hat Juliet would go back by omnibus that she might do some
shopping in Oxford Street, leaving me to walk home alone.

I saw her into her omnibus, and stood on the pavement looking wistfully
at the lumbering vehicle as it dwindled in the distance. At last, with a
sigh of deepest despondency, I turned my face homeward, and, walking
like one in a dream, retraced the route over which I had journeyed so
often of late and with such different sensations.

CHAPTER XIII

MURDER BY POST

The next few days were perhaps the most unhappy that I have known. My
life, indeed, since I had left the hospital had been one of many
disappointments and much privation. Unfulfilled desires and ambitions
unrealised had combined with distaste for the daily drudgery that had
fallen to my lot to embitter my poverty and cause me to look with gloomy
distrust upon the unpromising future. But no sorrow that I had hitherto
experienced could compare with the grief that I now felt in
contemplating the irretrievable ruin of what I knew to be the great
passion of my life. For to a man like myself, of few friends and deep
affections, one great emotional upheaval exhausts the possibilities of
nature; leaving only the capacity for feeble and ineffective echoes. The
edifice of love that is raised upon the ruins of a great passion can
compare with the original no more than can the paltry mosque that
perches upon the mound of Jonah with the glories of the palace that lies
entombed beneath. I had made a pretext to write to Juliet and had
received a reply quite frank and friendly in tone, by which I knew that
she had not--as some women would have done--set the blame upon me for
our temporary outburst of emotion. And yet there was a subtle difference
from her previous manner of writing that only emphasised the finality of
our separation.

I think Thorndyke perceived that something had gone awry, though I was
at great pains to maintain a cheerful exterior and keep myself occupied,
and he probably formed a pretty shrewd guess at the nature of the
trouble; but he said nothing, and I only judged that he had observed
some change in my manner by the fact that there was blended with his
usual quiet geniality an almost insensible note of sympathy and
affection.

A couple of days after my last interview with Juliet, an event occurred
which served, certainly, to relieve the tension and distract my
thoughts, though not in a very agreeable manner.

It was the