qualities
which had chilled his too precipitate passion for her, and left
him alone, without romance, without family sympathy, without social
acclamations, with nothing indeed save his high-strung notion of honor
to help him bravely face the wedding march. How appalling must the
wedding march sound to a waiting bridegroom who sees the bride, that he
no longer looks at except with distaste and estrangement, coming nearer
and nearer to him up the aisle! A funeral march would be gayer than that
music, I should think! The thought came to me to break out bluntly and
say to him: "Countermand the cake! She's only playing with you while
that yachtsman is making up his mind." But there could be but one
outcome of such advice to John Mayrant: two people, instead of one,
would be in bed suffering from contusions. As I mused on the boy and
his attractive and appealing character, I became more rejoiced than ever
that he had thrashed somebody, I cared not very much who nor yet very
much why, so long as such thrashing had been thorough, which seemed
quite evidently and happily the case. He stood now in my eyes, in some
way that is too obscure for me to be able to explain to you, saved from
some reproach whose subtlety likewise eludes my powers of analysis.

It was already five minutes after three o'clock, my dinner hour, when he
at length appeared in the Library; and possibly I put some reproach into
my greeting: "Won't you walk along with me to Mrs. Trevise's?" (That was
my boarding house.)

"I could not get away from the Custom House sooner," he explained;
and into his eyes there came for a moment that look of unrest and
preoccupation which I had observed at times while we had discussed
Newport and alcoholic girls. The two subjects seemed certainly far
enough apart! But he immediately began upon a conversation briskly
enough--so briskly that I suspected at once he had got his subject ready
in advance; he didn't want me to speak first, lest I turn the talk into
channels embarrassing, such as bruised foreheads or wedding cake.
Well, this should not prevent me from dropping in his cup the wholesome
bitters which I had prepared.

"Well, sir! Well, sir!" such was his hearty preface. "I wonder if you're
feeling ashamed of yourself?"

"Never when I read Shakespeare," I answered restoring the plume to its
place.

He looked at the title. "Which one?"

"One of the unsuitable love affairs that was prevented in time."

"Romeo and Juli