She put her hands to her eyes with a shudder:  “You do not know what you are saying,” she cried, and rose.

“Then trust it all to time,” he said finally, “that is best!  Time alone solves so much.  Wait!  Do not act!  Think and feel as little as possible.  Give time its merciful chance.  I’ll come to see you.”

They had moved toward the door.  She drew off her glove which she was putting on and laid her hand once more in his.

“Time can change nothing.  I have decided.”

As she was going down the steps to the carriage, she turned and came back.

“Do not come to see me!  I shall come to you to say good-by.  It is better for you not to come to the house just now.  I might not be able to see you.”

Isabel had the carriage driven to the Osborns’.

The house was situated in a pleasant street of delightful residences.  It had been newly built on an old foundation as a bridal present to Kate from her father.  She had furnished it with a young wife’s pride and delight and she had lined it throughout with thoughts of incommunicable tenderness about the life history just beginning.  Now, people driving past (and there were few in town who did not know) looked at it as already a prison and a doom.

Kate was sitting in the hall with some work in her lap.  Seeing Isabel she sprang up and met her at the door, greeting her as though she herself were the happiest of wives.

“Do you know how long it has been since you were here?” she exclaimed chidingly.  “I had not realized how soon young married people can be forgotten and pushed aside.”

“Forget you, dearest!  I have never thought of you so much as since I was here last.”

“Ah,” thought Kate to herself, “she has heard.  She has begun to feel sorry for me and has begun to stay away as people avoid the unhappy.”

But the two friends, each smiling into the other’s eyes, their arms around each other, passed into the parlors.

“Now that you are here at last, I shall keep you,” said Kate, rising from the seat they had taken.  “I will send the carriage home.  George cannot be here to lunch and we shall have it all to ourselves as we used to when we were girls together.”

“No,” exclaimed Isabel, drawing her down into the seat again, “I cannot stay.  I had only a few moments and drove by just to speak to you, just to tell you how much I love you.”

Kate’s face changed and she dropped her eyes.  “Is so little of me so much nowadays?” she asked, feeling as though the friendship of a lifetime were indeed beginning to fail her along with other things.

“No, no, no,” cried Isabel.  “I wish we could never be separated.”

She rose quickly and went over to the piano and began to turn over the music.  “It seems so long since I heard any music.  What has become of it?  Has it all gone out of life?  I feel as though there were none any more.”