mental
climax. Moreover, he might be dead. It might be spiritual influence that
had handled her imagination. She was not a superstitious woman; she was
merely wise enough to know that she knew nothing, and that it was folly
to disbelieve anything.

Hedworth did not return for three weeks. During that time it seemed to
her that her brain was an amphitheatre in which the two men were
constantly wrestling. She never saw one without the other. When Hedworth
mastered for the moment she was reminded that he was merely playing a
familiar tune on her soul-keys. She felt for the man who had first
touched those keys a persistent tenderness, and during the last days
watched restlessly for his letter. But she felt no desire whatever to
see him again. For Hedworth she longed increasingly.

Hedworth returned. The other man vanished.

* * * * *

She announced the engagement. They had been invited to the same houses
for the autumn. Necessarily they saw little of each other, and planned
to meet in the less-frequented rooms and in the woods. At first they
enjoyed this new experience; but when they found themselves in a large
party that seemed to pervade every corner of the house and grounds at
once, and two days had passed without an interview of five minutes'
duration, Hedworth walked up to her--she was alone for the moment--and
said:

"Four weeks from to-day we marry."

She gave a little gasp, but made no protest.

"I have had enough of dawdling and sentimentalizing. We will marry at
your place in Sussex on the second of October."

"Very well," she said.

Shortly after she went to Paris to confer with the talent that should
enhance her loveliness, then paid Mrs. Hedworth a visit in Switzerland.
Hedworth met her there, and his mother saw little of her guests. Edith
returned to England alone. Hedworth was to follow at the end of the
week, and spend the few remaining days of his bachelorhood at the house
of a friend whose estate adjoined the one Lady Carnath had bought not
long after her husband's death.

Several days after her return she was sitting at her dressing-table when
a letter was handed her bearing the Washington post-mark. Her maid was
devising a new coiffure, and she was grumbling at the result. She
glanced at the handwriting, pushed the letter aside, and commanded the
maid to arrange her hair in the simple fashion that suited her best.
After the woman had fixed the last pin, Edith c