eason.

"I want you to be happy and contented, my dear Judith."

"H'm," she said.

Her slipper dangling as usual from the tip of her foot fell to the
ground. I declare I was only half conscious of the accident as my mind
was deep in other things.

"You don't even pick up my slipper," she said.

"Ten thousand pardons," I exclaimed, springing forward. But she had
anticipated my intention. We remained staring into the fire and saying
nothing. As she professed to be tired I went away early.

At the front door of the mansions, finding I had left my umbrella
behind, I remounted the stairs, and rang Judith's bell. After a while
I saw her figure through the ground-glass panel approach the door, but
before she opened it, she turned out the light in the passage.

"Marcus!" she cried, rather excitedly; and in the dimness of the
threshold her eyes looked strangely accusative of tears. "You have come
back!"

"Yes," said I, "for my umbrella."

She looked at me for a moment, laughed, clapped her hands to her throat,
turned away sharply, caught up my umbrella, and putting it into my hands
and thrusting me back shut the door in my face. In great astonishment I
went downstairs again. What is wrong with Judith? She said this evening
that all men are cruel. Now, I am a man. Therefore I am cruel. A perfect
syllogism. But how have I been cruel?

I walked home. There is nothing so consoling to the depressed man as the
unmitigated misery of a walk through the London rain. One is not
mocked by any factitious gaiety. The mind is in harmony with the sodden
universe. It is well to have everything in the world wrong at one and
the same time.

I have changed my drenched garments for dressing-gown and slippers. I
find on my writing-table a letter addressed in a round childish hand.
It is from Carlotta, who for the last fortnight has been staying in
Cornwall with the McMurrays. I have known few fortnights so long. In
a ridiculous schoolboy way I have been counting the days to her
return--the day after to-morrow.

The letter begins: "Seer Marcous dear." The spelling is a little jest
between us. The inversion is a quaint invention of her own. "Mrs.
McMurray says, can you spare me for one more week? She wants to teach me
manners. She says I have shocked the top priest here--oh, you call him
a vikker--now I do remember--because I went out for a walk with a little
young pretty priest without a hat, and because it rained I put on his
hat a