the climate of Nice had improved him wonderfully, and he had better try it again.  There was nothing the young gentleman would have liked better, but elephants could not have dragged him back after the scolding he had received.  Pride forbid, and whenever the longing grew very strong, he fortified his resolution by repeating the words that had made the deepest impression—­“I despise you.”  “Go and do something splendid that will make her love you.”

Laurie turned the matter over in his mind so often that he soon brought himself to confess that he had been selfish and lazy, but then when a man has a great sorrow, he should be indulged in all sorts of vagaries till he has lived it down.  He felt that his blighted affections were quite dead now, and though he should never cease to be a faithful mourner, there was no occasion to wear his weeds ostentatiously.  Jo wouldn’t love him, but he might make her respect and admire him by doing something which should prove that a girl’s ‘No’ had not spoiled his life.  He had always meant to do something, and Amy’s advice was quite unnecessary.  He had only been waiting till the aforesaid blighted affections were decently interred.  That being done, he felt that he was ready to ’hide his stricken heart, and still toil on’.

As Goethe, when he had a joy or a grief, put it into a song, so Laurie resolved to embalm his love sorrow in music, and to compose a Requiem which should harrow up Jo’s soul and melt the heart of every hearer.  Therefore the next time the old gentleman found him getting restless and moody and ordered him off, he went to Vienna, where he had musical friends, and fell to work with the firm determination to distinguish himself.  But whether the sorrow was too vast to be embodied in music, or music too ethereal to uplift a mortal woe, he soon discovered that the Requiem was beyond him just at present.  It was evident that his mind was not in working order yet, and his ideas needed clarifying, for often in the middle of a plaintive strain, he would find himself humming a dancing tune that vividly recalled the Christmas ball at Nice, especially the stout Frenchman, and put an effectual stop to tragic composition for the time being.

Then he tried an opera, for nothing seemed impossible in the beginning, but here again unforeseen difficulties beset him.  He wanted Jo for his heroine, and called upon his memory to supply him with tender recollections and romantic visions of his love.  But memory turned traitor, and as if possessed by the perverse spirit of the girl, would only recall Jo’s oddities, faults, and freaks, would only show her in the most unsentimental aspects—­beating mats with her head tied up in a bandanna, barricading herself with the sofa pillow, or throwing cold water over his passion a la Gummidge—­and an irresistable laugh spoiled the pensive picture he was endeavoring to paint.  Jo wouldn’t be put into the opera at any price, and he had to give her up with a “Bless that girl, what a torment she is!” and a clutch at his hair, as became a distracted composer.