perienced only a sense of
irksomeness, isolation. The man squared his shoulders and looked out
again from the window toward that small bit of the river he could just
discern. Once he had gazed at it when its song seemed to be of the green
banks and flowers it had passed by; but that had been on a fairer
occasion; at the close of a joyous, spring day. How it came back to him;
the solemn court of justice, the beautiful face, an open doorway, with
the sunshine golden without and a figure that, ere passing into it, had
turned to look back! It was but for an instant, yet again his gaze
seemed to leap to that luring light, the passing gleam of her eyes, that
had lingered--

That he saw now! or was it a dream? At the threshold near-by, some one
looked out; some one as fair, fairer, if that could be, whose cheeks
wore the tint of the wild rose.

"Pardon me; I came up to see if my uncle--"

He stared at her, at the beautiful, tremulous lips, the sheen of her
hair--

"You!--"

"Yes." She raised a small, gloved hand and swept back a disordered
tress.

"Your--your uncle has just gone," he said.

"I know."

"You do?" He knew it was no dream, that the fever had not returned, that
she really stood there. Yet it seemed inexplicable.

"I was in the library when they--went out. I had come up to see--I was
with my uncle in the cab--and wondered why he--"

She stopped; he took a quick step toward her. "You were in there, that
room, when--"

"Yes," she said, and threw back her head, as if to contradict a sudden
mistiness that seemed stupidly sweeping over her gaze. "Why did you not
tell me--you did not?--that you were innocent?"

"You were in there?" He did not seem to catch her words.
"Heard--heard--?"

A moment they stood looking at each other; suddenly she reached out her
hands to him. With a quick exclamation he caught and held them.

But in a moment he let them fall. What had he been about to say, to do,
with the fair face, the golden head, so near? He stepped back
quickly--madness! Had he not yet learned control? Had the lessons not
been severe enough? But he was master of himself now, could look at her
coldly. Fortunately she had not guessed, did not know he had almost--She
stood near the back of a chair, her face half-averted; perhaps she
appeared slightly paler, but he was not sure; it might be only the
shadow of the thick golden hair.

"You--are going away?" She was the first to speak. Her voice was, in the
l