yet called. So he
left no message, merely saying that he'd call up again. Which he forgot
to do.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Captain Selwyn was sauntering along Fifth Avenue under the
leafless trees, scanning the houses of the rich and great across the
way; and these new houses of the rich and great stared back at him out
of a thousand casements as polished and expressionless as the monocles
of the mighty.

And, strolling at leisure in the pleasant winter weather, he came
presently to a street, stretching eastward in all the cold
impressiveness of very new limestone and plate-glass.

Could this be the street where his sister now lived?

As usual when perplexed he slowly raised his hand to his moustache; and
his pleasant gray eyes, still slightly blood-shot from the glare of the
tropics, narrowed as he inspected this unfamiliar house.

The house was a big elaborate limestone affair, evidently new. Winter
sunshine sparkled on lace-hung casement, on glass marquise, and the
burnished bronze foliations of grille and door.

It was flood-tide along Fifth Avenue; motor, brougham, and victoria
swept by on the glittering current; pretty women glanced out from
limousine and tonneau; young men of his own type, silk-hatted,
frock-coated, the crooks of their walking sticks tucked up under their
left arms, passed on the Park side.

But the nods of recognition, lifted hats, the mellow warnings of motor
horns, clattering hoofs, the sun flashing on carriage wheels and
polished panels, on liveries, harness, on the satin coats of horses--a
gem like a spark of fire smothered by the sables at a woman's throat,
and the bright indifference of her beauty--all this had long since lost
any meaning for him. For him the pageant passed as the west wind passes
in Samar over the glimmering valley grasses; and he saw it through
sun-dazzled eyes--all this, and the leafless trees beyond against the
sky, and the trees mirrored in a little wintry lake as brown as the
brown of the eyes which were closed to him now forever.

As he stood there, again he seemed to hear the whistle signal, clear,
distant, rippling across the wind-blown grasses where the brown
constabulary lay firing in the sunshine; but the rifle shots were the
crack of whips, and it was only a fat policeman of the traffic squad
whistling to clear the swarming jungle trails of the great metropolis.

Again Selwyn turned to the house, hesitating, unreconciled.