I was amazed. If I had suddenly discovered that the woman I loved was unfaithful to me it could not have produced, in my frame of mind at that moment, a greater shock. It seemed to me then that the wooing of months, the confidence and affection of a year, were to be sacrificed in a moment of infatuated stubbornness. The very thought was so unnatural that it produced a revulsion in my own feelings. "My darling," I said, as I went toward her impulsively, "we are playing the unworthy part of fools. Nothing can ever happen that will make us love each other less, or prevent you from being my wife." I put my arm around her in the old familiar way. She was passive and irresponsive. She stood there, limply holding the curtain, with one white arm upraised, her beautiful head bent over and her eyes cast down so that I could not look into her face. This stony obduracy was so new and unlike her that I withdrew my arm and stepped back a little to regard her with astonishment, not unmingled with pique. At that moment she lifted her head slowly, and as she looked at me with a dreamy and far-away pathos I saw that her eyes were filled with tears. "It seems to me," she said, with a voice that sounded as if it was addressed to an invisible phantom way beyond me. "It seems to me that I shall never be your wife!" I must have stared at her several seconds in silence. Then I said: "You are ill. You are not yourself. When you have recovered your normal condition I will come back." I snatched a kiss from her lips, that were strangely cold, and rushed from the house. It was not till the next morning, when I woke up after a short and disturbed sleep, that my mind reverted to the cause of all this purely sentimental disagreement, and I felt a strong desire to have events prove that the Judge was slightly monomaniacal, and that I was right. I went to Riccadonnas' for my breakfast and got all the morning papers, as usual, but this time with a distinct confidence that the news would be the best vindication of my good sense, and that I should yet have a good laugh at the Judge. I opened the paper as I sipped my coffee, and the first thing my eyes fell on were the headlines of a dispatch from St. Louis. I read them with an inexplicable sense of something sinking in me. As I recall them they ran as follows: "Strange news from the West. All communication west of Salt Lake City ceases. Meteorological puzzle. What is the matter with the wires?" Then followed the dispatch, which I have not forgotten: ST. LOUIS, June 26, 8 P. M.--A dispatch received here from Yuma on the Texas Pacific announces that no eastern-bound train has come in since morning, and all attempts to open communication by telegraph with points west of that place have failed. It is the opinion of railroad men that a great storm is raging in California. Weather here pleasant, with a steady, dry wind from the east blowing.