nly
wholesome thing in such a case. She pushed him aside vigorously, stepped
upon the settee, slipped in at the window, and closed it. She drew the
curtain, but it seemed thin, and with characteristic impulsiveness she
put out her light that she might have the friendly drapery of
darkness about her. She heard the soft--for the first time it seemed
to her stealthy--tread of Humphreys, as he returned to his room. Whether
she swooned or whether she slept after that she never knew. It was
morning without any time intervening, she had a headache and could
scarcely walk, and there was August's note lying on the floor. She read
it again--if not with more intelligence, at least with more suspicion.
She wondered at her own hastiness. She tried to go about the house, but
the excitement of the previous night, added to all she had suffered
beside, had given her a headache, blinding and paralyzing, that sent her
back to bed.

[Illustration: "NOW I HATE YOU!"]

And there she lay in that half-asleep, half-awake mood, which a nervous
headache produces. She seemed to be a fly in a web, and the spider was
trying to fasten her. A very polite spider, with that smile which went
half-way up his face but which never seemed able to reach his eyes. He
had straps to his pantaloons, and a reddish mustache, and she shuddered
as he wound his fine webs about her. She tried to shake off the
illusion. But the more absurd an illusion, the more it will not be
shaken off. For see! the spider was kissing her hand! Then she seemed to
have made a great effort and to have broken the web. But her wings were
torn, and her feet were shackled by the fine strands that still adhered.
She could not get them off. Wouldn't somebody help her, even as she had
many a time picked off the webs from a fly's feet out of sheer pity? And
all day she would perpetually return into these half-conscious states
and feel the spider's web about her feet, and ask over and over again if
somebody wouldn't help her to get out of the meshes.

Toward evening her mother brought her a cup of tea and a piece of
toast, and for the first time in the remembered life of the daughter
made an endeavor to show a little tenderness for her. It was a clumsy
endeavor, for when the great gulf is once fixed between mother and child
it is with difficulty bridged. And finding herself awkward in the new
role, Mrs. Anderson dropped it and resumed her old gait, remarking, as
she closed the door, that she w