His face seemed to her trivial, with a selfishness that more than suggested meanness, the eyes looking out from a mind which habitually entertained ideas not worth a real man's while.

What was the matter with him--"or with me ?" What is he thinking about?
Why is he looking so mean and petty?
Why had he no longer the least physical attraction for her?
Why did her intense emotions of a few brief weeks ago seem as vague as an unimportant occurrence of many years ago?
What had broken the spell?
She could not answer her own puzzled questions; she simply knew that it was so, that any idea that she did, or ever could, love Ross Whitney was gone, and gone forever.

"It's so," she thought.

"What's the difference why?
Shall I never learn to let the stove doors alone ?" As soon as lunch was over Matilda took Ellen to her boudoir and Ross went away, leaving Janet and Adelaide to walk up and down the shaded west terrace with its vast outlook upon the sinuous river and the hills.

To draw Janet from the painful theatricals, she took advantage of a casual question about the lynching, and went into the details of that red evening as she had not with anyone.