“Say good-bye to me,” he whispered.  “And my pretty one will write to me.  I shall reply so punctually!  I don’t like to leave her at Christmas; and she will give me a line of Italian, and a little French—­mind her accents, though!—­and she needn’t attempt any of the nasty German--kshrra-kouzzra-kratz!—­which her pretty lips can’t do, and won’t do; but only French and Italian.  Why, she learnt to speak Italian!  “La dolcezza ancor dentro me suona.”  Don’t you remember, and made such fun of it at first?  ‘Amo zoo;’ ‘no amo me?’ my sweet!”

This was a specimen of the baby-lover talk, which is charming in its season, and maybe pleasantly cajoling to a loving woman at all times, save when she is in Dahlia’s condition.  It will serve even then, or she will pass it forgivingly, as not the food she for a moment requires; but it must be purely simple in its utterance, otherwise she detects the poor chicanery, and resents the meanness of it.  She resents it with unutterable sickness of soul, for it is the language of what were to her the holiest hours of her existence, which is thus hypocritically used to blind and rock her in a cradle of deception.  If corrupt, she maybe brought to answer to it all the same, and she will do her part of the play, and babble words, and fret and pout deliciously; and the old days will seem to be revived, when both know they are dead; and she will thereby gain any advantage she is seeking.

But Dahlia’s sorrow was deep:  her heart was sound.  She did not even perceive the opportunity offered to her for a wily performance.  She felt the hollowness of his speech, and no more; and she said, “Good-bye, Edward.”

He had been on one knee.  Springing cheerfully to his feet, “Good-bye, darling,” he said.  “But I must see her sit to table first.  Such a wretched dinner for her!” and he mumbled, “By Jove, I suppose I shan’t get any at all myself!” His watch confirmed it to him that any dinner which had been provided for him at the Club would be spoilt.

“Never mind,” he said aloud, and examined the roast-beef ruefully, thinking that, doubtless, it being more than an hour behind the appointed dinner-time at the Club, his guest must now be gone.

For a minute or so he gazed at the mournful spectacle.  The potatoes looked as if they had committed suicide in their own steam.  There were mashed turnips, with a glazed surface, like the bright bottom of a tin pan.  One block of bread was by the lonely plate.  Neither hot nor cold, the whole aspect of the dinner-table resisted and repelled the gaze, and made no pretensions to allure it.

The thought of partaking of this repast endowed him with a critical appreciation of its character, and a gush of charitable emotion for the poor girl who had such miserable dishes awaiting her, arrested the philosophic reproof which he could have administered to one that knew so little how a dinner of any sort should be treated.  He strode to the windows, pulled down the blind he had previously raised, rang the bell, and said,—­