ound and around, over and over again, of the facts which I have told
you to-night; but when night has come, I am the prey of my own thoughts.
For six days, in spite of my exaggerated fear of scandal, I have prowled
like a ghost before my own house, lurking behind trees, watching my own
door like a ten-dollar-a-day detective. Dodging the policeman who would
know me, I have kept my eyes for hours on the dim light that sometimes
burns in my wife's room, and when I have seen the shadow of some one
passing and repassing behind the drawn shade, I have felt my heart in my
throat, and have scarcely been able to restrain myself from calling out
into the night air, "Julianna! Julianna!"

Finally, I must tell you one thing more. I had believed that perhaps the
crisis which had come to her had done so independently of any
personality but mine or hers. I was wrong. To-night, unable to remain
inactive any longer, and by the accumulation of restraint made
desperate, I rung up my house on the telephone. No answer was returned.
The feeling that my wife, in danger, was calling upon me, swept over me
until, had I been open to such beliefs, I would have felt sure that
across the affection and sympathy between us, as across wires, the
message came.

I walked hastily from the hotel into the park, taking the path which I
had used in the pleasant June days when I had met her at the Monument.
You know the kind of night it has been. Therefore when I reached the
border of trees opposite my house, I hardly thought it necessary to seek
the screen of the shrubbery; the arc lights were throwing the dancing
shadows of tree limbs across the pavement, the rush of the wind drowned
the noise of footsteps, and the street was deserted, I thought, except
for the clouds of whirling dust that passed downtown like so many huge
and ghostly pedestrians. I saw that a dim light shone through her blinds
and that the house was the picture of peace, suggesting that the walls
contained comfort, happiness, and the quiet of a peaceful family. So the
fronts of houses lie to us!

At the very moment that this thought came, I saw from my position under
the shadow of a spreading oak, which has not yet dropped its leaves,
that I was not the only person who was observing the light behind the
blinds. A figure was standing not more than a hundred feet away from me,
peering out from beyond one of the light poles. It wore a vizored cap, I
thought, and its head rolled this way and