With the morning, the peace of a conquered spirit fell upon her.  She had thought it all to an ending at last.  It seemed to Harriet that never in her life had she thought so clearly, so truly, so bravely.  Her duty to Richard, to his children, to Linda; she had faced them without fear and without deception, tasting the humiliating truth to its bitter dregs, planning the few short interviews that must precede her leaving them all forever.

For Harriet emerged from the furnace the mistress of her own soul.  She had been wrong; she had been weak; she had been contemptible; but not so wrong or weak or contemptible as they would think her.  She would go on her way now, the braver for the lesson and the shame.  And what they thought of her must never shake again her own knowledge of her own innocence.

Go on her way to what?  She did not know.  But she neither feared what the future might hold nor doubted, it.  She could make her own way from a new beginning.

“But before I go,” said Harriet, resolutely, “I must tell him that I’m sorry.  And I must ask Nina to forgive me.”

She turned, and buried her face in the thick, soft sleeve of her coat.  But she did not cry long, and when Jensen, the boatman, came out on the dock at seven, the lady he knew to be his new mistress was sitting composedly enough on her bench, studying the now glittering and sparkling river with quiet eyes.

Harriet nodded to him, and rose somewhat stiffly, to go up to the house.  She mounted the brick steps with a thoughtfully dropped head—­the straight shafts of the sunlight were making it impossible to face the house, in any case—­and so was within three feet of Richard Carter before she saw him.

He looked fresh, hard, even young, in his white flannels.  They stood looking at each other for a moment without speaking.

“Where have you been?” said Richard, sharply, then.  “You look ill!”

Tears, despite her desperate resolution, suddenly stung Harriet’s eyes.  And yet her heart leaped with hope.

“I wanted to see you, Mr. Carter,” she faltered.  “I couldn’t sleep very well.  I’ve been down at the shore.  But later—­any time will do!”

“You couldn’t sleep!” he exclaimed with quick sympathy.  He looked from her about him, as if for a shelter for her emotion.  “Here,” he said, “come down the steps a bit.  I was just going down to the court for a little tennis; Ward may follow me, but he won’t be dressed for half an hour yet.  Sit down here; we can talk.”

They had come to the marble bench on the terrace, where Isabelle and Anthony Pope, sheltered by these same towering trees and low brick walls, had had their talk a year ago.  Harriet, to her own consternation, felt that she was in danger of tears.

“I—­I hardly know how to say it,” she began.  “But—­but you know how ashamed I am!”

“I know—­I know how you feel!” Richard said with a sort of brief sympathy.  “I’m sorry!  But you know you mustn’t take this all too hard.  I didn’t—­I was thinking of this last night; I didn’t ask you for—­well, any more than you gave me, in this marriage of ours.  Your divorce was your own affair—­”