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 had been not merely discouraged; he had been too downcast to feel discouragement. And his revival had been due to one of those unreasonable operations of his temperament which he could not justify, which he could not explain, which were as much a mystery to him as they were to Miss Morris and to everyone else. It was as if his affection for Margaret were stronger when he was alone than when he was with her; as if his imagination made her a dearer figure in his absent thought than she was in her own person. And in the days that followed, no matter how worried and unhappy he was while he was with her, as soon as he had left her he was tormented by the same restless longings, the same ardours that had kept him true to his dreams of her in all the time they had been separated.

On the morning after his unsuccessful appeal to Miss Morris for aid, he awoke as eager to see the girl as ever. He brushed his shabby clothes microscopically; he polished his shoes with elaborate care; he gulped his breakfast; and it was not until he was on the street that he remembered he had no encouraging news to take to her and no new plan to suggest. He turned aside from the direct route to her door, and wandered about the pavements trying to think of some excuse for such an early call.

He loitered at the art-shop windows, seeing her as beautiful as a plaster "Clytie," as regal as "Queen Louise" descending palace steps, as tender as the drooping maiden of a "Lovers' Quarrel." He stood before the display of photographs at a theatre door, gazing at a vision of her as a prima donna in grand