, cursed her--with words too
vile to print. With an oath and a profane wish for her future upon his
lips, the end came. The sensual mouth opened--the diseased wasted limbs
shuddered--the insane light in the lust-worn eyes went out.

With a scream, Mrs. Taine sank unconscious upon the floor beside the bed.

From the lower part of the house came the faint sounds of the few
remaining revelers.

* * * * *

When Aaron King and Conrad Lagrange left the house on Fairlands Heights
that night, they walked quickly, as though eager to escape from the
brilliantly lighted vicinity. Neither spoke until they were some distance
away. Then the novelist, checking his quick stride, pointed toward the
shadowy bulk of the mountains that heaved their mighty crests and peaks in
solemn grandeur high into the midnight sky.

"Well, boy," he said, "the mountains are still there. It's good to see
them again, isn't it?"

Reaching home, the older man bade his friend good night. But the artist,
declaring that he was not yet ready to turn in, went, with pipe and Czar
for company, to sit for a while on the porch.

Looking away over the dark mass of the orange groves to the distant peaks,
he lived over again, in his thoughts, those weeks of comradeship with
Sibyl Andres in the hills. Every incident of their friendship he
recalled--every hour they had spent together amid the scenes she
loved--reviewing every conversation--questioning searching, wondering,
hoping, fearing.

Later, he went out into the rose garden--her garden--where the air was
fragrant with the perfume of the flowers she tended with such loving care.
In the soft, still darkness of the night, the place seemed haunted by her
presence. Quietly, he moved here and there among the roses--to the little
gate in the Ragged Robin hedge, through which she came and went; to the
vine-covered arbor where she had watched him at his work; and to the spot
where she had stood, day after day, with hands outstretched in greeting,
while he worked to make the colors and lines upon his canvas tell the
secret of her loveliness. He remembered how he had felt her presence in
those days when he had laughingly insisted to Conrad Lagrange that the
place was haunted. He remembered how, even when she was unknown to him,
her music had always moved him--how her message from the hills had seemed
to call to the best that was in him.

So it was, that, as he recalled these things,--as