er
without losing honor to an adversary who has proved his
superiority. Yes, I surrendered. I cast out love in order
that I might live for my art.

"But I was too late. I had pushed too far the enmity of this
spectral and unrelenting foe, and it would not accept my
surrender. I have dashed the image of Rosa from my heart, and
I have done it to no purpose. I am dying. And so I write this
for you, lest you should go unwarned to the same doom.

"The love of Rosa is worth dying for, if you can win it. (I
could not even win it.) You will have to choose between Love
and Life. I do not counsel you either way. But I urge you to
choose. I urge you either to defy your foe utterly and to the
death, or to submit before submission is useless.

"Alresca."

I sat staring at the paper long after I had finished reading it,
thinking about poor Alresca. There was a date to it, and this date
showed that it was written a few days before his mysterious disease
took a turn for the better.

The communication accordingly needs some explanation. It seems to me
that Alresca was mistaken. His foe was not so implacable as Alresca
imagined. Alresca having surrendered in the struggle between them, the
ghost of Lord Clarenceux hesitated, and then ultimately withdrew its
hateful influence, and Alresca recovered. Then Rosa came again into
his existence that evening at Bruges. Alresca, scornful of
consequences, let his passion burst once more into flame, and the
ghost instantly, in a flash of anger, worked its retribution.

Day came, and during the whole of that day I pondered upon a phrase in
Alresca's letter, "You will have to choose between love and life." But
I could not choose. Love is the greatest thing in life; one may,
however, question whether it should be counted greater than life
itself. I tried to argue the question calmly, dispassionately. As if
such questions may be argued! I could not give up my love; I could not
give up my life; that was how all my calm, dispassionate arguments
ended. At one moment I was repeating, "The love of Rosa is worth dying
for;" at the next I was busy with the high and dear ambitions of which
I had so often dreamed. Were these to be sacrificed? Moreover, what
use would Rosa's love be to me when I was dead? And what use would my
life be to me without my love for her?

A hundred times I tried to laugh, and said t