acred sheet.

"I love you! I love you! I shall die without you! Come home to me,
and save me! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love--!"

David Lockwin has fainted.

The glasses chink, and heavy feet tramp on soft carpets, making a
muffled sound.

"'Scuse me!" says a thick-voiced banqueter in the hall. "I thought it
was my hat! Hooray! 'Scuse me! I know it's pretty late. Whoop!
'Scuse me!"

The waiters bicker hotly; the counting-room bell rings afar off. There
is a smothered cry of "Front!"

"All trains for the East--" comes a monotonous announcement in the
corridors.

"Sixty-six! Number sixty-six!" screeches the carriage-crier.

A drunken refrain floats on the air from Wabash avenue:

"We won't go home till morn-i-n-g,
T-i-l-l daylight doth appear."

CHAPTER V

LETTERS OF CONSOLATION

On the Africa David Lockwin loved but one person, and that was David
Lockwin.

On this morning after the banquet David Lockwin hates but one person, and
that is David Lockwin.

He had lately hungered for somebody more charitable to himself than he
himself could be. He had experienced a mean, spiritless happiness in
noting the honors which the widow was heaping on his memory. Now he is
furiously in love with that widow. He sallies from the hotel in haste to
her residence.

Three blocks away from his goal, with the old home in sight, he awakens
to his danger. A moment more and the whole shameful truth had been known!

"No, base as I am, I cannot do that," he shudders.

Besides, he is a true lover, and what one ever dared to take the great
risk?

Here she lives! And between her and her lover, her husband, yawns the
chasm of death! Was it not a black act that could so enrobe a woman? He
recalls her garb as she appeared at the dedication yesterday--solemn,
solemn!

It is unsafe to stay in this neighborhood, yet let this man creep nearer
and gaze on the house where Davy died.

The balcony--it seems to him, dimly, that he made a speech from that
balcony. But Davy's death is not now the calamity it was yesterday. It
seems more like a pleasant memory--a small memory. The gigantic thought
is Esther, Esther--Esther the beautiful, the noble, the generous, the
faithful. She shall be the wife of Ulysses, waiting for his return, and
he shall return!

The husband again starts for Esther's door. There are two men within
him--one is David Lockwin dead, the other is David Lockwin livin