rs to find himself abandoned, forgotten, perhaps even
a dupe? For the first time the sting of jealousy entered his soul.
Perhaps, unconsciously to himself, his strange and varying feelings that
afternoon had been the gathering climax of his mental condition; at all
events, in the sudden revulsion there was a shaking off of his apathetic
thought; there was activity, even if it was the activity of pain. Here
was a mystery to be solved, a secret to be discovered, a past wrong to
be exposed, an enemy or, perhaps, even a faithless love to be punished.
Perhaps he had even saved his reason at the expense of his love. He
quickly replaced the photograph on the mantel-shelf, returned the letter
carefully to his pocket-book,--no longer a souvenir of the past, but a
proof of treachery,--and began to mechanically undress himself. He was
quite calm now, and went to bed with a strange sense of relief, and
slept as he had not slept since he was a boy.

The whole hotel had sunk to rest by this time, and then began the usual
slow, nightly invasion and investment of it by nature. For all its broad
verandas and glaring terraces, its long ranges of windows and glittering
crest of cupola and tower, it gradually succumbed to the more potent
influences around it, and became their sport and playground. The
mountain breezes from the distant summit swept down upon its flimsy
structure, shook the great glass windows as with a strong hand, and sent
the balm of bay and spruce through every chink and cranny. In the great
hall and corridors the carpets billowed with the intruding blast along
the floors; there was the murmur of the pines in the passages, and the
damp odor of leaves in the dining-room. There was the cry of night birds
in the creaking cupola, and the swift rush of dark wings past bedroom
windows. Lissome shapes crept along the terraces between the stolid
wooden statues, or, bolder, scampered the whole length of the great
veranda. In the lulling of the wind the breath of the woods was
everywhere; even the aroma of swelling sap--as if the ghastly stumps
on the deforested slope behind the hotel were bleeding afresh in the
dewless night--stung the eyes and nostrils of the sleepers.

It was, perhaps, from such cause as this that Barker was awakened
suddenly by the voice of the boy from the crib beside him, crying,
"Mamma! mamma!" Taking the child in his arms, he comforted him, saying
she would come that morning, and showed him the faint dawn