He grew to understand the feelings and the thought, to sympathise in the work of the prisoner in his dungeon. The solitary ray of sunshine that fell upon his life was the love of Violet. He was himself confined, imprisoned by the iron bars and the strong walls of poverty, and the tools he had at hand for his labour of love were scanty and rude. How could he in that contracted sphere, without travel, without change of scene and conversation with other men, ever hope to find materials for works with which to please the world, and obtain for himself fame and position? He understood now the deep meaning of the words put in Ulysses’ mouth—“I am a part of all that I have met.” They applied with tenfold force to the artistic, and to the literary career. It was only by extended experience, by contact with the wide, wide world, that he could hope to comprehend what it wanted. Yet it sometimes happened that even the prisoner in his cell, by sheer self-concentration, and with the aid of the rude tools and material within his reach, produced a work which could not be surpassed. The poor prisoner of the picture reminded him constantly of this. He tried. He thought and thought, till at last, in the quiet and solitude of his lonely room, an idea did occur to him—not a very great or remarkable idea either, but still one which, he felt, if properly carried out, might produce substantial results. Evening after evening, upon leaving the office, he laboured at his new conception, illustrating his book with his own pencil, spending hour after hour upon it far into the night. So absorbed was he upon it, that he almost neglected Violet’s letters—almost, he could not quite—but his notes were so short and so unlike his usual style, that she, with her knowledge of his character, saw at once what he was doing, and kept begging him not to overwork himself. “Circumstances over which we have no control.” There are other circumstances still more powerful—i.e., those circumstances which we never even think of controlling, which happen so quietly and whose true significance is so little apparent at the time, that we pass them by without a thought. It happened that Mr Broughton was engaged in a cause which necessitated extracts to be made from a file of old newspapers. Being overworked himself, and his staff also in full employment, he asked Aymer to do this, and to do it especially well and carefully. Aymer began the work, and at first found it dry enough, but as he got deeper into it, the strange contrast presented by this contemporary chronicle with the present day gradually forced itself upon him, and he ceased to cast aside the papers so soon as the particular extract required was made.