little room for a more gracious development of the soul. He had lived
for the world and the world had repaid him as she repays all her lovers
with the fruit which is rarely bitter before the fortieth year.

Adams, meanwhile, had walked rapidly home, thinking with enthusiasm that
Kemper was a thoroughly good fellow. His social pleasures were few, and
he had enjoyed the fine wine and the choice cigars as a man enjoys a
taste for luxury which he seldom gratifies. He had expected to find
Connie still out, but to his surprise there was a sound on the staircase
as he entered the front door, and she came rapidly to meet him, her
blonde hair hanging upon her shoulders and the soiled white silk
dressing-gown she wore trailing on the carpeted steps behind her.

"I was all alone and I've been so frightened," she said with a sob.

He took her hand, which felt dead and cold, and grasped it warmly while
he turned to fasten the outer door.

"Why, I thought you were at the theatre," he responded. "I've been to
dine with Kemper, but heaven knows I'd have stayed at home if you'd told
me you meant to keep me company."

A shudder ran through her, and he saw when he turned to look at her,
that her face was pinched and blue as if from cold. In her white gown,
under her tangled fair hair, she had a ghastly look like one just
awakened from a fearful dream. But she was very little--so little in her
terror and her blighted prettiness that his heart contracted as it would
have done at the sight of a suffering child.

"I say, little girl, what is it all about?" he asked gently, and as she
swayed unsteadily, he put his arm around her and drew her against his
side. "Wait a minute while I turn out the light," he added cheerfully,
pressing the electric button with his free hand. Then holding her closer
in a steadying support, they ascended together the darkened staircase.

"I went to the theatre, but I was so ill I couldn't stay," she said, and
he felt the heavy breaths that laboured through the thin figure within
his arm. "Oh, I am in agony--in agony and I am so afraid."

She began crying in loud, uncontrollable sobs as a child cries when it
is hurt, protesting that she was afraid--that she was fearfully afraid.
He felt her terror struggling like a live thing within her--like an
imprisoned animal that could not find an escape into the light. Her
hysteria was almost akin to madness, and the form it took was one of a
blind presentiment of evil