s the One of his eternal fidelity had verily taken lodgings--and
for a long lease. But this was not all. At parting, he had, almost
involuntarily, given her hand a pressure of a peculiar and indescribable
kind; a little response from her, like a mere pulsation, of the
same sort, told him that the impression she had made upon him was
reciprocated. She was, in a word, willing to go on.

But was he able?

There had not been much harm in the flirtation thus far; but did she
know his history, the curse upon his nature?--that he was the Wandering
Jew of the love-world, how restlessly ideal his fancies were, how the
artist in him had consumed the wooer, how he was in constant dread lest
he should wrong some woman twice as good as himself by seeming to mean
what he fain would mean but could not, how useless he was likely to be
for practical steps towards householding, though he was all the while
pining for domestic life. He was now over forty, she was probably
thirty; and he dared not make unmeaning love with the careless
selfishness of a younger man. It was unfair to go further without
telling her, even though, hitherto, such explicitness had not been
absolutely demanded.

He determined to call immediately on the New Incarnation.

She lived not far from the long, fashionable Hamptonshire Square, and
he went thither with expectations of having a highly emotional time, at
least. But somehow the very bell-pull seemed cold, although she had so
earnestly asked him to come.

As the house spoke, so spoke the occupant, much to the astonishment of
the sculptor. The doors he passed through seemed as if they had not been
opened for a month; and entering the large drawing-room, he beheld, in
an arm-chair, in the far distance, a lady whom he journeyed across
the carpet to reach, and ultimately did reach. To be sure it was Mrs.
Nichola Pine-Avon, but frosted over indescribably. Raising her eyes in a
slightly inquiring manner from the book she was reading, she leant back
in the chair, as if soaking herself in luxurious sensations which
had nothing to do with him, and replied to his greeting with a few
commonplace words.

The unfortunate Jocelyn, though recuperative to a degree, was at first
terribly upset by this reception. He had distinctly begun to love
Nichola, and he felt sick and almost resentful. But happily his
affection was incipient as yet, and a sudden sense of the ridiculous
in his own position carried him to the verge of r