he storm and the danger and even the
ice bound fishermen--and she told herself that it would be impossible
ever to atone to him for her past rudeness.

"Perhaps I was unjust," she remarked presently, "but one is never proof
against intuitive impressions, and after all it does not greatly
matter."

Then she looked at Roger Adams as he walked in the electric light beside
her. She saw how haggard were the lines in his face, that he was bent in
the shoulders as if from some mental burden, and the delicacy of his
long, slender figure appeared to her almost as a physical infirmity. It
occurred to her at the instant that his bodily defects had never before
showed so plainly to her eyes, and it was with a flash of acute
self-consciousness--a flash as from a lantern that has been turned
inward--that she realised that she was comparing him with Arnold Kemper.

CHAPTER X

SHOWS THE HERO TO BE LACKING IN HEROIC QUALITIES

When he had parted from Laura Adams walked down Fifth Avenue to
Thirty-fifth Street and then turned east in the direction of his own
house. He found upon entering that Connie, as usual, was dining out, and
after he had eaten his poorly served dinner alone in the dining-room, he
went upstairs with the intention of slipping into his smoking jacket and
returning to his study for a peaceful smoke. The electric lights were
blazing in Connie's bedroom, and when he went in to extinguish them,
moved by some instinct of economy, he found that the room was in even
greater disorder than that to which he had grown, after years of
uncomplaining discomfort, outwardly if not inwardly resigned. Of a
naturally systematic habit of thought, Connie's carelessness had been
for him one of those petty annoyances of daily life to meet which he had
always felt that philosophy had been especially designed; but to-night
the chaos struck him so forcibly that he found himself vaguely
questioning if it were possible for a human creature to sleep in such a
spot? Picking up several gowns from the middle of the floor, he returned
them to the wardrobe, and set himself to clearing the bed of an array of
satin shoes. Her silver hair brushes had fallen on the hearth rug, and
in replacing them upon the bureau his eye fell on a small, half-empty
phial lying beneath a pile of lace-edged handkerchiefs. Looking at it a
little closer he found that it contained a solution of cocaine.

For a moment surprise held him motionless; then as if to re