Dainty and delicate, wrought of silver and gold, with an inlay of copper, I would not have exchanged it for the Koh-i-noor; and when I had slipped it on my finger its tiny eye of blue enamel looked up at me so friendly and companionable that I felt the glamour of the old-world superstition stealing over me, too.
Not a single patient came in this evening, which was well for me (and also for the patient), as I was able forthwith to write in reply a long letter; but this I shall spare the long-suffering reader excepting its concluding paragraph:-- "And now, dearest, I have said my say; once for all, I have said it, and I will not open my mouth on the subject again (I am not actually opening it now) 'until the times do alter.' And if the times do never alter--if it shall come to pass, in due course, that we two shall sit side by side, white-haired, and crinkly-nosed, and lean our poor old chins upon our sticks and mumble and gibber amicably over the things that might have been if the good Osiris had come up to the scratch--I will still be content, because your friendship, Ruth, is better than another woman's love.

So you see, I have taken my gruel and come up to time smiling--if you will pardon the pugilistic metaphor--and I promise you loyally to do your bidding and never again to distress you.
"Your faithful and loving friend, "PAUL." This letter I addressed and stamped, and then, with a wry grimace which I palmed off on myself (but not on Adolphus) as a cheerful smile, I went out and dropped it into the post-box; after which I further deluded myself by murmuring _Nunc dimittis_ and assuring myself that the incident was now absolutely closed.
But, despite this comfortable assurance, I was, in the days that followed, an exceedingly miserable young man.

It is all very well to write down troubles of this kind as trivial and sentimental.

They are nothing of the kind.

When a man of an essentially serious nature has found the one woman of all the world who fulfils his highest ideals of womanhood, who is, in fact, a woman in ten thousand, to whom he has given all that he has to give of love and worship, the sudden wreck of all his hopes is no small calamity.