He called again at The Poplars a few days afterwards, and was
met in the entry by Miss Cynthia, with whom he had a long conversation on
matters involving Myrtle's interests and their own.

CHAPTER XXI.

MADNESS?

Mr. Clement Lindsay returned to the city and his usual labors in a state
of strange mental agitation. He had received an impression for which he
was unprepared. He had seen for the second time a young girl whom, for
the peace of his own mind, and for the happiness of others, he should
never again have looked upon until Time had taught their young hearts the
lesson which all hearts must learn, sooner or later.

What shall the unfortunate person do who has met with one of those
disappointments, or been betrayed into one of those positions, which do
violence to all the tenderest feelings, blighting the happiness of youth,
and the prospects of after years?

If the person is a young man, he has various resources. He can take to
the philosophic meerschaum, and nicotine himself at brief intervals into
a kind of buzzing and blurry insensibility, until he begins to "color" at
last like the bowl of his own pipe, and even his mind gets the tobacco
flavor. Or he can have recourse to the more suggestive stimulants, which
will dress his future up for him in shining possibilities that glitter
like Masonic regalia, until the morning light and the waking headache
reveal his illusion. Some kind of spiritual anaesthetic he must have, if
he holds his grief fast tied to his heartstrings. But as grief must be
fed with thought, or starve to death, it is the best plan to keep the
mind so busy in other ways that it has no time to attend to the wants of
that ravening passion. To sit down and passively endure it, is apt to
end in putting all the mental machinery into disorder.

Clement Lindsay had thought that his battle of life was already fought,
and that he had conquered. He believed that he had subdued himself
completely, and that he was ready, without betraying a shadow of
disappointment, to take the insufficient nature which destiny had
assigned him in his companion, and share with it all of his own larger
being it was capable, not of comprehending, but of apprehending.

He had deceived himself. The battle was not fought and won. There had
been a struggle, and what seemed to be a victory, but the
enemy--intrenched in the very citadel of life--had rallied, and would
make another desperate attempt to retrieve h