From the shadow of her muslin curtain, Edna looked down on the walk beneath, and after a few moments saw him coming to the house.

He paused on the terrace, took off his hat, swept back the thick hair from his forehead, and stood looking out over the quiet lawn.

Then a heavy, heavy sigh, almost a moan, seemed to burst from the depths of his heart, and he turned and went into the house.

The night was far spent, and the moon had cradled herself on the tree-tops, when Edna raised her face all blistered with tears.  Stretching out her arms she fell on her knees, while a passionate, sobbing prayer struggled brokenly across her trembling lips: 

“O my God! have mercy upon him! save his wretched soul from eternal death!  Help me so to live and govern myself that I bring no shame on the cause of Christ.  And if it be thy will, O my God! grant that I may be instrumental in winning this precious but wandering, sinful soul back to the faith as it is in Jesus!”

Ah! verily—­

...  “More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of.  Wherefore let thy voice Rise like a fountain for him night and day.  For what are men better than sheep or goats, That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves, and those who call them friend?”

CHAPTER XIX.

“Where are you going, St. Elmo?  I know it is one of your amiable decrees that your movements are not to be questioned, but I dare to brave your ire.”

“I am going to that blessed retreat familiarly known as ’Murray’s den,’ where, secure from feminine intrusion, as if in the cool cloisters of Coutloumoussi, I surrender my happy soul to science and cigars, and revel in complete forgetfulness of that awful curse which Jove hurled against all mankind, because of Prometheus’s robbery.”

“There are asylums for lunatics and inebriates, and I wonder it has never occurred to some benevolent millionaire to found one for such abominable cynics as you, my most angelic cousin! where the snarling brutes can only snap at and worry one another.”

“An admirable idea, Estelle, which I fondly imagined I had successfully carried out when I built those rooms of mine.”

“You are as hateful as Momus, minus his wit!  He was kicked out of heaven for grumbling, and you richly deserve his fate.”

“I have a vague recollection that the Goddess Discord shared the fate of the celestial growler.  I certainly plead guilty to an earnest sympathy with Momus’s dissatisfaction with the house that Minerva built, and only wish that mine was movable, as he recommended, in order to escape bad neighborhoods and tiresome companions.”