of public life and passionate endeavour he had not lost
one colour of the painted clouds or missed one note from the sharp
tangle of autumn odours. To this day the going down of the sun in red
and gold awoke within him the impulse of revenge, and the effluvium of
rotting flowers or the tang of pines revived the duller ache of his
senseless rage.

On that evening he had buried his youth with his youthful passion. The
hours between the twilight and the dawn had seen his emotions consumed
and his softer side laid waste. Since then he had not played saint or
martyr; he had gone his way among women, and he had liked some good ones
and some bad ones--but the turn of Eugenia's head or the trick of her
voice had haunted him in one and all. He had followed the resemblance
and had found the vacancy; he had been from first to last a man of one
ideal. His nature had broadened, hardened, rung metallic to the senses;
but it had not yielded to the shock of fresh emotions. He had loved one
woman from her childhood up.

And again she rose before him as in that Indian summer when he knew her
best--her beauty flaming against the autumn landscape, "clear as the
sun, and terrible as an army with banners." He saw her red or pale,
quivering or cold, always passing from him in a splendour of colours
that was like the clash of music.

That was sixteen years ago and it seemed but yesterday. He had lost her,
and yet he had not been unhappy, for he had learned that it is not gain
that makes happiness nor loss that kills it. Life had long since taught
him the lesson all great men learn--that happiness is but one result of
the adjustment of the individual needs to the Eternal Laws. A man had
once said of him, "Burr must think a lot of life; he bears it so blamed
well. He's the happiest man I know," and Burr, overhearing him, had
laughed aloud:

"Am I? I have never thought about it."

He did not think about life, he lived it; this was the beginning and the
end of his success.

The face of Eugenia faded slowly into the firelight, and he rose and
shook himself like a man who awakes from a nightmare. There was work for
him at his desk, and he settled to it with sudden determination.

A week later the papers were still in his desk. He told himself at first
that he would send them to Kingsborough to Judge Bassett and abide by
his decision; but the course struck him as cowardly and he put it from
him. The work was his and he would do it. Then for a