mplaint, "by
thinking that I ought to go."

She looked him timidly, but steadily, in the eyes. "I'm not so sure that
I do. The whole thing is too sacred to your own inner life for me to
have an opinion. You must do what you think right, and Maggie Clare--"

"The woman ruined me," he cried, desperately.

"And must she bear all the responsibility of that?"

The words were accompanied by one of her swift, half-frightened smiles;
but she didn't wait for an answer. Before Chip could begin to stammer
out an explanation that would give his point of view she was passing
rapidly up the pathway, bordered with irises and peonies and
bleeding-hearts, toward the house.

But when he returned to town he went to see Maggie Clare. He went, and
went again. The experience became, in its way, the most poignant in his
life. He had not much knowledge of death and even less of sickness. The
wasted face and the sunken, burning eyes wrought in him a kind of
terror. It was with an effort that he could take the long thin hand,
that already had the chill of the grave in its limp fingers, into his
own. As for kissing those bloodless lips, so eager, so strained, which
he could see was what she wanted him to do, he was unable to bring
himself to it. Luckily he was not obliged to talk, since her mind
couldn't follow coherent sentences. It was enough for her to have him
sit by the bed while she worked her hands gropingly toward him, saying,
"Oh, Chip! oh, Chip!" and murmuring broken things in Swedish. It was
incredible to him that this poor worn thing, this living shadow, that
had exhausted everything but its passion for himself, had once been a
woman whom he loved.

He was glad when she died and could be buried, so that he might consider
that episode as ended--if there was ever an end to anything in this
cursed life! And yet the occurrence brought him another kind of shock.
In the death of one who for years had been so closely associated with
his thoughts it was as if his own death had begun. He grew uneasy,
morbid. Such occupations as he found to fill the hours when he was not
at work grew insufficient. He came to hate the clubs, the restaurants,
the theaters, and such social gatherings as he was now invited to. There
was an evening when from sheer boredom he went home to his rooms as
early as eight o'clock--and the bottle of Old Piper came out of its
hiding-place.

The real struggle followed on that. He had not so far forgotten Emery
Eland'