; their faces almost touched, eyes
met, heart looked into heart; then Leo smiled and drew back, lowering
her veil, and as the cars shivered, lurched, moved on, Mr. Dunbar put
on his hat and unclosed his fingers.

The white fire leaping in the diamonds destroyed the last vestige of a
betrothal, that he had once regarded as the summum bonum of his
successful career; consumed in its incipiency the farewell compact,
which his regard for Leo's womanly pride, and an honorable desire to
cling as closely as possible to at least the loyal forms of allegiance,
had prompted him to impose upon himself.

Apparently unwounded, she would sail away victrix, with gay pennons
flying through distant summer seas, while he remained, stranded on the
reefs of adverse fate, a target for cynical society batteries, a victim
of the condolence of sympathizing friends.

In reality he felt the benignant touch of fortune still upon his head,
and thanked her heartily that Leo had taken the initiative; that no
overt act of disloyalty blurred his escutcheon, and above all, that he
had been spared the humiliation of acknowledging his inability to
resist the strange fascination that dragged him from his allegiance, as
Auroras swing the needle from the pole. He did not attempt to underrate
the vastness of his loss, nor to condone the folly which he designated
as "infernal idiocy"; yet conscience acquitted him of intentionally
betraying the trust a noble woman had reposed; and his vanity was
appeased by the conviction that though Leo had cast him out of her
life, she went abroad because she loved him supremely. Putting the ring
in his pocket, he turned away as from a grave that had closed forever
over that which once held ail the promise of life.

Three hours later, that carefully written letter acknowledging to his
fiancee that his heart had rebelliously swung from its moorings, under
the magnetic strain of another woman, and asking her tender forbearance
to aid him in conquering a weakness for which he blushed, had been
reduced to a drab shadow on his office hearth; and the lawyer was
engrossed by the preparation of a testamentary document, which embraced
several pages of legal cap. Again and again he read it over, pausing
now and then as if striving to recall some invisible scroll, and at
last as if satisfied with the result, placed it in an envelope, thrust
it into his pocket, and once more mounted his horse. The ceaseless and
intense yearning to se