ed from his ken as mysteriously
and completely as she herself had vanished. He received not a line of
acknowledgment.

Day by day he made up his mind finally and definitely to give it up, to
make an end of waiting, to accept the harsh cruelty of her treatment of
him as an absolute definition of her wishes--to sever his renewed life
in New York and return once and for all to the Antipodes. And day by day
he paltered, doubted, put off going to the steamship office to engage
passage. The memory of that last day on the lonely island would not
down. Surely she dared not deny the self she had then revealed to him!
Surely she must be desperately ill and unable to write, rather than
ignoring him so heartlessly and intentionally. Surely the morrow would
bring word of her!

Sometimes, fretted to a frenzy, he sought out Ember and made wild and
unreasonable demands upon him. These failing of any effect other than
the resigned retort, "I am a detective, not a miracle-monger," he would
fly into desperate, gnawing, black rages that made Ember fear for his
sanity and self-control and caused him to be haunted by that gentleman
for hours--once or twice for days--until he resumed his normal poise of
a sober and civilized man. He was, however, not often aware of this
sedulous espionage.

September waned and October dawned in grateful coolness: an exquisite
month of crisp nights and enlivening days, of mellowing sunlight and
early gloamings tenderly coloured. Country houses were closed and
theatres reopened. Fifth Avenue after four in the afternoon became
thronged with an ever thickening army--horse, foot and motor-car.
Several main-travelled thoroughfares were promptly torn to pieces and
set up on end by municipal authorities with a keen eye for the
discomfort of the public. A fresh electric sign blazed on Broadway every
evening, and from Thirty-fourth Street to Columbus Circle the first
nights crackled, detonated, sputtered and fizzled like a string of cheap
Chinese firecrackers. One after another the most exorbitant restaurants
advanced their prices and decreased their portions to the prompt and
extraordinary multiplication of their clientele: restaurant French for a
species of citizen whose birth-rate is said to be steadfast to the ratio
of sixty to the hour. Wall Street wailed loudly of its poverty and
hurled bitter anathemas at the President, the business interest of the
country continued to suffer excruciating agonies, and the pro