“David!” called Honora.  “David!”

Two blithe baby voices answered her from the rear porch.  The little ones were there with Mrs. Hays, and they excitedly welcomed this variation in their day’s programme.

“In a minute, babies,” called Honora.  “Mamma will come in a minute.”

Yes, she and David would go together to the babies, and they would “tell them,” the way people “told the bees.”

“David!” she kept calling.  “David!”

She looked in the doors of the rooms she passed, and presently reached her own.  As she entered, a large envelope addressed in David’s writing, conspicuously placed before the face of her desk-clock, caught her eye.  She imagined that it contained some bills or memoranda, and did not stop for it, but ran on.

“Oh, he’s gone to town,” she cried with exasperation, “and I haven’t an idea where to reach him!”

Closing her ears to the calls of the little girls, she returned to her own room and shut herself in.  She was completely exasperated with the need for patience.  Never had she so wanted David, and he was not there—­he was not there to hear that the moment of triumph had come for both of them and that they were justified before their world.

Petulantly she snatched the envelope from the desk and opened it.  It was neither bills nor memoranda which fell out, but a letter.  Surprised, she unfolded it.

Her eyes swept it, not gathering its meaning.  It might have been written in some foreign language, so incomprehensible did it seem.  But something deep down in her being trembled as if at approaching dissolution and sent up its wild messages of alarm.  Vaguely, afar off, like the shouts of a distant enemy on the hills, the import besieged her spirit.

“I must read it again,” she said simply.

She went over it slowly, like one deciphering an ancient hieroglyph.

     “My DEAR HONORA:—­” (it ran.)

“I am off and away with Mary Morrison.  Will this come to you as a complete surprise?  I hardly think so.  You have been my good comrade and assistant; but Mary Morrison is my woman.  I once thought you were, but there was a mistake somewhere.  Either I misjudged, or you changed.  I hope you’ll come across happiness, too, sometime.  I never knew the meaning of the word till I met Mary.  You and I haven’t been able to make each other out.  You thought I was bound up heart and soul in the laboratory.  I may as well tell you that only a fractional part of my nature was concerned with it.  Mary is an unlearned person compared with you, but she knew that, and it is the great fact for both of us.

“It is too bad about the babies.  We ought never to have had them.  See that they have a good education and count on me to help you.  You’ll find an account at the bank in your name.  There’ll be more there for you when that is gone.

     “DAVID.”