t Owen's letter. He took it and
glanced down the page, his face grown grave. She waited nervously till
he looked up.

"That's a good plan; the best thing that could happen," he said, a just
perceptible shade of constraint in his tone.

"Oh, yes," she hastily assented. She was aware of a faint current of
relief silently circulating between them. They were both glad that Owen
was going, that for a while he would be out of their way; and it seemed
to her horrible that so much of the stuff of their happiness should be
made of such unavowed feelings...

"I shall see him this evening," she said, wishing Darrow to feel that
she was not afraid of meeting her step-son.

"Yes, of course; perhaps he might dine with you."

The words struck her as strangely obtuse. Darrow was to meet his
Ambassador at the station on the latter's arrival, and would in all
probability have to spend the evening with him, and Anna knew he had
been concerned at the thought of having to leave her alone. But how
could he speak in that careless tone of her dining with Owen? She
lowered her voice to say: "I'm afraid he's desperately unhappy."

He answered, with a tinge of impatience: "It's much the best thing that
he should travel."

"Yes--but don't you feel..." She broke off. She knew how he disliked
these idle returns on the irrevocable, and her fear of doing or saying
what he disliked was tinged by a new instinct of subserviency against
which her pride revolted. She thought to herself: "He will see the
change, and grow indifferent to me as he did to HER..." and for a moment
it seemed to her that she was reliving the experience of Sophy Viner.

Darrow made no attempt to learn the end of her unfinished sentence. He
handed back Owen's letter and returned to his newspaper; and when he
looked up from it a few minutes later it was with a clear brow and a
smile that irresistibly drew her back to happier thoughts.

The train was just entering a station, and a moment later their
compartment was invaded by a commonplace couple preoccupied with
the bestowal of bulging packages. Anna, at their approach, felt the
possessive pride of the woman in love when strangers are between herself
and the man she loves. She asked Darrow to open the window, to place her
bag in the net, to roll her rug into a cushion for her feet; and while
he was thus busied with her she was conscious of a new devotion in his
tone, in his way of bending over her and meeting her eyes. He w