reticent and retiring—­too much so, I dare say—­and no misery could have been devised for me more dreadful than this.  Her accusations are atrocious, such as could only come from a grossly impure mind, or at the suggestion of vile creatures.  You she hates with a rabid hatred—­God only knows why.  She would hate any one who was my friend, and whose society relieved me for a moment from my ghastly torments!”

He ceased for very exhaustion, so terribly did the things he described work upon him.

“What am I to do, Waymark?  Can you give me advice?”

Waymark had listened with his eyes cast down, and he was silent for some time after Julian ceased.

“You couldn’t well ask for advice in a more difficult case,” he said at length.  “There’s nothing for it but to strengthen yourself and endure.  Force yourself into work.  Try to forget her when she is out of sight.”

“But,” broke in Julian, “this amounts to a sentence of death!  What of the life before me, of the years I shall have to spend with her?  Work, forget myself, forget her,—­that is just what I cannot do!  My nerves are getting weaker every day; I am beginning to have fits of trembling and horrible palpitation; my dreams are hideous with vague apprehensions, only to be realised when I wake.  Work!  Half my misery is caused by the thought that my work is at an end for ever.  It is all forsaking me, the delight of imagining great things, what power I had of putting my fancies into words, the music that used to go with me through the day’s work.  It is long since I wrote a line of verse.  Quietness, peace, a calm life of thought, these things are what I must have; I thought I should have them in a higher degree than ever, and I find they are irretrievably lost.  I feel my own weakness, as I never could before.  When you bid me strengthen myself, you tell me to alter my character.  The resolution needed to preserve the better part of my nature through such a life as this, will never be within my reach.  It is fearful to think of what I shall become as time goes on.  I dread myself!  There have been revealed to me depths of passion and misery in my own heart which I had not suspected.  I shall lose all self-control, and become as selfish and heedless as she is.”

“No, you will not,” said Waymark encouragingly.  “This crisis will pass over, and strength will be developed.  We have a wonderful faculty for accommodating ourselves to wretchedness; how else would the world have held together so long?  When you begin to find your voice again, maybe you won’t sing of the dead world any longer, but of the living and suffering.  Your thoughts were fine; they showed you to be a poet; but I have never hidden from you how I wished that you had been on my side.  Art, nowadays, must be the mouthpiece of misery, for misery is the key-note of modern life.”

They talked on, and Julian, so easily moulded by a strong will, became half courageous.