"How like!" he said aloud. "So Sanderson sowed his wild oats, too!... When he stood there, with the light on his face--when he talked--I--I could almost have thought it was Hugh!" [Illustration] CHAPTER II DOCTOR MOREAU Harry Sanderson and the judge parted at the gate, and Harry walked slowly home in the moonlight. The youthful follies that he had resurrected when he had called himself his old nickname of "Satan Sanderson" he had left so far behind him, had buried so deep, that the ironic turn of circumstance that had dragged them into view, sorry skeletons, seemed intrusive and malicious. Not that he was desirous of sailing under false colors; he had brought into his new career more than a _soupçon_ of the old indifference to popular estimation, the old propensity to go his own way and to care very little what others thought of him. The sting was a nearer one; it was his own present of fair example and good repute that recoiled with a fastidious sense of abasement from the recollection. As he stood in the library, his hand on the mantelpiece, he had been painfully conscious of detail. He remembered vividly the half amused smile of the lawyer, the silent, listening attitude of the girl crouched by the wheel-chair. He had seen Jessica Holme scarcely a half-dozen times, then only at service, or driving behind the Stires bays. That moment when she had thrown herself beside the old man's chair to plead for the son she had never seen--an instant revelation wrought by the strenuous agitation of the moment--had been illuminative; it had given him a lightning-like glimpse into the unplummeted deeps of womanly unselfishness and sympathy. He flushed suddenly. He had not realized that she was so beautiful. What a tragedy to be blind, for a woman with temperament, talent and heart! To be sightless to the beauty of such a perfect night, with that silver bridge of stars, those far hills rising like purple tulips--an alluring night for those who saw! The picture she had made, kneeling with the lamplight rosying in her hair, hung before him. The flower-scent with which the room had been full was in his nostrils, and verses flashed into his mind: And I swear, as I thought of her thus, in that hour, And of how, after all, old things were best, That I smelt the smell of that jasmin-flower Which she used to wear in her breast. Under his thought the lines repeated themselves in a mystical monotone.