'We read of the tester of a bandit-bed; and it flattened unwary recumbents to pancakes.

An escape from the like of that seems pleadable, should be: none but the drowsy would fail to jump out and run, or the insane.' Mr.Radnor was taken with the illustration of his case.

'For the sake of my sanity, it was! to preserve my....

but any word makes nonsense of it.

Could--I must ask you--could any sane man--you were abroad in those days, horrible days! and never met her: I say, could you consent to be tied--I admit the vow, ceremony, so forth-tied to--I was barely twenty-one: I put it to you, Fenellan, was it in reason an engagement--which is, I take it, a mutual plight of faith, in good faith; that is, with capacity on both sides to keep the engagement: between the man you know I was in youth and a more than middle-aged woman crazy up to the edge of the cliff--as Colney says half the world is, and she positively is when her spite is roused.