In 1900 the spell that held her was broken by tragedy. Early in that year Violet Shilleto fell into acute depression, “finding her intellectual mysticism empty” and doubtless also wounded by the loss of the intimate friendship, and in the autumn she secretly joined the Catholic church. Whether spiritual conflict undermined her health or whether incipient tuberculosis precipitated the religious crisis, she fell ill and was ordered to winter in Cannes. Vivien promised to visit her there, but was too deeply entangled in her own affairs to sense the gravity of the other girl’s condition. She seems instead to have made a trip to America. When at last she responded to an urgent summons, it was too late—her friend was dead before Vivien reached her. Vivien’s grief and remorse were shattering. The fact that Violet was given a “cold” Anglican funeral and interred beneath a church in the Avenue de l’Alma instead of under clean earth and sky increased the poet’s agony, and “for a long time she spent hours each day at dusk” in the subterranean gloom beside Violet’s grave. This state of affairs quite naturally moved Barney, who was nothing if not proud, to accuse her of being more in love with Love than with reality, and to depart for a protracted stay in the States. Thus Vivien was left doubly deserted, and from this period stem many poems in her early volumes. In _Cendres et Poussières_ (1902) we find “Devant la Mort d’une Amie Véritablement Aimée”: Ils me disent, tandis que je sanglote encore: “Dans l’ombre du sépulcre où sa grace pâlit Elle goûte la paix passagère du lit, Les ténèbres au front, et dans les yeux l’aurore ... Dans une aube d’avril qui vient avec lenteur Elle refleurira, violette mystique.” Moi, j’écoute parmi les temples de la mort ... J’écoute, mais le vent des espaces emporte L’audacieux espoir des infinis sereins. Je sais qu’elle n’est plus dans l’heure que j’étreins, L’heure unique et certaine, et moi, je la crois morte. And in _Études et Préludes_ (1901): J’attends, o Bien-Aimée! o vierge dont le front Illumine le soir de pompe et d’allégresse ... Notre lit sera plein de fleurs qui frémiront ... Et la paix des autels se remplira de flammes; Les larmes, les parfums et les épithalames, Les prières et l’encens monteront jusqu’à nous. Malgré le jour levé, nous dormirons encore Du sommeil léthargique où gisent les époux, Et notre longue nuit ne craindra plus l’aurore. In _Evocations_ (1903) she is proclaiming a “Victoire Funèbre:”