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326 that he who had lavished his heart's best treasure on her was no more to her than the yellow sands that the seas kissed and left.

A few hours before and her eyes had smiled on him, her presence had been with him; she had listened to him, spoken with him, let him linger beside her in ail the familiar communion of a welcome freindship; he could not realise that he was forsaken by her without a word, without a regret, without an effort for them ever to meet again. He had no claim on her remembrance, no title to her confidence, it was true; his acquaintance with her was slight, as the world would have considered. But he could not realise that the tie between them of a life saved, so powerful on him, so deathless in its memory for him, could be as nothing to her. The wanton cruelty of her desertion seemed to him so merciless that he had no remembrance of how little hold he had, in reason and in fact, upon her tenderness. The knowledge of her loss alone was on him, leaving him no consciousness save of the burning misery that possessed him.

As he had never loved, so he had never suffered until now; his adventurous career in camps, and cities, and deserts, had never been touched by any grief; he had come there in the gladness of the