She did not care for him, she would not object to his presence, so he came nearer to the stove, poising his patent leathers upon the hearth, thrusting both hands into his pockets, and even humming to himself snatches of a song, which Lily used to sing up the three flights of stairs in that New York boarding house.
Poor Adah! How white and cold she grew, listening to that air, and gazing upon the face she had loved so well.

It was changed since the night when with his kiss warm on her lips he left her forever, changed, and for the worse.

There was a harder, a more reckless, determined expression there, a look which better than words could have done, told that self alone was the god he worshiped.
Once, as he walked up and down the room, passing so near to her that she might have touched him with her hand, she felt an almost irresistible desire to thrust her thick brown veil aside, and confronting him to his face, claim from him what she had a right to claim, his name and a position as his wife--only for Willie's sake, however; for herself she did not wish it.
It was a relief when at last the roll of the cars was heard, and buttoning his coat still closer around him, he turned toward the door, half looking back to see if the veiled figure too had risen.

It had, and was standing close beside him, its outside garments sweeping his as the crowd increased, pressing her nearer to him, but Adah passed back into the ladies' room, and opening the rear door was out in the street again almost before the train had left the station.

George was gone--lost to her forever! and with a piteous moan for her ruined life, Adah kept on her way till the post office was reached.
There were four letters in the box--one for Mrs.Richards, from an absent brother; one for Eudora, from Lottie Gardner; one for Asenath, from an old friend, and at the bottom, last of all, one for Annie Richards, faced with black, and bearing the initial "M." upon the seal of wax.
Adah saw all this, but it conveyed no meaning to her mind except a vague remembrance that at some time or other, very, very long years it seemed, Anna had bidden her keep from her mother any letter directed to herself in a mourning envelope.