.'

There was much more, but this was the gist of it, and the writer sealed
and despatched it, not daring to tempt himself to a new effort by
reading it over. The answer reached him in an hour:

'What is it, my poor friend, which has so disturbed you as to prompt you
to the writing of such a letter as I have just received? I had thought
myself safe in counting upon your esteem. If you are really called to
London by affairs of urgency, I must not keep you, and, of course, I
should be hurt if you went without telling me good-bye. It happens that
I have engaged to dine at table-d'hote tonight with passing friends, but
I shall be free at ten o'clock. Ask for me then.'

Paul had been conscious and jealous of a good many small rivalries since
he and the Baroness had first set up that platonic communion of soul
in which they had now lived so long, but on the whole he had to confess
that Gertrude had acted with complete discretion in these matters,
and he had been repeatedly forced to admit to himself that he had been
unable to find any real ground for his tremors. He had never once felt
himself in actual danger of being deposed from his position of high
priest in that ridiculous temple. When a man is in love with a woman, he
cannot be expected to judge her actions or her meaning wisely, and the
Baroness's platonics, with the little flashes of earthly fire in amongst
them here and there, had always seemed to him to indicate a nature
throbbing with fervour which was held in restraint only by a delicacy of
equal charm and beauty, and a lofty moral sense. But he was easily open
to the influence of other men's opinions, and he had never been able to
think of Ralston's smile without an inward twinge which had sometimes
amounted to an actual tenor. Suppose he were merely being played with
by a heartless woman, who found it minister to her vanity to have him
perpetually dangling at her heels in public and burning incense in
private before her day by day? Suppose he were throwing away the best
and freshest years of his manhood in the pursuit of such a mocking
shadow? These, of course, were a sort of lover's blasphemies against his
idol, and he resented them with all his heart and soul, exactly as any
other worshipper would resent the insinuations of the devil against the
powers and perfections of his deity. His resentment could not lead
him to oblivion, and his memory of Ralston's humorous and mischievous
enjoyment was with him often