, however, was far from
resembling a belfry. Its high ceilings and spacious rooms were of the
type which architects drew in the early nineteenth century, when labor
cost but its feed and materials were everywhere at hand. Just as the
bricks in the outside walls were laid "every other one a header," so the
interior spoke of a style which went out of existence three generations
ago. More recently, however, the Colonel had added a furnace and baths,
converting for the latter several entire bed-rooms with which Arden was
over supplied. Thus Bachelors' Belfry might have been considered the
most agreeable, even as the most isolated, portion of the house; and, as
its occupants passed a law forbidding women servants to ascend above the
second floor between five in the afternoon and nine in the morning,
conventions of attire were not by your leave, but as you please.

Tonight Brent had gone up early. At dinner he had been distrait; nor
even his poise could quite disguise it. The Colonel had suggested a
smoke and chat out on the porch where the air was soft and still and
cool, but Brent could not find it in his heart to stay.

During a portion of the morning, during those few passion-riven seconds
while Jane had been held like a carved image by the unfathomable timbre
of his voice, a struggle had taken place in the engineer's soul. And
when she had again started toward the house she little dreamed how
savagely it was raging. So he wanted to be alone tonight; not to face
that fight anew, because for once and all it had been settled, but to
plan for the fulfillment of its issue. The Colonel, therefore, was
smoking alone; just as Miss Liz was reading her Bible alone, and as Dale
was poring alone over a book in the silent library.

Brent, his chair back-tilted, his pumps resting on the window sill, his
coat off, had been surrounded for an hour by darkness. Only out across
the limited space of world framed by his window, and now barely visible
in the starlight, was there anywhere to rest his eyes.

He had watched the afterglow fading, fading; he had heard the last
sleepy twitter of the birds; he had seen one star, two and three, come
out; before his steadfast, brooding stare the trees had slowly lost
their green for the somber shade of night. And now it was indeed night;
that hushed and awe-inspiring span of gloom when worlds most sin; when
men and women do their sobbing; do their yielding; count their cost.

All of this had had a