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200 no cheery voices to cry out, "So long, colonel," and wave a welcoming hand to a hat-brim. People jostled him to one side, seeing only a thin, threadbare old man in a faded coat. He had no consciousness that they would turn and look at him, and point him out to the stranger from the East whom they were "taking round." He was no more to Sacramento than it was to him. He grew so to dread the feeling of oppressive melancholy that fell upon him in its unfriendly streets that he gave up going out, and spent most of his time in the garden or in Viola's room.

When with her he tried to be bright and to make the best of the situation. He saw in her changed attitude nothing but blame of him, and he would have borne anything uncomplainingly to win back the love he thought she withheld. That another and a deeper feeling could be causing her heaviness of spirit he did not dream. Like many another man, he had no instinct to see into the hidden inner life of the child that was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.

He hardly ever let his thoughts revert to the cause that had made her take her hasty step. He knew he had been to blame, and the colonel was a man who always forgot his own mistakes. In the course of time they ceased to be mistakes, and, in his eyes, assumed the proportions