"By telegraph!" he read, "War inevitable. Postscript! Fort Sumter! It is now certain that the Government has decided to reinforce Major Andersen's command at all hazards----" The lines in the _Evening Post_ blurred under his eyes; he passed one broad, bony hand across them, straightened his shoulders, and, setting the unlighted cigar firmly between his teeth, composed himself to read. But after a few minutes he had read enough. He dropped deeper into his arm-chair, groping for the miniature of Berkley's mother. As for Berkley, he was at last alone with his letters and his keepsakes, in the lodgings which he inhabited--and now would inhabit no more. The letters lay still unopened before him on his writing table; he stood looking at the miniatures and photographs, all portraits of his mother, from girlhood onward. One by one he took them up, examined them--touched them to his lips, laid each away. The letters he also laid away unopened; he could not bear to read them now. The French clock in his bedroom struck eight. He closed and locked his desk, stood looking at it blankly for a moment; then he squared his shoulders. An envelope lay open on the desk beside him. "Oh--yes," he said aloud, but scarcely heard his own voice. The envelope enclosed an invitation from one, Camilla Lent, to a theatre party for that evening, and a dance afterward. He had a vague idea that he had accepted. The play was "The Seven Sisters" at Laura, Keene's Theatre. The dance was somewhere--probably at Delmonico's. If he were going, it was time he was afoot. His eyes wandered from one familiar object to another; he moved restlessly, and began to roam through the richly furnished rooms. But to Berkley nothing in the world seemed familiar any longer; and the strangeness of it, and the solitude were stupefying him. When he became tired trying to think, he made the tour again in a stupid sort of way, then rang for his servant, Burgess, and started mechanically about his dressing. Nothing any longer seemed real, not even pain. He rang for Burgess again, but the fellow did not appear. So he dressed without aid. And at last he was ready; and went out, drunk with fatigue and the reaction from pain. He did not afterward remember how he came to the theatre. Presently he found himself in a lower tier box, talking to a Mrs. Paige who, curiously, miraculously, resembled the girlish portraits of his mother--or he imagined so--until he noticed that her hair was yellow and her eyes blue. And he laughed crazily to himself, inwardly convulsed; and then his own voice sounded again, low, humorous, caressingly modulated; and he listened to it, amused that he was able to speak at all. "And so you are the wonderful Ailsa Paige," he heard himself repeating. "Camilla wrote me that I must beware of my peace of mind the moment I first set eyes on you----" "Camilla Lent is supremely silly, Mr. Berkley----"