“Sleep!” he groaned. “How am I to sleep when I see her sitting down yonder at the foot of the bed with her great eyes watching and watching hour after hour? I tell you it saps all the strength and manhood out of me. That’s what makes me drink. God help me--I’m half drunk now!” “You are very ill,” I said, putting some vinegar to his temples; “and you are delirious. You don’t know what you say.” “Yes, I do,” he interrupted sharply, looking up at me. “I know very well what I say. I brought it upon myself. It is my own choice. But I couldn’t--no, by heaven, I couldn’t--accept the alternative. I couldn’t keep my faith to her. It was more than man could do.” I sat by the side of the bed, holding one of his burning hands in mine, and wondering over his strange words. He lay still for some time, and then, raising his eyes to me, said in a most plaintive voice-- “Why did she not give me warning sooner? Why did she wait until I had learned to love her so?” He repeated this question several times, rolling his feverish head from side to side, and then he dropped into a troubled sleep. I crept out of the room, and, having seen that he would be properly cared for, left the house. His words, however, rang in my ears for days afterwards, and assumed a deeper significance when taken with what was to come. My friend, Barrington Cowles, had been away for his summer holidays, and I had heard nothing of him for several months. When the winter session came on, however, I received a telegram from him, asking me to secure the old rooms in Northumberland Street for him, and telling me the train by which he would arrive. I went down to meet him, and was delighted to find him looking wonderfully hearty and well. “By the way,” he said suddenly, that night, as we sat in our chairs by the fire, talking over the events of the holidays, “you have never congratulated me yet!” “On what, my boy?” I asked. “What! Do you mean to say you have not heard of my engagement?” “Engagement! No!” I answered. “However, I am delighted to hear it, and congratulate you with all my heart.” “I wonder it didn’t come to your ears,” he said. “It was the queerest thing. You remember that girl whom we both admired so much at the Academy?” “What!” I cried, with a vague feeling of apprehension at my heart. “You don’t mean to say that you are engaged to her?”