sort with Trego and suffer the airs with which Mrs. Artemas would
treat her vanquished rival in the man's affections, even though Sally
had never been conscious of the rivalry nor in any way encouraged the
putative prize.

It might seem ungrateful to Mrs. Gosnold; Sally couldn't help that,
though she was sincerely sorry; the association simply must be
discontinued.

And that, she declared in her solitude, was all there was about
it. . . .

By the time she had succeeded in composing a note which seemed
sufficiently grateful in tone to excuse the pitiful inadequacy of her
excuse for absconding--that she was "out of her element" on the
Island, an outsider, a Nobody, and didn't "belong" and never
could--the chill light of early dawn had rendered the electrics
garish.

She read the note over with hypercritical sensitiveness to its
defects, but decided that it must do. Besides, she had used the last
sheet of note-paper in the rack on her desk; more was not
obtainable without a trip to the living-room. Then in desperation she
appended, under the sign of the venerable P. S., a prayer that this
might prove acceptable in lieu of more gracious leave-taking,
addressed the envelope to Mrs. Gosnold, and left it sticking
conspicuously in the frame of her dressing-mirror.

Studiously she reduced her travelling gear to the simplest requisites;
the hand-bag she took because she had a use for it, nothing less than
to serve as a cover for the return of everything she wore.

She was determined to go out of this Island world, whose ether was too
rare for her vulgar lungs, with no more than she had brought into it.

At length the laggard hands of the clock were close together on the
figure 6.

She rose, let herself out of the room, and by way of that memorable
side door issued forth into a morning as rarely beautiful as ever that
blessed Island knew. It made renunciation doubly difficult. Yet Sally
did not falter or once look back.

Her way to the village wharf was shortest by the beach. None saw her
steal through the formal garden (with eyes averted from that one
marble seat which was forever distinguished from all others in the
world) and vanish over the lip of the cliff by way of its long, zigzag
stairway. Few noticed her as she debouched from the beach into
the village streets; her dress was inconspicuous, her demeanour even
more than retiring.

Her hope was favoured in that on this earlier trip of the boat there
were few