To remain indoors, when he was not working, was sheer torture; for he could not read, and had lost all interest in the little excitements, amusements, occupations that go to make up the normal life of man.  Every outer thing seemed to have dropped off, shrivelled, leaving him just a condition of the spirit, a state of mind.

Lying awake he would think of things in the past, and they would mean nothing—­all dissolved and dispersed by the heat of this feeling in him.  Indeed, his sense of isolation was so strong that he could not even believe that he had lived through the facts which his memory apprehended.  He had become one burning mood—­that, and nothing more.

To be out, especially amongst trees, was the only solace.

And he sat for a long time that evening under a large lime-tree on a knoll above the Serpentine.  There was very little breeze, just enough to keep alive a kind of whispering.  What if men and women, when they had lived their gusty lives, became trees!  What if someone who had burned and ached were now spreading over him this leafy peace—­this blue-black shadow against the stars?  Or were the stars, perhaps, the souls of men and women escaped for ever from love and longing?  He broke off a branch of the lime and drew it across his face.  It was not yet in flower, but it smelled lemony and fresh even here in London.  If only for a moment he could desert his own heart, and rest with the trees and stars!

No further letter came from her next morning, and he soon lost his power to work.  It was Derby Day.  He determined to go down.  Perhaps she would be there.  Even if she were not, he might find some little distraction in the crowd and the horses.  He had seen her in the paddock long before the Colonel’s sharp eyes detected him; and, following in the crush, managed to touch her hand in the crowded gateway, and whisper:  “To-morrow, the National Gallery, at four o’clock—­by the Bacchus and Ariadne.  For God’s sake!” Her gloved hand pressed his hard; and she was gone.  He stayed in the paddock, too happy almost to breathe. . . .

Next day, while waiting before that picture, he looked at it with wonder.  For there seemed his own passion transfigured in the darkening star-crowned sky, and the eyes of the leaping god.  In spirit, was he not always rushing to her like that?  Minutes passed, and she did not come.  What should he do if she failed him?  Surely die of disappointment and despair. . . .  He had little enough experience as yet of the toughness of the human heart; how life bruises and crushes, yet leaves it beating. . . .  Then, from an unlikely quarter, he saw her coming.

They walked in silence down to the quiet rooms where the Turner watercolours hung.  No one, save two Frenchmen and an old official, watched them passing slowly before those little pictures, till they came to the end wall, and, unseen, unheard by any but her, he could begin!