might at least have told her that I loved her,
though she could not have answered me."

"It is too late now. To-night, while I was finishing the picture, I saw
her in the garden. Her spirit, all in white, with a blue flower in her
belt. I knew she was dead across the sea. I tried to call to her, but my
voice made no sound. She seemed not to see me. She moved like one in a
dream, straight on, and vanished. Is there no one who can tell her? Must
she never know that I loved her?"

The last thing in the book was a printed scrap of paper that lay between
the leaves:

IRREVOCABLE

"Would the gods might give
Another field for human strife;
Man must live one life
Ere he learns to live.
Ah, friend, in thy deep grave,
What now can change; what now can save?"

So there was a message after all, but it could never be carried; a task
for a friend, but it was impossible. What better thing could I do
with the poor little book than bury it in the garden in the shadow of
Larmone? The story of a silent fault, hidden in silence. How many of
life's deepest tragedies are only that: no great transgression, no shock
of conflict, no sudden catastrophe with its answering thrill of courage
and resistance: only a mistake made in the darkness, and under the
guidance of what seemed a true and noble motive; a failure to see the
right path at the right moment, and a long wandering beyond it; a word
left unspoken until the ears that should have heard it are sealed, and
the tongue that should have spoken it is dumb.

The soft sea-fog clothed the night with clinging darkness; the faded
leaves hung slack and motionless from the trees, waiting for their fall;
the tense notes of the surf beyond the sand-dunes vibrated through the
damp air like chords from some mighty VIOLONO; large, warm drops wept
from the arbour while I sat in the garden, holding the poor little book,
and thinking of the white blot in the record of a life that was too
proud to bend to the happiness that was meant for it.

There are men like that: not many perhaps, but a few; and they are the
ones who suffer most keenly in this world of half-understanding and
clouded knowledge. There is a pride, honourable and sensitive, that
imperils the realization of love, puts it under a spell of silence and
reserve, makes it sterile of blossoms and impotent of fruits. For what
is it, after all, but a subtle, spiritual worship of self? And what wa