"Oh--yes," he said aloud, but scarcely heard his own voice.

The envelope enclosed an invitation from one, Camilla Lent, to a
theatre party for that evening, and a dance afterward.

He had a vague idea that he had accepted.

The play was "The Seven Sisters" at Laura, Keene's Theatre. The
dance was somewhere--probably at Delmonico's. If he were going, it
was time he was afoot.

His eyes wandered from one familiar object to another; he moved
restlessly, and began to roam through the richly furnished rooms.
But to Berkley nothing in the world seemed familiar any longer; and
the strangeness of it, and the solitude were stupefying him.

When he became tired trying to think, he made the tour again in a
stupid sort of way, then rang for his servant, Burgess, and started
mechanically about his dressing.

Nothing any longer seemed real, not even pain.

He rang for Burgess again, but the fellow did not appear. So he
dressed without aid. And at last he was ready; and went out, drunk
with fatigue and the reaction from pain.

He did not afterward remember how he came to the theatre.
Presently he found himself in a lower tier box, talking to a Mrs.
Paige who, curiously, miraculously, resembled the girlish portraits
of his mother--or he imagined so--until he noticed that her hair