compelled to go out upon the desert world again and begin anew? Surely, surely, that would not be necessary! And yet, what was he to do? The question on Rita’s side by no means interfered with her rest, save for that hour or so when she chose to think of it, instead of brushing her hair; but it took away Harry’s, upon whom all the responsibility rested. Her feeling on the matter came only the length of a certain amused interest and curiosity as to how he would conduct himself in the future, and what he meant by these odd speeches; but his affected all his life. Whether he should stay where he was, or go away; whether he should have to throw aside again all his hopes of advancement, all his comfort and renewed confidence in his fate, all hung in the balance. He turned uneasily on his bed all the night through, dozing and dreaming of it, and waking to ask the same question again. But the night brings counsel, and when he woke somewhat late the next morning from the sleep which overtook him at last in the midst of his deliberations, he woke with a new idea in his mind, as we so often do, after a long consideration. The first words he said to himself as he woke were, “I will ask Paolo.” For a moment he could not tell what the momentous subject was that he was to ask Paolo about. Paolo had continued to be Harry’s faithful friend; but their intercourse had been disturbed by the society at the Consulate, for, except on some special occasion, he was not important enough to be introduced to all the fine company that assembled there; only now and then when all the _employés_ were asked, and a little semipublic fête for them banished the fine people, did Paolo enter these enchanted walls, and talk with the young mistress of the house. He had scarcely ever talked to Harry of the Signorina, but when he did mention her there had been a slightly cynical tone in his remarks. To tell the truth, Paolo had never got over that first appearance of the Vice-Consul’s daughter in the street at night. He had recognized her, clinging to her old attendant, hurrying away, while Harry, all unconscious of what was to come of it, had stopped the Italians who were pursuing her, and summarily knocked down the Englishman. Paolo was not ill-natured, nor given to ill-thinking, but he was an Italian, and he could not imagine any perfectly virtuous motive which could have taken a young lady out of her house at that hour. That love or intrigue had something to do with it he was convinced, and all the proof in the world could not have persuaded him otherwise. But he did not wish to throw any indiscreet light upon her proceedings, or to betray her to the world. With some sense of this, though without ever explaining to himself how it was that he had such a feeling, Harry had refrained from telling him the climax of the story. He had left the Consul’s sudden friendship unexplained, Paolo requiring no explanation of it, and feeling it the most simple and natural thing in the world.