ould be in a loving
woman's pride. But through the thin disguise the hermit saw easily
that his lady had come back to him--if he chose. He had won a golden
crown--if it pleased him to take it. The reward of his decade of
faithfulness was ready for his hand--if he desired to stretch it forth.

For the space of one minute the old enchantment shone upon him with
a reflected radiance. And then by turns he felt the manly sensations
of indignation at having been discarded, and of repugnance at having
been--as it were--sought again. And last of all--how strange that it
should have come at last!--the pale-blue vision of the beautifulest of
the Trenholme sisters illuminated his mind's eye and left him without
a waver.

"It is too late," he said, in deep tones, pressing the baking-powder
can against his heart.

Once she turned after she had gone slowly twenty yards down the path.
The hermit had begun to twist the lid off his can, but he hid it again
under his sacking robe. He could see her great eyes shining sadly
through the twilight; but he stood inflexible in the doorway of his
shack and made no sign.

Just as the moon rose on Thursday evening the hermit was seized by the
world-madness.

Up from the inn, fainter than the horns of elf-land, came now and then
a few bars of music played by the casino band. The Hudson was broadened
by the night into an illimitable sea--those lights, dimly seen on its
opposite shore, were not beacons for prosaic trolley-lines, but low-set
stars millions of miles away. The waters in front of the inn were gay
with fireflies--or were they motor-boats, smelling of gasoline and oil?
Once the hermit had known these things and had sported with Amaryllis
in the shade of the red-and-white-striped awnings. But for ten years
he had turned a heedless ear to these far-off echoes of a frivolous
world. But to-night there was something wrong.

The casino band was playing a waltz--a waltz. What a fool he had
been to tear deliberately ten years of his life from the calendar
of existence for one who had given him up for the false joys that
wealth--"_tum_ ti _tum_ ti _tum_ ti"--how did that waltz go? Butthose
years had not been sacrificed--had they not brought him the star and
pearl of all the world, the youngest and beautifulest of--

"But do _not_ come on Thursday evening," she had insisted. Perhaps by
now she would be moving slowly and gracefully to the strains of that
waltz, held closely by West-Point