ave
visited him sooner. I changed the subject.

"You shall have writing materials and your books, Oscar. Force yourself
to write. You are looking better than you used to look; your eyes are
brighter, your face clearer." The old smile came back into his eyes, the
deathless humour.

"I've had a rest cure, Frank," he said, and smiled feebly.

"You should give record of this life as far as you can, and of all its
influences on you. You have conquered, you know. Write the names of the
inhuman brutes on their foreheads in vitriol, as Dante did for all
time."

"No, no, I cannot: I will not: I want to live and forget. I could not, I
dare not, I have not Dante's strength, nor his bitterness; I am a Greek
born out of due time." He had said the true word at last.

"I will come again and see you," I replied. "Is there nothing else I can
do? I hear your wife has seen you. I hope you have made it up with her?"

"She tried to be kind to me, Frank," he said in a dull voice, "she was
kind, I suppose. She must have suffered; I'm sorry...." One felt he had
no sorrow to spare for others.

"Is there nothing I can do?" I asked.

"Nothing, Frank, only if you could get me books and writing materials,
if I could be allowed to use them really! But you won't say anything I
have said to you, you promise me you won't?"

"I promise," I replied, "and I shall come back in a short time to see
you again. I think you will be better then....

"Don't dread the coming out; you have friends who will work for you,
great allies--" and I told him about Lady Dorothy Nevill at Mrs. Jeune's
lunch.

"Isn't she a dear old lady?" he cried, "charming, brilliant, human
creature! She might have stepped out of a page of Thackeray, only
Thackeray never wrote a page quite dainty and charming enough. He came
near it in his 'Esmond.' Oh, I remember you don't like the book, but it
is beautifully written, Frank, in beautiful simple rhythmic English. It
sings itself to the ear. Lady Dorothy" (how he loved the title!) "was
always kind to me, but London is horrible. I could not live in London
again. I must go away out of England. Do you remember talking to me,
Frank, of France?" and he put both his hands on my shoulders, while
tears ran down his face, and sighs broke from him. "Beautiful France,
the one country in the world where they care for humane ideals and the
humane life. Ah! if only I had gone with you to France," and the tears
poured down his cheeks and our