"Now," said he，"that little space was given to delirium and delusion. I rested my temples on the breast of temptation，and put my neck voluntarily under her yoke of flowers; I tasted her cup. The pillow was burning: there is an asp in the garland: the wine has a bitter taste: her promises are hollow- her offers false: I see and know all this."

I gazed at him in wonder.

"It is strange," pursued he，"that while I love Rosamond Oliver so wildly- with all the intensity，indeed，of a first passion，the object of which is exquisitely beautiful，graceful，and fascinating- I experience at the same time a calm，unwarped consciousness that she would not make me a good wife; that she is not the partner suited to me; that I should discover this within a year after marriage; and that to twelve months" rapture would succeed a lifetime of regret. This I know."

"Strange indeed!" I could not help ejaculating.

"While something in me," he went on，"is acutely sensible to her charms，something else is as deeply impressed with her defects: they are such that she could sympathise in nothing I aspired to- co-operate in nothing I undertook. Rosamond a sufferer，a labourer，a female apostle? Rosamond a missionary"s wife? No!"

"But you need not be a missionary. You might relinquish that scheme."

"Relinquish! What! my vocation? My great work? My foundation laid on earth for a mansion in heaven? My hopes of being numbered in the band who have merged all ambitions in the glorious one of bettering their race- of carrying knowledge into the realms of ignorance- of substituting peace for war- freedom for bondage- religion for superstition- the hope of heaven for the fear of hell? Must I relinquish that? It is dearer than the blood in my veins. It is what I have to look forward to，and to live for."

After a considerable pause，I said- "And Miss Oliver? Are her disappointment and sorrow of no interest to you?"