“But because I love you, my own little darling, I will not spoil your life.  I won’t ask you to give me even one thought.  But if I believed that it were of any good to say a prayer, I should pray that you may soon find that strong man; for it is not well for any of us to stand alone.  There comes a time when the loneliness is more than we can bear.

“There is one thing I want you to know:  indeed I am not the gruff fellow I have so often seemed.  Do believe that.  Do you remember how I told you that I dreamed of losing you?  And now the dream has come true.  I am always looking for you, and cannot find you.

“You have been very good to me; so patient, and genial, and frank.  No one before has ever been so good.  Even if I did not love you, I should say that.

“But I do love you, no one can take that from me:  it is my own dignity, the crown of my life.  Such a poor life . . . no, no, I won’t say that now.  I cannot pity myself now . . . no, I cannot . . .”

The Disagreeable Man stopped writing, and the pen dropped on the table.

He buried his tear-stained face in his hands.  He cried his heart out, this Disagreeable Man.

Then he took the letter which he had just been writing, and he tore it into fragments.

END OF PART I.

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

THE DUSTING OF THE BOOKS.

IT was now more than three weeks since Bernardine’s return to London.  She had gone back to her old home, at her uncle’s second-hand book-shop.  She spent her time in dusting the books, and arranging them in some kind of order; for old Zerviah Holme had ceased to interest himself much in his belongings, and sat in the little inner room reading as usual Gibbon’s “History of Rome.”  Customers might please themselves about coming:  Zerviah Holme had never cared about amassing money, and now he cared even less than before.  A frugal breakfast, a frugal dinner, a box full of snuff, and a shelf full of Gibbon were the old man’s only requirements:  an undemanding life, and therefore a loveless one; since the less we ask for, the less we get.

When Malvina his wife died, people said:  “He will miss her.”

But he did not seem to miss her:  he took his breakfast, his pinch of snuff, his Gibbon, in precisely the same way as before, and in the same quantities.

When Bernardine first fell ill, people said:  “He will be sorry.  He is fond of her in his own queer way.”

But he did not seem to be sorry.  He did not understand anything about illness.  The thought of it worried him; so he put it from him.  He remembered vaguely that Bernardine’s father had suddenly become ill, that his powers had all failed him, and that he lingered on, just a wreck of humanity, and then died.  That was twenty years ago.  Then he thought of Bernardine, and said to himself, “History repeats itself.”  That was all.