tting of the door as the ripples widen on a pool
with the falling of the stone. She crushed her knuckles tighter and
tighter over her lips, she pressed her fingers to her eyes, she slowly
clasped and reclasped her hands, listening for what she did not know.
She thought of her husband hurrying away from her, ignoring her, and
her love for him in the haste and heat of battle. She thought of
Corthell, whom she had sent from her, forever, shutting his love from
out her life.

Crushed, broken, Laura laid herself down among the cushions, her face
buried in her arm. Above her and around her rose the dimly lit gallery,
lowering with luminous shadows. Only a point or two of light
illuminated the place. The gold frames of the pictures reflected it
dully; the massive organ pipes, just outlined in faint blurs of light,
towered far into the gloom above. The whole place, with its half-seen
gorgeous hangings, its darkened magnificence, was like a huge, dim
interior of Byzantium.

Lost, beneath the great height of the dome, and in the wide reach of
the floor space, in her foolish finery of bangles, silks, high comb,
and little rosetted slippers, Laura Jadwin lay half hidden among the
cushions of the couch. If she wept, she wept in silence, and the
muffling stillness of the lofty gallery was broken but once, when a
cry, half whisper, half sob, rose to the deaf, blind darkness:

"Oh, now I am alone, alone, alone!"

IX

"Well, that's about all then, I guess," said Gretry at last, as he
pushed back his chair and rose from the table.

He and Jadwin were in a room on the third floor of the Grand Pacific
Hotel, facing Jackson Street. It was three o'clock in the morning. Both
men were in their shirt-sleeves; the table at which they had been
sitting was scattered over with papers, telegraph blanks, and at
Jadwin's elbow stood a lacquer tray filled with the stumps of cigars
and burnt matches, together with one of the hotel pitchers of ice water.

"Yes," assented Jadwin, absently, running through a sheaf of telegrams,
"that's all we can do--until we see what kind of a game Crookes means
to play. I'll be at your office by eight."

"Well," said the broker, getting into his coat, "I guess I'll go to my
room and try to get a little sleep. I wish I could see how we'll be
to-morrow night at this time."

Jadwin made a sharp movement of impatience.

"Damnation, Sam, aren't you ever going to let up croaking? If you're
afraid of this t