'To my father's! Ah! what a son I would have been to him now, in his extreme need! . . . And he will not let me! Lancelot, is it impossible to move him? I do not want to go home again . . . to live there . . . I could not face that, though I longed but this moment to do it. I cannot face the self-satisfied, pitying looks . . . the everlasting suspicion that they suspect me to be speaking untruths, or proselytising in secret. . . . Cruel and unjust!' Lancelot thought of a certain letter of Luke's . . . but who was he, to break the bruised reed? 'No; I will not see him. Better thus; better vanish, and be known only according to the spirit by the spirits of saints and confessors, and their successors upon earth. No! I will die, and give no sign.' 'I must see somewhat more of you, indeed.' 'I will meet you here, then, two hours hence. Near that house--even along the way which leads to it--I cannot go. It would be too painful: too painful to think that you were walking towards it,-- the old house where I was born and bred . . . and I shut out,--even though it be for the sake of the kingdom of heaven!' 'Or for the sake of your own share therein, my poor cousin!' thought Lancelot to himself, 'which is a very different matter.' 'Whither, after you have been--?' Luke could not get out the word home. 'To Claude Mellot's.' 'I will walk part of the way thither with you. But he is a very bad companion for you.' 'I can't help that. I cannot live; and I am going to turn painter. It is not the road in which to find a fortune; but still, the very sign-painters live somehow, I suppose. I am going this very afternoon to Claude Mellot, and enlist. I sold the last of my treasured MSS. to a fifth-rate magazine this morning, for what it would fetch. It has been like eating one's own children--but, at least, they have fed me. So now "to fresh fields and pastures new."' CHAPTER XV: DEUS E MACHINA When Lancelot reached the banker's a letter was put into his hand; it bore the Whitford postmark, and Mrs. Lavington's handwriting. He tore it open; it contained a letter from Argemone, which, it is needless to say, he read before her mother's:--