He could not be calm, he could no longer be still; and ceaselessly treading to and fro after the house had long grown quiet, and the brilliant radiance of the moon was everywhere falling through the broad, tall windows, his restless spirit was tempted beyond the bounds of the shadowy staircase that he might at least, wandering like some unhappy ghost, see again the old familiar haunts. He passed through the halls, silent, slow, unafraid, as if invested with invisibility. He was grave, heavy-hearted, as aloof from all it once meant as if he were indeed some sad spirit revisiting the glimpses of the moon. Now and again he paused to gaze on some arrangement of sofas or chairs familiar to his earlier youth. By this big window always lay the backgammon-board. There was the old guitar, with memory, moonlight, romantic dreams, all entangled in the strings! It had been a famous joke to drag that light card-table before the pier glass, which reflected the hand of the unwary gamester. He sank down in a great fauteuil in the library, and through the long window on the opposite side of the room he could see the sheen of the moonlight lying as of old amidst the familiar grove. The sentry, with his cap and light blue overcoat, its cape fluttering in the breeze, ever and anon marched past, his musket shouldered, all unaware of the eyes that watched him; the budding trees cast scant shadows, spare and linear, on the dewy turf; the flowers bloomed all ghostly white in the parterre at one side. So might he indeed revisit the scene were he dead, Julius thought; so might he silently, listlessly, gaze upon it, his share annulled, his hope bereft. Were he really dead, he wondered, could he look calmly at Leonora's book where she had laid it down? He knew its owner from her habit of marking the place with a flower; it held a long blooming rod of the _Pyrus Japonica_, the blossoms showing a scarlet glow even in the pallid moonlight. One of the "ladies" had cast on the floor her "nun's bonnet," a tube-like straw covering, fitted with lining and curtain of blue barège and blue ribbons; that belonged to Adelaide, he was sure, the careless one, for the bonnets of the other two "nuns" hung primly on the rack in the side hall. His father's pen and open portfolio lay on the desk, and there too was the pipe that had solaced some knotty perplexity of his business affairs, growing complicated now in the commercial earthquake that the war had superinduced. Without doubt more troublous times yet were in store. Julius rose suddenly. He must not add to these trials! He must exert every capacity to compass his safe withdrawal from this heady venture, for his father's sake as well as his own. With this monition of duty the poor ghost bade farewell to the scene that so allured him, the old home atmosphere so dear to his sense of exile, and took his way silently, softly, up the stairs.