Outcast and criminal as he was, castaway, who had stolen a bank's money and a woman's love, Hugh was still her husband. Hugh's wife--what could she be to him? And this fevered conflict was shot through with yet another pang; for the waking smart of compunction which had risen at Jessica's bitter cry, "You helped to make him what he has become!" would not down. That cry had shown him, in one clarifying instant, the follies and delinquencies of his early career reduplicated as through the facets of a crystal, and in the polarized light of conscience, Hugh--loafer, gambler and thief--stood as the type and sign of an enduring accusation. But if the recollection of that wedding-day and its aftermath stalked always with him--if that kiss had seemed to cling again and again to his lips as he sat in the quiet of his study--no one guessed. He seldom played his violin now, but he had shown no outward sign. As time went on, he had become no less brilliant, though more inscrutable; no less popular, save perhaps to the parish heresy-hunter for whom he had never cared a straw. But beneath the surface a great change had come to Harry Sanderson. To-night, as he wended his way past the house in the aspens, through the clatter and commotion of the evening, there was a kind of glaze over his whole face--a shell of melancholy. Judge Conwell drove by in his dog-cart, with the superintendent of the long, low hospital. The man of briefs looked keenly at the handsome face on the pavement. "Seems the worse for wear," he remarked sententiously. The surgeon nodded wisely. "That's the trouble with most of you professional people," he said; "you think too much!" The judge clucked to his mare and drove on at a smart trot. The friendly, critical eye clove to the fact; it discerned the mental state of which gloom, depression and insomnia were but the physical reagents. Harry had lately felt disquieting symptoms of strain--irritable weakness, fitful repose, a sense of vague, mysterious messages in a strange language never before heard. He had found that the long walks no longer brought the old reaction--that even the swift rush of his motor-car, as it bore him through the dusk of an evening, gave him of late only a momentary relief. To-morrow began his summer vacation, and he had planned a month's pedestrian outing through the wide ranch valleys and the further ranges, and this should set him up again.