But poor Viola was not of the women who find in the exercise of the brain a method of healing the hurts of a wounded heart. At times a sense of piercing misery possessed her. There were hours when her loneliness pressed upon her like a weight, when the sense of what she had lost was unbearable as a fierce, continuous pain. Then, in the hope of escaping from the torment of "remembering happier things," she went out and, in the blistering heat under which the streets lay sweltering, walked aimlessly. If fatigue overcame her she sat down on one of the benches in the little plazas that dot the city, and there a graceful, listless figure slipped back over the intervening gulf to the days when the sunshine had been bright and her own heart was full of it. Sometimes rebellion against the fate which had shut her out from happiness rose within her. A beloved companionship, no matter at what cost, was better than this waste of desolation. One life is all of which we are sure; why not, then, seize what we can of that one? How terrible, in the darkness of death, to realize that we have lost all that might have made this world so rich and sweet! Oh, the frightful thoughts of seeing at the end that we have relinquished joy and love for a dream, for nothing! For the first time in a life singularly free from event or developing experience, she met that dark second self which dwells in each of us. So the tempter whispered his old words. She closed her ears to them with fear and aversion. But they returned, coming upon her persuasively in moments of deadly depression and disgust of life, coming upon her with comforting declarations of harmlessness, coming upon her with challenging queries as to their wrong. One evening they were more convincing than they had ever been before. Sitting alone in her own room after dinner, Viola listened, for the first time hesitating. Where would be the wrong in writing to him--just a line to tell him she was sorry they had gone without seeing him? Common politeness would seem to suggest that she ought to do that. She would have done it before, only--only-- She rose from her seat and, going to the window, looked down into the dark recesses of the garden, whence small rustling noises rose, then upward to the clear pink of the sunset, cut with black palm-spikes. He, once their best friend! What excuse was there for slighting a friend?