cied he felt it stifling the air, and opened the window for
breath. Patchouli or copperas,--what was the difference? The mill and
his future wife came to him together; it was scarcely his fault, if he
thought of them as one, or muttered, "Damnable clog!" as he sat down to
write, his cold eye growing colder. But he did not argue the question
any longer; decision had come keenly in one moment, fixed, unalterable.

If, through the long day, the starved heart of the man called feebly for
its natural food, he called it a paltry weakness; or if the old thought
of the quiet, pure little girl in the office below came back to him,
he--he wished her well, he hoped she might succeed in her work, he
would always be ready to lend her a helping hand. So many years (he was
ashamed to think how many) he had built the thought of this girl as his
wife into the future, put his soul's strength into the hope, as if love
and the homely duties of husband and father were what life was given
for! A boyish fancy, he thought. He had not learned then that all dreams
must yield to self-reverence and self-growth. As for taking up this life
of poverty and soul-starvation for the sake of a little love, it would
be an ignoble martyrdom, the sacrifice of a grand unmeasured life to a
shallow pleasure. He was no longer a young man now; he had no time to
waste. Poor Margaret! he wondered if it hurt her now.

He left the writing in the slow, quiet way natural to him, and after
a while stooped to pat the dog softly, who was trying to lick his
hand,--with the hard fingers shaking a little, and a smothered
fierceness in the half-closed eye, like a man who is tortured and alone.

There is a miserable drama acted in other homes than the Tuileries, when
men have found a woman's heart in their way to success, and trampled
it down under an iron heel. Men like Napoleon must live out the law of
their natures, I suppose,--on a throne or in a mill.

So many trifles that day roused the under-current of old thoughts and
old hopes that taunted him,--trifles, too, that he would not have heeded
at another time. Pike came in on business, a bunch of bills in his hand.
A wily, keen eye he had, looking over them,--a lean face, emphasized
only by cunning. No wonder Dr. Knowles cursed him for a "slippery
customer," and was cheated by him the next hour. While he and Holmes
were counting out the bills, a little white-headed girl crept shyly
in at the door, and came up to the tabl