Seth answered, as calmly as he could: “Yes, I am sure of it. I recognized him.” He stood close to the door, and the thought that only the thin pine panels divided him from her was uppermost in his mind. There was a little pause. Once his hand involuntarily moved toward the latch, but he drew it back. Then she spoke again: “You had a terrible quarrel, didn’t you, and all for me! I heard your answer, Seth, way up here. How nobly you spoke! It went straight to my heart, to hear his brutality rebuked in that manly way. I shan’t forget it.” There was a moment’s silence; then she whispered with a lingering softness, “Good night!” and he heard the faint rustling of her garments down the hall. Brief as the interruption was, it had changed the whole spirit of his thoughts. The vindictive accusing demons had vanished, and left no more than a numbing sense of past torture in his breast. The anguish of self-condemnation, the crushing burden of self-humiliation, had passed away. The moonlight, as it spread over the slope toward Thessaly village, seemed to bring healing in its peaceful radiance. His own provocation grew mountain high; his brother’s justification for his insults and barbarity diminished. “I was doing only my duty in opposing him,” he said confidently, and there was no voice of dissent now. “Still more was I right in defending poor Isabel from his unmanly imputations. If a man is incapable of appreciating such a wife----.” He did not follow out his thought, but surrendered himself instead to calling up, and enjoying in detail, the sweet scene which Albert’s coming had so rudely broken into. How delicious it all was, as fancy now limned its outlines--yet not all the dainty graces of imagination and memory could reproduce in its full charm the original. He could think, and think, until the whole room seemed instinct with her presence, but how poor a counterfeit it all was, lacking the perfume of her hair and laces, the deep, languorous glow of her eyes, the thrilling melody of her low voice. The tender, caressing prolongation of syllables in that whispered “good night” made soft soul-music still in his ears. The insane thought--he did not dare ask himself if it were also a hope--that she might come again, took possession of him, and he stood for a long time close by the door, listening, waiting. It was while Seth stood thus, seeing only with the eyes of the mind, that Milton stole past on the grass below, with the black mare, on his mission of murder. Had the young man been at the window instead, much that followed might have been different. Seth stood at the door for what seemed to him a long time, until gradually the futility of the action became apparent to him. “Of course she would not come!” he said, and resumed his pacing once more.