.

"Do you remember," Casti continued, "when all my talk used to be about
Rome, and how I planned to see it one day--see it again. I should say?
Strange to think that I really was born in Rome. I used to call myself
a Roman, you know, and grow hot with pride when I thought of it. Those
were dreams. Oh, I was to do wonderful things! Poetry was to make me
rich, and then I would go and live in Italy, and fill my lungs with the
breath of the Forum, and write my great Epic. How good that we can't
foresee our lives!"

"I wish to heaven," Waymark exclaimed, when they were parting, "that
you would be a man and shake this monstrous yoke from off your neck! It
is that that is killing you. Give yourself a chance. Defy everything
and make yourself free."

Julian shook his head sadly.

"Too late! I haven't the courage. My mind weakens with my body."

He went to his lodgings, and, as he anticipated, found that Harriet had
not yet come home. She was almost always out very late, and he had
learnt too well what t expect on her return. In spite of her illness,
of which she made the most when it suited her purpose, she was able t
wander about at all hours with the acquaintances her husband did not
even know by name, and Julian had no longer the strength even to
implore her to have pity on him. He absence racked him with nervous
fears; her presence tortured him to agony. Weakness in him had reached
a criminal degree. Once or twice he had all but made up his mind to
flee secretly, and only let her know his determination when he had
gone; but his poverty interposed such obstacles that he ended by
accepting them as excuses for his hesitation. The mere thought of
fulfilling the duty which he owed to himself, of speaking out with
manly firmness, and telling her that here at length all ended between
them--that was a terror to his soul. So he stayed on and allowed her to
kill him by slow torment. He was at least carrying out to the letter
the promise he had made to her father, and this thought supplied him
with a flattering unction which, such was his disposition, at times
even brought him a moment's solace.

There was no fire in the room; he sank upon a chair and waited. Every
sound in the street below sent the blood back upon his heart. At length
there came the fumbling of a latch-key--he could hear it plainly--and
then the heavy foot ascending the stairs. Her glazed eyes and red
cheeks told the familiar tale. She sat down opposite him a