thirteen hours of moving at the rate of twenty-two knots an hour,
she should be at that moment. Having determined that fact to his own
satisfaction, he sent a wireless after the ship. It read: "It is now
midnight and you are in latitude 40 degrees north, longitude 68 degrees
west, and I have grown old and gray waiting for the sign."

The next morning, and for many days after, he was surprised to find
that the city went on as though she still were in it. With
unfeeling regularity the sun rose out of the East River. On Broadway
electric-light signs flashed, street-cars pursued each other, taxicabs
bumped and skidded, women, and even men, dared to look happy, and had
apparently taken some thought to their attire. They did not respect even
his widowerhood. They smiled upon him, and asked him jocularly about the
farm and his "crops," and what he was doing in New York. He pitied them,
for obviously they were ignorant of the fact that in New York there were
art galleries, shops, restaurants of great interest, owing to the fact
that Polly Kirkland had visited them. They did not know that on upper
Fifth Avenue were houses of which she had deigned to approve, or which
she had destroyed with ridicule, and that to walk that avenue and halt
before each of these houses was an inestimable privilege.

Each day, with pathetic vigilance, Ainsley examined his heart for the
promised sign. But so far from telling him that the change he longed
for had taken place, his heart grew heavier, and as weeks went by and
no sign appeared, what little confidence he had once enjoyed passed with
them.

But before hope entirely died, several false alarms had thrilled him
with happiness. One was a cablegram from Gibraltar in which the only
words that were intelligible were "congratulate" and "engagement." This