that the storm touched her. When he had gone on, Mary did as she
always did--she went into an unlit room across the hall from that
in which they had spent the evening, and, looking from the window,
watched him until he was out of sight. The storm made that difficult
to-night, but she caught a glimpse of him under the street-lamp that
stood between the two houses, and saw that he turned to look back
again. Then, and not before, she looked at the upper windows of
Roscoe's house across the street. They were dark. Mary waited, but
after a little while she closed the front door and returned to her
window. A moment later two of the upper windows of Roscoe's house
flashed into light and a hand lowered the shade of one of them. Mary
felt the cold then--it was the third night she had seen those windows
lighted and the shade lowered, just after Bibbs had gone.

But Bibbs had no glance to spare for Roscoe's windows. He stopped for
his last look back at the open door, and, with a thin mantle of white
already upon his shoulders, made his way, gasping in the wind, to the
lee of the sheltering wing of the New House.

A stricken George, muttering hoarsely, admitted him, and Bibbs became
aware of a paroxysm within the house. Terrible sounds came from the
library: Sheridan cursing as never before; his wife sobbing, her
voice rising to an agonized squeal of protest upon each of a series
of muffled detonations--the outrageous thumping of a bandaged hand
upon wood; then Gurney, sharply imperious, "Keep your hand in that
sling! Keep your hand in that sling, I say!"

"LOOK!" George gasped, delighted to play herald for so important
a tragedy; and he renewed upon his face the ghastly expression with
which he had first beheld the ruins his calamitous gesture laid before