And with a deep vow of fidelity sworn to his secret soul he sat alone, watching the shadows of evening steal over the landscape--falling, falling slowly, like a gradually descending curtain upon all visible things, till Briar Farm stood spectral in the gloom like the ghost of its own departed days, and lights twinkled in the lattice windows like little eyes glittering in the dark. Then silently bidding farewell to all his former dreams of happiness, he set himself to face "the burden and heat of the day"--that long, long day of life so difficult to live, when deprived of love! BOOK TWO: HIS FACT BOOK TWO CHAPTER I In London, the greatest metropolis of the world, the smallest affairs are often discussed with more keenness than things of national importance,--and it is by no means uncommon to find society more interested in the doings of some particular man or woman than in the latest and most money-milking scheme of Government finance. In this way it happened that about a year after Innocent had, like a small boat in a storm, broken loose from her moorings and drifted out to the wide sea, everybody who was anybody became suddenly thrilled with curiosity concerning the unknown personality of an Author. There are so many Authors nowadays that it is difficult to get up even a show of interest in one of them,--everybody "writes"--from Miladi in Belgravia, who considers the story of her social experiences, expressed in questionable grammar, quite equal to the finest literature, down to the stable-boy who essays a "prize" shocker for a penny dreadful. But this latest aspirant to literary fame had two magnetic qualities which seldom fail to arouse the jaded spirit of the reading public,--novelty and mystery, united to that scarce and seldom recognised power called genius. He or she had produced a Book. Not an ephemeral piece of fiction,--not a "Wells" effort of imagination under hydraulic pressure--not an hysterical outburst of sensual desire and disappointment such as moves the souls of demimondaines and dressmakers,--not even a "detective" sensation--but just a Book--a real Book, likely to live as long as literature itself. It was something in the nature of a marvel, said those who knew what they were talking about, that such a book should have been written at all in these modern days. The "style" of it was exquisite and scholarly--quaint, expressive, and all-sufficing in its artistic simplicity,--thoughts true for all time were presented afresh with an admirable point and delicacy that made them seem new and singularly imperative,--and the story which, like a silken thread, held all the choice jewels of language together in even and brilliant order, was pure and idyllic,--warm with a penetrating romance, yet most sincerely human. When this extraordinary piece of work was published, it slipped from the press in quite a modest way without much preliminary announcement, and for two or three weeks after its appearance nobody knew anything