"Love's rather cruel in a way." Guy looked aghast. "Pauline, you don't regret falling in love with me?" "No, of course not, of course not. Oh, I love you more than I can say." When Guy's arms were round her again Pauline thought that love could be as cruel as he chose; she did not care for his cruelty. JULY Guy had been conscious ever since the rose-gold evening of the ragged-robins of new elements having entered into his and Pauline's love for each other. All this month, however, June creeping upon them with verdurous and muffled steps had plotted to foil the least attempt on Guy's part to face the situation. Now the casual indiscretion of yesterday brought him sharply against it, and, as in the melancholy of the long Summer evening he contemplated the prospect, it appeared disquieting enough. In nine months he had done nothing; no quibbling could circumvent that deadly fact. For nine months he had lived in a house of his own, had accepted paternal help, had betrothed himself; and with every passing month he had done less to justify any single one of the steps. What were the remedies? The house might be sublet; at any rate, his father's bounty came to an end this quarter; engaging himself formally to Pauline, he could throttle the Muse and become a schoolmaster, and in two years perhaps they could be married. It would be a wrench to abandon poetry and the hope of fame, indeed it would stagger the very foundations of his pride; but rather than lose Pauline he would be content to remain the obscurest creature on earth. Literature might blazon his name; but her love blazoned his soul. Poetry was only the flame of life made visible, and if he were to sacrifice Pauline what gasping and ignoble rushlight of his own would he offer to the world?