"You'll tell her what you think she ought to do?" he asked with some eagerness. "You should have told her, you know, that I had seen you in town only that one time," Fleda observed.!

"I made a point of letting Mona know that I should be here, don't you see? That's exactly what I wrote her this morning." "You plunge me in stupefaction," that lady answered, "and at the same time you terrify me. Your account of Owen is inconceivable, and yet I don't know what to hold on by. He cares for you, it does appear, and yet in the same breath you inform me that nothing is more possible than that he's spending these days at Waterbath. Excuse me if I'm so dull as not to see my way in such darkness. If he's at Waterbath he doesn't care for you. If he cares for you he's not at Waterbath."

This was categoric; Fleda drank it in. "She takes such an interest in them?" At this our young lady smiled. "Yes, because it was a disappointment. She had been so sure." In the place at the corner, on the chance of its saving time, Fleda wrote her telegram—wrote it in silence under Mrs. Gereth's eye and then in silence handed it to her. "I send this to Waterbath, on the possibility of your being there, to ask you to come to me." Mrs. Gereth held it a moment, read it more than once; then keeping it, and with her eyes on her companion, seemed to consider. There was the dawn of a kindness in her look; Fleda perceived in it, as if as the reward of complete submission, a slight relaxation of her rigor.