would.'

They sighed; but it was now with the relief of a lightened oppression.

'If, dear, in truth the father's look is in the child, he has the greater
reason to desire for her a taste of our atmosphere.'

'Do not pursue it. Sleep.'

'One prayer!'

'Your mention of our atmosphere, dear, destroys my power to frame one. Do
you, for two. But I would cleanse my heart.'

'There is none purer.'

'Hush.'

Virginia spoke a more fervent word of praise of her sister, and had not
the hushing response to it. She heard the soft regular breathing. Her own
was in downy fellowship with it a moment later.

At the hour of nine, in genial daylight, sitting over the crumbs of his
hotel breakfast, Victor received a little note that bore the handwriting
of Dorothea Duvidney.

'Dear Victor, we are prepared to receive the child for a month.
In haste, before your train. Our love. D. and V.'

His face flashed out of cloud.

A more precious document had never been handed to him. It chased back to
midnight the doubt hovering over his belief in himself;--phrased to say,
that he was no longer the Victor Radnor known to the world. And it
extinguished a corpse-like recollection of a baleful dream in the night.
Here shone radiant witness of his being the very man; save for the spot
of his recent confusion in distinguishing his identity or in feeling that
he stood whole and solid.--Because of two mature maiden ladies? Yes,
because of two maiden ladies, my good fellow. And friend Colney, you know
the ladies, and what the getting round them for one's purposes really
means.

The sprite of Colney Durance had struck him smartly overnight. Victor's
internal crow was over Colney now. And when you have the optimist and
pessimist acutely opposed in a mixing group, they direct lively
conversations at one another across the gulf of distance, even of time.
For a principle is involved, besides the knowledge of the other's triumph
or dismay. The couple are scales of a balance; and not before last night
had Victor ever consented to think of Colney ascending while he dropped
low to graze the pebbles.

He left his hotel for the station, singing the great aria of the fourth
Act of the Favorita: neglected since that mighty German with his Rienzi,
and Tannhauser, and Tristan and Isolda, had mastered him, to the
displacement of his boyhood's beloved sugary -inis and -antes and
-zettis; had clearly mastered, not beguiled, him; had wafted him up to