a. "If ever you should
want to leave me--"

"Me darling!" exclaimed the O'Kelly.

"But you may," insisted the Signora. "Something may happen to help you,
to show you how wicked it all is. I shall be glad then to think that you
will go back to her. Because she is a good woman, Willie, you know she
is."

"She's a saint," agreed Willie.

At the Obelisk I shook hands with them, and alone pursued my way towards
Fleet Street.

The next friend whose acquaintance I renewed was Dan. He occupied
chambers in the Temple, and one evening a week or two after the
'Ortensia marriage, I called upon him. Nothing in his manner of greeting
me suggested the necessity of explanation. Dan never demanded anything
of his friends beyond their need of him. Shaking hands with me, he
pushed me down into the easy-chair, and standing with his back to the
fire, filled and lighted his pipe.

"I left you alone," he said. "You had to go through it, your slough of
despond. It lies across every path--that leads to anywhere. Clear of
it?"

"I think so," I replied, smiling.

"You are on the high road," he continued. "You have only to walk
steadily. Sure you have left nothing behind you--in the slough?"

"Nothing worth bringing out of it," I said. "Why do you ask so
seriously?"

He laid his hand upon my head, rumpling my hair, as in the old days.

"Don't leave him behind you," he said; "the little boy Paul--Paul the
dreamer."

I laughed. "Oh, he! He was only in my way."

"Yes, here," answered Dan. "This is not his world. He is of no use to
you here; won't help you to bread and cheese--no, nor kisses either. But
keep him near you. Later, you will find, perhaps, that all along he has
been the real Paul--the living, growing Paul; the other--the active,
worldly, pushful Paul, only the stuff that dreams are made of, his
fretful life a troubled night rounded by a sleep."

"I have been driving him away," I said. "He is so--so impracticable."

Dan shook his head gravely. "It is not his world," he repeated. "We must
eat, drink--be husbands, fathers. He does not understand. Here he is the
child. Take care of him."

We sat in silence for a little while--for longer, perhaps, than it
seemed to us--Dan in the chair opposite to me, each of us occupied with
his own thoughts.

"You have an excellent agent," said Dan; "retain her services as long as
you can. She possesses the great advantage of having no conscience, as
regards your affairs. Women never