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 wife: her beauty was extraordinary, but it seemed to him the beauty of a smooth sea along an unlit coast. She frightened him.

He sat late in his study. He heard the parlor-maid lock the front door; then his wife went upstairs and the lights were put out. His brain was like some great empty hall with an echo in it: one thought reverberated endlessly At length he drew his chair to the table and began to write. He addressed an envelope and then slowly re-read what he had written.

He let himself out of the darkened house and dropped the letter in the post-box at the corner.

The next afternoon he was detained late at his