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390 side. "No doubt the business has been concluded more quickly than he expected, and he did not think it worth while to write."

"It could not have been that, George, for he would not have known at Marseilles, and he promised to write from there."

"Do you know, Nell," he says, looking down into my wan face, "that you are making a mountain out of a mole-hill? Because you have had a dream, and because you have not received a letter, you have made up your mind that something dreadful has happened. I wonder what Vasher will say, when he walks in and finds you have been fretting yourself into a shadow?"

When Vasher walks in!—how comfortable and safe the words sound!

"I'll try and not be foolish," I say, my spirits rising, as they always do when I have some one to speak to, "but oh! George, this past week has been so wretched: I think if I had such another I should go mad. I have learnt the length and breadth, and depth and height, of that ugly word 'endure.

"Have you, dear?" he says, and brave man that he is, he does not add, "and so have I."

It is a strange hap that makes my old lover my friend and consoler in the absence of my new one. Are there many men, I wonder, who could fill the post with such unselfishness, dignity, and single-heartedness as he does? All too often I forget how he loved me, and in speaking of Paul say something that touches him to the quick. Noble George, for whom no woman that I ever saw was half good enough!

"How near Christmas is," I say, looking at the flaming scarlet berries that close round the green stalks with such prim, glossy precision. "Only think that to-morrow week is the 25th. He is sure to be back then, is he not, George?"

"Quite sure!" says the young man; "he may come any day now."