suddenly,
loosed her. For a breathless moment he stood with head bowed in seeming
humility, then, stooping, he crushed her hand, medicine bottle and all,
to lips that burned with anything but humility.

"Good night, dear Princess Nobody!" he said, and watched her turn away,
nor moved until the door had closed upon her. That night he smoked many
pipes, weaving him fancies of the beautiful City of Perhaps, and dreamed
dreams of what might be, and his eyes glowed bright and wide, and his
mouth grew alternately grim and tender. And, that night, long after he
lay asleep, Hermione's golden head was bowed above her work, but, more
than once she stayed her humming sewing-machine to look at one white
hand with eyes shy and wistful--the hand that had held the medicine
bottle, of course.

CHAPTER XIV

OF A TEXT, A LETTER, AND A SONG

Ravenslee opened his eyes to find his small chamber full of a glory of
sun which poured a flood of radiance across his narrow bed; it brought
out the apoplectic roses on the wall paper and lent a new lustre to the
dim and faded gold frame that contained a fly-blown card whereon was the
legend:

LOVE ONE ANOTHER

And with his gaze upon this time-honoured text, Ravenslee smiled, and
leaping out of bed proceeded to wash and shave and dress, pausing often
to glance glad-eyed from his open window upon the glory of the new day.
And indeed it was a morning of all-pervading beauty, one such that even
Mulligan's, its dingy bricks and mortar mellowed by the sun, seemed less
unlovely than its wont, and its many windows, catching a sunbeam here
and there, winked and twinkled waggishly.

So Ravenslee washed and shaved and dressed, glancing now and then from
this transfigured Mulligan's to the fly-blown text upon the wall, and
once he laughed, though not very loudly to be sure, and once he hummed
a song and so fell to soft whistling, all of which was very strange in
Geoffrey Ravenslee.

The sun, it is true, radiates life and joy; before his beneficence gloom
and depression flee away, and youth and health grow strong to achieve
the impossible; even age and sickness, bathed in his splendour, may
forget awhile their burdens and dream of other days. Truly sunshine is a
thrice blessed thing. And yet, as Ravenslee tied the neckerchief about
his brawny throat, was it by reason of the sun alone that his grey eyes
were so bright and joyous and that he whistled so soft and merrily?

Having brushed his hai