He had to move two or three bottles to get at one with a large neck and stopper, which he shook up and loosened several pieces of dull looking white crystal. One of these pieces he turned out on to the table by his letters, hesitated, and jerked out another. Then, setting down the bottle, he crossed the room to where a table-filter stood on a bracket, and returned with the large _carafe_ and a tumbler, which he filled nearly full of water. These two he set down on the table, and taking up one of the lumps of crystal he dropped it into the glass, taking care that no water should sprinkle over the side. He held it up to his lamp to see how quickly it would dissolve, set it down again, and dropped in the second piece before beginning to tap the table with his nails, watching the crystalline pieces the while. "Quick and painless, I hope," he said quietly. "Bah! I can bear a little pain." He turned in his chair with a laugh, which froze upon his lips as he saw his shadow on a panel a few yards away, the weird aspect of the moving figure having so terrible an effect upon his shattered nerves that he sprang from his seat and fled to the wall, where he stood breathing hard. "Yes, I know," he cried wildly. "Only my shadow, but it is coming back--I cannot--it is more than man can bear." There was a wild despair in his utterance, and he shrank away more and more toward the doorway leading to the further room. Then, as if making a supreme effort, he drew himself up erect, with his lips moving rapidly in a low murmur, stepped firmly toward the table and seized the glass. CHAPTER ELEVEN. FATE! Barron was back to dine at the admiral's that night, but the dinner was not a success. Myra was singularly cold and formal in her manner; Edie pleaded a headache; and the admiral was worried by recollections of the morning's blunder, and felt awkward and constrained with his guest. Strive hard as he would he could not help making comparisons, and a curious feeling of pity came over him as he thought of Stratton's blank face and the look of despair in his eyes, while he half wished that he had not allowed himself to be so easily won over to the engagement. "For he is, after all, nearly a stranger," he mused as his son-in-law elect tried hard to secure Myra's interest in a society anecdote he was retailing, to which she listened and that was all. "Yes, a stranger," mused Sir Mark. "I know very little about him. Bah! Absurd! What should I know of any man who wanted to marry my girl? I might meet his relatives, and there would be a certain amount of intercourse, but if I knew them for fifty years it would not make the man a good husband to my poor girl. He loves her dearly; he is a fine, clever, manly fellow; there is no doubt about the Barron estate in Trinidad, and he has a handsome balance at his banker's."