skiness
of her eyes, in the fulness of her red lips, in every sweeping movement
of her body, which seemed caused by the obsession of a hidden fiery
force that held her apart and afar, goddess-like, even while she spoke
of and handled the things of every-day life. She looked at the
common-place surroundings, at the children, at Dosia; but she saw only
Justin. When she was beside him, she smiled into his gentle, stricken
eyes, telling him little fondly-foolish anecdotes of the children to
make him smile also; patting him, talking of the summer, when they would
go off together--anything to make him forget, even though the effort
left her breathless afterward. When she went out of the room and came
back again, she found him still watching the place where she had been
with haggard, feverish, burning eyes. He would not go to bed, but lay on
the outside of it in his dressing-gown, so that he might get ready the
more quickly to go downtown again if the doctor "fixed him up," though
now he felt weighted from head to foot with stones.

There was a ring at the door-bell in the middle of the morning, which
might have been the doctor, but which turned out surprisingly to be Mr.
Angevin L. Cater.

"I heard Mr. Alexander was taken ill this morning and had gone home, and
as I had to come out this way on business, I thought I'd just drop in
and see if there was anything I could do for him in town," he stated to
Dosia.

"I'll find out," said Dosia, and came down in a moment with the word
that Justin would like to see the visitor.

Cater himself looked extraordinarily lean and yellow. The fact that his
clothes were new and of a fashionable cut seemed only to make him the
more grotesque. He looked oddly shrunken; the quality of his smile of
greeting seemed to have shrunk also--something had gone out of it.

"Well, Cater, you find me down," said Justin, with glittering, cold
cheerfulness.

"I hope not for long," said the visitor.

"Oh, no; but, when I get up, you won't see me going past much longer.
I'll soon be out of the old place. I guess the game is up, as far as I'm
concerned. Your end is ahead."

"Mr. Alexander," began Cater, clearing his throat and bending earnestly
toward Justin, "I hope you ain't going to hold it up against me that I
had to make a different business deal from what we proposed. I've been
thinking about it a powerful lot. There wasn't any written agreement,
you know."

"No, there was no written agreement,