the fort, for I am coming.”  The incongruity of this made him smile, and he did not write it.  Finally he composed this message, which seemed to him to have a businesslike and innocent aspect:  “Too late.  Impossible for me to change.  Have invested everything.  Expect letter.”  Mechanically he counted the words when he had written this.  On the fair presumption that the company would send “everything” as one word, there were still two more than the conventional ten, and, from force of habit, he struck out the words “for me.”  But he had no sooner done this than he felt a sense of shame.  It was contemptible for a man in love to count his words, and it was intolerable to be haggling with himself at such a crisis over the expense of a despatch.  He got cold over the thought that Irene might also count them, and see that the cost of this message of passion had been calculated.  And with recklessness he added:  “We reach the Profile House next week, and I am sure I can convince you I am right.”

King found Niagara pitched to the key of his lacerated and tumultuous feelings.  There were few people at the Cataract House, and either the bridal season had not set in, or in America a bride has been evolved who does not show any consciousness of her new position.  In his present mood the place seemed deserted, the figures of the few visitors gliding about as in a dream, as if they too had been subdued by the recent commission which had silenced the drivers, and stopped the mills, and made the park free, and was tearing down the presumptuous structures along the bank.  In this silence, which emphasized the quaking of the earth and air, there was a sense of unknown, impending disaster.  It was not to be borne indoors, and the two friends went out into the night.

On the edge of the rapids, above the hotel, the old bath-house was in process of demolition, its shaking piazza almost overhanging the flood.  Not much could be seen from it, but it was in the midst of an elemental uproar.  Some electric lamps shining through the trees made high lights on the crests of the rapids, while the others near were in shadow and dark.  The black mass of Goat Island appeared under the lightning flashes in the northwest sky, and whenever these quick gleams pierced the gloom the frail bridge to the island was outlined for a moment, and then vanished as if it had been swept away, and there could only be seen sparks of light in the houses on the Canadian shore, which seemed very near.  In this unknown, which was rather felt than seen, there was a sense of power and of mystery which overcame the mind; and in the black night the roar, the cruel haste of the rapids, tossing white gleams and hurrying to the fatal plunge, begat a sort of terror in the spectators.  It was a power implacable, vengeful, not to be measured.  They strolled down to Prospect Park.  The gate was closed; it had been the scene of an awful tragedy but a few minutes before.  They did not know it,