I wished I had never been born. But hers was a
nature of surprises, and impulsive, like my own. Beside the cabinet she
turned, calm again, all trace of anger vanished from her face. Drawing a
hawthorn sprig from a porcelain vase I had given her, she put it in my
hand.

"Let us forget this, Richard," said she; "we have both been very
foolish."

Forget, indeed! Unless Heaven had robbed me of reason, had torn the past
from me at a single stroke. I could not have forgotten. When I reached
my lodgings I sent the anxious Banks about his business and threw myself
in a great chair before the window, the chair she had chosen. Strange to
say, I had no sensation save numbness. The time must have been about two
of the clock: I took no account of it. I recall Banks coming timidly
back with the news that two gentlemen had called. I bade him send them
away. Would my honour not have Mrs. Marble cook my dinner, and be
dressed for Lady Pembroke's ball? I sent him off again, harshly.

After a long while the slamming of a coach door roused me, and I was
straightway seized with such an agony of mind that I could have cried
aloud. 'Twas like the pain of blood flowing back into a frozen limb.
Darkness was fast gathering as I reached the street and began to walk
madly. Word by word I rehearsed the scene in the drawing-room over the
Park, but I could not think calmly, for the pain of it. Little by little
I probed, writhing, until far back in my boyhood I was tearing at the
dead roots of that cherished plant, which was the Hope of Her Love. It
had grown with my own life, and now with its death to-day I felt that I
had lost all that was dear to me. Then, in the midst of this abject
self-pity, I was stricken with shame. I thought of Comyn, who had borne
the same misfortune as a man should. Had his pain been the less because
he had not loved her from childhood? Like Comyn, I resolved to labour
for her happiness.

What hour of the night it was I know not when a man touched me on the
shoulder, and I came to myself with a start. I was in a narrow street
lined by hideous houses, their windows glaring with light. Each seemed a
skull, with rays darting from its grinning eye-holes. Within I caught
glimpses of debauchery that turned me sick. Ten paces away three women
and a man were brawling, the low angry tones of his voice mingling with
the screeches of their Billingsgate. Muffled figures were passing and
repassing unconcernedly, some entering the ho