She paused, afire with an eloquence that had come unsought.  But her husband only stared at her.  She was transformed beyond his recognition.  Surely he had not married this woman!  And, if the truth be told, down in his secret soul whispered a small, congratulatory voice.  Although he did not yet fully realize it, he was glad he had not.

Honora, with an involuntary movement, pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.

“Good-by, Howard,” she said.  “I—­I did not expect you to understand.  If I had stayed, I should have made you miserably unhappy.”

He took her hand in a dazed manner, as though he knew not in the least what he was doing.  He muttered something and found speech impossible.  He gulped once, uncomfortably.  The English language had ceased to be a medium.  Great is the force of habit!  In the emergency he reached for his cigarette case.

Honora had given orders that the carriage was to wait at the door.  The servants might suspect, but that was all.  Her maid had been discreet.  She drew down her veil as she descended the steps, and told the coachman to drive to the station.

It was raining.  Leaning forward from under the hood as the horses started, she took her last look at the lilacs.

CHAPTER VIII

IN WHICH THE LAW BETRAYS A HEART

It was still raining when she got into a carriage at Boston and drove under the elevated tracks, through the narrow, slippery business streets, to the hotel.  From the windows of her room, as the night fell, she looked out across the dripping foliage of the Common.  Below her, and robbed from that sacred ground, were the little granite buildings that housed the entrances to the subway, and for a long time she stood watching the people crowding into these.  Most of them had homes to go to!  In the gathering gloom the arc-lights shone, casting yellow streaks on the glistening pavement; wagons and carriages plunged into the maelstrom at the corner; pedestrians dodged and slipped; lightnings flashed from overhead wires, and clanging trolley cars pushed their greater bulk through the mass.  And presently the higher toned and more ominous bell of an ambulance sounded on its way to the scene of an accident.

It was Mathilde who ordered her dinner and pressed her to eat.  But she had no heart for food.  In her bright sitting-room, with the shades tightly drawn, an inexpressible loneliness assailed her.  A large engraving of a picture of a sentimental school hung on the wall:  she could not bear to look at it, and yet her eyes, from time to time, were fatally drawn thither.  It was of a young girl taking leave of her lover, in early Christian times, before entering the arena.  It haunted Honora, and wrought upon her imagination to such a pitch that she went into her bedroom to write.

For a long time nothing more was written of the letter than “Dear Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary”:  what to say to them?