been to separate from her only a brief time
before. He looked to the right and left in search of her, but the moon
was obscured now by thin gray clouds, and a fog drifting up from the
ocean was fast obliterating the crowd of golden stars that had been so
brilliant when he went forth.

Mellen walked on, growing more and more anxious, till he came in sight
of the graveyard, then he paused under a clump of cedars; for he saw his
unhappy wife forcing her way, in desperate haste, through the broken
pickets of the fence, with her face turned homewards. The gray woollen
shawl was floating loosely around her, giving a weird ghostliness to her
appearance.

Mellen turned and went back, sheltering himself under the cedar trees.
When he saw that she was safe, a revulsion came upon his feelings; a
sense of the wrong she had done him returned with bitter force, and when
she passed along the outskirts of the cedars, making her way down the
hill, he retreated deeper into the shadows, recoiling from contact with
her.

"She will go home," he said, gloomily, "no one is more familiar with the
paths through the woods. Thank heaven she does not know that I am weak
enough to care for her safety! Let her reach the house first, we shall
be less likely to meet."

With these thoughts in his mind he lingered in the cedars till Elizabeth
was out of sight. The wind was dying away in low sobs now, smothered
down by the fog, through which he could hear the moaning of the ocean
afar off.

Mellen left the woods, and made the best of his way home, believing that
his wife had already found a shelter there.

The house was dark and still as the grave when he entered it again.
Instinctively he trod with caution along the halls and crept stealthily
upstairs, for in the depths of his heart he was anxious to conceal
Elizabeth's movements that night from the servants, and, above all, from
Elsie. He paused and listened a moment in the square passage that led to
her rooms, hoping to hear some movement by which he could be certain
that she had reached home in safety. But there was no sound, and he
turned away sighing, for compassion and the tender pity which every
generous man feels for a fallen woman whom he has once loved, was
turning the bitterness of his rage into intense pain.

Hearing nothing, and with vague uncertainty at his heart, the unhappy
man entered his own dark chamber, threw off his clothes and flung
himself into bed, wretched beyond any po