I have thought of you so often, and wanted to know you; you don't realise how I have longed to meet you--to listen to you, to have you lift the veil that hides your mind from me. Sometimes in a crowd I have fancied I caught a glimpse of you; I can't explain--the poise of the head, a look in the eyes, there was something that hinted it was You. And in a whirlwind of an instant it almost seemed that you would recognise me; but you said no word--you passed, a secret from me still. To yourself where you are sitting you are just a charming woman, with "a local habitation and a name;" but to me you are not Miss or Madam, not M. or N., you are a Power, and I have sought you by a name you have not heard--you are my Public. And O my Lady, I am speaking to you! I feel your presence in my senses, though you are far away, and I can't hear your answer. I do wrong to speak like this; I may be arraigned for speaking; I have broken laws for the honour of addressing you--among all the men who have worshipped you, has one done more?--and I will never offend again. But in this breathless minute while I dare, I would say: "Remember that overleaf, and in every line unto the end I shall be picturing _you_, working for you, trembling lest _you_ frown." Unto the End. Forgive me. I have sinned, but I exult--it is as if I had touched your hand across the page. CHAPTER VII Conrad drifted from the Riviera with the rest, and lingered through June in Paris; not on the left bank this time--in the Paris of the Boulevards and the Bois, where he was a world away from the quarter where he had run to clasp the illusions of his youth, and stayed to mourn them. Although he was finding life pleasant, there were moments when he looked at the bridges, and felt wistful; but he never crossed one--he knew now that he could not walk over the Pont Neuf into the Past. Nor was it with any definite purpose that he returned to London. Amusement, agreeable society had lulled that desire to revisit old scenes. And his experiments had been such failures: the endeavour to recapture his fervour as an art-student; the ludicrous attempt to revive in cynical adults the buoyant comradery of childhood; the interest in the little girl whom time had turned into the least interesting of women--it was with a mental blush that he recalled these follies. If he thought no less tenderly of his youth, he thought of it less often; if he was still liable to a sense of bereavement, he was now idling as conventionally as any other man of his class.