tily, as she passed on her early
ride with Ned Marshall. Turning, almost unconsciously, my eyes followed
her graceful, very erect figure, in its close black habit, swaying so
perfectly with the motion of her chestnut mare. An immeasurable,
wind-blown space seemed to stretch between us, and the very sound of the
horse's hoofs on the cobblestones in the street came to me, faint and
thin, as if it had floated back from some remote past which I but dimly
remembered. I had never felt, even when standing at Bonny's side, that I
was within speaking distance of her, and to-day, while I looked after
the vanishing horses, I knew that odd, baffling sensation of struggling
to break through an inflexible, yet invisible barrier. Why was it that I
who had won Sally should still remain so hopelessly divided from all
that to which Sally by right and by nature belonged?

Farther down the two great sycamores, still gaunt and bare as skeletons,
stood out against a sky of intense blueness; and on the crooked pavement
beneath, the shadows, fine and delicate as lace-work, rippled gently in
the wind that blew straight in from the river. Looking up from under the
silvery boughs, I saw the wire cage of the canary between the parted
curtains, and beyond it the pale oval face of Miss Mitty, with its
grave, set smile, so like the smile of the painted Blands and Fairfaxes
that hung, in massive frames, on the drawing-room walls. In the midst of
my own ruin an impulse of compassion entered my heart. The vacancy of
the old grey house was like the vacancy of a tomb in which the ashes
have scattered, and the one living spirit seemed that of the canary
singing joyously in his wire cage. Something in the song brought Sally
to my mind as she had appeared that morning at breakfast, and I felt
again the soft, comforting touch of the hand she had laid on my face.
Then I turned my eyes to the street, and saw George Bolingbroke coming
slowly toward me, beyond the last great sycamore, which grew midway of
the bricks. At the sight of him all that had comforted or supported me
crumbled and fell. In its place came that sharp physical soreness--like
the soreness from violent action--that the shock of my failure had
brought. I, who had meant so passionately to win in the race, was
suddenly crippled. Money, I had said, was all that I had to give, and
yet I was beggared now even of that. Shorn of my power, what remained to
me that would make me his match?

He came up,