A silence followed her words,--a strange and heavy silence.

It was broken by her voice hushed to an extreme softness, yet
clearly audible.

"Good-night!--good-bye!"

He turned impatiently away to avoid further leave-taking--then, on a
sudden impulse, his mood changed.

"Morgana!"

The call echoed through emptiness. She was gone. He called again,--
the long vowel in the strange name sounding like "Mor-ga-ar-na" as a
shivering note on the G string of a violin may sound at the
conclusion of a musical phrase. There was no reply. He was--as he
had desired to be,--alone.




CHAPTER III


"She left New York several weeks ago,--didn't you know it? Dear me!-
-I thought everybody was convulsed at the news!"

The speaker, a young woman fashionably attired and seated in a
rocking chair in the verandah of a favourite summer hotel on Long
Island, raised her eyes and shrugged her shoulders expressively as