e me, Carlo, for God's sake! I need love, love,
love!--fire, enthusiasm, life."

"_Fire, enthusiasm, life_." Does the human lot contain these things, or
no? If it does, have the gods mocked us, after all?

Pondering these great words, Ferrier strolled homeward, while the
outpouring of the evening splendor died from Perusia Augusta, and the
mountains sank deeper into the gold and purple of the twilight.

As for love, he had missed it long ago. But existence was still rich,
still full of savor, so long as a man's will held his grip on men and
circumstance.

All action, he thought, is the climbing of a precipice, upheld above
infinity by one slender sustaining rope. Call it what we like--will,
faith, ambition, the wish to live--in the end it fails us all. And in
that moment, when we begin to imagine how and when it may fail us, we
hear, across the sea of time, the first phantom tolling of the
funeral bell.

There were times now when he seemed to feel the cold approaching breath
of such a moment. But they were still invariably succeeded by a
passionate recoil of life and energy. By the time he reached the hotel
he was once more plunged in all the preoccupations, the schemes, the
pugnacities of the party leader.

* * * * *

A month later, on an evening toward the end of June, Dr. Roughsedge,
lying reading in the shade of his little garden, saw his wife
approaching. He raised himself with alacrity.

"You've seen her?"

"Yes."

With this monosyllabic answer Mrs. Roughsedge seated herself, and slowly
untied her bonnet-strings.

"My dear, you seem discomposed."

"I hate _men_!" said Mrs. Roughsedge, vehemently.

The doctor raised his eyebrows. "I apologize for my existence. But you
might go so far as to explain."

Mrs. Roughsedge was silent.

"How is that child?" said the doctor, abruptly. "Come!--I am as fond of
her as you are."

Mrs. Roughsedge raised her handkerchief.

"That any man with a heart--" she began, in a stifled voice.

"Why you should speculate on anything so abnormal!" cried the doctor,
impatiently. "I suppose your remark applies to Oliver Marsham. Is she
breaking her own heart?--that's all that signifies."

"She is extremely well and cheerful."

"Well, then, what's the matter?"

Mrs. Roughsedge looked out of the window, twisting her handkerchief.

"Nothing--only--everything seems done and finished."

"At twenty-two?" The doctor laughed, "And it's not q