y did begin to open my eyes; for no sooner had the
unfortunate accountant parted with his ring, than his ebbing affections
rushed back in a miraculous flood, and he was begging for it again in
five minutes, vowing that he had been mad but now was sane, and looking
more himself into the bargain. But Delavoye was adamant to these
hysterical entreaties. He plied Berridge with his own previous arguments
against the marriage, and once at least he struck a responsive chord
from those frayed nerves.

"Nobody but yourself," he pointed out, "ever said you didn't love her;
but see what love makes of you! Can you dream of marriage in such a
state? Is it fair to the girl, until you've really reconsidered the
whole matter and learnt your own mind once for all? Could she be happy?
Would she be--it was your own suggestion--but are you sure she would be
even safe?"

Berridge wrung his hands in new despair; yes, he had forgotten that!
Those awful instincts were the one unalterably awful feature. Not that
he felt them still; but to recollect them as genuine impulses, or at
best as irresistible thoughts, was to freeze his self-distrust into a
cureless cancer.

"I was forgetting all that," he moaned. "And yet here in my pocket is
the very book those hopeless lines are from. I bought it at Stoneham's
this morning. It's the most peculiar poem I ever read. I can't quite
make it out. But that bit was clear enough. Only hear how it goes on!"

And in a school-childish singsong, with no expression but that
involuntarily imparted by his quavering voice, he read twelve lines
aloud--

"Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because----"

He shuddered horribly--

"The dead so soon grow cold.

"Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die."

"It's all I'm fit for, death!" groaned Guy Berridge, trying to tug the
fierce moustache out of his mild face. "The sooner the better, for me!
And yet I did love her, God knows I did!" He turned upon Uvo Delavoye in
a sudden blaze. "And so I do still--do you hear me? Then give me back my
ring, I say, and don't encourage me in this madness--you--you devil!"

[Illustration: Trying