wrung from
him against his will.

"Smiles has gone for a little walk with ... Dr. Bentley, dear," answered
Ethel in a manner which she strove to make commonplace. She felt his
frame quiver, and, with a motion that was almost rough, he shook off her
comforting arms, and mounted the steps, holding to the rail as he did
so. He went directly indoors, and to his room, with the instinct of a
wounded creature to seek its cave or burrow. Save for a cold, cheerless
patch of moonlight on the floor it was dark, and he felt no desire to
turn on the lights. For a while he sat, silent and motionless, on the
edge of the bed. But he could not stand the closed-in solitude. The
place seemed filled with the fragrant presence of the girl who was not
there; would never be there. He wanted to smoke, and went to the bureau
to fumble blindly for a pipe which he remembered he had left on it. His
hand touched something small and glazed, and he drew it sharply away.
The something was the little rose jar. Smiles' first gift to him, which
had travelled far since that morning on the mountain side, five years
before.

The thoughts which would not be stilled repossessed his mind, and drove
him out-of-doors again,--through a side door, so that he would not have
to speak to his father and Ethel, whose voices he heard in low
conversation on the front porch. They ceased for a moment, as though
the speakers had heard the sound of his footsteps, and paused to listen.
The night was still, so still that the chirp of a cricket under the
piazza sounded loudly. It was a cheerful little note, and Donald hated
it for its cheer, and started hastily away toward the beach.

High above, to the south, the moon was sailing through a sea of clouds,
in silent majesty. Moonlit nights he had seen aplenty since that one in
the Cumberlands, four summers previous, when he had climbed the
mountain, impatient to see once more the strange, smiling child who had
so stirred his imagination. In the old days he had loved the soft and
majestic radiance. Now he hated it. Had he not lived long in war-ridden
France, where every clear night illumined by that orb, which once had
been the glory of those who loved, had meant merely the advent of the
Hunnish fiends, whose winging visits brought death and devastation to
the sleeping towns below?

He had fled from the darkness of his room, but now he craved the
darkness again, for, perchance, it might blot out the memory of other
nights, b