harlequin costume of the jailbird. He tried to see himself making his
own bed, and scrubbing his own floor, and standing at his cell door with
a tin pot in his hand, waiting for his skilly. It was so absurd, so out
of the question, that he nearly laughed outright. He was in a dream--in
a nightmare! He shook himself, he pinched himself, in order to wake up.
He was ready in sudden rage to curse the handsome, familiar room for the
persistence of its reality, because the rows of books and the Baxter
prints and the desks and chairs and electric lights refused to melt away
like things in a troubled sleep.

It was then that for the first time he began to taste the real measure
of his impotence. He was in the hand of the law. He was in the grip of
the sternest avenging forces human society could set in motion against
him; and, quibbles, shifts, and subterfuges swept aside, no one knew
better than himself that his punishment would be just.

It was a strange feeling, the feeling of having put himself outside the
scope of mercy. But there he was! There could never be a word spoken in
his defense, nor in any one's heart a throb of sympathy toward him. He
had forfeited everything. He could expect nothing from any man, and from
his daughter least of all. The utmost he could ask for her was that she
should marry, go away, and school herself as nearly as might be to
renounce him. That she should do it utterly would not be possible; but
something would be accomplished if pride or humiliation or resentment
gave her the spirit to carry her head high and ignore his existence.

It was incredible to think that at that very instant she was sleeping
quietly, without a suspicion of what was awaiting her. Everything was
incredible--incredible and impossible. As he looked around the room, in
which every book, every photograph, every pen and pencil, was a part of