He was late of getting up; he was slow to go out; he did not care what he did with himself; sometimes his impulse was to hurry to the Castle, to take advantage as long as he could of the permission which certainly had been given him, on the mere chance of perhaps seeing _her_ again. But what was the use of seeing _her_? It was to Miss Jean his visit would have to be made. It was she who had been the aim of his devotion; and at that thought Lewis laid down the hat which he had snatched up, and threw himself in despair upon his seat. No, better to hurry away, never to put himself within the reach of her influence again, to do nothing at least to deepen and increase it. And then he began to say to himself, what matter? no one but himself should ever know the strong temptation which had seized him, the enchantment she had exercised unawares. It would do no harm to any one but himself, if he did see her once more; and if he suffered for it, there would be compensation in the sweetness of her presence; he would have had the sunshine at least, even if the cloud were all the blacker afterwards. Throughout the whole of this self-discussion it will be seen that the idea of being unfaithful to his first declared object never occurred to Lewis. He believed that he had made Miss Jean fully aware of the proposal he meant to make her. He had told Miss Margaret of it. He had no doubt that they must have communicated with each other on the subject, and that the mere fact of his reception at the house was a proof that he was viewed under the aspect of an accepted lover. And, this being the case, nothing in the world would have made Lewis flinch from the position he had assumed. It seemed to him now like going from the glory of the skies and free air into the dim and shadowed atmosphere indoors. Lilias would have meant the garden of Eden, the perennial, never-exhausted idyll of human blessedness. Miss Jean meant a domestic interior somewhat dull, grey, full of dimness and shadows. But all the glory and blessedness in the world could not make that possible which was impossible, as Lewis knew; and what was impossible was to leave in the lurch the woman he had wooed. That was the one thing he could not do, however hard the price he had to pay. It did not come even the length of a discussion in his mind. It was too certain, too self-evident, for anything of the kind. He made no question about it. Thus sometimes he jumped up, thinking he would go at once to the Castle, and linger there till it was time to see her again; sometimes sat down again, saying to himself why should he do it? why should he add to his pain? Better to keep that one vision as the only one, a sort of poem, a revelation for one moment, and no more. In the lives of the saints such things have been told; how they had seen a celestial vision, sometimes printing marks in their very flesh, and had seen no more. Lewis felt that it was perhaps profane to compare with that