el, you are a fool!"

His voice broke.

"I wish you could have heard Miss Wedderburn sing her English song after
you were gone. It was called, 'What would You do, Love?' and she made us
all cry."

"Ah, Miss Wedderburn! How delightful she is."

"If it is any comfort to you to know, I can assure you that she thinks
as I do. I am certain of it."

"Comfort--not much. It is only that if I ever allowed myself to fall in
love again, which I shall not do, it would be with Miss Wedderburn."

The tone sufficiently told me that he was much in love with her already.

"She is bewitching," he added.

"If you do not mean to allow yourself to fall in love with her," I
remarked, sententiously, "because it seems that 'allowing' is a matter
for her to decide, not the men who happen to know her."

"I shall not see much more of her. I shall not remain here."

As this was what I had fully expected to hear, I said nothing, but I
thought of Miss Wedderburn, and grieved for her.

"Yes, I must go forth from hence," he pursued. "I suppose I ought to be
satisfied that I have had three years here. I wonder if there is any way
in which a man could kill all trace of his old self; a man who has every
desire to lead henceforth a new life, and be at peace and charity with
all men. I suppose not--no. I suppose the brand has to be carried about
till the last; and how long it may be before that 'last' comes!"

I was silent. I had put a good face upon the matter and spoken bravely
about it. I had told him that I did not believe him guilty--that my
regard and respect were as high as ever, and I spoke the truth. Both
before and since then he had told me that I had a bump of veneration and
one of belief ludicrously out of proportion to the exigencies of the age
in which I lived.

Be it so. Despite my cheerful words, and despite the belief I did feel
in him, I could not help seeing that he carried himself now as a marked
man. The free, open look was gone; a blight had fallen upon him, and he
withered under it. There was what the English call a "down" look upon
his face, which had not been there formerly, even in those worst days
when the parting from Sigmund was immediately before and behind us.

In the days which immediately followed the scene at the concert I
noticed how he would set about things with a kind of hurried zeal, then
suddenly stop and throw them aside, as if sick of them, and fall to
brooding with head sunk upon his breast, and lo