As he entered his door the wind drove a drift of snow into the hall, and the water dripping from his coat made shining pools on the carpet. He went into his study and slammed the door behind him. The little dog sleeping on the rug came to welcome him, and he patted it mechanically with a nerveless hand. His face was strained and set, and his breath came pantingly. In a sudden revolution the passion which he believed buried forever had risen, reincarnated, to overwhelm him. He lived again, more vitally because of the dead years, the death of a child who was his and the grief of a woman who was his also. He, who had believed himself arbiter of his fate, had awakened to find himself the slave of passion--a passion mighty in its decay, but all victorious in its resurrection. He shivered and looked about him. The room, the fire, the atmosphere seemed thrilled with an emotional essence. He felt it in his blood, and it warmed the falling snow beyond the window. Before the consuming flame the apathy of years was lost in smoke. A memory floated before him. He was sitting again in that silent room, driving the heavy pen, listening to the breathing of his dying child, watching the still droop of Mariana's profile, framed by dusk. He felt her sobbing upon his breast, her hands clinging in pain when he lifted her from beside her dead--and his. He heard again her cry: "Tell me that I shall see her! Tell me that God is just!" The eternal cry of stricken motherhood. Whatever the present or the future held, these things were locked within the past. He might live them over or live them down, but unlive them he could not. They had been and they would be forever. * * * * * The door opened and the servant came in. "If you please, father, there is a lady to see you." He looked up, startled. "A lady? On such a night?" "She came in a carriage, but she is very wet. Will you see her at once?" "Yes, at once." He turned to the door. It opened and closed, and Mariana came towards him. She came like a ghost, pale and still as he had seen her in his memory, with a veil of snow clinging to her coat and to the feathers in her hat. Her eyes alone were aflame. He drew back and looked at her. "You?" he said. She was silent, holding out her gloved hand with an impulsive gesture. He did not take it. He had made a sudden clutch at self-control, and he clung to it desperately. "Can I do anything for you?" he asked, and his voice rang hollow and without inflection. She still held out her hand. Flecks of snow lay on her loosened hair, and the snow was hardly whiter than her face. "You must speak to me," she said. "You promised to come, and I waited--and waited." "I was busy," he returned, in the same voice. "We cannot be as strangers," she went on, passionately. "We must be friends. Can you or I undo the past? Can you or I undo our love--or our child?" "Hush!" he said, harshly.