His want of boldness almost excited my contempt.  My skill was baffled on every side, and, not caring much to conceal my impatience, I said, “You have asked me to advise you as I would my brother.  She is cold and selfish:  give her up.”

“Give her up!” he said with measured and emphatic slowness—­“give her up, when I have sought her beneath every clime on which the sun shines—­not for months, but for years?  Give her up, when her presence gives me all I have ever known of happiness?  Give her up!” and he leaned his head on the back of his chair and closed his eyes.

I had imagined him gifted with wonderful self-control, but when I looked up from my work all color had faded from his cheeks, the lips seemed ready to yield the little blood left there by the clinch of the white-teeth upon them, while every muscle of the face quivered with spasmodic effort to control emotion.  When the eyes were opened and fixed on the ceiling, I saw no trace in them of anger, revenge, or even of wounded pride.  They were full of tears, ready to gush in one last flood-tide of feeling over a subdued, chastened, but breaking heart.

It was very evident that my treatment was not adding much comfort to my patient, however salutary it might prove in the end.  I knew of his intention to leave the next day:  there was little time left me to aid him, and I had come to regard the unknown woman’s mysterious nature or strategic warfare as pitted against my superior penetration.  That he might be victorious she must be vanquished. She was, then, my antagonist.

The deepening twilight was producing chilliness.  I flooded the room with brilliant light, stirred the grate into glowing warmth, and invited him to a seat near the fire.

“You will not leave me, will you?  This may be—­it will be—­my last demand on you as a confidante.  How is the bouquet progressing?” he asked.

“See,” I said, holding my embroidery up before me:  “we must hurry.  I have but one more tendril to add.”

“Tendrils are clinging things, like hope, are they not?” he said pensively.

But sentimentalizing was not the business of the hour, and I intimated as much to him.  “Yes,” I replied, “but hope must now give place to effort.  I see you are not going to take my ‘give-her-up’ advice.”

“No—­only from her who has the right to give it.”

I now considered my patient out of danger.

“Then why do you torture yourself longer with doubts?  Perhaps your irresolution has caused a want of confidence in the strength of your affection.  At least give her an opportunity to define her true position toward you.  Beard the lions of indifference and friendship in their dens, and do not yield to unmanly cowardice.  Strange that I have given you the counsel last which should have been given first!  But do not, I beseech you, lose any time in seeking her.  Assure her of your long and unwavering devotion.  Constancy is the most valued word in a true woman’s vocabulary.  You have staked too much happiness to lose:  you must win.”