One morning Cartice met Colonel Layton in the hall, as he was about to go out for the day. His unusual appearance struck her at once. He was clean shaven and carefully dressed; his face was pale and no signs or fumes of liquor were upon or about him. This, of itself, was enough to attract particular attention; but there was more. An indefinable something in his manner asked for sympathy in a silent way, like an animal; and in his eyes which of late were unusually glassy and vacant, was an expression of reminiscent sadness, such as comes to the eyes of those who in a quiet, self-questioning hour, look back upon their lives and see scenes that bring regret. Cartice felt her heart stirred by a wish to comfort him. Perhaps he was conscious of that vibration of sympathy, for he smiled and the smile was singularly sweet and winning, revealing a glimpse of his old-time handsome self, when he had won the Butterfly’s heart. In conversation the Colonel was ever a failure. His ability in that art did not go much beyond a few stock expletives, eked out with significant shrugs and emphatic grunts. But now he tried to make talk, and lingered as though he had something to say and knew not how to begin. “Hang it all,” he growled at last, “what is there in this life anyhow? What are we here for, I should like to know? What’s the object of the whole, miserable procession? It’s a devil of a grind for everybody, and we have to give it up at last, and go out of it, God only knows where. What do you think is at the end of it, Mrs. Doring?” “O Colonel, I think and think, but I know nothing.” “Yes, that’s the dickens of it, nobody knows,” he sighed. “But if there is a hell most of us will be well seasoned for it by tough times here. I feel about ripe myself. At least I am certain they can’t get up anything worse than this world anywhere. Mighty little happiness here.” There was something inexpressibly pathetic in this ruined man’s mention of happiness. Like all others he had been in pursuit of it, yet his seeking had but led him farther astray. “Should you like to live your life over again?” he asked with sudden animation. “I have not the courage,” she answered. “I don’t know that I have either,” he said, with a weary air. “I don’t know that I want to; yet all the morning I have seen myself as I was when a child in my father’s house, and my grown-up life seems but a dream. If it were so, and I remembered the dream, I would not again travel the same road, I assure you. I recall one spring morning, particularly--a Sunday morning--when I sat with my mother on the shady old porch with vines running up the sides, and she sang this: “‘There is a land of pure delight, Where saints immortal reign. Infinite day excludes the night, And pleasures banish pain. “‘There everlasting spring abides And never-withering flowers. Death like a narrow sea divides That heavenly land from ours.’”