"What is it?" I repeated, as inadequately as before, knowing the uselessness of any debilitating touch of sympathy.
"It's so hard," she said, struggling to control her voice.
"What is?"
"It's so hard to begin over."
"But they say you're the cleverest woman in the world!" was the only consolation I could offer her.
CHAPTER IX
A RIALTO RAIN-STORM
I lifted my face to the sudden pelt of the rain-shower, feeling very much like a second edition of King Lear as I did so. Not that I had lost a kingdom, or that I'd ever been turned out of an ungrateful home circle! But something quite as disturbing, in its own small way, had overtaken me.
I had been snubbed by Mary Lockwood. While I stood watching that sudden shower empty upper Broadway as quickly as a fusillade of bullets might have emptied it, I encountered something which quite as promptly emptied my own heart. It was the cut direct. For as I crouched back under my dripping portico, like a toad under a rhubarb-leaf, I caught sight of the only too familiar wine-colored landaulet as it swung about into Longacre Square. I must have started forward a little, without being quite conscious of the movement. And through the sheltering plate-glass of the dripping hood I caught sight of Mary Lockwood herself.