Betty Steel sat alone at the open window of her room one evening as the sun went down over the red roofs of the old town. Lying back in her chair, with her head on a cushion of yellow silk, she could see nothing of the life in the square below, but only the tops of the elm-trees, the black spire of the church, and an infinite expanse of cloud-barred sky. The west stood one great splendor of scarlet and of gold. Above, at the zenith, the clouds were bathed in a radiance of auriferous rose. A cold chalcedony blue held the eastern arch, where the purple rim of the night merged into the amethystine shadows of the woodland hills.

Betty Steel was alone, save for the cat Mignon, curled up asleep in her mistress’s lap. Half covering the cat was a crumpled letter, a letter that had been read and reread by eyes that were blind to the pageant of the summer sky. She stirred now and again in her chair, and shivered. The evening seemed cold to her despite all this chaos of color, this kindling of the torches of the west. The house, too, had an empty silence, like a lonely house where death had been and set a seal upon its lips.

Betty lifted Mignon from her lap, rose, crossed the room, and rang the bell. She took a crimson opera-cloak from a wardrobe in the corner, flung it across her shoulders, and returned to her chair, with the crumpled letter still in her hand.

“Yes, ma’am.”

A white cap and apron were framed by the shadows of the landing.

“Is Miss Ellison back yet, Symons?”

“No, ma’am. She said—”

“Listen! Isn’t that the front door?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Will you ask her to come to me here?”

The white cap and apron vanished into the shadows. Betty, lying back in her chair, looked vacantly at the paling sky, with the blood-red cloak deepening the darkness of her hair. The cat Mignon sprang into her lap. Dreamily, and as by habit, she began to stroke the cat, while listening to the murmur of the two voices in the hall below.

Brisk footsteps ascended the stairs, with the swish of silk, and the soft sighing of a woman’s breath.

“Here I am, dear, at last.”

“Shut the door, Madge.”

“I missed my train. You must have wondered what had happened.”

“I have ceased to wonder at anything in life.”

Madge Ellison looked curiously at Betty lying back in her chair, and crossed the room slowly, unbuttoning her gloves.

“You sound rather down, dear. What’s that? Have you heard—?”

Betty Steel’s hand closed spasmodically upon the crumpled letter that she held. Her face was hard and reflective in its outlines. And yet in the eyes there was a pathos of unrest, the unrest of a woman whose gods have left her utterly alone.

“I have heard from Parker.”

Madge Ellison threw her gloves on the bed, unpinned her hat, and waited.

“He is leaving England.”

“Leaving England?”

“Yes, for the Cape.”

“And you?”

“My own mistress to do everything—anything that I please.”

She gave a curious little laugh, and began straightening out the letter on her knee, looking at it with eyes that strove to make cynicism cover the wounded instincts of her womanhood.

“Of course—he does not care. He was afraid to face things.”

“The coward!”

Madge Ellison bent over her, and laid one hand along her cheek.

“And he has left you here?”

“I suppose he thought there was nothing else to do. He says—” and she still smoothed the creased letter under her hand—“you have your own money to live on. The practice is worth nothing under the circumstances. I should advise you to let the house. You cannot afford to live in it on two hundred pounds a year.”

“Is that all you have?”

“My father left it me.”

“Wise father!”

“I never thought, Madge, I should value two hundred pounds so much.”

Mignon, who still possessed some of the kittenish spirit of her youth, rolled over in Betty’s lap, and began to clutch at the letter with her paws. There was something pathetic in the way the wife suffered that scrap of paper to be a plaything for her pet.