against the marriage, and once at least he struck a responsive chord from those frayed nerves.

"Nobody but yourself," he pointed out, "ever said you didn't love her; but see what love makes of you! Can you dream of marriage in such a state? Is it fair to the girl, until you've really reconsidered the whole matter and learned your own mind once for all? Could she be happy? Would she be—it was your own suggestion—but are you sure she would be even safe?"Berridge wrung his hands in new despair; yes, he had forgotten that! Those awful instincts were the one unalterably awful feature. Not that he felt them still; but to recollect them as genuine impulses, or at best as irresistible thoughts, was to freeze his self-distrust into a cureless cancer. "I was forgetting all that," he moaned. "And yet here in my pocket is the very book those hopeless lines are from. I bought it at Stoneham's this morning. It's the most peculiar poem I ever read. I can't quite make it out. But that bit was clear enough. Only hear how it goes on!"

And in a school-childish singsong, with no expression but that involuntarily imparted by his quavering voice, he read twelve lines aloud--
"Some kill their love when they are young,
      And some when they are old;
    Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
      Some with the hands of Gold:
    The kindest use a knife, because----"
He shuddered horribly--
"The dead so soon grow cold.
Some love too little, some too long,
      Some sell, and others buy;
    Some do the deed with many tears,
      And some without a sigh:
    For each man kills the thing he loves,
      Yet each man does not die."

"It's all I'm fit for, death!" groaned Guy Berridge, trying to tug the fierce moustache out of his mild face. "The sooner the better, for me! And yet I did love her, God knows I did!" He turned upon Uvo Delavoye in a sudden blaze. "And so I do still--do you hear me? Then give me back my ring, I say, and don't encourage me in this madness--you--you devil!"

[Illustration: Trying to tug the fierce moustache out of his mild face.]

"Give it him back," I said. But Uvo set his teeth against us both, looking almost what he had just been called--looking 

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