The maid broke in at this point to ask if Madame la Baronne would be served.

'At once,' said the mistress, and waved Paul to his place. He bowed and took it. The maid served a number of elegant kickshaws, and the grave serving-man who had superintended the dinner-table on the previous evening entered with a bottle of hock in a cradle and stealthily withdrew.

'You gave me but little time,' said Gertrude, 'to prepare for you, but I think you will find that we have done very well. Try that hock, M. Paul.'

Paul looked down his nose, and in a dry-at-dust voice recited the first verse of old Ben's immortal lyric. His voice quavered a little on the last lines—

'But might I of Jove's nectar sip, I would not change from thine!' and Gertrude broke in with a laugh and an airy little wave of her hand.

'Now, my dear M. Paul,' she said, 'you are really and truly admirable. That is quite perfect, and if you will promise me, upon your sacred word of honour as a man, not to betray me by a word or a look, I will tell you something I never told you before. I have never admired you so much, or loved you so dearly, as I do at this hour. You must believe me,' she continued, pushing her plate away and beckoning the maid with a slight backward gesture of the head, 'I hate this tone of persiflage, but what is there left for us if we would be blamelessly alone, and yet speak our hearts to each other?'

'Madame,' said Paul, 'I find it a masterstroke of genius.' Their tones were ice on both sides, but their words were fire. The maid most probably thought her mistress bored, and the guest a dullard. She had seemed at first interested in the new arrival, but she lapsed now into an attitude of indifference, and the dangerous pretence went on. In this intoxicating whirl of passion, when interchange of vows was offered under the necessity of constant watchfulness and self-guardianship, the meal was not an important matter.

'But,' said Gertrude, 'my dear Paul, you must really do justice to my table; the pretence must be absolute.'

'I will try to make it so,' he answered; but the luxurious meal had no more relish for him than if it had been desert sand. He struggled with it manfully, however, and contrived to keep astride his end of the see-saw of pretence.

Who are the best and who the worst of women? Did any man ever venture to impugn the fair fame of Madame la Baronne de Wyeth? Yet, had the devil a better ally anywhere than this delicate little purring white-breasted epicure in the varying flavours of the ruined soul? Oh, the devil is, of course, a symbol! Let the phrase pass.

But the Paul Armstrong of ten years later, perched in his fog-bound eyrie, staring along the unseen gorge? He tells himself that had she been what he believed her, he might have been elsewhere than where he finds himself. There had been but a surface ash upon the seeming ruin of a life. There was something still to build upon, but she must needs destroy what was left. There was wholesome blood in the veins of the man who aspired to rebuild, and it was she who poisoned its fount.

'"Queen bee of the honey asps,"' quoth Paul of the eyrie: and he was back in Paris.

He was back at Gertrude's table, the worshipped, the immaculate Gertrude of those days.

They had reached the end of the repast, and coffee was served in little cups of eggshell china encased in filigree gold.

'A gift from the Khedive,' she said, indicating these. 'Sardou was with me when I was in Alexandria.' She laughed, and what with her eyes, to which a single glass of the rare hock had given an added sparkle, and what with her faultless teeth, she fairly dazzled on her companion. 'Yes, that is the creature's absurd name. Sardou is the solemn personage who has been waiting upon us all the morning, and his godfathers and godmothers had the impertinence to baptize him in the name of Victor. I was telling you that Sardou was with me in Alexandria when the Khedive was so gracious as to offer me this little souvenir, and I implored his Highness that he might be permitted to make a study in coffee in the palace kitchen. He made it, and the result is adorable. Inter alia,' she said in the same tone, 'you, too, are adorable this morning, and now I think I may snatch a longed-for moment and tell you so in earnest. Juliette, bring me a letter you will find upon my toilet-table, and call Sardou.'

Juliette tripped out like a stage soubrette, demurely pert from crown to sole. Possibly—just possibly—she guessed; probably she guessed nothing. The suggestion was no more than a suggestion in the mind of the watcher of all these bygone scenes.

Paul rose, but Gertrude waved him back.

'Not yet,' she whispered, 'not yet.'

He sat down again, his senses all awhirl with the aching desire he had to hold her in his arms.

'You must not allow Sardou's masterpiece to grow cold,' said Gertrude; and Juliette came tripping back again, with the grave man at her heels. 'You will take this to the post,' said Madame la Baronne, indicating the letter on the salver the maid carried. 'You will see it registered personally, and bring me the receipt.'

The grave man bowed, and retired, letter in hand.

'You like your coffee, Mr. Armstrong? And, oh, Juliette, bring to me that last little portfolio of watercolour drawings. You know where you will find them?'

'But, yes, Madame la Baronne, but they were locked in the escritoire.'

'You will find the key,' said the Baroness, sipping her coffee, 'in my purse. Make haste, for M. Armstrong has but a moment to spare.'

Juliette ran with a swirl of petticoats upstairs. Gertrude followed the footsteps with alert ear and eye. Ear and eye alike seemed to listen. She rose to her feet and stretched her arms with an imploring gesture.

'Does this make amends to you?' she murmured. 'To me it atones for all'

'No, no; be careful Mind my hair, you silly darling—mind my hair! Shall you be content to wait for this just now and then? Oh, Paul, Paul, Paul! how hard it is! Go now—go. Quickly! Sip your coffee, Paul, and try to look as little unnatural as you can. She is quicker than I fancied. I've always a cigar to offer a departing breakfast guest. Juliette, the cigars.'

Juliette laid down the small portfolio she carried, and pricked away a third time.

'You love me?' he said hoarsely.

The sound of his own voice was in his ears, after everything that had happened.

'I adore you!'she responded. 'You know it all now. But duty calls you one way and me another. And oh, Paul, "of love that never found its earthly close, what sequel?"'

'The very words,' he cried, 'that ticked in my brain all night'

'You must look at the portfolio,' she murmured. 'Est tu content de moi?

'Je t'aime!' and with fumbling fingers he untied the strings of the portfolio.

And now was Paul Armstrong the tame cat of Madame la Baronne de Wyeth, and earned his title well in many cities, from St Petersburg to Cadiz, and from London to Cairo.



CHAPTER XXIII

It would appear that in the course of time Gertrude grew a little tired of Paul's ceaseless devotion. It is quite likely that she sometimes found him in the way, and she was deprived of her best conversational theme. It was of no use to try to revive the legend of the Isolated Soul any longer, because of the frequent and earnest confession which had been made of the final discovery of a spiritual rapport absolute and complete. Paul and his angel had lived on terms of so much intimacy that they had earned the right to be acidulous with each other upon occasion. Her pruderies and her abandonments of prudery afforded between them an atmosphere as unwholesome as it was easily possible for a man of fervent temperament to live in. Work of the hard and healthful sort was practically abandoned. There was a good deal of verse-turning done, and an anonymous volume of sonnets entitled 'Dialogues of the Soul' made a momentary splash on the surface of the literary deep, and then sank like a pebble to the bottom. The book distilled a faint odour of eroticism, a scent of the epicene; but the degenerates, sniffing it, thought poorly of it because of its want of downright rancidity, and the people of whom crowds are made misliked it for a better reason. Paul, with a diminishing exchequer, found himself aware of the first flat literary failure of his lifetime.

The exchequer failed rapidly, and there were several contributory reasons. In the first place, the Baroness had any amount of money to spend, and it was essential that anyone who aspired to follow her about the capitals of Europe on equal terms should live at a high rate. Then, Annette had proclaimed her rights of freedom, and had escaped from Laurent and his forces, and had run up bills in Paris, and in London, and elsewhere. The most successful of comedies will pass out of vogue. To be idle, to be extravagant in one's own person, and to be milked perpetually by the extravagance of another—could better ways to ruin be discovered?

The two had their first real tiff at Naples on a Christmas Eve. Gertrude had set up a sheep-dog in the person of one Mrs. Diedrich, a sour and sallow remnant of New England fashion and beauty, a lady who both on her husband's side and her own claimed all the splendours of Knickerbocker descent. The husband was dead, the fortune—except for a meagre bone or two with little meat thereon—was eaten all away. Mrs. Diedrich and the sympathetic Gertrude's mother had been friends. There was nothing more natural or more befitting than that the wealthy Baroness de Wyeth should find an asylum for this superannuated slave of fortune, though Paul knew perfectly well that she was no more than a buckler against scandal at the first. But reasonable as he was compelled to admit such a precaution to be, he was not very long in discovering that the impoverished lady was a buckler against himself, and that she was used to prevent that old familiar laying of heads together, and the old familiar communion of hearts, in which, by dint of careful manoeuvring, a bare sixty seconds might sometimes he snatched for a solitude of two.

There should have been a drive that afternoon—Gertrude and Paul, with Mrs. Diedrich to play gooseberry—and Mrs. Diedrich had fallen ill. Paul presented himself at the appointed hour, and no Gertrude was there to meet him. Instead of the Presence a note couched in the chilliest terms:

'Dear Friend,

'Mrs. Diedrich is shockingly unwell to-day, and I cannot leave her. Profoundest regrets for a lost pleasure.

'Sincerely, 'G. de W.'

'My luck!' said Paul bitterly to himself; for he had been more than once disappointed of late. But he found grace enough to express his sorrow, send his compliments and good wishes, and to withdraw. He went strolling about in unknown ways, with all manner of unpleasant things to think of. He not only made his momentary disappointment the greatest of them all, but strove to make it so. And yet the others would intrude. Here was a letter from Darco expressing grave disappointment with the end of the second act of their latest piece. Darco coughing up his stammering gutturals as a speaker of English was one man, and Darco with a pen in his hand was another.

'It crumbles,' wrote the critic, 'at the very instant at which it should triumph. It is vague, unconvincing, wrong. You leave me unanswered for six whole weeks, and at the end you send me this incoherent sandheap, when your promises had given me the right to expect a solid piece of well-worked marble. I do not know whether you are well or ill, whether you desire to continue the work or no. All of which I am certain is that the piece is wanted for March, and that we cannot work together at this distance. I will meet you where you like—Paris, Brussels, Vienna, London, Hong Kong. It is all one to me so long as I get you back to work in time. But, for whatever reason, this second act is so written that it will not do. And I cannot wait I am a poet, but I am a poet without a language. If you will not be my interpreter, I must find another. Is friendship friendship, or is business business? In the name of both I ask you to meet me and to work with me.'

Look at it how he would, and distort his own perspective as he might, Darco's angry and outspoken appeal was larger than anything his duty to Gertrude might ask of him. But, to tell the whole truth, his sense of duty was his curse, because the sense itself had grown distorted. Because of some rooted infirmity of character, he must needs be true to the ideal which least merited truth. He saw this fact throughout his career. He had bowed at foolish shrines. Gertrude—oh yes, Gertrude was impeccable. But just as he was wasting the heart of ardent manhood now, he had wasted the heart of youth and the heart of boyhood The career was all of a piece. Born to be fooled, whether by a village coquette, or his own loftiest, or his own lowest, or by practised femme de feu and femme de glace in one—always born to be fooled, frustrated, enticed to the throwing away of real passion and of real power.

And over and above all these, arrange them in what imaginary perspective he might choose, the sordid side of things, the bills—bills from lodging-house keepers of the better sort, from hotels, from milliners, and from modistes—and the shrinking exchequer, which barely, when all claims were satisfied, would leave him so much as two hundred and fifty pounds.

What had his year and a half of dalliance brought him? A dream of pleasure, a desert ache of hunger, an occasional delirious spur to appetite. Now, what in the name of common-sense is the good of it all? And is Gertrude any better, after all, than an innocent Delilah, trapping no Samson, but a fool unmuscled, who has no strength to break the weakest of her withes? Innocent Delilah! He never profaned her in his thought.

But in this mood—with his conscience, literary-artistic and simply human, entirely endorsing old Darco's reproof of his work and his evasions; with a financial crevasse at his feet, and Annette chopping away his standing-place, and his own extravagances melting his foothold like butter in the sun; with a barren future staring him in the face—he was disposed alike to remorse and penitence.

The city in which he rambled was strange to him, and, according to his fashion when absorbed in thought, he took any turning which suggested itself, and lost himself in a labyrinth of byways. He had done the same kind of thing in a hundred towns and cities without any result worth mentioning, but just for once he was destined to find a purpose wrapped up in the folds of this simple habit.

He was plodding along miserably enough, and did not know whether he were at Naples or the North Pole, when a familiar voice awoke him from his bitter reveries, and he looked about him to discover that he was between a high wall and & hedge of aloes on a strip of grass which had no pathway on it, and apparently led nowhere. He had a vague idea that he had set out in this direction upon a footpath more or less distinct, and making a volte-face, he saw that the path had come to a termination at a door in the high wall a wicket's length behind him.

The voice he had heard was the voice of Gertrude, and the words it had spoken were: 'Ah! but my dear friend, that inevitable, that unceasing isolation of the mind!'

A swift pang of jealousy ran through him, and he listened with an almost fierce anxiety. There was nothing in his nature to induce him to play the eavesdropper, but he could not have refrained from listening just then had it been to save his soul. Some deep undetermined murmur of a voice in answer seemed to reach his ears, but they were drumming so to the startled music of his heart that his sense failed to record it. He went back swiftly and stealthily to the spot at which the pathway terminated, and there he found an old green-painted door in a small archway in the wall. It half drooped upon its rusty hinges, and across the gap it left between its own rim and the postern, he had view enough to tell him whither his rambling footsteps had led him. He was looking at the terraced gardens in the rear of the Baroness's hotel, and whilst he looked Gertrude herself floated into sight. Some trifle of a lace mantilla was thrown over her head, and in her right hand she balanced a parasol daintily between thumb and finger. Her companion was a man apparently of middle age, frock-coated, silk-hatted, booted and gloved as if for Rotten Row. He bore himself with an air of distinction, and the looker-on saw the gloved hand caress a big moustache of sweeping silver. The owner of the moustache was bending over the Baroness with an unmistakable air of gallant attention, and Paul's blood boiled within him. He had no real sense of the impulse which moved him, and no calculation as to what might happen; but he pushed the door aside, and, entering the garden, walked along the gravelled main path which led to the hotel. He made a feint of holding his head straight, and of looking neither to left nor right, but he watched Gertrude and her companion with a keen sidelong glance. His brisk footstep set a pebble rolling in the pathway, and a second later he heard his own name called. A low-growing orange-tree, all lustrous with globes of green and gold and shiny leafage, had intercepted his view of the pair for just the instant which intervened between the sound and the call.

'Mr. Armstrong,' said Gertrude's voice, 'Mr. Armstrong!' He turned in a pretence of amazement, and, hat in hand, crossed a small space of turf.

'I had just sent round to you,' said the smiling little lady, 'at your hotel.' She transferred the parasol to her left hand, and held out the right in an almost effusive greeting. 'I suppose you have not been back yet?'

'No,' Paul answered. 'I have been walking and had lost myself, until I recognised the garden through the open door yonder. Then I made sure of myself again, and thought I might secure a short-cut home.'

'How fortunate!' said Gertrude, smiling; 'and how curious, too!' she added. 'At the very moment at which I caught sight of you your name was in my mind. Are you a believer in the Aura, Colonel Brunton—the something which envelops personality and diffuses itself in such a manner that you recognise a friend's presence before you are made aware of it by sight or hearing? Don't you recognise the reality of those things? But, oh, I forgot! You gentlemen are, I am afraid, strangers to each other. This is Colonel Brunton, our great traveller in the Himalayas and Thibet, and this is Mr. Paul Armstrong, the author of I dare not say how many charming books and comedies—Mr. Darco's collaborateur.'

'Whose work,' said Colonel Brunton in a voice typically American, but profoundly deep, 'I have, bafore my trip to Asia, seen performed with a splendid eclaw both in London and New York. I am proud to meet you, Mr. Armstrong.'

He was a rugged man, brown as a sun-burned brick, with a cascading moustache of silver, jet-black eyebrows, and eyes which danced defiance at his gray hairs and wrinkles. Paul could do no less than accept the hearty hand he offered, and Gertrude set herself to soothe him.

'You know,' she said, laying her finger-tips upon his arm, 'you are a very inattentive cavalier, Mr. Armstrong. Poor Mrs. Diedrich was taken ill so suddenly and alarmingly that I had time to do no more than just to scribble that little hasty note to you. You might at least have paused to make inquiry.'

'That would never have done,' said Paul 'One does not inquire into a lady's decision at any moment.'

He spoke with a capital assumption of gaiety, but to the keen instinct of that experienced trifler with hearts it was an assumption only, and Gertrude turned the question with the easy skill of a woman of the world.

'Those geological researches now,' she said, with a charming air of mocking schoolgirl ignorance about such matters. 'Do you really mean to tell me that right away in the Himalayas you found the same little protozoic blot in the same limestone that you find in our own Andes? Has that little creature really built the mountains of the world? Why, it is the story of the Coral Islands over again; but on what an enormous scale, 'Dear me, what creatures of a day we are!'

Colonel Brunton, who, as it appeared, was a member of many learned societies, and a most indefatigable besieger of the world's inaccessible places, turned out to be a man of so much simplicity, sincerity, and charm, and Gertrude drew him to his best so skilfully, that it was not easy to be sulky for a long time together in his society. It was Paul's cue to disguise himself as far as possible, and this delightful American helped him greatly. He could barely think of the man as a rival; he was so very upright, downright complimentary.

'Why, Lord!' he said once in the course of that afternoon's talk, 'when you were in short frocks, and I was over head and ears in love with you——'

The Baroness snatched a fan which girdled her, and tapped him with it reprovingly.

'Well,' he said, twinkling, 'when all is said and done, habit is the conqueror. I got into that habit when you were a baby: twenty years ago, I'll swear, though it's not legitimate, I know, to guess a lady's age. I've found a new habit since—a Satanic habit—of going to and fro about the earth, and roaming up and down on it, but I have never forgotten the old one.'

The Baroness laughed and made fun of this proclamation, which was accompanied by certain old-fashioned bows and flourishes of deportment.

'But now,' she said, 'I must really run away and look after my patient, and must leave you, gentlemen, to console each other for my loss. I left Mrs. Diedrich asleep, and could just afford to snatch half an hour for so old a friend as you, Colonel If you care to come back and have tea with me at six, I shall be glad to meet you, if I may dare run away again. But if I should be compelled to send down my excuses, you will understand.'

She had already started a movement towards the hotel, and the two men sauntered along with her, one on either side. She left them in the flower-perfumed dimness of the shaded hall, and the whole business of the afternoon had by this time so explained and reconciled itself to Paul's mind that he would have been a brute to fret about it longer.

'I say,' said the Colonel, 'I have been for three years outside civilization, and I should like a John Collins. I came here last night by the Messagerie Maritime. They are good people, and they cook as well as anybody can be expected to cook outside the United States, but their ideas of drink are curiously simple. Can you be my guide, Mr. Armstrong?'

'Need I guide you farther?' asked Paul 'I should fancy that your materials are to be found here in an absurd plenty, and if you have a skilful hand——'

'Sir,' said the Colonel, with a burlesque flourish, interrupting him, 'there is not a man from Marble Head to the Golden Gate who can make a John Collins to compare with mine.'

Paul knew the house, and led his new acquaintance to a shady veranda where a polyglot waiter chipped his ice to his fancy, found him lemon, pounded sugar, fresh mint, square-faced Hollands, and syphon-water, and left the Colonel compounding in a high state of content.

'This is like home,' he said, 'bar the celestial straw, the use of which these blahsted Continentals have not learned. This is quite like home. Three years I have been roughing it, up hill and down dale, camp and field Seen a little bit o'fightin' on the Burmah side 'long of your British troops.

Mr. Armstrong; better boys I do not want to meet And here's to them and you, sir. But, Lord!'—he caressed his tumbler with a lean brown hand, and looked contemplatively into space—'I must smoke. Try a Burmese cigarette, sir. Lord 'I land here last night after three years. I just break my journey on the way to London, and I run against the little girl that broke my heart when I was fifteen years of age, and broke it again when I was one-and-twenty, and would just go on breaking it for the mere fun of the thing for the next million years, if she and me could only live as long.'

'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Paul, in a cold insolence which made him hot to think of a thousand times later, 'have you been drinking?'

'Well, I guess,' said Mr. Brunton, and, leaning back in his deck-chair, drew a great volume of smoke into his lungs, expelled it in a cloud, and laughed; 'after a three years' drought, the man who is not game to drink deserves to go dry. But, by Heaven, sir, to strike up against that mighty little flirt after a space of fifteen years—to come across it all again by accident! Look here! I land out of the Grande Marie de Luxembourg at Naples, with no more idea of revivin' old times than of escapin' into the next century, and who's the first person that I meet but little Gertie, and what's the first word that I hear but the isolation of the soul!'

Paul sat in a chill, tense agony.

'I was,' said the Colonel, growing more and more clearly articulate in accordance with his needs, 'about as full up as any Christian need be when I landed, and I was going to bed like a clean Christian gentleman. Then I ran up against Gertie. I have been Turkish bathed, I have been sluiced and washed and shaved and perfumed, and I can stand and talk straight. What do you say? What would you have said about me amongst the oranges and lemons in the garden there?' He sat up in a momentary fierceness. 'Am I intoxicated, or, at least, was I till I turned the lock-gate winch and set the waters foaming? No, sir, but in that profoundly philosophic observation of life your works declare you will have observed the state in which a man becomes drunk-sober.

He brims over after that stage. That I allow. He brims over, sir—he brims over, sir. If it is of any humorous value to you to make observations of the present case, I am brimming over, sir.'

The clean-cut, travel-hardened, sun-stained man was slipping from his original place in Paul's mind, like a statue built in clay too soft to support its own weight. He slipped at the chin, at the mouth, at the base of the nostril, at the eyebrow, and yet, in spite of these deflections from the original, he appeared to recover himself with an extraordinary swiftness at moments, and to be again the alert, adventurous creature of the woods and wilds his extraordinary career proclaimed him.

It was in a moment of supreme sobriety that he touched Paul's arm and said:

'I'll tell you all about little Gertie right away.'



CHAPTER XXIV

The Colonel's capacity for the holding of liquid substances looked abnormal even to a man of Paul's experience.

'Thirst is now assuaged,' he said solemnly at the end of his third deep tumbler, 'and a man may begin to enjoy himself. There ought to be a boy here who can make a cocktail.'

He kept the boy fairly busy, and he talked. He had recovered himself curiously, and there was now no more than a hint of coming intoxication in his eye and in his voice. It seemed as if he had arrived at a settled stage, and was able to make a longish stay there.

'You're pretty thick with our little friend, ain't you?' he asked, rolling round in his seat.

'If you are speaking of the lady who left us a little while ago——'

'Why, certainly,' said the Colonel.

'I have the honour of her friendship,' said Paul with an icy air.

The Colonel was no longer smoking, but he chewed the end of his cigar with a lazy appetite, and he smiled.

'Funny little devil she is,' he said contemplatively. 'Women are odd, however you take 'em; but she's odder than odd. By God, sir, she's odder than Dick's hat-band! I suppose she wants me to believe that she's forgotten how I bowled her out years ago. Soul! Heart 'It was before she got married. She made me believe that I was the only man she ever came across who had either. There were twenty-three of us met in New York City, and we had a dinner on the strength of it. I was that mad, sir, at the time, I drummed up the whole contingent. I believe that evening left some of us a little sore, but it cured us, and little Gertie had three-and-twenty play-fellows the fewer next morning. And I'm damned if she didn't open fire on me again in the first half-hour after all these years. It's funny, ain't it?'

'I am afraid I must bid you good-afternoon, sir,' said Paul. 'And if you will permit a stranger to intrude in your affairs, I would suggest that you should make that cocktail your last.'

'Wha-at?' asked the Colonel, placidly smiling, and eating his cigar. 'Should we have made it four-and-twenty if you had been in Noo Yawk City at the time of that banquet.'

'I beg your pardon, sir,' Paul answered stiffly. 'I don't care to continue this conversation, and I will take the liberty to end it.'

'I say,' said the Colonel, 'wait there. I never began a quarrel in my life, Mr. Armstrong, but I have ended—lemme see——' He began to count upon his fingers with an inward look. 'I have ended eight,' he said.

'Do you wish to quarrel now?' Paul demanded.

'Why, no, sir, no,' said the Colonel; 'I am a man of peace. But when you presoom, sir, to dictate what a man shall drink, and when you presoom to object to the theme upon which he chooses to converse—why, don't you see?'

'No,' said Paul, 'I do not see. If you choose to renew this conversation to-morrow, that is my hotel, and I shall be pleased to meet you there at any hour before noon.'

'Now,' the Colonel answered, taking him by the sleeve in alcoholic friendship, 'you are becoming shirty, and your tone is warlike. And that, Mr. Armstrong, is unreasonable. Perhaps you know now that I am an old traveller. I'm a little bit of an explorer, sir, and I have never objected to being guided over a bit of country that I didn't know, if I happened to meet a man that knew it Now, that's enough said, Mr. Armstrong. If you find my conversation distasteful, just damn my eyes and go. But don't you let me hear you. You can curse outside to your heart's content, and, you see, that needn't breed a quarrel.'

'Very well,' said Paul. The Solemn drunken man made him laugh in spite of his own anger and bewildered misery of mind. 'Whatever cursing I may have to do shall be done outside.'

'Good,' the Colonel answered, and having by this time eaten his cigar to its burned ash, he ejected the remnant and permitted Paul to escape.

As he came out upon the mild widespread sunshine of the street at the close of the afternoon, he seemed to realize himself for the first time in his whole life. He did not trouble himself to curse the Colonel, but he cursed Paul Armstrong soundly, and, striding rapidly towards his hotel, resolved on instant action. He mounted to his own room, and there he wrote a letter.

'I must see you,' it ran, 'and I must see you to-day. I must catch to-morrow's train for London, and I cannot guess when I may be able to return. I have neglected both work and business too long, and I must shake myself awake. On the whole, perhaps the kindest and best thing you could do for me would be to send me away for good and all. I have lived in a fool's dream too long.'

There was much more, but this was the gist of it, and the writer sealed and despatched it, not daring to tempt himself to a new effort by reading it over. The answer reached him in an hour:

'What is it, my poor friend, which has so disturbed you as to prompt you to the writing of such a letter as I have just received? I had thought myself safe in counting upon your esteem. If you are really called to London by affairs of urgency, I must not keep you, and, of course, I should be hurt if you went without telling me good-bye. It happens that I have engaged to dine at table-d'hote tonight with passing friends, but I shall be free at ten o'clock. Ask for me then.'

Paul had been conscious and jealous of a good many small rivalries since he and the Baroness had first set up that platonic communion of soul in which they had now lived so long, but on the whole he had to confess that Gertrude had acted with complete discretion in these matters, and he had been repeatedly forced to admit to himself that he had been unable to find any real ground for his tremors. He had never once felt himself in actual danger of being deposed from his position of high priest in that ridiculous temple. When a man is in love with a woman, he cannot be expected to judge her actions or her meaning wisely, and the Baroness's platonics, with the little flashes of earthly fire in amongst them here and there, had always seemed to him to indicate a nature throbbing with fervour which was held in restraint only by a delicacy of equal charm and beauty, and a lofty moral sense. But he was easily open to the influence of other men's opinions, and he had never been able to think of Ralston's smile without an inward twinge which had sometimes amounted to an actual tenor. Suppose he were merely being played with by a heartless woman, who found it minister to her vanity to have him perpetually dangling at her heels in public and burning incense in private before her day by day? Suppose he were throwing away the best and freshest years of his manhood in the pursuit of such a mocking shadow? These, of course, were a sort of lover's blasphemies against his idol, and he resented them with all his heart and soul, exactly as any other worshipper would resent the insinuations of the devil against the powers and perfections of his deity. His resentment could not lead him to oblivion, and his memory of Ralston's humorous and mischievous enjoyment was with him often. And now came this American man, this boozing Colonel, with none of Ralston's reticence, and apparently with none of his respect for the character of a lady whom he had known long and well, and the coarser accusation travelled on the same lines as the other, and only differed from it in going a good deal further.

'I will know to-night,' Paul said to himself savagely a hundred times in the course of that afternoon and evening, and when at length the slow hours had rolled themselves on to the time of his appointment, he presented himself in the vestibule of the Baroness's hotel in a condition of tragic resolve.

Gertrude was there in the very act of saying farewell to her passagere American friends, and he thought to himself, with as much of anger as admiration, that he had never seen her look altogether so charming as she did at that instant. The vivacity of colouring which commonly distinguished her was softened, and the unaccustomed pallor of her face lent a tender softness to her whole aspect. Her eyes, too, had lost something of their brilliance, and seemed faintly humid. He could have sworn that she had been crying, but when she turned to meet him after the departure of her friends, there was a gentle sparkle of welcome in her face, and she held out her beautiful jewelled little hand with a charming frankness.

'I am so glad you are here,' she said, 'and I was so much afraid that those dear tiresome people were going to overstay their time, and that I should have to keep you waiting.'

She had a hooded opera-cloak thrown over her left arm, and she held this out to him, and turned away so that he might adjust it about her shoulders.

'It is a lovely night,' she said, 'like a night in our Indian summer in dear old Massachusetts. Let us talk in the garden, Paul.'

He walked by her side, still half saturnine, but in part conquered already by the soft seduction of her voice and face. He did not speak a word until they reached the garden terrace, and then only in answer to her question:

'You must really go, Paul?'

'Yes,' he answered gloomily, 'I must really go.'

For the season of the year it was a wonderful night even for Naples. The air was like balm, and was loaded with the scent of flowers. Lights twinkled here and there about the garden, and the moon shone broad and bright almost at the zenith, half drowning the lustre of the stars in the haze of light it spread. Scattered about the gardens were a dozen parties, more or less, all chattering gaily, and here and there disposed to frolic Their presence jarred on Paul, but there was no removing it He allowed Gertrude to lead the way, and she; strolling in pensive silence, brought him to a shaded avenue on the western side of the garden, where a gentleman and lady were promenading slowly arm-in-arm away from them. Gertrude laid a hand upon his arm, and stood still until the couple in front had strayed out of hearing, and then resumed her pensive march.

'How came you, Paul,' she asked, looking suddenly up to him, 'to write so strange a letter?'

'I had to write it,' Paul answered in a constricted voice, in which a certain note of anger sounded. It disturbed him to find that his resolve was melting away from him, and he felt that he must needs harden his heart if be were but partly to fulfil his purpose. 'What is there in the letter,' he asked therefore, 'which you find strange?

'You have never told me,' she responded, 'one word of your purpose until this afternoon, and you are leaving me tomorrow. Is not that a little strange, Paul?'

Her voice trembled and almost broke upon his name.

'I knew nothing of it myself until yesterday,' he answered 'I have had letters of the most urgent importance, and must answer them in person.'

'How long do you expect to be away,' she asked.

'The one wise thing,' he answered, 'I could do would be to stay away altogether.'

'Ah, Paul,' she half whispered, wreathing her arm through his, 'there is your "fool's dream" again. What do you mean by the "fool's dream"? Haven't we been happy for a time?'

'Is it happiness,' Paul asked, 'to pay for a week's emptiness and longing with one minute of delirium? Is it a happy thing to be so set on one unattainable hope as to be able, dreaming or waking, to think of nothing else? A man is not to be made happy by the life I live.'

'Paul,' she whispered, 'what more can you ask than I have given you?'

'Everything,' he answered.

She drew her arm away lingeringly. He let it go, and for a minute they walked in silence side by side. They reached the avenue, and turned back again.

'Can you tell me anything,' she asked after this pause—'do you care to tell me anything about your business in England.'

'That's simple enough,' he answered. 'I am within some few months of poverty, and I must get to work again. I have had a tremendous letter from old Darco, slanging me for breach of faith, and for having sent him a piece of intolerably bad work. I have deserved every word he has to say, and now I must make amends to him.'

'You have not been fortunate in your work lately?'she asked.

'I have not been fortunate,' he answered; 'I have been so far from fortunate that' I have been writing like an untrained schoolboy. I could have done better before I was fifteen.'

'But why is that? she asked. 'Your mind should only just now be ripening. Your time is all your own.'

'There is not one minute of my time my own,' he answered in a smouldering wrathfulness.

'Why not?' she questioned.

'Come,' said Paul, 'isn't that just a little disingenuous? Don't you know why not? Here am I,' he went on, 'as I do most solemnly believe, as madly in love as ever man was in the history of the world; petted, encouraged, and caressed, and ignored, and repulsed, until in the insane weakness of my own nature I have let all manhood ooze out of me. I am unlike Hamlet, my dear Gertrude. I am both to be fretted and played upon.'

'Played upon?' she said reproachfully.

'Played upon,' he repeated with what sounded like a weighty deliberation.

Gertrude began to cry, and set a dainty handkerchief to her eyes, but she said nothing, and Paul's only resource was to go on talking, to keep himself in sight of his own injuries.

'You and I made a bargain, Gertrude: we were to be friends, and no more than friends. You have known all along how much it cost me to keep within those limits; and have you helped me? I put that to your conscience.'

'Helped you?' she asked, pausing once more in her walk, and looking up at him in an innocent bewilderment.

'Helped me,' he repeated stonily. 'The words are plain enough.'

There was a garden-seat near at hand. She hastened to it, and sinking down upon it, seemed to surrender herself to tears. He moved moodily after her, and stood looking down at the pathway, tracing haphazard figures on its moss-grown surface with the cane he carried.

'I understand you now,' sobbed Gertrude. 'I have a right to reproach myself because my own undisciplined heart has gone beyond control sometimes; but does it lie in your province, Paul, to blame me for that? Have I not an equal right,' she went on, 'to tell you that you have not helped me in the daily struggle I have had to make? You are unjust, you are ungenerous. I could never have believed it of you.'

'I can foresee nothing,' Paul said, 'but misery.'

'Nor can I,' she answered. She rose and faced him, and in the patch of moonlight in which she stood he could see that her tears at least were real. 'What you have to say to me, in effect,' she said, with an air of sudden quiet dignity, but with a quiver in her voice, 'is just this: that I am a heartless coquette, and have never cared for you; that I have wilfully lured you on to your own unhappiness. If you really think that, Paul, if it means anything more than a mere passing gust of temper, we had better say good-bye at once. I have at least an equal right to bring the same charge against you, but I should disdain to harbour such a thought about you. There are many ways in which you may be cruel to a woman, Paul, and be forgiven, but you must not wound her pride in that way. That is the cruellest stab of all. The blade is poisoned, dear, and the wound will rankle for a lifetime.'

'Tell me,' he said, with his eyes blazing upon her, and the guarded voice in which he spoke shaking—'tell me that you have really cared for me; tell me, on your conscience and your honour, that you have not deliberately led me to this madness.'

'You can ask me that? she said. 'You can insult me so?'

'I ask it,' he responded.

'If my conduct has not shown it clearly,' said Gertrude, 'it is quite in vain to protest. I have given you better proof than words.'

'There is only one proof,' Paul answered. 'Are you strong enough to brave the world with me?'

'No, no,' she whispered; 'you must not ask me that I am not afraid of the world, but I am afraid of my own conscience.'

'Do you think,' he asked passionately, 'that love could not sanctify a union such as ours? Be my Georges Sand, and I will be your De Musset; be my Stella, and I will be your Swift.'

'You choose your instances unfortunately, Mr. Armstrong,' Gertrude answered. 'Georges and Alfred lived to write vile and bitter books about each other, and Stella broke her heart under the despotism of a brute. I do not care for such a prospect.'

The 'Mr. Armstrong 'lashed him like an actual whip, and under the sting of it he barely followed the meaning of what came after. He was so staggered that he could only repeat the words:

'Mr. Armstrong.'

'You force me to my defence,' she answered gently. 'I am a woman, Paul; but I have my code of honour.'

'Im Gott's und Teufel's namen,' he groaned, 'what is it? You give me lips and arms; you have sworn you love me. What is loyalty?'

She drew herself to her full height:

'I do not pretend to define loyalty,' she said; 'but I know it when I see it. It may be less definite than insult; but the last, at least, is clearly outlined. I have been mistaken, and I will correct my error now. Good-bye, Mr. Armstrong.'

'Good-bye,' said Paul.

She lingered for a mere instant as if in expectation of some further adieu, but he had none to offer. He saw no more clearly now into the truth than he had done at the beginning of the interview, but he had in a measure hardened himself by the spoken definition of his own attitude, and, partly because he could not as yet retreat from it, he permitted her to go without another word She floated away in the alternate soft splendour of the moon and the deep shadow of the overhanging boughs, and he watched her gloomily until her figure disappeared at the end of the avenue. He stood for a minute or two with a vacant mind, digging his walking-cane into the dry, friable earth at his feet, and scoring the thin, scum-like growth of moss upon it with unmeaning lines. Then he lit a cigar, and, avoiding the crowded vestibule, skirted the dark western wall of the hotel, and so walked homeward. The thing was done now, and, whether it were rightly done or wrongly he cared very little for the moment He stood at one of those pauses of emotion in which the mind is able logically to balance pros and cons without the intervention of any gust of feeling. If Gertrude were really what she professed to be, he had acted with great cruelty. If she were not what she professed to be, he had acted with great wisdom for the first time in his life so far as the woman as protagonist was concerned He looked at the probabilities on both sides with a cynical coolness which would have been impossible to him at any earlier stage in his career. He had met but two men who had known the Baroness de Wyeth well, and they had both looked upon her from pretty much the same standpoint. Ralston's view was the more genial, but even in his opinion she was a born flirt, a creature who loved to tyre her chariot-wheels with hearts; and in the view of the coarser mind she was a coquette mere and simple—a Queen Rabesqurat, who kept a sackful of the human eyes which had turned to her in adoration. Then, in spite of momentary indifference, his nerves tingled and his blood sparkled at the memory of that rare and fleeting instant at which she had seemed to surrender herself to his embraces, and to make him immortal with a kiss. All the same, he could look on that fine second's immortality with a cold indifference when the thrill was over. Granted the very lowest scale for passion, could the thing be real? Could he, for example, have stayed the torrent of his own blood in full course? He laughed to think of it, and a line and a half of his favourite poet sang in his brain:

'And thy passions matched with mine Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.'

On the whole he began to conceive that he had done rightly, and in that half-belief, which drew slowly towards conviction, he went to bed and slept in a stolidity which surprised him later. The fact was that he was less resolved than tired.

Whilst he was at his deepest sleep a thundering summons at his door aroused him. A dream which came between the first prelude to this orchestral drumming and his awaking had advised him of a fainter disturbance, but by the time he was fairly awake the knocking had grown so exigent that it bade fair to raise the house.

'Come in I' he cried, and suddenly remembering that he had locked the door before getting into bed, he scrambled out in the darkness and turned back the key. 'What the devil is the matter here?' he asked, and the night porter of the hotel handed him a letter.

'I was told, sir,'he said, in indifferent French, 'to deliver this at once, but the messenger is gone, and there is no answer called for.'

There was light enough in the corridor to read by, and Paul recognised Gertrude's superscription.

'Thank you,' he answered. 'Light the gas for me in my room, and that will do.'

The man obeyed, bowed himself out, and went his way, closing the door behind him.

The letter Paul held in his hand was bulky, and when he had broken the envelope open he found that it held no fewer than seven sheets of Gertrude's crested paper. They were all covered in a hasty and sprawling hand, and on the first page was a scrawled date and a 'Sir' which had been written with so much energy that the upward sweeping course of the pen had bespattered the whole white surface with inky dots of greater or less magnitude.

'I had thought you my friend,' the epistle began; 'you have professed to be something more, and, as 'have heard you say, the greater should include the less.'

There the writing suddenly changed in character, and the letter went on, as it were, in calmer and more measured cali-graphic accents.

'How could you treat me so, knowing my friendship and even my foolish fondness? Was it not cruel to urge me as you did? I will confess to you what I have striven in vain to disguise. Had we met in earlier days, had I known you before I was bound in honour to the course I am compelled to run until my footsteps lead me to my grave, I might have been a happy woman. But a woman may love, and may yet place her honour before everything. I shall not care if, when I am dead and gone, you choose to boast that you won a woman's heart, and I will not even put you on your honour now to keep this silly secret; but you shall not go from me without my assurance of this one fact. When I married, marriage was to me a sacrament, and if it were not for that——— But no more of this, dear Paul Dear, dear, and dearest Paul! I hardly know how I am writing, but the anguish you have caused me is unspeakable, and I am not guarded in my words. A woman's heart may err, and her principle of honour may yet be strong. I bid you good-bye with an aching heart, and I wish you all good fortune. It would seem that our stars are in opposition to each other, and fighting against each other in their courses. I agree with you in thinking that we are best apart, but I shall watch your career with a more than sisterly devotion, and my heart tells me that I shall have the right to acclaim your future.'

The letter said much more than this so far as the mere extension of the same sentiments might appear to be concerned, but in effect this was all until the final paragraph was reached.

'I have adhered to duty,' this ran, 'and I will. Nothing—neither the thought of your suffering nor of my own—shall draw me from it, but I recognise none the less the kindred soul I should have met had I been fortunate—as I am far from being. Write this in your private memoirs of me: "She loved too well, yet wisely," and think sometimes that it is possible for a woman to feel sometimes like a man, and to think I "could not love thee, dear, so well, loved I not honour more."

'I shall not add another word to this,' Gertrude concluded, 'except to say, I wish you all prosperity, all happiness. But just this remember always, that if I were a mischievous influence in your life, I meant it far otherwise, and I am always your devoted friend and well-wisher.

'G. DEW.'

For some reason or another by no means clear to himself the letter moved Paul less than it seemed to him that it should have done. He read it sitting in his pyjamas on the bedside, kicking his bare heels against the valance, and when he had done with it he tossed it on to the centre table, on which his manuscripts, now too rarely looked at, lay scattered, and said rather grimly:

'Footlights.'

Then he mused awhile, half desiring to confirm the word, and half recalling it. He had made many desperate efforts to be loyal in his thoughts, but he was less disposed to struggle in that direction than he had been. His mind strayed back to Ralston, and to the bibulous explorer. Memory went further than either of them, and carried him back to the days when he had broken his career in two for the sake of Miss Belmont, old Darco's Middle Jarley Prown.' He had played the flat traitor to Darco once already for the sake of one woman, and now, as he began to see, he was once more using him very ill for the sake of another. He sat kicking his heels against the valance of the bed, and thinking. May Gold, Norah MacMulty, the dreadful hour of the lost innocence, Claudia, Annette, Gertrude—what an incredible list of follies for one man to have committed! He grew intensely bitter and self-disdainful.

There was no answer for the letter of the heart-wounded Gertrude. He was not quite sure whether he were a mere insensate brute or no, but he packed, and took the homeward train without a word of farewell. If Gertrude's friendship were a real thing, he was a beast unspeakable. If it were a selfish sentimental sham—why, then—anything. He began to taste life with a very nausea of weariness.

But when London was reached, and the physical fatigue of travel shaken off, and the tornado of Darco's energies had engulfed him as of old, he found himself another man. Darco was terrible at their earliest interview.

'Led me haf a look at you,' he said, dragging Paul to his study-window. 'What haf you peen doing with yourseluf? I have known an Armstrong for some years who was rather a glever vellow. Vot? Ant now I gome agross an Armstrong who is a plithering impecile. Eh?'

'Now, my dear Darco,'Paul answered, 'I dare say that your criticism of the stuff I sent you is quite just I haven't, indeed, the remotest doubt about it But I have been out of health and worried, and now I am here for work. You shall have the best I can give you.'

'I shall speag to you,' said Darco, 'with an egsdreme blain-ness. I haf not forgotten our first parting. You did not dreat me well.'

'I know I didn't,' Paul said.

'Ant now,' continued Darco, refusing to be mollified all at once, 'you haf wasted months of valuable dime, ant you ant I are both the poorer by hundrets ant hundrets of pounts. I will haf your bromise, your sacred wort of honour, before I will gollaborate again, that you will no more blay with me these farces. I like you, yourself, Armstrong. I am very font of you. I haf a very creat atmiration for your worg. But you haf not been reliaple. You haf no right to resent what I am sayink.'

'I have some excuses, of which I can't talk,' said Paul; 'but I don't resent what you are saying. I am very sorry to have kept you waiting. I promise you that you shall have all my time and all my best energies for this one spell of work in any case. After that——'

'Veil,' said Darco, 'afder that?

'Heaven knows!' Paul answered. 'Don't say any more just now, Darco. Let us go to work.'

Darco looked at him for a second or two, and began then to stump about the room.

'Goot! he said suddenly; 'let us go to work.'

To work they went. Whatever else might be said for Darco, it was at least impossible to brood in his society. The man's tireless enthusiasm did one of two things for everybody with whom he encountered. It repelled either through terror or distaste, or it inspired a sentiment which corresponded with itself. He frightened timid people; he made the pugnacious angry and resentful. But here and there he kindled a fire.

Paul's love for work had gone to sleep very soundly, but Darco's storming awoke it, and in a day or two the new remedy had got hold of him, and he came back to a moderately healthy state of mind. He wrote to Gertrude, and she responded, and a peace was patched between them, but it was not easy on either side to climb back to the old existence of confidence, and Paul at least was shaken in allegiance. Nor was this all, for he had begun to have some apprehension of his own character, and to take soundings of those emotional shallows which had always seemed to him so profound. When a man has once learned to distrust his own raptures they do not rise easily.

He took up his quarters with Darco, and they worked all day together, and, on occasion, far into the night, for they were entered on a race against time, and an extended run of the piece which then held the stage at Darco's theatre meant loss. Act by act was put in rehearsal as it left the writers' hands, and the final scenes were written in the theatre itself, and the parts copied in one of the dressing-rooms. For the last fortnight of the work there was time to think of nothing else, and when the very tag was written there was labour enough left to satisfy even Darco.

No better medicine for Paul's malady could have been prescribed than he found in this ceaseless mental occupation. It shook him out of his useless moonings, and brought his mind back to its old healthy elasticity, and when at last the decisive night came, and the play went with a roar from start to finish, he went to bed to sleep the clock round, and awoke to triumph.

Out of an idea which had cropped up in the course of work, and had been abandoned as being too heavy to be employed as a mere episode, the indefatigable Darco had already constructed a new plot, and was fain to begin at once upon its development. But Paul insisted upon at least a fortnight's holiday, and carried his point. There was no further fear of financial embarrassment for many months to come. Annette's liabilities were paid. A lawyer was engaged to make settled arrangements with her, and for awhile there was a clear prospect and free air to breathe. Then came the new work, carried on at a less fiery pressure than the old, but yet pursued with diligence. It lasted six months, and was not likely to be in demand for another half-year. Gertrude was back in Paris, and thither went Paul, prepared to study the platonic theory in a more philosophical spirit than he had hitherto displayed. She was charming. She could not easily cease to be charm ing, but she maddened no longer, and if she had had a heart at all, her lover's extreme placidity might have piqued her into love. It could not do that, but it served to introduce upon the scene an episode of some humour.

Madame la Baronne de Wyeth could not exist without an adorer. It was an agreeable thing enough to have two at a time, and would have been agreeable to have had a dozen had the creatures been manageable. Mr. Ricardo P. Janes, of Boston, Massachusetts, was a young man of excellent family connections, and in enjoyment of liberal means. He was a very handsome boy of four- or five-and-twenty, and having a taste for art and the Muses in general, he was studying in the atelier of a famous French painter. He took life seriously, and wrote nice verses. He was simple and enthusiastic, pure-minded and romantic, and altogether eligible as a candidate for a place in the list of Gertrude's soulful friends. When Paul reached Paris he had an immediate introduction to this young gentleman, and conceived a real liking for him. There was hardly an escape from the recognition of the fact that Mr. Janes, in his serious, romantic way, was in love with Gertrude, but it was evident that he had been held well in hand, and that with him the platonic path had strict barriers, beyond which he did not even aspire to pass. He made Paul his confidant when the two came to intimacy, as they very easily did; and from his simple talk the elder learned again a great deal of what he had learned already from Gertrude—how, for instance, there was a certain isolation of the soul from which it was impossible to escape even in the closest and most genuine friendship, and how the Individual was never truly apprehended by any other Individual, but was doomed to go its way in eternal solitude towards its goal. Mr. Janes, despite his romanticisms and enthusiasms, was in the main a sensible young man, and he would not have said these things had he known or guessed that their ground of inspiration would be recognised by his companion. But Gertrude's ideas had seemed to him—they would appear to have seemed so to many for a time—to hold a most true and beautiful though sad philosophy, and he was of that time of life when such thoughts are full of serious interest and charm. Had Mr. Janes appeared nine months earlier under the same conditions, Paul would probably have conceived a fiery hatred for him, but now he felt a kind of superiority to him, which was in part cynical, and in part affectionate, and in part self-disdainful. He had gone thrilling at all this for years on end, because it came from the lips of a pretty and engaging woman, with whom it was no more than a canting shibboleth. Of course it helped to disillusionize him, and he began even to see that Gertrude was not as beautiful as he had once believed her to be. This is almost a fatal symptom in the history of love's decay, unless the perception be attended, as it is in happy cases, by the perception of new beauties whose presence more than atones for the absence of the old. And Paul did not find new beauties. Gertrude was simply a pretty woman now, and a pretty woman is a very different creature from an angel whose effulgence so dazzles that it blinds the eyes. It was pleasant enough to philander with her, to touch the skirts of topics which had once been dangerous, but were dangerous no longer, but the glamour was gone, and young Mr. Janes had done as much to banish it in a single fortnight as Ralston and the bibulous explorer and the nine months of diligent labour all put together.

It happened that the Baroness herself planned a little pleasure trip, which resulted in the closing of this chapter of Paul Armstrong's life. It placed him incidentally in a position of extreme awkwardness, and he was never able to decide whether he had acted well or ill in it. The point may be reckoned a fine one.

Gertrude had made accidental acquaintance with a charming old house in the neighbourhood of Fontainebleau, a country chateau of the old-world sort, which was for sale, with all its furniture, its plate and its pictures, and a rather exceptionally good library. Failing a sale, it was provisionally for hire, and she, having, always, practically unlimited funds at her disposal, was inclined to take it and to spend some half-year in retirement, within easy reach of the capital and her friends, whilst she added the last touches to a volume of poems on which she had been engaged from time to time for some three or four years past She was in negotiation for the place, and just by way of experiment she had thought it a charming idea to give a little—a very little—house-party there. There were to be only five people—Gertrude's own Knickerbocker sheepdog, then one Comtesse de Cassault, Gertrude herself, and Mr. Janes and Paul. The servants of the departed family were available for a day; a chef and one or two kitchen assistants might be sent down from Paris. The party would assemble in time for luncheon, would spend the afternoon in a country excursion, would return to dinner, and so Pariswards by a special train. It was a pretty programme, and would cost M. le Baron de Wyeth a pretty penny, but the last consideration was Gertrude's affair alone. The Comtesse de Cassault was a beautiful person, a flirt of the demurest kind. The Knickerbocker was virtually nobody. In effect it was a partie carree and bade fair to be enjoyable.

It was the very loveliest of October days, and Paul began his adventures by a little accident to the voiture which should have borne him to the station. It was no very great matter, but he found himself entangled with the horses of an omnibus, and though he escaped personal injury, apart from an inconsiderable bruise or two, he had to make an awkward jump for safety, and, falling, split the knees of his trousers, and plastered his shirt-cuffs with the mud which an overnight shower had left behind. This petty disaster involved a return home, and the loss of his train. He despatched a wire and made inquiries. The quickest way of arriving at his destination appeared to be to book by train to a point some ten miles from it, and then to secure a conveyance of some sort to get the rest of the distance. He was turned out at a lonely rural station with no vehicle for hire within miles. Very good, he would make the best of a small misfortune, and would walk. He got directed by a stupid peasant, and set off in the wrong direction. When he had walked some two miles out of his way, he made further inquiries and retraced his steps. The roads were a little heavy, the sun was hot, and Paul of late had taken but little physical exercise. When, after three hours hard walking, he reached the retired chateau which was the scene of the day's festivity, luncheon had been over two hours before, and Gertrude and her party were away for a drive. But Mr. Armstrong was expected and was welcomed, and when he had a little repaired the ravages the journey had made upon his aspect, he was provided with a pleasant little repast and a bottle of excellent Moselle. The room in which he took this meal was on the ground-floor, and was an extension from the original building. It stood a few feet above a sloping lawn, and it had wide French windows on either side of it A balcony travelled round it on three sides, and on that which faced the sun heavy velvet curtains had been drawn. A full light which brought no dazzle with it came in from the windows opposite.

When Paul had finished his meal, which he ate with great relish after the unaccustomed exercise of the day, he explored the balcony, and finding on the sunny side one of those long American cane-chairs which, when furnished with cushions, offer so agreeable a lounge, he sat down there and smoked a cigar. A while ago the small contretemps which had delayed him would have caused him profound trouble, or, at least, he would have made himself think so; but he took the matter quite easily now, and occupied himself in rehearsing the history he would have to tell on his hostess's return. The day was exquisitely mild, the temperature perfect, now that he was no longer in hasty effort; he had eaten heartily, had half emptied the bottle of excellent Moselle, and he was very tired. Before he had begun to realize fairly the fact that he was drowsy, he had fallen asleep.

When he awoke there were voices in the room he had quitted some two hours before. The sun had gone down behind the trees in the blue distance, and he was just a trifle stiff and chilly. He was barely conscious of these things, when the voice of young Mr. Janes startled him broad awake.

'It is dangerous,' said Mr. Janes; 'it is seriously dangerous.'

'Silly boy!' said Gertrude, in a voice half mocking and half caressing. 'How can an old woman like me be dangerous to the peace of a child like you?'

'It is not dangerous to you, Gertrude,' said Mr. Janes, with a tremor which bespoke him very much in earnest 'I know your purity, and I reverence it. I know that I have done wrong in speaking as I have done, but I could not help it I must go.'

'No, Ricardo,' said Gertrude, 'you must not go. You must only put this foolish fancy by—it is only a foolish fancy—and there will be no need to disturb a friendship which has been so sweet, so valuable, to both of us.'

By this time it occurred suddenly to Paul that he had perhaps heard enough, but he had hitherto been held so entirely by surprise that he had not had time to think that this conversation was not intended for his ears. He arose, and began to creep stealthily away, when he saw that the curtains through which he had passed from the room were partly open as he had left them. And whilst he stood irresolute, wondering how he should escape, and trying to devise some means of declaring his presence, the talk went on.

'Oh, damn it all!' he said to himself desperately. 'It isn't my fault. I know that line of country pretty well, and I have been so often introduced to it that I am hardly an intruder on it. I can't get away without being seen, and that will be awkward for everybody. And I can't stay here and listen to this rot.'

But the talk went on, and what with the absurd misery of his own position and the well-known lines the conversation followed, he was fairly aflame with embarrassment and self-disdain. Exactly what this gifted and amiable young ass of a Bostonian was doing, and saying, and thinking, and feeling, he had been doing, saying, thinking, feeling a year ago. And Gertrude was playing with young Mr. Janes exactly as she had played with young Mr. Armstrong. Mr. Janes took a good deal of coaxing—more than Paul had done—but the trained coquette was equal to the task, and she brought him to the climax just as she had brought his predecessor. And there was the one little embrace granted, and there was a rustle of skirts, and the click of a door-latch, and Gertrude's voice said, 'You will stay now Ricardo?' and Ricardo groaned. Then the door was closed, and there was silence. Then Ricardo groaned again, and Paul heard his disordered footsteps as he paced the room. The unwilling listener returned to the cane-chair and stretched himself upon it with great stealth, and feigned sleep in case of contingencies. But after five dreary minutes young Mr. Janes withdrew, and the way of escape was open.

Paul made his way to the drawing-room, and found there the Knickerbocker lady and the demure Countess, with whom he had already a slight but agreeable acquaintance. He had had time to recover his self-possession, and though he wished himself a hundred miles away, he did his best to set the kite of conversation flying. He was making an attempt in his somewhat halting French to tell the story of his delay when Gertrude entered, and he told the tale to her, leaving her to translate it. His narrative was so vivacious that she trilled with laughter at it, and broke in upon it with a rapid paraphrase in French here and there, so that she and the Countess and the historian were all laughing heartily together when Mr. Janes came in with a sombre countenance, and made so funereal an effort to join in the mirth that Paul was fiercely tickled. And whilst he made a comedy of the morning's accident for her amusement, he was thinking all the while, 'You heartless, cruel, dangerous little jade!' and thinking it, too, with a real savagery of hatred. 'How many have you betrayed,' he asked in his heart 'To how many hungers of passion deliberately awakened have you offered that heart of stone?'

The Baroness knew him mainly on the sentimental side, but that evening he launched out as a raconteur, and was gay and brilliant. Even Mr. Janes was awakened to sporadic laughter at the dinner-table, where they sat by preconcerted arrangement without the formality of evening-dress, and fared admirably from the hors d'oeuvres to the coffee—a flawless meal. And dinner being over, they drove away under a noble moon to the railway-station, and bowled back to Paris.

Paul, still with an air of gaiety, begged Gertrude to accord him ten minutes on the following day.

'I have something to tell you,' he said, 'in which I am sure you will take the warmest interest. May I trespass on your time for just ten minutes in the morning? I got a curious little bit of intelligence to-day which will carry me, I fancy, to the United States.'

'The United States? cried Gertrude. 'I can send you to the nicest people there. But shall you be long away?'

'I shall be able to tell you that to-morrow,' Paul answered. 'May I?

'Certainly,' she replied graciously. 'Shall we all breakfast together at twelve?'

'I am sorry,' said Paul, 'but for me that is impossible. But if I may see you at a quarter to the hour——'

'Certainly,' she said again.

'Thank you,' he said, and turning away somewhat abruptly, as he thought afterwards, he began to talk to the irresponsive Janes, who sat, as it were, in fog.

'You come with me?' said Paul to the young Bostonian when the terminus was reached, and the final adieux had been said amongst the rest.

'Well, no,' said Mr. Janes. 'I am a little out of sorts for some reason or another, and I think that I'll go home.'

'Well, then,' said Paul, 'I go with you. It's all the same; but I have something to say to you. It won't keep, Janes, and whether you and I like it or no, it has to be spoken.'

'Oh,' said Janes, 'that sounds serious!'

'Come to the Rue Castiglione with me,' Paul answered, 'and I will tell you exactly how serious it is.'

'Very well,' the younger man answered, and Paul having chartered a fiacre, they drove home together.

Arrived at his hotel, Paul ordered, and his guest refused, a whisky-and-soda, and the two sat down at a table in Paul's bedroom.

'Mr. Janes,' he began, 'I hope very sincerely that what am about to say will not wound you—much. It is sure to hurt you a little at first, but it is meant in friendship. Let me begin by telling you that for some three years of my life, more or less, I made an unexampled ass of myself about a certain lady. And now let me confess that I was put into a beastly corner this afternoon, and could not help overhearing a conversation in which the lady held a part. That conversation was identical in result, and almost identical in terms, with one in which I took part about a year and a half ago.'

Young Mr. Janes set his elbows on the table, and rested his face upon his hands. He was silent for a long time, but at last he said:

'I cannot judge of the delicacy or otherwise of your statement, Mr. Armstrong, but I leave Paris to-morrow morning, and I shall not return. I should have gone, sir, without this revelation from you, and I am sorry that you have made it.'

'I am not,' said Paul stanchly. 'Nor do I think that you will be in a little time. I wasted three years, Mr. Janes, in worship at that empty shrine, and when I had most accidentally and most unwittingly surprised another worshipper——'

'Don't mock at it, for God's sake!' said young Mr. Janes. 'I'm going home. Good-night. I think you were right to tell me. I think I should have done the same. You're going——' He paused there, and looked up with a white face. 'You're going to see her in the morning?'

'On that one errand,' Paul answered.

'Well,' said Mr. Janes, 'good-bye, Armstrong.'

He offered his hand, and Paul took it warmly. Janes went dejectedly away.

At ten minutes before the strike of noon next day Paul and Gertrude met for the last time. She came gaily towards him with both hands outstretched in welcome, but her face changed as he stood before her with no recognition of her proffered salute.

'What is the matter?' she asked.

'I am here to tell you, Gertrude,' he responded. 'I told you a part of my adventures of yesterday, but I did not tell you all. When my walk was finished I had luncheon, and after luncheon I lay down on a chair upon the veranda and fell asleep there. I awoke at the moment when Mr. Janes was telling you that it was dangerous. I had not the courage to break in upon a conversation so intimate, and—may I say it?—so familiar. I could not get away without a risk of being seen, and so I stayed where I was.'

She had gone white to the lips, and she was trembling, but she faced him.

'Oh,' she said, 'I had thought you a little worthier than that! An eavesdropper!'

'An eavesdropper!' Paul answered. 'That is understood; but not a willing one. You have wasted a good part of my life, but of that I have no right to complain. But I do lament a little that you should have taken away my last illusion. I had learned a little of your adorable sex, Gertrude, before I met you, and nothing in my experience had taught me to think well of it. But I believed I had found in you a proof of the monstrous falsity of the belief into which I was being thrust. Well, you see, you confirm that belief. I shall go to my grave now in the certainty that one-half the world is made to wheedle and befool the other half, and that every woman is born to treason as the sparks fly upward. You lied to me, Gertrude, and I believed you. You lured me on deliberately, with a cold cruelty for which there is no name. I shall never hate you as well as I have loved you, for I have a rather poor capacity in that way. You found a man with a bruised heart, and for your own wicked pleasure you set to work to torture him. There is no use in words, and I have said all I came to say.'

That was the end of that episode, and a minute later he was striding along the street. In three days he was aboard ship at Havre, and the disconsolate Janes was one of his fellow-voyagers.



CHAPTER XXV

If a philosopher were set to describe the best and the worst of life, he would certainly have a considerable choice before him. But amongst the best he would have to set down love, and amongst the worst he would have to set down love's disillusion. The curse of age is indifference. With the increase of the years you come to a time when nothing matters. Anything which helps hearty youth this way is harmful. In ninety cases in a hundred age is a crime against the hopes of the world, and nothing ages like cynicism. This is the beginning of senile decay. And what is a man to do who has lavished his heart, and has always found that the woman has played counters of affectation against the sincere gold of his soul? Obviously he turns cynic, despising himself and his too cheap emotions; and to cheapen one's own emotions is to play the very devil. It was written from of old that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and a man who has learned to loathe one half of his own nature is not stable. Even that he has a perfect right to do it does not help him.

May Gold had fooled Paul Armstrong. Claudia Belmont had carried on the game. So had Annette, and so had Gertrude. It was a wise man who wrote that the net is spread in vain in the sight of any bird, but he wrote nonsense, all the same. The capturing net is the one to which we are most accustomed.

So with a heart filled with distrust, and misliking half the world, Paul travelled across the Atlantic, and sauntered about the United States. The money question was settled for the time being, if not definitely, and for a year or two he would have no occasion to think of ways and means. He got away into the prairies and the mountains, camped out, shooting and hunting, learned to sit a horse, learned to handle a gun, to build a tent, and to cook.

Then he went back into civilization, and travelled on to San Francisco, and the western parts of Canada. And one day at Victoria, having nothing better before him, he wandered on board a vessel which in four-and-twenty hours from that time was bound to sail for Japan. He took lunch with the proprietors and officers of this boat, and, almost before he knew it, had booked his passage for Yokohama. Why not see the world?

There were ladies aboard, and they flirted with the stranger because he was young and already famous, and more than average good-looking. They flirted demurely, and they flirted fiercely, and they flirted in all the ways which are known to women; but for once in feminine experience they met a man who was proof against all their charms, charmed they never so wisely. To be dangerous to man's peace of mind a woman must inspire belief, and in Paul's heart belief was dead.

The ship went on to New Zealand, her port of call Dunedin. Why not New Zealand? Why not see the world? More flirts aboard, and more flirtations, but still the hitherto so susceptible heart unmoved. The next port of call Hobart Town, then Melbourne. Still, why not see the world? More flirts and more flirtations, as if there were nothing but the rustle of a petticoat which is worth taking notice of on the surface of the planet. But observe that the young man is spoiled, at least for the time being.

Possum and kangaroo shooting make good sport. Rabbits swarm in literal millions. We grow very handy with the gun, very handy at building a shelter of any sort, or at cooking a dinner.

Then back to New Zealand, and here the beginning of a new life.

New Year's Eve, as it happens, and the exile's mind not unnaturally filled with thoughts of home. And tucked away in the further corner of the dining-room of the Grand Hotel the familiar figure of an English comedian! who, when Paul last saw him, was playing in a piece written far himself and Darco.

'Hillo, Paul! Can't I get into any blooming corner of the world but some old pal is bound to root me out?' 'How's trade?' said Paul. 'Going strong?' 'Bad, dear boy,' the comedian answered. 'Bad as bad can be. Do me a turn, old fellow. Write me a play. I've brought out three, and they're all rotten failures. Ask the press, and they'll tell you I'm coining money. Ask me, and I'll tell you I'm dropping it by the barrelful. Been here long—eh?'

Paul was at the theatre again that night, for the first time since he had left England, two years ago. Two years ago! Such a distance had been placed between him and Gertrude—between him and Annette!

A dreary farce in three acts greeted him, and ambitions awoke anew. The cheery comedian asked:

'Why not try it on the dog? Give us a bit of human nature, dear child. Run it round these far outlying provinces. No harm to you if you make a failure; loads of minted money if you make a hit. What I always say, dear boy: minimize the risk of failure—eh?'

Paul took fire. He knew his man, and could fit him like a glove.

'Where are you in ten weeks' time?' he asked 'Ten weeks? said the comedian. 'Auckland.' 'Good!' said Paul. 'We meet in Auckland.' 'Right you are,' said the comedian; and then they parted, and never met again for years.

But the talk set Paul at work again, and he laboured like a Trojan on the shores of Lake Te Anau, with heath and sky and mountains for his comrades and inspirers, and when his play was finished he went back to civilization to discover that his comedian was well on his way to England. That mattered little enough. He sent a copy of the piece to Darco, and wandered hither and thither about the southern island until by hazard he tumbled against a new fate in the person of a new comedian.

'And you don't happen to have a play in your pocket, Mr. Armstrong? said he, in the first hour of their acquaintanceship.

'As it happens,'said Paul, 'I have. You may read it this afternoon.'

There was a business chaffer, and the affair was virtually settled. Paul was to read the play to the company of the travelling comedian on the morrow.

He presented himself at the theatre at the appointed hour, and the manager kept him waiting for a minute or two whilst he harangued the baggage-man.

'You'll know her by this portrait: she's small; she's very ordinary-looking; she wears her hair in a topknot, with a hat stuck over it about so high'—he held his arms abroad. 'Excuse me, Mr. Armstrong, we are all ready for you with the exception of a lady who will be here in half an hour. I wired for her a week ago to Australia The boat was signalled two hours since. Since we must wait, you won't mind my utilizing the half-hour?'

'Pray go on,' said Paul; and, seating himself upon a rolled-up bale of carpet, surrendered his mind to ennui.

In due time the lady for whose help the company waited appeared. The play was read, the characters were apportioned, and the date of the first production was fixed Paul took no special note of the new arrival, and, indeed, she did not seem specially notable. She was little more than a child, with a child's stature but a woman's figure. She had brown eyes and brown hair, and she wore a dress of brown velvet. She was strange to the crowd about her, so it seemed; for she was introduced to every member of it, and she scrutinized everybody with a childlike mixture of frankness and reticence.

'Like a little brown mouse,' said Paul to himself, 'peeping out of her cranny at an assemblage of cats, without quite knowing the cat's proclivity.'

Beyond this she was Miss Madge Hampton, an amateur of some small private means, and he thought no more about her. Rehearsal in an insignificant part displayed her as capable and willing to be taught.

The company never stayed more than a week in any one town, and for a considerable part of the time went bushwhacking from place to place, taking one-night stands! and crawling by sleepy railways amongst some of the most exquisite scenery of the land. Paul had nothing better to do—had, indeed, nothing else to do—and found a pleasure in this revival of old experiences. It reminded him of the ancient days with Darco, which now looked so far away, and he surrendered himself, as he had always done, to the interests of the moment and the hour. A fair proportion of the working day was spent in travel, and sometimes, as they crossed the exquisite plain of flowering green, with the snowcapped mountains in the distance, the ladies of the company would cry out at sight of some especial bank of wild flowers, and the conductor would stop the leisurely train to let them go out and cull bouquets. At some such excursions Paul assisted, and, whether by hazard or goodwill, he found himself oftener by the side of Miss Madge Hampton than elsewhere. He had himself been born to the inheritance of a most inordinate mouthful of provincial accent, and since he had studied and learned to speak almost every dialect known to the little islands which are the centre of our Empire, his ear had grown nice and critical. The ladies and gentlemen of the company, with the exception of the famous and admirable comedian who led them, were all of colonial education, and they all spoke with the accent the existence of which our colonial brethren and sisters so strenuously deny. It was, of course, the language of fashion, as they knew it, but it was, as it still is, perilously near the English of Mile End, and the ear of the Englishman, grown critical through many studies, used to ache at it. The leader of the troupe talked the English of the stage, which, after all, is perhaps not quite the English of the cultured Englishman, but was not altogether intolerable. But, by some accident, Miss Hampton had no trace of the accent which disfigured the speech of her companions, and this little fact of itself accounted for something in the very gradual intimacy which grew up between herself and Paul.

The train was sauntering along in its customary easy-going fashion, when it came to a halt at the signal of a man in corduroy trousers, a flannel shirt which had once been scarlet, and a felt hat of no colour. The signaller sat upon a fence and wanted a chat with the driver, who was quite willing, in the course of his leisurely progress, to spare him half an hour or so.

'If you ladies,' said the conductor, 'would like to stretch yourselves, there's any amount of flowers to be got here, and there's time to waste. There's no run back except on a Saturday, and an hour or two in the time of arrival won't make no difference.'

So the ladies got down and went flower-hunting, whilst the driver and the stoker and the guard sat on the fence together and talked politics and the latest mail from England.

Paul went out with the rest, and the party chanced upon a marshy piece of land where a species of purple iris grew in great profusion. There was a cry of delight at the sunlit patch of colour, and everybody charged down upon it, with the result that half of the travellers were bogged to the knees, and there was a good deal of pully-hauley business gone through before the last adventuress was extricated. Miss Madge Hampton fell to Paul's share by accident of mere neighbourhood, and she stretched out her little brown-kid-gloved hand to him with an air of timid appeal. He pulled stanchly, but the ground gave way beneath him, and before he knew it she was in his arms. There was a laugh all round, and a blush on both sides, but the lady was on firm earth again, and in a minute or two the drawling call of the conductor brought the party back to the train. The journey was renewed, and the incident forgotten by everybody save the dramatist, who sat coiled in his corner, with his eyes fixed upon a book which he might as well have held upside-down. The women of the company, five in number, were chattering like a nest of starlings, shrilling high against the slow rumble of the wheels. Miss Hampton alone was silent amongst them. Their talk was of matrimony, and the leading lady sparkled out with an engaging inquiry which embraced the whole carriageful.

'And what about Miss Hampton?'

'Oh,' said the little brown lady demurely, 'I shall die an old maid!'

It was at this instant that a singular and yet accustomed pang assailed the dramatist's heart. He ought to have known it well enough, in all conscience, for he had already had an opportunity of studying it four times over. May Gold had taught it, and Claudia had taught it, and Annette for a fleeting instant, and Gertrude through a heavy year or two. He looked at the smiling little face before him, and it took a new sweetness in his eyes. If he had had his absolute will at that moment, he would have taken its owner in his arms, and have cried 'No!' to her protestation. But, then, it is difficult to do these things in the presence of a whole carriageful of people who make a profession of comedy, and he restrained himself, wondering a little why such an impulse should have assailed him. Yet from that time forward he began to watch and to listen for the monitions of his own heart, which of itself is a dangerous thing for any susceptible young man to do, and he began to find charms in Miss Hampton which were quite separate from the exceptional delicacy of her English speech. He knew very well that he had no right to fall in love with any woman; he was bound to Annette; he was tied to her so long as she should live. But being newly awakened to a sense of the weakness which had pursued him through his life so far, he became afraid, and watched his own emotions with a jealous care.

The man who is born to fall in love will do it, whatever happens; but there are, of course, ways and ways of doing it, and this particular way of keeping guard over the emotions is perhaps as swift as any.

He held the figure at arm's length, as it were, and critically surveyed it. Why, he asked himself repeatedly, should this simple little personality appeal to him so strongly? To say the most and the least of it, it was feminine, and he had made up his mind about the sex when he had quitted Gertrude. He had honestly despaired of finding a woman who was not either a coquette or a fool, and he had taught himself to use the whole sex after the manner of his conception; and now the cynic feeling into which he had conspired with circumstance to school himself was breaking up again, and, with all his knowledge of the world, he felt himself helpless.

There never was a tale of this sort which came to a definite end without the aid of circumstances which were not planned by either party to the coming contract. It befell that the only married woman of the corps, who travelled with a child of seven, took cold, and had to be left behind. The child, playing, neglected, about the hotel, sustained some injury in the lift which plied between the upper and the lower stories. The company was only twenty miles away, and Paul, learning the news, bought grapes and jellies for the younger invalid and wines for the elder, and chartered a carriage to the town where they were staying. Half a mile before him was a hooded vehicle, which kept its relative place, more or less, throughout the journey. It was full in sight until the outlying streets of the town were reached, and it came into view again when he arrived at his destination—drawn up before the hotel door, and empty. A moment's interview with the manageress gave him the right to mount the stairs, and, when he tapped at the door of the room in which the invalids reposed, a voice he had not expected to hear bade him come in. There was Miss Hampton, of whom he had been thinking a good deal too much of late, sitting with the child upon her knees, and holding a grape above his lips. The child pouted for it, and he and the mother and the visitor were all laughing together.