"When a man has nothing to offer"--he broke off and flushed up hotly. "If I had a shadow of a right to a reason for staying," he exclaimed, "do you suppose I should not hold on to it, and fight for it, and demand what belonged to me? There might be a struggle--there would be; but no other man should have one jot or tittle that persistence and effort might win in time for me! A man who gives up is a fool! I have nothing to give up. I haven't even the right to surrender! I hadn't the right to enter the field and take my wounds like a man! It is pleasant to reflect that it is my own--fault. I trifled with my life; now I want it, and I can't get it back." "Ah!" she said, "that is an old story!" And then Agnes returned, and he took her home. On their way there they talked principally of Tom and Kitty. "They will miss you greatly," Agnes said. "They will be very kind to do it," was his reply. "We shall all miss you," she added. "That will be kinder still," he answered. "Might I be permitted to quote the ancient anecdote of the colored warrior, who, on running away in battle, was reproached and told that a single life counted as nothing on such great occasions, and that if he had fallen he would not have been missed,--his reply to this heroic statement of the case being, that he should have been likely to miss himself. I shall miss myself, and already a gentle melancholy begins to steal over me. I am not the gleesome creature I was before good luck befell me." But, despite this lightness of tone, their walk was not a very cheerful one; indeed, after this speech they were rather quiet, and they parted with few words at the door, Arbuthnot declining to go into the house. When Agnes entered alone Mrs. Merriam looked up from her novel in some surprise. "I thought I heard Mr. Arbuthnot," she said. "He left me at the door," Mrs. Sylvestre answered. "What!" said Mrs. Merriam, "without coming to say good-night to me! I wanted to tell him what a dissipated evening I have been spending with my new book." "He has been telling us good news," said Agnes, standing before the fire and loosening her furs. "He has been offered a consulship." Mrs. Merriam closed her book and laid it on the table. "Will he accept it?" she asked. "He could scarcely refuse it," Agnes replied. "It is a decided advance; he likes the life abroad, and it might even lead to something better in the future; at least one rather fancies such things are an opening." "It is true," reflected Mrs. Merriam, "that he seems to have no particular ties to hold him in one place rather than another." "None," said Agnes. "I don't know whether that is his fortune or his misfortune." "His fortune," said Mrs. Merriam. "He is of the nature to know how to value them. Perhaps, after all, he may form them if he goes abroad. It is not too late." "Perhaps so," said Agnes. "That would be another reason why it would be better for him to go."