But the journals made ample amends.  He had invented, they said, something new in literature, a story that was yet not a story, told in the form of essays which were no mere essays.  There was no character mentioned by name, there was not a line of dialogue, essays only, they might say, were the net result, yet a human heart was laid bare, and surely that was fiction in its highest form.  Fiction founded on fact, no doubt (for it would be ostrich-like to deny that such a work must be the outcome of a painful personal experience), but in those wise and penetrating pages Mr. Sandys called no one’s attention to himself; his subject was an experience common to humanity, to be borne this way or that; and without vainglory he showed how it should be borne, so that those looking into the deep waters of the book (made clear by his pellucid style) might see, not the author, but themselves.

A few of the critics said that if the book added nothing to his reputation, it detracted nothing from it, but probably their pen added this mechanically when they were away.  What annoyed him more was the two or three who stated that, much as they liked “Unrequited Love,” they liked the “Letters” still better.  He could not endure hearing a good word said for the “Letters” now.

The great public, I believe, always preferred the “Letters,” but among important sections of it the new book was a delight, and for various reasons.  For instance, it was no mere story.  That got the thoughtful public.  Its style, again, got the public which knows it is the only public that counts.

Society still held aloof (there was an African traveller on view that year), but otherwise everything was going on well, when the bolt came, as ever, from the quarter whence it was least expected.  It came in a letter from Grizel, so direct as to be almost as direct as this:  “I think it is a horrid book.  The more beautifully it is written the more horrid it seems.  No one was ever loved more truly than you.  You can know nothing about unrequited love.  Then why do you pretend to know?  I see why you always avoided telling me anything about the book, even its title.  It was because you knew what I should say.  It is nothing but sentiment.  You were on your wings all the time you were writing it.  That is why you could treat me as you did.  Even to the last moment you deceived me.  I suppose you deceived yourself also.  Had I known what was in the manuscript I would not have kissed it, I would have asked you to burn it.  Had you not had the strength, and you would not, I should have burned it for you.  It would have been a proof of my love.  I have ceased to care whether you are a famous man or not.  I want you to be a real man.  But you will not let me help you.  I have cried all day.  Grizel.”

Fury.  Dejection.  The heroic.  They came in that order.