The possibilities of marriage, social position, assured income, support in old age, the strands in the bond that held him, the bond that holds us all, had been untwisting, untwisting, from the third of June to the fifteenth.

The strand that stood for Dora doubtless was the last to break, but it did not detract from my beatitude to know that even this consideration, before the Dupleix and liberty, failed to hold.
I kept out of Miss Harris's way so studiously for the next week or two that she was kind enough in the end to feel compelled to send for me.

I went with misgivings--I expected, as may be imagined, to be very deeply distressed.

She met me with a storm of gay reproaches.

I had never seen her in better health or spirits.