“I must brush these cobwebs away from my brain ... only—­” suddenly her eyes flooded and there was a gasping sob in her voice—­“only they aren’t cobwebs—­they are cables and chains!  I was a fool to expect to be happy.  I haven’t been happy for years.  I’ve never had what I’ve wanted....  I haven’t even been able to have my baby with me.”  Marcia went slowly to a chair and sat staring, wide-eyed, at the wall.  At last she looked up and commanded in a whisper.  “You must go now—­don’t say good-by—­just go!”

Paul took up his hat and let himself out into the narrow hall.

CHAPTER XXII

The illness of Elizabeth Burton proved tedious and perplexing to the specialists who traced its origin beyond the purely physical to some unconfessed thing gnawing at the peace of her brain.  Accordingly they did what they could and, having effected a temporary repair, fell back on the customary prescription of change and travel.

During these weeks Mary had been constantly with her mother—­and when she was even a short while away the elder woman anxiously called for her.  Sometimes she and Hamilton had met, but at these times there was no syllable of surrender from the lips of either; only a tacit sort of truce such as might have existed where two armies drawn tensely in confronting battle-lines pause to care for the wounded in which both have interest.  But when the mandate came that Elizabeth Burton must go abroad Mary Burton faced the sternest dilemma which had ever presented itself for her decision.  The mother refused absolutely to obey the verdict unless her daughter accompanied her, and while Mary was abroad she could only guess what crises her lover might be meeting at home—­because he was her lover.

She and Edwardes were walking together one afternoon as they discussed this new complication in their affairs.  They had chosen for their tryst neither the smooth stretch of the avenue nor the paths of the park, but those tangled by-ways that thread the woods back of the Jersey Palisades.

It was a cold day with air as biting as a lash and as clear as crystal, and since these woods were wild and desolate in spots though skirted by smooth road-ways and flanked by handsome estates they had for the most part uninterrupted solitude.  Ragged outcroppings of rock stood baldly etched against the brilliant sky and through the open spaces they occasionally saw the Hudson and the contour of upper New York.  Twice they came upon rouged and powdered men and women with beaded lashes, but these men and women were too busy doing varied things before cameras to take notice of them, for their refuge was also the open-air workshop of moving-picture folk.

“Of course you must go,” Edwardes seriously told her.  “Your mother’s health—­her life itself—­may depend on it.  You aren’t the sort who can hesitate to answer such a call and it won’t be forever, you know.”