Mrs. Waite moistened her dry lips and spoke, faintly.
"I had a child once. He died.... She was his teacher and—and she was good to him. But don't tell her; she might try to talk to me about him and—and I couldn't stand that"——
Mrs. Waite stopped; her plain face contorted ludicrously. The next moment the cold Mrs. Hadwell and the woman beside whose frigid nature her own showed in the light of a volcano were weeping bitterly in one another's arms.
CHAPTER XXV
THE SHADOWS FALL
"All the dreaming is broken through,
Both what is done and undone I rue,
Nothing is tender, nothing true,
In heaven or earth save God and you."
—Arthur Sullivan.
"But still the faces gaped and cried,
'Give us the dream for which we died!'"
—Charles G. D. Roberts.
Mrs. Hadwell, having hypnotized Mr. Hadwell into apologizing profusely for his conduct, promised to forgive him if he would go away for a week.
"You have been talking for years of paying a visit to your sister in Toronto," she said. "Suppose you go now, Henry. She will be delighted to see you, and I—after a week of absence I shall be so glad to see you, again, that I shall not even think of this. Otherwise"——
He went. When Estelle had seen him safely in the train she drew a long breath of relief and telephoned to Miss Thayer. Until then she had not dared to risk an encounter between her friend and her husband, knowing that the former was a keen observer and the latter, a poor actor.
"Come to me, to-morrow, as soon as school is out, dear," she said. "I shall be in all afternoon. Promise!"