er
lover, however unhappy, could have felt.

My hosts evidently saw that I was depressed in spirits, and did their
best to divert me. Edith especially, I could see, was distressed for
me, but according to the usual perversity of lovers, having once been
so mad as to dream of receiving something more from her, there was no
longer any virtue for me in a kindness that I knew was only sympathy.

Toward nightfall, after secluding myself in my room most of the
afternoon, I went into the garden to walk about. The day was overcast,
with an autumnal flavor in the warm, still air. Finding myself near the
excavation, I entered the subterranean chamber and sat down there.
"This," I muttered to myself, "is the only home I have. Let me stay
here, and not go forth any more." Seeking aid from the familiar
surroundings, I endeavored to find a sad sort of consolation in
reviving the past and summoning up the forms and faces that were about
me in my former life. It was in vain. There was no longer any life in
them. For nearly one hundred years the stars had been looking down on
Edith Bartlett's grave, and the graves of all my generation.

The past was dead, crushed beneath a century's weight, and from the
present I was shut out. There was no place for me anywhere. I was
neither dead nor properly alive.

"Forgive me for following you."

I looked up. Edith stood in the door of the subterranean room,
regarding me smilingly, but with eyes full of sympathetic distress.

"Send me away if I am intruding on you," she said; "but we saw that you
were out of spirits, and you know you promised to let me know if that
were so. You have not kept your word."

I rose and came to the door, trying to smile, but making, I fancy,
rather sorry work of it, for the sight of her loveliness brought home
to me the more poignantly the cause of my wretchedness.

"I was feeling a little lonely, that is all," I said. "Has it never
occurred to you that my position is so much more utterly alone than any
human being's ever was before that a new word is really needed to
describe it?"

"Oh, you must not talk that way--you must not let yourself feel that
way--you must not!" she exclaimed, with moistened eyes. "Are we not
your friends? It is your own fault if you will not let us be. You need
not be lonely."

"You are good to me beyond my power of understanding," I said, "but
don't you suppose that I know it is pity merely, sweet pity, but pity
only. I should be a