"Give me the keys--thanks. Good night, Andy! I'll see you in the
morning."

He reeled uncertainly down the path, cursing his treacherous footing as
he went. At the gate he paused and waved an unsteady farewell to the
gambler, who stood on the porch staring after him.




CHAPTER SEVEN

THE BEAUTY OF ELIZABETH


His interview with Evelyn Langham left North with a sense of moral
nausea, yet he felt he had somehow failed in his comprehension of her,
that she had not meant him to understand her as he had; that, after all,
perhaps the significance he had given to her words was of his own
imagining.

He waited in his room until she should have time to be well on her way
home, then hurried down-stairs. He was to dine at the Herberts' at seven
o'clock, and as their place was but scant two miles from town, he
determined to walk. He crossed the Square, only stopping to speak with
the little lamplighter, and twenty minutes later Mount Hope, in the cold
breath of the storm, had dwindled to a huddle of faint ghostly lights on
the hillside and in the valley.