Never a word now of Elgar.  The Spences noted this cheerlessly, and could not but remark a bitterness that here and there revealed itself in her short, dry letters.  To Miriam she wrote only in the form of replies, rarely even alluding to her own affairs, but always with affectionate interest in those of her correspondent.

Another autumn came, and Cecily at length was mute; the most pressing letters obtained no response.  Miriam wrote to Reuben, but with the same result.  This silence was unbroken till winter; then, one morning in November, Eleanor received a note from Cecily, asking her to call as soon as she was able at an address in the far west of London—­nothing more than that.

In the afternoon, Eleanor set out to discover this address.  It proved to be a house in a decent suburban road.  On asking for Mrs. Elgar, she was led up to the second floor, and into a rather bare little sitting-room.  Here was Cecily, alone.

“I knew you would come soon,” she said, looking with an earnest, but not wholly sad, smile at her visitor.  “I had very nearly gone to you, but this was better.  You understand why I am here?”

“I am afraid so, after your long silence.”

“Don’t let us get into low spirits about it,” said Cecily, smiling again.  “All that is over; I can’t make myself miserable any more, and certainly don’t wish any one to be so on my account.  Come and sit nearer the fire.  What a black, crushing day!”

She looked out at the hopeless sky, and shook her head.

“You have lodgings here?” asked Eleanor, watching the girl with concern.

“Irene and her mother live here; they were able to take me in for the present.  He left me a month ago.  This time he wrote and told me plainly—­said it was no use, that he wouldn’t try to deceive me any longer.  He couldn’t live as I wish him to, so he would have done with pretences and leave me free.  I waited there in my ‘freedom’ till the other day; he might have come back, in spite of everything, you know.  But at last I wrote to an address he had given me, and told him I was going to London—­that I accepted his release, and that henceforth all his claims upon me must be at end.”

“Is he in Paris?”

“In the south of France, I believe.  But that is nothing to me.  What I inherited from my aunt makes me independent; there is no need of any arrangements about money, fortunately.  I dare say he foresaw this when he expressed a wish that I should keep this quite apart from our other sources of income, and manage it myself.”

Eleanor felt that the last word was said.  There was no distress in Cecily’s voice or manner, nothing but the simplicity of a clear decision, which seemed to carry with it hardly a regret.

“A tragedy can go no further than its fifth act,” Cecily pursued.  “I have shed all my tears long since, exhausted all my indignation.  You can’t think what an everyday affair it has become with me.  I am afraid that means that I am in a great measure demoralized by these experiences.  I can only hope that some day I shall recover my finer feeling.”