up the miserable farce--to seek to prevent
their coupling her name with his, and therefore discovering the secret
of her sad seclusion.

As Dysart found himself almost the last man in the room, he too rose,
reluctantly, as though unwilling to give himself up to the solitary
musings that he knew lay before him; the self-upbraidings, the vague
remorse, the terrible dread lest he had been too severe, that he knows
will be his all through the silent darkness. For what have sleep and he
to do with each other to-night?

He bade his host good-night and, with a pretense of going upstairs,
turned aside into the deserted library, and, choosing a book, flung
himself into a chair, determined, if possible, to read his brain into a
state of coma.

* * * * *

Twelve o'clock has struck, slowly, painfully, as if the old timekeeper
is sleepy, too, and is nodding over his work. And now one--as slowly,
truly, but with the startling brevity that prevents one's dwelling on
its drowsy note. Dysart, with a tired groan, flings down his book, and,
rising to his feet, stretches his arms above his head in an utter
abandonment to sleepless fatigue that is even more mental than bodily.
Once the subject of that book had been of an enthralling interest to
him. To-night it bores him. He has found himself unequal to the solving
of the abstruse arguments it contains. One thought seems to have dulled
all others. He is leaving to-morrow! He is leaving her to-morrow! Oh!
surely it is more than that curt pronoun can contain. He is leaving, in
a few short hours, his life, his hope, his one small chance of heaven
upon earth. How much she had been to him, how strong his hoping even
against hope had been, he never knew till now, when all is swept out of
his path forever.

The increasing stillness of the house seems to weigh upon him, rendering
even gloomier his melancholy thoughts. How intolerably quiet the night
is, not even a breath of wind is playing in the trees outside. On such a
night as this ghosts might walk and demons work their will. There is
something ghastly in this unnatural cessation of all sound, all
movement.

"What a strange power," says Emerson, "there is in silence." An old
idea, yet always new. Who is there who has not been affected by it--has
not known that curious, senseless dread of spirits present from some
unknown world that very young children often feel? "Fear came upon me
and trembling, which mad