friend only. If Ovid had owned the truth, he must have acknowledged
that her company was a relief to him, in the present state of his mind.

When a man's flagging purpose is in want of a stimulant, the most
trifling change in the circumstances of the moment often applies the
animating influence. Even such a small interruption as the appearance
of his cat rendered this service to Ovid. To use the common and
expressive phrase, it had "shaken him up." He wrote the letter--and his
patient companion killed the time by washing her face.

His mind being so far relieved, he went to bed--the cat following him
upstairs to her bed in a corner of the room. Clothes are unwholesome
superfluities not contemplated in the system of Nature. When we are
exhausted, there is no such thing as true repose for us until we are
freed from our dress. Men subjected to any excessive exertion--
fighting, rowing, walking, working--must strip their bodies as
completely as possible, or they are nor equal to the call on them.
Ovid's knowledge of his own temperament told him that sleep was not to
be hoped for, that night. But the way to bed was the way to rest
notwithstanding, by getting rid of his clothes.

With the sunrise he rose and went out.

He took his letter with him, and dropped it into the box in his
friend's door. The sooner he committed himself to the new course that
he had taken, the more certain he might feel of not renewing the
miserable and useless indecision of the past night. "Thank God, that's
done!" he said to himself, as he heard the letter fall into the box,
and left the house.