sh of tears came to his eyes as he turned away to leave his
earliest and best-loved college friend. But Kennedy stopped him, and
said wildly--

"Stop, Julian Home, you shall hear me speak. I can hardly believe that
you do this of your own responsibility--without Violet's--nay, nay, I
must not call her so--without your sister's consent. And if this be so,
hear me. Tell her that I scorn the heart which would thus fling away
its plighted love: tell her that she has committed a great sin in thus
rejecting me: tell her that _she_ is now responsible for all my
future,--that whatever errors I may fall into, whatever sins I may
commit, whatever disgrace or ruin I may incur, _she_ is the author of
them. Tell her that if I ever live to do ungenerous acts, or ever yield
to bursts of foolish passion, the acts are hers, not mine; _she_ will
have caused them; my life lies at her feet. Tell her this before it is
too late. What? you still wish to hurry away? Go, then." He almost
pushed Julian out, and banged the door after him.

Amazed at this paroxysm of wrath and madness, Julian went down-stairs
with a slow step and a heavy, heavy heart; above all, he dreaded the
necessity of breaking to Violet the heart-rending intelligence of his
decision, and the circumstances which caused it. He trembled to do it,
for he knew not how crushing the weight might prove. At last he
determined to write to his mother, and to beg her to bear for him the
pain of telling that which her womanly tact and maternal sympathy might
make less overwhelming to be borne.

But Kennedy, after Julian's words, rushed out of his rooms, and it was
night. He left the college, and wandered into the fields--he knew not
whither, nor with what intent.

His brain was on fire. The last gleam that lent brightness to his life
had been extinguished; the friend whom he loved best had cast him off;
his name was sullied; his love rejected. It was not _thought_ which
kept him in a tumult, but only a physical consciousness of dreadful,
irremediable calamity; and but for the wind which blew so coldly and
savagely in his face, and the rain that soaked his clothes and cooled
the fever of his forehead, he feared that he might go mad.

He did not return to the college till long past midnight; and the old
porter, as he got out of bed to open the gate, could not help saying to
him in a tone of reproach--

"Oh, Mr Kennedy, sir--excuse me, sir--but these are bad ways."

The