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120 "When did the signore leave this for me? Has he gone out again?"

Gone out again? But the signore had not come in since dinner: of that the gondolier was positive, as he had been on duty all the evening. A boy had brought the letter—an unknown boy: he had left it without waiting. It must have been about half an hour after the signora had herself gone out with her guests.

Susy, hardly hearing him, fled on to her own room, and there, beside the very lamp which, two months before, had illuminated Ellie Vanderlyn's fatal letter, she opened Nick's.

"Don't think me hard on you, dear; but I've got to work this thing out by myself. The sooner the better-don't you agree? So I'm taking the express to Milan presently. You'll get a proper letter in a day or two. I wish I could think, now, of something to say that would show you I'm not a brute—but I can't. N. L."

There was not much of the night left in which to sleep, even had a semblance of sleep been achievable. The letter fell from Susy's hands, and she crept out onto the balcony and cowered there, her forehead pressed against the balustrade, the dawn-wind stirring in her thin laces. Through her closed eyelids and the tightly-clenched fingers pressed against them, she felt the penetration of the growing light, the relentless advance of another day—a day without purpose and without meaning—a day without Nick.