Monk felt a sharp sadness that it was such a vivid possibility. Stonefield would not be the first man to have run away from the reality of love and its responsibilities, to grasp instead the illusion and excitement of lust and what might seem like freedom, only later to realize it was loneliness.

Another gust of rain soaked him just as he turned back to the door and it opened. The fair-haired parlormaid looked at him inquiringly.

“William Monk, to call upon Mrs. Stonefield,” he announced, dropping his card on the tray she held. “I believe she is expecting me.”

“Yes sir. If you care to wait in the morning room, I shall see if Mrs.

Stonefield is at home,” she replied, stepping back for him to enter. Monk walked through the pleasant hall behind her to wait in the room which he was shown. It gave him an opportunity to glance around and make some estimate of Stonefield's character and circumstances-although if he were in difficulties, the front rooms where guests were received would be the last to show it. Monk had known families to live without heat, and eat little more than bread and gruel, and yet keep up the facade of prosperity the moment visitors called. Generosity, even extravagance, was displayed to foster the pretense. Sometimes it aroused his contempt for the ridiculousness of it. At others he was moved to a strange, hurting pity that they found it necessary, that they believed their worth to their friends lay in such things.

He stood in the small, tidy room in which the maid had left him, and looked around it. To the outward eye it presented every sign of comfort and good taste. It was a little overcrowded, but that was the fashion, and there was no fire lit, in spite of the weather.

The furniture was solid and the upholstery of good quality and, as far as he could see, not overly worn. He looked more closely at the antimacassars on the backs of the chairs, but they were clean and unfaded or rubbed.