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?

"I do not know what you will think of me. I do not know, to-night,
what to think of myself. I have left Howard. It is not because he
was cruel to me, or untrue. He does not love me, nor I him. I