I knew while I walked with Porter that people were wondering who I was—­in my long black coat, with my hair all blown about.  I fancy that they won’t link my name, sentimentally, with the Knight of the Auburn Crest.  Beside Grace and Delilah I look like a little country girl.  But I don’t care—­my thick coat is comfortable, and my little soft hat stays on my head, which is all one needs, isn’t it?  But as I write this I wonder where the girl is who used to like pretty clothes.  Do you remember the dress I wore at Constance’s wedding?  I was thinking to-day of it—­and of Leila hippity-hopping up the stairs in her one pink slipper.  Oh, how far away those days seem—­and how strong I felt—­and how ready I was to face the world, and now I just want to crawl into a corner and watch other people live.

Leila is much braver than I. She takes a little walk every morning with her father, and another walk every afternoon with Porter—­and she is always talking to lonesome people and sick people; and all the while she wears a little faint shining smile, like an angel’s.  Yet I used to be quite scornful of Leila, even while I loved her.  I thought she was so sweetly and weakly feminine; yet she is steering her little ship through stormy waters, while I have lost my rudder and compass, and all the other things that a mariner needs in a time of storm.

Before the storm.

The fog still hangs over us, and we seem to ride on the surface of a dead sea.  Last night there was no moon and to-day Aunt Frances has not appeared.  Even Delilah seems to feel depressed by the silence and the stillness—­not a sound but the beat of the engines and the hoarse hoot of the horns.  This paper is damp as I write upon it, and blots the ink, but—­I sha’n’t rewrite it, because the blots will make you see me sitting here, with drops of moisture clinging to my coat and to my little hat, and making my hair curl up in a way that it never does in dry weather.

I wonder, if you were here, if you would seem a ghost like all the others.  Nothing is real but my thoughts of the things that used to be.  I can’t believe that I am on my way to London, and that I am going to live with Constance, and go sightseeing with Aunt Frances and Grace, and give up my plans for the—­Great Adventure.  Aunt Isabelle sat beside me this morning, and we talked about it.  She will stay with Aunt Frances and Grace, and we shall see each other every day.  I couldn’t quite get along at all if it were not for Aunt Isabelle—­she is such a mother-person, and she doesn’t make me feel, as the rest of them do, that I must be brave and courageous.  She just pats my hand and says, “It’s going to be all right, Mary dear—­it is going to be all right,” and presently I begin to feel that it is; she has such a fashion of ignoring the troublesome things of this world, and simply looking ahead to the next.  She told me once that heaven would mean to her, first of all, a place of beautiful sounds—­and second it would mean freedom.  You see she has always been dominated by Aunt Frances, poor thing.