He found something very pathetic in that picture she had drawn of herself in forecast, roaming disconsolate through her rooms the livelong night, unable to sleep.

The woful moan of insomnia seemed to make itself heard in every strain from her piano.
Alice heard it also, but being unillumined, she missed the romantic pathos.

"I call it disgraceful," she muttered from her pillow, "for folks to be banging away on a piano at this time of night.

There ought to be a law to prevent it." "It may be some distressed soul," said Theron, gently, "seeking relief from the curse of sleeplessness." The wife laughed, almost contemptuously.

"Distressed fiddlesticks!" was her only other comment.
The music went on for a long time--rising now to strident heights, now sinking off to the merest tinkling murmur, and broken ever and again by intervals of utter hush.