"Dear it's my very heart I'm sending you here. If I didn't love you, love you, love you I could write a better letter, tell you better how I love you. Write now. You will write? "Did someone tell you something or write you something that made you go away? It's not true, whatever it is. Nothing's true, but that I want you. As I've never wanted anything. Let me see you. Let me tell you. I'll explain everything--if anyone _has_ been telling lies. "If you don't care enough to write, I don't care enough to go on living. Oh, my dear Dear, all the words and phrases have been used up before. There's nothing new to _say_, I know. But what's in my heart for you--that's new, that's all that matters--that and what your heart might hold for me. Does it? Tell me. If I can't have your love, I can't bear my life. And I won't.--You'll think this letter isn't like me. It isn't, I know. But I can't help it. I am a new man: and you have made me. Dear,--can't you love the man you've made? Write, write, write! "Yours--as I never thought I could be anyone's, "Eustace Vernon." "It's too long," he said, "most inartistic, but I won't re-write it. Contemptible ass! If she cares it won't matter. If she doesn't, it won't matter either." And that was the letter that lay in the locked drawer for a week. And through that week the watching for the postman went on--went on. And the enquiries, mechanically. And no answer came at all, to either of his letters. Had the Concierge deceived him? Had she really no address to which to send the letter? "Are you sure that you posted the letter?" "Altogether, monsieur," said the concierge, fingering the key of the drawer that held it. And the hot ferment of Paris life seethed and fretted all around him. If Betty were at Long Barton--oh, the dewy gray grass in the warren--and the long shadows on the grass! Three days more went by. "You have posted the letter?" "But yes, Monsieur. Be tranquil. Without doubt it was a letter that should exact time for the response." It was on the fifth day that he met Mimi Chantal, the prettiest model on the left bank. "Is monsieur by chance painting the great picture which shall put him between Velasquez and Caran d'Ache on the last day?" "I am painting nothing," said Vernon. "And why is the prettiest model in Paris not at work?" "I was in lateness but a little quarter of an hour, Monsieur. And behold me--chucked." "It wasn't for the first time, then?" "A nothing one or two days last week. Monsieur had better begin to paint that _chef d'oeuvre_--to-day even. It isn't often that the prettiest model in Paris is free to sit at a moment's notice." "But," said Vernon, "I haven't an idea for a picture even. It is too hot for ideas. I'm going into the country at the end of the month, to do landscape." "To paint a picture it is then absolutely necessary to have an idea?" "An idea--or a commission."