The coffee was strong. Mrs. Breckenridge found it soothing to

rasped nerves and tired body, and after the dinner things had been

cleared away she sat on beside the library fire, under the soft

arc of light from the library lamp, sipping the stimulating fluid,

and staring at the snapping and flashing logs.

A sense of merely physical well-being crept through her body, and

for a little time even her active brain was quieter; she forgot

the man now heavily sleeping upstairs, the pretty little tyrant

who had rushed off to dinner at the Chases', and the many

perplexing elements in her own immediate problem. She saw only the

quiet changes in the fire as yellow flame turned to blue--sank,

rose, and sank again.

The house was still. Kitchenward, to be sure, there was a great

deal of cheerful laughter and chatter, as Ellie, sitting heavily

ensconced in the largest rocker, embroidered a centrepiece for her

sister's birthday, Annie read fortunes in the teacups, Alfred

imitated the supercilious manner of a lady who had called that

afternoon upon Mrs. Breckenridge, and Helda, a milk-blond Dane

with pink-rimmed eyes, laughed with infantile indiscrimination at

everything, blushing an agonized scarlet whenever Alfred's

admiring eye met her own.

But the kitchen was not within hearing distance of the quiet room

where Rachael sat alone, and as the soft spring night wore on no

sound came to disturb her revery. It was not the first solitary

evening she had had of late, for Clarence had been more than

usually reckless, and was developing in his wife, although she did

not realize it herself, a habit of introspection quite foreign to

her real nature.

She had never been a thoughtful woman, her days for many years had

run brilliantly on the surface of life, she knew not whence the

current was flowing, nor why, nor where it led her; she did not

naturally analyze, nor dispute events. Only a few years ago she

would have said that to an extraordinary degree fortune had been

kind to her. She had been born with an adventurous spirit, she had

played her game well and boldly, and, according to all the

standards of her type, she had won. But sitting before this quiet

fire, perhaps it occurred to her to wonder how it happened that

there were no more hazards, no more cards left to play. She was

caught in a net of circumstances too tight for her unravelling.

Truly it might be cut, but when she stood in the loose wreckage of

it--how should she use her freedom? If it was a cage, at least it

was a comfortable cage; at least it was better than the howling

darkness of the unfamiliar desert beyond.




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