"There is one thing I want you to know: indeed I am not the gruff fellow I have so often seemed. Do believe that. Do you remember how I told you that I dreamed of losing you? And now the dream has come true. I am always looking for you, and cannot find you. "You have been very good to me; so patient, and genial, and frank. No one before has ever been so good. Even if I did not love you, I should say that. "But I do love you, no one can take that from me: it is my own dignity, the crown of my life. Such a poor life . . . no, no, I won't say that now. I cannot pity myself now . . . no, I cannot . . . ." The Disagreeable Man stopped writing, and the pen dropped on the table. He buried his tear-stained face in his hands. He cried his heart out, this Disagreeable Man. Then he took the letter which he had just been writing, and he tore it into fragments. END OF PART I. PART II. CHAPTER I. THE DUSTING OF THE BOOKS. IT was now more than three weeks since Bernardine's return to London. She had gone back to her old home, at her uncle's second-hand book-shop. She spent her time in dusting the books, and arranging them in some kind of order; for old Zerviah Holme had ceased to interest himself much in his belongings, and sat in the little inner room reading as usual Gibbon's "History of Rome." Customers might please themselves about coming: Zerviah Holme had never cared about amassing money, and now he cared even less than before. A frugal breakfast, a frugal dinner, a box full of snuff, and a shelf full of Gibbon were the old man's only requirements: an undemanding life, and therefore a loveless one; since the less we ask for, the less we get. When Malvina his wife died, people said: "He will miss her." But he did not seem to miss her: he took his breakfast, his pinch of snuff, his Gibbon, in precisely the same way as before, and in the same quantities. When Bernardine first fell ill, people said: "He will be sorry. He is fond of her in his own queer way." But he did not seem to be sorry. He did not understand anything about illness. The thought of it worried him; so he put it from him. He remembered vaguely that Bernardine's father had suddenly become ill, that his powers had all failed him, and that he lingered on, just a wreck of humanity, and then died. That was twenty years ago. Then he thought of Bernardine, and said to himself, "History repeats itself." That was all. Unkind? No; for when it was told him that she must go away, he looked at her wonderingly, and then went out. It was very rarely that he went out. He came back with fifty pounds. "When that is done," he told her, "I can find more." When she went away, people said: "He will be lonely." But he did not seem to be lonely. They asked him once, and he said: "I always have Gibbon." And when she came back, they said: "He will be glad." But her return seemed to make no difference to him.