heart. Some day he
will ask for his mother; even now he may be asking for her!
Berenice, would he ever look with large, indulgent eyes
upon that little world of yours! Alas!

* * * * *

"I have read my letter over to myself, Berenice, and I fear
that it must sound to you very commonplace, even perhaps
cold! Yet, believe me when I tell you that I have passed
through a very fire of suffering, and if I am calm now it is
with the calm of an ineffable despair! In my life at Oxford,
and later, here in London, women have never borne any share.
Part of my scheme of living has been to regard them as
something outside my little cycle, an influence great
indeed, but one which had passed me by.

"Yet I am now one of the world's great sufferers, one of
those who have found at once their greatest joy linked with
an unutterable despair. For I love you, Berenice! Never
doubt it! Though I should never look upon your face
again--which God in His mercy forbid--my love for you must
be for ever a part and the greatest part of my life! Always
remember that, I pray you!

"It seems strange to talk of one's plans with such a great,
black cloud of sorrow filling the air! But the outward form
of life does not change, even when the light has gone out
and one's heart is broken! I have some work before me which
I must finish; when it is over I shall go abroad! But that
can wait! When you are back in London, send for me! I am
schooling myself to meet a new Berenice--my friend! And I
have something still more to say to you!

"MATRAVERS."

CHAPTER XV

The week that followed the sending of his letter was, to Matravers,
with his love for equable times and emotions, like a week in hell! He
had set himself a task not easy even to an ordinary man of business,
but to him trebly difficult and harassing. Day after day he spent in
the city--a somewhat strange visitor there, with his grave, dignified
manner and studied fastidiousness of dress and deportment. He was
unversed in the ways of the men with whom he had to deal, and he had
no commercial aptitude whatever. But in a quiet way he was wonderfully
persistent, and he succeeded better, perhaps, than any other emissary
whom John Drage could have employed. The sum of money which he
eventually co