recollection of passing through the crowded streets, wondering if the
people knew that she was an outcast, deserted by her husband, deceived
by her ideal hero, repudiated by her friends! Men had gathered in
knots before the newspaper offices, excited and gesticulating over the
bulletin boards that had such strange legends as "The Crisis," "Details
of an Alleged Conspiracy to Overthrow the Government," "The Assassin of
Henderson to the Fore Again," "Rumored Arrests on the Mexican Frontier."
Sometimes she thought she understood the drift of them; even fancied
they were the outcome of her visit--as if her very presence carried
treachery and suspicion with it--but generally they only struck her
benumbed sense as a dull, meaningless echo of something that had
happened long ago. When she reached her house, late that night, the
familiar solitude of shore and sea gave her a momentary relief, but with
it came the terrible conviction that she had forfeited her right to it,
that when her husband came back it would be hers no longer, and that
with their meeting she would know it no more. For through all her
childish vacillation and imaginings she managed to cling to one
steadfast resolution. She would tell him EVERYTHING, and know the worst.
Perhaps he would never come; perhaps she should not be alive to meet
him.

And so the days and nights slowly passed. The solitude which her
previous empty deceit had enabled her to fill with such charming visions
now in her awakened remorse seemed only to protract her misery. Had she
been a more experienced, though even a more guilty, woman she would have
suffered less. Without sympathy or counsel, without even the faintest
knowledge of the world or its standards of morality to guide her, she
accepted her isolation and friendlessness as a necessary part of her
wrongdoing. Her only criterion was her enemy--Mrs. Fairfax--and SHE
could seek her relief by joining her lover; but Mrs. Bunker knew now