Then love came by, and the half-dormant personality within him had been seized upon and roused, little by little, into a glowing, although a repressed and hidden energy. He had learnt in his own person what it means to crave, to thirst, to want. And now, grief had followed and had pinned him more closely than ever to his special little part in the human spectacle. The old loftiness, the old placidity of mood, were gone. He had loved, and lost, and despaired. Beside those great experiences how trivial and evanescent seemed all the interests of the life that went before them! He looked back over his intercourse with Isabel Bretherton, and the points upon which it had turned seemed so remote from him, so insignificant, that for the moment he could hardly realise them. The artistic and aesthetic questions which had seemed to him so vital six months before had faded almost out of view in the fierce neighbourhood of sorrow and passion. His first relation to her had been that of one who knows to one who is ignorant; but that puny link had dropped, and he was going to meet her now, fresh from the presence of death, loving her as a man loves a woman, and claiming from her nothing but pity for his grief, balm for his wound,--the answer of human tenderness to human need. How strange and sad that she should be still in ignorance of his loss and hers! In the early morning after Marie's death, when he woke up from a few heavy hours of sleep, his mind had been full of her. How was the news to be broken to her? He himself did not feel that he could leave his brother-in-law. There was a strong regard and sympathy between them; and his presence in the house of mourning would undoubtedly be useful to Paul for a while; besides, there were Marie's words--'Will you stay with him a few days--after--?'--which were binding on him. He must write, then; but it was only to be hoped that no newspaper would bring her the news before his letter could reach. However, as the day wore on, Paul came noiselessly out of the quiet room where the white shrouded form seemed still to spread a tender presence round it, and said to Eustace with dry, piteous lips: 'I have remembered Miss Bretherton; you must go to her to-morrow, after--the funeral' 'I can't bear the thought of leaving you,' said Kendal, laying a brotherly hand on his shoulder, 'Let me write to-day.' Paul shook his head. 'She has been ill. Any way it will be a great shock; but if you go it will be better.' Kendal resisted a little more, but it seemed as if Marie's motherly carefulness over the bright creature who had charmed her had passed into Paul. He was saying what Marie would have said, taking thought as she would have taken it for one she loved, and it was settled as he wished.