my brains, and shall probably succumb. I wonder if she will induce
another rhyming attack to-night. Was that night a dream or a reality?
Could I have had a short but sharp attack of brain fever? Perhaps
the less I think about it the better; but it is decidedly hard to be
gifted with the instincts of a poet and denied the verbal formulation.
And it was the most painfully realistic, aggressively material
thing, that conflict in my brain, that mortal ever experienced. That,
however, may have been a mere figment of my excited imagination.
But what excited my imagination? That is the question. If I remember
aright, I was mentally discoursing with some enthusiasm upon Miss
Penrhyn's charms, but in strict impartiality it cannot be said that
I was excited. The excitement was like that produced by an onslaught
from behind. It is the more surprising, as I think it may be conceded
that I have myself pretty well in hand by this time, and that my
nerves, unruly as nature saw fit to make them, are now my very abject
slaves. Occasionally one of our fiction carpenters flies off at a
tangent and treats us to a series of intellectual gymnastics, the
significance of which--so we are called upon to digest--is that the
soul of one dead, finding its present clime too warm--or too cold--or
having left something undone on earth, takes temporary and summary
possession of an unfortunate still in the flesh, and through this
unhappy medium endeavors to work his will. Perhaps that is what is the
matter with me. Pollok, perchance, who died in his flower, thinking
that he had not given the world a big enough pill to swallow, wants to
concoct another dose in my presumably vacant brain. I appreciate
the compliment, but I disdain to be Pollok's mouthpiece: I will be
original or nothing. Besides, it is deuced uncomfortable. And I should
like to know if there is anything in life more bitter than the sense,
even momentary, of loss of self-mastery. Well, as I remarked a few
moments since, the less I think about it the better, considering my
unfortunate peculiarities. I will go and see Miss Penrhyn to-morrow;
that will be sufficiently distracting for the present."

V.

He found her the next day in a pretty morning-room, dressed in a long
white gown, with a single great yellow rose at her throat. She had
a piece of tapestry in her hand, and as she rose to greet him, the
plain, heavy folds of her gown clinging about her, and her dark
hair bound clos