“Dear Oliver,

“My wife and I are obliged to go post-haste to Italy.  I watched you both at the dance the other night.  Be very gentle with Nell; and—­good luck to you!  But don’t say again that I told you to be patient; it is hardly the way to make her love you.

“M.  Lennan.”

That, then, was all—­yes, all!  He turned out the little lamp, and groped towards the hearth.  But one thing left.  To say good-bye!  To her, and Youth, and Passion!—­to the only salve for the aching that Spring and Beauty bring—­the aching for the wild, the passionate, the new, that never quite dies in a man’s heart.  Ah! well, sooner or later, all men had to say good-bye to that.  All men—­all men!

He crouched down before the hearth.  There was no warmth in that fast-blackening ember, but it still glowed like a dark-red flower.  And while it lived he crouched there, as though it were that to which he was saying good-bye.  And on the door he heard the girl’s ghostly knocking.  And beside him—­a ghost among the ghostly presences—­she stood.  Slowly the glow blackened, till the last spark had faded out.

Then by the glimmer of the night he found his way back, softly as he had come, to his bedroom.

Sylvia was still sleeping; and, to watch for her to wake, he sat down again by the fire, in silence only stirred by the frail tap-tapping of those autumn leaves, and the little catch in her breathing now and then.  It was less troubled than when he had bent over her before, as though in her sleep she knew.  He must not miss the moment of her waking, must be beside her before she came to full consciousness, to say:  “There, there!  It’s all over; we are going away at once—­at once.”  To be ready to offer that quick solace, before she had time to plunge back into her sorrow, was an island in this black sea of night, a single little refuge point for his bereaved and naked being.  Something to do—­something fixed, real, certain.  And yet another long hour before her waking, he sat forward in the chair, with that wistful eagerness, his eyes fixed on her face, staring through it at some vision, some faint, glimmering light—­far out there beyond—­as a traveller watches a star. . . .