"To-morrow never comes."
Richmond Wildair would have been ashamed to tell it, but he actually started and turned pale with superstitious terror. It seemed so like an answer to his thoughts that startled him more than anything of the kind had ever done before.
To him that night passed in feverish dreams. How passed it with another beneath that roof?
At early morning he was awake. An unaccountable presentment of an impending calamity was upon him and would not be shaken off.
Scarcely knowing what he did, he went up to Georgia's room, and softly turned the handle of the door. He had expected to find it locked, but it was not so; it opened at his touch, and he went in.
Why does he start and clutch it as if about to fall? The room is empty, and the bed has not been slept in all night.
A note, addressed to him, lies on the table. Dizzily he opens it, and reads:
"My dearest husband: Let me call you so for this once, this last time—you are free! On this earth I will never disgrace you again. May heaven bless you and forgive.
"Georgia."
She was gone—gone forever! Clutching the note in his hand, he staggered, rather than walked, down stairs, opened the door, and, in a cold gray of coming dawn, passed out.
All around the stainless snow-drifts seemed mocking him with their white blank faces, lying piled as they had been last night when he had driven his young wife from his side. Cold and white they were here still, and Georgia was—where?