X

DURING the weeks that followed, some malignant spirit seemed
to be torturing him with a slow realization of all he had lost;
taunting him with the possibility of regaining it and the certainty of
losing it forever.

As he stepped from the dock at Jersey City the fresh sea wind had
thrilled him like a memory, and his pulses leaped instantly into
sympathy with the tense life that vibrated in the air. He seemed
never to have been away so long, and never had home seemed so
pleasant. His sister had grown more beautiful; his mother's quiet,
noble face was smoother and fairer than it had been for years; and
despite the absence of his father, who had been hastily summoned
to England, there was an air of cheerfulness in the house that was
in marked contrast to its gloom when Clayton was last at home.
He had been quickened at once into a new appreciation of the
luxury and refinement about him, and he soon began to wonder
how he had inured himself to the discomforts and crudities of his
mountain life. Old habits easily resumed sway over him. At the club friend and acquaintance were so unfeignedly glad to see him that he began to suspect that his own inner gloom had darkened their faces after his father's misfortune. Day after day found him in his favorite corner at the club, watching the passing pageant and listening eagerly to the conversational froth of the town-the gossip of club, theatre, and society. His ascetic life in the mountains gave to every pleasure the taste of inexperience. His early youth seemed renewed, so keen and fresh were his emotions. He felt, too, that he was recovering a lost identity, and still the new one that had grown around him would not loosen its hold. He had told his family nothing of Easter-why, he could scarcely have said-and the difficulty of telling increased each day. His secret began to weigh heavily upon him; and though he determined to unburden himself on his father's return, he was troubled with a vague sense of deception. When he went to receptions with his sister, this sense of a double identity was keenly felt amid the lights, the music, the flowers, the flash of eyes and white necks and arms, the low voices, the polite, clear-cut utterances of welcome and
compliment.

Several times he had met a face for which he had once had a
boyish infatuation. Its image had never been supplanted during his
student career, but he had turned from it as from a star when he came home and found that his life was to be built with his own hands. Now the girl had grown to gracious womanhood, and when he saw her he was thrilled with the remembrance that she had once
favored him above all others. One night a desire assailed him to
learn upon what footing he then stood. He had yielded, and she
gave him a kindly welcome. They had drifted to reminiscence,
and Clayton went home that night troubled at heart and angry that
he should be so easily disturbed; surprised that the days were