Surely he had here the Idea? He had it so warmly, that his bath-water
heated. Only the vision was wanted.

On London Bridge he had seen it--a great thing done to the flash of
brilliant results. That was after a fall.

There had been a fall also of the scheme of Lakelands.

Come to us with no superstitious whispers of indications and
significations in the fall!--But there had certainly been a moral fall,
fully to the level of the physical, in the maintaining of that scheme of
Lakelands, now ruined by his incomprehensible Nesta--who had saved him
from falling further. His bath-water chilled. He jumped out and rubbed
furiously with his towels and flesh-brushes, chasing the Idea for simple
warmth, to have Something inside him, to feel just that sustainment; with
the cry: But no one can say I do not love my Nataly! And he tested it to
prove it by his readiness to die for her: which is heroically easier than
the devotedly living, and has a weight of evidence in our internal Courts
for surpassing the latter tedious performance.

His Nesta had knocked Lakelands to pieces. Except for the making of
money, the whole year of an erected Lakelands, notwithstanding
uninterrupted successes, was a blank. Or rather we have to wish it were
a blank. The scheme departs: payment for the enlisted servants of it is
in prospect. A black agent, not willingly enlisted, yet pointing to
proofs of service, refuses payment in ordinary coin; and we tell him we
owe him nothing, that he is not a man of the world, has no understanding
of Nature: and still the fellow thumps and alarums at a midnight door we
are astonished to find we have in our daylight house. How is it? Would