o pass, in due course, that we two shall sit
side by side, white-haired, and crinkly-nosed, and lean our poor old
chins upon our sticks and mumble and gibber amicably over the things
that might have been if the good Osiris had come up to the scratch--I
will still be content, because your friendship, Ruth, is better than
another woman's love. So you see, I have taken my gruel and come up to
time smiling--if you will pardon the pugilistic metaphor--and I promise
you loyally to do your bidding and never again to distress you._

"_Your faithful and loving friend,_
"PAUL."

This letter I addressed and stamped, and then, with a wry grimace which
I palmed off on myself (but not on Adolphus) as a cheerful smile, I
went out and dropped it into the post-box; after which I further
deluded myself by murmuring _Nunc dimittis_ and assuring myself that
the incident was now absolutely closed.

But despite this comfortable assurance I was, in the days that
followed, an exceedingly miserable young man. It is all very well to
write down troubles of this kind as trivial and sentimental. They are
nothing of the kind. When a man of essentially serious nature has
found the one woman of all the world who fulfils his highest ideals of
womanhood, who is, in fact, a woman in ten thousand, to whom he has
given all that he has to give of love and worship, the sudden wreck of
all his hopes is no small calamity. And so I found it. Resign myself
as I would to the bitter reality, the ghost of the might-have-been
haunted me night and day, so that I spent my leisure wandering
abstractedly about the streets, always trying to banish thought and
never for an instant succeeding. A great unrest was upon me; and when
I received a letter from Dick Barnard announcing his arrival at
Madeira, homeward bound, I breathed a sigh of relief. I had no plans
for the future, but I longed to be rid of the now irksome, routine of
the practise--to be free to come and go when and how I pleased.

One evening, as I sat consuming with little appetite my solitary
supper, there fell on me a sudden sense of loneliness. The desire that
I had hitherto felt to be alone with my own miserable reflections gave
place to a yearning for human companionship. That, indeed, which I
craved for most was forbidden, and I must abide by my lady's wishes;
but there were my friends in the Temple. It was more than a week since
I had seen them; in fact, we had not met since the morni