ing this study he would not have
divined that actual men and women might be leading lives of domestic
adventure, of romantic vicissitude, of sinister intrigue, lives crowded
with love and hate and fear and a thousand lawless complexities.

He had studied the street crowds in the light thus thrown on their inner
motives. It had been a fine thing to detect the plotting scoundrel under
the placid, dissembling mask of some fellow who bought an evening paper
and boarded a street car with elaborate airs of innocence; to probe the
secret of the unhappy wife whose white face stared blankly from a
passing brougham; to identify the handsome but never culpable hero,
unconscious of third-act toils tightening about him; to know the
persecuted heroine, or the manly but comic chap who loved her with
exquisite restraint, divining that she could never be his.

But, though he had stripped the masks from these mummers in the street
crowds, and read their secrets of guilt or innocence, he had not
supposed that the people he actually knew could be leading lives
complicated in that way. And if Teevan had talked, then Teevan must have
been drunk. He would see her to-morrow night, and she would speak
casually of her call at Teevan's upon some trifling errand.

Yet, when night came again and he stood in her presence, the first
devouring look at her shocked him momentarily out of all thought of
Teevan's maunderings. She was drooping and wasted and flatly pale. He
scarcely knew her face, with the eyes burning at him from black rings.
He took her hand, nursing it gently, standing helpless and hurt before
her.

"You are so changed," he said fearfully, "so changed! Oh, you are so
changed!"

But she laughed with her familiar gayety, tossing her head in denial. He
still scanned her face. Some resemblance there, some sinister memory of
her look on another face, was stirring him. He could almost remember
what it meant. At last her eyes fell before his and she drew her hand
quickly away.

"Really, I won't have any talk of myself. I hear too much of that. I'm a
bit run down, that's all. We found Florida enervating. Even dad was
affected by it and forgot his philosophy. So, an end to that. I must
hear of you, of your work."

She sat down, drawing a white scarf about her shoulders, and leaning
toward him in the old inviting way.

"Tell me what you have done--everything there is to tell about it."

All at once he remembered.

"Last night," he be