e to know that he really did care for me and
is ashamed and repentant of the baseness that made him act as he did. But
beyond that, I care nothing about him--nothing. I may not care for Dory
exactly as I should; but at least knowing him has made it impossible for
me to go back to the Ross sort of man."

That seemed clear and satisfactory. But, strangely, her mind jumped to
the somewhat unexpected conclusion, "And I'll not see him again."

She wrote Dory that night a long, long letter, the nearest to a love
letter she had ever written him. She brought Ross in quite casually;
yet--What is the mystery of the telltale penumbra round the written word?
Why was it that Dory, in far-away Vienna, with the memory of her strong
and of the Villa d'Orsay dim, reading the letter for the first time,
thought it the best he had ever got from her; and the next morning,
reading it again, could think of nothing but Ross, and what Adelaide had
really thought about him deep down in that dark well of the heart where
we rarely let even our own eyes look intently?

CHAPTER XXIII

A STROLL IN A BYPATH

Ross had intended to dine at the club; but Mrs. Hastings's trap was
hardly clear of the grounds when he, to be free to think uninterruptedly,
set out through the woods for Point Helen.

Even had he had interests more absorbing than pastimes, display, and
money-making by the "brace" game of "high finance" with its small risks
of losing and smaller risks of being caught, even if he had been married
to a less positive and incessant irritant than Theresa was to him, he
would still not have forgotten Adelaide. Forgetfulness comes with the
finished episode, never with the unfinished. In the circumstances, there
could be but one effect from seeing her again. His regrets blazed up into
fierce remorse, became the reckless raging of a passion to which
obstacles and difficulties are as fuel to fire.

Theresa, once the matter of husband-getting was safely settled, had no
restraint of prudence upon her self-complacence. She "let herself go"
completely, with results upon her character, her mind, and her personal
appearance that were depressing enough to the casual beholder, but
appalling to those who were in her intimacy of the home. Ross watched her
deteriorate in gloomy and unreproving silence. She got herself together
sufficiently for as good public appearance as a person of her wealth and
position needed to make, he reasoned; what did it matt