"The Camerons' place is within driving distance of my home. If I can get off for a day will you let me take you there? I want you to see it, and to meet old Mactier, and go with me into the caves where I used to play as a boy, and climb the crags, way up to their topmost peaks, and breathe the freedom that is in the air!"
Cary sprang up, flinging out her hands. There was an odd pulsing in her throat.
"Go! of course I'll go!" she cried, and then the pulsing grew and grew, and choked her.
At six Trevelyan left. She did not meet his eyes in parting, and Trevelyan missed her bantering voice, that usually followed him down stairs.
"It's Stewart," he told himself with passionate resentment, and he stumbled over the lower step and swore at the darkness.
Cary went back into the empty room, over to the mantel and looked into the fire, as Trevelyan had done. She could hear the echo of the closing front door. Outside, the fog grew thicker. Inside, the red lamp threw its coloring on the crimson roses Stewart had brought that day, making them more glorious still, and the heat of the fire intensified the odor of the violets on the woman's breast. Stewart had brought the violets too.
Cary turned away from the fire, and moved restlessly about the room, fixing a chair here, straightening a book there, and fingering some familiar object. As she passed the open piano, she hesitated, put out one finger and struck a key. The sound vibrated through the quiet room, deep and full and strong. A bar of an old Scotch song rose in her throat and broke. She closed the piano hastily. Once she leaned over the roses.
"Dear John," she murmured, and her hands touched for a moment the violets on her breast.
Then she went back to the fire, and stood wide-eyed and silent, looking into the heart of it. She was dimly conscious of the violets' perfume, but it was Trevelyan's face she saw in the flames.
III.