When Osborne entered the drawing-room at Peter's Row he was pale, spent, weak. He could hardly stand for a moment; the place swam round him, and he swayed to and fro as if about to fall. Some of the guests looked at him with amazement, some with suspicion, some with fear. What was wrong with this young man? Why did he come down to breakfast the other morning in that extraordinary condition? What was the meaning of any man, half covered with mud, breaking into a drawing-room? It was very strange. Was he drunk? Why did not Mrs Barclay tell him to leave? Kate saw at a glance something dreadful had occurred. She looked hastily at Marie, but found no explanation there. Marie sat on a couch fronting the door, and stared in vague apprehension at him. In her, love was alarmed by an unfamiliar phase of the beloved. Kate rose, and went to George, saying,-- 'What is the matter, George? What is the matter? You look ill.' 'I am only tired--only tired, Kate.' He glanced at Marie. 'She fears me already,' he thought. 'She fears me. See how she shrinks from me. She would scream out if I dared to go near her. She would scream. She sees, with the swift instinct of a woman, that what I swear to-day I will forswear to-morrow. She loathes me more than the most unsightly things that crawl on earth. Oh, my Marie, my life--my soul! Have I lost you for ever--for ever!' All the guests were still staring mutely at him. He was unconscious of their presence. He was unconscious of everything but the feeling of loss. He stood in the midst of a pitiless desert. Neither heaven nor earth, beast nor man, would take pity on him, would kill him, and put him out of this awful pain. If he could shut his eyes for ever on her, for ever on the past, he would be content. For, indeed, what want of contentment can there be when past, present, and future are no more? Had he been born to open his eyes on this apparition of supreme loveliness, merely that he might see it for a brief span, and then lose it, and all memory of it, for ever? If even memory might remain he should now be content. But nothing would be left--nothing. He had been foolish, insane, a moment ago, to wish for oblivion. He would prefer the memory of her, the mental image of her, with all the sense of final loss, to forgetfulness. How shallow Dante had been to say memory of former joys was the crudest pain! Who would give up certain aspects of his true love for all the pain those pictures could bring? Memory was the inexhaustible bank of love. As the future is the fairest, so is the past the most dear. The feeling you must lose all the heart-savings of a love-time is the most bitter sting that can enter the soul of man. Ay, but Dante did not think he or anyone should lose the memory of love at the silent side of the grave. That accounted for Dante saying, the bitterest thing of all was remembering brighter hours. Into Dante's code oblivion did not enter. _Miserere nobis_. _Miserere nobis_.