rried to Esther, and bound to live with her so long as
life should last--twenty, forty, perhaps fifty years more. Every day of
those years to be spent in her society; he and she face to face, soul to
soul; they two alone amid all the whirling, busy, indifferent world. So
near together in semblance; in truth, so far apart as regards all that
makes life dear.

Willoughby groaned. From the woman he did not love, whom he had never
loved, he might not again go free; so much he recognized. The feeling he
had once entertained for Esther, strange compound of mistaken chivalry
and flattered vanity, was long since extinct; but what, then, was the
sentiment with which she inspired him? For he was not indifferent to
her--no, never for one instant could he persuade himself he was
indifferent, never for one instant could he banish her from his
thoughts. His mind's eye followed her during his hours of absence as
pertinaciously as his bodily eye dwelt upon her actual presence. She was
the principal object of the universe to him, the centre around which his
wheel of life revolved with an appalling fidelity.

What did it mean? What could it mean? he asked himself with anguish.

And the sweat broke out upon his forehead and his hands grew cold, for
on a sudden the truth lay there like a written word upon the tablecloth
before him. This woman, whom he had taken to himself for better, for
worse, inspired him with a passion, intense indeed, all-masterful,
soul-subduing as Love itself.... But when he understood the terror of
his Hatred, he laid his head upon his arms and wept, not facile tears
like Esther's, but tears wrung out from his agonizing, unavailing
regret.

'A POOR STICK'

By Arthur Morrison

(_Tales of Mean Streets_, London: Methuen and Co., 1894) Published by
permission of Methuen and Co.

Mrs. Jennings (or Jinnins, as the neighbours would have it) ruled
absolutely at home, when she took so much trouble as to do anything at
all there--which was less often than might have been. As for Robert her
husband, he was a poor stick, said the neighbours. And yet he was a man
with enough of hardihood to remain a non-unionist in the erectors' shop
at Maidment's all the years of his service; no mean test of a man's
fortitude and resolution, as many a sufferer for independent opinion
might testify. The truth was that Bob never grew out of his
courtship-blindness. Mrs. Jennings governed as she pleased, stayed out
or came home as