"That may be; but at any rate I love you, and I cannot bear to see you thus, Frank. Get over it! They seem to have taken the whole business so ill that there is nothing more to be done. I wish you would only see that, and submit to the inevitable. Try to live for something else. Can there be no other woman in the world for you? Perhaps there is another. A man does not perish so for love. You are not a girl--girls do so." He gazed at Frank with such a magnetic light in his eyes that Westhove fancied there was a great truth in his words; and Bertie's last reproof reminded him of his vacillation, his miserable weakness, which lay beneath his manly and powerful exterior like an insecure foundation. Still he clung to his passionate longings, his vehement craving for the happiness he had lost. "You cannot possibly judge of the matter," he retorted impatiently, trying to escape from Van Maeren's eye. "You never _did_ love a woman, though you may say so. Why should not everything come right again? What has happened after all? What have I done? I fell into a violent, vulgar rage. What then? Is that so unpardonable in the person you love?? But perhaps--I say, can I have addressed the letters wrongly?" During a few seconds there was a weight of silence in the room, an atmosphere of lead. Then Van Maeren said--and his voice had a tender, coaxing tone: "If you had written but once, I might think it possible; but three letters, to the same house--it is scarcely possible." "I will go myself and call," said Westhove. "Yes, yes, I will go myself." "What are you saying?" asked Bertie dreamily. He was still under the influence of that heavy moral atmosphere; he had not quite understood, not grasped the idea. "What was it you said?" he repeated. "I shall go myself and call at the house," Frank reiterated. "At what house? Where?" "Why, at the Rhodes'--on Eva. Are you daft?" But Bertie rose to his feet, and his eyes glittered in his pale face like black diamonds with a hundred facets. "What to do there?" he said with a convulsive effort in his throat to keep his voice calm. "To talk to her and set matters straight; I cannot bear it. It has gone on too long." "You are a fool!" said Van Maeren shortly. "Why am I a fool?" "Why are you a fool? You have not a grain of self-respect. Do you really think of going there?" "Yes, of course." "I consider it absurd," said Bertie. "All right," said Frank, "pray think so. I myself can see that it is very weak of me. But, good God! I can hold out no longer. I love her so; I was so happy; life was so sweet; and now; now, by my own fault! I do not care what you think it. Absurd or not, I mean to go all the same." In his distress of mind he had thrown himself into a chair, and every muscle of his features was quivering with agitation. But he went on: