: I only write to thank you for the pleasure and the courage it
has given me. Some parts have fitted my case so exactly that I have
applied them and made use of them, as any chance comer is permitted to
do with any work of art.

"This is a great work you have produced, and I always knew that you
would do great things. Count me not last of those who praise you, and
who look to see your future triumphs. ALAN WALCOTT."

He put the letter in an envelope, sealed and addressed it. Then he
leaned back in his chair, and began to muse again.

What a failure his life had been! He had told himself so a hundred times
of late, but the truth of the verdict was more and more vivid every day.
Surely he had set out from the beginning with good intentions, with high
motives, with an honorable ambition. No man ever had a more just father,
a more devoted mother, a happier home, a more careful and conscientious
training. He had never seen a flaw in either of his parents, and it had
been his single purpose to imitate their devotion to duty, their piety,
their gentle consideration for all with whom they had to deal. It had
struck him sometimes as almost strange (he had suspected once that it
was a trifle unpoetical) that he had rather sought out than shunned his
humbler relatives in the little shop at Thorley, taking the utmost care
that their feelings should never be hurt by his more refined education
and tastes. Of these three friends of his youth who were dead he could
honestly say (but he did not say all this), that he had been dutiful to
them, and that he had not wilfully brought sorrow upon any one of them.

Where had he gone so far astray as to merit, or even to bring about, the
anguish which had fallen upon him? True, he had given himself to
pleasure for the few years which succeeded his father's death. He had
traveled, he had enjoyed the society of men and women, he had lived an
idle life--except inasmuch as he aspired to be a poet, and wrote two or
three volumes which the world had accepted and thanked him for, but the
standard of his boyhood had never been rejected--he had been considerate
of the feelings of every man and woman (Lettice alone, perhaps, having
the right to deny it), and had not permitted himself one pleasure, or
action, or relaxation, which might give pain to another. That had been
his rule of life. Was it not enough?

He had teased himself, as thoughtful men and women often have done, and
more often will do, ab