proportion.
But it was the mere reactionary surcease of prolonged pain, and the fit came on again in uglier guise before he left. "It isn't so much that I don't want to marry her," declared the accountant with startling abruptness, "as the awful thoughts I have as to what may happen if I do. They're too awful to describe, even to you two fellows. Of course nothing could make you think worse of me than you must already, but you'd say I was mad if you could see inside my horrible mind. I don't think she'd be safe; honestly I don't! I feel as if I might do her some injury--or--or violence!" He was swaying about the room with wild eyes staring from one to the other of us and twitching fingers feeling in his pockets. I got up myself and stood within reach of him, for now I felt certain that love or illness had turned his brain. But it was only a very small scrap of paper that he fished out of his waistcoat pocket, and handed first to Delavoye and then to me. "I cut it out of a review of such a peculiar poem in my evening paper," said Berridge. "I never read reviews, or poems, but those lines hit me hard." And I read: "Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!" "But you don't feel like that!" said Delavoye, laughing at him; and the laughter rang as false as his earlier consolation; but this time I had not the presence of mind to supplement it. Guy Berridge nodded violently as he held out his hand for the verse. I could see that his eyes had filled with tears. But Uvo rolled the scrap of paper into a pellet, which he flung among the lumps of asbestos glowing in his grate, and took the outstretched hand in his. I never saw man so gentle with another. Hardly a word more passed. But the poor devil squeezed my fingers before Uvo led him out to see him home. And it was many minutes before he returned. "I have had a time of it!" said he, putting his feet to the gas fire. "Not with that poor old thing, but his people, all three of them! I got him up straight to bed, and then they kept me when he thought I'd gone. Of course they know there's something wrong, and of course they blame the girl; one knew they would. It seems they've never really approved of her; she's a shocking instance of all-round peculiarity. They little know the apple of their own blind eyes--eh, Gilly?" "I hardly knew him myself," said I. "He must be daft! I never thought to hear a grown man go on like that." "And such a man!" cried Uvo. "It's not the talk so much as the talker that surprises me; and by the way, how well he talked, for him! He was less of a bore than I've ever known him; there was passion in the fellow, confound him! Red blood in that 

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