"My Dear Lavirotte,

"I cannot tell you how deeply grieved we both were to hear the occasion of your flight from Milan. Your landlady, Maria, told me the sad news. I was, indeed, greatly shocked and grieved to hear it. We can easily understand how it was, in the first terrible moment of your affliction, you should not care to come near even us. But I cannot help wishing that by some accident or another it had so chanced I left Milan by the train that took you away, though I might not be allowed to intrude upon you in the journey. "My dear Lavirotte, I know as well as anyone that under occasions of this kind words of consolation are generally outrages. My whole object in writing this letter is simply to say how sorry I am that I am not with you, and how sorry we both are for the cause which took you away. "I am sure the best thing you can do, under the circumstances, is to come back here as quickly as ever you can. Do not lose a moment. I am altogether thinking of you, and not of the desire either of us has to see you. To show you I am in earnest in this, if you tell me you will come, I will promise never to go near you until you give me leave. It is the commonest of commonplaces, but it is one of the truest, that hard work is the best way of occupying time, when time is bitter or heavy. My dear Lavirotte, come back and plunge headlong into work. We will not trouble you. When you wish to see us you know where to find us. I will not now say any more, except what you well know already, that our hearts are, and always will be, with you.

"Yours as ever,

"Eugene O'Donnell."

When Lavirotte finished reading this letter he fell into a long reverie. With head depressed and slow steps, he passed down Cheapside, Newgate Street, and over the Viaduct. A couple of hours ago it seemed to him his mind was made up beyond the possibility of change. And now he was not thinking of change. He was not thinking at all, but allowing to drift slowly across his imagination a long panorama of that future which he had resolved to abandon. He saw once more the life at Milan, the life he had been leading, the life Eugene would continue to lead for a while longer. He saw the moment when Eugene would finally take leave of that city and come northward, perfected in his art. He saw Eugene's arrival in London, with such good words for heralds as made him sought after in his profession. He saw obsequious managers with Eugene, flattering him, coaxing him, pressing him to accept splendid engagements. He saw the admiring faces at the private trial of Eugene's voice. He saw the smiles of delight, the hands that applauded. He saw the flush of triumph upon Eugene's face, Eugene's bows of acknowledgment. And behind all, he saw Nellie. He saw her radiant, transfigured, divine, sitting apart, isolated from all by the exquisite delicacy of her beauty, the exquisite delicacy of her love, the exquisite delicacy of her spirit. He saw the glance that shot from Eugene's faithful eyes to hers. He saw that in that room, that hall, the only thought between these two people was the thought of their love, the high and holy love of perfect faith, in which there is no more room for desire in the heart, in which the two spirits are not one in essence, but one in form, wherein neither exists apart, and each is complementary to the other. He saw these two married lovers had no need for words. They were with each other. That was enough. Each of them knew what this meant, how much it meant, down to the utmost limit of their joint happiness. Ah, what happiness was this! What joy, what unutterable rapture! To love thus wholly and without guile and without thought, without even consciousness of loving. What could be more! What could be more than this rich completion of spirit! What were all the gross, material ambitions of the world compared to such love as this! This was not the love of line and colour, the love of form and voice, the love of youth and sprightliness, the love of device or trick. Time would be powerless against this. The line and colour, the form and voice had been to this but the prelude to the imperial theme. These two spirits were now commingling to the perfect tones of the most glorious anthem, chanted by the angels for the accord of man on earth. He saw the crowded theatre, the blaze of light, the circles of wealth, and youth, and beauty, and fashion, of title and distinction, hushed for the great moment. He heard the orchestra pick up a thread of silver melody. He listened as the orchestra seemed, in carelessness, to lose that hint of melody. He heard that hint again, from a single string, and then to a note of sonorous undertone, he saw the great tenor step forth. He heard that voice begin farther away than the most delicate breathing of the instruments below, like a murmur coming from mid-air, under the stars. The sound descended, broadening and mellowing as it came, until it touched the earth in notes of resonant manhood, and then burst forth, complaining loud. Complaining of love denied, of true love lost for ever. He heard the song go on to the melodious climax of its final woe, and then he heard a mighty crash like the sound of an avalanche shot from a giddy, frozen cliff down a precipitous way to the valley below. He looked, he saw men on their feet cheering and clapping their hands, and women waving their handkerchiefs. Women flung their bouquets, their bracelets, their rings upon the stage--these women drunk on a human voice. He heard the "bravos," the "encores," cried by thousands of throats, by those people who were at once the slaves and tyrants of Eugene. Then, again, he heard the orchestra pick up that silver thread of melody---- He threw up his head. Where was this? Had he got so far? and how had he wandered here? Ah! Lincoln's Inn Fields! The College of Surgeons! Surgery, pain, disease, death! What a contrast to that great vision he had just seen! Good God, what a contrast! He turned hastily out of Lincoln's Inn Fields. He could not endure the dingy, decayed look of that rusty old square. He had once been told that the area of this square corresponded with the area of the base of the great Pyramid. Surgeons and embalmers, the Great Pyramid and mummies, Lincoln's Inn Fields and ghouls! These were ghastly subjects. He had never noticed before how stark and bleak and cold, how skeleton-like the houses in Lincoln's Inn Fields were. It was a horrible place at this time of year, when the leaves were dropping, when the leaves already down had begun to rot. The youth and manhood of the year were gone. It was in the sere, the yellow leaf. No wholesomeness or joy could now be hoped for until the spring was rife once more. The earth had ceased to aspire to heaven, and all the glorious and beautiful efflorescence of earth towards the sun was falling back once more to the dun clay from which, by the aid of silver rains and violet and ruby dews, the sun of spring had stolen such verdant marvels. The dun clay, the dun earth, surgeons and mummies, pyramids and ghouls; ah, there was no cheerfulness, no wholesomeness in any of them! Think of an English river with willows and swans, and the light of summer, and the blue sky, and the delicate, slender, upward-pointing reflections in the water, and the music of the bees, and the inextricably-mingled odour of innumerable flowers, and the songs of birds, surprising the mellow shades of inner woods. And then the beauty of woman, and the strength and glory of youth in man, and the triumph and glory of song in man, and then the voice of song that made the birds seem but the lifting of one leaf amid the tuneful murmurs of a mighty wood, and the voice of woman answering to love in the accents of the song---- Surgeons and mummies, pyramids and ghouls. God made none of these for man. But all the others had the touch of his great handicraft, the imperial fashion of his august design, the tones of sound and colour, half hidden from the heedless, but revealed in their exquisite perfection to the poetic sense. Surgeons and mummies, pyramids and ghouls. Bah! Overhead, what a gloomy sky! The sun was now shining on all the squares and streets of Milan!