e an
enclosed garden of sweetness and bloom. To think of her was to pass from
the scorching heat of the day to the freshness of dew-washed flowers
under the starlight.

"It is impossible," he said aloud, and immediately, as if in answer to a
challenge, a thousand proofs came to him that other men were doing the
impossible every day. How many writers--great writers, too--would have
jumped at a job on a railroad to insure them against starvation? How
many had married young and faced the future on less than twelve hundred
dollars a year? How many had let love lead them where it would without
butting their brains forever against the damned wall of expediency?

"It's impossible," he said again, and turning from the window, made
himself ready to go out. While he brushed his hair and pulled the end of
his necktie through the loop, his gaze wandered back over the roofs to
where a solitary mimosa tree drooped against the lemon-coloured
afterglow. The dust lay like gauze over the distance. Not a breath
stirred. Not a leaf fell. Not a figure moved in the town--except the
crouching figure of a stray cat that crawled, in search of food, along
the brick wall under the dead tree.

"God! What a life!" he cried suddenly. And beyond this parching desert
of the present he saw again that enclosed garden of sweetness and bloom,
which was Virginia. His resolution, weakened by the long hot afternoon,
seemed to faint under the pressure of his longing. All the burden of the
day--the heat, the languor, the scorching thirst of the fields, the
brazen blue of the sky, the stillness as of a suspended breath which
wrapt the town--all these things had passed into the intolerableness of
his desire. He felt it like a hot wind blowing over him, and it seemed
to him that he was as helpless as a leaf in the current of this wind
which was sweeping him onward. Something older than his will was driving
him; and this something had come to him from out the twilight, where the
mimosa trees drooped like a veil against the afterglow.

Taking up his hat, he left the room and descended the stairs to the wide
hall where Tom Peachey sat, gasping for breath, midway of two open
doors.

"I'll be darned if I can make a draught," muttered the old soldier
irascibly, while he picked up his alpaca coat from the balustrade, and
slipped into it before going out upon the front porch into the possible
presence of ladies. His usually cheerful face was clouded, for his
habitu