uty that was not
for me, could there have been another woman so wholly lovely, so
altogether desirable. I could have fallen on my knees before her, to
touch the hem of her dainty gown with my lips, and cry out my love and
longing for her. But instead I was called upon to say something civil,
and therefore hypocritical, to the newly-engaged pair, and then, as soon
as decency would permit my escape, to go out from her presence for ever,
and face the black loneliness of my darkened life.

Only a few days had passed since first I had seen the beauty of her
face, but already she dominated my every thought, and I knew that there
was no hope of surcease from the aching pain of having lost her.

Had I been obliged to stand by and see her give herself to any other man
than Carson Wildred, it seemed to me that the blow would have been more
bearable. But with my almost unreasoning aversion for and distrust of
him, the thought of a marriage between these two was like the sacrifice
of fair virgins to the foul, blood-dripping jaws of the mythical
Minotaur.

Slight as was our actual acquaintance, when measured by mere time, it
appeared the maddest conceit on my part to believe for a moment that had
I come earlier into her life I might have made a difference. But, mad as
it was, I did so believe. Some voice within me, which would not be
stilled or brook contradiction, cried aloud that I might have won her
love, that she might have been mine, that only some devilish tangle of
circumstances had circumvented the fate which originally had meant that
we two should be all in all to one another.

It was perhaps the hardest task I had ever been forced to perform when
after that ominous pause, which doubtless seemed far more prolonged to
me than to the others, I held out my hand, as I was expected to do,
taking Miss Cunningham's ice-cold fingers in mine, and wishing her
happiness.

Then I was obliged to turn to Wildred, in whose eyes I saw, or fancied I
saw, a malicious light of comprehension and triumphant defiance. But his
hand I would not take.

"It is hardly necessary to congratulate you," I said haltingly. "You are
one of the most fortunate men in the world."

"And the most undeserving?" It was he who added the words, as though he
had read them in my own mind; and there was a slight, sarcastic rising
inflection of the voice at the end of the sentence, as if he put it to
me as a question.

Of course, I vouchsafed him no answer, un