instance, you see, I want to
talk."

His hearer, though puzzled by the words, vaguely understood the smile
of self-contempt with which they were closed.

"As a woman-hater, too, my performances are beneath contempt.
I _did_ think," said Mr. Fogo with something of testiness in his
voice, "I should prove an adequate woman-hater, whereas it happens--"

He broke off suddenly, and took a turn or two up and down the room.
Caleb could have finished the sentence for him, but refrained.

"Surely," said Mr. Fogo, pausing suddenly in his walk, "surely the
conditions were favourable enough. Listen. It is not so very long
ago since I possessed ambitions--hopes; hopes that I hugged to myself
as only a silent man may. With them I meant to move the world, so
far as a writer can move the world (which I daresay may be quite an
inch). These hopes I put in the keeping of the woman I loved.
Can you foresee the rest?"

Caleb fumbled in his pocket for his pipe, found it, held it up
between finger and thumb, and, looking along the stem, nodded.

"We were engaged to be married. Two days before the day fixed for
our wedding she--she came to me (knowing me, I suppose, to be a mild
man) and told me she was married--had been married for a week or
more, to a man I had never seen--a Mr. Goodwyn-Sandys. Hallo! is it
broken?"

For the pipe had dropped from Caleb's fingers and lay in pieces upon
the floor.

"Quite so," he went on in answer to the white face confronting him,
"I know it. She is at this moment living in Troy with her husband.
I had understood they were in America; but the finger of fate is in
every pie."

Caleb drew out a large handkerchief, and, mopping his brow, gasped--

"Well, of all--" And then broke off to add feebly, "Here's a
coincidence!--as Bill said when he was hanged 'pon his birthday."

"I have not met her yet, and until now have avoided the chance.
But now I am curious to see her--"

"Don't 'ee, sir."

"And to-night intended writing."

"Don't 'ee, sir; don't 'ee."

"To ask for an interview, Caleb," pursued Mr. Fogo, drawing himself
up suddenly, while his eyes fairly gleamed behind his spectacles.
"Here I am, my past wrecked and all its cargo of ambitions scattered
on the sands, and yet--and yet I feel tonight that I could thank that
woman. Do you understand?"

"I reckon I do," said Caleb, rising heavily and making for the door.

He stopped with his hand on the door, and turning, observed his
m