mistress.'

'There is no chance.'

'I am, of course, prepared to hear you say so. Well; good-bye, and may
God bless you.'

The man had no poetry about him. He did not even care for romance. All
the outside belongings of love which are so pleasant to many men and
which to many women afford the one sweetness in life which they really
relish, were nothing to him. There are both men and women to whom even
the delays and disappointments of love are charming, even when they
exist to the detriment of hope. It is sweet to such persons to be
melancholy, sweet to pine, sweet to feel that they are now wretched
after a romantic fashion as have been those heroes and heroines of
whose sufferings they have read in poetry. But there was nothing of
this with Roger Carbury. He had, as he believed, found the woman that
he really wanted, who was worthy of his love, and now, having fixed
his heart upon her, he longed for her with an amazing longing. He had
spoken the simple truth when he declared that life had become
indifferent to him without her. No man in England could be less likely
to throw himself off the Monument or to blow out his brains. But he
felt numbed in all the joints of his mind by this sorrow. He could not
make one thing bear upon another, so as to console himself after any
fashion. There was but one thing for him;--to persevere till he got her,
or till he had finally lost her. And should the latter be his fate, as
he began to fear that it would be, then, he would live, but live only,
like a crippled man.

He felt almost sure in his heart of hearts that the girl loved that