-hour before the coming of the
messenger he felt a genuine regret that Graves had gone his own way. The
affair had dropped already into humorous perspective, and it seemed to
him that, had they stood side by side in this cabin, every barrier must
have fallen and the outcome been wholly good.

Nature's reaction from the too tense hours of that crowded day was at its
utmost swing as he gained his hotel room and smoothed the roughness of
his quarry toilet. The familiar chamber revolted him; its warring colors
jarred; the nymphs of his favorite picture were devoid of blandishment.
Nor did his cronies of below stairs attract, and the liquor he had taken
left him no appetite for solid food. He craved nothing so much as rest
and human sympathy.

Mrs. Hilliard was at home.

"You never fail when I need you," she said, as Shelby couched his jaded
body in the cosy library before an open fire. "Joe is always out, of
course. I don't mind that--now. Milicent too is gone to-night,--a
children's party. I've been lonely--depressed. Since you came--ah,
well, see for yourself what I am."

A maudlin self-pity, born of alcohol, dimmed Shelby's eyes.

"It's like a home to me," he confessed, his voice uncertain. "It's like
a home."

"And some call you hard!" Mrs. Hilliard extended both plump hands to
him. "How they misjudge you."

"Everybody misjudges me, Cora," Shelby declared, not backward in manual
demonstration himself; "everybody but you."

The lady released herself adroitly, and fluttered the music at a piano
just beyond the half-drawn portiere of the adjoining room.

"Shall I play?" she asked.

Shelby nodded like a sultan from his cushions.

"Ragtime," he directed. "Something with a tune." The other woman had
surfeited him with classicalities.

He built air castles as he watched and listened; fabrics furnished after
the manner of the Hilliard home and peopled by two kindred souls. If
this insidious luxury were his--the warmth, ease, leisure, Cora! He
considered the turn of her neck, her profile, the famous shoulders, now
clothed yet not concealed. She was handsome still; ripe, but not
over-ripe, ambitious, capable. They were singularly congenial, he and
she. He could have blundered worse than in marrying her, had not burly
Joe forestalled. _He_--inappreciative hulk!--was no fit mate for her.
She needed sympathy, cooeperation, the fellowship of her mind's true
complement: in fine, himself. If the other