ends quite foreign to all love, had raised a barrier between them
which had no right to exist, and yet one that in this world could, he
thought, never be removed.

Misfortunes rain upon us from every quarter of the sky, but so long as
they come from the sky we can bear them, for they are beyond the
control of our own volition, and must be accepted, as we accept the
gale or the lightning. It is the troubles which spring from our own
folly and weakness, or from that of those with whom our lives are
intertwined, which really crush us. Now Arthur knew enough of the
world to be aware that there is no folly to equal that of a woman who,
of her own free will, truly loving one man whom she can marry if she
will sit, deliberately gives herself to another. It is not only a
folly, it is a crime, and, like most crimes, for this life, an
irretrievable mistake.

Long before he got back to London, the first unwholesome exaltation of
mind that always follows a great misfortune, and which may perhaps be
compared with the excitement that for awhile covers the shameful sense
of defeat in an army, had evaporated, and he began to realize the
crushing awfulness of the blow which had fallen on him, and to fear
lest it should drive him mad. He looked round his little horizon for
some straw of comfort at which to catch, and could find none; nothing
but dreadful thoughts and sickening visions.

And then suddenly, just as he was sinking into the dulness of despair,
there came, like the fist gleam of light in chaotic darkness, the
memory of Mildred Carr. Truly she had spoken prophetically. His idol
had been utterly cast down and crushed to powder by a hand stronger
than his own. He would go to her in his suffering; perhaps she could
find means to comfort him.

When he reached town he took a hansom and went to look for some rooms;
he would not return to those he had left on the previous afternoon,
for the sympathetic landlord had helped him to pack up the wedding
clothes and had admired the wedding gift. Arthur felt that he could
not face him again. He found some to suit him in Duke Street, St.
James, and left his things there. Thence he drove to Fenchurch Street
and took a passage to Madeira. The clerk, the same one who had given
him his ticket about a year before, remembered him perfectly, and
asked him how he got on with Mrs. Carr. But when his passage was taken
he was disgusted to find that the mail did not sail for another five
days. He l