but the second self which so
often sat apart from her, and looked on with critical, mocking eyes,
whispered that to-morrow, the fever past, the fervor cooled, she must
see the thing in its true light--a glorious lunacy born of a moment of
enthusiasm. It was finely romantic of him, this mocking second self
whispered to her--picturesque beyond criticism--but, setting aside the
practical folly of it, could even the mood last?

The girl rose to her feet with an angry exclamation. She found herself
intolerable at such times as this.

"If there's a heaven," she cried out, "and by chance I ever go there, I
suppose I shall walk sneering through the streets and saying to myself:
'Oh yes, it's pretty enough, but how absurd and unpractical!'"

She passed before one of the small, narrow mirrors which were let into
the walls of the room in gilt Louis Seize frames with candles beside
them, and she turned and stared at her very beautiful reflection with a
resentful wonder.

"Shall I always drag along so far behind him?" she said. "Shall I never
rise to him, save in the moods of an hour?"

She began suddenly to realize what the man's going away meant--that she
might not see him again for weeks, months, even a year. For was it at
all likely that he could succeed in what he had undertaken?

"Why did I let him go?" she cried. "Oh, fool, fool, to let him go!" But
even as she said it she knew that she could not have held him back.

She began to be afraid, not for him, but of herself. He had taught her
what it might be to love. For the first time love's premonitory
thrill--promise of unspeakable, uncomprehended mysteries--had wrung her,
and the echo of that thrill stirred in her yet; but what might not
happen in his long absence? She was afraid of that critical and
analyzing power of mind which she had so long trained to attack all that
came to her. What might it not work with the new thing that had come? To
what pitiful shreds might it not be rent while he who only could renew
it was away? She looked ahead at the weeks and months to come, and she
was terribly afraid.

She went out of the room and up to her grandfather's chamber and knocked
there. The admirable Peters, who opened to her, said that his master had
not been very well, and was just then asleep, but as they spoke together
in low tones the old gentleman cried, testily, from within:

"Well? Well? Who's there? Who wants to see me? Who is it?"

Miss Benham went into the d