and selfish: give her up."

"Give her up!" he said with measured and emphatic slowness--"give
her up, when I have sought her beneath every clime on which the sun
shines--not for months, but for years? Give her up, when her presence
gives me all I have ever known of happiness? Give her up!" and he
leaned his head on the back of his chair and closed his eyes.

I had imagined him gifted with wonderful self-control, but when I
looked up from my work all color had faded from his cheeks, the lips
seemed ready to yield the little blood left there by the clinch of the
white-teeth upon them, while every muscle of the face quivered with
spasmodic effort to control emotion. When the eyes were opened and
fixed on the ceiling, I saw no trace in them of anger, revenge, or
even of wounded pride. They were full of tears, ready to gush in one
last flood-tide of feeling over a subdued, chastened, but breaking
heart.

It was very evident that my treatment was not adding much comfort to
my patient, however salutary it might prove in the end. I knew of his
intention to leave the next day: there was little time left me to aid
him, and I had come to regard the unknown woman's mysterious nature or
strategic warfare as pitted against my superior penetration. That
he might be victorious she must be vanquished. _She_ was, then, my
antagonist.

The deepening twilight was producing chilliness. I flooded the room
with brilliant light, stirred the grate into glowing warmth, and
invited him to a seat near the fire.

"You will not leave me, will you? This may be--_it will be_--my last
demand on you as a confidante. How is the bouquet progressing?" he
asked.

"See," I said, holding my embroidery up before me: "we must hurry. I
have but one more tendril to add."

"Tendrils are clinging things, like hope, are they not?" he said
pensively.

But sentimentalizing was not the business of the hour, and I intimated
as much to him. "Yes," I replied, "but hope must now give place to
effort. I see you are not going to take my 'give-her-up' advice."

"No--only from her who has the right to give it."

I now considered my patient out of danger.

"Then why do you torture yourself longer with doubts? Perhaps your
irresolution has caused a want of confidence in the strength of
your affection. At least give her an opportunity to define her true
position toward you. Beard the lions of indifference and friendship in
their dens, and do not yield to unmanly