ome as it was before
Christmas. Talk of forlorn hopes! Each time's worse than the last. I've
come straight from her now. I don't know what you must think of me! It's
not ten minutes since we said good-night." The big moustache trembled.
"I felt a Judas," he whispered--"an absolute Judas!"

"I believe it's all nerves," said Delavoye, but with so little
conviction that I loudly echoed the belief.

"But I don't go in for nerves," protested Berridge; "none of us do, in
our family. We don't believe in them. We think they're a modern excuse
for anything you like to do or say; that's what we think about nerves.
I'm not going to start them just to make myself out better than I am.
It's my heart that's rotten, not my nerves."

"I admire your attitude," said Delavoye, "but I don't agree with you.
It'll all come back to you in the end--everything you think you've
lost--and then you'll feel as though you'd awakened from a bad dream."

"But sometimes I do wake up, as it is!" cried Berridge, catching at the
idea. "Nearly every morning, when I'm dressing, things look different.
I feel my old self again--the luckiest fellow alive--engaged to the
sweetest girl! She's always that, you know; don't imagine for one moment
that I ever think less of Edith; she always was and would be a million
times too good for me. If only she'd see it for herself, and chuck me up
of her own accord! I've even tried to tell her what I feel; but she
won't meet me half-way; the real truth never seems to enter her head.
How to tell her outright I don't know. It would have been easy enough
last year, when her people wouldn't let us be properly engaged. But they
gave in at Christmas when I had my rise in screw; and now she's got her
ring, and given me this one--how on earth can I go and give it her
back?"

"May I see?" asked Delavoye, holding out his hand; and I for one was
grateful to him for the diversion of the few seconds we spent inspecting
an old enamelled ring with a white peacock on a crimson ground. Berridge
asked us if we thought it a very peculiar ring, as they all did at
Berylstow, and he babbled on about the circumstances of its purchase by
his dear, sweet, open-handed Edith. It did him good to talk. A tinge of
health returned to his cadaverous cheeks, and for a time his moustache
looked less out of keeping and proportion.

But it was the mere reactionary surcease of prolonged pain, and the fit
came on again in uglier guise before he left.

"I