on her shoulder--what a difference between those caresses and the
caresses that had made her beg him to be "kind" to her! Said he:

"Do you mind if I leave you alone for a while? I ought to go to the club
and have the rest of my things packed and sent. I'll not be gone
long--about an hour."

"Very well," said she lifelessly.

"I'll telephone my office that I'll not be down to-day."

With an effort she said, "There's no reason for doing that. I don't want
to interfere with your business."

"I'm neglecting nothing. And that shopping must be done."

She made no reply, but went to the window, and from the height looked
down and out upon the mighty spread of the city. He observed her a
moment with a dazed pitying expression, took his hat and departed.

It was nearly two hours before he got together sufficient courage to
return. He had been hoping--had been saying to himself with vigorous
effort at confidence--that he had simply seen one more of the many
transformations, each of which seemed to present her as a wholly
different personality. When he should see her again, she would have
wiped out the personality that had shocked and saddened him, would
appear as some new variety of enchantress, perhaps even more potent over
his senses than ever before. But a glance as he entered demolished that
hope. She was no different than when he left. Evidently she had been
crying, and spasms of that sort always accentuate every unloveliness. He
did not try to nerve himself to kiss her, but said:

"It'll not take you long to get ready?"

She moved to rise from her languid rest upon the sofa. She sank back.
"Perhaps we'd better not go to-day," suggested she.

"Don't you feel well?" he asked, and his tone was more sympathetic than
it would have been had his sympathy been genuine.

"Not very," replied she, with a faint deprecating smile. "And not
very--not very----"

"Not very what?" he said, in a tone of encouragement.

"Not very happy," she confessed. "I'm afraid I've made a--a dreadful
mistake."

[Illustration: "Evidently she had been crying."]

He looked at her in silence. She could have said nothing that would have
caused a livelier response within himself. His cynicism noted the fact
that while he had mercifully concealed his discontent, she was thinking
only of herself. But he did not blame her. It was only the familiar
habit of the sex, bred of man's assiduous cultivation of its egotism. He
said: "Oh, you'll feel dif