That now was the frequent and bitter cry of Falloden’s inmost being.  Trouble and the sight of trouble—­sorrow—­and death—­had been to him, as to other men, sobering and astonishing facts.  The most decisive effect of them had been to make him vulnerable, to break through the hard defences of pride and custom, so that he realised what he had done.  And this realisation was fast becoming a more acute and haunting thing than anything else.  It constantly drove out the poignant recollection of his father’s death, or the dull sense of financial loss and catastrophe.  Loss and catastrophe might be at some distant time made good.  But what could ever give Radowitz back his art—­his career—­his natural object in life?  The hatches of the present had just got to be closed over this ugly, irreparable thing.  “I can’t undo it—­nothing can ever be undone.  But I can’t spend my life in repenting it; one must just go forward, and not let that, or anything else, hamstring a man who has got his fight to fight, and can’t get out of it.”

Undo it?  No.  But were no, even partial, amends possible?—­nothing that could be offered, or done, or said?—­nothing that would give Constance Bledlow pleasure, or change her opinion?—­efface that shrinking in her, of which he hated to think?

He cudgelled his brains, but could think of nothing.

Money, of course, was of no use, even if he still possessed it.  Radowitz, in all matters connected with money, was hypersensitive and touchy.  It was well known that he had private means; and it was certainly probable that he was now the richer man of the two.

No—­there was nothing to be done.  He had maimed forever the vital, energising impulse in another human being, and it could never be repaired.  “His poor music!—­murdered”—­the words from Constance Bledlow’s horror-stricken letter were always in his mind.  And the day after the inquest on Sir Arthur, he had had some conversation on the medical points of his father’s case, and on the light thrown on them by Radowitz’s evidence, with the doctor who was then attending Lady Laura, and had, it appeared, been several times called in by Sorell during the preceding weeks to see Radowitz and report on the progress of the hand.  “A bad business!” said the young man, who had intelligence and was fresh from hospital—­“and awful hard luck!—­he might have hurt his hand in a score of ways and still have recovered the use of it, but with this particular injury”—­he shook his head—­“nothing to be done!  And the worst of it is that a trouble like this, which cuts across a man’s career, goes so deep.  The thing I should be most afraid of is his general health.  You can see that he’s delicate—­narrow-chested—­a bundle of nerves.  It might be phthisis—­it might be”—­he shrugged his shoulders—­“well, depression, bad neurasthenia.  And the poor lad seems to have no family—­no mother or sisters—­to look after him.  But he’ll want a lot of care, if he’s to pull round again.  An Oxford row, wasn’t it?  Abominable!”