afe of brandy in the room. He was chill and tired, and
in that contradictory condition of discomfort in which a man is at once
painfully sleepy and distressfully wide awake. He poured a quantity
of spirit into a tumbler, filled the glass to the brim with water,
undressed, blew out his candles, and went to bed, and the demons of
a sleepless night came to him and tormented him. The opening line of
Tennyson's 'Love and Duty' got into his brain and ticked there: 'Of love
that never found its earthly close, what sequel?' It recurred with a
damnable iteration. He tried all the devices for wooing slumber he had
ever heard of. He assembled an innumerable flock of sheep, for he had
the knack of making pictures in his mind, and he set them one by one to
leap through a gap in a hedge, counting them as they went by. He had
not counted a dozen when the words were back again: 'Of love that never
found its earthly close, what sequel?'

He repeated the experiment scores of times, but it was always
interrupted by the same query. He set an unending line of soldiers on
the march, all as like each other as peas in the same pod. He resolutely
denuded his mind of thought; he repeated the multiplication table. It
was all of no service; the question came back remorselessly, and at last
he set himself to face it. It was dismal enough to look at To think of
the world without Gertrude was to conceive a barren waste in which it
was worth no man's while to dwell. To anticipate a life-long continuance
of the experiences and emotions of the past three months was scarcely
to invite a more cheerful prospect To hint, even in his own thoughts, at
any attempt to draw her from her own height of purity was a profanation.
The quarters and the hours chimed, until the gray spring dawn crept
through the interstices of the blinds, and fatigue grew more leaden than
ever. But the devil of insomnia was unconquerable. He relit his candles,
found a book, and tried to read; but that was as hopeless as the rest.

He had no claim to call upon Gertrude again until he learned that it was
her goodwill and pleasure he should do so; but he was not forbidden to
write, and there at least was an occupation to which he could bend his
mind. He dressed and sat down, dull and haggard, to the task. He wrote
page on page, feeling as though he dipped his pen in his own heart's
blood; but when he came to read what he had written, it was no more
what he had meant it to be than a Hortus