It was an unexpected experiment, and an astounding shock. With hands clasped behind him Marrion restlessly paced the floor, trying to determine what was the best thing for him to do. He could board the next train and go back; but no, Cherokee had his promise that he would stay away. Besides, she had borne and sacrificed enough for Robert. He could write; but how could he express it on cold paper; he could wait a few days and see him in person, for he knew Robert expected to return when the bloom of the year was passed. That would be soon, for it was now time for the woods to be full of ghosts who gather to make lament, while winds sob in minor key, and trees are bowed in silent woe, and leaves, like tears, fall fast. This was best; so he decided upon it to wait and see him in person. His new drama lay on the desk before him; it was in this one Cherokee figured. What better way to forget the slow, creeping time, than to go to work; he had often said he wished he were poor, for the poor have small time for grieving. He did go to work in earnest; each night found him brain-weary after a hard day’s arduous task; it was the best thing he could have done. The very first morning he saw an announcement of Milburn’s return to the city he dropped him a line: “MY DEAR MILBURN: I have an explanation--an apology to make--then let us be on the old footing; for without you I am a lonely man. Appoint a place for an immediate interview and let me assure you that Frost had nothing to do with my leaving you. I return check. Yours very truly, MARRION LATHAM.” He dispatched this message, and paced the floor in a fever of anxiety until the answer came. Quickly he snatched the envelope, as a starving man breaks a crust of bread. This is what the letter said: “My time is now entirely occupied. Respectfully, ROBERT MILBURN.” CHAPTER XXVIII. A DROP OF POISON. Frost was succeeding in bringing Robert Milburn into open disrepute. That he was, will appear from his statement of the case to a few friends who had accompanied him into the bar room of ---- hotel. “I was saying, gentlemen, that it is such a deuced pity to see Milburn waste his talents, but the fact is, these self-destructive excesses must result in a total wreck. Am I not right?” The man appealed to nodded approval. “That’s what you are.” “I say when a man gets so that he can walk up to a bar and take a drink alone, it’s about time to put a bridle on him.” “That’s a fact,” assented a third; “and that isn’t all of it.” “No,” put in Frost, “I saw him driving up and down Fifty-eighth Street with the Morris woman the other day, in the early afternoon. I just told him what I thought about it.” “What did he say?” “Oh, he flared up, and said it was his own affair.”