“Whatever comes, I must not lose my courage,” she told herself at such times.  “If I lose my courage I shall have nothing left.”

Then she would put on her hat, and go down into the street, where the unwashed children swarmed like insects over the pavements, and the air was as hot and parched as the air of a desert.  If the mother of the Jewish babies sat on her doorstep, she would stop for a little talk with her about the heat and the health of the children, and the increasing price of whatever one happened to buy in the market, or, perhaps, if the fruit stall still kept open, she would ask after the Italian’s little boy, and stop to pat Archibald’s friend, the white mongrel with the black ear.  She had left her acquaintances when she left Fifty-seventh Street, and, with the exception of Judge Crowborough, who telephoned occasionally to inquire if she needed assistance, she was without friends in New York.  Patty wrote often from Paris, but Billy was happy with his work, and they said nothing of returning to America.  In the whole city, outside of Dinard’s, she knew only Dr. French, and from him she had had no word or sign for several months.

It was on one of these depressing evenings, while she was boiling an egg in the kitchen, that the ringing of the door-bell reverberated with an uncanny sound through the empty apartment.  Spurred by an instinctive fear of a telegram, she ran to open the door, and found Dr. French standing in the dimly lighted hail, with the negro Robert grinning cheerfully at his back.

“I am so glad,” she said, “so glad,” and her voice shook in spite of the effort she made.

“I’ve been thinking about you all summer,” he explained, “and the other day I passed you in the street as you were coming from work.  You are not looking well.  Is it the heat?”

“No, it isn’t the heat.  I think it is the loneliness.  You see it is so different not having the children to come back to in the afternoon, and when I get lonely I see things in false proportions.  This apartment has been like a grave to me all summer.”

She led the way into the living-room, where her sewing, a blue cambric frock she was scalloping for Fanny, was lying on the chair by the window.  “Things are all upset.  I hope you won’t mind,” she added apologetically while she folded the dress and laid it aside, “but nothing seems to matter when I sit here all by myself.”

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, I work all day.  There is really very little to do except plan for the autumn, and I like that.  Madame is in Paris, and I am in charge of the place.”

“And in the evenings?”

She laughed with recovered spirit.  “In the evening I sew and read and mope.”

“Well, we must change all that,” he said, with a tenderness which brought tears to her eyes.  “Why can’t you come out with me somewhere to dinner?”

Three years ago, when she was first separated from George, she would have evaded the suggestion; but to-night, at the end of the long summer, she caught eagerly at the small crumb of pleasure.