And happiness? What was it but another symbol to signify the wistful yearning of the world? Where was it found? Not in love, which is the thirsting for a woman's spirit; not in passion, which is the burning for a woman's flesh. Did not bitterness follow upon the one, and upon the other satiety? His nature was deadened to the verge of obliviousness, and in his waning vitality the impulse of self-gratification had gone first. Physical desires shrank into decay, and mental ones passed with them. He wondered that he had ever sought in love other than calm reasonableness and a cooling presence. The emotion that sent scarlet thrills to his brain he analyzed with callousness. He remembered his mother as she lay upon the invalid's sofa, her Bible and a novel of Victor Hugo's upon the table beside her. He saw the placid beauty of her face, the slender, blue-veined hand which she laid upon his forehead when he went to her a wailing child; and it seemed to him that such a touch was the only touch of love with the power to console. Then he remembered Mariana's hand as she laid it upon her child and his, and he knew that the touch was the same. He thought of her as she sat beside the crib when the child lay dying. The passionate self-control about the mouth, the agony in her eyes, the tragic droop of her figure--these returned to soften him. He saw the black shadow of the palm-leaf fan, passing to and fro above the little bluish face, and he heard the labored breathing. In sudden bitterness he opened his arms and cried aloud, "Mariana!" Then the tears of weakness and despair stained the pillow where her head had lain. When the twilight fell he rose, dressed himself with an effort, and descended the stairs. His limbs trembled as he moved, and, upon reaching the open air, he staggered and leaned for support against the red brick wall. Then he straightened himself, and wandered aimlessly from street to street. As he passed among men and women he was aware of a strange aloofness, as if the links connecting him with his kind had snapped asunder; and he felt that he might have been the being of another planet to whom earthly passions and fulfilments bore no palpable relation, but were to be considered with cosmic composure. The thought jarred upon him insistently that these moving men and women, whom he brushed in passing, were each stirred by an entity akin to that which in himself lay drugged. He realized that the condition of a mind without the attraction of physical desires is as chaotic as the condition of a world suddenly freed from the attraction of gravitation.