of

himself to the joy of the present! The future-even the narrow bounds of an earthly future-holds men prisoners. A few careless dogs, to be sure, live their day, blind to the years to come, but that is brute stupidity. A few brave souls swagger through their prime with some bravado, knowing the final cost, but willing to pay it by installments through the d

ught before he would have a clear conscience about it; he must convince himself a trifle more clearly that he shifted nothing to the load of those he

a warrant making him exempt from local laws. He moved among people whose perplexed thoughts wandered restlessly down the everlasting vista of the days ahead, and he alone of them all knew the secret of being untroubled beyond the week. The world had not for ten years appeared so gay to him

creation was abroad once more. Not a cranny in even this sprawling section of denaturalized earth but thrilled for the time being with budding hopes, sap-swollen courage, and bright, colorful dreams. Walking beneath the spitting glare of the arc-lights, through the golden mist flooding from the store windows, Donaldson hazily saw again the care

ife, so very gay, that he turned to glance back at them. He found the eyes of the prettier one upon him; sh

things about his person were always as fine and immaculate as though he were a gentleman of some fortune, his linen and his shoes. But in addition to such slight externals Donaldson, although not a large man, had good shoulders, a well-poised head, and walked with an Indi

oomed men and women laughingly clambered out of a big touring car and passed in before the obsequious attendants. He watched them with some envy. Music, good food, good wines, laughter, and bright eyes-the flimsiest vanities of life

struggling younger generation, and the wrecks of the past, embodied, in even the blank stare of their exteriors, stupid mediocrity. He fumbled nervously in his pocket for his latch-key, and opening the door climbed the three stale flights to his room. He lighted both gas-jets, but even then the

though he could, without Barstow's discovery, have lived his week and closed it by any one of a dozen effective means, he realized that he could not trust even himself to fulfill at the end-no matter how binding the oath-so fearful a decree. A few deep draughts of joyous life might turn his head. It was as dangerous an experiment as taking the first smoke of opium, as tampe

is city, nor to any living man or woman. In one form and another, he had paid. Few men could claim this as sincerely as Donaldson. He had lived conscientiously, so very conscientiously in fact that it was as much rebellion against self-imposed fetters which now drove him on to an opposite extreme as any bitterness against that society which h

upposing this were impossible, supposing no opportunity should offer, it would be something if he held himself open, offered himself a free instrument of Fate. He could promise-and he knew he could keep so sacred a promise as this with death approaching in so inevitable a form,-he could promise to offer himself upon the slightest pretext, recklessly and without fear, instantly and without thought, to the first chance which might come to him

on. He was to condense a possible thirty or forty years into seven days. To-day was the twenty-third of May. By to-morrow noon he could adjust all his affairs. With nothing

fixed now as later. It took but a moment's deliberation; he elected to go out at high noon. There would be dark enough afterwards-possibly a

effect was to steady him. He remembered the sweet girlishness of her face, the freshness of it which was like the freshness of a garden in the early morning. He realized that she stood for one thing that he could never know. What was it that he saw now in those strange eyes that left him a bit wistful at thought of thi

here until daylight, falling asleep in his chair from four to seven. He awok

ffairs before eleven o'clock. When he left his office to go back to his room, he had in his pocket every cent he possessed in the world in crisp new bank notes. It amounted to twenty-eight hundred and forty-seven dollars. Not much to scatter over a long life,-not much as capital. Invested it might yield some seventy

as barred from travel; barred from the purchase of future holdings; barred from everything by this time restriction save what he could absorb within seven days through his five senses. Being an intellig

s room he summon

any address and I 'm going to take with me only the few thing

nd of the quiet, gentle third stor

u had ba

"Very good news. I 'm going

ps you 'll

sure I shall n

or. She noticed that he took nothing but a few trinkets, a

eleven thirty. My vacation begins in half an hour. I mus

erk in advance. When at length he was left alone in his luxurious apartments, it was still a few minutes before twelve. He drew the vial from

ffer my life freely and without question for the protection of any huma

and. It was as simply and earnestly

aised it to his lips. There he paused, for once again he seemed to see the big, calm eyes of the girl now staring at him as