THE LAST ARABIAN NIGHT 499

break the silence. Twice he had watched her, with an
escort, go into a large expensive restaurant, where he
could not possibly follow her. Once he had been able
to get to the same theatre, and had sat in the corner of
the gallery, looking down at her in the stalls. He had
often jeered at young Stanley and his "shaddering," but
now, inspired by his jealous misery, he suddenly turned
himself into a master shadower. Icy winds pierced and
smote him; his feet ached in the slush; his hands grew
numb and his eyes watered; he caught colds that ought
to have sent him to bed, but he never heeded them and
somehow they disappeared; and all this discomfort
hardly troubled him at the time, for he carried a fire
inside him, a burning excitement. It was only after-
wards, when he trailed back to Nathaniel Street, sat in
his little room pulling off his wet boots, turned and
tossed and coughed in his bed hour after hour, dragged
himself out in the leaden mornings, that he suffered in
the body.

His mind, however, lived as it had never lived before,
knowing exquisite agonies, finding pleasure and pain
inextricably confused in these hours of waiting and
shadowing. Sometimes when he was returning to his
lodgings, cold, tired out, hopeless, or rose to meet
another heavy blank morning, he would tell himself that
he had done with it all, and then he might creep through
a day or two trying to live a life of his own, but every-
thing would seem then so dull, so savourless, that he
hurried back to Carrington Villas, to the waiting and
dodging and hurrying round corners. He discovered,
too, that when he knew where Lena was, what she was
actually doing, his jealous feelings were less strong and
sharply-barbed than when he did not know where she