ritically examined her
profile in the triple mirror; then thrust out a thin little foot to be
divested of its mule and shod in a slipper that had arrived that morning
from Paris: she expected people to tea. While the maid was on her knees
Edith bethought herself of the letter and read it:--

Dear Lady Carnath--I have been in Canada all summer. No letters
were forwarded. I find yours here at the Metropolitan. Thanks,
I am well. Life is the same with me. I eat and drink and
wither. But you are a memory to be thankful for, and I have
never tried to forget you. I was glad to learn through Tower,
whom I met in Montreal, that you were well and happy. I wish I
may never hear otherwise.

Then followed several pages of news of her old friends.

"Poor fellow!" thought Edith with a sigh. "But I doubt if any woman or
any circumstances would ever make a man like that happy. There are those
wretched people, and I am not half dressed!"

Nevertheless, he again took his stand in her brain and elbowed
Hedworth--whose concrete part was still detained in Switzerland. She did
not answer the letter at once; it was not an easy letter to answer. But
it haunted her; and finally she sat down at her desk and bit the end of
her penholder.

She sat staring before her, the man in complete possession. And
gradually the color left her face. If this old love, which her mind and
senses had corporealized, refused to abdicate, had she any right to
marry Hedworth? Now that she had unlocked this ghost, might not she find
it at her side whenever her husband was absent, reminding her that she
was a sort of mental bigamist? Carnath had no part in her dilemma; she
barely recalled his episode.

She was as positive as she had been when the past unrolled itself that
she had no wish to see the first man again; that did he stand before her
his power would vanish. He was a back number--a fatal position to occupy
in the imagination of a vital and world-living woman.

"Is it all that he awakened, made known to me, represented, that arises
in resentment? Or is it that the soul only gives itself once,
acknowledges only one mate? The mind and body, perhaps, obey the demand
for companionship again. The soul in its loneliness endeavors to
accompany these comrades, but finds itself linked to the mate of the
past. Probably when a woman marries a man she does not love, the soul,
having no demand made upon it, abstracts itself, sleeps.