For at least a quarter of an hour he tormented himself with the pictures his imagination drew of what was passing behind that illuminated screen. Then he went gloomily to his room and sat down with jealousy, and began to count up his suspicions. A miserable companion is jealousy! And a miserable tale of wrongs she gave him to reckon up. But at least he reached one truth in that unhappy occupation--it was, that the engagement between Sappha and himself ought to be immediately made public. All their little misunderstandings, all his humiliations, had come through their relationship being kept secret. He felt that he was missing much of the pleasure of his wooing; certainly he was deprived of the _éclat_ that it ought to have brought him. It was all wrong! All wrong! And it must be put right at once. He promised himself he would see to that necessity the first thing he did in the morning. With this promise his insurgent heart suffered him to sleep a little, yet sleep did him no good. He awoke with the same consuming fever of resentment. He could not eat, nor yet drink; he had no use for anything but thought: jealous thought, with that eternal hurry of the soul that will not suffer rest--thoughts of love and sorrow, starting in every direction from his unhappy heart, to find out some hope, and meeting only suspicion, anger, and despair. It was his first experience of that egotistical malady, “whose torment, no men sure But lovers and the damned endure.” And he was astonished and dismayed at his suffering. But few men suffer patiently; they are usually quick for their own relief, and accordingly very early the following morning Leonard made an excuse for calling on Sappha. Mrs. Bloommaert had gone, however, to Nassau Street, and he did not need to urge the excuse prepared. He launched at once into his wrongs and his sufferings; and indeed the latter had left some intelligible traces. Sappha was moved by his pale face and troubled eyes to unusual sympathy; but this did not suffice. He felt that the only way to prevent a recurrence of the night’s suffering was to insist upon a public acknowledgment of his rights as her accepted lover, and he told Sappha this in no equivocal words.