silver ribbon had become a black snake, and that the mountain range beyond loomed chill and dark and cheerless. “I guess I ought to be getting into my things,” he said, moving toward his own door. “There’s a bath in here,” his friend called after him. “We’re to divide it.” “Sure,” was the reply. It sounded a trifle thick. “I don’t think that she ought to,” said the brother to himself, as he began to draw out his stick-pin before the mirror, “I don’t care if she is my favorite sister—I don’t think that she ought to.” Then he went on to make ready for the securing of his half of the bath, and forthwith forgot his sister and his friend. Chapter Four Married It was almost like a scene at a ball, the great white-and-gold music room before dinner that night. The Burnett family proper numbered fifteen among themselves, and there were nearly thirty guests added. It was entirely too large a house party to have handled successfully for very long, but it would be most awfully jolly for three or four days; and now, when the whole crowd were gathered waiting for dinner, the picture was one of such bubbling joy that Jack’s very heavy heart seemed to himself to be terribly out of place there and he wondered whether he should be able to put up even a fairly presentable front during the endless hours that must ensue before the time for breaking up arrived. Burnett took him all around and introduced him to people in general, and people in general seemed to him to merely bring the fact of her pre-eminence more vividly than ever before his mind. He found himself looking everywhere but at them too, and listening with an acutely sensitive ear for sounds quite other than those of their various lips. But eternal disappointment rewarded his eyes and ears. She was nowhere. So he talked blindly about nothing to all the nobodies and laughed stupidly over all their stupidities until—suddenly and without any warning—a fearful jump in his throat sent the mercury in his constitution shooting up to 160, and he saw, heard, felt, gasped, and knew, that that radiant angel in silver tissue who had just entered the farther end of the room was indubitably Herself. (Married!) He quite forgot who, what and where he was. There was a somebody talking to him—a very awful
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