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 "Then you mustn't marry her, sir," said Pollyooly.

"But what am I to do?" cried Hilary Vance.

Pollyooly thought again; then she said, "I should go on with my work, sir. Then you won't think about it."

Hilary Vance raved that he would think about it, that he would always think of it—till his dying day, that his artistic powers were for ever destroyed, that the spring of imagination was dried up in him, that he would never be able to work again.

Undoubtedly he could not work at the moment. He tried to carry out Pollyooly's suggestion in the hope that work might make him feel better; but he flung down his pencil and again betook himself to his raving. Pollyooly listened to him and watched him with respectful but somewhat uncomprehending sympathy. His emotion to her childish mind seemed extravagant: marriage with Ermyntrude could not matter as much as all that to any one. Also his face interested her very much: thanks to its size, it expressed such a large quantity of any emotion he chanced to be feeling.

At tea, with the Lump on his knee, he was calmer