"What kind of future I wish for you, I need not write here. You know. And it is for the sake of that future—for the sake of the girl whose unselfish life has at last taught me and shamed me, that I give you up forever.
"Dear, perhaps you had better not answer this for a long, long time. Then, when that clever surgeon, Time, has effaced all scars—and when not only tranquillity is yours but, perhaps, a deeper happiness is in sight, write and tell me so. And the great god Kelly, nodding before his easel, will rouse up from his Olympian revery and totter away to find a sheaf of blessings to bestow upon the finest, truest, and loveliest girl in all the world.
"Halcyonii dies! Fortem posce animum! Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit. Vale!
"LOUIS NEVILLE."
CHAPTER XVII
The fifteenth day of her absence had come and gone and there had been no word from her.
Whether or not he had permitted himself to expect any, the suspense had been none the less almost unendurable. He walked the floor of the studio all day long, scarcely knowing what he was about, insensible to fatigue or to anything except the dull, ceaseless beating of his heart. He seemed older, thinner:—a man whose sands were running very swiftly.
With the dawn of the fifteenth day of her absence a gray pallor had come into his face; and it remained there. Ogilvy and Annan sauntered into the studio to visit him, twice, and the second time they arrived bearing gifts—favourite tonics, prescriptions, and pills.
"You look like hell, Kelly," observed Sam with tactful and characteristic frankness. "Try a few of this assorted dope. Harry and I dote on dope:
"'After the bat is over,
After the last cent's spent,
And the pigs have gone from the clover
And the very last gent has went;
After the cards are scattered,
After I've paid the bill,
Weary and rocky and battered
I swallow my liver pill!'"