_Bartlett._--"No, she had the dying look!" After a long pause, in which he has continued to wander aimlessly about the room: "Cummings, is it necessary that you should tell him you told me?" _Cummings._--"You know I hate concealments of any kind, Bartlett." _Bartlett._--"Oh, well; do it then!" _Cummings._--"But I don't know that we shall see him again; and even if we do, I don't see how I can tell him unless he asks. It's rather painful." _Bartlett._--"Well, take that little sin on your conscience if you can. It seems to me too ghastly that I should know what you've told me; it's indecent. Cummings,"--after another pause,--"how does a man go about such a thing? How does he contrive to tell the woman whose heart he has won that he doesn't care for her, and break the faith that she would have staked her life on? Oh, I know,--women do such things, too; but it's different, by a whole world's difference. A man comes and a man goes, but a woman _stays_. The world is before him after that happens, and we don't think him much of a man if he can't get over it. But she, she has been sought out; she has been made to believe that her smile and her looks are heaven, poor, foolish, helpless idol! her fears have been laid, all her pretty maidenly traditions, her proud reserves overcome; she takes him into her inmost soul,--to find that his love is a lie, a lie! Imagine it! She can't do anything. She can't speak. She can't move as long as she lives. She must stay where she has been left, and look and act as if nothing had happened. Oh, good Heaven! And I, _I_ look like a man who could do that!" After a silence: "I feel as if there were blood on me!" He goes to the piano, and gathering up his things turns about towards Cummings again: "Come, man; I'm going. It's sacrilege to stay an instant,--to exist." _Cummings._--"Don't take it in that way, Bartlett. I blame myself very much for not having spared you in what I said. I wouldn't have told you of it, if I could have supposed that an accidental resemblance of the sort would distress you so." _Bartlett_, contritely.--"You had to tell me. I forced you to extreme measures. I'm quite worthy to look like him. Good Lord! I suppose I should be capable of his work." He moves towards the door with his burden, but before he reaches it General Wyatt, from the corridor, meets him with an air of confused agitation. Bartlett halts awkwardly, and some of the things slip from his hold to the floor. VII. GENERAL WYATT, CUMMINGS, _and_ BARTLETT. _General Wyatt._--"Sir, I am glad to see you." He pronounces the civility with a manner evidently affected by the effort to reconcile Bartlett's offensive personal appearance with his own sense of duty. "I--I was sorry to miss you before; and now I wish-- Your friend"--referring with an inquiring glance to Cummings--"has explained to you the cause of our very extraordinary behaviour, and I hope you"--