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FIDELIA

"I do," she replied calmly. "Whenever I go back over it, always it's the night Fidelia came and you drove me home in the snow-storm and you stopped your car by the graveyard, remember?"

"Of course I remember."

"And you said you weren't going to live by your father's idea, you said you were tired of Eternity; you wouldn't have it any more. You thought that night—didn't you—that I'd do instead of Eternity. Then you thought I wouldn't but Fidelia would."

He realized in a moment that she was moving away. She did not turn but she stepped from him, saying no word but very evidently she meant to leave him. In another instant, she had turned and she was upon the walk to the house. He watched her while she went from him and her white figure became more visible as she approached the light upon the porch; she went up the steps without even looking back and entered the house.

David stayed out in the dark by himself and, turned from the house, he gazed away toward the wide, midnight sheen of the Mississippi. Lights glinted upon the river from the long bridge and a train slowly moved from the Illinois shore and crossed to Davenport. It could not be Myra's and Lan's train; for they were bound east; but it brought to David thought of them on their train; and he thought of Lan having to-night more than he had had in his camp with Fidelia on the Wisconsin shore; he thought of Lan starting with something he never had gained and this had nothing to do with Lan's going away to war.

The last of the guests were gone when David went