ess itself in a
sudden upward choking, he leaned forward--the waiter having left the
room--and, resting his arms on the table, buried his troubled face.

He remained in England till midsummer, and spent a month in the country,
wandering about cathedrals, castles, and ruins. Several times, taking
a walk from his inn into meadows and parks, he stopped by a well-worn
stile, looked across through the early evening at a gray church tower,
with its dusky nimbus of thick-circling swallows, and remembered that
this might have been part of the entertainment of his honeymoon. He had
never been so much alone or indulged so little in accidental dialogue.
The period of recreation appointed by Mrs. Tristram had at last expired,
and he asked himself what he should do now. Mrs. Tristram had written
to him, proposing to him that he should join her in the Pyrenees; but
he was not in the humor to return to France. The simplest thing was to
repair to Liverpool and embark on the first American steamer. Newman
made his way to the great seaport and secured his berth; and the night
before sailing he sat in his room at the hotel, staring down, vacantly
and wearily, at an open portmanteau. A number of papers were lying
upon it, which he had been meaning to look over; some of them might
conveniently be destroyed. But at last he shuffled them roughly
together, and pushed them into a corner of the valise; they were
business papers, and he was in no humor for sifting them. Then he drew
forth his pocket-book and took out a paper of smaller size than those he
had dismissed. He did not unfold it; he simply sat looking at the back
of it. If he had momentarily entertained the idea of destroying it, the
idea quickly expired. What the paper suggested was the feeling that
lay in his innermost heart and that no reviving cheerfulness could long
quench--the feeling that after all and above all he was a good fellow
wronged. With it came a hearty hope that the Bellegardes were enjoying
their suspense as to what he would do yet. The more it was prolonged the
more they would enjoy it! He had hung fire once, yes; perhaps, in his
present queer state of mind, he might hang fire again. But he restored
the little paper to his pocket-book very tenderly, and felt better for
thinking of the suspense of the Bellegardes. He felt better every time
he thought of it after that, as he sailed the summer seas. He landed
in New York and journeyed across the continent to San Francis