nd of his own
initiative gone so dreadfully and cruelly wrong in the world.

Would God pity him? Would some means be found for his salvation? Would
salvation come? It must; she could not doubt it--after she had lifted
her eyes once more and looked at him where he sat immersed in his
newspaper, a pleasant smile on his lips.

A bar of sunlight fell across his head, striping his shoulder; the
scarlet flowers on the table were becoming to him. And, oh! he seemed so
harmless--so delightfully decent; there where the sunlight fell across
his shoulder and spread in a golden net across the white cloth under his
elbows.

She rose, curiously weary; a lassitude lay upon her as she left the room
and went out into the city about her business--which was to see her
lawyer concerning the few remaining details of her inheritance.

The inheritance was the big, prosperous Westchester farm where she
lived--had always lived with her grandfather since her parents' death. It
was turning out to be very valuable because of the mania of the wealthy
for Westchester acreage and a revival in a hundred villages of the
magnificence of the old Patroons.

Outside of her own house and farm she had land to sell to the landed and
republican gentry; and she sold it and they bought it with an avidity
that placed her financial independence beyond doubt.

All the morning she transacted business downtown with the lawyer. In the
afternoon she went to a matinee all by herself, and would have had a most
blissful day had it not been for the unquiet memory of a young man who,
she had learned that morning, was fairly certain of eternal damnation.

That evening she went back to Westchester absent-minded and depressed.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

XXV

IT was in early June when she arrived in town again. He was in the lobby
as usual; he lunched at the table by the window as usual. There seemed to
be nothing changed about him except that he was a handsomer man than she
had supposed him.

She ate very little luncheon. As usual, he glanced at her once--a
perfectly pleasant and inoffensive glance--and resumed his luncheon and
his newspaper. He was always quiet, always alone. There seemed to be a
curious sort of stillness which radiated from him, laying a spell upon
his environment for a few paces on every side of him. She had felt this;
she felt it now.

Downtown her business was finally transacted; she went to a matinee all
by herself, and fou