all save Fergus—she must escape forever any tie that bound her, any bond which gave her into possession.
On the day after the concert Miss Ogilvie gave a reception. Crowds of women and a few intimidated men thronged the tiny parlor. They passed in and out in an endless stream, until Rebecca, who could bear it no longer, invaded the virgin privacy of Miss Ogilvie's bedroom and fell into a perfect orgy of smoking while she read Holy Living and Dying, the only book at hand to divert her. Hansi, shut in an adjoining room, howled and howled in his solitude.
Long after the winter twilight had descended, at a moment when Ellen thought she could endure the procession no longer, it began to abate and as the last guest departed she saw, coming up the neat brick walk between the lilacs and syringas, the figure of a plump dowdy woman surrounded by a phalanx of children. In truth there were but four in the phalanx but in the fading light their numbers seemed doubled. As the woman came nearer there rose about her an aura of familiarity . . . something in the way she walked, coquettish and ridiculous in a woman so plump and loose of figure. And then, all at once in a sudden flash, Ellen recognized the walk. The woman was May Biggs. Years ago May had moved thus, giggling and flirting her skirts from side to side while she walked with her arm about Ellen's waist. Only now (Ellen reflected) there was twice as much of her to wriggle and the effect was not the same.
As she approached Ellen did not wait. Some memory was stirred by the sight, something which she could no more control than she could understand. . . . May Biggs, whom she had scorned always, coming up Miss Ogilvie's brick walk carrying one child and leading three others by the hand, a May Biggs who was stout now and already middle-aged in her dowdy clothes covered with feathers and buttons and bits of passementerie. It was extraordinary, the feeling that overwhelmed her; it was a
