baby. At least I had
kept faith longer than she had. I wondered if she once more loved her
husband. Did I hope so? Yes, of course, in the same way that you
express conventional horror when you hear of the latest famine in China.

Well, for better for worse, I was a free man again. Free--if it is
free to be tormented by remorse, to feel cheap, futile, a waster--a
thing of no account to anyone. If this is freedom it isn't good to be
free. No man is happy who comes and goes as he pleases. There must be
responsibilities to shoulder, and ties which bind him. If he lives for
himself alone and for what, in the first glad bursts of unattachment he
imagines to be pleasure, a day will come when the acid of self-contempt
begins to corrode him.

I determined to go to France, via London for I needed clothes, and if I
had a definite place it was to volunteer as a nurse in the American
hospital. So I took out a passport, and engaged my passage.

A few days later, while crossing from Madison Avenue to Fifth, I found
myself suddenly face to face with Hilda. She averted her head and
tried to pass without being recognized, but I called her name, and she
stopped short and turned back.

"It's just to ask how you are getting on, Hilda."

"I've just left Mrs. Fulton," she said; "I'm going home."

"Home?"

"England."

"You don't mean it! But why?"

"Oh," she said, "it's all gotten on my nerves--the war. I want to
help. I've saved enough money to take me over, and to keep me if I
have to look round a bit."

"I'm going over, too," I said.

"To help?"

"Oh, Hilda, I don't know. I _hope_ so."

"Oh, I hope so, too, Mr. Mannering."

"But, Hilda, I want to talk to you. There may not be another chance.
Where are you going _now_?"

"I'm staying with friends till I sail."

"Well, tell them you're going for a motor ride with another friend, and
to dine somewhere along the Sound, will you?"

"Oh, I couldn't, not very well."

"Hilda," I said, "there are so many things I want to know, and only you
can tell me about Stamford--about last winter--is it true that Mrs.
Fulton is going----?"

"Yes, she is."

We were silent for a moment. Then she spoke. "Do you still----?"

"No, I don't _think_ so, Hilda."

"Then I'll come--if you want me to, and think I ought. But if any of
your friends----?"

"Do I have to tell you that you are one of the smartest looking people
I know, Hilda? They'll think you are the Marchion