"Whenever you usually have it," she replied, without looking up. "At seven o'clock, then. You had better tell Sanders.

" And I rang for him and went into my little smoking room. She had resisted her parents' final appeal to her to return to them. She had cast in her lot with me.

"The rest can be left to time," said I to myself. And, reviewing all that had happened, I let a wild hope thrust tenacious roots deep into me-the hope that she did not quite understand her own mind as to me. How often ignorance is a blessing; how often knowledge would make the step falter and the heart quail.

Who would have the courage, not to speak of the desire, to live his life, if he knew his own future? XV. During dinner I bore the whole burden of conversation-though burden I did not find it. Like most of the most reticent men, I am extremely talkative.