At the end of the week he sat down and considered his case quite calmly.  For three years he had loved this girl, deeply and tenderly.  He had been lover, brother, friend, and guardian.  During that time, even though she had accepted him in every capacity except as that of the prospective husband, she had never given him any real affection, nor sympathy, nor help; all she had done for him had been done without her knowledge or intent.  To know her, to love her, and to scheme to give her pleasure had been its own reward, and the only one.  For the last few months he had been living like a crossing sweeper in order to be able to stay in London until she came back to it, and that he might still send her the gifts he had always laid on her altar.  He had not seen her in three months.  Three months that had been to him a blank, except for his work—­which, like all else that he did, was inspired and carried on for her.  Now at last she had returned and had shown that, even as a friend, he was of so little account in her thoughts, of so little consequence in her life, that after this long absence she had no desire to learn of his welfare or to see him—­she did not even give him the chance to see her.  And so, placing these facts before him for the first time since he had loved her, he considered what was due to himself.  “Was it good enough?” he asked.  “Was it just that he should continue to wear out his soul and body for this girl who did not want what he had to give, who treated him less considerately than a man whom she met for the first time at dinner?” He felt he had reached the breaking-point; that the time had come when he must consider what he owed to himself.  There could never be any other woman save Helen; but as it was not to be Helen, he could no longer, with self-respect, continue to proffer his love only to see it slighted and neglected.  He was humble enough concerning himself, but of his love he was very proud.  Other men could give her more in wealth or position, but no one could ever love her as he did.  “He that hath more let him give,” he had often quoted to her defiantly, as though he were challenging the world, and now he felt he must evolve a makeshift world of his own—­a world in which she was not his only spring of acts; he must begin all over again and keep his love secret and sacred until she understood it and wanted it.  And if she should never want it he would at least have saved it from many rebuffs and insults.

With this determination strong in him, the note Helen had left for him after her talk with Marion, and the flowers, and the note with them, saying she was coming to take tea on the morrow, failed to move him except to make him more bitter.  He saw in them only a tardy recognition of her neglect—­an effort to make up to him for thoughtlessness which, from her, hurt him worse than studied slight.

A new regime had begun, and he was determined to establish it firmly and to make it impossible for himself to retreat from it; and in the note in which he thanked Helen for the flowers and welcomed her to tea, he declared his ultimatum.