remembered. There had been outings, of course, and shopping
expeditions and the like, but always Miss Manuel or one of her kind
had been at her elbow--sometimes professionally cheerful, sometimes
professionally grave, but at all times professionally watchful. The
woman exulted fiercely in her new-found liberty. She had hours before
her--free, glorious hours. She would use them, fill them, squander
them in a prodigal spending, following every impulse, indulging every
desire, for they were hers and they were her last. In the depths of
her brain lay a resolution as silent, as deadly, as a coiled serpent
waiting to strike. She would enter no asylums, she would endure no
more "absences," she would have no more supervision, no more
consultations, no more half-concealed fear of friends, no more pity
from strangers. There was a way of escaping all this forever, and she
knew it and would take it, though it led across the dim threshold over
which she could never return.

The car hummed as it sped along. At a distance she saw an entrance to
Central Park, and from the inside the branches of trees seemed to wave
a salute to her in honor of her freedom. She signalled to the
conductor and left the car, retracing her steps until she entered the
Park. She was far up-town, near the northern end of it, and the paths,
warm in the spring sunshine, were almost deserted. For a while she
strolled idly about, her senses revelling in the freshness and beauty
around her, in the green vistas that opened to right and left, and the
soft breeze that fanned her face. Children, riding tricycles or
rolling hoops, raced past her; and once, after she had walked almost
an hour, a small boy of four slipped his hand into her gloved one and
trotted beside her for a moment, to the open scandal of his nurse. She
smiled down at him, pleased by the touch of his little fingers. When
he left, as abruptly as he had joined her, and in response to a