"Do you suggest that I shall propose to him to come down here again?" she presently inquired. "No, I won't receive him here with you. Only where I received him last—only there again." She showed her companion that as to that she was firm.!

Fleda was silent a little. "What do you know about his 'loving' me?" "No, I'm not afraid now."

This attempt at gayety was futile; the silence with which, for a minute, her adversary greeted her troubled plea brought home to her afresh that she was on the bare defensive. "Is it a part of his kindness never to come near you?" Mrs. Gereth inquired at last. "Is it a part of his kindness to leave you without an inkling of where he is?" She rose again from where Fleda had kept her down; she seemed to tower there in the majesty of her gathered wrong. "Is it a part of his kindness that, after I've toiled as I've done for six days, and with my own weak hands, which I haven't spared, to denude myself, in your interest, to that point that I've nothing left, as I may say, but what I have on my back—is it a part of his kindness that you're not even able to produce him for me?" "Well," said Mrs. Gereth profoundly, "it will be clear enough that Mona has." 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.