y were joined by Polly and Ben, and as Deena made no reference
to the subject they had been discussing, the talk wandered to general
topics.

The sun was making long shadows and the hour to start was come. The
gayety of the morning deserted Deena as they sped back to Harmouth.
Her brain was busy fitting her ideas to this possible change that
French had just foreshadowed, and though she was silent, her eyes
shone with excitement and her color came and went in response to her
unspoken thoughts.

In her mind she saw Tierra del Fuego as it looked on the map at the
end of the narrowing continent, and then she remembered a picture of
Cape Horn that had been in her geography when she was a child--a bold,
rocky promontory jutting into a restless sea, in which three whales
were blowing fountains from the tops of their heads. She reflected
that it was very far away, and that in going there Simeon might
encounter possible dangers and certain discomfort, and she tried to
feel sorry, and all the time a wild excitement blazed in her breast.
She felt as if her youth had been atrophied, and that if Simeon went
it might revive, and then a great shame shook her to have allowed such
thoughts, and a tender pity for the lonely man she had married
obliterated self.

Stephen's voice broke in upon her reverie.

"Have I depressed you, Mrs. Ponsonby?"

"No, no," she answered. "I am only considering ways and means. I want
him to go. We might rent our house for the winter, and I could go home
to live. Count upon my doing everything in my power to make Simeon's
going easy, Mr. French."

"You are admirable," said Stephen, with genuine satisfaction. He even
half put out his hand to give hers a grasp of approbation, but thought
better of it. If she had had her hair parted in the middle, and had
been mending Ponsonby's stockings under the drop-light in her parlor,
he might have done so, braving the needle's point; but, looking as she
did to-day, it seemed safer to refrain.

It was six o'clock when the auto stopped at Deena's door.

"I wish she had shown a little more emotion at his going," was
Stephen's reflection as he helped her out, forgetting how he had
dreaded any evidence of distress; but he only said:

"May I come back to tea, Mrs. Ponsonby? I should like to talk this
over with Simeon to-night."

She acquiesced with an inward misgiving; it was the first time, she
had ever given an invitation to her own table, but it was her
husband