his spirit
to drag about, and which he could not cast off. No feeling of
resentment remained with him; only wonder at his wife's misshapen
knowledge and keen self-rebuke of his own momentary forgetfulness.
Even knowing Fanny as he did, he could not rid himself of the haunting
dread of having wounded her nature cruelly. He felt much as a man who
in a moment of anger inflicts an irreparable hurt upon some small,
weak, irresponsible creature, and must bear regret for his madness.
The only reparation that lay within his power--true, one that seemed
inadequate--was an open and manly apology and confession of wrong. He
would feel better when it was made. He would perhaps find relief in
discovering that the wound he had inflicted was not so deep--so
dangerous as he feared.

With such end in view he came home early in the afternoon. His wife
was not there. The house was deserted. Even the servants had
disappeared. It took but a moment for him to search the various rooms
and find them one after the other, unoccupied. He went out on the
porch and looked around. The raw air chilled him. The wind was blowing
violently, bringing dashes of rain along with it from massed clouds
that hung leaden between sky and earth. Could she have gone over to
the house? It was unlikely, for he knew her to have avoided Mrs.
Lafirme of late, with a persistence that had puzzled him to seek its
cause, which had only fully revealed itself in the morning Yet, where
else could she be? An undefined terror was laying hold of him. His
sensitive nature, in exaggerating its own heartlessness, was blindly
overestimating the delicacy of hers. To what may he not have driven
her? What hitherto untouched chord may he not have started into
painful quivering? Was it for him to gauge the endurance of a woman's
spirit? Fanny was not now the wife whom he hated; his own act of the
morning had changed her into the human being, the weak creature whom
he had wronged.

In quitting the house she must have gone unprepared for the inclement
weather, for there hung her heavy wrap in its accustomed place, with
her umbrella beside it. He seized both and buttoning his own great
coat about him, hurried away and over to Mrs. Lafirme's. He found that
lady in the sitting-room.

"Isn't Fanny here?" he asked abruptly, with no word of greeting.

"No," she answered looking up at him, and seeing the evident
uneasiness in his face. "Isn't she at home? Is anything wrong?"

"Oh, everythi