John Ravil himself was grotesque even to ugliness. Of scarcely the middle height, ill-shapen in body, and husky voiced, his peculiarities were so marked that it was impossible for him to walk in the streets without exciting unfavourable comment. His complexion was neither light nor dark; and an odd look was given by a bushy copper-coloured moustache, whose ends had never known training. An overhanging forehead, with knitted brows and stiff white hair that stood on end, completed the list of his most noticeable faults. Despite the marks of age, however, he was as yet only in his twenty-third year, and evidences of his youth were visible in his large brown eyes that seemed at times to belong to a young child. To-day those eyes were full of terrified perplexity. A change had come into his life; the love that had sapped his fountain of inspiration, and hindered him in his struggle for bread, had grown more and more absorbing of late, and in proportion, the passion of the beloved one had dwindled. Life had nothing for him save this woman: fame could never come now, and in his unhappiness he felt himself degraded to the verge of the commonplace. After awhile he rose, with a heavy indraught of breath, and opening the secret drawer of an old mahogany bureau took thence a small bundle of letters, each enclosed in its gilt-edged envelope. A band of white paper, whereon was inscribed ‘Flavia’s Correspondence,’ was tied round all. This he loosened, and taking the topmost letter, reverentially unfolded the sheet. It had been written soon after their first meeting. Flavia’s hand was eccentrically masculine. ‘Forgive me,’ it ran, ‘for being so obtuse last night in not divining the meaning of your words. You stung me somehow when you laughed at my singing: it was not till afterwards that I understood your laughter--strange and harsh as it sounded--as a far greater compliment than any other man could bestow. Truth to tell, I half resented the little speech that followed. _Why should I sing only alone or only for one?_ Heaven knows that I have not a beautiful voice, but still I believe (and I am not an egotist) that I have the power of expressing the predominant sentiment of the song. _Addio_, stay, I often visit that alley of firs you admire so--in the afternoon of most fine days--and a voice sounds infinitely more _spacious_ there. Shall I sing there alone?’ Here John Ravil bit his white lower lip until the blood oozed in scarlet drops. O the midsummer noon-tide; the trembling air; the golden dusk that clung around the fir trunks! Flavia had wafted towards him from the eastern glade, clad in azure and seeming like a cloud-borne cherub. Cherubs sing too, and she sang; but no cherub ever sang as she. Only one song-- ‘Oh turn, love, oh turn I pray I prithee, love, turn to me.’ But such memories add to one’s agony. The second letter, dated two months later, told of capitulation.