that seems to be a part of another
consciousness than his own.

Moreover, those first days he spent after the convention have chipped
the suavity from his countenance, and have written upon the bland,
complacent face all the cynicism of his nature. Triumph makes cynicism
arrogant, so the man is losing his mask. His nature is leering out of
his eyes, snarling out of his mouth, and where the little, lean lines
have pared away the flesh from his nose, a greedy, self-seeking pride is
peering from behind a great masterful nose. Thomas Van Dorn should be in
the adolescence of maturity; but he is in the old age of adolescence.
His skin has no longer the soft olive texture of youth; it is brown and
mottled and leathery. His lips--his lips once full and red, are pursing
and leadening.

Thus the pair go through the May twilight; and when the electric lights
begin to flash out at the corners, thus the Van Dorns ride before the
big black mass of the temple of love that looms among the young trees
upon the lawn. The woman alights from the trap. She pauses a moment upon
the stone block at the curbing. The man makes no sign of moving. She
takes the dog from the seat, and puts it on the ground. The man gathers
the reins tightly in his hands, then drops them again, lights his cigar,
and says behind his hands: "I'm going back downtown."

"Oh, you are?" echoes the woman.

"Yes, I am," replies the man sharply.

The woman is walking up the wide parking, with the dog. She makes no
reply. The man looks at her a second or two, and drives away, cutting
the horse to a mad speed as he rounds the corner.

Through the wide doors into the broad hall, up the grand staircase,
through the luxurious rooms goes the high Priestess of the Temple of
Love. It is a lonely house. For it is still in a state of social siege.
So far as Harvey is concerned, no one has entered it. So they live
rather quiet lives.

On that May evening the mistress of the great house sits in her bed room
by the mild electric, trying book after book, and putting each down in
disgust. Philosophy fails to hold her attention--poetry annoys her;
fiction--the book of the moment, which happened to be "The Damnation of
Theron Ware," makes her wince, and so she reaches under the reading
stand, and brings out from the bottom of a pile of magazines a salacious
novel filled with stories of illicit amours. This she reads until her
cheeks burn and her lips grow dry and she hears the roll o