h an invalid
sister; during which progress, the article gloated, she was "vainly
wooed by the Old World's proudest nobility for her beauty and wealth,"
the latter having been unexpectedly left her by an aged relative. Her
inexorable refusals were set down, by the romantic journalist, as due to
some secret and prior attachment. (He termed it an "affair de court"!)

Out of the welter of words there stood forth one sentence to tempt the
imagination: "She met death as a tryst." For that brief flash the
reporter had been lifted out of his bathos and tawdriness into a clearer
element. One could well believe that she had "met death as a tryst." For
if ever I have beheld unfaltering hope and unflagging courage glorified
and spiritualized into unearthly beauty, it was there in that pictured
face, fixed by the imperishable magic of the camera.

"No; I hadn't seen it," I said after reading. "Is it true?"

"In part." Then, after a pause, "You knew her, didn't you, Dominie?"

"Only by sight. She had special charge of the poetry alcove, hadn't
she?"

"Yes. She belonged there of right. She was the soul and fragrance of all
that the singers of springtime and youth have sung." He sighed, shaking
his grizzled head mournfully. "'And all that glory now lies dimmed in
death.' It doesn't seem believable."

He rose and went to the window. Through the whorls of snow could be
vaguely seen the outlines of the Worth house, looming on its corner. He
stared at it musing.

"I've often wondered if she cared for him," he murmured.

"For him? For Worth!" I exclaimed in amazement. "Were they friends?"

"Hardly more than acquaintances, I thought. But she left very strangely
the day of his death and never came back."

From the physician's corner there came an indeterminate grunt.

"If that is a request for further information, Doctor, I can say that on
the few occasions when they met here in the library, it was only in the
line of her duties. He was interested in the twentieth-century poets.
But even that interest died out. It was months before the--the tragedy
that he stopped coming to the Library."

"It was months before the tragedy that he stopped going anywhere, wasn't
it?" I asked.

"Yes. Nobody understood it; least of all, his friends. I even heard it
hinted that he was suffering from some malady of the brain." He turned
inquiringly to the far, dim corner.

Out of it the Little Red Doctor barked: "Death had him by the throat."

"De