il was
lost, with a last flutter, in the sunshine, he nodded to the fruit
vender, and crossing to Broadway started in the direction of his home.

He had asked Trent to dine with him--the boy looked fagged he thought,
and it might do him good to talk freely about his play. Then he recalled
several letters that he had put aside for the sake of seeing Laura; and
retracing his steps, he went back to his office and sat down before his
desk. It surprised him sometimes to find how little irksome such
uninteresting details had become.

They talked late over their cigars and coffee, and when at last Trent
rose, with a laughing reminder of his mother, and went out into the hall
to put on his overcoat, Adams passed by him, after a final handshake,
and entered his darkened study at the end of the hall. He heard the
door close quickly as Trent left the house, and his mind was still full
of the boy's dramatic ambitions, as he paused beside his desk and bent
down to raise the wick of the green lamp. He had fallen into the habit
of sitting up rather late now, and there was a paper on his blotting-pad
which he was preparing for the coming issue of his magazine. After
glancing hastily over, he found that the last few sentences were
rearranging themselves in his thoughts, and he had set himself patiently
to the redraughting of the paragraph, when a slight sound at the door
caused him to look up suddenly with the suspended blue pencil still, in
his hand. It was too late for the maids, he knew--they had already gone
to bed before Trent left--and he knew also that the person who entered
at this hour must have opened the outer door by means of a latch-key.
The soft, slow movement outside sent a nervous shiver through him; he
was aware the next instant that he gripped the pencil more closely in
his hand; and then, rising to his feet with a breathless impulse to be
face to face at once with the inevitable moment, he made a single step
forward, while he watched the knob turn, the door open slowly, and
Connie cross the threshold and pause confusedly as if blinded by the
lamplight.

The pencil dropped from his hand; he heard it fall with a thud upon the
carpet; and then he heard nothing else except the beating of his own
arteries in his ears. Time seemed to stop suddenly and then to whirl
madly forward while he stood rooted to his square of carpet, with his
useless hands hanging helplessly at his sides. It was the supreme
instant his life that