conquer myself, but I must have time."

"You make me terribly afraid--you may wound her by a chance word."

"That is impossible. Her mind is serene--no word of mine shall disturb
it."

But Lady Betty's fears were by no means allayed. She wrote him long
letters, imploring him to keep command of himself, else she would regret
bitterly that they had ever met again. They had both fought this
terrible battle: they were neither of them emerging unscathed, but their
wounds and hurt were the price of honourable victory. She was sure of
herself; but was he--the man!--to shrink back when the supreme moment
came? The thought of loyal duty accomplished would bring equanimity
hereafter.

"Ah, if all were only a dream!" he exclaimed sadly, as he lay thinking
of nights. And then he would try to believe that he had not met Lady
Betty again, had never even heard of her since her wedding-day. He had
never made the acquaintance of the Robinsons, had never set foot in
their great ugly house at the corner. Were not all these things the
fancies of a disordered imagination, and was he not still here in
Hampstead, in his narrow iron bed up on the gallery? To-morrow he would
jump up and make his miserable breakfast as usual, would think of
working without being able to raise a hand, and would potter away the
hours. And at six in the evening he would see his prosperous neighbour
from the City go past with noiseless, gentle step, bearing a plaited
rush-bag with a skewer thrust through it. Yet what a relief to throw off
the illusions of these latter days, and find himself again as of old,
free of all the tangle; even though the problem of bread still faced
him, and the vista of hopeless days stretched away endlessly!

Alas! the morning light, filling his panelled bedroom and revealing to
his eyes the many luxuries of these prosperous days, testified only too
convincingly to the reality of recent developments.

And yet, as he turned up the well-known Hampstead street of an evening
on his way to the Robinsons, he would still struggle again to recover
the illusion that the old days were yet. Approaching the house as it
loomed in the near distance through the wintry mist, he would imagine
himself supremely unconcerned with it. And then he would stop outside
his own former door, and fumble in his pocket a moment as if to find the
key. Like lessons learnt after the mind is set, all these later
accretions to his existence were ready to drop away, t