any notice!"

She was shaken by deep, convulsive weeping. Delafield soothed her as
best he could. And presently she stretched out her hand with a quick,
piteous gesture, and touched his face.

"You, too! What have I done to you? How you looked, just now! I bring a
curse. Why did you want to marry me? I can't tear this out of my
heart--I can't!"

And again she hid herself from him. Delafield bent over her.

"Do you imagine that I should be poor-souled enough to ask you?"

Suddenly a wild feeling of revolt ran through Julie's mind. The
loftiness of his mood chilled her. An attitude more weakly, passionately
human, a more selfish pity for himself would, in truth, have served him
better. Had the pain of the living man escaped his control, avenging
itself on the supremacy that death had now given to the lover, Delafield
might have found another Julie in his arms. As it was, her husband
seemed to her perhaps less than man, in being more; she admired
unwillingly, and her stormy heart withdrew itself.

And when at last she controlled her weeping, and it became evident to
him that she wished once more to be alone, his sensitiveness perfectly
divined the secret reaction in her. He rose from his place beside her
with a deep, involuntary sigh. She heard it, but only to shrink away.

"You will sleep a little?" he said, looking down upon her.

"I will try, _mon ami_."

"If you don't sleep, and would like me to read to you, call me. I am in
the next room."

She thanked him faintly, and he went away. At the door he paused and
came back again.

"To-night"--he hesitated--"while the doctors were here, I ran down to
Montreux by the short path and telegraphed. The consul at Zanzibar is an
old friend of mine. I asked him for more particulars at once, by wire.
But the letters can't be here for a fortnight."

"I know. You're very, very good."

* * * * *

Hour after hour Delafield sat motionless in his room, till "high in the
Valais depths profound" he "saw the morning break."

There was a little balcony at his command, and as he noiselessly stepped
out upon it, between three and four o'clock, he felt himself the
solitary comrade of the mist-veiled lake, of those high, rosy mountains
on the eastern verge, the first throne and harbor of the light--of the
lower forest-covered hills that "took the morning," one by one, in a
glorious and golden succession. All was fresh, austere, and vast--the
space