glass of fashion" in the shape of white waistcoat and shirt front,
surmounted by the handsome, irritated face of their owner, leaning back
with his hat tilted over his eyes.

_Trip-clip-clop_ went the horse.

A great deal of thinking may be compressed into a quarter of an hour,
especially if it has been long eluded.

"I will get out," he said again to himself with an impatient movement.
It was beginning to weary him, this commonplace intrigue which had been
so new and alluring a year ago. He did not own it to himself, but he
was tired of it. Perhaps the reason why good resolutions have earned for
themselves such an evil repute as paving-stones is because they are
often the result, not of repentance, but of the restlessness that dogs
an evaporating pleasure. This liaison had been alternately his pride and
his shame for many months. But now it was becoming something more--which
it had been all the time, only he had not noticed it till lately--a
fetter, a clog, something irksome, to be cast off and pushed out of
sight. Decidedly the moment for the good resolution had arrived.

"I will break it off," he said again. "Thank Heaven, not a soul has ever
guessed it."

How could any one have guessed it?

He remembered the day when he had first met her a year ago, and had
looked upon her as merely a pretty woman. He remembered other days, and
the gradual building up between them of a fairy palace. He had added a
stone here, she a stone there, until suddenly it became--a prison. Had