"The—the train."
"Oh, you was going on, was you?" Mrs. Kensy said. "Well, I can let you have the price of a ticket a little ways."
But Mrs. Dilworth, with shaking hands, pulled everything out of her bag, shook her skirts, fumbled in the bosom of her dress, ran out and searched the garden-path, strained her eyes across the snow on the river—all in vain. "Oh, my!" she said, faintly.
"But I can lend you the price of a ticket, ma'am," Mrs. Kensy said again.
"No matter," Mrs. Dilworth said, dully. "I'll go home."
Even as she spoke she heard the train tooting faintly far up the valley. She sat down, feeling suddenly sick.
V
There was nothing to do but to go home. She remembered now how in her agitated watching for her son she had put her purse down on the corner of her bureau—and left it there. Yes; there was nothing to do but go back. "I can start to-morrow," she said to herself. But in the sick reaction of the moment she knew that she could never start again; her purpose had been shattered by the blow. She took her bundle—the bundle that meant flight and disguise and self-sacrifice, and that stood for the shrewdness which is so characteristic of the kind of stupidity which forgets the purse—and went stumbling down in the darkness to the river. She said to herself that she must get her muff; and she thought heavily that it would be pretty hard to carry so many things across the ice. She was numb with the shock of interrupted ecstasy. She could not feel even mortification—only fatigue. She was so tired that, seeing in the darkness a hurrying figure approaching her, she did not recognize her husband until he was almost upon her.
"Milly? My God! Milly!"