The men looked at each other, their eyes luminous with intense and quickening emotions. Fortune had been so derisive that Mike feared Frank would break into foolish anger, and that only a quarrel and worse hatred might result from his offer of assistance. "It was in my box you met her; I remember the night quite well. You were with Harding." [Footnote: See _Spring Days_.] The men exchanged an inquiring look. "She wanted me to go home and have supper with her; she was in love with me then; I might have been her lover. But I refused, and I went into the bar and spoke to Lizzie; when she went off on duty I went and sat with you and Harding. Not long after I saw you at Reading, in the hotel overlooking the river. I was with Lizzie." [Footnote: See _Spring Days_.] "You can't accuse me of having cut you out. You could have got her, and--" "I didn't want her; I was in love with Lizzie, and I am still. And strange as it may appear to you, I regret nothing, at least nothing that concerns Lizzie." Mike wondered if this were true. His fingers fidgeted with the cheques. "Won't you take them?" Frank took them. It was impossible to continue the conversation. Frank made a remark, and the young men bade each other good-night. As Mike went up the staircase to his room, his exultation swelled, and in one of those hallucinations of the brain consequent upon nerve excitement, and in which we are conscious of our insanity, he wondered the trivial fabric of the cottage did not fall, and his soul seemed to pierce the depth and mystery imprisoned in the stars. He undressed slowly, looking at himself in the glass, pausing when he drew off his waistcoat, unbuttoning his braces with deliberation. "I can make nothing of it; there never was any one like me.... I could do anything, I might have been Napoleon or Caesar." As he folded his coat he put his hand into the breast pocket and produced the unposted letter. "That letter will drive me mad! Shall I burn it? What do I want with a wife? I've plenty of money now." He held the letter to the flame of the candle. But he could not burn it. "This is too damned idiotic!" he thought, as he laid it on the table and prepared to get into bed; "I'm not going to carry that letter about all my life. I must either post it or destroy it." Then the darkness became as if charged with a personality sweet and intense; it seemed to emanate from the letter which lay on the table, and to materialize strangely and inexplicably. It was the fragrance of brown hair, and the light of youthful eyes; and in this perfume, and this light, he realized her entire person; every delicate defect of thinness. She hung over him in all her girlishness, and he clasped her waist with his hands. "How sweet she is! There is none like her."