been more lamentably depressed. The thought of Miss Berrith hung upon the outskirts of this desert of dejection like the mirage of some fair oasis, and the whole history of “Sans Souci,” as I looked back upon it, seemed an arid waste, in which my hopes, my plans, my opinions, and my performances, stood out as grotesquely as forms of cacti against a stretch of sand. Then a line from Hamlet incongruously popped out of nothingness into my mind:
“This is the very ecstasy of love.”
Love, indeed! As if I did not know the symptoms of an indigestion!
If Galvin had made my bed with the express intention of rendering me as uncomfortable as possible, the result of her endeavours could not have been a more unqualified success. I tossed restlessly for a small eternity, and, with every movement, the memory of the previous afternoon turned over in my mind,
