wrote, what
deliberate lie, if it helped Nell over the first shock?

"DEAR NELL,

"I write this hastily in the early hours, to say that we are called out
to Italy to my only sister, who is very ill. We leave by the first
morning boat, and may be away some time. I will write again. Don't fret,
and God bless you.
"M. L."

He could not see very well as he wrote. Poor, loving, desperate child!
Well, she had youth and strength, and would soon have--Oliver! And he
took yet another sheet.

"DEAR OLIVER,

"My wife and I are obliged to go post-haste to Italy. I watched you both
at the dance the other night. Be very gentle with Nell; and--good luck
to you! But don't say again that I told you to be patient; it is hardly
the way to make her love you.
"M. LENNAN."

That, then, was all--yes, all! He turned out the little lamp, and groped
towards the hearth. But one thing left. To say good-bye! To her, and
Youth, and Passion!--to the only salve for the aching that Spring and
Beauty bring--the aching for the wild, the passionate, the new, that
never quite dies in a man's heart. Ah! well, sooner or later, all men
had to say good-bye to that. All men--all men!

He crouched down before the hearth. There was no warmth in that
fast-blackening ember, but it still glowed like a dark-red flower. And
while it lived he crouched there, as though it were that to which he was
saying good-bye. And on the door he heard the girl's ghostly knocking.
And beside him--a ghost among the ghostly presences--she stood. Slowly
the glow blackened, till the last spark had faded out.

Then by the glimmer of the night he found his way back, softly as he had
come, to his bedroom.

Sylvia was still sleeping; and, to watch for her to wake, he sat down
again by the fire, in silence only stirred by the frail tap-tapping of
those autumn leaves, and the little catch in her breathing now and then.
It was less troubled than when he had bent over her before, as though in
her sleep she knew. He must not miss the moment of her waking, must be
beside her before she came to full consciousness, to say: "There, there!
It's all over; we are going away at once--at once." To be ready to offer
that quick solace, before she had time to plunge back into her sorrow,
was an island in this black sea of night, a single little refuge point
for his bereaved and naked being. Something to do--something fixed,
real, certain. And yet another long hour before her