ould fail himself; but a sort
of rage bore him forward. If he lived on, and confessed, they would shut
him up, take from him the one thing he loved, cut him off from her; sand
up his only well in the desert. Curse them! And he wrote by firelight
which mellowed the white sheets of paper; while, against the dark
curtain, the girl, in her nightgown, unconscious of the cold, stood
watching.

Men, when they drown, remember their pasts. Like the lost poet he had
"gone with the wind." Now it was for him to be true in his fashion. A
man may falter for weeks and weeks, consciously, subconsciously, even in
his dreams, till there comes that moment when the only thing impossible
is to go on faltering. The black cap, the little driven grey man looking
up at it with a sort of wonder--faltering had ceased!

He had finished now, and was but staring into the fire.

"No more, no more, the moon is dead,
And all the people in it;
The poppy maidens strew the bed,
We'll come in half a minute."

Why did doggerel start up in the mind like that? Wanda! The weed-flower
become so rare he would not be parted from her! The fire, the candles,
and the fire--no more the flame and flicker!

And, by the dark curtain, the girl watched.

X

Keith went, not home, but to his club; and in the room devoted to the
reception of guests, empty at this hour, he sat down and read the report
of the trial. The fools had made out a case that looked black enough.
And for a long time, on the thick soft carpet which let out no sound
of footfall, he paced up and down, thinking. He might see the defending
counsel, might surely do that as an expert who thought there had been
miscarriage of justice. They must appeal; a petition too might be
started in the last event. The thing could--must be put right yet, if
only Larry and that girl did nothing!

He had no appetite, but the custom of dining is too strong. And while he
ate, he glanced with irritation at his fellow-members. They looked so at
their ease. Unjust--that this black cloud should hang over one blameless
as any of them! Friends, connoisseurs of such things--a judge among
them--came specially to his table to express their admiration of his
conduct of that will case. Tonight he had real excuse for pride, but he
felt none. Yet, in this well-warmed quietly glowing room, filled with
decorously eating, decorously talking men, he gained insensibly some
comfort. This su