“Come to me at once.  You will soon be free,” without any signature but an initial.  The melodramatic mystery of it would have cautioned knowing women, but Kitty was not knowing.

“If he had received this an hour ago, the ‘way of escape’ would have been found.  He would have been free to marry Maria.”  So much she understood.  She sat down and was quiet for half an hour.  It was the first wretched half hour of her life—­so wretched that she forgot to cry.

“It would make him very happy to marry Maria,” she said, getting up and speaking aloud.  Then she opened the door and went up to her chamber, her thoughts keeping time with her swift motions.  It seemed to her that she still spoke aloud.  “If I were a man I could go to this house in Philadelphia and receive this message, which will set him free” (beginning to fold the dresses in her closet).  “It will never reach him otherwise.  I could find and bring him to Maria.  But I never was five miles from Berrytown in my life, I never could go” (dragging out a great trunk and packing the dresses into it).  “It would be a friendly thing for some man to do for him.  Maria could not do so much” (cramming in undergarments enough for a year’s wear).  “If I were a man!  He’d not snub me then as he does now, when I am only Kitty.  If this could be done it would bring happiness for life to him.” (The trunk was packed as she had seen her mother’s.  She was on her knees, trying to force down the lid, but her wrists were too weak.) “He would come back at once.  How lovely Maria looked in that black lace mantilla!  He would kiss her mouth and smooth her hair.”  (Kitty, still kneeling, was staring at the wall with pale cheeks and distended eyes.  The lock snapped as it shut.  She rose and began putting on her gray hat and veil.) “No woman could go to the city through that dark; and there is a storm coming.  If I did it, what would he care for me?  I am only Kitty.  I would sit in the window here alone year after year, growing into a neglected old maid, and watch him go by with his happy wife and children.  I need not interfere.  I can throw the telegram into the fire and let them both go their ways.  What are they to me?” She had buttoned her sacque and gloves, and now went up to the glass.  It was a childish face that she looked at, but one now exceptionally grave and reserved.

She walked quickly down and tapped at the kitchen door:  “When the porter comes for my trunk, Jane, give it to him.  Tell my mother when she comes it was necessary for me to leave home to help a friend.  I shall be back in a few days—­if I am alive.”

“De Lord be good to us, honey!” Jane stood aghast.  Kitty came suddenly up to the old woman and kissed her.  She felt quite alone in the world in beginning this desperate undertaking.  The next moment she passed the window and was gone.

Miss Muller, with a satchel and shawl-strap, would have started coolly at an hour’s notice alone for the Yosemite or Japan.  But Kitty, with the enormous trunk, which was her sole idea of travel, set out through the night and storm, feeling death clutching at her on every side.