easantness the worst that Leander could have imagined.

The poor man tottered back to his room again, in a most unenviable frame
of mind; not even the prospect of being delivered from the goddess could
reconcile him to the price he must pay for it. He was going to take a
plunge into downright crime now; and if his friend the inspector came to
hear of it, ruin must follow. And, in any case, the cloak and the ring
would be gone beyond recovery, while these cut-throat housebreakers
would henceforth have a hold over him; they might insist upon steeping
him in blacker crime still, and he knew he would never have the courage
to resist.

As he thought of the new difficulties and dangers that compassed him
round about, he was frequently on the verge of tears, and his couch
that night was visited by dreadful dreams, in which he sought audience
of the Evil One himself at cross-roads, was chased over half London by
police, and dragged over the other half by burglars, to be finally
flattened by the fall of Aphrodite.

AT LAST

IX.

"Does not the stone rebuke me
For being more stone than it?"

_Winter's Tale._

"Yet did he loath to see the image fair,
White and unchanged of face, unmoved of limb!"

_Earthly Paradise._

Leander's hand was very tremulous all the next day, as several indignant
clients discovered, and he closed as early as he could, feeling it
impossible to attend to business under the circumstances.

About seven o'clock he went up to his sitting-room. A difficult and
ungrateful task was before him. To facilitate her removal, he must
persuade the goddess to take up a position in the saloon for the night;
and, much as he had suffered from her, there was something traitorous in
delivering her over to these coarse burglars.

He waited until the statue showed signs of returning animation, and then
said, "Good evening, mum," more obsequiously than usual.

She never deigned to notice or return his salutations. "Hairdresser,"
she said abruptly, "I am weary of this sordid place."

He was pleased, for it furthered his views. "It isn't so sordid in the
saloon, where you stood the other evening, you know," he replied. "Will
you step down there?"

"Bah!" she said, "it is _all_ sordid. Leander, a restlessness has come
upon me. I come back night after night out of the vagueness in which I
have lain so long, and for what? To stand here in this mean cha