She stirred impulsively. "Dick, you're overworking--you'll make yourself
ill."

"Nonsense. I'm as fit as ever this morning. Don't be imagining things."

He dropped his habitual kiss on her forehead, and turned to go. On the
threshold he paused, and she felt that something in him sought her and then
drew back. "Good-bye," he called to her as the door closed on him.

She sat down and tried to survey the situation divested of her midnight
fears. He had not referred to her wish to see the drawings: but what did
the omission signify? Might he not have forgotten her request? Was she
not forcing the most trivial details to fit in with her apprehensions?
Unfortunately for her own reassurance, she knew that her familiarity with
Dick's processes was based on such minute observation, and that, to such
intimacy as theirs, no indications were trivial. She was as certain as if
he had spoken, that when he had left the house that morning he was weighing
the possibility of using Darrow's drawings, of supplementing his own
incomplete design from the fulness of his friend's invention. And with a
bitter pang she divined that he was sorry he had shown her Darrow's letter.

It was impossible to remain face to face with such conjectures, and though
she had given up all her engagements during the few days since Darrow's
death, she now took refuge in the thought of a concert which was to take
place at a friend's house that morning. The music-room, when she entered,
was thronged with acquaintances, and she found transient relief in that
dispersal of attention which makes society an anesthetic for some forms
of wretchedness. Contact with the pressure of busy indifferent life often
gives remoteness to questions which have clung as close as the flesh to the
bone; and if Mrs. Peyton did not find such complete release, she at least