ng with two queens surrounded by courtiers and
playing the deep game of fascination, as if men were created for the
amusement of their lighter moments. Lily's defiant, inscrutable eyes
mocked him. But Mrs. Carstang gave him sweet friendship, and he sat by
her with the unchanging loyalty of a devotee to an altar from which the
sacrament has been removed.

Next morning Lily did not come to the lime-kiln. Maurice worked
furiously all day, and corrected proof in his room at night, though
tableaux were shown in the casino, both Mrs. Carstang and Lily being
head and front of the undertaking.

The second day Lily did not come to the limekiln. But he saw her pass
along the grassy avenue in front of his study with Mrs. Carstang, a man
on each side of them. They waved their hands to him.

Maurice sat with his head on his desk all the afternoon, beaten and
broken-hearted. He told himself he was a poltroon; that he was losing
his manhood; that the one he loved despised him, and did well to
despise him; that a man of his age who gave way to such weakness must
be entering senility. The habit of rectitude would cover him like armor,
and proclaim him still of a chivalry to which he felt recreant. But it
came upon him like revelation that many a man had died of what doctors
had called disease, when the report to the health-officer should have
read: "This man loved a woman with a great passion, and she slew him."

The sigh of the woods around, and the sunlight searching for him through
his door, were lonelier than illimitable space. It was what the natives
call a "real Mackinac day," with infinite splendor of sky and water.

Maurice heard the rustle of woman's clothes, and stood up as Lily came
through the white waste of stones. She stopped and gazed at him with
large hunted eyes, and submitted to his taking and kissing her hands. It
was so blessed to have her at all that half his trouble fled before her.
They sat down together on the bench.

Much of his life Maurice had been in the attitude of judging whether
other people pleased him or not. Lily reversed this habit of mind, and
made him humbly solicitous to know whether he pleased her or not. He
silently thanked God for the mere privilege of having her near him.
Passionate selfishness was chastened out of him. One can say much behind
the lips and make no sound at all.

"If I drench her with my love and she does not know it," thought
Maurice, "it cannot annoy her. Let me take wha