The glitter of the sea visible between the foliage of flowering-shrubs seemed to add a touch of vivacity to the June somnolence that hung like a summer mist over the south-coast town. Parker Steel, half lying in a basket-chair under a red May-tree in the hotel garden, betrayed his sympathy with the poetical paraphernalia of life by reading through a list of investments recommended by his brokers. A satisfactory breakfast followed by the contemplation of a satisfactory banking account begets peace in the heart of man.

It was about ten o’clock, and a few enthusiasts were already quarrelling over croquet, when the hotel “buttons” came out with a telegram on a tray.

“No. 25, Dr. Steel?”

“Here.”

“Any reply, sir?”

The boy waited with the tray held over that portion of his figure where his morning meal reposed, while Parker Steel tore open the envelope and read the message.

“No answer.”

“Right, sir.”

“Wait; tell them at the office to get my bill made up. I have to leave after lunch.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And bring me a time-table, and a whiskey and soda.”

Parker Steel glanced at his watch, thrust the investment list into the breast-pocket of his coat, and lay back again in his chair with the telegram across his knee. Faces vary much in their expression when the mind behind the face labors with some thought that fills the whole consciousness for the moment. The smooth indolence had melted from the physician’s features. His face had sharpened as faces sharpen in bitter weather, for a man who is a coward betrays his cowardice even when he thinks.

A much-grieved croquet-player in a blue-and-white check dress was confiding her criticisms to a very sympathetic gentleman in one corner of the lawn.

“It is such a pity that Mrs. Sallow cheats so abominably. I hate playing with mean people. Every other stroke is a spoon, and she is always walking over her ball, and shifting it with her skirt when it is wired.”

“People give their characters away in games.”

“It is so contemptible. I can’t understand any self-respecting person cheating.”

The continuous click of the balls appeared to irritate Parker Steel, as he sat huddled up in his chair with the telegram on his knee. He found himself listening—without curiosity—to the young lady in the blue-and-white whose complaints suggested that the immoral Mrs. Sallow was the cleverer player of the two. Dishonesty is only dishonest, to many people, when it comes within the cognizance of the law, and how thoroughly symbolical those four balls were of the opportunities mortals manipulate in life, Parker Steel might have realized had not his mind been clogged with other things.

The boy returned with a time-table and the whiskey and soda on a tray.

“A fast train leaves at 2.30, sir.”

“Thanks; get me a table. You can keep the change.”

“Much obliged, sir,” and he touched a carefully watered forelock; “will you drive, sir, or walk?”

“Order me a cab.”

“Right, sir.”

And the boy noticed, as he turned away, that the hand shook that reached for the glass, and that some of the stuff was spilled before it came to the man’s lips.

No one met Parker Steel at Roxton station that June evening. A porter piled his luggage on a cab, for the physician’s own carriage was not forthcoming. A sense of isolation and neglect took hold upon him as he drove through the sleepy streets of the old town. Loneliness is never comforting to a man who is cursed with an irrepressible conscience, and his own restless imaginings rose like a cold fog into the June air. Parker Steel shivered as he had often shivered when driving through moonlit mists to answer a midnight message. The very elms about St. Antonia’s spire had a shadowy strangeness for him, a gloom that gave nothing of the glow of a return home.

Parker Steel stood in his own dining-room, waiting and listening, as though he were in a stranger’s house. Symons, the starched servant, had opened the door to him without a smile; his luggage had been carried up-stairs. He had heard voices, faint, distant voices, that had tantalized him with words that he could not understand. He had been ready to ask the woman Symons a dozen questions, but had faltered from a self-conscious fear of betraying his own thoughts. The house seemed full of some indefinable dread as the dusk deepened towards night.

A door opened above. He heard footsteps descending the stairs, so slowly in the silence of the darkening house, that the sound reminded the man of the slow drip of water into a well. Parker Steel found himself counting them as they descended towards the hall. If it was Betty, how was he to construe the message of the morning? The suffering of suspense drove him to action. He turned sharply, crossed the room, and, opening the door, looked out into the hall.

“Hallo, dear, is it you?”

She was in white, and her foot was on the last step of the stairs.

“I am glad that you have come, Parker.”

“I had your wire early. I imagined—”

“That I was ill?”

“Yes, that you were ill.”

She halted with one hand on the carved foot-post of the balustrading. The dusk of the hall showed nothing but a white figure and a gray oval to mark her face. Some mysterious psychic force seemed to hold husband and wife apart. Their two personalities had become in............