the
failure of Butler's investments, L200 seems to have been a good deal
more than one-half Butler's income. At Pauli's death in 1897 Butler
discovered what he must surely at moments have suspected, that Pauli had
been making between L500 and L800 at the bar, and had left about
L9000--not to Butler. Butler wrote an account of the affair after
Pauli's death which is strangely self-revealing:--

'... Everything that he had was good, and he was such a fine
handsome fellow, with such an attractive manner that to me he seemed
everything I should like myself to be, but knew very well that I was
not....

'I had felt from the very beginning that my intimacy with Pauli was
only superficial, and I also perceived more and more that I bored
him.... He liked society and I hated it. Moreover, he was at times
very irritable and would find continual fault with me; often, I have
no doubt, justly, but often, as it seemed to me, unreasonably.
Devoted to him as I continued to be for many years, those years were
very unhappy as well as very happy ones.

'I set down a great deal to his ill-health, no doubt truly; a great
deal more, I was sure, was my own fault--and I am so still; I
excused much on the score of his poverty and his dependence on
myself--for his father and mother, when it came to the point, could
do nothing for him; I was his host and was bound to forbear on that
ground if on no other. I always hoped that, as time went on, and he
saw how absolutely devoted to him I was, and what unbounded
confidence I had in him, and how I forgave him over and over again
for treatment which I would not have stood for a moment from any
one else--I always hoped that he would soften and deal as frankly
and unreservedly with me as I with him; but, though for some fifteen
years I hoped this, in the end I gave it up, and settled down into a
resolve from which I never departed--to do all I could for him, to
avoid friction of every kind, and to make the best of things for him
and myself that circumstances would allow.'

In love such as this there is a feminine tenderness and devotion which
positively illuminates what otherwise appears to be a streak of
perversity in Butler; and the illumination becomes still more certain
when we read Butler's letters to the young Swiss, Hans Faesch, to whom
_Out into the Night_ was written. Faesch had departed f