Yet both had undoubtedly taken place.

He, who but yesterday morning had felt so bitterly his loneliness in the world, and, above all, the impossibility of what he most longed for--woman's companionship--found himself all at once on terms of at least friendly intimacy with two women, both young, both beautiful, yet so wholly different.

Each answered to an ideal which he cherished, and the two ideals were so diverse, so mutually exclusive.

The experience had left him in a curious frame of mind.

For the present, he felt cool, almost indifferent, to both his new acquaintances.