orrow for
the trouble it occasioned her was mitigated by a conviction that its
effect would not be permanent. In this idea he proved perfectly
correct. As the weeks passed by and nothing was heard of the vanished
man, his place in the lives of those who had been so intimately
associated with him became filled with other interests, and from a
living presence he dwindled to an occasional memory. It was as if he had
really died. His name was now and then mentioned with the sad affection
we accord to those who have gone before us; for the most part the
thought of him was thrust out in the busy give-and-take of everyday
life. Save for the absence of that bitter sense of hopelessness which
the separation of death brings, Stafford might as well have passed on
the road which, but for Ayre's intervention, he had marked out for
himself. Claudia and Eugene were wrapped up in one another; their love
tor him, though not dead, was dormant, and his name was oftener upon the
lips of Ayre and Morewood than of those who had been most closely united
with him in the bonds of common experience. But Ayre and Morewood,
besides entertaining a kindly memory of his personal charm, found
delight in studying him as a problem. They were keenly interested in the
upshot of his new start in life, and their blunter perceptions were deaf
to the dissonance between the ideal he had set before himself and the
alternative Ayre had suggested for his adoption. Perhaps they were
right. If none but saints may do the work of the world, much of its most
useful work must go undone.

Haddington and Kate Bernard were married before Christmas. Claudia
deprecated such haste; and Eugene willingly acquiesced in her wish to
put off the date of their own union. He thought that being engaged to
Claudia was a pleasant state of existence, and why hasten to change it?
Besides, as he suggested, they were not people of fickle mind, like Kate
and Haddington (for, of course, Claudia had told him of Haddington's
proposal to herself--it is believed ladies always do tell these
incidents), and could afford to wait. Eugene went to the wedding. He was
strongly opposed to such foolish things as standing quarrels, and Kate
was entirely charming in the capacity of somebody else's wife: it is a
comparatively easy part to fill, and he had no fault to find with her
conception of it. The magnificence of his wedding present smoothed his
return to favor, and Kate had the good sense to accept th