to do him justice. Enough may have been said, however, to impart
some faint idea of what this youth was to me in the bitter and
embittering anti-climax of my life. Conventional figures spring to
my pen, but every one of them is true; he was flowers in spring, he
was sunshine after rain, he was rain following long months of
drought. I slept admirably after all; and I awoke to see the
overturned toilet-table, and to thrill as I remembered there was one
fellow-creature with whom I could fraternize without fear of a rude
reopening of my every wound.

I hurried my dressing in the hope of our breakfasting together. I
knocked at the next door, and, receiving no answer, even ventured
to enter, with the same idea. He was not there. He was not in the
coffee-room. He was not in the hotel.

I broke my fast in disappointed solitude, and I hung about
disconsolate all the morning, looking wistfully for my new-made
friend. Towards mid-day he drove up in a cab which he kept waiting
at the curb.

"It's all right!" he cried out in his hearty way. "I sent my
telegram first thing, and I've had the answer at my club. The
rooms are vacant, and I'll see that Jane Braithwaite has all ready
for you by to-morrow night."

I thanked him from my heart. "You seem in a hurry!" I added, as I
followed him up the stairs.

"I am," said he. "It's a near thing for the train. I've just time
to stick in my things."