ten as he mounted the steps
of his hotel and dropped the remnant of his cigar over the side.

He had slept badly on the train the night before, and he had promised
himself to make up his lost sleep in the good conditions that seemed to
offer themselves. But when he sat down in the hotel office he was more
wakeful than he had been when he started out to walk himself drowsy.

The clerk gave him the New York paper which had come by the evening
train, and he thanked him, but remained musing in his chair. At times he
thought he would light another cigar, but the hand that he carried to
his breast pocket dropped nervelessly to his knee again, and he did not
smoke. Through his memories of disappointment pierced a self-reproach
which did not permit him the perfect self-complacency of regret; and yet
he could not have been sure, if he had asked himself, that this pang did
not heighten the luxury of his psychological experience.

He rose and asked the clerk for a lamp, but he turned back from the
stairs to inquire when there would be another New York mail. The clerk
said there was a train from the south due at eleven-forty, but it seldom
brought any mail; the principal mail was at seven. Langbourne thanked
him, and came back again to beg the clerk to be careful and not have him
called in the morning, for he wished to sleep. Then he went up to his
room, where he opened his window to let in the night air. He heard a dog
barking; a cow lowed; from a stable somewhere the soft thumping of the
horses' feet came at intervals lullingly.

II.

Langbourne fell asleep so quickly that he was aware of no moment of
waking after his head touched the fragrant pillow. He woke so much
refreshed by his first sound, soft sleep that he thought it must be
nearly morning. He got his watch into a ray of the moonlight and made
out that it was only a little after midnight, and he perceived that it
must have been the sound of low murmuring voices and broken laughter in
the next room which had wakened him. But he was rather glad to have been
roused to a sense of his absolute comfort, and he turned unresentfully
to sleep again. All his heaviness of heart was gone; he felt curiously
glad and young; he had somehow forgiven the wrong he had suffered and
the wrong he had done. The subdued murmuring went on in the next room,
and he kept himself awake to enjoy it for a while. Then he let himself
go, and drifted away into gulfs of slumber, where, suddenly, h