's heart if he knew it," said Demorest.

"Well, it's to save him from having his heart broken further that I
intend to find out this forger," said Stacy grimly. "Good-night, Phil!
I'll telegraph to you when I want you, and then COME!"

With another grip of the hand he left Demorest to his thoughts. In the
first excitement of meeting his old partners, and in the later discovery
of the forgery, Demorest had been diverted from his old sorrow, and for
the time had forgotten it in sympathetic interest with the present.
But, to his horror, when alone again, he found that interest growing as
remote and vapid as the stories they had laughed over at the table, and
even the excitement of the forged letter and its consequences began to
be as unreal, as impotent, as shadowy, as the memory of the attempted
robbery in the old cabin on that very spot. He was ashamed of that
selfishness which still made him cling to this past, so much his own,
that he knew it debarred him from the human sympathy of his comrades.
And even Barker, in whose courtship and marriage he had tried to
resuscitate his youthful emotions and condone his selfish errors--even
the suggestion of his unhappiness only touched him vaguely. He would no
longer be a slave to the Past, or the memory that had deluded him a few
hours ago. He walked to the window; alas, there was the same prospect
that had looked upon his dreams, had lent itself to his old visions.
There was the eternal outline of the hills; there rose the steadfast
pines; there was no change in THEM. It was this surrounding constancy
of nature that had affected him. He turned away and entered the bedroom.
Here he suddenly remembered that the mother of this vague enemy, Van
Loo,--for his feeling towards him was still vague, as few men really
hate the personality they don't know,--had only momentarily vacated
it, and to his distaste of his own intrusion was now added the profound
irony of his sleeping in the same bed lately occupied by the mother of
the man who was suspected of having forged his name. He smiled faintly
and looked around the apartment. It was handsomely furnished, and
although it still had much of the characterlessness of the hotel room,
it was distinctly flavored by its last occupant, and still brightened
by that mysterious instinct of the sex which is inevitable. Where a man
would have simply left his forgotten slippers or collars there was
a glass of still unfaded flowers; the cold marble top