Time stopped. In all this enormous interval the buds of the horse-chestnut had not yet burst to green. It was ages since he had seen the first primrose, and yet to-day, as he walked in the woods on the day after his return from another futile journey to London, they were all out in the forest still. And something stirred within him that had not deigned to take notice of all his feverish asseverations and wanderings, that had not rebuked him, that had not even listened when he had said repeatedly that he could not give up Di. By an invisible hand the challenge was taken up, and John knew the time of conflict was at hand. He walked on and on, not knowing where he went, past the forest and the meadowland, and away over the rolling moors, with only Lindo for his companion. At last his newly returned strength failing him, he threw himself down in the dry windswept heather. He had not outstripped his thoughts. This was the appointed place. He knew it even as he flung himself down. His hour was come. It was an April afternoon, pale and bleak. The late frost had come back, and had silenced the birds. One only deeply in love, somewhere near at hand, but invisible, repeated plaintively over and over again a small bird-name in the silence of the shrinking spring. And John's heart said over and over again one little word-- "Di, Di, Di!" There are some sacrifices which partake of the nature of self-mutilation. That is why principle often falls before the onslaught of a deep human passion, which is nothing but the rebellion of human nature brought to bay, against the execution upon itself of that dread command of the spiritual nature, "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off." To give up certain affections is with some natures to give up all possibility of the quickening into life of that latent maturer self that craves for existence in each one of us. It is to take, for better for worse, a more meagre form of life, destitute, not of happiness perhaps, but of those common joys and sorrows which most of all bind us in sympathy with our fellow-men. What marriage in itself is to the majority, the love of one fellow-creature, and one only, is to the few. To a few, happily a very few, there is only one hand that can minister among the pressure of the crowd. There was none other woman in the world for John, save only Di. Sayings common to vulgarity, profaned by every breach of promise case, can yet be true sometimes. "Di, Di, Di!" said John.