late, what his conversation with Margaret
Murchie in the garden had meant and what secret it was that lurked like
a clawed creature of the night, ready to eat away, bit by bit, the
happiness of an innocent man.

CHAPTER III

THE TORN SCRAP

When I left Judge Colfax that day, the only questions in my mind
concerned Julianna. To her I had said nothing in so many words of my
love, and yet I knew that if the Judge had read my growing sentiment
surely, she must have seen it even more clearly. I tried to interpret
her friendly, playful, girlish acceptance of my affection as an
indication that she, too, felt an increasing fondness for me--a fondness
which went beyond that given to a trustworthy friend. But I could not
forget that her father, when he had so strangely anticipated my request
for his consent, had described her as one whose yielding would be sudden
and complete--one to whom love would come in sweeping torrent of
emotion--one with whom love would thereafter stay eternally. If this
were true, she did not love me yet, I reflected. And with a falling of
hope, I remembered that the Judge had expressed, for what reason I did
not know, his own doubt of my ability to win her.

These were thoughts well adapted to hasten my lovemaking. I made a
point of walking to the Monument the next afternoon. I did not meet her
there, or on the way along the edge of the park, and I found myself
suddenly haunted by the hitherto unconsidered possibility that, as
summer was coming on, I might expect at any day that she would leave the
city to visit friends or go with the Judge to some resort.

It rained again the following day, and though the downpour ceased in the
late afternoon, great gray banks of clouds hung threateningly above the
city. Nevertheless, tormented with the notion that we might at any time
be separated for several weeks, I went again to the Monument to seek
her.

She was there. Nor did she seem at all surprised that I had come.

"I am full of energy to-day," she said, smiling a welcome. "Let us take
a long walk together."

"Good!" said I. "I will tell you about your father. As you know, I
called on him Thursday afternoon."

But from the Judge she quickly turned the subject to discussion that was
wholly impersonal, and it was the same on the following Monday when I
saw her again. Had it not been for the expression in her eyes with which
she greete