is head over the parapet, and his anguish
broke out in sobs and tears. Catharine took his hand in hers, leaned
over him, and whispered:

"Tom, listen--I shall never be any man's wife."

Before he could say another word she had gone, and he felt that he should
never see her again.

What makes the peculiar pang of parting? The coach comes up; the friend
mounts; there is the wave of a handkerchief. I follow him to the crest
of the hill; he disappears, and I am left to walk down the dusty lane
alone. Am I melancholy simply because I shall not see him for a month or
a year? She whom I have loved for half a life lies dying. I kiss her
and bid her good-bye. Is the bare loss the sole cause of my misery, my
despair, breeding that mad longing that I myself might die? In all
parting there is something infinite. We see in it a symbol of the order
of the universe, and it is because that death-bed farewell stands for so
much that we break down. "If it pleases God," says Swift to Pope, "to
restore me to my health, I shall readily make a third journey; if not, we
must part _as all human creatures have parted_." As all human creatures
have parted! Swift did not say that by way of consolation.

Tom turned homewards. Catharine's last words were incessantly in his
mind. What they meant he knew not and could not imagine, but in the
midst of his trouble rose up something not worth calling joy, a little
thread of water in the waste: it was a little relief that nobody was
preferred before him, and that nobody would possess what to him was
denied. He told his father, and found his faith unshakable. There was a
letter for him in a handwriting he thought he knew, but he was not quite
sure. It was as follows:--

"DEAR MR. CATCHPOLE,--I hope you will excuse the liberty I have taken
in writing to you. I have left my place at the Terrace. I cannot
help sending these few lines to say that Orkid Jim has been causing
mischief here, and if he's had anything to do with your going he's a
liar. It was all because I wouldn't go to the door and let him in,
and gave missus a bit of my mind about him that I had notice. I
wasn't sorry, however, for my cough is bad, and I couldn't stand
running up and down those Terrace stairs. It was different at the
shop. I thought I should just like to let you know that whatever
missus and master may say, _I'm_ sure you have done nothing but what
is quite straight.