your own."

I almost believed it now.

"Looks like it," I thought, as I hailed a coming crawler and got in.

I said nothing to the man, but I suppose he had noted my glance at my
watch before I got into the cab, and, in the hopes of an over-fare, he
began lashing his horse across the head and neck. It was this that
roused me out of a gloomy reverie, and I pushed up the trap.

"If you touch that animal again I'll get out," I said, angrily, as the
poor brute tossed his head from side to side.

"Beg pardin', sir! Thought you was in a 'urry, sir!" came through the
roof.

"Drive decently, and don't think," I muttered, relapsing into my own
thoughts, cutting as the lash on the chestnut's neck.

I had stopped the lash, but I could not stop my thoughts. After dinner
that evening I went to see her again. In this I did not succeed. I was
told she had already gone to bed, but she had left a message for me,
and not a word was said about rescinding the promise that had been
forced from her in the morning. On the whole I went away satisfied and
relieved.

"She will be all right," I thought, "now she has once made up her mind.
It is extraordinary; women seem to have as great an aversion to forming
a decision as children have to taking medicine."

"What should I do with myself now?" I questioned, standing idly in the
hot, dusty London street. It was too early for me to go to bed, and I
knew the pater would have turned in before I got back. I sauntered down
two streets, and then drove to the Club. In the card-room I found Dick
and two other fellows, one of whom was a stranger to me. As I made the
convenient fourth, we played a rubber at whist. After this it seemed
generally voted that the weather was too fatiguing for the strain of
whist, and an adjournment was made to an open window, chairs, and
drinks. I was preoccupied with my own thoughts, and I sat listening
fitfully to the other men's gossip. Sometimes a sentence came to me; at
one moment I was listening without hearing, the next I was hearing
without listening. At last the phrase struck me--"Yes; dying horribly,
like a rat of phosphorus."

I looked across to the man sitting opposite me. He was a young fellow,
and I had gathered from to-night's conversation that he was studying
medicine.

"Who is that?" I asked, with a sort of idle curiosity.

"Oh, only a fellow in the hospital," he answered with a cigarette
between his teeth. "A paying patient. D. T., you know. I s