tender protection for himself. She had known if he knew her place of abode
no fear of death would keep him from trying to see her. Ah! he had had the
tears--and why not the cold steel and blood? It was no price to pay could
he but hear once more her golden voice, and feel her loving, twining arms.

He was only held back by the fear of the danger for her. And instead of
being with her, and waiting on her footsteps, he should have to spend his
next hours with those ridiculous Englishwomen! Those foolish, flippant
girls! One had quoted poetry to him at dinner, the very scrap his lady had
spoken a line of--this new poet's, who was taking the world of London by
storm that year: "Loved with a love beyond all words or sense!" And it had
sounded like bathos or sacrilege. What did these dolls know of love, or
life? Chattering parrots to weary a man's brain! Yes, the Greeks were
right, it would be better to keep them spinning flax, and uneducated.

And so in his young intolerance, maddened by pain, he saw all things
gibbous like the mocking moon. Pike stirred under his arm and licked his
hand, a faint whine of love making itself heard in the night.

"O God!" said Paul, as he buried his face in his hands, "let me get through
this time as she would have me do; let me not show the anguish in my heart,
but be at least a man and gentleman."




CHAPTER XXIV


The neighbours and his parents were astonished at the eloquence of Paul's