I shall win a word of praise from him yet!” There!  I trust that will rouse a little pleasant conceit in you.  She meant it, and it is true.  I must go off and work at many things.  To-morrow or next day, after some further talk with her, I shall set off homewards, look up Forbes and begin operations.  She will be in town in about three weeks from now—­as you know she is going to stay first with your sister in Paris—­and then we shall have hard work till about the middle of November, when I suppose the play will be produced.  This will be more than a fortnight later than she intended to open, and Mr. Worrall will probably be furious over the delay, but she has developed a will of her own lately.

’Au revoir then.  You must have had a peaceful summer with your books and your heather.  I wish I had anything like the same digestion for work that you have; I never saw a man get as much pleasure out of his books as you do.  To me, I confess, that work is always work, and idleness a joy!

’However, no more idleness for me for a good while to come.  How grand she will be in that last act!—­Where were my eyes last spring?—­I wish there were a chance of her seeing much that is interesting in Paris.  However, flat as September generally is, she will get some Moliere at the Francais, and your sister will take care that she sees the right people.  Perrault, I hear, is to give her lessons—­under the rose.  Happy man!’

* * * * *

Kendal read this letter on a glowing August morning as he walked homeward along the side of the pond, where the shade of the fir-trees was a welcome protection against the rising heat, and the air was fragrant with the scent of the ling, which was just out in all its first faint flush of beauty.  He threw himself down among it after he had finished the sheets, and stared for long at the sunlit motionless water, his hat drawn forward over his brows.  So this was the outcome of it all.  Isabel Bretherton was about to become a great actress,—­Undine had found her soul!

It seemed to him, as he lay there buried in the ling, that during the past three weeks he had lived through a whole drama of feeling—­a drama which had its beginning, its complications, its climax.  While it had been going on he had been only half-conscious of its bearings, half-conscious of himself.  Wallace’s letter had made him sensible of the situation, as it concerned himself, with a decisive sharpness and completeness.  There was no possibility of any further self-delusion:  the last defences were overcome, the last veil between himself and the pursuing force which had overtaken him had fallen, and Kendal, with a shiver of pain, found himself looking straight into the wide, hungry eyes of Love!  Oh, was this love,—­this sore desire, this dumb craving, this restlessness of the whole being?