blow is struck, but after the whole system has
been made to languish under its effects, so a blow struck at the heart
can not make itself fully felt while the mind is still unable to
picture what the future will be like now that the grief has come. We
only taste our bitterest grief when the mind has shaken itself aloof
from the present woe, to travel forward and question what the future
can hold for us, now that our life is bereft of this treasure.

Madeline's condition, after the departure of Olive Girard, was an
exponent of this truth. Fast and hard worked her thoughts, but they
only encountered the ills of the present, and never glanced beyond.

She had set her lover aloft as her ideal, the embodiment of truth,
honor, and manhood. He had fallen. Truth, honor, manhood, had passed
out of existence for her. And she had loved him so well! She loved him
even yet.

The thought brought with it a pang of terror, and as if conjured up by
it, the scenes of the day previous marshalled themselves again for
review. Could it be possible? Was it only yesterday that she listened
to his tender love words, beneath the old tree in Oakley woods? Only
yesterday that her step-father was revealed in all his vileness,--his
plots, his hopes, his fears. Her mother's sad life laid bare before
her; Aunt Hagar's story; her defiance of the two men at Oakley; her
flight; Clarence Vaughan; the strange, great city; Olive Girard; and
now--now, just a dead blank, with no outlook, no hope.

And was this all since yesterday?

What was it, she wondered, that made people mad? Not things like
these; she was calm, very calm. She _was_ calm; too calm. If something
would occur to break up this icy stillness of heart, to convulse the
numbed powers of feeling, and shock them back into life before it was
too late.

She waited patiently for the coming of her base lover, lying upon the
soft divan, with her hands folded, and wondering if she would feel
_much_ different if she were dead.

When the summons came, at last, she went quietly down to greet the man
who little dreamed that his reign in her heart was at an end, and that
his hold upon her life was loosening fast.

When Madeline entered the presence of Lucian Davlin, she took the
initiatory step in the part she was henceforth to play. And she took
it unhesitatingly, as if dissimulation was to her no new thing. Truly,
necessity, emergency, is the mother of much besides "invention."
Entering, she gave