ald had wished he might have been a
masterful man, capable of the like things. But already a vague sickness
of soul had succeeded his momentarily dominant mood. Distrust filled
him--of his own character, his aims, his talent, his health, and his
destiny. His dreams had but recently taken the form in which he had that
day expressed them; he had not grown into them. Under the depressing
effect of failure he was no more sure than she had professed to be that
the proposed union would not be a rash mistake. He saw the wisdom of a
return to his gray policy of wanting nothing, asking nothing. Heaviness
possessed him; he made no motion.

Signs of the nearing city came thicker and thicker; the street lamps
became frequent and consecutive. Aurora sat up and composed her
appearance. The lighted house-fronts threw back the skies to
inexpressible altitudes.

She continued aloud for Gerald to hear a conversation she had been
holding mentally:

"Estelle says we must go away somewhere for the summer, because it's
awfully hot down here in Florence, we're told. We're thinking of taking
some sort of place at the seashore for the bathing season. You'll be
coming down to visit us, won't you? Then by and by, when I've had pretty
near enough of the kind of life I'm leading, tell you what I'm thinking
I'll do. Give up the house I've got and take another, different, and fit
it up for a children's hospital, a small one, of course, to be within my
means, and run it myself, and do what I can of the nursing. I've been
thinking of it for some time as a good thing to do instead of spending
my money and nothing to show for it. It would be something to do for the
sake of little Dan, to make it so it wouldn't be the same as if he never
had passed through the world. Then I shall have my work just as you have
yours, Gerald. And so we'll live on, each so interested in all the other
does. And you'll come to see me, and I'll go to see you--chaperoned, if
you insist, though I understand a studio can be visited without
impropriety, and--"

"You can leave me out of your plans for the future. I am going away to
forget you."

"Oh, no, you're not. You're coming to see me to-morrow. Five o'clock at
the very latest, hear?"

"I'm afraid you will have to excuse me."

"You wouldn't break my heart like that for anything, Gerald Fane! You
wouldn't let the foolish doings of this day destroy all the months have
built up! You're not so mean. When I tell you it'll b