who wave their dirty bits of rag at the train as it rushes by? It is thirty-one days by the almanac; but when I last came this way I was eighteen years old, and young for my age; now I feel fifty at the very least, and old for my age. By the time I really am fifty, I suppose I shall feel hundred, and by the time I reach three-score and ten—bah! It is a nasty thought that I may possibly live to that age, and live without teeth, taste, hearing, seeing, enjoying, without memory even.
As the day goes on a thought that has been lurking in some back lumber-room of my memory, forced thither by my will, steps nimbly out and stares me evilly in the face—I have to tell George. I know what I have to say to him well enough, but that does not make it any the better; and even when that terrible wrench is over, there will be the long inevitable afterwards. If only there were some city of refuge to which rejected lovers might flee, and be kept there until they had made up their minds it was no good to sigh after what they could not get! It is bad enough to say no over and over again to a man, without having the word crystallized into a two-legged illustration who struts up and down your little stage an image of despair, and never for a moment permits you to forget that your being such a wretch to him has brought him to this miserable pass! I can feel for him now, poor George! as I little thought I ever should. Some men might be glad that I should know something of the pangs they had suffered, but George is not one of those—there never was any selfishness in him: I should have cared for him more, perhaps, if there had been. I am glad that I know the truth about Paul; that I can take my lot and look it fairly in the face, and know that if no better, still no worse can befall me. Oh! it is easier to endure the long barren bondage from which there is no escape, than to exist trembling on the frail support of a hope that may vanish and leave the horizon more utterly dark than it was before. I wonder how
