“It is high time I went!” said Walter--not without the dignity that endurance gives. “May I ask you to do one thing for me, Mr. Sefton?” “Twenty things, if I can.” “Then please send my portmanteau after me.” With that he left the room, and went to his own, far on the way of cure, though not quite so far as he imagined. The blood, however, was surging healthily through his veins: he had been made a fool of, but he would be a wiser man for it! He had hardly closed his door when Sefton appeared. “Can I help you?” he said. “To pack my portmanteau? Did you ever pack your own?” “Oftener than you, I suspect! I never had but one orderly I could bear about me, and he’s dead, poor fellow! I shall see him again, though, I do trust, let believers in dirt say what they will! Never till I myself think no more, will I cease hoping to see my old Archie again! Fellows must learn something through the Lufas, or they would make raving maniacs of us! God be thanked, he has her in his great idiot-cage, and will do something with her yet! May you and I be there to see when she comes out in her right mind!” “Amen!” said Walter. “And now, my dear fellow,” said Sefton, “if you will listen to me, you will not go till to-morrow morning. No, I don’t want you to stay to breakfast! You shall go by the early train as any other visitor might. The least scrap of a note to Lady Tremaine, and all will go without remark.” He waited in silence. Walter went on putting up his things. “I dare say you are right!” he said at length. “I will stay till the morning. But you will not ask me to go down again?” “It would be a victory if you could.” “Very well, I will. I am a fool, but this much less of a fool, that I know I am one.” Somehow Walter had a sense of relief. He began to dress, and spent some pains on the process. He felt sure Sefton would take care the “Onlooker” should not be seen--before his departure anyhow. During dinner he talked almost brilliantly, making Lufa open her eyes without knowing she did. He retired at length to his room with very mingled feelings. There was the closing paragraph of the most interesting chapter of his life yet constructed! What was to follow? Into the gulf of an empty heart Something must always come. “What will it be?” I think with a start, And a fear that makes me dumb. I can not sit at my outer gate And call what shall soothe my grief; I can not unlock to a king in state, Can not bar a wind-swept leaf! Hopeless were I if a loving Care Sat not at the spring of my thought-- At the birth of my history, blank and bare. Of the thing I have not wrought. If God were not, this hollow need. All that I now call _me_, Might wallow with demons of hate and greed In a lawless and shoreless sea! Watch the door of this sepulcher, Sit, my Lord, on the stone, Till the life within it rise and stir. And walk forth to claim its own.