But that kiss-sealed oath to Belinda did not keep Loring from "going two ways" in his heart, for some time still. He was truly between two fires. He could not bear to let Sophy go in order to keep Belinda. It was unendurable to think of relinquishing Belinda that he might keep Sophy. In the end, however, Belinda won. When it came to the final test, he found that he could more easily let Sophy slip from him into a vague future than resign Belinda to the fat arms of Lewis Cuthbridge. And he suffered. For the best in him clung to Sophy, and he knew that it was with his best that he clung to her.

Belinda saw this inward struggle quite plainly. She remained calm in presence of it. Propinquity was her staunch ally. Besides, she had refused to break her engagement with Cuthbridge, until Morris could assure her—could let her see "with her own eyes"—that a divorce between him and Sophy had been decided upon past recall.

By the middle of December he was able to satisfy her in this respect. As soon as she was convinced that matters had reached an irrevocable point, she broke her engagement as she had promised. Then she set herself to blot out all possible regret on Loring's part. For this rÔle nature had consummately endowed her. Loring's heart had no chance to ache. His frantic passion filled every crevice of his consciousness. Memories, doubts, regrets—all went scurrying before it, like wild things before the onrush of a prairie fire.

As "Venus Victrix," Belinda was quite wonderful. Yet though she was now wholly Venus and triumphant, she still kept homespun Respectability at her elbow. Not a hair's-breadth too far did she permit her inflammable lover to venture. Belinda as Goddess would have compelled all Olympus to address her as Mrs. Vulcan.

---

And so, towards the end of December, Sophy left Bobby in the care of Charlotte and Harold Grey, and went to desolate, far-western Ontowega. After six months of that desolation she would be free again. It seemed incredible. She did not go alone, however. Susan Pickett, a second cousin of whom she and Charlotte had been very fond since childhood, went with her. Miss Pickett was a delightful spinster of fifty. She had not married, simply because she had never loved a man enough to want to marry him.

No one ever called Susan Pickett "Cousin Susan" or "Aunt Susan." She was "Sue" to all who loved her, young as well as old. She was a tall, vigorous woman, deep-breasted, and of perfect health. Her thick, brown eyebrows were masculine, her large, well-shaped mouth feminine. Her eyes, deep-set, grey, and humorous, might have been either a man's or a woman's. Eyes of this type—when they are kindly affectionate, as in Sue Pickett's case, are the sign of a big, impersonal humanity. It was never necessary to have Sue "on one's mind" even for a moment. She was always occupied in some way, and always serenely content. This is why Sophy ventured to ask her to share with her for six months the abomination of desolation called on the map of the United States Ontowega.

During the first stages of the long, tiresome journey Sophy was conscious only of a heavy, dull weight of determination and flat sadness. She hated the smell of train-smoke. Now it seemed as if this rank, clogging smoke trailed over the whole landscape of her life, past and future. She sat drearily, hour after hour, watching the telegraph poles snatch up the sagging wires as they flew past. The threads of her own life were like that, she thought—dark strands strung from one bare pole of fact to another, endlessly, monotonously. The bare poles had once been trees—living, joyous things. So had the bare facts of her life. Now lopped, stripped, rigid, they hemmed her in, guiding the thread of her destiny to some dull, conventional end—some mechanical fixture in a bleak station to which this hard, beaten road of divorce was leading.

---

After certain matters at Ontowega had been settled, they found that they could go to the Black Hills of Dakota without disturbing the course of events. They both loved riding. The lawyer told them that there was capital riding about the Black Hills. The place he suggested was called Bear Spring.

The world without lay in great curving swathes of white, pricked out by green-black pines as in an old Japanese print.

On the third day came a bundle of letters forwarded from Ontowega. The two that Sophy kept for the last were from Bobby and Amaldi. How strange it seemed to see the Italian stamp in the snowy wilderness of Bear Spring! And that seal with its arms and motto—"Che prendo—tengo".... In a flash there rose the memory of the struggle between Loring and Belinda for Amaldi's ring.... How things could hurt one ... things like the impression of a seal. Then she opened Bobby's letter. At the top was written, "I did not let Mr. Grey see this letter. So please to excuse mistakes. R.C.C." Among other things it said:

"Plantagenet" began as follows:

"Richard of England, monarch brave,
Bold as the lion that haunts the cave,
Wielding thy battle-axe with a crash,
As into the foe thou dost boldly dash!"

"Oh, my darling little 'poit'!" murmured Sophy, as she read. But she did not think, from "Plantagenet," that Bobby would ever really be a "poit." The "Grey Day," however, was another thing. Sophy had a queer feeling about her heart as she read that.

As Sophy read these last words she raised them to her lips. It seemed to her that Bobby need not fear about becoming "a author anyhow." She could not think that it was only mother-love that made "A Grey Day" seem unusual to her.

Then she opened Amaldi's letter. Here, too, was an unexpected pleasure. She had found his letters charming from the first, but in this one it was as if he had put aside a certain reserve that she had always noticed before. He might have been talking to her over a log fire at Le Vigne—— Or, no, she corrected herself with a smile—never had Amaldi "talked" to her with the ease, the fulness, the alternate gaiety and depth with which he wrote to her in this long, delightful letter. She sat holding it in her hand when she had finished reading it, trying to recall clearly his dark, irregular face and olive eyes—the sound of his voice. And she smiled again, thinking of the Corinthians' opinion of Paul: ".... His letters, say they, are weighty and powerful; ... but his speech is contemptible." "Dear Amaldi...." she thought, still smiling. "I wonder how it is that you are such a silent man as a rule, and yet can write such perfectly adorable letters?"

She put his letter with Bobby's and laid them both away. For a long time she stood at her bedroom window looking out over the snowy wilds towards the sunset. The afterglow burned red through the inky pines. The snow shone a queer, witch-like blue in the twilight. Sophy saw it all without seeing. She was thinking that there were beautiful things in her life still ... that she ought to be very grateful ... that after a while she ought even to be happy in them....

But as she gazed at the smouldering watchfires of the west, Bobby's words came back to her: "I do not know why it makes me so sad to see the red of the fire in the greyness...."

---