'I'm going to be a dramatist,' said Paul.

'A play-actor!' cried the mother, who was back again.

'A play-writer,' Paul corrected. 'I've got the best tutor in the world.'

'Do you mean to tell me,' his mother asked, 'that you think o' making that a trade for a lifetime?'

'Why not? asked Pau.

'Why not, indeed!' she cried, with an angry click of her knitting-needle. 'Writing a parcel o' rubbidge for fools to speak, and other fools to laugh at.'

'It was Shakespeare's trade, Mary,' said Armstrong.

'It's a pretty far cry from our Paul to Shakespeare, I reckon,' said the mother with sudden dryness.

'I suppose it is,' said Paul, laughing; 'but there are degrees in every calling. Wait a bit I don't mean that you shall be ashamed of me.'

Paul had been away from home for half a year, and absence had altered many things. The High Street of the town had grown mean and sordid to the eye. Shops which had once been palatial had lost all the glamour which childhood had given them and custom had preserved. The dusty, untidy shop at home had shrunk to less than half its original dimensions. Armstrong seemed changed more than anything or anybody else. He looked suddenly small and old and gray. He was not much over five-and-sixty, but he had always seemed old to Paul, even from the earliest recollections of infancy. But his age had been the age of dignity and authority, and now it was age without disguise, white-haired and withered, and bowed in uncomplaining patience.

But Paul felt that there was no such change anywhere as in himself. A certain complacency had stolen across the horror which had shaken him at the first contemplation of his own fall. He had made a step towards manhood; he heard the talk of men—not the best, not the wisest, yet neither the worst nor the most stupid—and he knew now how lightly they valued that which he had once esteemed priceless. He had written in his note-book:

'To forgive is godlike. Be as God unto thyself.'

He had made a step towards manhood. He had thought it a hideous, irremediable plunge to ruin, and yet somehow he seemed to stand the higher for it. The episode was to be hateful for ever in memory. But it was to cloud life no longer—only to stand as a sign of warning, a danger-signal. Surely the net is spread in vain in the sight of any bird. The burned child dreads the fire. He did not as yet reckon that man is a moral Salamander, and accommodates himself to all temperatures of heat and asceticism. How should a raw lad of less than nineteen think in such a fashion? But he knew what he had not known; he had passed through the fire, and the smell of burning had left his raiment.

The Midland mother gave him a cold cheek to kiss when he went away, but the Scottish father embraced him with a trembling arm.

'Ye'll be remembering Sir Walter's last words to Lockhart,' he said. 'Be a good man, my dear.'

Paul pressed his smooth cheek against the soft white whiskers of his father's face, and held his right hand hard. There was a lump in his throat, and his good-bye had a husk in it. He went back to the society of men who had never thought manly chastity a virtue or the unchastity of men a crime. He went back armed in steel, and the armour lasted a full fortnight in its perfection. Then here and there a rivet came out, and by-and-by the whole suit fell to pieces.

'Id is gurious,' said Darco, 'that all the vunniest sdories in the vorlt should be vhat they gall imbrober. Look at Arisdophanes; look at Jaucer; look at the "Gontes Troladigues"; look at the "Tegameron."'

'Look at Pickwick,' said Paul.

'Vell!' cried Darco, 'look at Bigvig. Bigvig woult haf peen a creat teal vunnier if Tickens had lived at the dime of Zmollet.'

'I don't mind drinking out of a jug,' said Paul, 'but I like a clean jug. I've read Aristophanes—in translation. It's like drinking wine out of a gold cup that has been washed in a sewer.'

'Who says that?' asked Darco.

'I do,' said Paul.

'It is a ferry coot ebicram,' said Darco. 'I vill rememper id. But, mindt you, to be squeamish is not to be glean-minded.

If a sdory is vunny, I laugh. Vy not? If a man tells me a sdory that is only dirdy, I co someveres else. I am a goot man. For dwendy-three hours and fifty-eight minutes in a tay I am as bure-minded as a child; then, in the ott dwo minutes somepoty tells me a dirdy sdory. I laugh, and I go avay, and I think of my blays and my boedry and my pusiness. It is water on a duck's pack.'

'Dirty water,' said Paul.

'There is enough glean water in the tay's rainfall to wash it off,' Darco answered. 'Did you efer read "The Orichinal"?

'No,' said Paul.

'The man who wrote it vos so healthy that he nefer hat need to wash himself. His skin was too bure to hold dirt.'

'Filthy beggar!' said Paul.

'I make it a baraple,' Darco declared. 'Id is true of the immordal soul. I am as bure-minded as a child, and I haf heardt den thousand fillainous sdories. Vot does it madder?'

The rivets of Paul's armour rotted, as the rivets of most men's armour rot, and he grew to tolerate what had been abominable. And that is the way of life, which is a series of declensions from high ideals, and is meant to be so because things must be lost before their worth can be known. The society in which he lived and moved was as rich as any in the world in the kind of narrative he had discussed with Darco. Little by little he got to take Darco's view. It is the view of ninety per cent, of men of the world. A naturally pure mind never learns to love nastiness, but it learns to tolerate it, for the sake of the wit which sometimes lives with it.

Darco was a man whom nobody ever saw for an instant under the influence of liquor, but then it was impossible to make him drunk. It seemed to Paul as if it were just as unlikely for him to become intoxicated by drinking as for a decanter to grow tipsy by having liquor poured into it. If he ate—as he did—twice as much as the average keen-set sportsman, he drank as much as the average hopeless drunkard, and no man could have guessed from his speech, or acts, or aspect that he was not a total abstainer. Paul, too, began to discover that he had a cast-iron pot of a head, and took an infantile pride in the fact; but this kind of vanity was not often indulged in, and he had no physical predisposition to it.

Darco made money by the handful, and spent it with a lavish ostentation. Paul continued his habit of riding about in cabs and dining in hotels. It was a bad commercial training, but he was not at the time of life to think of that. The days and nights were full. There were both labour and enjoyment in them. Every week showed him a new town or city: classic Edinburgh, dirty Glasgow—cleaner nowadays—roaring Liverpool, rainy Manchester, smoke-clouded Birmingham and Sheffield, granite-built Aberdeen, jolly Dublin, with an unaccustomed twang in the whisky, after the Scottish progress; Belfast, Cork, Waterford. Everywhere character studies in shoals; dialect studies every day and all day long. Paul could train his tongue, before the twelve months' tour was over, to the speech of Exeter, or Norwich, or Brighton, or Newcastle, or Berwick, or Aberdeen, or Cork, or the black North. He set himself to the task conscientiously, and with a rich enjoyment. What a Gargantuan table was the world!

How lovable, laughable, hateful were the men who sat at it! What a feast of feeling was spread daily!

The tour came near to its end, and Darco was arranging a new series for half a dozen companies, so that work grew furious. A man might have commanded an army or ruled a great department of State with less expenditure of energy. There was no advertising or consulting of agencies, but everything was done by personal letter. There were reams and reams of letters; there were scores and scores of contracts with managers, and actors, and actresses, and upholsterers, and scene-painters, and printers, and bill-posters, and Darco one organized mass of effort at the centre of all the business hurly-burly, doing three men's work, and tearing into fibre the nerves of all men who came near him. He could be princely with it all in his own way.

'You haf learned your pusiness, young Armstrong,' he said to Paul when the rush was over. 'I gan deach anypoty his pusiness if he is not a vool. I am Cheorge Dargo. You haf done your work gabidally, and you are vorth fife dimes vot I am baying you. But I alvays like the shady site of a pargain, and I shall only gif you four dimes.'

So at four times the original sum Paul's salary was fixed, and he began to feel himself a man of consequence.

'I am Mr. Darco's private secretary,' he was told to say to people with whom he was empowered to deal. 'I am entirely in Mr. Darco's confidence, and you may deal with me exactly as if Mr. Darco were here.'

At the beginning of the second year the great provincial cities had begun to take advantage of the Public Libraries Act, and here was a new joy for Paul. The Free Library was the first place he asked for in any big town, and at every spare hour he stuck his nose into a book, and kept it there until duty called him away again. Something in 'Gil Bias' about poverty in observation struck his fancy, and he cast about in his own mind asking where he could observe, not knowing yet that he was observing all things. He hit upon the landlady. A man who has fifty-two landladies in a year has surely a fertile field. He sorted and classified in the light of experience: the honeyed, the acidulated, and bibulous-godly (mostly Scottish), the bibulous-ungodly (mostly English), the slut with a clean outside to things, the painstaking sloven, the peculative (here one majestic sample), the reduced in circumstances, the confidential, the reserved, the frisky, the motherly, the step-motherly—a most excellent assembly for mirth and pity.

Mrs. Brace came back again. How many years was it since the memory of Mrs. Brace had touched the Exile's mind?

Darco did, in the main, his own marketing. He had sent home sausages for breakfast, seven in number. Six came to table.

'Vere is my other zausage,' cries Darco. 'There vere zeven. Now there are six. Vere is my other zausage?'

'Really you know, sir,' says Mrs. Brace. 'Sausages do shrink so in the cooking.'

Paul was under the table with a helpless yelp of pleasure, and Darco stormed like a beaten gong.

Come back again, in the brown sultry air, and the solitude, over that bridge of years departed, Mrs. Fuller. It was Mrs. Fuller's plan to convey a portion of the guests' clean linen from the chest of drawers into the hall, and to lay it on the table there pinned up in a neat newspaper parcel, and to say, 'If you please, gentlemen, the rest of your linning have come home, and, if you please, it's two and elevenpence halfpenny.' Oh, the days—the days when a jest like this could shake the ribs with mirth!

And Mistress MacAlister, painfully intoxicated at the dinner hour of 2 p.m., and the uncooked leg of young pork in the larder.

'D'ye thenk ah'm goin' to cuik till ye on the Sabba' Day? Ye'll no be findin' th' irreligious sort o' betches that'll do that for ye in Dundee, ah'm thenkin'.'

And the little soft-spoken lady from New Orleans, whose husband had been a General—in Del Oro—and an old friend of Darco's in his campaigning days. And the execution in the house. And Darco signing a cheque for twice the amount claimed, and blubbering like a great fat baby, and swearing to burn the cheque if she thanked him by another word. Old Darco, the nerve-tearer, the inordinate pyramid of vanity, the tender, the generous, the loyal. Sweetest fruit in sourest rind! Sleep on, old Darco. God makes none gentler in heart, though He makes many more beloved.

And how men do, on all hands, unconsciously lay themselves out to delight the budding genial satirist! Here is Darco, wealthy and prosperous as he has never been before, launching out fearlessly, and bearing with him the splendour of the stage—the great Montgomery Bassett. Darco, in consultation with the glorious creature, the question being in which of his unrivalled and majestic assumptions he shall first appear:

'It doesn't matter, dear boy,' says Mr. Montgomery Bassett, in that noble voice, a voice rich as the king of all the wines of Burgundy—'it doesn't matter the toss up of a blind beggar's farthing. The people don't come to see the play, my boy; they come to see me. They'd come to see me if I played in Punch and Judy.'

And the late leading man, now dethroned, and put to second business:

'Bassett! Montgomery Bassett! I could act his head off, dear boy. He is the rottenest stick that ever stalked upon a stage. He can't get in front of that infernal Roman nose, sir. "Now," says Bassett, "I'm going to be pathetic;" and the Roman nose says, "I'll see you damned first." "And now," says Bassett, "we'll have a bit of comedy." "Oh no, you won't," says the nose. You might as well try to act behind a barn-door as to act behind that nose. Just fill me out a little tot of Scotch, darling laddie. I want to lose the taste of Bassett.'

And the leading lady and the ingenue who hung together like twin cherries on one stalk, bathed in soft dews of tenderness, until Bassett praised the one and not the other, and the leading lady called the ingenue 'Chit' and the ingenue retorted 'Wrinkles!' And the reconciliation at the champagne supper which Darco gave when Bassett went away, when the tears they shed must have tasted of the wine.

Oh, the days—the days, long years before he set out on his Journey of Despair, when mirth had no malice, and tears were tributaries to pity!

'I have vound oudt,' said Darco, one day, 'that our paggage man is a pantit He is ropping eferypoty, and I have kiven him a fortnight's vages, and the bag to carry. That is my liddle chockular vay to say he has got the zack. I haf dele-graphed for a new man, and he will come from Lonton by the seven-thirty train. His name is Warr, and you will know him by his nose, which is pigger than your fist, and as hot to look at as the powels of the Phalarian Pull. It ought to be an acony to garry it, but he laughs pehint it in the distance. But I nodice it always zeems to make his eyes vater.'

Paul went to meet this phenomenon, and from the train Mr. Warr of the Nonconformist printing-office stepped out, carrying the work of art before him like an oriflamme.

'Mr. Warr, I believe?' said Paul.

'The same, sir,' said Mr. Warr, with a spinal inclination.

Paul's face was framed in a virginal fringe of brown beard, and he was dressed by a London theatrical tailor. Mr. Wan-had no memory of him.

'I am Mr. Darco's private secretary,' said Paul. 'That is the address of your lodgings, and when you have taken your traps there Mr. Darco will meet you at the theatre.'

'I am at your disposal, sir,' said Mr. Warr.

He gathered up two newspaper parcels, each of which leaked ragged hosiery and soiled linen at either end, and pottered along the platform at Paul's side, subservient and timid. Paul spurted laughter and affected a cough to hide it.

'Here is the refreshment-room, Mr. Warr,' he said. 'May I ask if you care at this moment to administer a coating of varnish to the work of art?'

'Have I had the pleasure to encounter you before, sir?' asked Mr. Warr, peering at him sideways across that astonishing nose, with a brown eye bright with moisture. It was like an old cat looking out from the side of a fireplace.

'Come in and see,' said Paul.

Mr. Warr went in, and being offered a choice in varnishes, selected cold gin.

'My highly superior respects, sir. You either know me, or my fame has reached you.' He smiled a propitiatory smile. 'I do not recall you, sir.'

'I have varnished the work of art before to-day,' said Paul. 'Do you remember Bucklersbury?'

'I should do so,' Mr. Warr returned. 'I drudged there for eight long years, and had it not been for Mr. Darco's kindly memories of an old associate, I might have drudged there still. But two and fifty shillings per week, sir, with freedom and travel thrown in, are highly superior to thirty-six, with slavery superadded. But I do not recall your face and figure, sir.'

'My name is Armstrong,' said Paul. 'I worked beside you for a week or two.'

'The friend of my youth,' said Mr. Warr. 'Permit me to shake hands. Rely upon me, Mr. Armstrong, not to be presumptuous. Rely upon me, sir. I shall respect bygones. Mr. Darco will tell you who I was and what I was when he first knew me. I was first low com., sir, at the Vic, upon my soul and honour, Mr. Armstrong. But the work of art, sir, so grew and prospered that at last the very gallery guyed me. I went for the varnish, Mr. Armstrong, in sheer despair. As God is my highly superior judge, sir, I never drank until I had a drunkard's nose. Then I made a jest of a deformity, and the joke carried me too far. This infernal feature is an unnatural legacy. It is from my maternal grandfather, who once owned the town of Guildford. I have heard my mother say that his cellars covered a quarter of an acre, and held nothing but port and brandy—packed, sir, seven feet deep. To-morrow, in Mr. Darco's presence, I sign the pledge till the end of the tour, as per our highly superior arrangement. I do not know, sir, whether behind that aspect of prosperity there lurks the probability of another fourpennyworth.'

'You mustn't get tipsy to meet Mr. Darco,' said Paul.

'There is no fear of that, sir,' Mr. Warr answered. 'That,' pointing to the empty glass, 'is my first to-day, and I as thirsty as I am hungry.'

'Eat, man, eat,' said Paul.

'May I, sir?' asked Mr. Warr.

'Your fill,' said Paul.

There were hard-boiled eggs and cold sausages on the marble-topped counter, and Mr. Warr fell to work among them, and mumbled gratitude with his mouth full. When he had half cleared the counter, Paul paid for the depredations, and Mr. Warr, who knew the town of old, picked up his leaking parcels and made off for the address given him.

'Veil,' said Darco when Paul got back to him, 'you haf seen him? Had he any package and luckage?' Paul described Mr. Warr's kit. 'You must puy for him a jeap, useful bordmandeau, and jarge id to me. I shall sdop it out of his wages,' which of course he never did.

Mr. Warr presented himself at Darco's lodging next morning wrapped in a perfume of gin and cloves. He laid upon the table a wordy document in foolscap with a receipt stamp in one corner, and read it aloud in his own breathless chuckle. It set forth that whereas he, the undersigned William Treherne Macfarvel Warr, of the one part, late of, et cetera, had entered into an engagement with George Darco, Esq., et cetera, et cetera, of the other part, to such and such an effect of polysyllabic rigmarole, he, the aforesaid and undersigned, did seriously and truly covenant with the aforesaid George Darco, Esq., of et cetera, et cetera, all over again, not to drink or imbibe or partake of any form of alcoholic liquor, whether distilled or fermented, until such time as the agreement or engagement between the aforesaid and undersigned on the one part, and the aforesaid George Darco, Esq., of the other part, should end, cease, and determine. He signed this document with a great sprawling flourish, and Darco and Paul having appended their names to it also, Mr. Warr wrote the date of the transaction across the receipt stamp, and handed the paper to his employer with a solemn bow.

'You haf peen zaying goot-bye to the dear greature,' said Darco; 'I can see that.'

'In the words of Othello, sir,' said Mr. Warr: '"I kissed her ere I killed her."' He smiled self-consciously, but instantly grew grave again. 'You know me, Mr. Darco. You have my highly superior word. I never go back on it, sir.'

Mr. Warr kept his word, but he grew insufferably self-righteous, and preached total abstinence to everybody, from Darco to the call-boy. He atoned for this unconsciously by the longing calculations he made.

'I have consulted the almanac,' he confided to Paul; 'it is two hundred and seventy-one days to my next drink.'

After this he offered a figure almost daily: 'Two seventy. A dry journey, Mr. Armstrong.''Two fifty, sir, two fifty. The longest lane must turn, sir.' Then, after a long spell of yearning: 'Only two hundred now, sir. I should like to obliterate two hundred. But a Warr's word is sacred.'

'Now,' said Paul one day, 'why don't you take advantage of this sober spell to cure yourself of the craving, in place of looking forward to the next outburst and counting the days between? Why don't you make up your mind to have done with it altogether?

'Sir,' said Mr. Warr with intense solemnity, 'if I thought I had tasted my last liquor, I'd cut my throat.'

'If ever I find myself disposed to feel like that,' Paul answered, 'I will cut my own.'

'Oh dear no, you won't, sir,' said Mr. Warr. 'If ever you go that way at all, you'll slide into it. You will always believe that you could drop it at any moment until you find you can't. Then you'll be reconciled, like the rest of us.'

Paul had little fear. His temptation, he told himself, did not lie in that direction.



CHAPTER X

Darco's work fell into routine for a time. The wheels of all his affairs went so smoothly that he and his assistant found many easy breathing-spaces. But Paul was of a mind just now to scorn delight and live laborious days. He confined himself for many hours of each day to his bedroom, and on the weekly railway journey with his chief he sat for the most part in a brown study, And made frequent entries in a big note-book.

'Vat are you doing?' Darco asked one day.

Paul blushed, and answered that he would rather wait a day or two before speaking.

'I shall ask your opinion in a week at the outside,' he added.

Darco went to sleep, a thing he seemed able to do whenever the fancy took him, and Paul made notes furiously all through the rest of the journey. His ideas affected him curiously, for at times his eyes would fill and he would blow his nose, and at other times he would chuckle richly to himself. He had got what he conceived to be a dramatic notion by the tip of the tail, and he was engaged in the manufacture of his first drama. In due time the result of his labours in his most clerk-like hand was passed over a breakfast-table to Darco, who winced, and looked like a shying horse at it.

'Vot is id?' he asked.

'It is a play,' said Paul, blushing and stammering. 'I want to have your judgment on it.'

'Dake it away!' cried Darco; 'dake it away. I am wriding blays myselluf, ant I will nod look at other beoble's. No. Dake it away!'

Paul stared at him in confusion.

'I do not vant to look at anypoty's blays,' said Darco. 'I haf got alreaty all the tramatic iteas there ever haf been in the vorldt—all there efer will be. I do not vant notions that are olter than the hills brought to me, and then for beobles to say I haf zeen their pieces and gopied from them. I do not vant to gopy from anypoty. I am Cheorge Dargo.'

'I'll bet,' said Paul rashly, 'that you haven't met this idea yet.'

'My tear poy,' Darco answered, 'if you haf cot a new way of bantling an old itea you are ferry lucky. But there are no new iteas, and you may take my vort for it. If anypoty asks who told you that, say it was Cheorge Dargo.'

'Let me read it to you,' Paul urged. 'It's hardly likely that a youngster like myself is going to have the cheek to charge you with having stolen your ideas—now, is it?' Darco smoothed a little. 'You could tell me if there's anything in it, or if I'm wasting time.'

'Go on,' said Darco, suddenly rising from the table and hurling himself into an arm-chair, so that the floor shuddered, and the windows of the room danced in their panes.

Paul sipped his tea, opened his manuscript and began to read. He read on until a loud snore reached his ears, and then looked up discouraged.

'Vot's the madder?' Darco asked. 'Go on; I am listening.'

Paul went on and Darco snored continuously, but whenever the reader looked up at him, he was wide awake and attentive. The landlady came in to clear the table and Darco drove her from the room as if she had come to steal her own properties. Then he flung himself anew into his arm-chair and snored until the reading came to a close. It had lasted two hours and a half, and Paul at times had been affected by his own humour and pathos. He waited with his eyes on the word 'Curtain 'at the bottom of the final page.

'You think that is a blay?' said Darco. 'Vell, it is nod a blay. It is a chelly.'

'I don't quite think I know what you mean,' Paul answered, horribly crestfallen.

'I say vot I mean,' Darco responded. 'It is a chelly. It is a very goot chelly—in' places. You might like it if you took it in a sboon out of a storypook, or a folume of boedry; but a blay is a very different greation.'

Then he fell to a mortally technical criticism of Paul's work—a practical stage-manager's criticism—and enlightened his hearer's mind on many things. He said, 'I am Cheorge Dargo, ant now you know,' a little oftener than was necessary, but he laid bare all the weaknesses of plot and execution—all the improbabilities which Paul supposed himself cunningly to have effaced or bidden, and he showed him how fatally he had disguised his budding scoundrel in a robe of goodness throughout the whole of the first act.

'But it's life!' cried Paul. 'That's what happens in life. You meet a man who seems made of honesty; you trust him, and he picks your pocket.'

'Aha!' said Darco; 'but there is always somepoty who knows the druth apout him, ant efery memper of your autience must represend that somepoty. Now, I'll dell you. I vill make a sgeleton for you. We will pild your chelly into a gomedy, ant we will preathe into id the preath of life, and it shall valk apout.'

'You'll—you'll work with me?' Paul cried. 'Hurrah!'

Darco rang a peal at the bell, and the landlady, probably thinking the house on fire, scurried madly to answer the call.

'Half-bast elefen o'glock,' growled Darco accusingly, 'ant look at the preakfast-dable.'

'But you told me, sir——' began the gasping woman.

'Now don't sdant jattering there,' said Darco, 'I am koing to be busy. Glear avay!'

'I came to clear away at nine, sir.'

'Glear avay now,' said Darco; 'don't vaste my dime.'

'I'm sure I don't want to waste your time, Mr. Darco,' said the landlady, 'but you've given me such a turn, sir, I don't know where I am.'

Darco shook the room again by a new plunge into the armchair, and the trembling landlady cleared away.

'Now, dake nodes!' he roared, as she left the room.

'I shall be very glad to take notice, sir,' said the landlady.

'Nodes!' shouted Darco. 'Nodes. I am not dalking to you. I am dalking to my brivade zegredary.'

Paul seized a pencil, set a pile of paper before him on the table, and waited. Darco began to prowl about the room, setting chairs in place with great precision, arranging ornaments on the chimney-shelf, and settling pictures on the wall with methodical exactness, muttering meanwhile, 'Nodes. Dake nodes. I am dalking to my brivade zegredary. Nodes. Dake nodes.' Paul was familiar with his ways, and waited seriously.

'But this down,' said Darco, pacing and turning suddenly. 'No. Don't but that down. I don't vant that' He roamed off again, murmuring: 'No. Don't but it down. I don't vant it. I don't vant it. Nodes. Dake nodes.' Then with sudden loudness and decision: 'But this down.'

He began to talk. Paul tried to follow him on paper, but the task was hopeless. Darco talked with a choking incoherence and at a dreadful pace. It was as if a big-bellied bottle were turned upside down, and as if the bottle were sentient and strove to empty the whole of its contents at once through a narrow neck. At last a meaning began to declare itself—the merest intelligible germ of a meaning—but it grew and grew until Paul clapped his hands with a cry of triumph at it.

'That is what was wanted.'

'That is a bart of vat is vanted,' said Darco. 'Haf you cot it town?' Before Paul could answer he was off again in a new tangle, and fighting and tearing his way through it as madly as before. 'Now I am dired,' he said. 'I shall haf some lunge, and co to sleep.'

He caught at the bell-pull in passing, gave it a tug, and waddled off to his bedroom. The landlady came in with the tray and began to arrange the table.

'I don't know what you gentlemen have been doing sir,' she said to Paul, 'but I'm sure I was afraid there was going to be murder in the house. I never heard anybody go on so in my life. I don't know how any young gentleman puts up with it.'

'There is very little danger, I assure you,' said Paul. 'Mr. Darco and I have been talking business.'

'Well,' returned the landlady, 'I suppose you know how to manage him. But I wouldn't be his keeper not for love or money.'

'I am Mr. Darco's private secretary, ma'am,' Paul answered gravely.

'All I can say is,' said the landlady, sighing, 'I'm glad it's Saturday.'

It happened that the company took a late train that night for a distant town, and Darco paid his bill before leaving for the theatre. He told the landlady that he had been extremely comfortable, and that he should have great pleasure in recommending her to his friends. When he had gone, the landlady told Paul that she was glad the gendeman had his lucy intervals.

But the comedy having been once rebegun on Darco's lines, was written to an accompaniment of fears and tremblings. It terrified the servants and the women-folk at large of every house the collaborateurs lodged in. Slaveys, with clasped hands and faces pale beneath smudges of blacklead, shook in the hall or on the stairs and landing whilst Darco roared, and Paul at the end of a day's work used sometimes to feel as if he had been badly beaten about the head. None the less, the work was finished, and put into rehearsal.

'Ve vill dry it on the tog,' said Darco, and Paul, who never dared to question him as to his meaning, went puzzled for a while.

But Darco rarely said a thing once without repeating it many times, and at length Paul understood that the play was to be played 'on the dog,' which is theatrical English for the production of a new piece at an obscure house in the country. It was tried, but the dog never took to it with any great kindness. Darco swore it was the first comedy which had been produced since the days of Sheridan. He put it into the repertoire, and played it once a week, and whenever it was played it brought a guinea to Paul's pocket. It is not every first effort in any work of art which does as much as this, however, and Paul had the good sense to see that he was fortunate, and looked hopefully to the future. He crept into the gallery when the piece was played in any town, and watched his neighbours, and listened to their comments on the action and to their talk between the acts. This taught him a great deal, for he saw how little the popular instinct varies in matters of emotion, and the verdict to which he listened was everywhere substantially the same.

There came an especially memorable afternoon when Mr. Warr in a four-wheeled fly drove to Darco's lodgings, and announced the sudden sickness of the juvenile lead. Darco pounced on Paul as the sick man's successor.

'My dear sir,' said Paul, 'I never spoke a word in public in my life. I can't do it.'

'That's all right, my poy,' said Darco. 'You've got to do it.'

There was no arguing the matter.

Mr. Warr was despatched in the fly to gather the members of the company. Darco thrust into Paul's hands the part he had to study, and went off tranquilly to his own room to sleep. Paul slaved for an hour, and seemed to have mastered nothing. Darco, having timed himself to sleep for one hour precisely, awoke to the minute, and bundled off his victim to the theatre. There such members of the company as Mr. Warr had succeeded in finding were already collected, and the scenes in which Paul was concerned were run through again and again until he began to have some idea of what was expected of him, and even some distant knowledge of the words. But the whole thing was like a nightmare, and whenever the thought of the coming night crossed his mind, it afflicted him with a half paralysis. Darco worried him incessantly, bubbling with unhelpful enthusiasm, roaring at him, pushing and hauling him hither and thither, so that at last he resigned himself to a stupor of despair. The leading lady intervened, and she and Darco talked together for a minute.

'Tam it!' he shouted. 'Do you think I want anypoty to deach me? I am Cheorge Dargo. I know my drade!'

But the leading lady stuck to him, and at last he went away.

'Now, my dear,' said Miss Belmont to Paul. 'I'll shepherd you. You're mostly with me, and so long as we're together you're safe. Darco's a darling when you know him, but he's enough to break a beginner's heart. Now, dears '—she appealed here to her whole public—'put your hearts into it, and help the young gentleman through.'

The rehearsal went on again, and the nightmare feeling wore away a little.

'You've got to give me a little bit of a chance here,' said Miss Belmont, with her pretty little gloved hand on Paul's shoulder. 'You see, it's your forgiveness melts me, and if you forgive me like chucking a pennyworth of coppers at a beggar, I shan't be melted. Now, then: "Georgy"—say it like that, just a bit throaty and quivery—"I loved you so that I'd have laid down my life for you!" Try it like that. That's better. Now, give me your eyes, large and mournful, for just five ticks. Now turn, three steps up stage, hand to forehead. That's it, but not quite so woodeny. Turn. Eyes again. "Georgy!" Now one step down, both hands out Pause. That's it "You have broken a truer heart than you will easily find again. But I will say no more. Good-bye, Georgy. And for the sake of those old dreams which were once so sweet, and now are flown for ever, God bless you 'Oh, God bless you and forgive you!" No. Try and get it just a little bit more. Poor dear Bannister always cried when he came to that. I've seen the tears run down his face many a time. Just go back to "Georgy, I loved you sa" Yes, yes, yes, that's it; that's capital. Now, that lets me in. "Oh, Richard! Richard! Is it possible that you forgive me?" That's your cue for the chair, face in both hands. Now my long speech: "Richard," and so on, and so on. "Good-bye, then, dearest, truest, tenderest." Just a little shake of the shoulders here and there, as if you were sobbing to yourself, don't you see? "Good-bye, good-bye." No, don't get up yet. Count six very slowly after "Good-bye" the second time. Now rise, turn, arms out "Georgy! Can't you see?" Then down I rush, and—curtain. Now, just once more from "Georgy, I loved you so."'

The company clapped hands. Berry, the first comedian, poked Earlsford, the leading man, in the waistcoat.

'You'll have to look to your laurels in a year or two.'

'Now,' said Miss Belmont, 'you can't expect to shine tonight. That wouldn't be reasonable, would it? But if you won't prevent the rest from shining you'll have done your duty nobly. Never you mind Darco: I'll keep him out of the house to-night. I'm the only woman in the profession who has the length of his foot I'd rather say the breadth of his heart, for that's where I always get at him. There'll be an explanation and an apology. You'd better read your part. The house won't mind it. Then put all you know into that last scene. Chuck the book a minute before the real business comes on, as if you'd made up your mind to go for the gloves. That'll fetch 'em. Well go over that bit again and again till you've got it They'll be just jumping with pleasure in front if you surprise 'em with a good touch at the finish, and they'll go away thinking how splendidly you'd have done it if you'd had half a chance. It's the trot up the avenue, don't you see?

Mr. Warr, who at a gesture had followed Darco from the theatre, appeared with a basket in his hand, and was followed by a man who bore a larger basket on his shoulder.

'The governor sends his highly superior compliments, ladies and gentlemen,' said Mr. Warr, 'and his polite request that you will be so very kind as to forget the dinner-hour. Sandwiches, ladies and gentlemen. Ham, beef, tongue, pate de foie gras, potted shrimps, and cetera. Juice of the grape.' He pointed to the basket, which his attendant had already laid upon the stage. 'Fizzy, Pommery-Greno, and no less, upon my sacred word of honour!' He groped in his pockets. 'Champagne-opener, to be carefully returned to bearer. Ah, sir,' he added feelingly to Paul, 'when I forswore the varnish, I little thought it would rise to this quality. And, ladies and gentlemen,' he continued aloud, 'I was to request that you would unite in lending your highly superior aid to the neophyte.'

'Our compliments to the governor,' said the leading comedian, who had seized the nippers and was already hard at work. 'We bestow on him unanimously the order of the golden brick.'

Darco's health was toasted, and the company went to rehearsal again, each with a champagne-glass in one hand and a sandwich in the other, and worked banqueting. Paul drank a glass of wine, and the coming night looked less terrible.

'We've two hours clear,'said Miss Belmont 'Now see if we don't make something of you in that time.'

Paul began to take up his cue with spirit, as often as not without the book, and to take his proper places without prompting. They worked their way on again to the final scene.

'Now, don't be afraid to let go,' said Miss Belmont 'Let us have it as if the house was full.'

So Paul threw down his part as arranged, for by this time he knew the words of this one scene, and what with the wine and the growing sense of freedom, he did pretty well, and when he sat in the arm-chair with his face in his hands Miss Belmont no longer gabbled her lines, but spoke them with all the feeling and fervour of which she was mistress. And when she came to her 'Good-bye, good-bye,' Paul, who at all times was easily emotional, was crying softly. He rose with outspread arms and the tears on his face and his voice broke. The leading lady rushed at him and clipped him round the neck, and Paul clipped the leading lady in a perfectly innocent enthusiasm and strained her to his breast.

'You—little—devil!' she whispered, as she drew away from him and stabbed him with one wicked flash of her blue eyes. 'I'll forgive you this time,' she added half a minute later; 'but it isn't professional.'

'Time for one more run through, ladies and gentlemen,' said the stage-manager, and once more the task began.

Miss Belmont's eyes plagued Paul most of the time, now with a look of serious affront, now with a sort of mocking challenge. Now, he was inclined to try that grip again to see how she would take it, and the mocking eyes invited him. Then he dared not so much as think of it, for the eyes looked severe offence at him. When the time came he was like a wooden doll handling a wooden doll.

'Pooh!' said Miss Belmont, pettishly drawing back from him. 'That won't do. Try again.'

They harked back to the beginning of the scene. The others had stolen away to their various dressing-rooms. Only the stage-manager was left, and he was engaged in talking with the leader of the orchestra, who had just come in with a fiddle-case beneath his arm peeping out from his shabby paletot The farewell speech came, and it was only breathed. She had always dearly, dearly loved him. She had lost him by her pride, her coquetry—her silly, silly, heartless coquetry. Her fingers touched him on the cheek soft as a snowflake, and lingered there whilst the cooing voice went on. Then came the 'Good-bye' again and the answering call. She paused and looked, and darted to him, and they clung together, she leaning back her head and tangling his eyes in hers.

'You hold me like that,' she breathed, 'until the curtain falls,'

She released herself gradually from his embrace, and drew away. Paul's pulses beat to a strange tune, and he was afraid to look at her.

'Ah!' she said, in a voice so commonplace that he jumped to hear it, 'the kind creatures have left us half a bottle. One glass, Mr. Armstrong, will do you good. You dress with Berry; hell help you with your make-up. Don't be nervous. You've got the book to prop you till the very end, and there you'll be as right as rain. Here's luck to your first appearance.'

Paul took the glass she held out to him, but his hand trembled so that he spilled one half its contents on the stage.

'How clumsy!' purred the leading lady. 'Here, take a full glass; there's more in the bottle. There; chink glasses. Luck for to-night.'

He drank mechanically, and the stinging wine threw him into a fit of coughing. Miss Belmont patted him laughingly on the back, and ran away to her own room. Paul took his part from the stage, and tumbled up a spiral iron staircase to the loft in which the leading comedian dressed.

'You'd better wear Bannister's togs, if they'll fit you,' said the comedian; 'if not, you'll want a dress-suit for the second act.'

The clothes fitted excellently, and Berry saw to the neophyte's make-up, painting and powdering him dexterously, and dressing the virginal beard and moustache with a dark cosmetic.

'You're funking it,' the comedian said cheerfully. 'That's all right, my boy; there never was a man worth his salt who didn't. Give me a new part, and I'm as nervous as a cat. But you're in luck in a way, for we've all been together so long in this that we could play it in our sleep. There isn't one of us that doesn't know the thing inside-out and upside-down and backwards.'

Paul crept down the spiral staircase, part in hand, and listened whilst the local manager, who rather prided himself on his ability as an orator, deplored the serious and sudden indisposition of that established favourite, Mr. Bannister, and announced that Mr. Armstrong had 'gallantly stepped into the breach,' and would essay the part, literally at a moment's notice. Paul would most certainly have ungallantly bolted out of the breach had that been possible; but the people cheered the local manager cordially, and he, stepping back into the gloom of the stage, found Paul shivering there, and tried to hearten him.

The night went by in a sort of fog, but Paul read his lines somehow, and made his crosses at the right places; and actors are eager to answer to any little courtesy from a manager, and Darco's half-dozen of champagne was richly paid for by the elan with which everybody played. As to the neophyte, they fed and nursed him, and were in at the close of every speech of his with a spring and a rattle which made the audience half forget the artificiality of the scenes he clouded. Mr. Berry took as much whisky-and-water as was good for him, and perhaps a little more, and Paul in his nervous anxiety lent a helpful hand towards the emptying of the bottle. There was no buzz in the cast-iron head and no cloud in the eyes, but he was strung to a strange tension, and he was looking forward to that last act and the embrace which crowned it.

'I shan't take the book for this last scene,' he whispered to the prompter; 'but watch me, will you?'

The prompter nodded, and Paul passed on to the spot from which he was to make his entrance. There was Miss Belmont waiting also. She was in evening dress, with shining white arms and shoulders.

'Fit?' she asked laconically, buttoning a glove.

'Middling,' said Paul hoarsely.

She slid away from him through the painted doorway, and he heard her voice on the stage. There was a pause, and someone near him whispered:

'Mr. Armstrong, go on; they're waiting.'

He obeyed. The practised woman, cool as a cucumber, gave him his cue a second time, and continued to make the pause look rational He plunged into the scene, awkward and constrained, but resolute, and in some degree master of himself. It was his stage business to be awkward and constrained, but he fared not over well, for on the stage it is easy to go too close to nature. But at the very last he lost his nervous tremors, and in the one scene in which he had been coached so often he acquitted himself with credit.

'Can't you see?' he asked in the final line of his piece, and the leading lady was in his arms again.

'I can see,' she whispered. 'Kiss me, you silly boy!'

And Paul bent his lips to hers, and kissed her in a way which looked theatrically emotional to the house. The roller came down with a thud.

'Stay as you are,' she said; 'there is a call.'

The curtain rose again and fell again, and Paul held the leading lady in his arms. The embrace lasted little more than a minute, but it left Paul frantically in love—after a fashion.

This was bad in many ways, for the woman was eight years his senior and a most heartless coquette, and Paul's infatuation kept him from his own thoughts, which were just beginning to be of value to him.

The Dreamer in the mountains grieved wistfully as the old times enacted themselves before him. 'Love,' says blackguard Iago, 'is a lust of the blood and a permission of the will.' Well, one-and-twenty made his dreams even out of such poor material. The westward train boomed past, invisible from first to last in the smoke-cloud.



CHAPTER XI

Miss Belmont, nine-and-twenty, fresh and fair, ignorant-clever (after the known feminine fashion), rusee to the finger-tips, with a dragon reputation for virtue and a resolute will to keep it, was dangerous to the peace of mind of masculine twenty-one. She made Paul her bondslave. She intoxicated him with a touch, and sobered him with a face of sudden marble. She played the matron and the sister with him, and drove him mad between whiles.

Here is one scene out of hundreds, all acted to the Solitary's mind as if the past were back again.

Summer was dying. The woods were yet lusty but growing sombre. Level beams of parting sunlight flashing through the trees like white-hot wire. A Sunday picnic for the company, magnificently provided by Darco, had brought Paul and Miss Belmont together. The lady had led the way into this solitude with so much tact and skill that Paul took pride in his own generalship. They sat on a rustic bench together, and immediately before them was an opening in the trees. At a very little distance the ground fell suddenly away, and in the valley wound a shining river with fold on fold of wooded lands beyond.

Paul was quivering to be nearer to her, but he had no courage to move. He looked at her, and her eyes seemed to be dreaming on the distant hills. He stole a timid hand towards her very slowly. She turned towards him with a soft smile, took the hand in her own, and held it, nestling her shoulders into the rustic woodwork and sending her dreamy gaze back to the hills again. Once or twice, as if unconsciously, she lifted the hand slightly and laid it down again caressingly.

Paul looked at her adoringly. It was like being in heaven, with a touch of vertigo.

'Claudia,' said Paul, in a whisper.

'Yes,' she answered. 'Don't speak louder than that. It suits the place to whisper. What are you thinking about?'

'You,' said Paul 'I think of nothing else.'

'You silly boy,' said Miss Belmont. 'Why should you think about me?'

'I can't help it I wake up to think of you. I think of you all day. I go to sleep thinking of you. I dream about you in the night-time.'

'Oh, you silly Paul!' Her lips smiled, but her eyes dreamed unchangingly on the landscape. 'Why do you think of me?'

'Because I love you,' said Paul.

The hand which held his own seemed to encourage him to draw nearer, and yet the sign, if there were any sign at all, was so faint that he was afraid to obey it She turned her head slowly to look at him. Her round soft chin stirred the lace at her shoulder and was half hidden by it, and she sat placidly dreaming at his ardent eyes just as she had dreamed at the hills.

'I think you do,' she said sweetly; 'but that is all nonsense. You are only a boy, and I am a middle-aged woman.'

'Middle-aged!' said Paul, with a fiery two-syllabled laugh of scorn at the idea.

'A woman is middle-aged at five-and-twenty. Didn't you know that, Paul? She took his hand within her own, and played with it 'What a beautiful hand!' she said. 'But you don't take care of it. You treat it carelessly. Now, I spend half an hour on my hands every day. Let me show you the difference,' and she began to draw off her glove.

'Let me,' said Paul, and she surrendered the hand and he peeled the glove from it delicately, and held the white wonder in his own palm. He stooped and kissed it in an idiot rapture. 'How happy you make me!' he said, looking up with tears in his eyes. 'How I love you!'

She stroked his cheek and his hair with the soft ungloved hand, smiling softly at him. He prisoned the hand again, and kissed it again.

'You are a silly boy,' she said; 'a dear, nice, affectionate, silly boy!' She released her hand and caressed his cheek again. 'If you were older than you are I shouldn't allow you to take these liberties, you know.' Then she bent forward sideways a little, and allowed her hand to stray beyond his shoulder. 'What makes you fancy that you love an old woman like me, Paul?

'It's no fancy,' he said; 'it's life or death with me, Claudia.'

'Poor boy,' said Miss Belmont caressingly, and so moved nearer to him and drew his head to her shoulder. 'Am I kind to you, Paul?'

'You are an angel,' said Paul

'Isn't it rather cruel to be kind to you, Paul?'

He buried his hot face in the soft drapery of her shoulder, and gave a murmured 'No; oh, no!'

'You think you love me, but it's only a boy's fancy, Paul It will pass away. I suppose it's happy whilst it lasts, when I am kind to you. But it can't last long. I shall be sorry to part, for I like you very much.'

'We mustn't part,' said Paul huskily. 'Claudia, if you left me I should break my heart.'

'No, no,' she answered, drawing him a little nearer. 'Hearts are not so easily broken.'

'Easily!' he said. 'Do you think it's easy, Claudia, to live as I do? I'm in heaven now, and I'd give my life to be with you for an hour like this. But when I'm away from you, when I see you in that beast Bannister's arms, and remember the only time I ever kissed you—oh, why were you so kind then, and why are you so cold and cruel now?'

'Cold? Cruel?' She stroked his flushed cheek with her soft fingers. 'I let you kiss me because I thought what a dear, nice handsome boy you were; but I should never have done it if I had thought that you would be so silly after it. If you were not so very silly I should like to kiss you, because it's a woman's way to kiss the people that she's really fond of. But you are so foolish, Paul dear, that I dare not.'

'I won't be foolish,' said Paul, lifting his head, and looking at her.

'Well,' she said, 'will you give me your word of honour to stay here for five minutes after I am gone if I give you just one kiss, and not to beg me for another, and not to try to get into the same carriage with me going home?'

'Don't ask me that,' he besought her.

'Ah, Paul,' she said tenderly, 'don't you think for a moment that I am a woman, and that this foolish world would talk about me, even with you, if I gave it only the shadow of a chance? Come; I must go now. Promise.'

'The kiss,' said Paul.

'The promise,' said Miss Belmont.

'Yes, I promise. If you asked me to leap over the rocks in front of us I'd do it.'

'Give me your hands, then. You won't try to keep me?'

'No, no, no.'

She kissed him warmly and lingeringly on the lips, and darted suddenly away. Paul rose to his feet and held out his arms towards her.

'Your promise,' she said. 'Your word of honour as a gentleman.' He dropped his hands. 'You shall be paid for that,' she whispered, with a face glowing like his own, and she returned to him and kissed him once more, holding his hands in hers. Then she left him swiftly and ran down the pathway, turning at the bend to waft a last kiss to him, and so was gone.

Paul mooned about in a miserable, aching ecstasy for a quarter of an hour or so, and then, finding by his watch that the supper-hour appointed by Darco was near at hand, he sauntered to the hotel. Miss Belmont was there before him, radiant and serene, and looking as unkissable as Diana. Paul would have approached her, but a mere motion of her fine eyebrows warned him off. He ate little, but he drank a good deal of wine, and was gay and moody by turns as he was driven home. And far into the night in his own room he walked up and down and made verses and raved them in whispers to himself, because Darco slept in the next apartment, and was not at all the man to be wisely awakened by the voice of Love's young dream. He drew his curtains apart and opened his window on the scented night, and took the moon and stars into his confidence, and the kisses bit softly down into his heart like fire.

Other scenes there were in which the cunning damsel betrayed Paul into the belief that he was an ennobling and lofty influence in her life. She was rigid in her choice of topics for conversation, but she ornamented her speech now and then with an almost masculine embroidery, and once she caught Paul looking at her with a shocked and wounded air.

'I caught your look,' she said, as soon as she could speak to him alone. 'I know what it meant, and, oh! you made me hate myself. There isn't any real harm in it—I mean, it isn't wicked—but it isn't refined or womanly, and I'll 'never do it again—never, never, never, for my dear little Paul's sake. And Paul shall have a kiss for teaching Claudia a lesson. Naughty Claudia!'

And again one day at rehearsal Miss Belmont ordered a brandy-and-soda, and Paul's face clouded; and Claudia was penitent, and Paul got more kisses for helping naughty Claudia to forget these man-like habits.

The boy's infatuation chimed in with a growing liking for the stage, and he volunteered to work there with so much ardour that Darco was newly pleased with him, and gave him ample opportunity. So he saw more and more of Claudia, and made some progress in his new craft, and the foolish game of love went on, until it brought about a crisis.

It was three o'clock on Friday afternoon, and Paul was at the theatre, seated in the manager's room, counting and putting into envelopes the weekly salaries of the company. He had just consigned the two crispest and cleanest of his small stock of five-pound notes and the brightest half-sovereign to an envelope bearing the name of Miss Claudia Belmont, when the lady herself tapped at the door and entered.

'I wanted to see you alone, Paul dear,' she said, 'and so I came over early. I have a piece of news for you. It is very sad news for me, but I am afraid you will not think it so.'

'If it grieves you it grieves me,' said Paul; 'you can't have a trouble that I don't share.'

'I am going away,' she said, walking to the window and looking out on a shabby back-yard which was full of rotting scenery and old stage-lumber of all sorts.

'Going away?' Paul repeated.

He was dazed and numbed, as if he had received a blow.

'Yes,' said Claudia. 'Mr. Darco and I have never hit it off very well together, and now I am going. I have a very good offer for London, and I leave at the end of next week.'

'But I can put things right with Mr. Darco,' said Paul; 'I know I can.'

'No,' she said, with a seeming gentle sadness; 'it's quite impossible. My position here has grown intolerable, and, besides that, everything is arranged; I have signed for London this afternoon.'

Paul said nothing for the time, for the intelligence crushed him.

'I was afraid that you would be hurt,' she added, after a pause. 'I am glad to see that you can take it more easily than I can.'

'Claudia!' said Paul miserably, and sat staring before him with a white face.

'I did almost hope,' she said, 'that you would have cared a little.'

'Can't you see?' he answered—' oh, can't you see?'

'I don't want play-acting, Paul,' said Claudia, searching for her handkerchief, 'After all we have been to each other I expected a little genuine feeling.'

'Claudia,' he burst out, 'you mustn't go; you mustn't leave me. I should break my heart without you.'

'I must go, Paul,' said Claudia.

'Then I will go,' cried Paul; 'I can't part from you.'

'How can you go, silly boy?' she answered, suffering him to take her hand in his and place his arm about her waist; 'you have nothing to do in London; you know nobody there. You have excellent prospects here with Darco.'

'Where you go I go,' said the young idiot stanchly. 'I could not live apart from you. You're the world to me, Claudia.'

He meant it, every word, and in his contradictory heat and flurry and despair he felt as if there were no words at his call which were strong enough to express him.

'Oh,' said Claudia, 'it would be sweet to think you cared so much if I could only believe you.'

'Believe me? cried Paul. 'Oh, Claudia!'

And then he choked, and could say no more.

But Claudia, whose self-possession was less disturbed than his, heard a footstep on the staircase, and whispered an eager warning to him just in time. He shot back into his seat, and feigned to be busy with his accounts and his orderly little pile of money. Miss Belmont stooped at the table, and when Mr. Berry entered he found her initialling the pay-sheet. She looked up with a sweet smile, nodded a greeting to him, inspected the contents of the envelope, transferred them to her purse, and moved to the door; then she turned.

'Oh, Mr. Armstrong, would you mind taking the trouble to run down to my lodgings when you have got through with this? I have something very particular to ask you, if you don't mind. You know where I'm staying? Thank you so much. Good-afternoon.'

She was gone, and everything was gone. Paul made a mechanical effort to get through his business.

'I say, young Armstrong,' cried Mr. Berry, 'you're woolgathering; you've given me an extra fiver, or has old Darco found out what I'm worth at last?'

'My mistake,' said Paul; 'I don't know what I'm doing. I've got a beastly headache; I can't think or see.'

'Hair of the dog?' suggested Mr. Berry. 'Hi! Chips, old sonnie'—he was bawling down the staircase—' catch 'Oh, butter-fingers! There it is, just behind you. Half-a-crown. Just nip across, will you? Two Scotches and a split. Take a pull at your own tap while you're there, and look slippy. Armstrong, dear boy, you're looking very chalky. Don't overdo it, dear boy, whatever you do. In my youth I never did apply hot and rebellious liquors to the blood. I take to 'em very kindly now, but I never began till thirty. A man's a seasoned cask at thirty.'

Paul let him talk, and was glad enough not to be further noticed. He sat with his head in his hands and stared at the table, and tried to realize what life would be without Claudia. It looked wholly vacant and intolerable.

'Here you are,' said Mr. Berry, releasing the soda-water with a pop, and foaming the contents of the bottle into the glasses.

Paul groaned and drank, and by-and-by felt a little better. He would see Claudia, would decide on some scheme of action, however desperate, which would prevent him from wholly losing sight of her. He would release himself from his engagement with Darco. That made him feel like a hound, for who had been so good to him as Darco? Who had taken him out of hunger and trouble but Darco? He recalled himself characterless, despairing; he contrasted his old lot with the present. The change was all of Darco's working, and he had grown to love the man, and the man on his side had given proofs enough of liking. It looked like a black ingratitude to leave him. It was what it looked like—neither more nor less. But, then, Claudia, Claudia, Claudia! How could he live without Claudia?

He looked at things all round. He had a fixed position, which was so excellent that he could not hope to mend it for years to come if he left it now. He had a true friend whose friendship he might lose if he left him now. He had perhaps an open avenue to fame, and it would close if he retired from it, and might never open any more. All these things he counted clearly, and reckoned the world well lost for Claudia.

The afternoon work was over, the pay-sheet initialled from top to bottom, the accounts made up and balanced, and the change and papers locked up in Darco's cash-box. He was free to go to Claudia.

A fly carried him in ten minutes to her door, and she herself admitted him.

'Come in, Paul,' she said 'I have been thinking, and I want to speak to you very, very seriously.' She led him into her sitting-room. 'Miss Pounceby is out for the day, so that we shall have time to talk together.' Miss Pounceby was the ingenue, and she and Claudia lived together. 'Sit down, dear, and let me see if I can't bring you to reason.'

'You can't persuade me to lose you, Claudia,' said Paul gloomily. 'It isn't to be done; it isn't to be thought about.'

'Silly boy!' said Claudia, seating herself beside him, and taking his hand in both of hers, 'you know I love you like a sister.'

'I don't want a sister's love,' said Paul. 'I want you to marry me.'

'Why, Paul,' she answered, 'the world would laugh at me. You are only just one-and-twenty; I am four years older. That is ages, you know, and it is ages on the wrong side.'

'Why should we care about the world?' Paul asked. 'What has the world to do with us so long as we can be happy?'

'But I don't love you in that way, Paul,' said Claudia. She leaned forward and sideways, and looked gravely in his eyes. 'I love you very much, dear Paul—very, very much indeed—and I shall be grieved to lose you.'

'I shan't lose you,' said Paul. 'I have made my mind up.'

'You dear boy!' she said, and kissed him; but when he would have embraced her she drew back with a warning forefinger upraised. 'You must not presume upon my kindness, Paul; but I know that I can trust you. I should not have asked you to meet me here if I had not been sure of that.'

'Claudia,' cried Paul, rising and pacing about the room, 'have some pity. I am not a child; I am a man. I can't bear this. You must be everything or you must be nothing.'

'Nothing, Paul?' said Claudia, with grave, accusing eyes and wounded face and voice. 'Nothing?'

It was exquisite practice, and she was a hundred times a better actress off the boards than on. Paul could appreciate her art at its full value in later years, but just now he found earnestness enough for two, and would have broken his heart outright if he had known how she was playing with him.

'Nothing or all,' he said. 'You treat me like a child, Claudia, but I am a man, if I am only a little over one-and-twenty. I have a man's heart and a man's blood in my veins. No. Don't come near me yet; I want to be my own master.'

'Oh, Paul, dear!' said Claudia; 'you mustn't talk so I never thought you felt so deeply. How could I? Must it all be over, Paul? Are they all gone, dear—all the happy, peaceful, tranquil hours? Can't I give my little brother Paul a simple kiss without making such a tempest?'

'I have had no peaceful, tranquil hours,' cried Paul. 'Oh, Claudia! Claudia!'

'Kiss and be friends, Paul,' said Claudia, and Paul was lured back to his absurd paradise, and fed on kisses and caresses which were sometimes suffered to reach the edge of ardour, and then skilfully chilled.

If feminine nine-and-twenty thinks it worth while to befool masculine one-and-twenty, and knows her business as well as Claudia knew it, the task is fairly easy. Claudia would not hear of Paul throwing away his prospects for so mad a purpose as to follow her to London. She covered her pretty ears with her ringed fingers when he talked of it, and positively refused to listen. But he must be rewarded for his devotion, too, and Claudia wished with all her heart that she could love Paul as he loved her. But it would be wicked to marry without a proper feeling for a husband, and Paul was her brother, her dear, dear younger brother, and to talk of marriage at their ages was such a folly. Wouldn't Paul always be her brother? And she laid her soft warm cheek against his and kissed his hand. What more could he ask for, silly boy? Wasn't that happiness enough for him if he really loved her? If he would be good, and promise never, never, never to be foolish again, and frighten Claudia with his anger—why should he want to frighten his poor Claudia?—they might always love each other, and be, oh, so happy!

The programme thus presented was actually admitted at last to be reasonable—for the time being—and Paul was sent away with the tenderest farewells and a profound belief—for the time being—that Claudia was an angel.

'Whatever you do, dear,' she had said at parting, with her sisterly arms about his neck, 'you must not dream of following me to London. I could not bear to think that you had imperilled your prospects for my sake.'

'I care for nothing in the world but you,' said Paul.

He played honest coin against counters.

'It is sweet to hear you say so,' said the sisterly Claudia, and she was so touched by his devotion that she allowed him to kiss her almost as wildly as he wished to do.

An hour or two later Paul was in Darco's presence. He had a hang-dog look and felt ashamed, but he was resolute.

'I beg your pardon, sir,'he said, 'but it has become absolutely necessary that I should go to London.'

'Oh!' said Darco, 'is there anythings the madder? Ven do you want to co and for how lonk?'

'I must go at the end of next week,' Paul answered, not daring to look at him, 'and I must go for good.'

'I am baying you goot vages,' said Darco. 'You vill not get as goot vages. Vot is the madder?'

'It is no question of wages, sir,' returned Paul 'I had not thought of looking for another situation even, though I shall have to do so, of course. But it is absolutely essential that I should be in London. I hope you won't think that I am acting ungratefully. I feel as if I were, but it will be easy for you to fill my place, and I shall always remember how kind and generous you have been to me.'

'Now, loog you here,' said Darco; 'there is somethings the madder. I can see it in your vace. You dell me vod it is, and I will but it straight for you. I can see that somethings is the madder. I am not a fool. I am Cheorge Dargo. Now dell me.'

'I can't explain,' said Paul. 'I can only tell you that I have to go to London. I must go.'

'You vait there a liddle bid,' returned Darco. 'I am going to think.' He rolled away, and Paul hoped he might think to little purpose, but in half an hour he was back again. His eyes snapped, but he was as cold as an iceberg. 'Ven do you vant to co?' he asked abruptly.

'As soon as you can spare me,' Paul answered.

'I can sbare you now,' said Darco. 'You are a pick-headed younk itiot, ant you can co at once. There is your zalary for next week. Goot-efening to you.'

He went out, banging the door behind him, and Paul was left alone feeling strangely mean and foolish. It seemed that Darco had come to an explanation of his movement, and Paul did not care to think that he had found the real reason for it The real reason was a sacred thing whilst it was hidden away in his own breast; but, held out to the inspection of others, it had a gawky, unfledged sort of look. It lost dignity. The dove that cooed in his bosom was a live bird; but once under Darco's eyes, and it was a moulted rag—a thing dead and despicable.

He had to face Darco again, and he had little taste for the meeting.

'I haf found oudt vat you are coing to London for,' said Darco. 'You are a tarn fool. I haf never seen such a tarn fool in all my tays ant years—nefer: nefer since I gave up peing a tarn fool myself. You can vork; you haf got prains; you haf cot a gareer in front of you; you are one-ant-dwenty. My Cott! you are one-and-dwenty; ant you haf prains, ant intustry, ant jances, and you juck them all into the gudder for liddle Jarlie Prown.'

'Who is Jarlie Prown?' asked Paul.

'Jarlie Prown is Glautia Pelmond,' said Darco. 'She has kebt her initials. C stands for Glautia, just as veil as it stands for Jarlie; and P stands both for Prown and Pelmond. She has ruint as many men as she has does and vingers. It is no pusiness of mine. Co your vays, you silly itiot 'Id is your dime of life to be an itiot, and it is my dime of life to laugh at you.'

'I have never heard a man breathe a word till now against Miss Belmont's virtue,'cried Paul.

'Firtue?' cried Darco, with a snorting laugh; 'what is firtue? Let me dell you this: Your Miss Glautia Pelmond is a volubtuous ice-woman; ant that is the most tangerous of all the taughters of the horse-leedge. Ant zo, my younk donkey, goot-night ant goot-bye. I am Cheorge Dargo, ant I nefer forgive an incratitude.'

This contemptuous parting wounded Paul to the quick, and the strange statements about Claudia maddened him. In one respect, at least, Darco, in his treatment of women, was chivalry incarnate; he would speak no scandal—no, nor listen to it. Paul tossed and tumbled throughout the night—a prey to shame and passion and cold doubt. Darco, who had so well deserved his gratitude, had accused him of the contrary—the one vice of all others which had seemed most repugnant to his nature. Darco was right, and Paul was bitten by shame. Then his mind flew to Claudia, and he thought how tender she had been that afternoon, how confiding, how warm, yet how delicately reticent in conduct Then he flamed and held his arms out in the darkness, and swore to be constant to that lovely creature, that maddening, dazzling, priceless idol, for ever. Then, like a stinging douche to a man in ardent heat of blood, came Darco's saying. Darco was a true man, and to think of him as a scandalmonger was mere folly. He had quarrelled with Claudia, to be sure, and there was a loophole out of which a hopeful doubt might pass. And yet to think so was an insult, for Darco was the last man in the world to take a revenge so base. But Darco honestly and mistakenly disliked her. That was another matter. He was a headstrong man, impetuous, prone to leap to conclusions—a very walking heap of favourable and unfavourable prejudice. Thus, neither Claudia nor Darco was dethroned. The headlong, stammering, vivid man had made a mistake—the fat, unwieldy, diamond-hearted creature, all crusted with slag and scoria. Paul could have cried to know that Darco dreamed him ungrateful.

'Who knows him as I do?' he thought. 'People laugh at his boasting, and run away from his blundering thunder; but the man has the heart of an angel.'

He thought of all those underground benefactions in which he himself had acted as almoner—the bank-notes to poverty, the Sandeman's port and the evaporated turtle-soup to sickness. And the pity of it that such a man should so misjudge his Claudia! 'Voluptuous ice-woman.' He could fathom the meaning of the phrase, but the wave it would fain have spouted over his Claudia left her angel raiment dry. Neither one nor the other of the far-parted spumings of the wave touched her. Was that ice when her lips were so tenderly laid on his, and their hearts beat close together? Was that voluptuous when she held him to a brother's part, and soothed his passions into slumber with quiet talk of sweet and sober things? And yet in Darco's face, to one who knew him as well as Paul did, there had been a mournful look when he had spoken of the most dangerous of all the daughters of the horse-leech. Out with the thought—out with it 'trample it down! Poor, dear old Darco had been abused. Claudia was spotless as the snow, soft as the dawn, sweet, sweet and sweeter than the honey or the honeycomb. Thus round the clock of the dark hours ran Paul's thoughts, with never a definite hour to strike.

He packed his portmanteaux before leaving his room next morning, and even in that simple act he found reproaches. He was carrying away from Darco's service a far different kit to that he had brought into it. The three or four coarse homemade shirts, and the rough and scanty supply of underclothing, were exchanged for linen and silks and woollen stuffs of the finest. There were trees for his boots; there was a dandy dressing-case; there were many things of the mere existence and use of which he had not known two years ago. They were all mementoes of Darco's generosity. Surely no man had ever found so open-handed an employer. But, for all these reflections, Paul could not surrender Claudia.

He heard the clatter of the breakfast apparatus, and smelt the odours of coffee and the savoury meats the soul of which Darco loved; but he dared not face the man to whom he felt he had behaved so badly.

'Are you gomink in to pregfast?' Darco trumpeted.

Paul entered and took his seat, and swallowed a cup of coffee; but he had no heart to eat.

Darco took his prodigious breakfast in cold gloom, and Paul was as sure of his bitter resentment as of his own useless regret for having wounded him. It was a trying hour for both of them.

'I am going out now,' said Darco, 'ant you will pe gone before I am pack again. Shake hants.' You are going to be very zorry before I see you again.'

Paul took the proffered hand, and was nine-tenths inclined to beg himself back again into Darco's friendship; but he could not bring himself to speak, and in a second or two Darco was in the street, and the opportunity had gone. But Paul had his marching-orders, at least, and, calling a fly, he saw his luggage set upon it, drove to the railway-station, deposited all his belongings in the cloak-room, and then started to give Claudia his news. Claudia sent out word that he might call again in an hour, and, glancing disconsolately at the window of her sitting-room as he walked away, he saw Miss Pounceby giggling behind the curtains with her head in a bush of curlpapers. He paced the streets until the hour had gone by, and then returned.

'What brings you here so early?' Claudia asked.

She looked ravishingly fresh and pretty to Paul's fancy.

'I told Darco,'Paul answered, 'that I was going to London, and that I wanted to leave at the end of next week. He was hurt and angry, and he said that, if I had made up my mind about it, I had better go at once.'

'You have behaved very foolishly, Paul,' said Claudia—' very foolishly indeed.'

'I did it for your sake, Claudia.'

'For my sake?' said Claudia, raising her eyebrows. 'Why, my dear child, how am I supposed to profit by it?' The question took his breath away. 'I certainly never asked you, or advised you to do anything so very silly. You have very likely ruined your whole career. At least, you have thrown away such a position as you won't see again for years to come. How many people do you think there are in the world who will give you the salary Darco gave you, or treat you as he treated you? Oh, you needn't look at me in that way, Paul, as if I were responsible. It is none of my doing, and I wash my hands of it.'

'But, Claudia,' cried Paul, 'I told you what I was going to do.'

'You certainly told me some nonsense of the kind,' she answered, 'and I remember the very words I used. I told you that you must not dream of following me to London. I said—I remember my very words distinctly—that I could not bear to think of your imperilling your prospects.'

'Claudia,' said Paul, 'I thought you would be glad.'

'Why should I be glad to see you making a fool of yourself?' Claudia asked disdainfully. 'I thought you had more sense.'

'I shall find work in London,' Paul said rather helplessly. 'I have saved more than fifty pounds.'

Possibly the sisterly lady had thought Paul very much poorer than he was, and had been in fear that he might in some way become a burden to her. The fancy did not touch Paul at the time, but he remembered afterwards how swiftly the acerbity of her manner faded.

'Well,' she answered, 'you are sillier than I thought you were; but it's of no use crying over spilt milk. You must make the best of things.'

'I shan't care for anything,' said Paul, rallying a little, 'so long as I'm not parted from you, Claudia.'

'That's all very well, Paul dear,' returned Claudia, 'but this is a practical world, and the people who live in it have got to be practical too.' She pinched his cheek as she said this, and laughed at him in quite the old delicious way. 'What makes you so absurdly romantic, Paul?'

'I don't know,' said Paul, 'that I'm more romantic than other people. I'm not the only man who ever fell in love, and I'm sure nobody ever had a better excuse than I have.'

'Upon my word!' cried the lady, 'you have a very nice way of saying things. Do you know, Paul, if you go on like this, you'll begin to be dangerous—in a year or two.'

'I don't belong to the dangerous classes,' Paul answered. 'I'm much likelier to suffer myself than to make you suffer.'

'Oh, I'm not talking about me,' said Claudia. 'I'm thinking of the other ladies.'

'There are no other ladies,' Paul declared. 'There never will be any other ladies. There is only one lady in the whole world for me.'

'Now, seriously, Paul, how long do you think this ridiculous infatuation for me is going to last?'

'For ever!' cried Paul boldly. 'For ever and ever. And it isnt an infatuation, Claudia. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to fall in love with you. Why, you can't walk down the street without half a dozen men doing it I know how they turn round to look at you.'

'Oh, you outrageous little flatterer! Wherever did you learn to tell such fascinating fibs?'

'They're not fibs, Claudia. You know it as well as I do And I'll tell you something. You ask me why I love you. I'm a judge of character.'

'Oh, you dreadful boy! You're not going to judge my character, I hope!'

'I did that long ago,' said Paul, 'and that is why I fell in love with you. No,' he broke off, blushing and stammering, 'that is not why I fell in love; but that is why I never wanted to climb out again.'

'Well,' said Claudia gaily, 'if you didn't fall in love with my character, I'm sure I don't know what else there is.'

'You,' said Paul rapturously. 'Your beauty, Claudia. Don't you ever look in the glass?'

'How do you think I am to do my hair?' she asked, laughing. 'But seriously, now, Paul, you don't think I'm a beauty? You never told me that before.'

'Claudia,' he said, reproaching her, 'I've told you a thousand times.'

'Oh yes,' said Claudia, 'in fun. But now, without nonsense—really? Am I pretty?'

'No; you're not pretty, Claudia. Pretty's commonplace. You are lovely. I think you are the most beautiful woman in the world.'

'You darling boy! There's a kiss for that. No, no, no, Paul. Only a very little one. But I'm not so silly as to believe you, Paul.'

'Claudia,' said Paul—they had reached by this time to the brotherly and sisterly attitude, and sat on the couch together, with the sisterly arm round Paul's neck—' I was bitterly sorry to leave old Darco, and to let him think that I was ungrateful. I know how much he has done for me.'

'I am sure I am not sorry to leave Darco,' she said. 'Grumpy, frumpy, stumpy, dumpy old German! I hate him!'

'Don't say that,' said Paul. 'There's as kind a heart under old Darco's waistcoat as you'll find in the whole wide world.'

'Never mind Darco, Paul dear. He's not a favourite theme of mine.'

'I wish you hadn't had to leave him, all the same, because then I shouldn't have had to leave him. Where shall you live in London, Claudia?'

'I'm going to stay with a Mrs. Walpole, a widow lady, a friend of mine who takes in a few boarders.'

'Might I stay there, too?

'You? Oh, you improper boy! Of course not.'

'Don't say that, Claudia. I've given up everything only to be near you. That's all I ask for, Claudia. It's all I want in the world.'

'My dear Paul,' said Claudia, 'you must not dream of such a thing. It would be most unwise. Why, good gracious, child, you'd compromise me every hour!'

'Indeed, indeed I wouldn't,' Paul declared. 'I would rather die than do it Oh, Claudia! you don't know how I love you. You don't know what it will be to me to be with you. You can't guess how miserably unhappy I shall be if I am away from you.'

'Very well, Paul,' said Claudia rather frigidly; 'but you must not blame me if you lose my friendship by presuming on it. I have no fear of being able to take care of my own reputation, and I want you to understand that I will do it. And now you may kiss me, and then we will talk business.' Paul availed himself of the permission with alacrity until Claudia slid gently away. 'That is enough, and more than enough. I won't have you making any more declamatory love-scenes, you dreadful boy! No, not another. No; not the least little one in the world. You will keep to that side of the table and I shall sit on this. Now, reach me my writing-desk. I am going to give you a letter of introduction to Walton, my new manager. I shall tell him how clever you are, and that you are ambitious and want to get to London. You'll get nothing like such a salary as Darco gave you—not more than half at the outside. You'll live in a poky little garret at the top of a smoky London house, and you'll pay thirty shillings a week for board and lodging, and the rest will go in washing and 'bus fares. You're making a very bad exchange, I can tell you, even if Walton will have anything to say to you.' 'I don't care if I'm to be near you, Claudia.'

'But you're not going to enjoy the liberties I allow you here. You must understand that, Paul.'

'I shall see you,' said Paul 'I shall be near you.'

'Very well. Now, I'll write the letter. And when it is written you will take the very first train to town and give it into Walton's hands to-night.'

'But I am going on with you to Cardiff,' Paul cried.

'Indeed,' said Claudia, 'you will do nothing of the kind. I am not so absurd as to allow it I am not going to be compromised in that way in my last week with the company.' Paul stared at her with a face so disconsolate that she laughed; but she put on a tender seriousness a moment later. 'Do you call that love, Paul? Ah, no! Few men—very few—ever so much as learn the meaning of the word. It is pure selfishness. You don't think of poor Claudia. You would let her reputation be torn to rags and tatters, but what would that amount to if only you could gratify your own wishes?'

'I'll go, Claudia,' cried Paul. 'I'll go to London. Great Heaven 'what a selfish, unreasonable beast I am 'Forgive me, Claudia. I did not think.'

'Now you are my own dear Paul again. But you mustn't expect me to find all the wisdom.'

She wrote her letter, and Paul watched the white hand skimming over the paper. When it was written she read it out to him. It was really an excellent letter of introduction, business-like and cordial. Paul received it with devout thanksgiving. Then Claudia gave him the address of the boarding-house to which she herself was bound, and looked up his train in the time-table.

'You must start in half an hour,' she said. 'Oh, Paul dear! Paul! I wonder if, in spite of all your protestations, you are so sorry to part as I am.'

'Claudia!' said Paul, and ran to the open arms.

He was abjectly in love and abjectly submissive, and Claudia had never been so kind. But when at last she told him 'You must go,' he strained her in his arms so wildly that he fairly frightened her. Then, terrified in his own turn, he released her, and covered her hand with tears and kisses of contrition.

'Go,' she said pantingly—'go, at once!'

He looked with remorse at her pale face and questioning eyes, and lurched towards the table on which he had laid his hat.

'Paul,' said Claudia, 'it would have been better for you if you had never met me.'

'No,'he answered, looking back at her. 'I shall never think that, whatever happens.'

'You will think it often,' she said. 'But go now, dear, for pity's sake.'

He went out into the street with his wet face, and for a minute or more did not know why people stared at him. Then he came to his senses a little, and found himself walking away from the station instead of towards it He retraced his steps, caught his train, and travelled up to London, his pulses beating 'Claudia' all the way.



CHAPTER XII

Claudia's introduction served so well that Paul was allowed to show what he was made of in rehearsal at the Mirror Theatre, with a prospective salary of fifty shillings a week. He had been a personage of late, and Darco had delegated to him a good deal of his own authority. He was not a personage any longer, and he was not altogether happy in his fall from dignity. But Claudia was coming. He and Claudia would be in the same house together, and playing at the same theatre. He would see her at breakfast, at luncheon, at dinner; he would escort her from the theatre and home again. That would be happiness enough to atone for anything.

This prophecy was not quite realized. Claudia chose to breakfast in her own room, and she was a woman of many friends, and lunched out and dined out so often that Paul hardly saw anything of her. The Sundays would have been Elysian days, but ladies and gentlemen of fashionable aspect drove to the house in handsome equipages, and spirited Miss Belmont away to revels at Richmond and elsewhere in which Paul had no part. He moved sadly about the house, in the streets, with no heart for study, or for the writing of the new comedy on which his mind had been set so warmly only a few weeks before. His old companions were travelling about the country, meeting old friends and making new ones, and he wished himself back amongst them many a time. He could have written to Claudia, and have looked forward to the time when he could have met her again on equal terms. They were not equals any longer. Miss Belmont was starred in big type, and was leading lady, at a biggish salary; for her first real chance had come to her, and she had charmed the town. Paul was a walking gentleman with a part of fifty lines, and not a solitary critic named his name.

Sometimes, but very rarely, Claudia shone upon him. On fine evenings, and on those sparse occasions when she and Paul dined at the same table, she would walk to the theatre and accept his escort Then, for a brief half-hour, life was worth the living again. But there was one nightly hour of torment. His work was over early, for he had nothing to do after the opening of the third act of the piece then playing. He would dress and wait in his room, and wonder whether that idiot, that dolt and fool incomparable, Captain the Honourable John MacMadden, was waiting at the stage-door. Captain MacMadden belonged to the Household Brigade, and was a bachelor of five-and-thirty. He parted his hair in the middle, and wore a moustache and weeping whiskers of the jettiest, shiny black. He smiled constantly, to show a set of dazzling white teeth. In his own mind Paul loaded this exquisite with savage satire. He was a tailor's dummy carrying about a barber's dummy, and the barber's dummy was finished with a dentist's advertisement He carried a very thin umbrella—the mere ghost of an umbrella—he was gloved and booted with the fineness of a lady, and he was always delicately perfumed. He was reported to be wealthy, abominably wealthy, and three nights a week or more he would present himself at the theatre, and take Miss Belmont out to supper. But so discreet was that lady, and so careful of her good report, that Captain MacMadden never came without a guardian dragon in the person of another young lady of the theatres, who was accompanied by a gentleman who was in all points tailored and barbered and gloved and booted like Captain MacMadden himself.

Paul would wonder if the splendid warrior were below until he could endure himself no longer. Then he would descend and hang about the stage-door, to find his enemy or not to find him, as the case might be, but in either event to eat his heart in jealousy and impatience. When he found him he burned to insult him by asking him what tailor he advertised, or by addressing him as the Housemaid's Terror or the Nursegirl's Blight. He ground tegmenta of 'Maud' between his teeth as he looked at him. 'His essences turn the live air sick,' and 'that oiled and curled Assyrian bull, smelling of musk and of insolence.' And it happened one night that Captain MacMadden, arriving late, and in a mighty hurry and flutter lest he should have missed the lady, tapped Paul upon the shoulder, and said:

'My boy, can you tell me if Miss Belmont has left the theatre?'

Paul, who was at that instant bending all the force of his mind upon Captain MacMadden, and punching his head in visioned combat, turned on him with a passionate 'Damn your impertinence, sir!' which set the startled gentleman agape with wonder. At this instant Claudia pushed through the swinging door which led from the stage to the corridor, and she ran in between the belligerent Paul and the object of his rage.

'What is this?' she asked.

'This gentleman,' said Paul, 'is sadly in want of a lesson in good-breeding. I shall be happy to offer him one.'

'Upon my word,' returned Captain MacMadden mildly, 'you're devilish peppery. Hadn't the slightest intention to affront anybody, upon my word. Nothing further from thoughts. Can't say moah.'

'Mr. Armstrong,' said Claudia, 'I have never seen you display this ill-bred brutality before. I had not expected you to show it in my presence to my friend.'

Paul felt for the instant that he had been brutal and ill-bred. Claudia judged him so, and whatever Claudia said must needs be just But when she had swept by him to the waiting brougham and the fashionable escort had followed her, he stood in a choking rage, and felt like Cain. A thick drizzle was falling, and he swung out into the night, glad of the wet coolness in his flaming face, and the wet wind that fanned him. The streets were heavily mired and the drizzle grew to a fast downpour. He turned up his coat-collar and ploughed along, growing more and more resolutely angry, and more and more resolved to fight his case out with Claudia. The house in which they lived was dark when he reached it, except for a single gas-jet in the hall at which guests bound bedward lit their candles. He walked into the dining-room and sat down to wait, with nothing but the winking jet on the wall and his own thoughts for company. The fire in the grate had died, and its cooling ashes made a crisp, faint noise from time to time. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked irritatingly, and sounded the quarters at intervals which seemed curiously irregular. At times one quarter seemed to follow close on another's heels, and the next seemed to lag for hours. Paul was soaked to the skin, and had violent fits of shivering, but he would not leave his post lest he should miss Claudia.