er, just as you threaten it now. Go, if you will, or if you must;
but let this be our last meeting and last parting."

"It is as such I mean it,--good-bye!" I sprang on the stepping-stone as
I spoke, and at the same instant a glittering object splashed into the
stream close to me. I saw it, just as one might see the lustre of a
trout's back as it rose to a fly. I don't know what demon sat where my
heart ought to have been, but I pressed my hat over my eyes, and went on
without turning my head.

CHAPTER XXXIX. ON THE EDGE OF A TORRENT

Very conflicting and very mixed were my feelings, as I set forth alone.
I had come well, very well, out of a trying emergency. I was neither
driven to pretend I was something other than myself, with grand
surroundings, and illustrious belongings, nor had I masqueraded under
a feigned name and a false history; but as Potts, son of Potts the
apothecary, I had carried my head high and borne myself creditably.

_Magna est Veritas_, indeed! I am not so sure of the _praevalebit
semper_, but, assuredly, where it does succeed, the success is
wonderful.

Heaven knows into what tortuous entanglements might my passion for the
"imaginative"--I liked this name for it--have led me, had I given way to
one of my usual temptations. In more than one of my flights have I found
myself carried up into a region, and have had to sustain an atmosphere
very unsuited to my respiration, and now, with the mere prudence of
walking on the _terra firma_, and treading the common highway of life,
I found I had reached my goal safely and speedily. Flowers do not assume
to be shrubs, nor shrubs affect to be forest trees; the limestone and
granite never pretend that they are porphyry and onyx. Nature is real,
and why should man alone be untruthful and unreal? If I liked these
reflections, and tried to lose myself in them, it was in the hope of
shutting out others less gratifying; but, do what I would, there, before
me, arose the image of Catinka, as she stood at the edge of the rivulet,
that stream which seemed to cut me off from one portion of my life, and
make the past irrevocably gone forever.

I am certain I was quite right in parting with that girl. Any
respectable man, a father of a family, would have applauded me for
severing this dangerous connection. What could come of such association
except unhappiness? "Potts," would the biographer say,--"Potts saw, with
the unerring instinct of his quick perception,