ugh his nostrils, he thought of it, and vaguely it
floated about the long days and nights of his work-filled loneliness,
making them sad, yet sweet. He had had an ideal and he had striven to
guard it carefully. He had lived for it. To-night he had cast it out in
a moment of strange excitement. Had he done wrong? Had he been false to
himself?

The mere fact that he was sitting and forming such questions in his mind
at such a moment proved to him that he had acted madly when he had
written and posted his letter. And he was overcome by a sense of dread.
He feared himself, that man who could act on a passionate impulse,
brushing aside all the restraints that his reason would oppose. And he
feared now almost unspeakably the result of what he had done. He had
given himself to the life which till now he had always avoided. He had
broken with the old life.

At eight-forty that morning his letter would be taken out of the box and
would start on its journey. Before night it would have been read and
probably answered. Sweat broke out on his face--a feeling of desperation
seized him. He loved his complete command of his own life, complete,
that is, in the human sense. He had never known how much he loved it,
clung to it, till now. And he must part from it. He had invited another
to join with him in the directing of his life. He had written burning
words. The thought of Madame Sennier and all she had done for her
husband had winged his pen.

The delicate smell from the little garden recalled him to the center. He
had been, he felt, crazily travelling along some broken edge. The earth
poured forth sobriety, truth dew-laden. He had to accept the influence.
No longer, in this grayness that grew, that would soon melt in rose and
in gold, did the dazzle of the Covent Garden lamps blind his eyes. In
this coolness of the approaching morning lust for anything was
impossible to him. Fame was but a shadow when the breast of the great
mother heaved under the least of her children. A bird chirped. Its
little voice meant more to Claude than the tempest of applause which had
carried him away in the theater.

Nature took him in the dawn and carried him back to himself. And that
was terrible. For when he was himself he knew that he wished he had
never written that letter of love to Charmian.

The dawn broke. The light, creeping in through the lattice, touched the
fragments of music paper which lay scattered over the floor. Claude
looked at th