It was generally conceded that nothing could be more agreeable than Mrs. Sylvestre's position and surroundings. Those of her acquaintance who had known her before her marriage, seeking her out, pronounced her more full of charm than ever; those who saw her for the first time could scarcely express with too much warmth their pleasure in her grace, gentleness, and beauty. Her house was only less admired than herself, and Mrs. Merriam, promptly gathering a coterie of old friends about her, established herself most enviably at once. It became known to the world, through the medium of the social columns of the dailies, that Mrs. Sylvestre was at home on Tuesday afternoons, and that she also received her friends each Wednesday evening. On these occasions her parlors were always well filled, and with society so agreeable that it was not long before they were counted among the most attractive social features of the week. Professor Herrick himself appeared on several Wednesdays, and it was gradually remarked that Colonel Tredennis presented himself upon the scene more frequently than their own previous knowledge of his habits would have led the observers to expect. On seeing Mrs. Sylvestre in the midst of her guests and admirers, Miss Jessup was reminded of Madame RÉcamier and the salons of Paris, and wrote almost an entire letter on the subject, which was printed by the "Wabash Times," under the heading of "A Recent RÉcamier," and described Mrs. Sylvestre's violet eyes, soft voice, and willowy figure, with nothing short of enthusiasm.

Under these honors Mrs. Sylvestre bore herself very calmly. If she had a fault, an impetuous acquaintance once remarked, it was that she was too calm. She found her life even more interesting than she had hoped it would be; there was pleasure in the renewal of old friendships and habits and the formation of new ones, and in time it became less difficult to hold regrets and memories in check with a steady hand. She neither gave herself to retrospection nor to feverish gayety; she felt she had outlived her need of the latter and her inclination for the former. Without filling her life with excitement, she enjoyed the recreations of each day as they came, and felt no resulting fatigue. When Professor Herrick came to spend an evening hour with her and sat by the fire gently admiring her as he was led on to talk, and also gently admiring Mrs. Merriam, who was in a bright, shrewd humor, she herself was filled with pleasure in them both. She liked their ripeness of thought and their impartial judgment of the life whose prejudices they had outlived. And as genuinely as she liked this she enjoyed Colonel Tredennis, who now and then came too. In the first place he came because he was asked, but afterwards because, at the end of his first visit, he left the house with a sense of being in some vague way the better for it. Agnes' manner toward him had been very kind. She had shown an interest in himself and his pursuits, which had somehow beguiled him out of his usual reticence and brought the best of his gifts to the surface, though nothing could have been more unstrained and quiet than the tone of their conversation. He was at no disadvantage when they talked together; he could keep pace with her and understand her gentle thoughts; she did not bewilder him or place him on the defensive. Once, as he looked at her sweet, reposeful face, he remembered what Bertha had said of his ideal woman and the thought rose in his mind that this was she—fair, feminine, full of all tender sympathy and kindly thought; not ignorant of the world nor bitter against it, only bearing no stain of it upon her. "All women should be so," he thought, sadly. And Agnes saw the shadow fall upon his face, and wondered what he was thinking of.

She began to speak to him of Bertha soon afterward, and, perhaps, if the whole truth were told, it was while she so spoke that he felt her grace and sweetness most movingly. The figure her words brought before him was the innocent one he loved, the one he only saw in memory and dreams, and whose eyes followed him with an appeal which was sad truth itself. At first Agnes spoke of the time when they had been girls together, making their entrÉe into society, with others as young and untried as themselves—Bertha the happiest and brightest of them all.

"She was always a success," she said. "She had that quality. One don't know how to analyze it. People remembered her and were attracted, and she never made them angry or envious. Men who had been in love with her remained her friends. It was because she was so true to them. She was always a true friend."

She remembered so many incidents of those early days, and in her relation of them Bertha appeared again and again the same graceful, touching young presence, always generous and impetuous, ready of wit, bright of spirit, and tender of heart.

"We all loved her," said Agnes. "She was worth loving; and she is not changed."

"Not changed," said Tredennis, involuntarily.

"Did you think her so?" she asked, gently.

"Sometimes," he answered, looking down. "I am not sure that I know her very well."

But he knew that he took comfort with him when he went away, and that he was full of heartfelt gratitude to the woman who had defended him against himself. When he sat among his books that night his mind was calmer than it had been for many a day, and he felt his loneliness less. What wonder that he went to the house again and again, and oftener to spend a quiet hour than when others were there! When his burdens weighed most heavily upon him, and his skies looked darkest, Agnes Sylvestre rarely failed to give him help. When he noted her thoughtfulness for others, he did not know what method there was in her thoughtfulness for himself, and with what skilful tact and delicate care she chose the words in which she spoke to him of Bertha; he only felt that, after she had talked to him, the shadow which was his companion was less a shadow, and more a fair truth to be believed in and to draw faith and courage from.

The professor, who met him once or twice during his informal calls, spoke of the fact to Arbuthnot with evident pleasure.

"He was at his best," he said, "and I have noticed that it is always so when he is there. The truth is, it would be impossible to resist the influence of that beautiful young woman."

His acquaintance with Mr. Arbuthnot had taken upon itself something of the character of an intimacy. They saw each other almost daily. The professor had indeed made many discoveries concerning the younger man, but none which caused him to like him less. He had got over his first inclination towards surprise at finding they had many things in common, having early composed himself to meet with calmness any source of momentary wonder which might present itself, deciding, at length, that he, himself, was either younger or his new acquaintance older than he had imagined, without making the matter an affair of years. The two fell into a comfortable habit of discussing the problems of the day, and, though their methods were entirely different, and Arbuthnot was, at the outset, much given to a light treatment of argument, they always understood each other in the end, and were drawn a trifle nearer by the debate. It was actually discovered that Laurence had gone so far as to initiate the unwary professor into the evil practice of smoking, having gradually seduced him by the insidious temptings of the most delicate cigars. The discussions, it was observed, were always more enjoyable when, the professor, having his easy-chair placed in exactly the right position with regard to light and fire, found himself, with his cigar in hand, carefully smoking it, and making the most of its aroma. His tranquil enjoyment of and respect for the rite were agreeable things to see.

"It soothes me," he would say to Arbuthnot. "It even inspires and elevates me. I feel as if I had discovered a new sense. I am really quite grateful."

It was Arbuthnot who generally arranged his easy-chair, showing a remarkable instinct in the matter of knowing exactly what was necessary to comfort. Among his discoveries concerning him the professor counted this one, that he had in such things the silent quickness of perception and deft-handedness of a woman, and perhaps it had at first surprised him more than all else.

It may have been for some private reason of his own that the professor occasionally gave to the conversation a lighter tone, even giving a friendly and discursive attention to social topics, and showing an interest in the doings of pleasure-lovers and the butterfly of fashion. At such times Arbuthnot noticed that, beginning with a reception at the British Embassy, they not unfrequently ended with Bertha; or, opening with the last dinner at the White House, closed with Richard and the weekly "evenings" adorned by the presence of Senator Planefield and his colleague. So it was perfectly natural that they should not neglect Mrs. Sylvestre, to whom the professor had taken a great fancy, and whose progress he watched with much interest. He frequently spoke of her to Arbuthnot, dwelling upon the charm which made her what she was, and analyzing it and its influence upon others. It appeared to have specially impressed itself upon him on the occasion of his seeing Tredennis, and having said that it would be impossible to resist this "beautiful young woman,"—as he had fallen into the unconscious habit of calling her,—he went on to discourse further.

"She is too tranquil to make any apparent effort," he said. "And yet the coldest and most reserved person must be warmed and moved by her. You have seen that, though you are neither the most reserved nor the coldest."

Arbuthnot was smoking the most perfectly flavored of cigars, and giving a good deal of delicate attention to it. At this he took it from his mouth, looked at the end, and removed the ash with a touch of his finger, in doing which he naturally kept his eyes upon the cigar, and not upon the professor.

"Yes," he said, "I have recognized it, of course."

"You see her rather often, I think?" said the professor.

"I am happy to be permitted that privilege," was the answer; "though I am aware I am indebted for it far more to Mrs. Amory than to my own fascinations, numberless and powerful though they may be."

"It is a privilege," said the professor; "but it is more of one to Philip than to you—even more of one than he knows. He needs what such a woman might give him."

"Does he?" said Arbuthnot. "Might I ask what that is?"

And he was angry with himself because he did not say it with more ease and less of a sense of unreasonable irritation. The professor seemed to forget his cigar, he held it in the hand which rested on his chair-arm, and neglected it while he gave himself up to thought.

"He has changed very much during the past year," he said. "In the few last months I have noticed it specially. I miss something from his manner, and he looks fagged and worn. It has struck me that he rather needs an interest, and feels his loneliness without being conscious that he does so. After all, it is only natural. A man who leads an isolated life inevitably reaches a period when his isolation wearies him, and he broods over it a little."

"And you think," said Arbuthnot, "that Mrs. Sylvestre might supply the interest?"

"Don't you think so yourself?" suggested the professor, mildly.

"Oh," said Laurence, "I think the man would be hard to please who did not find she could supply him with anything and everything."

And he laughed and made a few rings of smoke, watching them float upward toward the ceiling.

"He would have a great deal to bring her," said the professor, speaking for the moment rather as if to himself than to any audience. "And she would have a great deal in return for what she could bestow. He has always been what he is to-day, and only such a man is worthy of her. No man who has trifled with himself and his past could offer what is due to her."

"That is true," said Laurence.

He made more rings of smoke and blew them away.

"As for Tredennis," he said, with a deliberateness he felt necessary to his outward composure, "his advantage is that he does not exactly belong to the nineteenth century. He has no place in parlors; when he enters one, without the least pretension or consciousness of himself, he towers over the rest of us with a gigantic modesty it is useless to endeavor to bear up against. He ought to wear a red cross, and carry a battle-axe, and go on a crusade, or right the wrongs of the weak by unhorsing the oppressor in single combat. He might found a Round Table. His crush hat should be a helmet, and he should appear in armor."

The professor smiled.

"That is a very nice figure," he said, "though you don't treat it respectfully. It pleases my fancy."

Arbuthnot laughed again, not the gayest laugh possible.

"It is he who is a nice figure," he returned. "And, though he little suspects it, he is the one most admired of women. He could win anything he wanted and would deserve all he won. Oh, I'm respectful enough. I'm obliged to be. There's the rub!"

"Is it a rub?" asked the professor, a little disturbed by an illogical fancy which at the moment presented itself without a shadow of warning.

"You don't want the kind of thing he might care for."

This time Laurence's laugh had recovered its usual delightful tone. He got up and went to the mantel for a match to light a new cigar.

"I!" he said. "I want nothing but the assurance that I shall be permitted to retain my position in the Treasury until I don't need it. It is a modest ambition, isn't it? And yet I am afraid it will be thwarted. And then—in the next administration, perhaps—I shall be seedy and out at elbows, and Mrs. Amory won't like to invite me to her Thursday evenings, because she will know it will make me uncomfortable, and then—then I shall disappear."

"Something has disturbed you," commented the professor, rather seriously. "You are talking nonsense."

And as he said it the thought occurred to him that he had heard more of that kind of nonsense than usual of late, and that the fact was likely to be of some significance. "It is the old story," he thought, "and it is beginning to wear upon him until he does not control himself quite so completely as he did at first. That is natural too. Perhaps Bertha herself has been a little cruel to him, in her woman's way. She has not been bearing it so well either."

"My dear professor," said Laurence, "everything is relative, and what you call nonsense I regard as my most successful conversational efforts. I could not wield Excalibur. Don't expect it of me, I beg you."

If he had made an effort to evade any further discussion of Mrs. Sylvestre and the possibilities of her future, he had not failed in it. They talked of her no more, in fact, they talked very little at all. A shade had fallen upon the professor's face and did not pass away. He lighted his cigar again, but scarcely seemed to enjoy finishing it. If Arbuthnot had been in as alert a mental condition as usual, his attention would have been attracted by the anxious thoughtfulness of his old friend's manner; but he himself was preoccupied and rather glad of the opportunity to be silent. When the cigars were finished, and he was on the point of taking his departure, the professor seemed to rouse himself as if from a reverie.

"That modest ambition of yours"—he began slowly.

"Thank you for thinking of it," said Arbuthnot, as he paused.

"It interests me," replied the professor. "You are continually finding something to interest me. There is no reason why it should be thwarted, you know."

"I wish I did," returned Laurence. "But I don't, you see. They are shaky pieces of architecture, those government buildings. The foundation-stones are changed too often to insure a sense of security to the occupants. No; my trouble is that I don't know."

"You have a great many friends," said the professor.

"I have a sufficient number of invitations to make myself generally useful," said Laurence, "and of course they imply an appreciation of my social gifts which gratifies me; but a great deal depends on a man's wardrobe. I might as well be without talents as minus a dress-coat. It interests me sometimes to recognize a brother in the 'song and dance artist' who is open to engagements. I, my dear professor, am the 'song and dance artist.' When I am agile and in good voice I am recalled; but they would not want me if I were hoarse and out of spirits, and had no spangles."

"You might get something better than you have," said the professor, reflectively. "You ought to get something."

"To whom shall I apply?" said Laurence. "Do you think the President would receive me to-morrow? Perhaps he has already mentioned his anxiety to see me." Then, his manner changing, he added, with some hurry, "You are very good, but I think it is of no use. The mistake was in letting myself drift as I did. It would not have happened if—if I hadn't been a fool. It was my own fault. Thank you! Don't think of me. It wouldn't pay me to do it myself, and you may be sure it would not pay you."

And he shook the professor's hand and left him.

He was not in the best of humor when he reached the street, and was obliged to acknowledge that of late the experience had not been as rare a one as discretion should have made it. His equable enjoyment of his irresponsible existence had not held its own entirely this winter. It had been disturbed by irrational moods and touches of irritability. He had broken, in spite of himself, the strict rules he had laid down against introspection and retrospection; he had found himself deviating in the direction of shadowy regrets and discontents; and this in the face of the fact that no previous season had presented to him greater opportunities for enjoyment than this one. Certainly he counted as the most enviable of his privileges those bestowed upon him by the inmates of the new establishment in Lafayette Place. His intimacy with the Amorys had placed him upon a more familiar footing than he could have hoped to attain under ordinary circumstances, and, this much gained, his social gifts and appreciation of the favor showed him did the rest.

"Your Mr. Arbuthnot," remarked Mrs. Merriam, after having conversed with him once or twice, "or, I suppose, I ought rather to say little Mrs. Amory's Mr. Arbuthnot, is a wonderfully suitable person."

"Suitable?" repeated Agnes. "For what?"

"For anything—for everything. He would never be out of place, and his civility is absolute genius."

Mrs. Sylvestre's smile was for her relative's originality of statement, and apparently bore not the slightest reference to Mr. Arbuthnot himself.

"People are never entirely impersonal," Mrs. Merriam went on. "But an appearance of being so may be cultivated, as this gentleman has cultivated his, until it is almost perfection. He never projects himself into the future. When he picks up your handkerchief he does not appear to be thinking how you will estimate his civility; he simply restores you an article you would miss. He does nothing with an air, and he never forgets things. Perhaps the best part of his secret is that he never forgets himself."

"I am afraid he must find that rather tiresome," Agnes remarked.

"My dear," said Mrs. Merriam, "no one could forget herself less often than you do. That is the secret of your repose of manner. Privately you are always on guard, and your unconsciousness of the fact arises from the innocence of youth. You are younger than you think."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Sylvestre, rising and crossing the room to move a yellow vase on the top of a cabinet, "don't make me begin life over again."

"You have reached the second stage of existence," said the older woman, her bright eyes sparkling. "There are three: the first, when one believes everything is white; the second, when one is sure everything is black; the third, when one knows that the majority of things are simply gray."

"If I were called upon to find a color for your favorite," said Agnes, bestowing a soft, abstracted smile on the yellow vase, "I think I should choose gray. He is certainly neutral."

"He is a very good color," replied Mrs. Merriam; "the best of colors. He matches everything,—one's tempers, one's moods, one's circumstances. He is a very excellent color indeed."

"Yes," said Agnes, quietly.

And she carried her vase to another part of the room, and set it on a little ebony stand.

It had become an understood thing, indeed, that her relative found Laurence Arbuthnot entertaining, and was disposed to be very gracious toward him. On his part he found her the cleverest and most piquant of elderly personages. When he entered the room where she sat it was her habit to make a place for him at her own side, and to enjoy a little agreeable gossip with him before letting him go. After they had had a few such conversations together Arbuthnot began to discover that his replies to her references to himself and his past had not been so entirely marked by reticence as he had imagined when he had made them. His friend had a talent for putting the most adroit leading questions, which did not betray their significance upon the surface; and once or twice, after answering such a one, he had seen a look in her sparkling old eyes which led him to ponder over his own words as well as hers. Still, she was always astute and vivacious, and endowed him for the time being with a delightful sense of being at his best, for which he was experienced enough to be grateful. He had also sufficient experience to render him alive to the fact that he preferred to be at his best when it was his good fortune to adorn this particular drawing-room with his presence. He knew, before long, that when he had made a speech upon which he privately prided himself, after the manner of weak humanity, he found it agreeable to be flattered by the consciousness that Mrs. Sylvestre's passion-flower-colored eyes were resting upon him with that delicious suggestion of reflection. He was not rendered happier by the knowledge of this susceptibility, but he was obliged to admit its existence in himself. Few men of his years were as little prone to such natural weaknesses, and he had not attained his somewhat abnormal state of composure without paying its price. Perhaps the capital had been too large.

"If one has less, one is apt to be more economical," Bertha had heard him remark, "and, at least, retain a small annuity to exist upon in one's maturer years. I did not retain such an annuity."

Certainly there was one period of his life upon which he never looked back without a shudder; and this being the case, he had taught himself, as time passed, not to look back upon it at all. He had also taught himself not to look forward, finding the one almost as bad as the other. As Bertha had said, he was not fond of affairs, and even his enemies were obliged to admit that he was ordinarily too discreet or too cold to engage in the most trivial of such agreeable entanglements.

"If I pick up a red-hot coal," he said, "I shall burn my fingers, even if I throw it away quickly. Why should a man expose himself to the chance of being obliged to bear a blister about with him for a day or so? If I may be permitted, I prefer to stand before the fire and enjoy an agreeable warmth without personal interference with the blaze."

Nothing could have been farther from his intentions than interference with the blaze, where Mrs. Sylvestre was concerned; though he had congratulated himself upon the glow her grace and beauty diffused, certainly no folly could have been nearer akin to madness than such folly, if he had been sufficiently unsophisticated to indulge in it. And he was not unsophisticated; few were less so. His perfect and just appreciation of his position bounded him on every side, and it would have been impossible for him to lose sight of it. He had never blamed any one but himself for the fact that he had accomplished nothing particular in life, and had no prospect of accomplishing anything. It had been his own fault, he had always said; if he had been a better and stronger fellow he would not have been beaten down by one blow, however sharp and heavy. He had given up because he chose to give up and let himself drift. His life since then had been agreeable enough; he had had his moments of action and reaction; he had laughed one day and felt a little glum the next, and had let one mood pay for the next, and trained himself to expect nothing better. He had not had any inclination for marriage, and had indeed frequently imagined that he had a strong disinclination for it; his position in the Amory household had given him an abiding-place, which was like having a home without bearing the responsibility of such an incumbrance.

"I regard myself," Bertha sometimes said to him, "as having been a positive boon to you. If I had not been so good to you there would have been moments when you would have almost wished you were married; and if you had had such moments the day of your security would have been at an end."

"Perfectly true," he invariably responded, "and I am grateful accordingly."

He began to think of this refuge of his, after he had walked a few minutes. He became conscious that, the longer he was alone with himself, the less agreeable he found the situation. There was a sentence of the professor's which repeated itself again and again, and made him feel restive; somehow he could not rid himself of the memory of it.

"No man who had trifled with himself and his past could offer what is due to her." It was a simple enough truth, and he found nothing in it to complain of; but it was not an exhilarating thing to dwell upon and be haunted by.

He stopped suddenly in the street and threw his cigar away. A half-laugh broke from him.

"I am resenting it," he said. "It is making me as uncomfortable as if I was a human being, instead of a mechanical invention in the employ of the government. My works are getting out of order. I will go and see Mrs. Amory; she will give me something to think of. She always does."

A few minutes later he entered the familiar parlor. The first object which met his eye was the figure of Bertha, and, as he had anticipated would be the case, she gave him something to think of. But it was not exactly the kind of thing he had hoped for, though it was something, it is true, which he had found himself confronted with once or twice before. It was something in herself, which on his first sight of her presented itself to him so forcibly that it gave him something very near a shock.

He had evidently broken in upon some moment of absorbed thought. She was standing near the mantel, her hands clasped behind her head, her eyes seeming fixed on space. The strangeness of her attitude struck him first, and then the unusualness of her dress, whose straight, long lines of unadorned black revealed, as he had never seen it revealed before, the change which had taken place in her.

She dropped her hands when she saw him, but did not move toward him.

"Did you meet Richard?" she said.

"No," he replied. "Did he want to see me?"

"He said something of the kind, though I am not quite sure what it was."

Their eyes rested on each other as he approached her. In the questioning of hers there was a touch of defiance, but he knew its meaning too well to be daunted by it.

"I would not advise you to wear that dress again," he said.

"Why not?" she asked.

"Go to the mirror and look at yourself," he said.

She turned, walked across the room with a slow, careless step, as if the effort was scarcely worth while. There was an antique mirror on the wall, and she stopped before it and looked herself over.

"It isn't wise, is it?" she said. "It makes me look like a ghost. No, it doesn't make me look like one; it simply shows me as I am. It couldn't be said of me just now that I am at my best, could it?"

Then she turned around.

"I don't seem to care!" she said. "Don't I care! That would be a bad sign in me, wouldn't it?"

"I should consider it one," he answered. "It is only in novels that people can afford not to care. You cannot afford it. Don't wear a dress again which calls attention to the fact that you are so ill and worn as to seem only a shadow of yourself. It isn't wise."

"Why should one object to being ill?" she said. "It is not such a bad idea to be something of an invalid, after all; it insures one a great many privileges. It is not demanded of invalids that they shall always be brilliant. They are permitted to be pale, and silent, and heavy-eyed, and lapses are not treasured up against them." She paused an instant. "When one is ill," she said, "nothing one does or leaves undone is of any special significance. It is like having a holiday."

"Do you want to take such a holiday?" he asked. "Do you need it?"

She stood quite still a moment, and he knew she did it because she wished to steady her voice.

"Sometimes," she said at last, "I think I do."

Since he had first known her there had been many times when she had touched him without being in the least conscious that she did so. He had often found her laughter as pathetic as other people's tears, even while he had joined in it himself. Perhaps there was something in his own mood which made her seem in those few words more touching than she had ever been before.

"Suppose you begin to take it now," he said, "while I am with you."

She paused a few seconds again before answering. Then she looked up.

"When people ask you how I am," she said, "you might tell them that I am not very well, that I have not been well for some time, and that I am not getting better."

"Are you getting—worse?" he asked.

Her reply—if reply it was—was a singular one. She pushed the sleeve of her black dress a little way from her wrist, and stood looking down at it without speaking. There were no bangles on the wrist this morning, and without these adornments its slenderness seemed startling. The small, delicate bones marked themselves, and every blue vein was traceable.

Neither of them spoke, and in a moment she drew the sleeve down again, and went back to her place by the fire. To tell the truth, Arbuthnot could not have spoken at first. It was she who at length broke the silence, turning to look at him as he sat in the seat he had taken, his head supported by his hand.

"Will you tell me," she said, "what has hurt you?"

"Why should you ask that?" he said.

"I should be very blind and careless of you if I had not seen that something had happened to you," she answered. "You are always caring for me, and—understanding me. It is only natural that I should have learned to understand you a little. This has not been a good winter for you. What is it, Larry?"

"I wish it was something interesting," he answered; "but it is not. It is the old story. I am out of humor. I'm dissatisfied. I have been guilty of the folly of not enjoying myself on one or two occasions, and the consciousness of it irritates me."

"It is always indiscreet not to enjoy one's self," she said.

And then there was silence for a moment, while she looked at him again.

Suddenly she broke into a laugh,—a laugh almost hard in its tone. He glanced up to see what it meant.

"Do you want to know what makes me laugh?" she said. "I am thinking how like all this is the old-fashioned tragedy, where all the dramatis personÆ are disposed of in the last act. We go over one by one, don't we? Soon there will be no one left to tell the tale. Even Colonel Tredennis and Richard show signs of their approaching doom. And you—some one has shown you your dagger, I think, and you know you cannot escape it."

"I am the ghost," he answered; "the ghost who was disposed of before the tragedy began, and whose business it is to haunt the earth, and remind the rest of you that once I had blood in my veins too."

He broke off suddenly and left his seat. The expression of his face had altogether changed.

"We always talk in this strain," he exclaimed. "We are always jeering! Is there anything on earth, any suffering or human feeling, we could treat seriously? If there is, for God's sake let us speak of it just for one hour."

She fixed her eyes on him, and there was a sad little smile in their depths.

"Yes, you have seen your dagger," she said. "You have seen it. Poor Larry! Poor Larry!"

She turned away and sat down, clasping her hands on her knee, and he saw that suddenly her lashes were wet, and thought that it was very like her that, though she had no tears for herself, she had them for him.

"Don't be afraid that I will ask you any questions," she said. "I won't. You never asked me any. Perhaps words would not do you any good."

"Nothing would do me any good just now," he answered. "Let it go at that. It mayn't be as bad as it seems just for the moment—such things seldom are. If it gets really worse, I suppose I shall find myself coming to you some day to make my plaint; but it's very good in you to look at me like that. And I was a fool to fancy I wanted to be serious. I don't, on the whole."

"No, you were not a fool," she said. "There is no reason why you should not be what you want. Laurence," with something like sudden determination in her tone, "there is something I want to say to you."

"What is it?" he asked.

"I have got into a bad habit lately," she said,—"a bad habit of thinking. When I lie awake at night"—

"Do you lie awake at night?" he interrupted.

She turned her face a little away, as if she did not wish to meet his inquiring gaze.

"Yes," she answered, after a pause. "I suppose it is because of this—habit. I can't help it; but it doesn't matter."

"Oh," he exclaimed, "it does matter! You can't stand it."

"Is there anything people 'cannot stand'?" she said. "If there is, I should like to try it."

"You may well look as you do," he said.

"Yes, I may well," she answered. "And it is the result of the evil practice of thinking. When once you begin, it is not easy to stop. And I think you have begun."

"I shall endeavor to get over it," he replied.

"No," she said, "don't!"

She rose from her seat and stood up before him, trembling, and with two large tears falling upon her cheeks.

"Larry," she said, "that is what I wanted to say—that is what I have been thinking of. I shall not say it well, because we have laughed at each other so long that it is not easy to speak of anything seriously; but I must try. See! I am tired of laughing. I have come to the time when there seems to be nothing left but tears—and there is no help; but you are different, and if you are tired too, and if there is anything you want, even if you could not be sure of having it, it would be better to be trying to earn it, and to be worthy of it."

He rested his forehead on his hands, and kept his eyes fixed on the carpet.

"That is a very exalted way of looking at things," he said, in a low voice. "I am afraid I am not equal to it."

"In the long nights, when I have lain awake and thought so," she went on, "I have seemed to find out that—there were things worth altering all one's life for. I did not want to believe in them at first, but now it is different with me. I could not say so to any one but you—and perhaps not to you to-morrow or the day after—and you will hear me laugh and jeer many a time again. That is my fate; but it need not be yours. Your life is your own. If mine were my own—oh, if mine were my own!" She checked the passionate exclamation with an effort. "When one's life belongs to one's self," she added, "one can do almost anything with it!"

"I have not found it so," he replied.

"You have never tried it," she said. "One does not think of these things until the day comes when there is a reason—a reason for everything—for pain and gladness, for hope and despair, for the longing to be better and the struggle against being worse. Oh, how can one give up when there is such a reason, and one's life is in one's own hands! I am saying it very badly, Larry, I know that. Agnes Sylvestre could say it better, though she could not mean it more."

"She would not take the trouble to say it at all," he said.

Bertha drew back a pace with an involuntary movement. The repressed ring of bitterness in the words had said a great deal.

"Is it—?" she exclaimed, involuntarily, as she had moved, and then stopped. "I said I would not ask questions," she added, and clasped her hands behind her back, standing quite still, in an attitude curiously expressive of agitation and suspense.

"What!" he said; "have I told you? I was afraid I should. Yes, it is Mrs. Sylvestre who has disturbed me; it is Mrs. Sylvestre who has stirred the calm of ages."

She was silent a second, and when she spoke her eyes looked very large and bright.

"I suppose," she said, slowly, "that it is very womanish in me,—that I almost wish it had been some one else."

"Why?" he asked.

"You all have been moved by Mrs. Sylvestre," she replied, more slowly than before,—"all of you."

"How many of us are there?" he inquired.

"Colonel Tredennis has been moved, too," she said. "Not long before you came in he paid me a brief visit. He does not come often now, and his visits are usually for Janey, and not for me. I displeased him the night he went with me to the reception of the Secretary of State, and he has not been able to resign himself to seeing me often; but this evening he came in, and we talked of Mrs. Sylvestre. He had been calling upon her, and her perfections were fresh in his memory. He finds her beautiful and generous and sincere; she is not frivolous or capricious. I think that was what I gathered from the few remarks he made. I asked him questions; you see, I wanted to know. And she has this advantage,—she has all the virtues which the rest of us have not."

"You are very hard on Tredennis sometimes," he said, answering in this vague way the look on her face which he knew needed answer.

"Sometimes," she said; "sometimes he is hard on me."

"He has not been easy on me to-day," he returned.

"Poor Larry!" she said again. "Poor Larry!"

He smiled a little.

"You see what chance I should be likely to have against such a rival," he said. "I wonder if it ought to be a consolation to me to reflect that my position is such that it cannot be affected by rivals. If I had the field to myself I should stand exactly where I do at this moment. It saves me from the risk of suffering, don't you see? I know my place too well to allow myself to reach that point. I am uncomfortable only because circumstances have placed it before me in a strong light, and I don't like to look at it."

"What is your place?" she asked.

"It is in the Treasury," he replied. "The salary is not large. I am slightly in debt—to my tailor and hosier, who are, however, patient, because they think I am to be relied on through this administration."

"I wish I knew what to say to you!" she exclaimed. "I wish I knew!"

"I wish you did," he answered. "You have said all you could. I wish I believed what you say. It would be more dignified than to be simply out of humor with one's self, and resentful."

"Larry," she said, gently, "I believe you are something more."

"No! no! Nothing more!" he exclaimed. "Nothing more, for Heaven's sake!" And he made a quick gesture, as if he was intolerant of the thought, and would like to move it away. So they said no more on this subject, and began soon after to talk about Richard.

"What did you mean," Arbuthnot asked, "by saying that Richard showed signs of his approaching doom? Isn't he in good spirits?"

"It seems incredible," she answered, "that Richard should not be in good spirits; but it has actually seemed to me lately that he was not. The Westoria lands appear to have worried him."

"The Westoria lands," he repeated, slowly.

"He has interested himself in them too much," she said. "Things don't go as easily as he imagined they would, and it annoys him. To-day"—

"What happened to-day?" Laurence asked, as she stopped.

"It was not very much," she said; "but it was unlike him. He was a little angry."

"With whom?"

"With me, I think. Lately I have thought I would like to go abroad, and I have spoken of it to him once or twice, and he has rather put it off; and to-day I wanted to speak of it again, and it seemed the wrong time, somehow, and he was a trifle irritable about it. He has not always been quite himself this winter, but he has never been irritable with me. That isn't like him, you know."

"No, it isn't like him," was Laurence's comment.

Afterward, when he was going away, he asked her a question:

"Do you wish very much to go abroad?" he said.

"Yes," she answered.

"You think the change would do you good?"

"Change often does one good," she replied. "I should like to try it."

"I should like to try it myself," he said. "Go, if you can, though no one will miss you more than I shall."

And, having said it, he took his departure.