ssions from private sources.

But fortunately he had enough public work to keep the office busy, and
his dogged personal supervision of it during the racking suspense of
Shiela's illness was his salvation.

Twice a week his aunt wrote him from Sapphire Springs; every day he went
to his outdoor work on Long Island and forced himself to a minute
personal supervision of every detail, never allowing himself a moment's
brooding, never permitting himself to become panic-stricken at the
outlook which varied from one letter to another. For as yet, according
to these same letters, the woman he loved had never once mentioned his
name.

He found little leisure for amusement, even had he been inclined that
way. Night found him very tired; morning brought a hundred self-imposed
and complicated tasks to be accomplished before the advent of another
night.

He lived at his club and wrote to his aunt from there. Sundays were more
difficult to negotiate; he went to St. George's in the morning, read in
the club library until afternoon permitted him to maintain some
semblance of those social duties which no man has a right to entirely
neglect.

Now and then he dined out; once he went to the opera with the O'Haras;
but it nearly did for him, for they sang "Madame Butterfly," and
Farrar's matchless voice and acting tore him to shreds. Only the happy
can endure such tragedy.

And one Sunday, having pondered long that afternoon over the last letter
Malcourt had ever written him, he put on hat and overcoat and went to
Greenlawn Cemetery--a tedious journey through strange avenues and
unknown suburbs, under a wet sky from which occasionally a flake or two
of snow fell through the fine-spun drizzle.

In the cemetery the oaks still bore leaves which were growing while
Malcourt was alive; here and there a beech-tree remained in full autumn
foliage and the grass on the graves was intensely green; but the few
flowers that lifted their stalks were discoloured and shabby; bare
branches interlaced overhead; dead leaves, wet and flattened, stuck to
slab and headstone or left their stained imprints on the tarnished
marble.

He had bought some flowers--violets and lilies--at a florist's near the
cemetery gates. These he laid, awkwardly, at the base of the white slab
from which Malcourt's newly cut name stared at him.

Louis Malcourt lay, as he had wished, next to his father. Also, as he
had desired, a freshly planted tree, bereft now of foliage,