his journal, writing needless things: his actions, his very
thoughts,--things which could not have been wrung from him before;
but he was lonely and desperate. He must not think--'t was madness. So
he wrote and wrote and wrote.

He watched for the carrier all the daylight hours. His mail was light,
and the coming infrequent. There had been time for an answer, and the
watcher could no longer compose himself to write. All day he sat in
the doorway, looking across the two mounds, down the road whence the
carrier would come.

And at last he came. Far down the road toward town one morning a
familiar moving figure grew distinct. De Young watched as though
fascinated. He wanted to shout, to laugh, to cry. With an effort that
sent his finger nails deep into his palms, he kept quiet, waiting.

A letter was in the carrier's hand. Struck by the look on De Young's
face, the postman did not turn, but stood near by watching. The exile,
once the immovable, seized the missive feverishly, then paused to
examine. It was a man's writing he held, and he winced as at a blow,
but with a hand that was nerved too high to tremble, he tore open the
envelope. He read the few words, and read again; then in a motion of
weariness and hopelessness indescribable, hands and paper dropped.

"My God! And she never knew," he whispered.

When next the carrier came, he shaped the third mound.

ARCADIA IN AVERNUS

"_For they have sown the wind, and
they shall reap the whirlwind._"

CHAPTER I--PRELUDE

Silence, the silence of double doors and of padded walls was upon the
private room of the down-town office. Across the littered, ink-stained
desk a man and a woman faced each other. Threads of gray lightened the
hair of each. Faint lines, delicate as pencillings, marked the
forehead of the woman and radiated from the angles of her eyes. A deep
fissure unequally separated the brows of the man, and on his shaven
face another furrow added firmness to the mouth. Their eyes met
squarely, without a motion from faces imperturbable in middle age and
knowledge of life.

The man broke silence slowly.

"You mean," he hesitated, "what that would seem to mean?"

"Why not?" A shade of resentment was in the answering voice.

"But you're a woman--"

"Well--"

"And married--"

The note of resentment became positive. "What difference does that
make?"

"It ought to." The man spoke almost mechanically. "You to