incomprehensible, had insisted that it was not.
And when he had failed to convince her, she had
given him her hand in token of reconciliation--
and Edith had a wonderful way of giving her
hand, which made any one feel that it was a
peculiar privilege to press it--and they had
walked out arm in arm into the animated, gas-
lighted streets, with a delicious sense of
snugness and security, being all the more closely
united for their quarrel. Here, farther up the
avenue, they had once been to a party, and he
had danced for the first time in his life with
Edith. Here was Delmonico's, where they had
had such fascinating luncheons together; where
she had got a stain on her dress, and he had
been forced to observe that her dress was then
not really a part of herself, since it was a thing
that could not be stained. Her dress had
always seemed to him as something absolute and
final, exalted above criticism, incapable of
improvement.

As I have said, Halfdan walked briskly up the
avenue, and it was something after eleven when
he reached the house which he sought. The
great cloud-bank in the north had then begun
to expand and stretched its long misty arms
eastward and westward over the heavens. The
windows on the ground-floor were dark, but the
sleeping apartments in the upper stories were