le impatiently to the face of the awkward
stranger; he was equally, but more bitterly, conscious that she had not
recognized him! He dropped into a seat behind her; she did not look at
him again with even a sense of disturbance; the momentary contact had
evidently left no impression upon her. She glanced casually at
her neighbors on either side, and presently became absorbed in the
performance. When it was over she rose, and on her way out recognized
and exchanged a few words with one or two acquaintances. Again he
heard her familiar voice, almost at his elbow, raised with no more
consciousness of her contiguity to him than if he were a mere ghost.
The thought struck him for the first time with a hideous and appalling
significance. What was he but a ghost to her--to every one! A man dead,
buried, and forgotten! His vanity and self-complacency vanished before
this crushing realization of the hopelessness of his existence. Dazed
and bewildered, he mingled blindly and blunderingly with the departing
crowd, tossed here and there as if he were an invisible presence,
stumbling over the impeding skirts of women with a vague apology they
heeded not, and which seemed in his frightened ears as hollow as a voice
from the grave.

When he at last reached the street he did not look back, but wandered
abstractedly through by-streets in the falling rain, scarcely realizing
where he was, until he found himself drenched through, with his closed
umbrella in his tremulous hand, standing at the half-submerged levee
beside the overflowed river. Here again he realized how completely he
had been absorbed and concentrated in his search for his wife during the
last three weeks; he had never been on the levee since his arrival. He
had taken no note of the excitement of the citizens over the alarming
reports of terrible floods in the mountains, and the daily and hourly
fear that they experienced of disastrous inundation from the surcharged
river. He had never thought of it, yet he had read of it, and even
talked, and yet now for the first time in his selfish, blind absorption
was certain of it. He stood still for some time, watching doggedly the
enormous yellow stream laboring with its burden and drift from many
a mountain town and camp, moving steadily and fatefully towards the
distant bay, and still more distant and inevitable ocean. For a few
moments it vaguely fascinated and diverted him; then it as vaguely lent
itself to his one dominant, hau