n smaller
capacity than we--their pleasures and pains."

Seeing the Doctor ready to go, he began to rise.

"I may not be gone long," said the physician, rather coldly; "if you
choose to wait"--

"I thank you; n-no-o"--The visitor stopped between a sitting and a
rising posture.

"Here are books," said the Doctor, "and the evening papers,--'Picayune,'
'Delta,' 'True Delta.'" It seemed for a moment as though the gentleman
might sink into his seat again. "And there's the 'New York Herald.'"

"No, sir!" said the visitor quickly, rising and smoothing himself out;
"nothing from that quarter, if you please." Yet he smiled. The Doctor
did not notice that, while so smiling, he took his card from the table.
There was something familiar in the stranger's face which the Doctor was
trying to make out. They left the house together. Outside the street
door the physician made apologetic allusion to their interrupted
interview.

"Shall I see you at my office to-morrow? I would be happy"--

The stranger had raised his hat. He smiled again, as pleasantly as he
could, which was not delightful, and said, after a moment's
hesitation:--

"--Possibly."

CHAPTER XI.

A PANTOMIME.

It chanced one evening about this time--the vernal equinox had just
passed--that from some small cause Richling, who was generally detained
at the desk until a late hour, was home early. The air was soft and
warm, and he stood out a little beyond his small front door-step,
lifting his head to inhale the universal fragrance, and looking in
every moment, through the unlighted front room, toward a part of the
diminutive house where a mild rattle of domestic movements could be
heard, and whence he had, a little before, been adroitly requested to
absent himself. He moved restlessly on his feet, blowing a soft tune.

Presently he placed a foot on the step and a hand on the door-post, and
gave a low, urgent call.

A distant response indicated that his term of suspense was nearly over.
He turned about again once or twice, and a moment later Mary appeared in
the door, came down upon the sidewalk, looked up into the moonlit sky
and down the empty, silent street, then turned and sat down, throwing
her wrists across each other in her lap, and lifting her eyes to her
husband's with a smile that confessed her fatigue.

The moon was regal. It cast its deep contrasts of clear-cut light and
shadow among the thin, wooden, unarchitectural forms and weed-grown