s went into the fire-grate, and were
there carefully fired and reduced to ashes. It was only the discovery
that he was reduced to his final sheet of paper which really screwed his
courage to the sticking-point. Being once there it held until the need
for it was over; but when the letter was written it would have followed
its forerunners if there had but been another sheet of paper in the
house or the day had been anything but Sunday. As it was, he let it
stand perforce, enveloped and addressed it in a sort of desperation, and
put it in his pocket ready for personal delivery. The quartette party
always met on Sunday afternoons and played sacred music. Not so long ago
they had been used to meet in church; but since the introduction of gas
to the venerable building the afternoon service had been abandoned and
an evening service instituted in its stead. The music-parties were held
at Fuller's in the summer-time, and Reuben's chance of a declaration
by letter looked simple and easy enough. It was but to slip the
all-important note into Ruth's hand with a petition to her to read it,
and the thing was done. He had time enough to do this over and over and
over again in fancy as he walked down the sunlit street with his
violin case tucked under his arm. He had time enough to be accepted
and rejected just as often--to picture and enjoy the rapture of the one
event and the misery and life-long loneliness entailed by the other.
Every time his eager fancy slipped the note into Ruth's fingers his
heart leaped and his hands went hot and moist, but if ever the screw of
courage gave a backward turn the thought of Ferdinand twisted it back
to the sticking-point again, and he was all resolve once more. The
experience of ages has declared that there is no better spur for
the halting paces of a laggard lover than that which is supplied by
jealousy. The simplest coquette that ever tortured hearts in a hay-field
is aware of the fact, and needs no appeal to the experience of ages to
support her.

Reuben pushed the green gate aside, and entering upon the lawn, found
Fuller in the act of carrying the table to its customary place. He had
been so free of the house, and had been for years so accustomed to enter
it and leave it at his will, that there was nothing in the world but his
own restraining sense of shyness to prevent him from walking past his
host with the merest salutation and fulfilling his own purpose then
and there. But the trouble was