ime. We
are such strange creatures! It has been so present to me lately that
life was too good to last. You remember the sort of feeling one used to
have as a child about some treat in the distance--that it was too much
joy--that something was sure to come between you and it? Well, in a
sense, I have had my joy, the first-fruits of it at least.'

But as he threw his arms behind his head, leaning back on them, Flaxman
saw the eyes darken and the naive boyish mouth contract, and knew that
under all these brave words there was a heart which hungered.

'How strange!' Robert went on reflectively; 'yesterday I was travelling,
walking like other men, a member of society. To-day I am an invalid; in
the true sense, a man no longer. The world has done with me; a barrier I
shall never recross has sprung up between me and it.--Flaxman, to-night
is the story-telling. Will you read to them? I have the book here
prepared--some scenes from David Copperfield. And you will tell them?'

A hard task, but Flaxman undertook it. Never did he forget the scene.
Some ominous rumour had spread, and the New Brotherhood was besieged.
Impossible to give the reading. A hall full of strained upturned faced
listened to Flaxman's announcement, and to Elsmere's messages of cheer
and exhortation, and then a wild wave of grief spread through the place.
The street outside was blocked, men looking dismally into each other's
eyes, women weeping, children sobbing for sympathy, all feeling
themselves at once shelterless and forsaken. When Elsmere heard the news
of it, he turned on his face, and asked even Catherine to leave him for
a while.

The preparations were pushed on. The New Brotherhood had just become the
subject of an animated discussion in the press, and London was touched
by the news of its young founder's breakdown. Catherine found herself
besieged by offers of help of various kinds. One offer Flaxman persuaded
her to accept. It was the loan of a villa at El Biar, on the hill above
Algiers, belonging to a connection of his own. A resident on the spot
was to take all trouble off their hands; they were to find servants
ready for them, and every comfort.

Catherine made every arrangement, met every kindness, with a
self-reliant calm that never failed. But it seemed to Flaxman that her
heart was broken--that half of her, in feeling, was already on the other
side of this horror which stared them all in the face. Was it his
perception of it which sti