was
taking appearances for facts. She strove to listen to the whisper, but
the fantoches were froward and insistent; the sturdier her effort to
dispel them the closer they swarmed. Sometimes of their own accord they
would leave her, she would think herself done with them, her eyes filled
in testimony to her deliverance, and abruptly back they came. But still
the whisper persisted, it was growing potent, and its voice was clear.
It kept exhorting to patience, it exorcised appearances, and advanced
little pleas of its own.

Eden was only too willing to be guided. "I am impatient," she mused,
"but I will wait."

Another hour limped away, and though an hour limps it may leave a balm
behind. The lamps in the drawing-room had been lighted, but the servant
had come and gone unobserved. Eden was still closeted in herself.
"Surely, by eleven at the latest he will return," she reflected, "and
then all will be explained. It is a thankless task this of building
imaginary dungeons. There are hours in which I let fancies resolve
themselves into facts and the facts fossilize into skeletons." An
episode of her girlhood came back to her and she smiled. "Perhaps father
was right; I may have hemiopia, after all."

She stood up from her seat and was about to leave the room when she
heard the front door open, and in a second her husband's step.

Eden drew the portiere aside and looked out in the hall. Usselex had his
back to her. He was taking off his overcoat. She spoke to him and he
turned at once, one arm still unreleased. At last he freed himself and
came to her.

"You got my note, did you not?" he began. "I am sorry about this
evening. Could you not go to Mrs. Manhattan's without me? Something
always seems to turn up at the last moment."

"I hardly expected you so early," Eden answered. "I sent word to Laura."
She was looking at her husband, but her husband was not looking at her.
He seemed preoccupied and nodded his head abstractedly.

"Yes, yes," he muttered, with singular inappositeness. "Yes, of course.
But there," he added and turned again to the door, "I must hurry."

"Whom were you with this afternoon?" Eden asked.

It was as though she had checked him with a rein. He stopped at once and
glanced at her.

"Did you see me?" he inquired; and accepting her silence for answer he
continued at once: "It's a long story; I have hardly time to tell it
now."

Eden put her hand on his sleeve. "Tell it me," she pleaded.

For