ched with ice. He would have called out, but he was stupefied.
After a few long minutes he saw Miss Blanchflower make a sudden movement
and give both her hands to her companion. The two stood face to face,
and seemed to be speaking passionately. Desborough covered his eyes, and
would see no more.

How long he sat he never knew; but when he was able to realize his place
and to realize the fact of existence, he was alone. He moaned, and then
by one of those revolutions of feeling common to men of his temperament,
he broke into laughter.

As he climbed out from his retreat his sense of the tragic turn of
things left him, and he laughed still more.

"And I am an eaves-dropper, am I? Mr. Hamlet Desborough. And Ophelia's
not talking to her father this time. What a nice young Polonius we have
got--ambrosial curls Polonius has--And Ophelia! Oh! Ophelia's very
fair--chaste as an icicle, and pure as snow."

He walked towards a deep pool that lay further down towards the sea. The
pool was very sullen and cool under the dank shadow of the hanging
trees. Desborough looked a minute into the dark depths.

"Now, Hamlet, let us finish up. Let me see. What are the puzzles that I
have to solve? Death? That's soon done. Three minutes, they say, it
takes under water. And that other country where the travellers go and
never return? Well, I don't see particularly why I should return, and
oh! Ophelia, Ophelia."

He sat down and looked at the water until gradually his impulse wore
off, and his face grew stern. He muttered no more as he walked home; he
passed people in the street, but made no sign; he had revenge, fear,
rage, pity, and love in his heart, and his passions were too strong for
his will. Had he not been able to gain solitude there is no knowing what
he might have done, for no man does such terrible things, and no man is
so utterly reckless as a thoroughly weak individual who is suddenly cast
adrift from all his mental holdfasts.

Before night he had written a little note. These were the words that he
wrote:--

"My dearest, I have been thinking bad thoughts of you all day. Now I
have come to myself. I know where you were this morning, and I know that
my life is broken. I will not thrust my claim upon you, and I cannot ask
you for pity. You will not see me again. I give you up without one
reproach. I only reproach myself for wearying you, and for trying to
entrap you into a life that would have been misery to you. I was meant