and heady to taste, but with what infinite bitterness and disgust in the cup.  It had robbed him of everything—­of his work, of his temperate ecstasies in sight and sound, of his intellectual enthusiasm.  His life was all broken to pieces about him; he had lost at once all interest and all sense of dignity.  He was simply a man betrayed by a passion, which had fevered him just because his life had been so orderly and pure.  He was not strong enough even to cut himself adrift from it all.  He must just welter on, a figure visibly touched by depression and ill-fortune, and hammering out the old grammar-grind.  Had any writer, any poet, ever agonised thus?  The people who discoursed glibly about love, and wove their sorrows into elegies, what sort of prurient curs were they?  It was all too bad to think of, to speak of—­a mere staggering among the mudflats of life.

In this raging self-contempt and misery, he drew near to the still pool in the valley; he would sit there and bleed awhile, like the old warrior, but with no hope of revisiting the fight:  he would just abandon himself to listless despair for an hour or two, while the pleasant drama of life went on behind him.  Why had he not at least spoken to Maud, while he had time, and secured her loyalty?  It was his idiotic deliberation, his love of dallying gently with his emotions, getting the best he could out of them.

Suddenly he saw that there was some one on the stone seat by the spring, and in a moment he saw that it was Maud—­and that she had observed him.  She looked troubled and melancholy.  Had she stolen away here, had she even appointed a place of meeting with the wretched boy? was she vexed at his intrusion?  Well, it would have to be faced now.  He would go on, he would say a few words, he would at least not betray himself.  After all, she had done no wrong, poor child—­she had only found her mate; and she at least should not be troubled.

She rose up at his approach; and Howard, affecting a feeble heartiness, said, “Well, so you have stolen away like me!  This is a sweet place, isn’t it; like an old fairy-tale, and haunted by a Neckan?  I won’t disturb you—­I am going on to the hill—­I want a breath of air.”

Maud looked at him rather pitifully, and said nothing for a moment.  Then she said, “Won’t you stay a little and talk to me?—­I don’t seem to have seen you—­there has been so much going on.  I want to tell you about my book, you know—­I am going on with that—­I shall soon have some more chapters to show you.”

She sate down at one end of the bench, and Howard seated himself wearily at the other.  Maud glanced at him for a moment, but he said nothing.  The sight of her was a sort of torture to him.  He longed with an insupportable longing to fling himself down beside her and claim her, despairingly and helplessly.  He simply could not frame a sentence.