and threw back his cloak, which was half-
saturated with the rain. He was so strangely
changed since I had last seen him, that, but
for his voice, I should not have felt sure that
it was he. His face was thinner and paler;
his eyes were rimmed and sunken: a slight
baldness had increased so much, that his forehead
seemed to have doubled in height. Such
hair as he had was closely cropped, and his
beard and moustache were shaved off.

"You would not have recognised me in
the street?" he said, catching my eye upon
him.

"I think not," I answered.

He passed his hand over his forehead, as
if at a loss to continue; and then added,
abruptly,

"We parted on bad terms, the last time we
were together."

"We did."

"You must not think anything more of
that. I have no heart to rake up old quarrels
now. I come to you, to ask a shelter to-night,
because I have not a friend of whom I care
to ask it: and it does not suit me to seek a
lodging among strangers. I am not the man
you knew me once. I have had a run of
misfortune for some time—not in play only, for
I never was a thorough gambler—everything
has gone wrong. I am a broken man;
broken in purse, and broken in spirits, or
I would not come here to ask you to shelter
me, this rough night. Honorine—you knew
Honorine?"—

"Your wife?"

"Aye: you might call her so," he
continued. "Never did a man love a wife more
tenderly; or treat one with more kindness,
while he had means—"

He paused for a moment; then, as if
he had forgotten what he was about to say,
applied his hand to his forehead again; and
sat thus, for a few seconds, looking down.

"You spoke of your wife," I said.

"Yes," he continued. "Never mind now.
When, at all hours and times, by night and by
day, a certain thing haunts you, it is natural
to talk about it, and to forget that your affairs
do not interest others as they interest
yourself."

"You seem in trouble," I said, as soothingly
as I could.

"Yes," he answered, "things were
desperate enough before the crowning misfortune
came. People will say it is my own
fault. Perhaps it is. But I never saw life as
I see it now. Accident set me on the wrong
road before I knew the difference between
right and wrong; and one thing and another
served to push me on the same way. It is
hard to get out of old habits. If I had to
begin life again, I would act differently. But
the lessons of experience come too late to be
of any use. And yet there is no mercy for
errors; though it is often hard enough,
amidst all the hubbub of opinions in the
world, to find the right—especially for a
young man. He goes on sometimes blundering,
and growing familiar with evil, until his
sense is blunted, he excuses everything, and
cannot bring himself to believe that he is
become what the world calls a scoundrel."

His tone and manner were so utterly
abject, that I could not help pitying him.
Perhaps my previous loneliness made me feel a
satisfaction in any kind of companionship. I
saw that he was suffering from some recent
misfortune, and I attributed his self-accusations
to the tone of despondency thus wrought
in his mind. I even reproached myself with
my old antipathy to him, and thought how
few men would hate each other, perhaps,
if the minds of all were laid bare.

"Come," I said, "let us not look at troubles
until we are half blinded. Turn away from
them to-night, and to-morrow you will see
your way the clearer."

"I am worn out, Valentine," said he.
"This is no thing of to-day nor of yesterday. I
have held up, and have kept a careless outside,
with such things in my heart as would have
driven any other man mad: but I cannot hold
up any longer. I have been hunted about,
like a runaway slave—turning this way and
that—and finding myself baulked on every
side. I have determined," he said, rising up
suddenly, "to be hunted no more."

"Well, well," said I, "no more of this
now. Let us make a fire and be cheerful this
stormy weather."

Casting on some additional logs, and
fanning the embers until they ignited and
began to blaze, I sat down, and bade him
also bring a chair up to the fire.

"I am as wet and cold as a dog's nose,"
said he, spreading his hands over the blaze.

"You have been in the country," I
remarked, seeing some clay upon his boots.

"I have walked some ten leagues to-day.
This rainy, windy weather is enough to blow
and drench a man's life out of him; and the
cloudy sky weighs upon my spirits, as if I
were buried alive in lead."

"You have only just returned to
Brussels?"

"I arrived here this afternoon from Paris,
and have been walking about the muddy
streets ever since, to no purpose. I thought I
had a friend or two here; but I find I have
not. It is my own fault. I chose my own
acquaintances, and might have known what
they would be to me, when such a time
as this should arrive. Yet," he continued,
looking at the fire, "there was one from
whom I hoped something better. Never
mind now! After the conduct of Honorine, I
need not have looked for honesty in the world.
This friend never lived under my roof, as she
did, for years—sharing my prosperity, and
swearing every day that it was all for love of
me. May she die in a hospital!"

Several times I essayed to divert our
conversation into new channels, but he invariably
returned to the same subject; and at length I