"Oh, that's what you're all down on him about, is it?" The other nodded; then, with a "so-long," he cut across the street and disappeared into an office where he had business. CHAPTER VII. "THE WHOLE SOUL PRISONER ..." No more foolish passion was ever implanted in the human breast than that of jealousy--unless it were that of which it is the direct outcome--nor is there any which the average human is less potent to resist. The victim of either, or both, is for the time being outside reason. Now the first-mentioned form of disease is, to the philosophical mind, of all others the most essentially foolish--indeed, we can hardly call to mind any other so thoroughly calculated to turn the average well-constructed man or woman into an exuberantly incurable idiot. For what does it amount to when we come to pan it out? If there exist grounds for the misgiving, why then it is going begging--grovelling for something which the other party has not got to give; if groundless, is it not a fulfilling of the homely old saw relating to cutting off one's nose to spite one's face? (We disclaim any intent to pun.) In either case it is such a full and whole-souled giving of himself, or herself, away on the part of the patient; while on that of its object--is he, or she, worth it? Now, from a very acute form of this insanity George Falkner was a chronic sufferer. He had cherished a secret weakness for Lilith, almost when she was yet in short frocks, but since her return from England, from the moment he had once more set eyes upon her on the deck of the _Persian_, he had tumbled madly, uncontrollably, headlong in love. Did a member of the opposite sex so much as exchange commonplaces with her, George Falkner's personality would contrive to loom, grim and dark, and almost threatening, in the background; while such male animal who should enjoy the pleasure of say an hour of Lilith's society _a deux_, even with no more flirtatious or ultimate intent than the same period spent in the society of his grandmother, would inspire in George a fell murderousness, which was nothing short of a reversion to first principles. As for Lilith herself, she was fond of him, very, in a sisterly, cousinly way--and what way, indeed, could be more fatal to that by which he desired to travel? Nor did it mend matters any that their mutual relatives were the reverse of favourable to his aspirations, on the ground of the near relationship existing between the parties. So, poor George, seeing no light, became morose and quarrelsome, and wholly and violently unreasonable--in short, a bore. All of which was a pity, because, this weakness apart, he was, on the whole, rather a good fellow.