I have broken a woman’s heart. I have spurned the passionate love of a woman who has been near and dear to me; a woman of great nature; a woman of subtle brain who has been my chosen companion, my equal partner in any intellectual path I chose to tread; a sensitive lady, with all the graciousness of soul that term conveys. Heaven knows what a woman can see in me to love. I look in the glass at my bony, hawk-like face, on which the stamp of futility seems eternally set, and I am seized with a prodigious wonder; but the fact remains that to me unlovely and unworthy has been given that thing without price, a woman’s love. I remember Pasquale laughing merrily at this valuation. He said the love of women was as cheap as dirt, and the only use for it was to make mud pies. The damned cynical villain! “Always reflect,” said he, on another occasion, “that although a man may be as ugly as sin, the probability is that he is just as pleasant. Beauties will find hitherto unsuspected amenities in Beasts till the end of time.” But I am such a poor and sorry Beast, without the chance of a transformation; a commonplace Beast, dull and didactic; a besotted, purblind, despicable Beast! Yet Judith loved me. Instead of thanking on my knees the high gods for the boon conferred, I rejected it, and went mad for craving of the infinitely lesser glory of Carlotta’s baby lips and gold-bronze hair. I have broken Judith’s heart. I will expiate the crime I have committed. Expiate the crime! The realisation of the meaning of the words covers me with shame. As if what I propose will be a sorry penance! That is the danger of a man thinking, as I have always done, in metaphors. It has given me my loose, indirect views of life, of myself, of those around me. If I had advice to offer to a young man, I should say: “Learn to think straight.” Expiate, indeed! I will go to her and make confession. I will tell her that awful loneliness is crushing my soul. I will kneel before her and beseech her of her great woman’s goodness to give me her love again, and to be my helpmeet and my companion who will be cherished with all that there is of loyalty in me to her life’s end. She will pity me a little, for I have suffered, and I will pity her tenderly, in deep sincerity, and our life together will be based on that all-understanding which signifies all-forgiveness. And it shall be a real life together. I used to smile, in a superior way, at her dread of solitude. Heaven forgive me. I did not then know its terrors. It comforted for the first few benumbed days, but now it is gathering around me like a mysterious and appalling force. I crave the human presence in my home. I need the woman’s presence in my heart.