At the beginning of August Gabriella sent the children to the country with Miss Polly, and sailed, on a fast boat, for a brief visit to the great dress designers of Paris.  Ever since Madame’s age and infirmities had forced her to relinquish this annual trip, Gabriella had taken her place, and all through the year she looked forward to it as to the last of her youthful adventures.  On her last visit, Billy and Patty had been in Switzerland; but this summer they met her at Cherbourg; and she spent several brilliant days with them before they flitted off again, and left her to the doubtful consideration of dressmakers and milliners.  Patty, who appeared to grow younger and lovelier with each passing year, came to her room the evening before they parted, and asked her in a whisper if she had heard of George or Florrie in the ten years since their elopement?

“Not a word—­not a single word, darling.  I haven’t heard his name mentioned since I got my divorce.”

“You didn’t know, then, that Florrie left him six months after they ran away?”

“No, I didn’t know.  Does he ever write to you?”

“Not to me, but mother hears from him every now and then when he wants money badly.  Of course she doesn’t have much to send him, but she gives him every penny she can spare.  A year ago she had a letter from some doctor in New Jersey telling her that he was treating George for the drink habit, and that he needed to be kept somewhere for treatment for several months.  We sent her the money she needed, Billy and I, but in her next letter she said that George had escaped from the hospital and that she hadn’t heard of him since.  That must have been about six months ago.”

“It’s dreadful for his mother,” observed Gabriella, with vague compassion, for she felt as if Patty were speaking of a stranger whose face she was incapable of visualizing in her memory.  In the last ten years she had not only forgotten George, but she had forgotten as completely the Gabriella who had once loved him.  Though it was still possible for her to revoke the hollow images of the past, she could not restore to these images even the remotest semblance of reality and passion.  It was as if some nerve—­the sentimental nerve—­had atrophied.  She could remember George as she remembered the house in Fifty-seventh Street or her wedding-gown which Miss Polly had made; she could say to herself, “I loved him when I married him,” or, “It was in such a year that he left me”; but the empty phrases awoke no responsive echoes in her heart; and it would have been impossible to imagine a woman less crushed or permanently saddened by the wreck of her happiness.  “I suppose it’s hard work that keeps me from thinking about the past,” she reflected while she watched Patty’s beautiful face framed by the pale gold of her hair.  “I suppose it’s work that has driven everything else out of my thoughts.”

“Have you any idea what became of Florrie?” she asked, moved by a passing curiosity.