it will; and we poor devils have no
say in it."

"What do you advise me, then?"

Lennan had an almost overwhelming impulse to turn on his heel and leave
the young man standing there. But he forced himself to look at his face,
which even then had its attraction--perhaps more so than ever, so pallid
and desperate it was. And he said slowly, staring mentally at every
word:

"I'm not up to giving you advice. The only thing I might say is: One
does not press oneself where one isn't wanted; all the same--who knows?
So long as she feels you're there, waiting, she might turn to you at any
moment. The more chivalrous you are, Oliver, the more patiently you
wait, the better chance you have."

Oliver took those words of little comfort without flinching. "I see," he
said. "Thanks! But, my God! it's hard. I never could wait." And with
that epigram on himself, holding out his hand, he turned away.

Lennan went slowly home, trying to gauge exactly how anyone who knew all
would judge him. It was a little difficult in this affair to keep a
shred of dignity.

Sylvia had not gone up, and he saw her looking at him anxiously. The one
strange comfort in all this was that his feeling for her, at any rate,
had not changed. It seemed even to have deepened--to be more real to
him.

How could he help staying awake that night? How could he help thinking,
then? And long time he lay, staring at the dark.

As if thinking were any good for fever in the veins!

X

Passion never plays the game. It, at all events, is free from
self-consciousness, and pride; from dignity, nerves, scruples, cant,
moralities; from hypocrisies, and wisdom, and fears for pocket, and
position in this world and the next. Well did the old painters limn it
as an arrow or a wind! If it had not been as swift and darting, Earth
must long ago have drifted through space untenanted--to let. . . .

After that fevered night Lennan went to his studio at the usual hour and
naturally did not do a stroke of work. He was even obliged to send away
his model. The fellow had been his hairdresser, but, getting ill, and
falling on dark days, one morning had come to the studio, to ask with
manifest shame if his head were any good. After having tested his
capacity for standing still, and giving him some introductions, Lennan
had noted him down: "Five feet nine, good hair, lean face, something
tortured and pathetic. Give him a turn if possible." The turn had come,