smooth, expressionless face of the man whom he could not reach.

Toward midnight, seated in his chair by the window, a deathly lassitude
weighing his heart, he heard the steps of people on the stairway, the
click of the ascending elevator, gay voices calling good night, a ripple
of laughter, the silken swish of skirts in the corridor, doors opening
and closing; then silence creeping throughout the house on the receding
heels of departure--a stillness that settled like a mist through
hall and corridor, accented for a few moments by distant sounds, then
absolute, echoless silence. And for a long while he sat there listening.

The cool wind from the ocean blew his curtains far into the room, where
they bellied out, fluttering, floating, subsiding, only to rise again
in the freshening breeze. He sat watching their silken convolutions,
stupidly, for a while, then rose and closed his window, and raised the
window on the south for purposes of air.

As he turned to adjust his transom, something white thrust under the
door caught his eye, and he walked over and drew it across the sill.
It was a sealed note. He opened it, reading it as he walked back to the
drop-light burning beside his bed:

"Did you not mean to say good-bye? Because it is to be good-bye for a
long, long time--for all our lives--as long as we live--as long as the
world lasts, and longer. ... Good-bye--unless you care to say it to me."

He stood studying the note for a while; presently, lighting a match,
he set fire to it and carried it blazing to the grate and flung it in,
watching the blackened ashes curl up, glow, whiten, and fall in flakes
to the hearth. Then he went out into the corridor, and traversed the
hall to the passage which led to the bay-window. There was nobody there.
The stars looked in on him, twinkling with a frosty light; beneath, the
shadowy fronds of palms traced a pale pattern on the glass roof of the
swimming pool. He waited a moment, turned, retraced his steps to his own
door and stood listening. Then, moving swiftly, he walked the length of
the corridor, and, halting at her door, knocked once.

After a moment the door swung open. He stepped forward into the room,
closing the door behind him, and confronted the tall girl standing there
silhouetted against the lamp behind her.

"You are insane to do this!" she whispered. "I let you in for fear you'd
knock again!"

"I went to the bay-window," he said.

"You went too late. I was th