for the work before him,--but after
standing for a moment or two leaning on the chest of drawers in his
bedroom, he gave up this idea. "After all that's come and gone," he
said to himself, "if I cannot win her as I am now, I cannot win her
at all." And then he swore to himself a solemn oath, resolving that
he would repeat the purport of it to Lily herself,--that this should
be the last attempt. "What's the use of it? Everybody ridicules me.
And I am ridiculous. I am an ass. It's all very well wanting to be
prime minister; but if you can't be prime minister, you must do
without being prime minister." Then he attempted to sing the old
song--"Shall I, sighing in despair, die because a woman's fair? If
she be not fair to me, what care I how fair she be?" But he did care,
and he told himself that the song did him no good. As it was not
time for him as yet to go to Lily, he threw himself on the sofa,
and strove to read a book. Then all the weary nights of his journey
prevailed over him, and he fell asleep.

When he woke it wanted a quarter to six. He sprang up, and rushing
out, jumped into a cab. "Berkeley Square,--as hard as you can go," he
said. "Number --." He thought of Rosalind, and her counsels to lovers
as to the keeping of time, and reflected that in such an emergency
as this, he might really have ruined himself by that unfortunate
slumber. When he got to Mrs. Thorne's door he knocked hurriedly, and
bustled up to the drawing-room as though everything depended on his
saving a minute. "I'm afraid I'm ever so much behind my time," he
said.

"It does not matter in the least," said Lily. "As Mrs. Arabin said
that perhaps you might call, I would not be out of the way. I
supposed that Sir Raffle was keeping you and that you wouldn't come."

"Sir Raffle was not keeping me. I fell asleep. That is the truth of
it."

"I am so sorry that you should have been disturbed!"

"Do not laugh at me, Lily,--to-day. I had been travelling a good
deal, and I suppose I was tired."

"I won't laugh at you," she said, and of a sudden her eyes became
full of tears,--she did not know why. But there they were, and she
was ashamed to put up her handkerchief, and she could not bring
herself to turn away her face, and she had no resource but that he
should see them.

"Lily!" he said.

"What a paladin you have been, John, rushing all about Europe on your
friend's behalf!"

"Don't talk about that."

"And such a successful paladin too! Why