d rival had actually shown up in the flesh, she visibly braced
up. Her neighbors understood that it must have been a shock "to be
suddenly confronted with any souvenir of the hotel fire"--so one had
expressed it--and the incident soon passed out of the village mind.

It was not long after this incident that the widow confided to a friend
that she was coming to depend upon Morris for advice in her business.

"Standing as he does, in that hotel door--between two worlds, as you
might say--why, he sees both ways, and oftentimes he'll detect an event
_on the way to happening_, an' if it don't move too fast, why, I can
hustle an' get the better of things." It was as if she had a private
wire for advance information--and she declared herself happy.

Indeed, a certain ineffable light such as we sometimes see in the eyes
of those newly in love came to shine from the face of the widow, who did
not hesitate to affirm, looking into space as she said it:

"Takin' all things into consideration, I can truly say that I have never
been so truly and ideely married as since my widowhood." And she smiled
as she added:

"Marriage, the earthly way, is vicissitudinous, for everybody knows that
anything is liable to happen to a man at large."

There had been a time when she lamented that her picture was not
"life-sized" as it would seem so much more natural, but she immediately
reflected that that hotel would never have gotten into her little house,
and that, after all, the main thing was having "him" under her own roof.

As the months passed Mrs. Morris, albeit she seemed serene and of
peaceful mind, grew very white and still. Fire is white in its ultimate
intensity. The top, spinning its fastest, is said to "sleep"--and the
dancing dervish is "still." So, misleading signs sometimes mark the
danger-line.

"Under-eating and over-thinking" was what the doctor said while he felt
her translucent wrist and prescribed nails in her drinking-water. If he
secretly knew that kind nature was gently letting down the bars so that
a waiting spirit might easily pass--well, he was a doctor, not a
minister. His business was with the body, and he ordered repairs.

She was only thirty-seven and "well" when she passed painlessly out of
life. It seemed to be simply a case of going.

There were several friends at her bedside the night she went, and to
them she turned, feeling the time come:

"I just wanted to give out that the first thing I intend to do