t, cooing murmur of voices
from the back stoop. The servant, as usual, was keeping tryst there
with her lover. He walked a little farther and came upon their
consolidated shadow of love under the wild-cucumber vine which
wreathed over the trellis-hood of the door. The girl gave a little
shriek and a giggle, the man, partly pushed, partly of his own
volition, started away from her and stood up with an incoherent growl
of greeting.

"Good-evening," said Anderson. "Jane, I am going out, and my mother
has gone up-stairs. If you will be kind enough to have a little
attention in case she should ring." Anderson had fixed an electric
bell in his mother's room, which communicated with the kitchen.

"Yes, sir," said the girl, with a sound between a gasp and a giggle.

"I have locked the front-door," said Anderson.

"Yes, sir," said the girl, again.

Anderson went around the house, and the sound of an embarrassed and
happy laugh floated after him. He felt again the sense of injury and
resentment, as if he were shut even out of places where he would not
care to be, even out of the humblest joys of life, out of the
kitchens as well as the palaces.

Anderson strolled down the deserted street and turned the corner on
to Main Street. Then he strolled on until he reached the church. It
was brilliantly lighted. Peering people stood in the entrance and the
sidewalk before it was crowded. There was a line of carriages in
waiting. But everything was still except for the unintermittent
voices of the night, which continued like the tick of a clock
measuring off eternity, undisturbed by anything around it. From the
church itself a silence which could be sensed seemed to roll,
eclipsing the diapason of an organ. Not a word of the minister's
voice was audible at that distance. Instead was that tremendous
silence and hush. Anderson wondered what that pretty, ignorant little
girl in there was, to dare to tamper with this ancient force of the
earth? Would it not crush her? If the man loved her would he not,
after all, have simply tried to see to it that the fair little
butterfly of a thing had always her flowers to hang over: the little
sweets of existence, the hats and frocks and ribbons which she loved,
and then have gone away and left her? A great pity for the bride came
over him, and then a flood of yearning tenderness for the other girl,
greater than he had ever known.

In his awe and wonder at what was going on all his own rebellion