Also, of evenings, she found herself straining to hear the voice of Judge Harvey.  When she surprised herself at this, she would flush slightly, and again raise her book close to her shaded candle.

Then, of course, her meals were a diversion.  She became quite expert with the can-opener and the corkscrew.  The empty cans, since there was no way to get them out of her suite, she stacked on the side of the bathroom opposite her provisions; and daily the stack grew higher.

The nearest approach to an incident during this solitary period came to pass on the third night after Matilda’s departure.  On that evening Mrs. De Peyster became aware of a new voice in the house—­a voice with a French accent.  It seemed familiar, yet for a time she was puzzled as to the identity of the voice’s owner.  Then suddenly she knew:  the man below was M. Dubois, whom Olivetta, at her desire, had with unwilling but obedient frostiness sent about his business.  She had known that Jack had taken up with M. Dubois at the time the artist was doing her portrait; but she had not known that Jack was so intimate as the artist’s being admitted to Jack’s secret seemed to indicate.

Within herself, some formless, incomprehensible thing seemed about to happen.  During these days of solitude—­and this, too, even before Matilda had gone—­a queer new something had begun to stir within her, almost as though threatening an eruption.  It seemed a force, or spirit, rising darkly from hitherto unknown spaces of her being.  It frightened her, with its amorphous, menacing strangeness.  She tried to keep it down.  She tried to keep her mental eyes away from it.  And so, during all these days, she had no idea what the fearsome thing might be....

And then something did happen.  On the fifth day after Matilda’s departure, and the eighteenth after the sailing of the Plutonia, Mrs. De Peyster observed a sudden change in the atmosphere of the house.  Within an hour, from being filled with honeymoon hilarity, the house became filled with gloom.  There was no more laughter—­no more running up and down the stairs and through the hallways—­the piano’s song was silent.  Mrs. De Peyster sought to gain some clue to this mysterious change by listening for the talk of Mary and Jack and Mr. Pyecroft as they passed her door.  But whereas the trio had heretofore spoken freely and often in liveliest tones, they now were either wordless or their voices were solemnly hushed.

What did it mean?  Days passed—­the solemn gloom continued unabated—­and this question grew an ever more puzzling mystery to Mrs. De Peyster.  What could it possibly, possibly, mean?

But there was no way in which she could find out.  Her only source of information was Matilda, and Matilda was gone for a month; and even if Matilda, by any chance, should know what was the matter, she would not dare write; and even if she wrote, the letter, of course, would never be delivered, but would doubtless be forwarded to the pretended Mrs. De Peyster in Europe.  Mrs. De Peyster could only wonder—­and read—­and gaze furtively out of the little peep-holes of her prison—­and eat—­and stack the empty cans yet higher in her bathroom—­and wait, impatiently wait, while the mystery grew daily and hourly in magnitude.