The letter lies before me now, many pages in a curious, half-formed foreign hand.  Many would think it an ill-written letter—­for there are faults of spelling and faults of grammar—­but even now, as I look on those faults, the tears come into my eyes.  Oh, how exquisitely, pathetically, monumentally, sublimely foolish!  She had little or nothing to do with it, poor dear; it was only the Arch-Jester again, leading her blindly away, so as once more to leave me high and dry on the Hill of Derision.

“. . .  My dear, you must forgive me!  My heart is breaking, but I know I’m doing right.  There is nothing for it but to go out of your life for ever.  It terrifies me to think of it, but it’s the only way.  I know you think you love me, dear; but you can’t, you can’t really love a woman so far beneath you, and I would sooner never see you again than marry you and wake up one day and find that you hated and scorned me. . . .”

Can you wonder that I shook my fist at Heaven and danced with rage?

“. . .  Miss Eleanor Faversham called on me just a few minutes after you left me that afternoon.  We had a long, long talk.  Simon, dear, you must marry her.  You loved her once, for you were engaged, and only broke it off because you thought you were going to die; and she loves you, Simon, and she is a lady with all the refinement and education that I could never have.  She is of your class, dear, and understands you, and can help you on, whereas I could only drag you down.  I am not fit to black her boots. . . .”

And so forth, and so forth, in the most heartrending strain of insensate self-sacrifice and heroic self-abasement.  The vainest and most heartless dog of a man stands abashed and helpless before such things in a woman.

She had not seen or written to me because she would not have her resolution weakened.  After the great wrench, succeeding things were easier.  She had taken Anastasius’s cats and proposed to work them in the music-halls abroad and send the proceeds to be administered for the little man’s comfort at the Maison de Sante.  As both her name and the Papadopoulos troupe of cats were well known in the “variety” world, it would be a simple matter to obtain engagements.  She had already opened negotiations for a short season somewhere abroad.  I was not to be anxious about her.  She would have plenty of occupation.

“. . .  I am not sending you any address, for I don’t want you to know where I am, dear.  I shan’t write to you again unless I scribble things and tear them up without posting.  This is final.  When a woman makes such a break she must do it once and for all.  Oh, Simon, when you kissed me two days ago you thought you loved me; but I know what the senses are and how they deceive people, and I had only just caught your senses on that spring afternoon, and I made you do it, for I had been aching, aching for months for a word of love from you, and when it came I was ashamed.  But I should have been weak and shut my eyes to everything if Miss Faversham had not come to me like God’s good angel. . . .”