This turn embarrassed me again. It would not exactly suit my convenience to go to Paris that afternoon. There were some things I wanted to--attend to. I wondered whether my young friend was becoming suspicious. 'Could I be of any service to you there?' I enquired. 'After all I don't know that you could,' said he after a moment's reflection. 'Besides, thanking you all the same for your advice, dear Campbell, I've made up my mind to stay here. I can never love, much less marry, any other woman than the Countess Almara.' There was a certain element of nobility in the placid obstinacy of the young fellow, who was committing the amazing folly of resigning ten thousand a year for the sake of a girl to whom he had never spoken, and until the last two or three days never seen, that touched me a little and made me resolve not to let him ruin himself without another effort to save him. 'Jeff, you are an ass,' I said bluntly. 'Your brain has been addled with the pursuit of what you are pleased to imagine poetry, until you have grown to believe that a man can live on love and lyrics instead of on beefsteak and bullion. You say you can never love any but the Countess Almara; I say it is, at all events, your duty to try. Go to Paris, and at least make the acquaintance of the young lady your father has selected for you. If you find her unlovable, at all events that will be some satisfaction.' 'Thank you very much, Campbell, but I can't, really.' 'You persist in running your head against a wall?' Jeff smiled mildly and said nothing. 'All right; _liberavi animam meam_. I wash my hands of you. One thing: I can't take the responsibility of giving you an introduction.' 'You know them both, then?' 'Well, I have not been presented to the young lady yet, but----' 'I shall be happy to present you when I know her myself,' said Jeff forgivingly; 'and when we are married I trust you and I will be better friends than ever.' 'Oh! fathomless self-conceit and fatuity of Bostonian youth!' I muttered to myself as I lit a final cigarette and preceded the poet to the door. 'Poor Jeff! upon my soul I am sorry for him!' And when we parted outside I shook his hand with a feeling not far removed from respect mingling with my impatience, and I watched him walk away with the kindly hope that the Providence which presides over children and fools might keep a beneficent eye upon the poor little poet. VI.