Sam looked at him in some surprise, wondering if he were a little off, but he repeated the story again, apologizing profusely because he was there a spectator of the scene, which he described very fully, interspersing his remarks with “Don’t you remember?” and “Don’t you know?” while Rex kept saying, “Yes, yes, go on,” till he had a very lucid idea of what had taken place in the grove the previous day. It was not a phantom he saw in the glass, the half face whose one eye had left the stone by the well and was dancing up and down before him with a persistency which made him dizzy. It was Irene herself playing a trick upon him and offering no explanation when she saw how it had affected him. What was her object? Not a mere joke, or she would have confessed it, and if it were a joke it certainly was not worthy of her, he thought, and there began to creep over him a great revulsion of feeling toward her and he was glad he had not sent the letter. He must wait a while and think it over. He was very tired and very warm and very sick, he said to himself at last, as he sat half blinded with the pain in his head and the nausea at his stomach. He knew Sam was still talking to him, but he did not comprehend all he was saying. He had not, however, lost a word where Irene was concerned, and could see her stealing up behind him, while he was too absorbed to hear her. He could see, too, the half face in the mirror and the eye looking at him with something like a mocking smile in its blue depths, but aside from that he did not pay much attention to Sam’s talk till he spoke of taking Irene to the station and how badly she felt about her brother. “I s’posed she lived in New York, but she got a ticket for Claremont,” he said. For a moment Rex looked at him inquiringly. “Claremont? Where is that?” he asked. “Dunno,” Sam replied. “Maybe her brother lives there and not in New York with her.” “Yes, that’s it, thank you,” Rex said, as if Sam had solved a question which was puzzling him a little. The brother and Claremont were new to him, and in his hazy state of mind he could not quite comprehend them. But Sam had made it plain. The brother lived in Claremont and Irene had gone there. “Yes, thank you,” he said again, while Sam looked curiously at him a moment, and then remembering the fever which had broken out in the village he spoke of it and how rapidly it was spreading. “I shouldn’t wonder if you was comin’ down with it,” he said, as he noticed Rex’s flushed face and saw him shiver occasionally as if he were cold. “Be you real sick?” he asked, at last, and Rex replied: “No—no; a little shaky, that’s all. I was startled at the well, that’s a fact, and the weather is so warm. I think, however, I’ll go home. That is the best place; yes, the best place, and I must lie down.”