was losing the power to think
clearly where Sylvia was concerned. Even the most innocent acts of hers
assumed new aspects; and countless circumstances which in the past had
seemed merely puzzling to him arose before him now charged with deadly
significance.

His days became a torture to him. He could not lose himself in a crowd,
and draw something of recuperation from a sense of obscurity, a feeling
that he was not observed. He seemed now to be cruelly visible to every man
and woman on both sides of the river. Strangers who gave more than the
most indifferent glance to his massive strength and romantic, swarthy
face, with its fine dark eyes and strong lines and the luxuriant black
mustache, became to him furtive witnesses to his shame--secret
commentators upon his weakness. He recalled pictures of men held in
pillories for communities to gibe at--and he felt that his position was
not unlike theirs. He had at times a frantic realization that he had
unconquerable strength, but that by some ironic circumstance he could not
use it.

If his days were sapping his vigor and driving him to the verge of
madness, his nights were periods of a far more destructive torture. He had
resolved that Sylvia should see no change in him; he was trying to
persuade himself that there _was_ no change in him. Yet at every tenderly
inquiring glance of hers he felt that the blood must start forth on his
forehead, that body and skull must burst from the tumult going on within
them.

It was she who brought matters to a climax.

"Harboro, you're not well," she said one evening when her hand about his
neck had won no response beyond a heavy, despairing gesture of his arm.
His eyes were fixed on vacancy and were not to be won away from their
unseeing stare.

"You're right, Sylvia," he said, trying to arouse himself. "I've been
trying to fight against it, but I'm all out of sorts."

"You must go away for a while," she said. She climbed on his knee and
assumed a prettily tyrannical manner. "You've been working too hard. They
must give you a vacation, and you must go entirely away. For two weeks at
least."

The insidious poison that was destroying him spread still further with a
swift rush at that suggestion. She would be glad to have him out of the
way for a while. Were not unfaithful wives always eager to send their
husbands away? He closed his eyes resolutely and his hands gripped the
arms of his chair. Then a plan which he had been vaguely