But I cannot sleep. Something lies at the back of my brain—a dull anxiety, hardly definable to myself. It is possible that I may see her again, when I come home once more. I shall know for certain in the morning. And yet it may so happen that it is indeed finished. Nay, nay, my friend, have patience. I can see you as you read this, storming about the room, dropping red cigarette ash on the carpet, visibly perturbed in your mind at my madness.

Yes, yes, I know I forswore it all in a moment of bitter cynicism. But, mon ami, I am a man—a very irregularly balanced man, too, I often think—and there rises from my soul an exceeding bitter cry sometimes. You see here my life—barmaid society, ship’s tittle-tattle, unending rough toil. To have but one hold, one haven, one star to guide—canst blame me, mon ami, if I hold desperately to a tiny hope?

Thinking this out, I walk far out to the pier-head, beneath the harbour light, and look earnestly into the darkness covering the sea. Have pity, at least, old friend, when I write in pain.

To which your much-tried patience replies merely, “Humph!” I suppose? But, old friend, is it not true? Have I not heard your own voice give way a little, your own hand falter with the eternal cigarette as some long-hidden memory swept across your mind? So I believe, and so I understand the terse silence when you rise abruptly from the piano in the middle of some sad, low improvisation, and I lose you in the smoke-laden darkness of the room. Life for us moderns has its difficulties at times, life being, as it were, anything but modern. We have so many gods, not all of them false, either; but the Voice of the Dweller in the Innermost brings their temples crashing about our ears, and we are homeless, godless, atheists indeed.

I do not think this problem has been solved for us yet. It is all very well for the orthodox to say sneeringly, “Why not believe, like us? Why stand outside the pearly gates, while Love and Lovers pace beneath the trees that grow by the River of Life? So easy, mes amis! Only believe. Do not delay, but come. Why not to-night?” We are further from yon purple-crowned heights than you wot of, good friends. Between us and that golden radiance lie many miles of dusty road, lies even the Valley of the Shadow, through which we have passed. And now, as we are emerging from that same Valley, out upon the broad high tablelands of Understanding, we turn and see the distant loveliness, and we halt and stumble, and (sometimes) lose our way.

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