s too dilatory and resignation too remote,
happened on the device which he translated after his manner.

But however you construe the hierograph, the door must be demolished
before you get out. Across the door is written: Hope. It is a very hard
door to crack. When you succeed you are covered with splinters. They
cling to you and pierce you. Joiners, carpenters, pilgrims, poets and
fiends have a name for them. They call the splinters Regrets. Though you
have escaped, they accompany you. Hell encircles you still.

It was on the day following the conversation with Mrs. Austen that
Lennox received Margaret's letter. In his dark rooms it was waiting. A
moment previous he had intended to go to her. He had it all planned.
Mrs. Austen could say what she liked; the physician might interfere; he
would submit to no one. He proposed to see her, to adjust it, to swing
up and out from the circles which already were closing about him.

On leaving Mrs. Austen he had gone to dinner. He could not eat. He had
gone to bed. He could not sleep. In the morning his face was flushed.
Always fit, hard as nails, these phenomena perplexed. Yet he knew it was
not illness that produced them. What he did not know was that poison
had. The poison was anger, an unphilosophic emotion which disturbs the
circulation, the stomach and social intercourse. He could have wrung
Mrs. Austen's neck.

In that murderous mood he went to Wall Street and in that mood returned.
Already hell was gaping. Headlong into it the letter threw him. Being a
man he sought and found the door, smashed it and passed out. Not at once
however. It took him many a sleepless hour before he deciphered the
device Lascia la donna. Leave the lady? Certainly. Since she so wished,
what else in decency could he do? Go and badger her with complaints and
questions? Not he. But how do you translate: Studia la matematica? The
dictionary that is in every man, who is a man, told him. Then he knew.
Meanwhile the flush in departing left him grey.

In every affection there is the germ of hate. Margaret, confronted by
the unawaited, hated Lennox. Lennox, confronted by the inexplicable,
hated Margaret. Hatred is love turned inside out. Love is perhaps a
fermentation of the molecules of the imagination. In that case so also
is hate. Of all things mystery disturbs the imagination most. Margaret
could not understand how Lennox could have acted as he had. Lennox could
not understand how Margaret could ac