to woman's influence on the life artistic, but
inclined to hold the sex lightly, it seemed, in a much wider aspect. And
he spoke, Ewing was sure, out of a ripe experience. He had no difficulty
in detecting, under the little man's self-depreciating talk, that Teevan
had ever been a power among women, and was not even yet invincibly
averse to gallant adventure; not yet a man to be resisted. He was far
from bluntly confessing this, but sometimes, when the brandy was low in
the decanter, he would tacitly admit a romantic past; romantic, perhaps,
to the point of turbulence. And once, when there was no brandy left, he
spoke of specific affairs, particularly of one the breaking off of which
was giving him the devil's own worry.

"Gad! She's bent on sacrificing everything for me!"

Ewing innocently murmured words about marriage as an honorable estate.

"Marriage!" said Teevan, and Ewing blushed, noting his tone and the lift
of his brows.

"Poor, silly, romantic fools!" sighed Teevan. "One would find it
difficult to say what they see in me, I fancy."

Ewing murmured polite protestations. But less than ever did he feel
moved to speak of Mrs. Laithe to the little man. It did not seem
fitting. "Don Juan" had been among the verse with which the lake cabin
was supplied.

Not even when Mrs. Laithe was taken off to Florida by her father did he
speak her name, though he was filled with her good-by to him. There had
seemed to be so much between them, and yet so little of it that could
come to words. But he carried for long the last look of her eyes, and he
set to his work with a new resolve. There was incentive enough. Teevan
never let him forget that he required signs and miracles, like the
doubting ones of old. And she--she knew he would perform them.

CHAPTER XX

A LADY BLUSHES

As the winter wore on Ewing fell into doubt and dread. Vague enough they
were, but they rested on a sickening effect of emptiness, a time blank
of achievement. He still regarded Teevan as quite all of the seven
pillars of the house of wisdom. Yet instinct was rebelling. There were
tired afternoons when he hungered to eat of the fruit of his own way.

This feeling could not but show in his occasional letters to Mrs.
Laithe. She read through all his protestations of cheerfulness to the
real dejection beneath them, and was both troubled and mystified, raging
at his secretiveness.

When she returned to New York on a day in April and found a no