turning the check you sent for what I did on the Manderson
case," Trent wrote to Sir James Molloy from Munich, whither he had gone
immediately after handing in at the _Record_ office a brief despatch
bringing his work on the case to an unexciting close. "What I sent you
wasn't worth one-tenth of the amount; but I should have no scruple about
pocketing it, if I hadn't taken a fancy--never mind why--not to touch
any money at all for this business. I should like you, if there is no
objection, to pay for the stuff at your ordinary space-rate, and hand
the money to some charity which does not devote itself to bullying
people, if you know of any such. I have come to this place to see some
old friends and arrange my ideas, and the idea that comes out upper-most
is that for a little while I want some employment with activity in it. I
find I can't paint at all; I couldn't paint a fence. Will you try me as
your Own Correspondent somewhere? If you can find me a good adventure I
will send you good accounts. After that I could settle down and work."

Sir James sent him instructions by telegram to proceed at once to
Kurland and Livonia, where Citizen Browning was abroad again, and town
and country-side blazed in revolt. It was a roving commission, and for
two months Trent followed his luck. It served him not less well than
usual. He was the only correspondent who saw General Dragilew killed in
the street at Volmar by a girl of eighteen. He saw burnings, lynchings,
fusillades, hangings; each day his soul sickened afresh at the
imbecilities born of misrule. Many nights he lay down in danger. Many
days he went fasting. But there was never an evening or a morning when
he did not see the face of the woman whom he hopelessly loved.

He discovered in himself an unhappy pride at the lasting force of this
infatuation. It interested him as a phenomenon; it amazed and
enlightened him. Such a thing had not visited him before; it confirmed
so much that he had found dubious in the recorded experience of men.

It was not that, at thirty-two, he could pretend to ignorance of this
world of emotion. About his knowledge, let it be enough to say that what
he had learned had come unpursued and unpurchased, and was without
intolerable memories; broken to the realities of sex, he was still
troubled by its inscrutable history; he went through life full of a
strange respect for certain feminine weakness and a very simple terror
of certain feminine strength.