in her face, as though she had been dancing wildly or
were in a fever. And this brilliancy seemed only to accentuate the
sharpened lines of her features, with their suggestion of delicacy, of a
too transparent fineness.

"You were asleep, Ben. I am sorry I waked you," she said.

"What is the matter, you are so flushed?" I asked.

"It was very warm in the theatre. I shan't go again until autumn."

"I don't believe you are well, dear. Isn't it time for you to get out of
the city?"

Her arms were raised to unfasten the pearl necklace at her throat, and
while I watched her face in the mirror, I saw that the flush suddenly
left it and it grew deadly white.

"It's that queer pain in my back," she said, sinking into a chair, and
hiding her eyes in her hands. "It comes on like this without warning.
I've had it ever--ever since that year on Church Hill."

In an instant I was beside her, catching her in my arms as she swayed
toward me.

"What can I do for you, dearest? Shall I get you a glass of wine?"

"No, it goes just as it comes," she answered, letting her hands fall
from her face, and looking at me with a smile. "There, I'm better now,
but I think you're right. I need to go out of the city. Even if I were
to stay here," she added, "you would be almost always away."

"Go North with Bonny Marshall, as she suggested, and I'll join you for
two weeks in August."

Shrinking gently out of my arms, she sat with the unfastened bodice of
her gown slipping away from her shoulders, and her face bent over the
pearl necklace which she was running back and forth through her fingers.

"Bonny and Ned and George all want me to go to Bar Harbor," she said,
after a moment. Then she raised her eyes and looked at me with the
expression of defiance, of recklessness, I had seen in them first on the
afternoon when Beauchamp had thrown her. "If you want me to go, too,
that will decide it."

"Of course I shall miss you,--I missed you this evening,--but I believe
it's the thing for you."

"Then I'll go," she responded quietly, and turning away, as if the
conversation were over, she went into her dressing-room to do her hair
for the night.

Two weeks later she went, and during her absence the long hot summer
dragged slowly by while I plunged deeper and deeper into the whirlpool
of affairs. In August I made an effort to spend the promised two weeks
with her, but on the third day of my visit, I was summoned home by a
telegram; and once