one
hand and waved it gaily, then with outflung arms he stumbled back into
the room, the hot tears coursing down his cheeks.

Marmion Moore halted upon the stairs and felt mechanically for her
gold chatelaine. She recalled dropping it upon the center-table as she
went forward with hands outstretched to Austin; so she turned back,
then hesitated. But he was leaving to-morrow; surely he would
not misinterpret the meaning of her reappearance. Summoning her
self-control, she remounted the stairs quickly.

The door was half ajar as she had left it in her confusion. Mustering
a careless smile, she was about to knock, then paused. Austin was
facing her in the middle of the room, beating time. He was counting
aloud--but was that his voice? In the brief instant she had been gone
he had changed astoundingly. Moreover, notwithstanding the fact that
she stood plainly revealed, he made no sign of recognition, but merely
counted on and on, with the voice of a dying man. She divined that
something was sadly amiss; she wondered for an instant if the man had
lost his senses.

She stood transfixed, half-minded to flee, yet held by some pitying
desire to help; then she saw him reach forward and grope his way
uncertainly to the window. In his progress he stumbled against a
chair; he had to feel for the casing. Then she knew.

Marmion Moore found herself inside the room, staring with wide,
affrighted eyes at the man whose life she had spoiled. She pressed her
hands to her bosom to still its heavings. She saw Austin nodding down
at the street below; she saw his ghastly attempt to smile; she heard
the breath sighing from his lungs and heard him muttering her name.
Then he turned and lurched past her, groping, groping for his chair.
She cried out, sharply, in a stricken voice:

"Mr. Austin!"

The man froze in his tracks; he swung his head slowly from side to
side, as if listening.

"What!" The word came like the crack of a gun. Then, after a moment,
"Marmion!" He spoke her name as if to test his own hearing. It was the
first time she had ever heard him use it.

She slipped forward until within an arm's-length of him, then
stretched forth a wildly shaking hand and passed it before his
unwinking eyes, as if she still disbelieved. Then he heard her moan.

"Marmion!" he cried again. "My God! little girl, I--thought I heard
you go!"

"Then this, _this_ is the reason," she said. "Oh-h-h!"

"What are you doing here? Why did you come ba