Gregory Vigil called Mr. Paramor a pessimist it was because, like other people, he did not know the meaning of, the term; for with a confusion common to the minds of many persons who have been conceived in misty moments, he thought that, to see things as they were, meant, to try and make them worse.  Gregory had his own way of seeing things that was very dear to him—­so dear that he would shut his eyes sooner than see them any other way.  And since things to him were not the same as things to Mr. Paramor, it cannot, after all, be said that he did not see things as they were.  But dirt upon a face that he wished to be clean he could not see—­a fluid in his blue eyes dissolved that dirt while the image of the face was passing on to their retinae.  The process was unconscious, and has been called idealism.  This was why the longer he reflected the more agonisedly certain he became that his ward was right to be faithful to the man she loved, right to join her life to his.  And he went about pressing the blade of this thought into his soul.

About four o’clock on the day of Mrs. Pendyce’s visit to the studio a letter was brought him by a page-boy.

         &nb
sp;                         “Green’shotel,
                                        “Thursday. 
“Dear Grig,

“I have seen Helen Bellew, and have just come from George.  We have all been living in a bad dream.  She does not love him—­perhaps has never loved him.  I do not know; I do not wish to judge.  She has given him up.  I will not trust myself to say anything about that.  From beginning to end it all seems so unnecessary, such a needless, cross-grained muddle.  I write this line to tell you how things really are, and to beg you, if you have a moment to spare, to look in at George’s club this evening and let me know if he is there and how he seems.  There is no one else that I could possibly ask to do this for me.  Forgive me if this letter pains you.

                         “Your affectionate cousin,
                                   “Margery Pendyce.”

To those with the single eye, the narrow personal view of all things human, by whom the irony underlying the affairs of men is unseen and unenjoyed, whose simple hearts afford that irony its most precious smiles, who; vanquished by that irony, remain invincible—­to these no blow of Fate, no reversal of their ideas, can long retain importance.  The darts stick, quaver, and fall off, like arrows from chain-armour, and the last dart, slipping upwards under the harness, quivers into the heart to the cry of “What—­you!  No, no; I don’t believe you’re here!”

Such as these have done much of what has had to be done in this old world, and perhaps still more of what has had to be undone.

When Gregory received this letter he was working on the case of a woman with the morphia habit.  He put it into his pocket and went on working.  It was all he was capable of doing.