ou were not ill."

"That was nice of him." Edith put a small pink foot out of bed on the
other side and gazed at it pensively. Madame laughed.

"I don't believe you've grown up," she said. "You remind me of a small
child, who has just discovered her toes. Do you want your breakfast up
here?"

"No, I'll come down. Give me half an hour and I'll appear before you,
clothed and in my right mind, with as humble an apology for my sins as
I'm able to compose in the meantime."

[Sidenote: Call of the Wander-Lust]

She was as good as her word, appearing promptly at the time she had set,
and dressed for the street. After doing justice to a hearty breakfast,
she said that she was going out for a walk and probably would not be
back to luncheon.

"My dear!" exclaimed Madame. "You mustn't do that. I'll have luncheon
kept for you."

"No, please don't, for I really shan't want any. Didn't you observe my
breakfast? Even a piano-mover couldn't think of eating again before
seven, so let me go a-gypsying till sunset."

Madame nodded troubled acquiescence, and, with a laugh, Edith kissed her
good-bye. "I'm subject to the Wander-lust," she said, "and when the call
comes, I have to go. It's in my blood to-day, so farewell for the
present."

Madame watched her as she went down the street, the golden quill on her
green hat bidding jaunty defiance to the wind. As she had said, she felt
the call at times, and had to yield to its imperative summons, but
to-day it was her soul that craved the solace of the open spaces and the
wind-swept fields.

As she dressed, she had tried to dismiss last night's experience as a
mere fantasy of sleep, or, if not an actual dream, some vision hailing
from the borderland of consciousness, at the point where the senses
merge. Yet, even as she argued with herself, she felt the utter futility
of it, and knew her denials were vain in the face of truth.

[Sidenote: Roaming through the Village]

She dreaded the necessity of meeting Alden again, then made a wry face
at her own foolishness. "Ridiculous," she said to herself,
"preposterous, absurd!" No matter what her own nightmares might be, he
slept soundly--of course he did. How could healthy youth with a clear
conscience do otherwise?

For an hour or more, she kept to the streets of the village, with the
sublime unconsciousness of the city-bred, too absorbed in her own
thoughts to know that she was stared at and freely commented upon by
those to whom a s