The door closed on him, and she sat there with the golden afternoon on her hands. She said to herself: "There has never been such a beautiful November—" and her imagination danced with visions of happy people, young, vigorous, self-confident, draining with eager lips the last drops of autumn sunshine. Always in twos they were, the people she pictured. It used not to be so; she had often had her solitary dreams. But now that she was hardly ever alone she was so often lonely. Lonely! It was a word she did not admit in her vocabulary—but the sensation was there, cold and a little sickening, gnawing at the roots of her life… . What nonsense! Why, she was actually robbing poor Lewis of the proud prerogative of isolation! As if a girl with her resources and her spirits hadn't always more than enough to pack the hours with! She leaned in the wide window of the library and looked over the outspread city, and thought how when she had first stood there all its myriad pulses seemed to be beating in her blood… . "Am I tired? What's wrong lately?" she wondered… . Should she call up the garage where her Chrysler was kept and dash out for the night to Paul's Landing, where her family had lingered on over Thanksgiving? It would be rather jolly, arriving at Eaglewood long after dark, in the sharp November air, seeing the glitter of lights come out far ahead along the Hudson, and entering, muffled in furs, the shabby drawing room where Mr. and Mrs. Spear would be sitting over the fire, placidly denouncing outrages in distant lands… . No, not that … It was sweet to sit in New York dreaming of Eaglewood; but to return there now was always a pang… .