"The decks are cleared between us, Laura, for you know now that I love you. You said, 'Oh, but this is terrible!' Yes, Laura, love is terrible. It is not only cleansing, inspiring, and noble, it is terrible also. Why is it that you so misunderstand, misjudge, the one priceless gift, the only bit of Heaven which God or Nature--I care not which--has given to man and woman? What you, judging by your words to-day, take to be love is as little like that passion as a deep draught of pure cold water to a man dying of thirst, is like the last glass of drugged beer imbibed by some poor sot already drunk." Oliver Tropenell waited awhile. There were still two spaces, before the bottom of the page of notepaper was reached, and again he dipped the pen into the strange volatile liquid. "God bless you, my dear love," he wrote, "and grant you the peace which seems the only thing for which you crave." He waited till the words had quite vanished, and then he took up the two sheets of paper, folded them in half, and put them in a large envelope which fitted the paper when so folded. He wrote on the outside, "Mrs. Pavely, Lawford Chase." And then, turning out the light with a quick, nervous gesture, he got up and went over to the long, low, garret window. For a few moments he saw nothing but darkness, then the familiar scene unrolled below him and took dim shape in the starlit night. Instinctively his sombre eyes sought the place where, far away to the right, was a dark patch of wood. It was there, set amidst a grove of high trees, that stood Lawford Chase, the noble old house which had been his mother's early home, and which now contained Laura Pavely, the woman to whom he had just written two such different letters, and who for nearly three months had never been out of his waking thoughts. As his eyes grew more and more accustomed to the luminous darkness, he saw the group of elms under which this very day a word had unsealed the depths of his heart, and where he had had the agony of seeing Laura shrink, shudder, wilt as does a flower in a breath of hot, foetid air, under his avowal of love. Violently he put that memory from him, and staring out into the splendour of this early autumn night, he tried to recapture the mixture of feelings with which he had regarded Laura Pavely the first time they had met since her marriage--the first time indeed since she had been a shy, quiet little girl, and he an eager, highly vitalised youth, five years older than herself.