bedevilled alternately
by melancholy and exhilaration, or lay staring blindly into the
darkness, striving to focus his thoughts upon the abstract, a hopeless
effort; trying to think where to go to-morrow, whither to turn his feet
when the gates of Paradise had closed behind him, and knowing it did
not matter, he did not care, that hereafter one place and another would
be the same to him, so that they were not the place of her abode.

The chateau was as still as any castle of enchantment; only an old
clock in the drawing room, two floors below, tolled the slow hours; and
through the open windows came the mournful murmur of the river, a voice
of utter desolation in the night.

He heard the clock strike two, and shortly after, in a fit of
exasperation, thinking to discipline his mind with reading, lighted the
candle on the bedside stand, found his book, and fumbled vainly in the
little silver casket beside the candlestick for a cigarette.

Now a sincere smoker can do without smoking for hours on end, as long
as the deprivation is voluntary. But let him be without the wherewithal
to smoke if he have the mind to, and he must procure it instantly
though the heavens fall. It was so then with Duchemin. And what greater
folly could there be than to want a cigarette and do without one when
there were plenty in the drawing-room, to be had for the taking?

He rose, girdled about him his dressing-gown, took up the candlestick,
opened his door. The hallway was as empty and silent as he had expected
to find it. He had no fear of disturbing the household, for his
slippers were of felt and silent and the stairs were of stone and
creakless.

Shielding the candle flame with his hand, and somewhat dazzled by the
light thus cast into his face, he passed the floor on which the three
ladies of the chateau had each her separate suite of rooms, and gained
the drawing-room as noiselessly as any ghost.

The fire had died down till only embers glowed, faint under films of
ash, like an old anger growing cold with age.

The cigarettes were not where he had expected to find them, near one
end of a certain table. Duchemin put down the candlestick and moved
toward the other end, discovering the box he sought as soon as his back
was turned to the light. In the same breath this last went out.

He stood for a moment transfixed in astonishment. There were no windows
open, no draughts that he could feel, nothing to account for the flame
expiring as