for the sake of argument, I would allow it.  I think that I would risk something after all.  What a glorious thing it would be to be loved by a woman, once, wholly and for ever.  To meet the creature I described to him the other night, waiting for me to come into her life, and to be to her all I could be to the woman I should love.  But she has never come; never will, now; still, there is a sort of rest to me in thinking of rest.  Hearth, home, wife, children; the worn old staff resting in the corner, never to wander again.  What a strange thing it is that men should have all these, and more, and yet never see that they have the simple elements of earthly happiness, if they would but use them.  And we, outcasts and wanderers, children of sin and darkness, in whose hands one commandment seems hardly less fragile than another, would give anything—­had we anything to give—­for the happiness of a home, to call our own.  How strange it is that what I said to Isaacs should be true.  “Do not marry unless you must depend on each other for daily bread, or unless you are rich enough to live apart.”  Yes, it is true, in ninetynine cases out of a hundred.  But then, I should add a saving clause, “and unless you are quite sure that you love each other.”  Ay, there is the pons asinorum, the bridge whereon young asses and old fools come to such terrible grief.  They are perfectly sure they love eternally; they will indignantly scorn the suggestions of prudence; love any other woman? never, while I live, answers the happy and unsophisticated youth.  Be sorry I did it?  Do you think I am a schoolboy in my first passion? demands the aged bridegroom.  And so they marry, and in a year or two the enthusiastic young man runs away with some other enthusiastic man’s wife, and the octogenarian spouse finds himself constituted into a pot of honey for his wife’s swarming relations to settle on, like flies.  But a man in strong middle prime of age, like me, knows his own mind; and—­yes, on the whole I was unjust to Isaacs and to Miss Westonhaugh.  If a woman loved me, she should have all the tiger’s ears she wanted.  “Still, I hope he will get back safely,” I added, in afterthought to my reverie, as I turned into bed and ordered Kiramat Ali to wake me half an hour before dawn.

I was restless, sleeping a little and dreaming much.  At last I struct a light and looked at my watch.  Four o’clock.  It would not be dawn for more than an hour; I knew Isaacs had made for the place where the tiger passed his days, certain that he would return near daybreak, according to all common probability.  He need not have gone so early, I thought.  However, it might be a long way off.  I lay still for a while, but it seemed very hot and close under the canvas.  I got up and threw a caftan round me, drew a chair into the connat and sat, or rather lay, down in the cool morning breeze.  Then I dozed again until Kiramat Ali woke me by pulling at my foot.  He said it would be dawn in half an