of the elopement. The little room was filled with memories of Clarence. She must have seen him again as he had been on that first night (so lost now in the turmoil of all that had gone between) . . . sitting there, frightened of old Harvey Seton, ardent and excited in his choked, inarticulate fashion, a man who even then had seemed a little ridiculous and pitiful.
And once Miss Ogilvie had summoned him to life when she said to Ellen, "Poor Mr. Murdock. If only he could be here to see your success."
The little old woman had the best intentions in the world. The meager speech was born of sympathy and kindness alone. She could not have known that each word had hurt Ellen intolerably. Poor Clarence! He would not have liked it. It would have made him even more insignificant and wretched. The husband of Ellen Tolliver. That's what I'll be! The words echoed ironically in her ears. And Clarence had never known Lilli Barr, who was born years after he died. . . . Lilli Barr who had nothing to do with poor Clarence. So far as the world was concerned he had never existed at all.
She had her triumph. There were set floral pieces with the words "Welcome Home" worked in carnations and pansies. And there was a welcoming speech by Mrs. McGovern, president of the Sorosis Club (who had downed Cousin Eva Barr only after a fierce struggle for the honor). And they had cheered her. It was a triumph and in a poor, inadequate fashion it satisfied her. But she was not sure that it was worth all the pain.
She did not go into the empty, echoing rooms of Shane's Castle. She saw it, distantly, veiled in the smoke and flame of the Flats, from Miss Ogilvie's back window on the hill, the one monument of her family in all the Town. She could not have borne it to enter alone the door which on each Christmas Day for so many years had admitted a whole procession.
And she came to understand that it was not alone the Town which she was driven relentlessly to escape. It was the Babylon Arms, Thérèse Callendar and all her world, even her own family,
