question, it is probable that a friendship that had
existed from boyhood would then and there have been severed. He took it
that Ogilvie was merely referring to the thousand and one obstacles that
lay between him and that obvious and natural goal.

"Marry her!" he exclaimed. "Yes, you are right to look at it in that
way--to think of what it will all lead to. When I look forward, I see
nothing but a maze of impossibilities and trouble. One might as well
have fallen in love with one of the Roman maidens in the Temple of
Vesta. She is a white slave. She is a sacrifice to the monstrous
theories of that bloodless old pagan, her father. And then she is
courted and flattered on all sides; she lives in a smoke of incense: do
you think, even supposing that all other difficulties were removed--that
she cared for no one else, that she were to care for me, that the
influence of her father was gone--do you think she would surrender all
the admiration she provokes and the excitement of the life she leads, to
come and live in a dungeon in the Highlands? A single day like to-day
would kill her, she is so fine and delicate--like a rose leaf, I have
often thought. No, no, Ogilvie, I have thought of it every way. It is
like a riddle that you twist and twist about to try and get the answer;
and I can get no answer at all, unless wishing that I had never been
born. And perhaps that would have been better."

"You take too gloomy a view of it, Macleod," said Ogilvie. "For one
thing, look at the common-sense of the matter. Suppose that she is very
ambitious to succeed in her profession, that is all very well; but, mind
you, it is a very hard life. And if you put before her the chance of
being styled Lady Macleod--well, I may be wrong, but I should say that
would count for something. I haven't known many actresses myself--"

"That is idle talk," Macleod said; and then he added, proudly, "You do
not know this woman as I know her."

He put aside his pipe; but in truth he had never lit it.

"Come," said he, with a tired look, "I have bored you enough. You won't
mind, Ogilvie? The whole of the day I was saying to myself that I would
keep all this thing to myself, if my heart burst over it; but you see I
could not do it, and I have made you the victim, after all. And we will
go into the drawing-room now; and we will have a song. And that was a
very good song you sang one night in London, Ogilvie--it was about
'Death's black wine'--and do you thi