Lothian rose from his chair and bowed to the distant gallery. The musician's face lighted up and he bowed twice to Lothian. Monsieur Toché had recognised the name upon the card. And the request, written in perfect, idiomatic French, had commenced, "_Cher Maitre et Confrère_." The lasting hunger of the obscure artist for recognition by another and greater one was satisfied. Poor Toché went to his bed that night in Soho feeling as if he had been decorated with the Order of Merit. And though, during the supper hours from eleven to half past twelve he had to play "selections" from the Musical Comedy of the moment, he never lost the sense of _bien être_ conferred upon him by Gilbert Lothian at dinner. Gilbert was trembling a little as the music ended. Rita sat back in her chair with downcast eyes and lips slightly parted. Neither of them spoke. Gilbert suddenly experienced a sense of immense sorrow, of infinite regret too deep for speech or tears. "This is the moment of realisation," he thought, "the first real moment in my life, perhaps. _I know what I have missed._ Of all women this was the one for me, as I for her. We were made for each other. Too late! too late!" He struggled for mastery over his emotion. "How well they play," he said. She made a slight motion with her hand. "Don't let's talk for a minute," she answered. He was thrilled through and through. Did she also, then, feel and know . . . ? Surely that could not be. His youth was so nearly over, the keen æsthetic vision of the poet showed him so remorselessly how changed he was physically from what he had been in years gone by, for ever. Mechanically, without thinking, obeying the order given by the new half-self, that spawn of poison which was his master and which he mistook for himself, he filled his glass once more and drank. In forty seconds after, triumph and pride flared up within him like a sheet of thin paper lit suddenly with a match. Yes! She was his, part of him--it was true! He, the great poet, had woven his winged words around her. He had bent the power of his Mind upon her--utterly desirable, unsoiled and perfect--and she was his. The blaze passed through him and upwards, a thing from below. Then it ended and only a curl of grey ash floated in the air. The most poignant and almost physical sorrow returned to him. His heart seemed to ache like a tooth. Yet it wasn't dull, hopeless depression. It was, he thought, a high tragic sorrow ennobling in its strength; a sorrow such as only the supreme soul-wounded artists of the world could know--had known. "She was for me!" his heart cried out. "Ah, if only I had met her first!" Yes! he was fain of all the tragic sorrows of the Great Ones to whom he was brother, of whose blood he was. In a single flash of time--as the drowning man is said to experience all the events of his life at the penultimate moment of dissolution--he felt that he knew the secrets of all sorrow, the pangs of all tragedy.