Page:Fidelia, (IA fidelia00balm).pdf/344

 to the east, a small, pleasant room, overlooking the lake, where she and he used to sit. It had agreeable, shaded lights and on cool nights, a maple fire would be burning on the brick hearth. He caught the slight odor of the wood and he saw the flicker of flame.

"Can we go in there?" he asked.

"You want to?"

He nodded and followed as she led into the little room.

The window blinds were up, the curtains were not drawn and the lights were sufficiently shaded so that he could see out to the lake, and he thought that Alice intentionally had left that view of the lake where he had gone from her for Fidelia.

The lawn was not white as it had been on the March evening of Alice's skating party and there was no large field of ice afloat far out, but the shore hummocks and floe were there in a wide, glistening band along the beach.

Alice looked out, as he was doing, and she asked him, "You've heard from Fidelia since she went back to—her husband?"

"Once, indirectly. There's a man named Jessop who used to be her guardian in White Falls."

"I know about Mr. Jessop," Alice said.

"Apparently she wrote him what she was doing and asked him to take the legal steps for the annulment of our marriage. He's been taking them; they aren't much. They consist chiefly in offering proof that Samuel Bolton, who married her at Lakoon, Idaho, five years ago, is the same Samuel Bolton who enlisted