fe that he evidently believed that this would be a
disagreeable thing for Caius to do.

Day went on to the village. Caius strolled off through the warm woods
and across the hot cliffs to make this visit.

The woman was not in bed. She was dying of consumption. The fever was
flickering in her high-boned cheeks when she opened the door of the
desolate farmhouse. She wore a brown calico gown; her abundant black
hair was not yet streaked with gray. Caius could not see that she looked
much older than she had done upon the evening, years ago, when he had
first had reason to observe her closely. He remembered what Josephine
had told him--that time had stood still with her since that night: it
seemed true in more senses than one. A light of satisfaction showed
itself in her dark face when, after a moment's inspection, she realized
who he was.

"Come in," she said briefly.

Caius went in, and had reason to regret, as well on his own account as
on hers, that she shut the door. To be out in the summer would have been
longer life for her, and to have the summer shut out made him realize
forcibly that he was alone in the desolate house with a woman whose
madness gave her a weird seeming which was almost equivalent to
ghostliness.

When one enters a house from which the public has long been excluded and
which is the abode of a person of deranged mind, it is perhaps natural
to expect, although unconsciously, that the interior arrangements should
be very strange. Instead of this, the house, gloomy and sparsely
furnished as it was, was clean and in order. It lacked everything to
make it pleasant--air, sunshine, and any cheerful token of comfort; but
it was only in this dreary negation that it failed; there was no
positive fault to be found even with the atmosphere of the kitchen and
bare lobby through which he was conducted, and he discovered, to his
surprise, that he was to be entertained in a small parlour, which had a
round polished centre table, on which lay the usual store of such things
as are seen in such parlours all the world over--a Bible, a couple of
albums, a woollen mat, and an ornament under a glass case.

Caius sat down, holding his hat in his hand, with an odd feeling that he
was acting a part in behaving as if the circumstances were at all
ordinary.

The woman also sat down, but not as if for ease. She drew one of the big
cheap albums towards her, and began vigorously searching in it from the
beginning, as if i