The Eddy: A Novel of To-day

by Clarence Louis Cullen

  CHAPTER XII

  Not alone from John Blythe had Langdon Jesse suffered a rebuff in hisattempt to gather ammunition, in the form of intimate and more or lessmandatory credentials, for his European campaign, in which LouiseTreharne figured as the alluring citadel of his sinister ambition. Firsthe had tried Louise's mother with that purpose in view; and in thatquarter he had been treated to one of the surprises of his by no meansuneventful life.

  Jesse's method of reasoning, in approaching Mrs. Treharne on such amission, was in no wise subtle; it was, on the contrary, as plain andpointed as a fence-paling. It all started from the outright premise thatJesse "wanted" Louise Treharne and thoroughly meant to "have" her--forJesse had the merit (negative enough in his case) of never attempting todeceive himself as to his eventual purposes where women were concerned.Louise, of course, had plainly given him to understand that she despisedhim. That, however, was, in Jesse's view, a negligible detail. It wouldmake his final conquest all the more satisfying. Many women who hadbegun by disliking him and frankly questioning his motives had ended byyielding to him; whereupon, after basking in the joys of triumph, he hadtaken a revengeful pleasure in casting them into what, in hisself-communings, he brutally termed his "discard."

  It would be the same, Jesse thoroughly believed, in Louise's case. Shenow represented to him a difficulty to be surmounted, a transaction tobe successfully carried through. The weakness in the armor of men of theJesse type is that they have little or no imagination. They foreseemerely results; and their handling of the means to an end often issingularly clumsy and unadept. In regarding all women, of whateverclass, as mere palterers with virtue and self-respect, Jesse consideredthat he was justified by his experience with women; but he made theegregious mistake of supposing that his own experience with womenestablished a criterion, a formula, from which there could be nodeparture.

  A week or so before he contemplated going abroad, mainly for the purposeof continuing his besiegement of Louise, Jesse dropped in at the houseon the Drive one evening. He was glad to find Mrs. Treharne alone. Hewas not unmindful of his boast to Judd that he would victoriouslyovercome what, in his B[oe]otian imagining, he really deemed Louise's"prejudice" against him; and he preferred to lay his course without anyJudd finger on his chart.

  Mrs. Treharne, now thin and frail-looking, no longer from banting, butfrom the conflict with conscience that been consuming her ever since herdaughter's departure, received him coldly enough. Not the least of herself-scornings since Louise had gone away had centered upon hercomplaisance in tacitly permitting her daughter to be pursued by a manof the Langdon Jesse type.

  "I am leaving for England," Jesse found early occasion to announce.

  Mrs. Treharne, very languid and tired-looking, did not find theannouncement sufficiently important to call for comment.

  "Louise, I believe, is in London?" pursued Jesse, sensing, withoutperturbation, the chill Mrs. Treharne was purposely diffusing.

  Mrs. Treharne gave him a level, penetrating glance.

  "Miss Treharne, I think, would not be interested in knowing that youpossessed information as to her movements," she replied, with studiedindifference.

  Jesse smiled and stooped to stroke a dozing spaniel.

  "What have I done, Tony?" he asked after a pause, looking up with adental smile.

  "You have presumed to employ Miss Treharne's first name, after havingmet her, I believe, not more than three times. Don't do it again,"replied Mrs. Treharne in a tone that, while quiet enough, had a ring init that was utterly new to Jesse. Jesse, seeming by his manner to takethe rebuke in a chastened spirit, occupied himself again with thespaniel's silky coat.

  "I seem," he said, finally breaking the oppressive silence, "to havefound you in a somewhat Arctic humor. Still, that should not be allowedto congeal an old friendship. It cannot be that you, too, are beginningto misunderstand me, as Miss Treharne has from the beginning?"

  "Miss Treharne should not have been allowed to meet you at all,"returned Mrs. Treharne. "I leave you to imagine how bitterly I condemnmyself now for not having at least screened her from that."

  "You say 'now,'" said Jesse. "Why, particularly 'now?'"

  "That," replied Mrs. Treharne, "is my affair."

  The time, of course, had arrived for Jesse to make the best of a poordeparture. The man, however, was of a surprising obtuseness as to suchdetails.

  "And yet I came this evening," he said, adopting a tonal tremolo whichwas intended to convey the idea that he was sorely put upon, "to offer,through you, any poor courtesies that I might have at my command tomake Miss Treharne's stay in England agreeable."

  Mrs. Treharne shrugged impatiently.

  "Spare yourself these posturings, if you please," she said. "MissTreharne has made it plain enough that she detests you. Are you waitingto have me tell you that I applaud her judgment?"

  An ugly sneer flickered across Jesse's features. At length the barbswere hitting home. But he effaced the sneer and twisted it into a forcedsmile.

  "What I can't understand is why you received me at all this evening, ifthis is your feeling--your newly-formed feeling--toward me," he said,quelling the hoarseness that proceeded from his repressed anger.

  "I confess to having entertained a certain curiosity, perhaps a certainuneasiness, as to your purpose in calling at all," promptly replied Mrs.Treharne. "It is the first time you have been here since my daughter'sdeparture. I have been sorting over certain of my mistakes since shewent away. I have been considering them, too, from a different anglethan any you could possibly understand. Not the least of these mistakes,as I have told you, was in permitting my daughter to exchange as much astwo words with you. Happily, it is not too late to rectify that mistake,at least. She is well protected. I need not tell you that if you shouldhave the temerity to attempt to call upon her in London she wouldinstruct the flunkeys to cease carrying her your card. I think there isno more to be said?" Mrs. Treharne rose and assumed the attitude ofdismissal.

  This time Jesse, also rising, did not essay to erase the sneer from hiswrath-flushed features.

  "What is all this--a scene from some damned imbecile play?" he demanded,completely throwing off the mask. "Are you trying to regale me with arehearsal of the flighty mother turned virtuous? Don't do that. Thatisn't the sort of thing you could reasonably expect me to stand for fromFred Judd's kept wo----"

  "Say that if you dare!" exclaimed Mrs. Treharne, stepping close to himand transfixing him with blazing eyes.

  Jesse, out of sheer timidity, broke off at the exact point where she hadinterrupted him. As she stepped to the wall to ring, he put on his hatwith studied deliberation and patted it to make it more secure on hishead. Thus, with his hat on, he spoke to her.

  "I suppose your solicitude for the--er--the what-you-may-call-it of yourauburn-haired daughter is natural enough, probably being based uponsomething that you, and you alone, know," he said, sidling, however,toward the door as he spoke. "But it is wasted solicitude, let me tellyou that. She has lived here with you, hasn't she? Well, that fact willabout settle her, you know. There's no downing that. And after awhileshe'll give up. She won't be able to stand the stigma. None of them canstand it. It would take a superwoman to endure, without herselfsurrendering, the ignominy of having lived under this roof. Don't forgetthat."

  Then the butler, answering the ring, appeared at the door. Mrs. Treharneraised a limp arm and pointed to Jesse.

  "This man," she said to the butler, "is not to be admitted to the houseagain as long as I am in it."

  The butler inclined his head with butler-like gravity, detoured to getbehind Jesse, and Jesse, patting the top of his hat again to emphasize,in the menial's presence, the insult of wearing it, stalked down thehall.

  The broken, faded woman tottered to her sleeping room and fell upon acouch in an agony of tears.

  It was on the day following this scene that Jesse, inconceivablypersistent in the pursuit of such a purpose as he had in mind, and nowroused by obstacles to the poin
t where he swore to himself that he would"win out," made the call at Blythe's office which the latter purposelyglossed over in describing it in his letter to Laura.

  Jesse's purpose in seeking out Blythe was two-fold. In the first place,he wanted to measure the man who, he knew, had been appointed Louise'sguardian. He only recalled Blythe in a general sort of a way, and hewanted to "size him up" from this new angle. He was aware that Blythewas not only the guardian but an admirer of Louise, and he wanted toascertain, from the contact of an interview, whether Blythe's admirationwas of a piece with his own; the manifestation of a mere predatorydesign, that is to say; for men of the Jesse type are ever prone to dragthe motives of other men to a level with their own. Secondly, if hefound, as he hoped to find, that Blythe was a mere supple andsycophantic young lawyer, eager to succeed, and therefore capable ofbeing impressed by a call from a man looming large in the financialworld, Jesse prefigured that probably Blythe, by means of credentialsthat would have the weight of a guardian's advice, might very easily aidhim in his "little affair" (so he thought of it) with Louise when hereached London. Jesse was not in the least fearful of the consequences,so far as his standing with Louise was concerned, of his unmasking inthe presence of her mother. He was under the impression that Louise hadleft the house on the Drive at odds with her mother and that nocorrespondence existed between them. So that he felt sure that Louisewould not hear from her mother of his brutality toward her.

  It took Jesse something less than thirty seconds, when he called uponBlythe, to discover that that young lawyer was neither sycophantic norsupple, and that, so far from being impressed by a visit from Jesse inhis capacity of financial magnate, Blythe was coldly but distinctlyhostile toward him. The interview had terminated with startlingabruptness. After having mentioned Louise's name once, and beenforbidden to repeat the offense, Jesse had involuntarily let slip hername again. Blythe, seated in his desk-chair with his hands on hisknees, viewed Jesse calmly, but with eyes that showed cold glints ofsteel.

  "Are you going to get out now, or are you waiting for me to throw youout?" Blythe inquired of him in much the same tone that he would haveemployed in asking for a match.

  Jesse, it appeared, was not waiting to be thrown out. He went at once.But when he reached the street level and got into his waiting car, hewas in almost as pretty a state of passion as any sepulchral-voicedstage villain. And he was quite as resolved to win the baffling battle,even under the lash of unintermittent scorn, as he had been from thehour of his first meeting with Louise Treharne.

  An hour after Jesse had gone, leaving the stunned, shattered womanweltering in his litter of cowardly words, Judd walked into AntoinetteTreharne's apartments. He found her dishevelled and still weepingconvulsively. He sat down and regarded her with the bewilderedhelplessness of the male when the woman's tears are streaming. Shescarcely saw him, but lay, huddled and shaking, a mere wraith of thewoman whom he had beckoned to this present disaster and despair but afew years before.

  Judd, a gross, fleshly man not without human traits, felt sorry for heras he sat watching her. Also, he felt sorry for himself. It was notagreeable that a woman--this woman--should be weeping and moaning andshaking her shoulders in her grief in such a manner. It was disturbing.It destroyed the poise of things. It created a sort of sympathy whichwas bad for the digestion of the sympathizer. But Judd felt sorry forher. He really did. He had been watching, with a sort of mystifiedconcern, how her health had been going to pieces lately. He wondered whythat was. Surely, she had everything that she wanted? Well, then.Anyhow, Judd was sorry. He was extremely fond of Tony. She had touched acertain responsive chord in him, and he knew that his chords were prettywell insulated; and here she was weeping and staining her face withtears, her hair all mussed, and all that--Judd was decidedly disturbed,and sorry as well.

  "I say, Tony, what is it?" he asked her, after keeping vigil for fifteenminutes without emitting a word.

  There was no reply. She did not even look up at him. Gradually, though,her weeping ceased. Judd walked up and down the room, smoking anenormously long, black cigar, occasionally stopping in his heavy strideto look at her. Presently she sat up, blinking in the light, her facestill swollen with her tears. A certain prettiness still remained toher; but it was the pathetic prettiness of the exotic the petals ofwhich are dropping, dropping.

  "Is it anything that I can help, Tony?" asked Judd in a tone that wasnot lacking in kindliness, as he stopped and stood before her. She shookher head wearily.

  "No," she answered him in a quiet, tear-hoarsened tone. "It is nothingthat you can help. It is all my own fault."

  Judd flicked the long ash of his cigar to the rug and studied her with apuckered but not scowling brow.

  "I don't want to stir up or start anything anew," he said, not unkindly,"but may I ask what it is that is your fault?"

  She crushed her wet handkerchief between her palms and looked up at himwith vague eyes.

  "Oh, everything," she replied, with a shrug of utter weariness. "Fewwomen could be found in all the world tonight, I believe, who have madesuch an utter mess of their lives as I have of mine. But I am not sounfair, thank God, as to blame it upon anybody but myself. It is acompensation, at any rate, to be able to see things in their truelight."

  "You are ill, aren't you?" Judd asked her, with a solicitude that wasobviously genuine.

  "I don't know--I think so," she replied. "I am very tired--I know that.Tired of myself, of everything."

  "You need a change," suggested Judd. "You ought to go away somewhere.But I don't want you to go alone. I am pretty busy, but I'll chuckeverything to go with you if you want me to, Tony."

  She looked at him with a sort of weary curiosity.

  "It is just as I have said," she murmured after having made thisinspection of him. "It has never been your fault. You have, in your way,been kind to me. You still are. You care for me in your way. But it is abad way, Fred. I know that now. It is too late, of course. Nevertheless,I am going to make what amendment I can. I must try to preserve at leasta shred of womanhood. I am sure you are not going to take it angrily orbitterly. But we have reached the parting of the ways, my friend. Youhave been fair enough, from your point of view, through the wholewretched business. It has been my fault, my weakness, from thebeginning."

  Judd plumped into a deep chair near her and, pondering, blew greatsmoke-rings at the portieres.

  "The thing is," he said, presently, "that you've lost your nerve. And,having lost it, why, you've gone into the camp of the folks you call theSmugs. Am I right?"

  "You are utterly wrong," she replied, spiritlessly. "I have littletoleration for--well, death-bed repentances. That is too old and toounconvincing a story. A woman does as she likes, flouts the world, snapsher finger at usage, until she becomes middle aged or near it; then shebegins to fumble her beads, takes on the face of austerity, andcondemns, right and left, the lapses of the younger generation ofdefiant women. I haven't the least use for that sort of thing. It issimply that I have arrived at the knowledge that a woman is an idiot notto conform and to stay conformed. It is mere madness for a woman tosuppose that she can fight so unequal a battle against the world'sopinion as I have foolishly tried to fight. It makes no difference as toa man. He can do as he pleases. I suppose it was the inequality of thatlaw that goaded me into it all in the first place. But I've lost. I seenow that there never was the possibility of any other outcome."

  "You get a bit beyond me, you know," said Judd, not argumentatively, butas one seeking enlightenment. "I am willing to grant that men have thebest of it, and all that sort of thing. But women know the rules of thegame. Then why can't they play the game without moaning and kicking tothe umpire?"

  "There isn't any umpire except conscience," she answered him. "Thereisn't any arbitration for a woman. She is what the steel-sheathed law ofthe ages says she is to be, or she is not. I have not been, and I havelost. That is all. I am not so futile as to complain of the game. Idespise myself for having been so opaque as to
suppose that I could defythe rules, win, and not be disqualified--as I have been, of course, eversince I tried it."

  "It's queer," said Judd, reflectively, after a pause, "how theseman-made laws sooner or later anchor all you women, after you've madeyour flights. The whole thing, you know, is an idiotic system. They tryto regulate us by rote and rule, by bell, book and candle. But, afterall, they only think they're regulating us that way, don't they? Iwonder how many of us really follow their rules? Mighty few that I knowof. Openly, we subscribe to all of the iron-bound tenets, privately welaugh at them and do the best we know to rip them apart. It's all amatter of being found out; of being caught with the goods. A woman, ofcourse, has to watch out for more danger signals than a man. But they'repretty clever little watchers, believe me."

  "Well, you can't blame them for that," said Mrs. Treharne. "Most ofthem, at any rate, have the common sense not to attempt to brazenmatters out, as I have."

  "I see what you mean," said Judd, cogitatively. "Your idea is that it isa woman's business to get all that she can out of life, and that theonly way for her to get the most out of life is to pretend to agree tothe rules as they've been made for her, and then, if she feels disposedto kick over the traces, why, to keep under cover about it. You're rightin that view, of course. But, after all, what difference does it make?Sooner or later, no matter how we play the string, they toss us into abox and plant us. When it comes to that, I can't see why you shouldpermit what you call your conscience to make a wreck of you in this way.What have you done? Why, you've been my companion. Will you be goodenough to tell me how that companionship could possibly have been madeany better than it has been if, at its outset, a man in a surplice or amouthing justice had mumbled a few so-called binding words over us?Faugh! You can't believe such crass humbug. The so-called 'consecrationof matrimony' is a good enough phrase and a good enough scheme to keepgroundlings up to the mark. Don't you suppose we'd have fought andbarked at each other just the same if we'd been married according to thefrazzled old rule? At that, I'd have married you years ago, just tostraighten you out, if there had been the least chance of my prevailingupon my wife, who made life a hell for me with her whinings, to get adivorce from me. But, now that the thing has ambled along to this stage,what's the use of talking about quitting?"

  She listened to him composedly. But his words fell thumpingly enoughupon her ears. He had never gone to the pains before of giving her socomplete an elucidation of his doctrine.

  "There is as little use in our debating the world's social and ethicalsystem," she said. "I am not thinking of myself. There is no reason whyI shouldn't acknowledge to you that I don't much care how ourrelationship affects myself. But----"

  "Yes, I know what it's all about," put in Judd. "It's your daughter.Well, I'll have to grant that you've got a big end of the argumentthere. I've got daughters of my own, and I know how I'd snort around ifI thought there was a chance on earth for any of my daughters to inheritmy doctrine, my view of the world, the flesh and the devil. That's thefinest little inconsistency I possess. I might as well stick in theobservation here, while we're all confessing our sins, that I've felt agood deal more like a blackguard than has been comfortable to myself-esteem ever since the night I rounded on your daughter. That, Ithink, was about the meanest and commonest act of my life. A pretty finesort of a girl, your daughter."

  "I didn't think you had it in you to admit that, and I'm glad that youhave admitted it," replied Mrs. Treharne. "Of course your surmise isexactly right. It _is_ on my daughter's account that I have broughtmyself up with a round turn. It is pretty late in the day for me to dothat, I know; but one must do the best one can. We can talk as we pleaseabout our opinions of morals and ethics and the world's harsh rules; butall of our talk vanishes into murky vapor when we begin to consider ourchildren. The most contemptible act of _my_ life, since you have sounexpectedly acknowledged yours, was in permitting my daughter to comehere. You know that as well as I do--now."

  Judd lit another cigar and smoked in silence for a time.

  "The thing that gets me around the throat in connection with all this,"he said, presently, "is that it seems all to simmer down to the factthat you are thinking of quitting me."

  "Don't be absurd, Fred," said Mrs. Treharne. "That consideration doesn'tdisturb you a whit. You know very well that you will be glad to be ridof me."

  "That," said Judd, leaning toward her, his small eyes curiously alight,"is not true, and you know it."

  "But," she said, perhaps, with the unconquerable desire of the woman foraffection and admiration, curious to hear his reply, "I have lost mylooks; I am a mere relic of what I was when I came to you; I am not farfrom forty. You know these things."

  "Yes, I know them," said Judd, and there was genuine feeling in theman's tone. "But I know, too, that I care a damned sight more for youthan I ever did for any other woman in all my life. I know that, if youreally mean to go through with this plan of quitting me, it's going toknock me sky-high. I can't figure myself being without you. You havegrown into my scheme of living. I don't profess to much when it comes tomorals and all that sort of thing; but I've got a heart built upon somekind of a pattern, I suppose; I must have, and you ought to know it, foryou've possessed it for years. And, that being the case--and it _is_the case--our relationship isn't so bad as you might have been supposingit to be. Don't you imagine that I am so infernally dried up as to whatis called the affections. I know that my life won't be worth much to meafter you go out of it."

  Mrs. Treharne, astonished and perhaps a little pleased at theearnestness of the man's self-revelation, nevertheless shook her headwearily.

  "Yet you know very well, at this moment, that I _must_ leave you," shesaid broodingly.

  "Well, I'm going to be fair with you," said Judd, the latent manhood,that had been buried under the callousness of years, showing in him."I'm leaving that part of it up to you. I wouldn't do that, either, if Ididn't care for you as I do. But you've got your end of it, and a bigend. You're entitled to do what you are prompted to do in considerationof your daughter. I'm not hound enough to try to block you in that. I'llgo further and say that you're right about it. If I were in your placeI'd do the same thing. The devil of it is that I care for you all themore when I see you moved to give your daughter the fair deal she'sentitled to. I hate to have you go. I don't know what I'll do withmyself without you. But you've hit me right where I live in thisbusiness--the progeny end of it. The young ones have got to be thoughtof. And there is, I suppose, no way whereby you could remain openlyunder my protection and at the same time be doing the right thing byyour daughter. Of course, if you cared to be more private about it,why----"

  "No, no--don't even suggest that," put in Mrs. Treharne. "That would bea pitiable evasion. You know that."

  "Well, probably it would, but I'm putting all angles of the thing up toyou," said Judd, perhaps more in earnest that he had ever been in hislife before. "One thing, though, you must leave to me. It's only thefair thing that I should continue to take care of you, no matter whereyou go."

  "Not even that, Fred," replied Mrs. Treharne, determinedly. "That, too,would be a dodging of the issue. I have a few thousands put by. Theycame from you, of course, but before I had made up my mind to--to liveotherwise. I shall manage. Let me have my own way this final once, won'tyou?" and she smiled wanly.

  Judd rose and picked up his hat and coat.

  "Don't take any leaps in the dark, Tony, that's all," he said. "Thinkthe thing all over. Don't give yourself the worst of it. You know that_I_ won't give you the worst of it. I never have, have I? Maybe you'llchange your mind about it all. I'll be back tomorrow night and see.Goodnight."

  There were tears standing in the eyes of the huge-girthed man as hewent heavily out of the room, and his shoulders were hunched forward asif he had suddenly passed from elderliness to old age.

  Mrs. Treharne, for almost an hour after Judd had gone, sat, chin inpalm, gazing into vacancy. Then she rose, heavily enough for a woman sofragile as
she now had become, gazed for a moment in the glass at herhaggard features, and shook her head, smiling bitterly.

  "'_Facilis descensus_,' and the rest of it," she murmured. "That, Isuppose, is the truest of the maxims; it stands the wear of time betterthan any of the rest of them. Well, I have the mournful satisfaction ofknowing that I have sufficient intelligence, at any rate, not to blameanybody but myself."

  Then she rang for her maid.

  "Pack in the morning, Heloise," she said when the maid appeared. "Beginearly. Get one of the housemaids to help you. Pack everything--all ofyour own things, too. We shall be leaving before noon."

  "Everything, madame?" inquired Heloise, her eyes widening, "Wintercostumes--everything?"

  "Everything," repeated Mrs. Treharne. "I am not to return here."

  Heloise nodded with a sage acquiescence, and began to take down hermistress's hair.

  "Where do we go tomorrow, madame?" Heloise asked when she had finishedher task and Mrs. Treharne was in readiness for retiring.

  "I haven't the least idea, Heloise," replied Mrs. Treharne, gesturingher unconcern. "I shall decide between now and morning. To themountains, I suppose--the Adirondacks, probably. I am not very well--NewYork stifles me. The mountains, I think it shall be, Heloise."

  "Madame feels badly?" inquired Heloise, solicitously. "One has noticedthat madame is _distraite_, grows thin, looks unlike herself."

  "Sometimes I wish I were anybody but myself, Heloise," said Mrs.Treharne, enigmatically enough, considering her audience. "Goodnight."

  After the maid had gone Mrs. Treharne went to her desk and wrote toLouise, telling her that she was leaving the house on the Drive, not toreturn. It was a long, self-reproachful letter, threaded with thewistful but not outrightly expressed hope that the step she was takingwould atone, if only in a slight degree, for the "wretched sin," as shecalled it, of having permitted her daughter to set foot within theRiverside Drive establishment. She did not mention Langdon Jesse's name.She felt a singular uneasiness over the thought that Jesse's approachingvisit to London in some way involved the weaving of a net about herdaughter; but she dismissed that thought, as often as it recurred, whenshe considered Louise's poise and her protection by Laura Stedham, anexperienced woman of the world. Moreover, Mrs. Treharne would have foundit difficult, unless there were some grave actual peril, to mentionJesse's name in a letter to her daughter; for it brought the blood toher face to remember how unconcernedly she had permitted Louise to meetthe man--how she had even chided her daughter for not having acceptedJesse's attentions in a more pliant, not to say grateful, spirit.

  "I am leaving with Heloise tomorrow, dear, but I have not decided whereto go," she concluded. "I shall write or cable you an address beforelong. I am entirely well, though I believe I need rest and change. Haveout your good time--I know that you are in good hands with Laura, towhom my love. I am looking forward to our new, happy life when youreturn to me."

  Then she penned a little note to be left behind for Judd.

  "Don't think me unkind for going without seeing you again," she wrote."We have gone over it all, and we are both of the same opinion as to theneed for the step I am taking. I cannot quite tell you how you haveadvanced in my opinion for some of the things you said tonight. Youhave been very fair, and I am correspondingly grateful. I will notbe so _banal_ as to suggest that, if there be any chance for areconciliation, or at least a decent armistice, between you and yourwife, it might be at least a solution of a sort, considering yourchildren; I only wish that I could suggest that outright withoutincurring the suspicion that, having made a belated repentance myself, Iam seeking to reform the world. One thing, however, I shall sayoutright: If I had it all to do over again, I should _conform_. There isno other way for a woman. We seek to ridicule the promptings ofconscience by calling conscience an abnormality, a thing installed in usto whip us into line with age-old system. But it won't do. It is, afterall, the true voice. I wish I had never closed my ears to its urgings.

  "Time heals all. You will find yourself thinking less and less often ofme as the days drift by. That is as it should be. I am sorry for thehurt--I did not know until you spoke as you did tonight that it would bea hurt--I am inflicting upon you in thus effacing myself, at such shortnotice, from your life. But Time heals. Goodbye, and all best wishes."

  Before noon, on the following day, Mrs. Treharne and Heloise left thehouse on the Drive, leaving no word behind as to whither they werebound.