the host no longer resisted the
guest's growing anxiety to be gone. He arose and exchanged with him
good wishes and goodbyes.

'Marriage is evidently a most successful institution,' said he,
half-jesting, half-sincere; 'you almost make me inclined to go and get
married myself. Confess now your thoughts have been at home the whole
evening.'

Willoughby thus addressed turned red to the roots of his hair, but did
not deny it.

The other laughed. 'And very commendable they should be,' he continued,
'since you are scarcely, so to speak, out of your honeymoon.'

With a social smile on his lips, Willoughby calculated a moment before
replying, 'I have been married exactly three months and three days.'
Then, after a few words respecting their next meeting, the two shook
hands and parted--the young host to finish the evening with books and
pipe, the young husband to set out on a twenty minutes' walk to his
home.

It was a cold, clear December night following a day of rain. A touch of
frost in the air had dried the pavements, and Willoughby's footfall
ringing upon the stones re-echoed down the empty suburban street. Above
his head was a dark, remote sky thickly powdered with stars, and as he
turned westward Alpherat hung for a moment 'comme le point sur un _i_',
over the slender spire of St John's. But he was insensible to the worlds
about him; he was absorbed in his own thoughts, and these, as his friend
had surmised, were entirely with his wife. For Esther's face was always
before his eyes, her voice was always in his ears, she filled the
universe for him; yet only four months ago he had never seen her, had
never heard her name. This was the curious part of it--here in December
he found himself the husband of a girl who was completely dependent upon
him not only for food, clothes, and lodging, but for her present
happiness, her whole future life; and last July he had been scarcely
more than a boy himself, with no greater care on his mind than the
pleasant difficulty of deciding where he should spend his annual three
weeks' holiday.

But it is events, not months or years, which age. Willoughby, who
was only twenty-six, remembered his youth as a sometime companion
irrevocably lost to him; its vague, delightful hopes were now
crystallized into definite ties, and its happy irresponsibilities
displaced by a sense of care, inseparable perhaps from the most
fortunate of marriages.

As he reached the street in which he lodged