to him, beyond a blissful memory, a star that he had once touched? Self-
love kept him strong by day, but in the darkness of night came his
misery; wakening from tender dreams, he would find his heart sinking
under a horrible pressure, and then the fair fresh face of Rose swam over
him; the hours of Beckley were revived; with intolerable anguish he saw
that she was blameless--that he alone was to blame. Yet worse was it
when his closed eyelids refused to conjure up the sorrowful lovely
nightmare, and he lay like one in a trance, entombed-wretched Pagan!
feeling all that had been blindly; when the Past lay beside him like a
corpse that he had slain.

These nightly torments helped him to brave what the morning brought.
Insensibly also, as Time hardened his sufferings, Evan asked himself what
the shame of his position consisted in. He grew stiff-necked. His Pagan
virtues stood up one by one to support him. Andrew, courageously evading
the interdict that forbade him to visit Evan, would meet him by
appointment at City taverns, and flatly offered him a place in the
Brewery. Evan declined it, on the pretext that, having received Old
Tom's money for the year, he must at least work out that term according
to the conditions. Andrew fumed and sneered at Tailordom. Evan said
that there was peace in Mr. Goren's shop. His sharp senses discerned in
Andrew's sneer a certain sincerity, and he revolted against it. Mr John
Raikes, too, burlesqued Society so well, that he had the satisfaction of
laughing at his enemy occasionally. The latter gentleman was still a
pensioner, flying about town with the Countess de Saldar, in deadly fear
lest that fascinating lady should discover the seat of his fortune;
happy, notwithstanding. In the mirror of Evan's little world, he beheld
the great one from which he was banished.

Now the dusk of a winter's afternoon was closing over London, when a