said nothing and let the
moment pass, and she with it; for couples were dancing and she was
soon again in the whirl. I am not a dancing man myself, and I had
leisure to think and madden myself with contemplation of my wrecked
life and questions as to what I should do to her and to him, and to
the world where such things could happen. I had forgotten the
details of time and place, or rather had put them out of my mind,
and I would not look at the words again--could not. But as the
minutes went by, the remembrance returned, startling and
convincing, that the hour was two and the place--our old pavilion.

I walked about after that like a man in whose breast the sources of
life are frozen. I chatted--I who never chatted--with women, and
with men. I even smiled--once. That was when my little white-faced
wife asked me if it were not time to go home. Even a man under
torture might find strength to smile if the inquisitor should ask
if he were not ready to be released.

And we went home.

I did not carry her this time across the driveway; but when we
parted in the library, where I always spent an hour before
retiring, I picked out a lily from a vase of flowers standing on my
desk and held it out to her. She stared at it for a moment, quite
as white as the lily, then she slowly put out her hand and took it.
I felt no mercy after that, and bade her good-night with the remark
that I should have to write far into the morning, and that she need
not worry over my light, which I should not probably put out till
she was half through with her night's rest.

For answer, she dropped the lily. I found it next morning lying
withered and brown in the hall-way.

That light did burn far into the morning; but I was not there to
trim it. Before the fatal hour had struck, I had left the house and
made my way to the pavilion. As I crossed the sward I saw the gleam
of a lantern at the masthead of a small boat riding near our own
landing-place, and I understood where he was at this hour, and by
what route he hoped to take my darling. "A route she will never
travel," thought I, striving to keep out of my mind and conscience
the vision of another route, another travel, which that sweet young
body might take if my mood held and my purpose strengthened.

There was