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 Sanskrit for all the impression they conveyed to my mind.

“I can’t abide to trouble you,” the Machiavellian Galvin would observe. “If you was a married man, Mr. Sands, there’d be no need— but of course — ”

And the door would close upon this incomplete, yet eloquent, remark, leaving me, each time, more shaken in my resolution than before. The Galvin octagon was complete at last, and its eighth side was match-manufactural!

Thus beset, exteriorly by a subtle system of suggestion ever crescent in its effect, and interiorly by an obsession which I had even less will than power to control, I saw, more and more clearly, what the inevitable outcome of my plight must be. Already the currents had swept my bark into the rapids. The roar of the cataract was in my ears. It remained to be seen in what manner I should contrive to pass it; whether triumphantly, to emerge presently upon the serener waters of married life, or