steam on in the corridors, and toasted
themselves before the log fires on the spectacular hall hearth. Gaites
walked all day, and at night he lounged by the lamp, trying to read, and
wished himself at Kent Harbor. The blue eyes of June Alber made
themselves one with the sky and the river again, and all three laughed
at him for his folly in leaving the certain delight they embodied for
the vague good of a whim fulfilled. Was this the change he had come to
the mountains for? He could throw his hat into the clouds that hung so
low in the defile where the hotel lurked, and that was something; but it
was not so much to the purpose, now that he had it, as June Alber and
the sky and the river, which he had no longer. As he drowsed by the fire
in a break of the semicircle of old ladies before it, he suddenly ceased
to think of June Alber and the Kent sky and river, and found himself as
it were visually confronted with that pale, delicate girl in thread
gloves; she was facing him from the bow of a canoe in the train at
Boston, where he had first met her, and some one was saying, "Oh, she's
a Desmond, through and through."

He woke to the sound of a quick snort, in which he suspected a terminal
character when he glanced round the semicircle of old ladies and found
them all staring at him. From the pain in his neck he knew that his head
had been hanging forward on his breast, and, in the strong belief that
he had been publicly disgracing himself, he left the place, and went out
on the piazza till his shame should be forgotten. Of course, the sound
of the name Desmond had been as much a part of his dream as the sight of
that pale girl's face; but he felt, while he paced the veranda, the pull
of a strong curiosity to make sure of the fact. From time to time he
looked in through the window, without courage to return. At last, when
the semicircle was reduced to the bulks of the two ladies who had sat
nearest him, he went in, and took a place with a newspaper at the lamp
just behind them.

They stopped their talk and recognized him with an exchange of
consciousness. Then, as if compelled by an irresistible importance in
their topic, they began again; that is, one of them began to talk again,
and the other to listen, and Gaites from almost the first word joined
the listener with all his might, though he diligently held up his paper
between himself and the speaker and pretended to be reading.

"Yes," she said, "they must have had their