"Fearfully?" broke from the girl. Somehow, at the word, she was startled. "So as not to aggravate Mona, naturally. We've had a narrow course to steer, but thank God we're at last in the open!"!

He turned about vaguely for his hat. "Wherever he is, I can bear it," Fleda said. "But I haven't the least idea where he is."

"Very true, you've done it all yourself." Fleda spoke gravely and gently, without a breath of coquetry. "But those are shades between which she's probably not obliged to distinguish. It's enough for her that we're singularly intimate." "Quite right. There's nothing like them," said Mrs. Gereth. At this her companion took up one of her hands again and kissed it as she had done in London. "Mona went back that night; she was not there yesterday. Owen stayed on," she added. A minute later she had returned with him to the waiting-room, where, in the thick swim of things, she saw something like the disk of a clock. "Is there an up-train?" she asked.