t had happened to her this day? When she had reached
her room, Janet began to wonder why she had told her parents. Had it not
been in order to relieve their anxiety--especially her mother's--on the
score of her recent absences from home? Yes, that was it, and because the
news would make them happy. And then the mere assertion to them that she
was to marry Ditmar helped to make it more real to herself. But, now that
reality was fading again, she was unable to bring it within the scope of
her imagination, her mind refused to hold one remembered circumstance
long enough to coordinate it with another: she realized that she was
tired--too tired to think any more. But despite her exhaustion there
remained within her, possessing her, as it were overshadowing her,
unrelated to future or past, the presence of the man who had awakened her
to an intensity of life hitherto unconceived. When her head touched the
pillow she fell asleep....

When the bells and the undulating scream of the siren awoke her, she lay
awhile groping in the darkness. Where was she? Who was she? The discovery
of the fact that the nail of the middle finger on her right hand was
broken, gave her a clew. She had broken that nail in reaching out to save
something--a vase of roses--that was it!--a vase of roses on a table with
a white cloth. Ditmar had tipped it over. The sudden flaring up of this
trivial incident served to re-establish her identity, to light a fuse
along which her mind began to run like fire, illuminating redly all the
events of the day before. It was sweet to lie thus, to possess, as her
very own, these precious, passionate memories of life lived at last to
fulness, to feel that she had irrevocably given herself and taken--all. A
longing to see Ditmar again invaded her: he would take an early train, he
would be at the office by nine. How could she wait until then?

With a movement that had become habitual, subconscious, she reached out
her hand to arouse her sister. The coldness of the sheets on the right
side of the bed sent a shiver through her--a shiver of fear.

"Lise!" she called. But there was no answer from the darkness. And Janet,
trembling, her heart beating wildly, sprang from the bed, searched for
the matches, and lit the gas. There was no sign of Lise; her clothes,
which she had the habit of flinging across the chairs, were nowhere to be
seen. Janet's eyes fell on the bureau, marked the absence of several
knick-knacks, including a