Lansdale left the house in Colfax Avenue with an unanalyzed sense of levitation, which made him feel as though he were walking upon air; but when he had accounted for the phenomenon he came to earth again with disheartening celerity. What had a man in whose daily walk death was a visible presence to do with the tumult of gladsome suggestion evoked by a few words of sympathy from a compassionate young woman with a winsome face and innocent eyes? Nothing; clearly, nothing whatever. Lansdale set his teeth upon the word, and drove the suggestion forth with sudden bitterness. His part in the little drama growing out of Miss Elliott's deed of mercy was at best but that of a supernumerary. When he should have made his entrance and exit, he must go the way of other supernumeraries, and be presently forgotten of the real actors. So ran the wise conclusion; but the event leagued itself with unwisdom, and the prudent forecasting gave place to the apparent necessities. The preliminary interview with Grim was wholly abortive. The man of vice not only refused point blank to make restitution, but evinced a readiness to take the matter into the courts which was most disconcerting to Margaret Gannon's moneyless advocate. Thereupon ensued other visits to the house in Colfax Avenue, and a growing and confidential intimacy with Constance, and the enlisting of Stephen Elliott in the cause of justice, and many other things not prefigured in Lansdale's itinerary. And at the end of it all it was Stephen Elliott's check-book, and not an appeal to the majesty of the law, which rescued Margaret Gannon's sewing-machine; and the man of vice pocketed the amount of his extortionate claim, and gave a receipt in full therefor, biding his time, and bidding an obsequious Son of Ahriman--the same whom Jeffard had smitten aforetime--keep an eye on Margaret Gannon against the day when she should be sufficiently unbefriended to warrant a recasting of the net. And when these things had come to pass, Robert Lansdale was of all men the most miserable. From much dabbling in the trickling rill of fictional sentiment, he had come to disbelieve the existence of any deep river of passion; but now he found himself upon the brink of such a river and was forbidden to plunge therein. Nay, more; he must turn away from it, parched and thirsty as any wayworn pilgrim of the world-desert, without so much as lifting a palmful of its healing waters to his lips. He postponed the turning away from day to day, weakly promising himself that each visit to the house in Colfax Avenue should be the last, and as weakly yielding when a day or two of abstinence had enhanced his soul-hunger until it became a restless agony, mocking his most strenuous effort to drown it in a sea of work.