s effort to recover
himself, 'until seven.'

Ralston shook hands and went his way, and Paul raced upstairs two steps
at a time and burst into the room he had left less than three hours ago
in a mood so cheerless and despondent He kissed the letter and clapped
it to his heart, and strolled up and down exulting. He was not to be
dismissed; he was not to be sent into the desert, after all.

And, then, what about Ralston? It was really a most unpleasant, a most
unlucky, chance which had brought him there at that particular
instant. There was no blinking the fact that Ralston had enjoyed Paul's
discomfiture, and his talk of the previous night came back to mind--the
fun he had made of the Isolated Soul; his good-humoured allowance
for the one foible in the character of a lady whom he had known from
childhood, and for whom he professed both affection and esteem. It
matters not how impossible a suggestion of this kind may seem to a
lover's mind. His rejection of it with a natural scorn is of no
manner of consequence except inasmuch as it confirms his loyalty. The
suggestion will stick and will worry, and it will stick the longer and
worry the more because it will make the sufferer suspicious of himself.
'Trust me not at all, or all in all,' is a native motto for the man
of candid soul, and for him an implanted mistrust will not touch
his mistress, though it may anguish him with a sense of his own
unworthiness.

But--for the time, at least--these things were no more than mere
trickeries of self-torment for Paul's mind, and he was on fire to meet
the mid-day. He got out his handsomest morning raiment and brushed it
with his own hands, and made a second toilet lest there should be
a speck on cuff or collar after the morning's drive, and then he
promenaded the streets at a snail's pace to kill the hour which
intervened between himself and heaven.

Heaven was a trifle chilly when, after all this patient waiting, he
reached its portals. Gertrude was like frozen honey. She met him in an
exquisite morning confection of the latest Parisian design--a something,
to the uninstructed male eye, between a peignoir and a tea-gown, but
of costly simplicity, and of colours cunningly suited to match Madame's
complexion in the daylight. The table was exquisitely appointed, but to
Paul's dismay the couverts laid upon it were as for apart as the length
of the table would permit. He looked so comically discomfited at this
discovery, and his face