ho sat with cooling pipes in their palms, constrained to
silence still by the infinite sadness of motherhood bereaved.

"Tomorrow morning we better start in clearing the road," one muttered
at last. "Somebody can ride down and have a team come up after her."

"It's no use to hunt any longer," another observed uneasily. "The snow
would cover up--"

"Sh-sh-sh!" warned the professor, and nodded his head toward the room
door.

In her own home, that had been closed for months, Mrs. Singleton Corey
folded her black veil up over the crown of her black hat and picked up
the telephone. Her white hair was brushed up from her forehead in a
smooth, cloudy fashion that had in it no more than a hint of marcelle
waving. Her face was almost as white as her hair, and her eyes were
black-shadowed and sunken. She sat down wearily upon the chair beside
the telephone stand, waited dull-eyed for Central to answer, and then
called up her doctor. Her voice was calm--too calm. It was absolutely
colorless.

Her doctor, on the other hand, became agitated to the point of
stuttering when he realized who was speaking to him. His disjointed
questions grated on Mrs. Singleton Corey, who was surfeited with
emotion and who craved nothing so much as absolute peace.

"Yes, certainly I am back," she drawled with a shade of impatience.
"Just now--from the depot.... No, I am feeling very well--No, I have
not read the papers, and I do not intend to.... Really, doctor, I can
see no necessity of your coming out here. I am perfectly all right, I
assure you. I shall call up the maids and let them know that I am
home, but first I have called you, just to ease your mind--providing,
of course, that you have one. You seem to have lost it quite
suddenly...."

She listened, and caught her breath. Her lips whitened, and her
nostrils flared suddenly with what may have been anger. "No, doctor ... I
did not--find--Jack." She forced herself to say it. He would
have to know, she reflected.

She was about to add something that would make her statement sound
less bald, but the doctor had hung up, muttering something she did not
catch. She waited, holding the receiver to her ear until Central, in
that supercilious voice we all dislike so much, asked crisply, "Are
you waiting?" Then Mrs. Singleton Corey also hung up her receiver and
sat there idly gazing at her folded hands.

"I must have a manicure at once," she said to herself irrelevantly,
though the heart of her