ook her place
under a picture of the Virgin and murmured a little prayer.

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PART VI

THE GUEST-CHAMBER

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CHAPTER XXV

It was remarked in the offices of the Mexican International Railroad about
this time that something had gone wrong with Harboro. He made mistakes in
his work. He answered questions at random--or he did not answer them at
all. He passed people in the office and on the street without seeing them.
But worse than all this, he was to be observed occasionally staring darkly
into the faces of his associates, as if he would read something that had
been concealed from him. He came into one room or another abruptly, as if
he expected to hear his name spoken.

His associates spoke of his strange behavior--being careful only to wait
until he had closed his desk for the day. They were men of different minds
from Harboro's. He considered their social positions matters which
concerned them only; but they had duly noted the fact that he had been
taken up in high places and then dropped without ceremony. They knew of
his marriage. Certain rumors touching it had reached them from the
American side.

They were rather thrilled at the prospect of a denouement to the story of
Harboro's eccentricity. They used no harsher word than that. They liked
him and they would have deplored anything in the nature of a misfortune
overtaking him. But human beings are all very much alike in one
respect--they find life a tedious thing as a rule and they derive a
stimulus from the tale of downfall, even of their friends. They are not
pleased that such things happen; they are merely interested, and they
welcome the break in the monotony of events.

As for Harboro, he was a far more deeply changed man than they suspected.
He was making a heroic effort in those days to maintain a normal bearing.
It was only the little interstices of forgetfulness which enabled any one
to read even a part of what was taking place in his thoughts.

He seemed unchanged to Sylvia, save that he admitted being tired or having
a headache, when she sought to enliven him, to draw him up to her own
plane of merriment. He was reminding himself every hour of the night and
day that he must make no irretrievable blunder, that he must do nothing to
injure his wife needlessly. Appearances were against her, but