y in
her chair, gave utterance to that peculiar clucking, 'TS, TS, TS, TS,'
whereby certain women express emotions too deep for words.

"Abel, roused by Hollins's question, answered, with a sudden energy--

"'Love! there is no love in the world. Where will you find it? Tell me,
and I'll go there. Love! I'd like to see it! If all human hearts were
like mine, we might have an Arcadia; but most men have no hearts. The
world is a miserable, hollow, deceitful shell of vanity and hypocrisy.
No: let us give up. We were born before our time: this age is not worthy
of us.'

"Hollins stared at the speaker in utter amazement. Shelldrake gave a
long whistle, and finally gasped out--

"'Well, what next?'

"None of us were prepared for such a sudden and complete wreck of our
Arcadian scheme. The foundations had been sapped before, it is true; but
we had not perceived it; and now, in two short days, the whole edifice
tumbled about our ears. Though it was inevitable, we felt a shock of
sorrow, and a silence fell upon us. Only that scamp of a Perkins Brown,
chuckling and rubbing his boot, really rejoiced. I could have kicked
him.

"We all went to bed, feeling that the charm of our Arcadian life was
over. I was so full of the new happiness of love that I was scarcely
conscious of regret. I seemed to have leaped at once into responsible
manhood, and a glad rush of courage filled me at the knowledge that
my own heart was a better oracle than those--now so shamefully
overthrown--on whom I had so long implicitly relied. In the first
revulsion of feeling, I was perhaps unjust to my associates. I see
now, more clearly, the causes of those vagaries, which originated in a
genuine aspiration, and failed from an ignorance of the true nature
of Man, quite as much as from the egotism of the individuals. Other
attempts at reorganizing Society were made about the same time by men of
culture and experience, but in the A. C. we had neither. Our leaders had
caught a few half-truths, which, in their minds, were speedily warped
into errors. I can laugh over the absurdities I helped to perpetrate,
but I must confess that the experiences of those few weeks went far
towards making a man of me."

"Did the A. C. break up at once?" asked Mr. Johnson.

"Not precisely; though Eunice and I left the house within two days,
as we had agreed. We were not married immediately, however. Three long
years--years of hope and mutual encouragement--passed away before