coincide with a wish to that effect on the part of her gentleman
friend.




III

HER LAST DAY


For some time--possibly an hour or more--she sat perfectly still,
staring at a wavering line made on the floor by a stray sunbeam which
had forced its way through the window of her hotel sitting-room. At
first she looked unseeingly, with the dull, introspective gaze of the
melancholic. Then she began to notice the thing, and to fear it, and
to watch for outlines of a quivering human face, and to tremble a
little. Surely there had been a face--she thought vaguely, and
puckered her brow in an effort to remember. It was half an hour before
she realized what it was, and the passing of fifteen minutes more had
been ticked off by a clock on the table near her when she lifted her
glance enough to follow the beam along the floor, up the wall, to the
pane where it had entered. She rose suddenly. It was long since she
had made a consciously voluntary movement, and she knew this. She drew
a deep breath as she stood up, and almost on the instant she
experienced a life-giving sensation of poise and freedom. The weight
fell from her feet, the blackness in which she had lived for weeks
unwrapped itself from around her like a departing fog, her lax muscles
tightened. She groped her way to the window and stood there for a
moment, resting her cheek against the cool pane and gazing up at the