on her face, her fur jacket and her little
hands so soiled and red.

As for the man, they finally contrived to drag the dog from him, and
lift him to the couch, where he lay twitching among the dolls for a
while; then stopped twitching.

Later in the night men came with lanterns who carried him away. A doctor
said that there was the usual chance for partial recovery. But it was
the last excitement he could ever venture to indulge in. His own doctors
had warned him often enough. Now he had learned something, but not as
much as Alixe had already learned. And perhaps he never would; but no
man knows such things with the authority to speak of them.

ARS AMORIS

Nine days is the period of time allotted the human mind in which to
wonder at anything. In New York the limit is much less; no tragedy can
hold the boards as long as that where the bill must be renewed three
times u day to hold even the passing attention of those who themselves
are eternal understudies in the continuous metropolitan performance. It
is very expensive for the newspapers, but fortunately for them there is
always plenty of trouble in the five boroughs, and an occasional
catastrophe elsewhere to help out.

So they were grateful enough that the Edgewater tragedy lasted them
forty-eight hours, and on the forty-ninth they forgot it.

In society it was about the same. Ruthven was evidently done for; that
the spark of mere vitality might linger for years in the exterior shell
of him familiar to his world, concerned that world no more. Interest in
him was laid aside with the perfunctory finality with which the memory
of Alixe was laid away.

As for Selwyn, a few people noticed his presence at the services; but
even that episode was forgotten before he left the city, six hours
later, under an invitation from Washington which admitted of no delay on
the score of private business or of personal perplexity. For the summons
was peremptory, and his obedience so immediate that a telegram to Austin
comprised and concluded the entire ceremony of his leave-taking.

Later he wrote a great many letters to Eileen Erroll--not one of which
he ever sent. But the formality of his silence was no mystery to her;
and her response was silence as profound as the stillness in her soul.
But deep into her young heart something new had been born, faint fire,
latent, unstirred; and her delicate lips rested one on the other in the
sensitive curve of suspense; and her whi