in thought rather than deed, and cognizance of it unshared by others. For what food, moral or sentimental, did he slink, retreating like the hedgehog from his own shadow, to and fro in this musty Bohemia that lacked even the picturesque?
But the thing that struck home, that hurled his peripheral soul (to continue the fantasy) from its province, and restored his hereditary entity, and set him raging, was the part played by the Amazonian prisoner. To the counterpart of that astounding belligerent—identical, at least, in the way of experience—to one, by her own confession, thus far fallen, had he, not three hours since, been united in marriage. How desirable and natural it had seemed to him then, and how monstrous it seemed now! How the words of diamond thief Number Two yet burned in his ears—“If you ever get a girl, she ‘ll have a picnic.” What did
