irst glimpse of the real. He had not seen his father and
mother die. The thought that followed, Sonia's beloved face lying under
that shadow, had terrified him. It was the uplifting of the veil of
illusion that enwraps childhood. The thought stayed his foot that night
as he turned into the avenue leading up to his own house, and he paused
to consider this new dread.

The old colonial house greeted his eyes, solemn and sweet in the
moonlight, with a few lights of human comfort in its windows. He had
never thought so before, but now it came straight to his heart that this
was his home, his old friend, steadfast and unchanging, which had
welcomed him into the world, and had never changed its look to him,
never closed its doors against him; all that remained of the dear, but
almost forgotten past; the beautiful stage from which all the ancient
actors had made irrevocable exit. What beauty had graced it for a
century back! What honors its children had brought to it from councils
of state and of war! What true human worth had sanctified it! Last and
the least of the splendid throng, he felt his own unworthiness sadly;
but he was young yet, only a boy, and he said to himself that Sonia had
crowned the glory of the old house with her beauty, her innocence, her
devoted love. In making her its mistress he had not wronged its former
rulers, nor broken the traditions of beauty. He stood a long time
looking at the old place, wondering at the charm which it had so
suddenly flung upon him. Then he shook off the new and weird feeling and
flew to embrace his Sonia of the starry eyes.

Alas, poor boy! He stood for a moment on the threshold. He could hear
the faint voices of servants, the shutting of distant doors, and a
hundred sweet sounds within; and around him lay the calmness of the
night, with a drowsy moon overhead lolling on lazy clouds. Nothing
warned him that he stood on the threshold of pain. No instinct hinted at
the horror within. The house that sheltered his holy mother and received
her last breath, that covered for a few hours the body of his heroic
father, the house of so many honorable memories, had become the
habitation of sinners, whose shame was to be everlasting. He stole in on
tiptoe, with love stirring his young pulses. For thirty minutes there
was no break in the silence. Then he came out as he entered, on tiptoe,
and no one knew that he had seen with his own eyes into the deeps of
hell. For thirty minutes, that s