a certain steadfast, rapt
look in them which altered his expression curiously. Sir Allan
Beaumerville seldom used his powers of reflection save for practical
purposes. Just then, however, he was departing from his usual custom.
Strange ghosts of a strange past were flitting through his mind. Old
passions, which had long lain undisturbed, were sweeping through him,
old dreams were revived, old memories kindled once more smoldering
fires, and aided at the resurrection of a former self. The cold
man-of-the-world philosophy, which had ruled his life for many years,
seemed suddenly conquered by this upheaval of a stormy past. Under the
influence of the serene night, the starlit sky, and the force of these
old memories, he seemed to realize more than he had ever done before the
littleness of his life, its colorless egotism, the barrenness of its
routine. Like a flash it stood glaringly out before him. Stripped of all
its intellectual furbishing, the chill selfishness of the creed he had
adopted struck home to his heart. A finite life, with a finite
goal--annihilation! Had it really ever satisfied him? Could it satisfy
anyone? A great weariness crept in upon him. Epicureanism could have
been carried no further than he had carried it. He had steeped his
senses in the most refined and voluptuous pleasures civilization had to
offer him. Where was the afterglow? Was this all that remained? A palled
appetite, a hungry heart, and a cold, chill despair! What comfort could
his much-studied philosophy afford him? It had satisfied the brain; had
it nothing to offer the heart? Something within him seemed to repeat the
word with a grim echo. Nothing! nothing! nothing!

What was it that caused his eyes to droop till they rested upon two
figures on the opposite pavement? He could not tell whence the power,
and yet he obeyed the impulse. They glanced over the man with
indifference and met the woman's upturned gaize. And Sir Allan
Beaumerville stood like a figure of stone, with a deathlike pallor in
his marble face.

The stream of carriages swept on, and the motley crowds of men and women
passed on their way unnoticing. Little they knew that a tragedy was
being played out before their very eyes. A few noticed that stately
white-haired lady gazing strangely at the house across the way, and a
few too saw the figure of the man on whom her eyes were bent. But no one
could read what passed between them. That lay in their own hearts.

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