feeling I have ever had or ever shall have.  I am not a bit afraid of conscience.  If God is Universal Truth, He cannot look hardly upon us for being true to ourselves.  And as to people, we shall just hold up our heads; I think that they generally take you at your own valuation.  But, anyway, Society does not much matter.  We shan’t want those who don’t want us—­you may be sure.  I hope he will divorce her quickly—­there is nobody much to be hurt by that except you and Cis; but if he doesn’t—­it can’t be helped.  I don’t think she has anything; but with my six hundred, and what I can make, even if we have to live abroad, we shall be all right for money.  You have been awfully good to me always, Gordy, and I am very grieved to hurt you, and still more sorry if you think I am being ungrateful; but when one feels as I do—­body and soul and spirit—­there isn’t any question; there wouldn’t be if death itself stood in the way.  If you receive this, we shall be gone together; I will write to you from wherever we pitch our tent, and, of course, I shall write to Cicely.  But will you please tell Mrs. Doone and Sylvia, and give them my love if they still care to have it.  Good-bye, dear Gordy.  I believe you would have done the same, if you had been I. Always your affectionate—­mark.”

In all those preparations he forgot nothing, employing every minute of the few hours in a sort of methodic exaltation.  The last thing before setting out he took the damp cloths off his ‘bull-man.’  Into the face of the monster there had come of late a hungry, yearning look.  The artist in him had done his work that unconscious justice; against his will had set down the truth.  And, wondering whether he would ever work at it again, he redamped the cloths and wrapped it carefully.

He did not go to her village, but to one five or six miles down the river—­it was safer, and the row would steady him.  Hiring a skiff, he pulled up stream.  He travelled very slowly to kill time, keeping under the far bank.  And as he pulled, his very heart seemed parched with nervousness.  Was it real that he was going to her, or only some fantastic trick of Fate, a dream from which he would wake to find himself alone again?  He passed the dove-cot at last, and kept on till he could round into the backwater and steal up under cover to the poplar.  He arrived a few minutes before eight o’clock, turned the boat round, and waited close beneath the bank, holding to a branch, and standing so that he could see the path.  If a man could die from longing and anxiety, surely Lennan must have died then!