essing-room, to
change whatever was still damp about him before seeking Milly, who
presumably was nursing her cold before the study fire. When he had
thrown off his shoes, he noticed that the door leading to his wife's
room was ajar and a faint red glow of firelight showed invitingly
through the chink. A fire! It was irresistible. He went in quickly and
stirred the coals to a roaring blaze. The dancing flames lit up the
long, low room with its few pieces of furniture, its high white
wainscoting, and paper patterned with birds and trellised leaves. They
lit up the low white bed and the white figure of his sleeping wife. Till
then he had thought the room was empty. She lay there so deathly still
and straight that he was smitten with a sudden fear; but leaning over
her he heard her quiet, regular breathing and saw that if somewhat pale,
she was normal in color. He touched her hand. It was withdrawn by a
mechanical movement, but not before he had felt that it was warm.

A wild excitement thrilled him; it would have been truer to say a wild
joy, only that it held a pang of remorse for itself. So she had lain at
the Hotel du Chalet when he had left her for that long walk over the
crisp mountain snow. And when he had returned, she--what She? No, his
brain did not reel on the verge of madness; it merely accepted under the
compulsion of knowledge a truth of those truths that are too profound to
admit of mere external proof. For our reason plays at the edge of the
universe as a little child plays at the edge of the sea, gathering from
its fringes the flotsam and jetsam of its mighty life. But miles and
miles beyond the ken of the eager eye, beyond the reach of the alert
hand, lies the whole great secret life of the sea. And if it were all
laid bare and spread at the child's feet, how could the little hand
suffice to gather its vast treasures, the inexperienced eye to perceive
and classify them?

Alone in the firelit, silent room, with this tranced form before him,
Ian Stewart knew that the woman who would arise from that bed would be a
different woman from the one who had lain down upon it. By what
mysterious alchemy of nature transmuted he could not understand, any
more than he could understand the greater part of the workings of that
cosmic energy which he was compelled to recognize, although he might be
cheated with words into believing that he understood them. Another woman
would arise and she his Love. She had been gone so