might succeed in her work, he would always be ready to lend her a
helping hand. So many years (he was ashamed to think how many)
he had built the thought of this girl as his wife into the
future, put his soul's strength into the hope, as if love and the
homely duties of husband and father were what life was given for!
A boyish fancy, he thought. He had not learned then that all
dreams must yield to self-reverence and self-growth. As for
taking up this life of poverty and soul-starvation for the sake
of a little love, it would be an ignoble martyrdom, the sacrifice
of a grand unmeasured life to a shallow pleasure. He was no
longer a young man now; he had no time to waste. Poor Margret!
he wondered if it hurt her?

He signed the deed, and left it in the slow, quiet way natural to
him, and after a while stooped to pat the dog softly, who was
trying to lick his hand,--with the hard fingers shaking a little,
and a smothered fierceness in the half-closed eye, like a man who
is tortured and alone.

There is a miserable drama acted in other homes than the
Tuileries, when men have found a woman's heart in their way to
success, and trampled it down under an iron heel. Men like
Napoleon must live out the law of their natures, I suppose,--on a
throne, or in a mill.

So many trifles that day roused the undercurrent of old thoughts
and old hopes that taunted him,--trifles, too, that he would not
have heeded at another time. Pike came in on business, a bunch
of bills in his hand. A wily, keen eye he had, looking over
them,--a lean face, emphasized only by cunning. No wonder Dr.