at night by the half-sleeping sense that a door or
window has been left unfastened, or in the day by the remembrance of
unanswered letters. So does that promise haunt me from time to time, and
has done to-day particularly.'

There was a pause, and they smoked on. Millborne's eyes, though fixed on
the fire, were really regarding attentively a town in the West of
England.

'Yes,' he continued, 'I have never quite forgotten it, though during the
busy years of my life it was shelved and buried under the pressure of my
pursuits. And, as I say, to-day in particular, an incident in the law-
report of a somewhat similar kind has brought it back again vividly.
However, what it was I can tell you in a few words, though no doubt you,
as a man of the world, will smile at the thinness of my skin when you
hear it . . . I came up to town at one-and-twenty, from Toneborough, in
Outer Wessex, where I was born, and where, before I left, I had won the
heart of a young woman of my own age. I promised her marriage, took
advantage of my promise, and--am a bachelor.'

'The old story.'

The other nodded.

'I left the place, and thought at the time I had done a very clever thing
in getting so easily out of an entanglement. But I have lived long
enough for that promise to return to bother me--to be honest, not
altogether as a pricking of the conscience, but as a dissatisfaction with
myself as a specimen of the heap of flesh called humanity. If I were to
ask you to lend me fifty pounds, which I would repay you next midsummer,
and I did not repay you, I should consider myself a shabby sort of
fellow, especially if you wanted the money badly. Yet I promised that
girl just as distinctly; and then coolly broke my word, as if doing so
were rather smart conduct than a mean action, for which the poor victim
herself, encumbered with a child, and not I, had really to pay the
penalty, in spite of certain pecuniary aid that was given. There, that's
the retrospective trouble that I am always unearthing; and you may hardly
believe that though so many years have elapsed, and it is all gone by and
done with, and she must be getting on for an old woman now, as I am for
an old man, it really often destroys my sense of self-respect still.'

'O, I can understand it. All depends upon the temperament. Thousands of
men would have forgotten all about it; so would you, perhaps, if you had
married and had a family. Did she ever marry?'

'I don't think