nightgown, yearning with every fibre of her for the unknown joy. The
flickering light of the candles was answered by the strange fire that
burned in her eyes. At last her head drooped forward and, blind with
tears, she hid her face in her hands.

"Oh, dear God in Heaven," she prayed, passionately. "Open the door of
the House of Life to me! Send someone to love me and to take me away,
for Christ's sake--Amen!"

III

The Crystal Ball

[Sidenote: A Function]

"Am I late, Lady Mother?"

Madame Marsh turned toward Alden with a smile. "Only five minutes, and
it doesn't matter, since it's Saturday."

"Five minutes," he repeated. "Some clever person once said that those
who are five minutes late do more to upset the order of the universe
than all the anarchists."

Madame's white hands fluttered out over the silver coffee service. "One
lump or two?" she inquired, with the sugar-tongs poised over his cup.

"Two, please."

Of course she knew, but she liked to ask. She had been at the table,
waiting for him, since the grandfather's clock in the hall struck eight.

In the old house on the shore of the river, breakfast was a function,
luncheon a mild festivity, and dinner an affair of high state. Madame
herself always appeared at dinner suitably clad, and, moreover, insisted
upon evening clothes for her son. Once, years ago, he had protested at
the formality.

[Sidenote: The Magic of Sunlight]

"Why not?" she had queried coldly. "Shall we not be as civilised as we
can?" And, again, when he had presented himself at the dinner hour in
the serviceable garb of every day, she had refused to go to the table
until he came down again, "dressed as a gentleman should be dressed
after six o'clock."

The sunlight streamed into every nook and cranny of the room where they
sat at breakfast. It lighted up the polished surfaces of old mahogany,
woke forgotten gleams from the worn old silver, and summoned stray bits
of iridescence from the prisms that hung from the heavy gilt
chandeliers.

With less graciousness, it revealed several places on the frame of the
mirror over the mantel, where the gold had fallen away and had been
replaced by an inferior sort of gilding. By some subtle trickery with
the lace curtain that hung at the open window, it laid an arabesque of
delicate shadow upon the polished floor. In the room beyond, where
Madame's crystal ball lay on the mahogany table, with a bit of black
velvet beneath it, the