an
that You'll See Me--Later--when We're in London?" " 155

Edith was Standing in the Doorway, the Man Behind Her. "Chip,
Mr. Lacon Knows We Met in England" " 192

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THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT

I

TRANSGRESSION

It was strange to think that if, on finishing her coffee in her room,
she had looked in on the children, as she generally did, instead of
going down to the drawing-room to write a note, her whole life might
have been different. "Why didn't I?" was the question she often asked
herself in the succeeding years, only to follow it with the reflection:
"But perhaps it would have happened in any case. Since the fact was
there, I must have come to know it--in the long run."

The note was an unimportant one. She could have sent it by a servant at
any minute of the day. The very needlessness of writing it at once, so
that her husband could post it as he went to his office, gave to the act
something of the force of fate.

Everything that morning, when she came to think of it, had something of
the force of fate. Why, on entering the drawing-room, hadn't she gone
straight to her desk, according to her intention, if it wasn't that fate
intervened? As a matter of fact, she went to the oriel window looking
down into Fifth Avenue, with vague thoughts of the weather. It was one
of those small Scotch corner windows that show you both sides of the
street at once. It was so much the favorite conning-spot of the family
that she advanced to it from habit.

And yet, if she had gone to her desk, that girl might have disappeared
before the lines of the note were penned. As it was, the girl was there,
standing as she had stood on other occasions--three or four, at
least--between the two little iron posts that spaced off the opening for
foot-passengers into the Park. She was looking up at the house in the
way Edith had noticed before--not with the scrutiny of one who wishes to
see, but with the forlorn patience of the unobtrusive creature hoping to
be seen.

In a neat gray suit of the fashion of 1904 and squirrel furs she was the
more unobtrusive because of a background of light snow. She was
pathetically unobtrusive. Not that she seemed poor; she suggested,
rather, some one lost or dazed or partially blotted out. People glanced
at her as they hurried by. There were some who turned and glanced a
sec