Sweet, pure face under its bridal-veil! The face which shall, if fate spare it, be as dear to me many a long year hence as now at the culminating moment of my life! As he trudged on in the dark, his tortured memory was living through that time again.

The images forced themselves upon him, however much he tried to think of quite other things--of some fictitious story on which he might set to work.

In the case of his earlier books he had waited quietly until some suggestive 'situation,' some group of congenial characters, came with sudden delightfulness before his mind and urged him to write; but nothing so spontaneous could now be hoped for.

His brain was too weary with months of fruitless, harassing endeavour; moreover, he was trying to devise a 'plot,' the kind of literary Jack-in-the-box which might excite interest in the mass of readers, and this was alien to the natural working of his imagination.

He suffered the torments of nightmare--an oppression of the brain and heart which must soon be intolerable..