Harriet’s face burned at the mere thought of it.  No, she couldn’t tell Linda yet; she was too tired to write to-night, anyway.  Linda and Fred had not been at all approving, Christmas night.  David had reproached her, had disappeared earlier than was expected or necessary; they had not failed of their suspicions.

“Well!  I must go to bed,” she said aloud, suddenly.  She stood, one elbow on the mantel, her beautiful eyes fixed on the dying fire.  It was midnight, the room and the house very still.  Outside the snow was still falling—­falling.  Her loose gown slipped back from the round young arm, fell in folds about the slender figure; her rich hair was braided, and hung in a rope of gold over one shoulder.  Her smoke-blue eyes, heavy-lidded in a rather white face, met their own gaze in the mirror.  “It isn’t exactly what I expected marriage to be,” mused Harriet, smiling at the exquisite vision upon which no other eyes would fall.  “But after all,” she said to herself, beginning to move about with last preparations for bed, “I’m married to the man I love—­nothing can change that.  And if he doesn’t love me, he likes me.  I’ve done nothing wrong, and if my life is just a little different from most women’s, why, I shall have to make the best of it!  And I did tell him—­I did tell him—­”

And her thoughts went back to the first few minutes she had spent in Richard’s office that day.  They had been alone, discussing the last details of their astonishing plan, when she had suddenly taken the plunge.

“Mr. Carter, there is just one thing!  Of course,” Harriet’s cheeks had flamed, “of course, this marriage of ours is not the usual marriage, and yet, there is just one thing of which I would like to speak to you before we—­we go up to Greenwich.”  And finding his gray eyes pleasantly fixed upon her she had gone on, confused but determined:  “I’m twenty-seven now-and perhaps I might have married some other man before this—­except that-when I was seventeen-I did fall in love with a man!  And we were to be married—!” She had stopped short; it was incredibly hard.  “He had—­or I thought he had, brought something tremendously big and wonderful into my life,” Harriet had continued, “and I was a stupid little girl, just taking care of my sister’s babies and reading my father’s books—­”

“You are under no obligation to tell me anything of this,” Richard had said, kindly, far more concerned for her distress than interested in what she was saying.  “I must have known that there were admirers!  I assure you that—­”

“No, but just a moment!” Harriet had interrupted him.  “I was infatuated—­I knew that at once, God knows I’ve known it ever since!  I went away with him, little fool that I was!”

A gleam of genuine surprise had come into Richard Carter’s eyes, and he looked at her without speaking.

“I was taken ill the day I left with him.  While I was getting well I had time to think it over.  I knew then I was too young and too ignorant to be any man’s wife.  I was frightened and I—­well, I ran away; I went back to my sister.  Both she and her husband regarded me after that as in some way marked, unprincipled, unworthy—­”