alk that pleased her father so was but surface-deep, he knew.
The woman he must conquer for his great end lay beneath, dark and cold.
It was only for that end he cared for her. Through what cold depths of
solitude her soul breathed faintly mattered little. Yet an idle fancy
touched him, what a triumph the man had gained, whoever he might be,
who had held the master-key to a nature so rare as this, who had the
kingly power in his hand to break its silence into electric shivers of
laughter and tears,--terrible subtile pain, or joy as terrible. Did he
hold the power still? He wondered. Meanwhile she sat there, unread.

CHAPTER II.

The evening came on, slow and cold. Life itself, the Doctor thought,
impatiently, was cool and tardy here among the hills. Even he fell into
the tranquil tone, and chafed under it. Nowhere else did the evening
gray and sombre into the mysterious night impalpably as here. The
quiet, wide and deep, folded him in, forced his trivial heat into
silence and thought. The world seemed to think there. Quiet in the
dead seas of fog, that filled the valleys like restless vapour curdled
into silence; quiet in the listening air, stretching gray up to the
stars,--in the solemn mountains, that stood motionless, like
hoary-headed prophets, waiting with uplifted hands, day and night, to
hear the Voice, silent now for centuries; the very air, heavy with the
breath of the sleeping pine-forests, moved slowly and cold, like some
human voice weary with preaching to unbelieving hearts of a peace on
earth. This man's heart was unbelieving; he chafed in the oppressive
quiet; it was unfeeling mockery to a sick and hungry world,--a dead
torpor of indifference. Years of hot and turbid pain had dulled his
eyes to the eternal secret of the night; his soul was too sore with
stumbling, stung, inflamed with the needs and suffering of the
countless lives that hemmed him in, to accept the great prophetic calm.
He was blind to the prophecy written on the earth since the day God
first bade it tell thwarted man of the great To-Morrow.

He turned from the night in-doors. Human hearts were his proper study.
The old house, he thought, slept with the rest. One did not wonder
that the pendulum of the clock swung long and slow. The frantic,
nervous haste of town-clocks chorded better with the pulse of human
life. Yet life in the veins of these people flowed slow and cool;
their sorrows and joys were few and life-long.