"Dear, I think I'll go over to Beldon's a while to-night."
She was crossing the floor, and I remember how she turned and looked at him.
"Beldon's?" she said. "Have—have you some business?"
"No," Russell says. "He wanted me to come in and have a game of billiards."
"Very well," she says only, and she went and sat down by the fire.
He got into his coat, humming a little under his breath, and then he came over and stooped down and kissed her. She kissed him, but she hardly turned her head. And she didn't turn her head at all as he went out.
When he'd gone and she heard the apartment door shut, Ellen fairly frightened me. She sank down in the big chair where I had first seen her, and put her head on its arm, and cried—cried till her little shoulders shook, and I could hear her sobs. "Ellen," I says, "what is it?" Though, mind you, I knew well enough.
She put her arms round my neck as I kneeled down beside her. "Oh, Calliope, Calliope!" she says. "It's the end of things."
"End," says I, "of what?"