d
paralyse the human part of him and exhaust the fount of his compassion?
In his widening vision he saw that in the spirit of things humanity is
one and indivisible, a single organism held together by a common pulse
of life. To live or to die apart he realised, is beyond the scope of an
individual destiny, for in the eye of God each man that lives is the
keeper not of his own but of his brother's soul.

The self reproach which moved in his heart impelled him so rapidly upon
his way that when he reached the doors he had still an hour to wait
before the opera ended. Remembering that if he were so fortunate to find
Connie he must take her home, he went to a livery stable for a carriage,
and then coming back, walked nervously up and down upon the frozen
pavement. His mind was divided between the fear that she might leave by
another entrance--that he might miss her altogether--and the more
horrible dread that in seeing her he should be unable to prevail upon
her to come away. She might, he felt, demand a reason, exact from him
the meaning of his unexpected appearance; there was even a hideous
possibility that she might fly into a temper.

The wind was bitter and he went into the lobby, where a few men were
hurrying out to secure their carriages. Then at last came the crowd in
evening dress, and it seemed to him that the acuteness of his perception
was reinforced by an almost unnatural power of vision. Out of the moving
throng the face of each woman stood forth distinctly as if relieved by a
spectral illumination; and he saw them clearly one after one, fair or
dark, plain or beautiful, until from among them there shone toward him
the elaborately arranged blonde head of Connie, under a winking diamond
which shed over her an unbecoming light. He had hoped to the last that
she would be with several others, but he perceived when she came out at
Brady's side, with her babyish chin tilted upward and her thin features
working in a forced and unhealthy animation, that they were alone and
would probably be alone for the remainder of the evening.

Standing beyond the entrance, and watching her unseen, while she paused
for an instant in the crowded lobby, Adams felt again the strange stir
of emotion he had experienced when he looked at her the evening before
under the lamplight in his study. In a single vivid instant he saw her
winking diamonds, her rouged cheeks, the nervous flutter that shook her
fragile figure, and the consuming fi