started broad awake. As the din increased, and sleep refused to return
to the startled senses, all unused to these city sounds, she arose,
and completing her toilet with some haste, seated herself at her
window to look out upon the scene so new to her.

What a world of strange emotions passing and repassing beneath her
eye! What hopes and fears; what carelessness and heartache! How they
hurried to and fro, each apparently intent upon his own thoughts and
purposes.

She gazed down until her vision wearied of the motley, ever-changing,
yet ever the same crowd; and then she reclined in the downy depths of
a great easy chair, closed her eyes, and thought of Lucian. After all,
what meaning had this restless moving throng for her? Only one;
Lucian. What was this surging sea of humanity to her save that,
because of its roar and clamor, they two were made more isolated,
therefore nearer to each other?

The morning wore away, and she began to realize how very soon she
should be with her hero, and then no more of separation. Her heart
bounded at this thought.

Some one tapped softly at her door. She opened it quickly, thinking
only of Lucian. It was not Lucian, however, but a veiled woman who
stepped within the room, closing the door as she came.

Madeline fell back a pace, and gazed at the intruder with a look of
startled inquiry which was, however, free from fear. She had not
thought of it before, it flashed across her mind now that this fact
was odd; but in all her morning's ruminations, she had not once
thought of the mysterious stranger of the railway episode. Yet now the
first words that took shape in her mind, at the entrance of this
unexpected visitor, were "Clarence Vaughan, M. D." She almost spoke
them.

With a quick, graceful movement, the stranger removed the shrouding
veil; and Madeline gazed wonderingly on the loveliest face she had
ever seen or dreamed of. It was a pure, pale face, lighted by lustrous
dark eyes, crowned by waving masses of dark silky hair; exquisitely
molded features, upon which there rested an expression of mingled
weariness and resignation, the look of

"A soul whose experience
Has paralyzed bliss."

One could imagine such a woman lifting to her lips the full goblet of
life's sparkling elixir, and putting it away with her own hand, lest
its intoxicating richness should shut from her senses the fragrance of
Spring violets, and dim her vision of the world beyond.

They formed