housandth chance, even if
Ehrhardt were still there, that they should meet him at the railroad
station, and there were a thousand chances that he was no longer in
Peschiera. He could see that his wife and Lily were restive too: as the
train drew into the station they nodded to each other, and pointed out
of the window, as if to identify the spot where Lily had first noticed
him; they laughed nervously, and it seemed to Elmore that he could not
endure their laughter.

During that long wait which the train used to make in the old Austrian
times at Peschiera, while the police authorities _vised_ the passports
of those about to cross the frontier, Elmore continued perpetually
alert. He was aware that he should not know Ehrhardt if he met him; but
he should know that he was present from the looks of Lily and Mrs.
Elmore, and he watched them. They dined well in waiting, while he
impatiently trifled with the food, and ate next to nothing; and they
calmly returned to their places in the train, to which he remounted
after a last despairing glance around the platform in a passion of
disappointment. The old longing not to be left so wholly to the effect
of what he had done possessed him to the exclusion of all other
sensations, and as the train moved away from the station he fell back
against the cushions of the carriage, sick that he should never even
have looked on the face of the man in whose destiny he had played so
fatal a part.

XIII.

In America, life soon settled into form about the daily duties of
Elmore's place, and the daily pleasures and cares which his wife assumed
as a leader in Patmos society. Their sojourn abroad conferred its
distinction; the day came when they regarded it as a brilliant episode,
and it was only by fitful glimpses that they recognized its essential
dulness. After they had been home a year or two, Elmore published his
Story of Venice in the Lives of her Heroes, which fell into a ready
oblivion; he paid all the expenses of the book, and was puzzled that, in
spite of this, the final settlement should still bring him in debt to
his publishers. He did not understand, but he submitted; and he accepted
the failure of his book very meekly. If he could have chosen, he would
have preferred that the Saturday Review, which alone noticed it in
London with three lines of exquisite slight, should have passed it in
silence. But after all, he felt that the book deserved no better fate.
He always spoke of it