A. Harlow, aged twenty-four, by the bursting of a
gun."

As Loramer lifted his eyes the door opened and Lawrence came in. Cora
uttered a low cry and reached for the paper, but Lawrence's look
frightened her so that she fell back into her chair. He kept his eyes
upon her, but went toward Loramer and reached out a cigar-case which
he brought in his hand.

"Here's your cigar-case," he said. "You'd better take it back."

Loramer swore at the case, and flung it into the fire.

"Look here!" he cried. "Read that." He thrust it before his face. "Go
on! Do you see? She was his wife when she married you. You're a free
man!"

A brutal exultation seized Lawrence. He shouted and laughed,--"Ha ha,
ha ha ha! She's made fools of us both. You can have her, Harry, and
welcome. I wish you joy. Ha ha, ha ha ha! She's the devil! she's the
devil!"

Loramer answered with harsh and scornful hilarity. Neither took any
other notice of her sitting there, sunken together, crushed, hiding
her face with her hands. Loramer turned away and ran tramping up the
stairs, crammed his things into his valise, and came tramping down.
Lawrence was backed against the post at the stair-foot. Loramer
grasped his arm in passing. "By-bye! Come and see us," he called. He
went out and banged the door, and they heard his hoarse laughter far
down the quiet street.

To Cora that laughter sounded like the knell at the end of all things.
She sat as they had left her, and did not move for a long while after
Lawrence too had gone out.

Lawrence's mirthful humor passed very quickly. He grew full of a most
delectable sense of freedom. It seemed as if a suffocating network had
been tightening about his heart and, now that it had burst, the joy of
the great and unexpected deliverance was more than his breast could
hold. He could not breathe in-doors,--he wanted all the air he could
get on the windy hills.

He had been true; he had been true, he cried out to himself--in
thought and deed he had been true! He tried to think: he could not
think nor reason. A flood that he had never acknowledged, that he had
hardly suspected, that he had set all his faculties to dam up and wall
over, had been suddenly let loose and overwhelmed him. He could see no
law or order in the world but in one place; to that place he must go,
for light, for understanding!

And his heart, like a bird set free,
That tarries not early or late,
But flies, over land, over sea,