had eloped with a tall, handsome stranger who had been seen loitering around the house.  Oku scoffed at all this gossip.  It was clear as daylight, he said.  His master was tired of being married so long to the same woman, and as to madame, she also was weary of being married to the same man, so each had decided to try a little change, whereupon Lizzie, the second waitress—­a buxom Irish girl who despised “furriners” in general and Japanese in particular—­bid Oku hold his tongue and not jabber such heathenish nonsense.

But if the situation was productive of much unconscious humor in servants’ hall, it was different upstairs.  To Robert Stafford it was all serious enough, a tragedy which had suddenly blasted his life, and night after night as he sat alone in the library, making a hollow pretence at work, forcing his mind on a book or newspaper when really his thoughts were miles away, he wondered how he could have been such a fool as to allow his happiness slip through his fingers.

Now that Virginia was really gone, he realized what she had been to him and what he had lost.  At the outset, he had taken it lightly, resentfully.  He schooled himself to appear indifferent, afraid that he would be surrendering some of his pride if he displayed the slightest weakness.  To himself he argued that if she chose to quarrel with him and disturb the harmony of their home on such a trivial pretext, he would be a poor weak fool to permit a woman to bully him and question rights which were of the very essence of his manhood.  If she preferred to make a fuss and go her own way he could not prevent her.  But when the door had closed behind her, when he saw that she was really in earnest, that she had been willing to give up all this comfort, all this luxury, to return to a precarious existence, a life of humiliation and self-denial, and all this for a mere matter of principle, he was startled.

The railroad promoter had never troubled to think deeply on matters outside his material interests.  Of religion, he had none, and he seldom stopped to consider the ethical side of a question.  But all at once, as by a miracle, the scales fell from his eyes.  In a sudden flash of illuminating reason he saw himself as he was—­selfish, cynical, inconsiderate, brutal.  He was astounded at finding himself compelled to admit the truth of these self-made charges.  He did not mean to be all these things.  At heart he was a good fellow.  It was simply the fault of his training.  He saw now the truth of what in his egotism and cynicism he had always scoffed at before, that some women are strong enough morally, brave enough physically to do anything, make any sacrifice for the sake of right.  How unworthy he had proved himself of such a woman!  What respect could she have left for him, what respect had he left for himself?