She was the inspiration, the _raison d'être_, of these letters. That "friendship" which his heated brain had created and imposed upon hers, he had set up before him like a picture and had woven fervent and critical rhapsodies about it. The joy that he had experienced in the making of these letters was more real and utterly satisfying than any he had ever known. He was filled and exalted by a sense of high power as he wrote the lovely words. He knew how she would read, understand and be thrilled by them. Paragraph after paragraph, sentence after sentence, were designed to play upon some part of the girl's mind and temperament--to flatter her own opinion at a definite point, and to flatter it with a flattery so subtle and delicate, so instinct with knowledge, that it came to her as a discovery of herself. He would please her--since she was steeped in books and their appeal, utterly ignorant of Life itself--with a pleasure that he alone could give. He would wrap her round with the force and power of his mind, make her his utterly in the bonds of a high intellectual friendship, dominate her, achieve her--through the mind. He had set himself to do this thing and he had done it. Her letters to him, in their innocent, unskilful, but real and vivid response had shown him everything. From each one he gathered new material for his reply. He had lived of late in a new world, where, neglecting everything else, he sat Jove-like upon the Olympus of his own erection and drew a young and supremely beautiful girl nearer and nearer to him by his pen. He had fallen into many mortal sins during his life. Until now he had not known the one by which the angels fell, the last sin of Pride which burns with a fierce, white consuming flame. All these wonderful letters had been wrought under the influence of alcohol. He would go to his study tired in body and so wearied in brain that he felt as if his skull were literally packed with grey wool. "I must write to Rita," he would think, and sit down with the blank sheet before him. There would not be an idea. The books upon the walls called to him to lose himself in noble company. The Dog Trust gambolling with Tumpany in the garden invited him to play. The sight of Mary with her basket on her arm setting out upon some errand of mercy in the village, spoke of the pleasant, gracious hours he might spend with her, watching how sweet and wise she was with the poor people and how she was beloved.