The mood vanished, the present closed mercifully about him, leaving him merely defiant. The townclock announced the hour in slow, jarring notes. A light shone above from Ellie's room, and he heard his father's deliberate footsteps in the hall, returning from the Ellerton Club, where, as was his invariable nightly habit, he had played cooncan. The moon, freed from the towering beams, was without color. Anthony rose, and flung away a cold, stale cigarette; the world was just like that--stale and cold. He proceeded toward the house, when he heard footfalls on the pavement; in the obscurity he barely made out a man and woman, walking so closely as to be hardly distinguishably separate. They stopped by the fence, only a few feet from where he stood concealed in the shadows, and the man took the woman's hands in his own, bending over her. Then, suddenly, clasping her in his arms, he covered her upturned face with passionate kisses. With a little, frightened gasp she clung to his shoulders. The kisses ceased. Their strained, desperate embrace remained unbroken.--It seemed that each was the only reality for the other in a world of unsubstantial gloom, veiled in the shifting, silvery mist of a cold and removed planet. The woman breathed with a deep, sobbing inspiration; and, when she spoke, Anthony realized that he was eavesdropping, and walked swiftly and cautiously into the house. But the memory of that embrace; accompanied him up the stairs, into his room. It haunted him as he lay, cool and nearly bare, on his bed. It filled him with a profound and unreasoning melancholy, new to his customary, unconscious animal exuberance. All at once he thought of the redhaired girl who liked port wine; and, as he fell asleep, she stood before him, leering slyly at the side of that other broken shape which threatened him out of the future. VI THE shed that held the machine shop and garage fronted upon an informal lane skirting the verdurous border of the town. Beyond the fence opposite a broad pasturage dipped and rose to the blackened ruins of a considerable brick mansion, now tenanted by a provident colony of Italians; further hill topped green hill, the orchards drawn like silvery scarves about their shoulders, undulating to the sky. Back of the shed ranged the red roofs and tree-tops of the town. When Anthony arrived at the seat of his industry the grass was flashing with dew and the air a thrill with the buoyant piping of robins. He found the door open, and Alfred Craik awaiting him. “She's gone,” Alfred informed him. “Sam told me last night; it was your infernal tinkering... you can't let a machine alone,” Anthony dropped beside the other on the door sill. “Could we get another car, do you think?” Alfred demanded; “I had almost finished a humming experiment on Sam's.” “This garage is closed,” Anthony pronounced; “it's out of existence. The family are yelping for the screwdrivers. What do we owe?”