hold gods he alone
erects his altar only upon the hearth where the ashes are cold.

As she sat there through the two acts, she seemed to be watching the
stage and taking part in the conversation of the Fanshaws and their
friends; yet afterward she could not recall a single thing that had
occurred, a single word that had been said. At the end of the last act
she again made them linger so that they were the last to emerge into
the passage. In the outside doorway, she saw the woman--just a glimpse
of a pretty, empty, laughing face with a mouth made to utter
impertinences and eyes that invited them.

Mrs. Fanshaw was speaking--"You're very tired, aren't you?"

"Very," replied Pauline, with a struggle to smile.

"What a child you look! It seems absurd that you are a married woman.
Why, you haven't your full growth yet." And on an impulse of intuitive
sympathy Mrs. Fanshaw pressed her arm, and Pauline was suddenly filled
with gratitude, and liked her from that moment.

Alone in her sitting-room at the hotel, she went up to the mirror over
the mantel, and, staring absently at herself, put her hands up
mechanically to take out her hat-pins. "No, I'll keep my hat on," she
thought, without knowing why. And she sat, hat and wrap on, and looked
at a book. Half an hour, and she took off her hat and wrap, put them
in a chair near where she was sitting. The watched hands of the clock
crawled wearily round to half-past one, to two, to half-past two, to
three--each half-hour an interminable stage. She wandered to the
window and looked down into empty Fifth Avenue. When she felt that at
least an hour had passed, she turned to look at the clock
again--twenty-five minutes to four. Her eyes were heavy.

"He is not coming," she said aloud, and, leaving the lights on in the
sitting-room, locked herself in the bedroom.

At five o'clock she started up and seized the dressing-gown on the
chair near the head of the bed. She listened--heard him muttering in
the sitting-room. She knew now that a crash of some kind had roused
her. Several minutes of profound silence, then through the door came a
steady, heavy snore.

The dressing-gown dropped from her hand. She slid from the bed, slowly
crossed the room, softly opened the door, looked into the sitting-room.
A table and a chair lay upset in the middle of the floor. He was on a
sofa, sprawling, disheveled, snoring.

Slowly she advanced toward him--she was barefooted, and the w