“As to how I felt toward him:  I don’t know.  I liked him—­admired him.  I believe that I loved him.  But again we are faced with the abnormal condition in which I found myself.  I believe I loved him as I believe he loved me.  He represented a chance for life when for three years I had been dead—­living and breathing—­yet dead as a woman.  And that is the most terrible of all deaths.

“We planned to elope.  Don’t ask me how I could consider such a thing.  There is no answer possible.  It wasn’t a sane decision—­but I decided that I would.  There was the craving to get away from things—­to try to start over.  To revel in the richest things of life for awhile.  I was selfish—­unutterably so.  I didn’t think then of the effect on my husband—­or of the effect on Evelyn.  I was selfish—­yes.  But immoral—­no!  What I planned to do—­under the circumstances—­was not immoral.  Even yet I cannot convince myself that it was.

“Roland laid all his plans to leave the city.  In all my delirium of preparation—­the hiding and the secrecy—­I felt sincerely sorry for only one person, and that person was Hazel Gresham to whom Mr. Warren was engaged.  I believe she was in love with him.  But so was I—­and if he loved me—­as I said before, Mr. Carroll—­I was selfish!

“On the morning of the day we were to go—­my husband was in Nashville, you know—­Mr. Warren came to the house in his car.  He showed me that he had reserved a drawing-room for us to New York.  In order that we would not be seen together, he gave me one of the railroad tickets.  I was to reach the Union Station ten minutes before train time.  If you recall—­the train on which we were to go was quite late that night.

“We planned not to talk to one another at the station until after boarding the train.  Morning would have published news of the scandal broadcast, but until the irrevocable step had been taken—­we determined to avoid gossip.  And, Mr. Carroll—­I was then—­what is called a ’good woman’.  My faithlessness up to that time, and to this moment, had been mental—­and mental only.

“When he left me that morning he took with him my suit-case.  We had agreed that I was not to take a trunk:  that I was to buy—­a trousseau—­in New York.  I looked upon it almost as a honeymoon.  He took my suit-case to the Union Station and checked it there.  I did not see him again that day.”

“Toward evening—­knowing that my husband was not due back until the following morning, and realizing that I could not leave Evelyn alone in the house—­I suggested that she spend the night with Hazel Gresham.  She was surprised—­knowing that I dread to be alone at night—­but was ready enough to go.  I was not overcome with either emotion or shame when I told her good-bye that afternoon.  I was so hungry for happiness that I was dead to the other emotions.

“I went to the station that night in a street car.  I had telephoned in advance and learned that the train was late.  The night was the worst of the winter—­bitterly cold.  When I reached the station, I saw that Roland was already there, and as he saw me enter, he left through the opposite door—­walking out to the platform which parallels the railroad tracks.