f we made no secret of the truth, but
dared the world together, we should find, I know, that it would deal
kindly with us.'

He stood for a moment, and, receiving no reply, bowed and walked blindly
towards a door which communicated with another room. Madge called to
him, 'This way,' and went out into the hall before him.

'Is this to be our last parting, I wonder?' he asked hoarsely.

She shook her head with a weary lifting of the fine arched brows as if
to say she could find no answer, and then withdrew without word or sign,
leaving him to quit the house unattended.

He fumbled half blindly until he found his hat and cane, and then he had
to fumble for the door, for the whole place was heavily shadowed from
the blazing sun outside, and his eyesight and his hands were each less
serviceable to him than usual. At first the broad sunshine fell upon
his eyes like a sudden vivid heat upon a wound, and in his agitation
and half-blindness he found himself walking away from the quarter of the
city to which he had meant to direct his steps. Correcting this error in
a minute or two, he turned and made for his hotel with a mind so shaken
and vacant that he seemed to have no thoughts at all. A man who has
been passionately in love three times before he has begun to verge
upon middle age may easily be thought too inflammable a subject to be
deserving of much pity, but a man may be keenly in sympathy with himself
without enlisting the sympathy of other people, and Paul was here as
always heroically and tragically in earnest. Without seeking apologies
for him too far afield, there is a kind of nature which burns intensely
within itself, and will break out into violence of smoke and flame with
the intrusion of any new emotional material, just as there is a nature
not more intense which will burn equably and clearly whatever new supply
of fuel may be heaped upon it.

There is no need to dwell upon the time of waiting, the miserable
loiterings in bedroom, corridor and entrance-hall, the aimless perusal
of newspapers which conveyed no meaning to the mind, the taking up and
laying down of petty occupations, and all the other signs and tokens
of suspense. Time and the hour wear out the roughest day, and as Paul
lingered over the dessert of a barely tasted dinner, a note reached him
in Madge's handwriting. It contained these words only:

'There is no change. I dare not hope, and I dare not despair. I may have
news for you to-morrow, bu