Now he had formed the habit of lifting a secret glass, as a rite and a toast to the portrait of the ancestor, with whose spirit he seemed to commune. The things that had festered in the unclean soreness of his brain had tinctured every thought with their poison of monomania, leaving him without a suspicion of his own miserable deceit. He believed that he held the imperative commission of the Deity to act as a vicegerent and an avenger. God had designated him as a prosecutor, and to-night he was summing up the case against the transgressors. "A sinful and an adulterous generation!" he breathed with curling lips. Item by item he went over the evidence, and it fitted and jibed in every detail. From the first interrupted assignation at Providence to this evening when he had seen, silhouetted against a starry sky, the man carrying close to his breast the wife of another, no link failed to join into a perfect chain of guilt. But above all he must remain just--as just as the Divinity whose commission he served. This essence of absolute and impersonal righteousness demanded an overt act of unquestionable guilt. "So saith the Lord." When that deciding proof was established there should fall upon the sinning pair the wrath of an outraged heaven, and he, Eben Tollman, in whom every feeling of the heart had turned to the gall of hatred, would hurl the bolt. But when he appeared at the breakfast table the next morning he brought the only untroubled face to be seen there. "I am going to New York this afternoon," announced Stuart somewhat bluntly, and Eben looked quickly up, frankly surprised. "Running down for a day or two? You'll be back, of course?" he inquired, and the guest shook his head. "No. I sha'n't be back at all." "But your Broadway opening doesn't take place until October? Didn't you tell us that?" "Perhaps. I'm not going on that account." "Then why not finish out your vacation?" "I have finished it." The host looked at his guest and read in his eyes a defiant dislike and a repressed ferocity, but he chose to ignore it. The long-fostered urbanity of his make-believe must last a little longer. But at that moment Stuart's eyes met those of Conscience and he acknowledged a sense of chagrin. After all, he was leaving to-day and whatever his feelings, he had so far been outwardly the beneficiary of Tollman's hospitality. Nothing was to be gained, except a sort of churlish satisfaction, by assuming at the eleventh hour a blunt and open hostility of manner. "I'm sorry," suggested Tollman evenly. "I had hoped that we might have you with us longer. You have brought a certain animation to the uneventfulness of our life here." Stuart changed his manner with an effort. "Thank you," he replied. "But I've already over-stayed the time I had allowed myself for a vacation. There are many neglected things to be taken up and finished."