I replied that I considered it urbane on his part to invite me to see his cats perform.

"If you were to hurt one of his cats he'd murder you," she informed me. "He always carries a long, sharp knife concealed somewhere about him on purpose."

"What a fierce little gentleman," I remarked.

"He looks on me as one of his cats, too," she said with a low laugh, "and considers himself my protector. Once in Buda-Pesth he and I were driving about. I was doing some shopping. As I was getting into the cab a man insulted me, on account, I suppose, of my German name. Anastasius sprang at him like a wild beast, and I had to drag him off bodily and lift him back into the cab. I'm pretty strong, you know. It must have been a funny sight." She turned to me quickly. "Do you think it wrong of me to laugh?"

"Why shouldn't you laugh at the absurd?"

"Because in devotion like that there seems to be something solemn and frightening. If I told him to kill his cats, he would do it. If I ordered him to commit Hari-Kari on the hearthrug, he would whip out his knife and obey me. When you have a human soul at your mercy like that, it's a kind of sacrilege to laugh at it. It makes you feel—oh, I can't express myself. Look, it doesn't make tears come into your eyes exactly, it makes them come into your heart."

We continued the subject, divagating as we went, and had a nice little sentimental conversation. There are depths of human feeling I should never have suspected in this lazy panther of a woman, and although she openly avows having no more education than a tinker's dog, she can talk with considerable force and vividness of expression.

Indeed, when one comes to think of it, a tinker's dog has a fine education if he be naturally a shrewd animal and takes advantage of his opportunities; and a fine education, too, of its kind was that of the vagabond Lola, who on her way from Dublin to Yokohama had more profitably employed her time than Lady Kynnersley supposed. She had seen much of the civilised places of the earth in her wanderings from engagement to engagement, and had been an acute observer of men and things.

We exchanged travel pictures and reminiscences. I found myself floating with her through moonlit Venice, while she chanted with startling exactness the cry of the gondoliers. To my confusion be it spoken, I forgot all about Dale Kynnersley and my mission. The lazy voice and rich personality fascinated me. When I rose to go I found I had spent a couple of hours in her company. She took me round the room and showed me some of her treasures.

"This is very old. I think it is fifteenth century," she said, picking up an Italian ivory.

It was. I expressed my admiration. Then maliciously I pointed to a horrible little Tyrolean chalet and said:

"That, too, is very pretty."

"It isn't. And you know it."

She is a most disconcerting creature. I accepted the rebuke meekly. What else could I do?

"Why, then, do you have it here?"

"It's a present from Anastasius," she said. "Every time he comes to see me he brings what he calls an 'offrande'. All these things"—she indicated, with a comprehensive sweep of the arm, the Union Jack cushion, the little men mounting ladders inside bottles, the hen sitting on her nest, and the other trumpery gimcracks—"all these things are presents from Anastasius. It would hurt him not to see them here when he calls."

"You might have a separate cabinet," I suggested.

"A chamber of horrors?" she laughed. "No. It gives him more pleasure to see them as they are—and a poor little freak doesn't get much out of life."

She sighed, and picking up "A Present from Margate" kind of mug, fingered it very tenderly.

I went away feeling angry. Was the woman bewitching me? And I felt angrier still when I met Lady Kynnersley at dinner that evening. Luckily I had only a few words with her. Had I done anything yet with regard to Dale and the unmentionable woman? If I had told her that I had spent a most agreeable afternoon with the enchantress, she would not have enjoyed her evening. Like General Trochu of the Siege of Paris fame, I said in my most mysterious manner, "I have my plan," and sent her into dinner comforted.

But I had no plan. My next interview with Madame Brandt brought me no further. We have established telephonic communications. Through the medium of this diabolical engine of loquacity and indiscretion, I was prevailed on to accompany her to a rehearsal of Anastasius's cats.

Rogers, with a face as imperturbable as if he was announcing the visit of an archbishop, informed me at the appointed hour that Madame Brandt's brougham was at the door. I went down and found the brougham open, as the day was fine, and Lola Brandt, smiling under a gigantic hat with an amazing black feather, and looking as handsome as you please.

We were blocked for a few minutes at the mouth of the courtyard, and I had the pleasure of all Piccadilly that passed staring at us in admiration. Lola Brandt liked it; but I didn't, especially when I recognised one of the starers as the eldest Drascombe-Prynne boy whose people in Paris are receiving Eleanor Faversham under their protection. A nice reputation I shall be acquiring. My companion was in gay mood. Now, as it is no part of dealing unto oneself a happy life and portion to damp a fellow creature's spirits, I responded with commendable gaiety.

I own that the drive to Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos's cattery in Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell, was distinctly enjoyable. I forgot all about the little pain inside and the Fury with the abhorred shears, and talked a vast amount of nonsense which the lady was pleased to regard as wit, for she laughed wholeheartedly, showing her strong white, even teeth. But why was I going?

Was it because she had requested me through the telephone to give unimagined happiness to a poor little freak who would be as proud as Punch to exhibit his cats to an English Member of Parliament? Was it in order to further my designs—Machiavellian towards the lady, but eumoirous towards Dale? Or was it simply for my own good pleasure?

Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos, resplendently raimented, with the shiniest of silk hats and a flower in the buttonhole of his frock-coat, received us at the door of a small house, the first-floor windows of which announced the tenancy of a maker of gymnastic appliances; and having kissed Madame Brandt's hand with awful solemnity and bowed deeply to me, he preceded us down the passage, out into the yard, and into a ramshackle studio at the end, where his cats had their being.

There were fourteen of them, curled up in large cages standing against the walls. The place was lit by a skylight and warmed by a stove. The floor, like a stage, was fitted up with miniature acrobatic paraphernalia and properties. There were little five-barred gates, and trapezes, and tight-ropes, and spring-boards, and a trestle-table, all the metal work gleaming like silver. A heavy, uncouth German lad, whom the professor introduced as his pupil and assistant, Quast, was in attendance. Mr. Papadopoulos polyglotically acknowledged the honour I had conferred upon him. He is very like the late Emperor of the French; but his forehead is bulgier.

With a theatrical gesture and the remark that I should see, he opened some cages and released half a dozen cats—a Persian, a white Angora, and four commonplace tabbies, who all sprang on to the table with military precision. Madame Brand began to caress them. I, wishing to show interest in the troupe, prepared to do the same; but the dwarf scurried up with a screech from the other end of the room.

"Ne touchez pas—ne touchez pas!"

I refrained, somewhat wonderingly, from touching. Madame Brandt explained.

"He thinks you would spoil the magnetic influence. It is a superstition of his."

"But you are touching."

"He believes I have his magnetism—whatever that may be," she said, with a smile. "Would you like to see an experiment? Anastasius!"

"Carissima."

"Is that the untamed Persian you were telling me of?" she asked, pointing to a cage from which a ferocious gigantic animal more like a woolly tiger than a tom-cat looked out with expressionless yellow eyes. "Will you let Mr. de Gex try to make friends with it?"

"Your will is law, meine Konigin," replied Professor Papadopoulos, bowing low. "But Hephaestus is as fierce as the flames of hell."

"See what he'll do," laughed Lola Brandt.

I approached the cage with an ingratiating, "Puss, puss!" and a hideous growl welcomed me. I ventured my hand towards the bars. The beast bristled in demoniac wrath, spat with malignant venom, and shot out its claws. If I had touched it my hand would have been torn to shreds. I have never seen a more malevolent, fierce, spiteful, ill-conditioned brute in my life. My feelings being somewhat hurt, and my nerves a bit shaken, I retreated hastily.

"Now look," said Lola Brandt.

With absolute fearlessness she went up to the cage, opened it, took the unresisting thing out by the scruff of its neck, held it up like a door-mat, and put it on her shoulder, where it forthwith began to purr like any harmless necessary cat and rub its head against her cheek. She put it on the floor; it arched its back and circling sideways rubbed itself against her skirts.

She sat down, and taking the brute by its forepaws made it stand on its hind legs. She pulled it on to her lap and it curled round lazily. Then she hoisted it on to her shoulder again, and, rising, crossed the room and bowed to the level of the cage, when the beast leaped in purring thunderously in high good humour. Mr. Papadopoulos sang out in breathless delight:

"If I am the King of Cats, you, Carissima, are the Queen. Nay, more, you are the Goddess!"

Lola Brandt laughed. I did not. It was uncanny. It seemed as if some mysterious freemasonic affinity existed between her and the evil beast. During her drive hither she had entered my own atmosphere. She had been the handsome, unconventional woman of the world. Now she seemed as remote from me as the witches in "Macbeth."

If I had seen her dashing Paris hat rise up into a point and her umbrella turn into a broomstick, and herself into one of the buxom carlines of "Tam O'Shanter," I should not have been surprised. The feats of the mild pussies which the dwarf began forthwith to exhibit provoked in me but a polite counterfeit of enthusiasm. Lola Brandt had discounted my interest. Even his performance with the ferocious Persian lacked the diabolical certainty of Lola's handling. He locked all the other cats up and enticed it out of the cage with a piece of fish. He guided it with a small whip, as it jumped over gates and through blazing hoops, and he stood tense and concentrated, like a lion-tamer.

The act over, the cat turned and snarled and only jumped into its cage after a smart flick of the whip. The dwarf did not touch it once with his hands. I applauded, however, and complimented him. He laid his hand on his heart and bent forward in humility.

"Ah, monsieur, I am but a neophyte where Madame is an expert. I know the superficial nature of cats. Now and then without vainglory I can say I know their hearts; but Madame penetrates to and holds commune with their souls. And a cat's soul, monsieur, is a wonderful thing. Once it was divine—in ancient Egypt. Doubtless monsieur has heard of Pasht? Holy men spent their lives in approaching the cat-soul. Madame was born to the privilege. Pasht watches over her."

"Pasht," I said politely in French, in reply to this clotted nonsense, "was a great divinity. And for yourself, who knows but what you may have been in a previous incarnation the keeper of the Sacred Cats in some Egyptian temple."

"I was," he said, with staggering earnestness. "At Memphis."

"One of these days," I returned, with equal solemnity, "I hope for the privilege of hearing some of your reminiscences. They would no doubt be interesting."

On the way back Lola thanked me for pretending to take the little man seriously, and not laughing at him.

"If I hadn't," said I, "he would have stuck his knife into me."

She shook her head. "You did it naturally. I was watching you. It is because you are a generous-hearted gentleman."

Said I: "If you talk like that I'll get out and walk."

And, indeed, what right had she to characterise the moral condition of my heart? I asked her. She laughed her low, lazy laugh, but made no reply. Presently she said:

"Why didn't you like my making friends with the cat?"

"How do you know I didn't like it?" I asked.

"I felt it."

"You mustn't feel things like that," I remarked. "It isn't good for you."

She insisted on my telling her. I explained as well as I could. She touched the sleeve of my coat with her gloved hand.

"I'm glad, because it shows you take an interest in me. And I wanted to let you see that I could do something besides loll about in a drawing-room and smoke cigarettes. It's all I can do. But it's something." She said it with the humility of the Jongleur de Notre Dame in Anatole Frances's story.

In Eaton Square, where I had a luncheon engagement, she dropped me, and drove off smiling, evidently well pleased with herself. My hostess was standing by the window when I was shown into the drawing-room. I noted the faintest possible little malicious twinkle in her eye.

During the afternoon I had a telephonic message from my doctor, who asked me why I had neglected him for a fortnight and urged me to go to Harley Street at once. To humour him I went the next morning. Hunnington is a bluff, hearty fellow who feeds himself into pink floridity so as to give confidence to his patients. In answer to his renewed inquiry as to my neglect, I remarked that a man condemned to be hanged doesn't seek interviews with the judge in order to learn how the rope is getting on. I conveyed to him politely, although he is an old friend, that I desired to forget his well-fed existence. In his chatty way he requested me not to be an ass, and proceeded to put to me the usual silly questions.

Remembering the result of my last visit, I made him happy by answering them gloomily; whereupon he seized his opportunity and ordered me out of England for the winter. I must go to a warm climate—Egypt, South Africa, Madeira—I could take my choice. I flatly refused to obey. I had my duties in London. He was so unsympathetic as to damn my duties. My duty was to live as long as possible, and my wintering in London would probably curtail my short life by two months. Then I turned on him and explained the charitable disingenuousness of my replies to his questions. He refused to believe me, and we parted with mutual recriminations. I sent him next day, however, a brace of pheasants, a present from Farfax Glenn. After all, he is one of God's creatures.

The next time I called on Lola Brandt I went with the fixed determination to make some progress in my mission. I vowed that I would not be seduced by trumpery conversation about Yokohama or allow my mind to be distracted by absurd adventures among cats. I would clothe myself in the armour of eumoiriety, and, with the sword of duty in my hand, would go forth to battle with the enchantress. All said and done, what was she but a bold-faced, strapping woman without an idea in her head save the enslavement of an impressionable boy several years her junior? It was preposterous that I, Simon de Gex, who had beguiled and fooled an electorate of thirty thousand hard-headed men into choosing me for their representative in Parliament, should not be a match for Lola Brandt. As for her complicated feminine personality, her intuitiveness, her magnetism, her fascination, all the qualities in fact which my poetical fancy had assigned to her, they had no existence in reality. She was the most commonplace person I had ever encountered, and I had been but a sentimental lunatic.

In this truly admirable frame of mind I entered her drawing-room. She threw down the penny novel she was reading, and with a little cry of joy sprang forward to greet me.

"I'm so glad you've come. I was getting the blind hump!"

Did I not say she was commonplace? I hate this synonym for boredom. It may be elegant in the mouth of a duchess and pathetic in that of an oyster-wench, but it falls vulgarly from intermediate lips.

"What has given it to you?" I asked.

"My poor little ouistiti is dead. It is this abominable climate."

I murmured condolences. I could not exhibit unreasonable grief at the demise of a sick monkey which I had never seen.

"I'm also out of books," she said, after having paid her tribute to the memory of the departed. "I have been forced to ask the servants to lend me something to read. Have you ever tried this sort of thing? You ought to. It tells you what goes on in high society."

I was sure it didn't. Not a duchess in its pages talked about having a blind hump. I said gravely:

"I will ask you to lend it to me. Since Dale has been away I've had no one to make out my library list."

"Do turn Adolphus out of that chair and sit down," she said, sinking into her accustomed seat. Adolphus was the Chow dog before mentioned, an accomplished animal who could mount guard with the poker and stand on his head, and had been pleased to favour me with his friendship.

"I miss Dale greatly," said I.

"I suppose you do. You are very fond of him?"

"Very," said I. "By the by, how did you first come across Dale?"

She threw me a swift glance and smiled.

"Oh, in the most respectable way. I was dining at the Carlton with Sir Joshua Oldfield, the famous surgeon, you know. He performed a silly little operation on me last year, and since then we've been great friends. Dale and some sort of baby boy were dining there, too, and afterwards, in the lounge, Sir Joshua introduced them to me. Dale asked me if he could call. I said 'Yes.' Perhaps I was wrong. Anyhow, voila! Do you know Sir Joshua?"

"I sat next to him once at a public dinner. He's a friend of the Kynnersleys. A genial old soul."

"He's a dear!" said Lola.

"Do you know many of Dale's friends?" I asked.

"Hardly any," she replied. "It's rather lonesome." Then she broke into a laugh.

"I was so terrified at meeting you the first time. Dale can talk of no one else. He makes a kind of god of you. I felt I was going to hate you like the devil. I expected quite a different person."

The diplomatist listens to much and says little.

"Indeed," I remarked.

She nodded. "I thought you would be a big beefy man with a red face, you know. He gave me the idea somehow by calling you a 'splendid chap.' You see, I couldn't think of a 'splendid chap' with a white face and a waxed moustache and your way of talking."

"I am sorry," said I, "not to come up to your idea of the heroic."

"But you do!" she cried, with one of her supple twists of the body. "It was I that was stupid. And I don't hate you at all. You can see that I don't. I didn't even hate you when you came as an enemy."

"Ah!" said I. "What made you think that? We agreed to argue it out, if you remember."

She drew out of a case beside her one of her unspeakable cigarettes. "Do you suppose," she said, lighting it, and pausing to inhale the first two or three puffs of smoke, "do you suppose that a woman who has lived among wild beasts hasn't got instinct?"

I drew my chair nearer to the fire. She was beginning to be uncanny again.

"I expected you were going to be horrified at the dreadful creature your friend had taken up with. Oh, yes, I know in the eyes of your class I'm a dreadful creature. I'm like a cat in many ways. I'm suspicious of strangers, especially strangers of your class, and I sniff and sniff until I feel it's all right. After the first few minutes I felt you were all right. You're true and honourable, like Dale, aren't you?"

Like a panther making a sudden spring, she sat bolt upright in her chair as she launched this challenge at me. Now, it is disconcerting to a man to have a woman leap at his throat and ask him whether he is true and honourable, especially when his attitude towards her approaches the Machiavellian.

I could only murmur modestly that I hoped I could claim these qualifications.

"And you don't think me a dreadful woman?"

"So far from it, Madame Brandt," I replied, "that I think you a remarkable one."

"I wonder if I am," she said, sinking back among her cushions. "I should like to be for Dale's sake. I suppose you know I care a great deal for Dale?"

"I have taken the liberty of guessing it," said I. "And since you have done me the honour of taking me so far into your confidence," I added, playing what I considered to be my master-card, "may I venture to ask whether you have contemplated"—I paused—"marriage?"

Her brow grew dark, as she looked involuntarily at her bare left hand.

"I have got a husband already," she replied.

As I expected. Ladies like Lola Brandt always have husbands unfit for publication; and as the latter seem to make it a point of honour never to die, widowed Lolas are as rare as blackberries in spring.

"Forgive my rudeness," I said, "but you wear no wedding ring."

"I threw it into the sea."

"Ah!" said I.

"Do you want to hear about him?" she asked suddenly. "If we are to be friends, perhaps you had better know. Somehow I don't like talking to Dale about it. Do you mind putting some coals on the fire?"

I busied myself with the coal-scuttle, lit a cigarette, and settled down to hear the story. If it had not been told in the twilight hour by a woman with a caressing, enveloping voice like Lola Brandt's I should have yawned myself out of the house.

It was a dismal, ordinary story. Her husband was a gentleman, a Captain Vauvenarde in the French Army. He had fallen in love with her when she had first taken Marseilles captive with the prodigiosities of her horse Sultan. His proposals of manifold unsanctified delights met with unqualified rejection by the respectable and not too passionately infatuated Lola. When he nerved himself to the supreme sacrifice of offering marriage she accepted.

She had dreams of social advancement, yearned to be one of the white faces of the audience in the front rows. The civil ceremony having been performed, he pleaded with her for a few weeks' secrecy on account of his family. The weeks grew into months, during which, for the sake of a livelihood, she fulfilled her professional engagements in many other towns. At last, when she returned to Marseilles, it became apparent that Captain Vauvenarde had no intention whatever of acknowledging her openly as his wife. Hence many tears. Moreover, he had little beyond his pay and his gambling debts, instead of the comfortable little fortune that would have assured her social position. Now, officers in the French Army who marry ladies with performing horses are not usually guided by reason; and Captain Vauvenarde seems to have been the most unreasonable being in the world. It was beneath the dignity of Captain Vauvenarde's wife to make a horse do tricks in public, and it was beneath Captain Vauvenarde's dignity to give her his name before the world. She must neither be Lola Brandt nor Madame Vauvenarde. She must give up her fairly lucrative profession and live in semi-detached obscurity up a little back street on an allowance of twopence-halfpenny a week and be happy and cheerful and devoted. Lola refused. Hence more tears.

There were scenes of frantic jealousy, not on account of any human being, but on account of the horse. If she loved him as much as she loved that abominable quadruped whose artificial airs and graces made him sick every time he looked at it, she would accede to his desire. Besides, he had the husband's right—a powerful privilege in France. She pointed out that he could only exercise it by declaring her to be his wife. Relations were strained. They led separate lives. From Marseilles she went to Genoa, whither he followed her. Eventually he went away in a temper and never came back. She had not heard from him since, and where he was at the present moment she had not the faintest idea.

"So you went cheerfully on with your profession?" I remarked.

"I returned to Marseilles, and there I lost my horse Sultan. Then my father died and left me pretty well off, and I hadn't the heart to train another animal. So here I am. Ah!"

With one of her lithe movements she rose to her feet, and, flinging out her arms in a wide gesture, began to walk about the room, stopping here and there to turn on the light and draw the flaring chintz curtains. I rose, too, so as to aid her. Suddenly as we met, by the window, she laid both her hands on my shoulders and looked into my face earnestly and imploringly, and her lips quivered. I wondered apprehensively what she was going to do next.

"For God's sake, be my friend and help me!"

The cry, in her rich, low notes, seemed to come from the depths of the woman's nature. It caused some absurd and unnecessary chord within me to vibrate.

For the first time I realised that her strong, handsome face could look nobly and pathetically beautiful. Her eyes swam in an adorable moisture and grew very human and appealing. In a second all my self-denying ordinances were forgotten. The witch had me in her power again.

"My dear Madame Brandt," said I, "how can I do it?"

"Don't take Dale from me. I've lived alone, alone, alone all these years, and I couldn't bear it."

"Do you care for him so very much?"

She withdrew her hands and moved slightly. "Who else in the wide world have I to care for?"

This was very pathetic, but I had the sense to remark that compromising the boy's future was not the best way of showing her devotion.

"Oh, how could I do that?" she asked. "I can't marry him. And if I do what I've never done before for any man—become his mistress—who need know? I could stay in the background."

"You seem to forget, dear lady," said I, "that Captain Vauvenarde is probably alive."

"But I tell you I've lost sight of him altogether."

"Are you quite so sure," I asked, regaining my sanity by degrees, "that Captain Vauvenarde has lost sight of you?"

She turned quickly. "What do you mean?"

"You have given him no chance as yet of recovering his freedom."

She passed her hand over her face, and sat down on the sofa. "Do you mean—divorce?"

"It's an ugly word, dear Madame Brandt," said I, as gently as I could, "but you and I are strong people and needn't fear uttering it. Don't you think such a scandal would ruin Dale at the very beginning of his career?"

There was a short silence. I was glad to see she was feminine enough to twist and tear her handkerchief.

"What am I to do?" she asked at last. "I can't live this awful lonely life much longer. Sometimes I get the creeps."

I might have given her the sound advice to find healthy occupation in training crocodiles to sit up and beg; but an idea which advanced thinkers might classify as more suburban was beginning to take shape in my mind.

"Has it occurred to you," I said, "that now you have assumed the qualifications imposed by Captain Vauvenarde for bearing his name?"

"I don't understand."

"You no longer perform in public. He would have no possible grievance against you."

"Are you suggesting that I should go back to my husband?" she gasped.

"I am," said I, feeling mighty diplomatic.

She looked straight in front of her, with parted lips, fingering her handkerchief and evidently pondering the entirely new suggestion. I thought it best to let her ponder. As a general rule, people will do anything in the world rather than think; so, when one sees a human being wrapped in thought, one ought to regard wilful disturbance of the process as sacrilege. I lit a cigarette and wandered about the room.

Eventually I came to a standstill before the Venus of Milo. But while I was admiring its calm, mysterious beauty, the development of a former idea took the shape of an inspiration which made my heart sing. Fate had put into my hands the chance of complete eumoiriety.

If I could effect a reconciliation between Lola Brandt and her husband, Dale would be cured almost automatically of his infatuation, and I should be the Deputy Providence bringing happiness to six human beings—Lola Brandt, Captain Vauvenarde, Lady Kynnersley, Maisie Ellerton, Dale, and Mr. Anastasius Papadopoulos, who could not fail to be delighted at the happiness of his goddess.

There also might burst joyously on the earth a brood of gleeful little Vauvenardes and merry little Kynnersleys, who might regard Simon de Gex as their mythical progenitor. It might add to the gaiety of regiments and the edification of parliaments. Acts should be judged, thought I, not according to their trivial essence, but by the light of their far-reaching consequences.

Lola Brandt broke the silence. She did not look at me. She said:

"I can't help feeling that you're my friend."

"I am," I cried, in the exultation of my promotion to the role of Deputy Providence. "I am indeed. And a most devoted one."

"Will you let me think over what you've said for a day or two—and then come for an answer?"

"Willingly," said I.

"And you won't——?"

"What?"

"No. I know you won't."

"Tell Dale?" I said, guessing. "No, of course not."

She rose and put out both her hands to me in a very noble gesture. I took them and kissed one of them.

She looked at me with parted lips.

"You are the best man I have ever met," she said.

At the moment of her saying it I believed it; such conviction is induced by the utterances of this singular woman. But when I got outside the drawing-room door my natural modesty revolted. I slapped my thigh impatiently with what I thought were my gloves. They made so little sound that I found there was only one. I had left the other inside. I entered and found Lola Brandt in front of the fire holding my glove in her hand. She started in some confusion.

"Is this yours?" she asked.

Now whose could it have been but mine? The ridiculous question worried me, off and on, all the evening.



CHAPTER VII

The murder is out. A paragraph has appeared in the newspapers to the effect that the marriage arranged between Mr. Simon de Gex and Miss Eleanor Faversham will not take place. It has also become common knowledge that I am resigning my seat in Parliament on account of ill-health. That is the reason rightly assigned by my acquaintances for the rupture of my engagement. I am being rapidly killed by the doleful kindness of my friends. They are so dismally sympathetic. Everywhere I go there are long faces and solemn hand-shakes. In order to cheer myself I gave a little dinner-party at the club, and the function might have been a depressed wake with my corpse in a coffin on the table. My sisters, dear, kind souls, follow me with anxious eyes as if I were one of their children sickening for chicken-pox. They upbraid me for leaving them in ignorance, and in hushed voices inquire as to my symptoms. They both came this morning to the Albany to see what they could do for me. I don't see what they can do, save help Rogers put studs in my shirts. They expressed such affectionate concern that at last I cried out:

"My dear girls, if you don't smile, I'll sit upon the hearthrug and howl like a dog."

Then they exchanged glances and broke into hectic gaiety, dear things, under the impression that they were brightening me up. I am being deluged with letters. I had no idea I was such a popular person. They come from high placed and lowly, from constituents whom my base and servile flattery have turned into friends, from Members of Parliament, from warm-hearted dowagers and from little girls who have inveigled me out to lunch for the purpose of confiding to me their love affairs. I could set up as a general practitioner of medicine on the advice that is given me. I am recommended cod-liver oil, lung tonic, electric massage, abdominal belts, warm water, mud baths, Sandow's treatment, and every patent medicament save rat poison. I am urged to go to health resorts ranging geographically from the top of the Jungfrau to Central Africa. All kinds of worthy persons have offered to nurse me. Old General Wynans writes me a four-page letter to assure me that I have only to go to his friend Dr. Eustace Adams, of Wimpole Street, to be cured like a shot. I happen to know that Eustace Adams is an eminent gynecologist.

And the worst of it all is that these effusions written in the milk of human kindness have to be answered. Dale is not here. I have to sit down at my desk and toil like a galley slave. I am being worn to a shadow.

Lola Brandt, too, has heard the news, Dale in Berlin, and the London newspapers being her informants. Tears stood in her eyes when I called to learn her decision. Why had I not told her I was so ill? Why had I let her worry me with her silly troubles? Why had I not consulted her friend, Sir Joshua Oldfield? She filled up my chair with cushions (which, like most men, I find stuffy and comfortless), and if I had given her the slightest encouragement, would have stuck my feet in hot mustard and water. Why had I come out on such a dreadful day? It was indeed a detestable day of raw fog. She pulled the curtains close, and, insisting upon my remaining among my cushions, piled the grate with coal half-way up the chimney. Would I like some eucalyptus?

"My dear Madame Brandt," I cried, "my bronchial tubes and lungs are as strong as a hippopotamus's."

I wish every one would not conclude that I was going off in a rapid decline.

Lola Brandt prowled about me in a wistful, mothering way, showing me a fresh side of her nature. She is as domesticated as Penelope.

"You're fond of cooking, aren't you?" I asked suddenly.

She laughed. "I adore it. How do you know?"

"I guessed," said I.

"I'm what the French call a vraie bourgeoise."

"I'm glad to hear it," said I.

"Are you? I thought your class hated the bourgeoisie."

"The bourgeoisie," I said, "is the nation's granary of the virtues. But for God's sake, don't tell any one that I said so!"

"Why?" she asked.

"If it found its way into print it would ruin my reputation for epigram."

She drew a step or two towards me in her slow rhythmic way, and smiled.

"When you say or do a beautiful thing you always try to bite off its tail."

Then she turned and drew some needlework—plain sewing I believe they call it—from beneath the Union Jack cushion and sat down.

"I'll make a confession," she said. "Until now I've stuffed away my work when I heard you coming. I didn't think it genteel. What do you think?"

I scanned the shapeless mass of linen or tulle or whatever it was on her lap.

"I don't know whether it's genteel," I remarked, "but at present it looks like nothing on God's earth."

My masculine ignorance of such mysteries made her laugh. She is readily moved to mild mirth, which makes her an easy companion. Besides, little jokes are made to be laughed at, and I like women who laugh at them. There was a brief silence. I smoked and made Adolphus stand up on his hind legs and balance sugar on his nose. His mistress sewed. Presently she said, without looking up from her work:

"I've made up my mind."

I rose from my cushioned seat, into which Adolphus, evidently thinking me a fool, immediately snuggled himself, and I stood facing her with my back to the fire.

"Well?" said I.

"I am ready to go back to my husband, if he can be found, and, of course, if he will have me."

I commended her for a brave women. She smiled rather sadly and shook her head.

"Those are two gigantic 'ifs.'"

"Giants before now have been slain by the valiant," I replied.

"How is Captain Vauvenarde to be found?"

"An officer in the French Army is not like a lost sparrow in London. His whereabouts could be obtained from the French War Office. What is his regiment?"

"The Chasseurs d'Afrique. Yes," she added thoughtfully. "I see, it isn't difficult to trace him. I make one condition, however. You can't refuse me."

"What is that?"

"Until things are fixed up everything must go on just as at present between Dale and me. He is not to be told anything. If nothing comes of it then I'll have him all to myself. I won't give him up and be left alone. As long as I care for him, I swear to God, I won't!" she said, in her low, rich voice—and I saw by her face that she was a woman of her word. "Besides, he would come raving and imploring—and I'm not quite a woman of stone. It isn't all jam to go back to my husband. Goodness knows why I am thinking of it. It's for your sake. Do you know that?"

I did not. I was puzzled. Why in the world should Lola Brandt, whom I have only met three or four times, revolutionise the whole of her life for my sake?

"I should have thought it was for Dale's," said I.

"I suppose you would, being a man," she replied.

I retorted, with a smile: "Woman is the eternal conundrum to which the wise man always leaves her herself to supply the answer. Doubtless one of these days you'll do it. Meanwhile, I'll wait in patience."

She gave me one of her sidelong, flashing glances and sewed with more vigour than appeared necessary. I admired the beautiful curves of her neck and shoulders as she bent over her work. She seemed too strong to wield such an insignificant weapon as a needle.

"That's neither here nor there," she said in reference to my last remark. "I say, I don't look forward to going back to my husband—though why I should say 'going back' I don't know, as he left me—not I him. Anyhow, I'm ready to do it. If it can be managed, I'll cut myself adrift suddenly from Dale. It will be more merciful to him. A man can bear a sudden blow better than lingering pain. If it can't be managed, well, Dale will know nothing at all about it, and both he and I will be saved a mortal deal of worry and unhappiness."

"Suppose" said I, "it can't be managed? Do you propose to keep Dale ignorant of the danger he is running in keeping up a liaison with a married woman living apart from her husband?"

She reflected. "If my husband says he'll see me damned first before he'll come back to me, then I'll tell Dale everything, and you can say what you like to him. He'll be able to judge for himself; but in the meanwhile you'll let me have what happiness I can."

I accepted the compromise, and, dispossessing Adolphus, sat down again. I certainly had made progress. Feeling in a benevolent mood, I set forth the advantages she would reap by assuming her legal status; how at last she would shake the dust of Bohemia from off her feet, and instead of standing at the threshold like a disconsolate Peri, she would enter as a right the Paradise of Philistia which she craved; how her life would be one continual tea-party, and how, as her husband had doubtless by this time obtained his promotion, she would be authorised to adopt high and mighty airs in her relations with the wives of all the captains and lieutenants in the regiment. She sighed and wondered whether she would like it, after all.

"Here in England I can say 'damn' as often as I choose. I don't say it very often, but sometimes I feel I must say it or explode."

"There are its equivalents in French," I suggested.

She laughed outright. "Fancy my coming out with a sacre nom de Dieu in a French drawing-room!"

"Fancy you shouting 'damn' in an English one."

"That's true," she said. "I suppose drawing-rooms are the same all the world over. I do try to talk like a lady—at least, what I imagine they talk like, for I've never met one."

"You see one every time you look in the glass," said I.

Her olive face flushed. "You mustn't say such things to me if you don't mean them. I like to think all you say to me is true."

"Why in the world," I cried, "should you not be a lady? You have the instincts of one. How many of my fair friends in Mayfair and Belgravia would have made their drawing-rooms unspeakable just for the sake of not hurting the feelings of Anastasius Papadopoulos?"

She put aside her work and, leaning over the arm of the chair, her chin in her hands, looked at me gratefully.

"I'm so glad you've said that. Dale can't understand it. He wants me to clear the trash away."

"Dale," said I, "is young and impetuous. I am a battered old philosopher with one foot in the grave."

Quick moisture gathered in her eyes. "You hurt me," she said. "You'll soon get well and strong again. You must!"

"Ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut," I laughed.

"Eh bien, je le veux," she said with an odd expression in her eyes which burned golden. They fascinated me, held mine. For some seconds neither of us moved. Just consider the picture. There among the cushions of her chair she sprawled beneath the light of a shaded lamp on the further side, and in front of the leaping flames, a great, powerful, sinuous creature of sweeping curves, clad in a clinging brown dress, her head crowned with superb bronze hair, two warm arms bare to the elbow, at which the sleeve ended in coffee-coloured lace falling over the side of the chair, and her leopard eyes fixed on me. About her still hung the echo of her last words spoken in deep tones whose register belongs less to human habitations than to the jungle. And from her emanated like a captivating odour—but it was not an odour—a strange magnetic influence.

I have done my best to write her down in my mind a commonplace, vulgar, good-natured mountebank. But I can do so no longer.

There is something deep down in the soul of Lola Brandt which sets her apart from the kindly race of womankind; whether it is the devil or a touch of pre-Adamite splendour or an ancestral catamount, I make no attempt to determine. At any rate, she is too grand a creature to fritter her life away on a statistic-hunting and pheasant-shooting young Briton like Dale Kynnersley. He would never begin to understand her. I will save her from Dale for her own sake.

All this, ladies and gentlemen, because her eyes fascinated me, and caused me to hold my breath, and made my heart beat.

And will Captain Vauvenarde understand her? Of course he won't. But then he is her husband, and husbands are notoriously and cum privilegio dunder-headed. I make no pretensions to understand her, but as I am neither her lover nor her husband it does not matter. She says nothing diabolical or eerie or fantastic or feline or pre-Adamite or uncanny or spiritual; and yet she is, in a queer, indescribable way, all these things.

"Je le veux," she said, and we drank in each other's souls, or gaped at each other like a pair of idiots just as you please. I had a horrible, yet pleasurable consciousness that she had gripped hold of my nerves of volition. She was willing me to live. I was a puppet in her hands like the wild tom-cat. At that moment I declare I could have purred and rubbed my head against her knee. I would have done anything she bade me. If she had sent me to fetch the Cham of Tartary's cap or a hair of the Prester John's beard, I would have telephoned forthwith to Rogers to pack a suit-case and book a seat in the Orient express.

What would have happened next Heaven alone knows—for we could not have gone on gazing at each other until I backed myself out at the door by way of leave-taking—had not Anticlimax arrived in the person of Mr. Anastasius Papadopoulos in his eternal frock-coat. But his gloves were black.

As usual he fell on his knees and kissed his lady's hand. Then he rose and greeted me with solemn affability.

"C'est un privilege de rencontrer den gnadigsten Herrn," said he.

Confining myself to one language, I responded by informing him that it was an honour always to meet so renowned a professor, and inquired politely after the health of Hephaestus.

"Ah, Signore!" he cried. "Do not ask me. It is a tragedy from which I shall never recover."

He sat down on a footstool by the side of Madame Brandt and burst into tears, which coursed down his cheeks and moustache and hung like drops of dew from the point of his imperial.

"Is he dead?" asked Madame.

"I wish he were! No. It is only the iron self-restraint that I possess which prevented me from slaying him on the spot. But poor Santa Bianca! My gentle and accomplished Angora. He has killed her. I can scarcely raise my head through grief."

Lola put her great arm round the little man's neck and patted him like a child, while he sobbed as if his heart would break.

When he recovered he gave us the details of the tragic end of Santa Bianca, and wound up by calling down the most ingeniously complicated and passionate curses on the head of the murderer. Lola Brandt strove to pacify him.

"We all have our sorrows, Anastasius. Did I not lose my beautiful horse Sultan?"

The professor sprang to his full height of four feet and dashed away his tears with a noble gesture of his black-gloved hand.

Base slave that he was to think of his own petty bereavement in the face of her eternal affliction. He turned to me and bade me mark her serene nobility. It was a model and an example for him to follow. He, too, would be brave and present a smiling face to evil fortune.

"Behold! I smile, carissima!" he cried dramatically.

We beheld—and saw his features (smudged with tearstains and the dye from the black gloves which he obviously wore out of respect for the deceased Santa Bianca) contorted into a grimace of hideous imbecility.

"Monsieur," said he, assuming his natural expression which was one of pensive melancholy, "let us change the conversation. You are a great statesman. Will you kindly let me know your opinion on the foreign policy of Germany?"

Whereupon he sat down again upon his stool and regarded me with earnest attention.

"Germany," said I, with the solemnity of a Sir Oracle in the smoking-room of one of the political clubs, "has dreams of an empire beyond her frontiers, and with a view to converting the dream into a reality, is turning out battleships nineteen to the dozen."

The Professor nodded his head sagaciously, and looked up at Lola.

"Very profound," said he, "very profound. I shall remember it. I am a Greek, Monsieur, and the Greeks, as you know, are a nation of diplomatists."

"Ever since the days of Xenophon," said I.

"You're both too clever for me," exclaimed our hostess. "Where did you get your knowledge from, Anastasius?"

The Professor, flattered, passed his hand over his bulgy forehead.

"I was a great student in my youth," said he. "Once I could tell you all the kings of Rome and the date of the battle of Actium. But pressure of weightier concerns has driven my erudition from me. Pardon me. I have not yet asked after your health. You are looking sad and troubled. What is the matter?"

He sat bolt upright, fingering his imperial and regarding her with the keen solicitude of a family physician. To my amazement, Lola Brandt told him quite simply:

"I am thinking of living with my husband again."

"Has the traitor been annoying you?" he asked with a touch of fierceness.

"Oh, no! It's my own idea. I'm tired of living alone. I don't even know where he is."

"Do you want to know where he is?"

"How can I communicate with him unless I do?"

Anastasius Papadopoulos rose, struck an attitude, and thumped his breast.

"I will seek him for you at the ends of the earth, and will bring him to prostrate himself at your feet."

"That's very kind of you, Anastasius," said Lola gently; "but what will become of your cats?"

The dwarf raised his hand impressively.

"The Almighty will have them in His keeping. I have also my pupil and assistant, Quast."

Lola smiled indulgently from her cushions, showing her curious even teeth.

"You mustn't do anything so mad, Anastasius, I forbid you."

"Madame," said he in a most stately manner, "when I devote myself, it is to the death. I have the honour to salute you!"—he bowed over her hand and kissed it. "Monsieur." He bowed to me with the profundity of a hidalgo, and trotted magnificently out of the room.

It was all so sudden that it took my breath away.

"Well I'm——" I didn't know what I was, so I stopped. Lola Brandt broke into low laughter at my astonishment.

"That's Anastasius's way," she explained.

"But the little man surely isn't going to leave his cats and start on a wild-goose chase over Europe to find your husband?"

"He thinks he is, but I shan't let him."

"I hope you won't," said I. "And will you tell me why you made so hot-headed a person your confidant?"

I confess that I was wrathful. Here had I been using the wiles of a Balkan chancery to bring the lady to my way of thinking, and here was she, to my face, making a joke of it with this caricature of a Paladin.

"My dearest friend," she replied earnestly, "don't be angry with me. I've given the poor little man something to think of besides the death of his cat. It will do him good. And why shouldn't I tell him? He's a dear old friend, and in his way was so good to me when I was unhappy. He knows all about my married life. You may think he's half-witted; but he isn't. In ordinary business dealings he's as shrewd as they make 'em. The manager who beats Anastasius over a contract is yet to be born."

By some extraordinary process of the contortionist's art, she curled herself out of her chair on to the hearthrug and knelt before me, her hands clasped on my knee.

"You're not angry with me, are you?" she asked in her rich contralto.

I took both her hands, rose, and assisted her to rise. I was not going to be mesmerised again.

"Of course not," I laughed. Indeed my wrath had fallen from me.

Her bosom heaved with a sigh. "I'm so glad," she said. Her breath fanned my cheek. It was aromatic, intoxicating. Her lips are ripe and full.

"You had better find your husband as soon as possible," said I.

"Do you think so?" she asked.

"Yes, I do. And it strikes me I had better go and find him myself."

She started. "You?"

"Yes," I said. "The Chasseurs d'Afrique are probably in Africa, and the doctors have ordered me to winter in a hot climate, and I shall go on writing a million letters a day if I stay here, which will kill me off in no time with brain fag and writer's cramp. Your husband will be what the newspapers call an objective. Good-bye!" said I, "I'll bring him to you dead or alive."

And without knowing it at the time, I made an exit as magnificent as that of Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos.



CHAPTER VIII

I do not know whether I ought to laugh or rail. Judged by the ordinary canons that regulate the respectable life to which I have been accustomed, I am little short of a lunatic. The question is: Does the recognition of lunacy in oneself tend to amusement or anger? I compromise with myself. I am angry at having been forced on an insane adventure, but the prospect of its absurdity gives me a considerable pleasure.

Let me set it down once and for all. I resent Lola Brandt's existence. When I am out of her company I can contemplate her calmly from my vantage of social and intellectual superiority. I can pooh-pooh her fascinations. I can crack jokes on her shortcomings. I can see perfectly well that I am Simon de Gex, M.P. (I have not yet been appointed to the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds), of Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, a barrister of the Inner Temple (though a brief would cause me as much dismay as a command to conduct the orchestra at Covent Garden), formerly of the Foreign Office, a man of the world, a diner-out, a hardened jester at feminine wiles, a cynical student of philosophy, a man of birth, and, I believe, breeding with a cultivated taste in wine and food and furniture, one also who, but for a little pain inside, would soon become a Member of His Majesty's Government, and eventually drop the "Esquire" at the end of his name and stick "The Right Honourable" in front of it—in fact, a most superior, wise and important person; and I can also see perfectly well that Lola Brandt is an uneducated, lowly bred, vagabond female, with a taste, as I have remarked before, for wild beasts and tea-parties, with whom I have as much in common as I have with the feathered lady on a coster's donkey-cart or the Fat Woman at the Fair. I can see all this perfectly well in the calm seclusion of my library. But when I am in her presence my superiority, like Bob Acres's valour, oozes out through my finger-tips; I become a besotted idiot; the sense and the sight and the sound of her overpower me; I proclaim her rich and remarkable personality; and I bask in her lazy smiles like any silly undergraduate whose knowledge of women has hitherto been limited to his sisters and the common little girl at the tobacconist's.

I say I resent it. I resent the low notes in her voice. I resent the cajolery of the supple twists of her body. I resent her putting her hands on my shoulders, and, as the twopenny-halfpenny poets say, fanning my cheek with her breath. If it had not been for that I should never have promised to go in search of her impossible husband. At any rate, it is easy to discover his whereabouts. A French bookseller has telegraphed to Paris for the Annuaire Officiel de l'Armee Francaise, the French Army List. It locates every officer in the French army, and as the Chasseurs d'Afrique generally chase in Africa, it will tell me the station in Algeria or Tunisia which Captain Vauvenarde adorns. I can go straight to him as Madame Brandt's plenipotentiary, and if the unreasonable and fire-eating warrior does not run me through the body for impertinence before he has time to appreciate the delicacy of my mission, I may be able to convince him that a well-to-do wife is worth the respectable consideration of a hard-up captain of Chasseurs. I say I may be able to convince him; but I shrink from the impudence of the encounter. I am to accost a total stranger in a foreign army and tell him to return to his wife. This is the pretty little mission I have undertaken. It sounded glorious and eumoirous and quixotic and deucedly funny, during the noble moment of inspiration, when Lola's golden eyes were upon me; but now—well, I shall have to persuade myself that it is funny, if I am to carry it out. It is very much like wagering that one will tweak by the nose the first gentleman in gaiters and shovel-hat one meets in Piccadilly. This by some is considered the quintessence of comedy. I foresee a revision of my sense of humour.

This afternoon I met Lady Kynnersley again—at the Ellertons'. I was talking to Maisie, who has grown no happier, when I saw her sailing across to me with questions hoisted in her eyes. Being particularly desirous not to report progress periodically to Lady Kynnersley, I made a desperate move. I went forward and greeted her.

"Lady Kynnersley," said I, "somebody was telling me that you are in urgent need of funds for something. With my usual wooden-headedness I have forgotten what it is—but I know it is a deserving organisation."

The philanthropist, as I hoped, ousted the mother. She exclaimed at once:

"It must have been the Cabmen and Omnibus Drivers' Rheumatic Hospital."

"That was it!" said I, hearing of the institution for the first time.

"They are martyrs to rheumatic gout, and of course have no means of obtaining proper treatment; so we have secured a site at Harrogate and are building a comfortable place, half hospital, half hotel, where they can be put up for a shilling a day and have all the benefits of the waters just as if they were staying at the Hotel Majestic. Do you want to become a subscriber?"

"I am eager to," said I.

"Then come over here and I'll tell you all about it."

I sat with her in a corner of the room and listened to her fairy-tale. She wrung my heart to such a pitch of sympathy that I rose and grasped her by the hand.

"It is indeed a noble project," I cried. "I love the London cabby as my brother, and I'll post you a cheque for a thousand pounds this evening. Good-bye!"

I left her in a state of joyous stupefaction and made my escape. If it had not fallen in with my general scheme of good works I should regard it as an expensive method of avoiding unpleasant questions.

Another philanthropist, by the way, of quite a different type from Lady Kynnersley, who has lately benefited by my eleemosynary mania is Rex Campion. I have known him since our University days and have maintained a sincere though desultory friendship with him ever since. He is also a friend of Eleanor Faversham, whom he now and then inveigles into weird doings in the impossible slums of South Lambeth. He has tried on many occasions to lure me into his web, but hitherto I have resisted. Being the possessor of a large fortune, he has been able to gratify a devouring passion for philanthropy, and has squandered most of his money on an institution—a kind of club, school, labour-bureau, dispensary, soup-kitchen, all rolled into one—in Lambeth; and there he lives himself, perfectly happy among a hungry, grubby, scarecrow, tatterdemalion crowd. At a loss for a defining name, he has called it "Barbara's Building," after his mother. His conception of the cosmos is that sun, moon and stars revolve round Barbara's Building. How he learned that I was, so to speak, standing at street corners and flinging money into the laps of the poor and needy, I know not. But he came to see me a day or two ago, full of Barbara's Building, and departed in high feather with a cheque for a thousand pounds in his pocket.

I may remark here on the peculiar difficulty there is in playing Monte Cristo with anything like picturesque grace. Any dull dog that owns a pen and a banking-account can write out cheques for charitable institutions. But to accomplish anything personal, imaginative, adventurous, anything with a touch of distinction, is a less easy matter. You wake up in the morning with the altruistic yearnings of a St. Francois de Sales, and yet somehow you go to bed in the evening with the craving unsatisfied. You have really had so few opportunities; and when an occasion does arise it is hedged around with such difficulties as to baffle all but the most persistent. Have you ever tried to give a beggar a five-pound note? I did this morning.

She was a miserable, shivering, starving woman of fifty selling matches in Sackville Street. She held out a shrivelled hand to me, and eyes that once had been beautiful pleaded hungrily for alms.

"Here," said I to myself, "is an opportunity of bringing unimagined gladness for a month or two into this forlorn creature's life."

I pressed a five-pound note into her hand and passed on. She ran after me, terror on her face.

"I daren't take it, sir; they would say I had stolen it, and I should be locked up. No one would believe a gentleman had given it to me."

She trembled, overwhelmed by the colossal fortune that might, and yet might not, be hers. I sympathised, but not having the change in gold, I could do no more than listen to an incoherent tale of misery, which did not aid the solution of the problem. It was manifestly impossible to take back the note; and yet if she retained it she would be subjected to scandalous indignities. What was to be done? I turned my eyes towards Piccadilly and beheld a policeman. A page wearing the name of a milliner's shop on his cap whisked past me. I stopped him and slipped a shilling into his hand.

"Will you ask that policeman to come to me?"

The boy tore down the street and told the policeman and followed him up to me, eager for amusement.

"What has the woman been doing, sir?" asked the policeman.

"Nothing," said I. "I have given her a five-pound note."

"What for, sir?" he asked.

"To further my pursuit of the eumoirous," said I, whereat he gaped stolidly; "but, be that as it may, I have given it her as a free gift, and she is afraid to present it anywhere lest she should be charged with theft. Will you kindly accompany her to a shop, where she can change it, and vouch for her honesty?"

The policeman, who seemed to form the lowest opinion of my intellect, said he didn't know a shop on his beat where they could change it. The boy whistled. The woman held the box of matches in one hand, and in the other the note, fluttering in the breeze. Idlers paused and looked on. The policeman grew authoritative and bade them pass along. They crowded all the more. My position was becoming embarrassing. At last the boy, remembering the badge of honour on his cap, undertook to change the note at the hatter's at the corner of the street. So, having given the note to the boy and bidden the policeman follow him to see fair play, and encouraged the woman to follow the policeman, I resumed my walk down Sackville Street.

But what a pother about a simple act of charity! In order to repeat it habitually I shall have to rely on the fortuitous attendance of a boy and a policeman, or have a policeman and a boy permanently attached to my person, which would be as agreeable as the continuous escort of a jackdaw and a yak.



Poor Latimer is having a dreadful time. Apparently my ten thousand pounds have vanished like a snowflake on the river of liabilities. How he is to repay me he does not know. He wishes he had not yielded to temptation and had allowed himself to be honestly hammered. Then he could have taken his family to sing in the streets with a quiet conscience.

"My dear fellow," said I through the telephone this morning. "What are ten thousand pounds to me?"

I heard him gasp at the other end.

"But you're not a millionaire!"

"I am!" I cried triumphantly. And now I come to think of it, I spoke truly. If a man reckons his capital as half a year's income, doubles it, and works out the capital that such a yearly income represents, he is the possessor of a mint of money.

"I am," I cried; "and I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll settle five thousand on Lucy and the children, so that they needn't accompany you in your singing excursions. I shouldn't like them to catch cold, poor dears, and ruin their voices."

In tones more than telephonically agonised he bade me not make a jest of his misery. I nearly threw the receiver at the blockhead.

"I'm not jesting," I bawled; "I'm deadly serious. I knew Lucy before you did, and I kissed her and she kissed me years before she knew of your high existence; and if she had been a sensible woman she would have married me instead of you—what? The first time you've heard of it? Of course it is—and be decently thankful that you hear it now."

It is pleasant sometimes to tell the husbands of girls you have loved exactly what you think of them; and I had loved Lucy Latimer. She came, an English rose, to console me for the loss of my French fleur-de-lis, Clothilde. Or was it the other way about? One does get so mixed in these things. At any rate, she did not marry me, her first love, but jilted me most abominably for Latimer. So I shall heap five thousand pounds on her head.

I have been unfortunate in my love affairs. I wonder why? Which reminds me that I made the identical remark to Lucy Latimer a month or two ago. (She is a plump, kind, motherly, unromantic little person now.) She had the audacity to reply that I had never had any.

"You, Lucy Crooks, dare say such a thing!" I exclaimed indignantly.

She smiled. "Are there many more qualified than I to give the opinion?"

I remember that I rose and looked her sternly in the face.

"Lucy Crooks or Lucy Latimer," said I, "you are nothing more or less than a common hussy."

Whereupon she laughed as if I had paid her a high compliment.

I maintain that I have been unfortunate in my love affairs. First, there was an angel-faced widow, a contemporary of my mother's, whom I wooed in Greek verses—and let me tell the young lover that it is much easier to write your own doggerel and convert it into Greek than to put "To Althea" into decent Anacreontics. I also took her to the Eton and Harrow match, and talked to her of women's hats and the things she loved, and neglected the cricket. But she would have none of me. In the flood tide of my passion she married a scorbutic archdeacon of the name of Jugg. Then there was a lady whose name for the life of me I can't remember. It was something ending in "-ine." We quarrelled because we held divergent views on Mr. Wilson Barrett. Then there was Clothilde, whose tragical story I have already unfolded; Lucy Crooks, who threw me over for this dear, amiable, wooden-headed stockjobbing Latimer; X, Y and Z—but here, let me remark, I was the hunted—mammas spread nets for me which by the grace of heaven and the ungraciousness of the damsels I escaped; and, lastly, my incomparable Eleanor Faversham. Now, I thought, am I safe in harbour? If ever a match could have been labelled "Pure heaven-made goods, warranted not to shrink"—that was one. But for this rupture there is an all-accounting reason. For the others there was none. I vow I went on falling in love until I grew absolutely sick and tired of the condition. You see, the vocabulary of the pastime is so confoundedly limited. One has to say to B what one has said to A; to C exactly what one has said to A and B; and when it comes to repeating to F the formularies one has uttered to A, B, C, D and E one grows almost hysterical with the boredom of it. That was the delightful charm of Eleanor Faversham; she demanded no formularies or re-enactment of raptures.

The Annuaire Officiel de l'Armee Francaise has arrived. It is a volume of nearly eighteen hundred pages, and being uncut both at top and bottom and at the side it is peculiarly serviceable as a work of reference. I attacked it bravely, however, hacking my way into it, paperknife in hand. But to my dismay, the more I hacked the less could I find of Captain Vauvenarde. I sought him in the Alphabetical Repertory of Colonial Troops, in the list of officers hors cadre, in the lists of seniority, in the list of his regiment, wherever he was likely or unlikely to be. There is no person in the French army by the name of Vauvenarde.

I went straight to Lola Brandt with the hideous volume and the unwelcome news. Together we searched the pages.

"He must be here," she said, with feminine disregard of fact.

"Are you quite certain you have got the name right?" I asked.

"Why, it is my own name!"

"So it is," said I; "I was forgetting. But how do you know he was in the army at all?"

He might have been an adventurer, a Captain of Kopenick of the day, who had poured a gallant but mendacious tale into her ears.

"I hardly ever saw him out of uniform. He was quartered at Marseilles on special duty. I knew some of his brother officers."

"Then," said I, "there are only two alternatives. Either he has left the army or he is——"

"Dead?" she whispered.

"Let us hope," said I, "that he has left the army."

"You must find out, Mr. de Gex," she said in a low voice. "I took it for granted that my husband was alive. It's horrible to think that he may be dead. It alters everything, somehow. Until I know, I shall be in a state of awful suspense. You'll make inquiries at once, won't you?"

"Did you love your husband, Madame Brandt?" I asked.

She looked at the fire for some time without replying. She stood with one foot on the fender.

"I thought I did when I married him," she said at last. "I thought I did when he left me."

"And now?"

She turned her golden eyes full on me. It is a disconcerting trick of hers at any time, because her eyes are at once wistful and compelling; but on this occasion it was startling. They held mine for some seconds, and I caught in them a glimpse of the hieroglyphic of the woman's soul. Then she turned her head slowly and looked again into the fire.

"Now?" she echoed. "Many things have happened between then and now. If he is alive and I go to him, I'll try to think again that I love him. It will be the only way. It will save me from playing hell with my life."

"I am glad you see your relations to Dale in that light," said I.

"I wasn't thinking of Dale," she said calmly.

"Of what, then, if I may ask without impertinence?"

She broke into a laugh which ended in a sigh, and then swung her splendid frame away from the fireplace and walked backwards and forwards, her figure swaying and her arms flung about in unrestrained gestures.

"You are quite right," she said, with an odd note of hardness in her voice. "You're quite right in what you said the other day—that it was high time I went back to my husband. I pray God he is not dead. I have a feeling that he isn't. He can't be. I count on you to find him and ask him to meet me. It would be better than writing. I don't know what to say when I have a pen in my hand. You must find him and speak to him and send me a wire and I'll come straight away to any part of the earth. Or would you like me to come with you and help you find him? But no; that's idiotic. Forget that I have said it. I'm a fool. But he must be found. He must, he must!"

She paused in her swinging about the room for which I was sorry, as her panther-in-a-cage movements were exceedingly beautiful, and she gazed at me with a tragic air, wringing her hands. I was puzzled to find an adequate reason for this sudden emotional outburst. Hitherto she had accepted the prospect of a resumption of married life with a fatalistic calm. Now when the man is either dead or has vanished into space, she pins all her hopes of happiness on finding him. And why had her salvation from destruction nothing to do with Dale? There is obviously another range of emotions at work beneath it all; but what their nature is baffles me. Although I contemplate with equanimity my little corner in the Garden of Prosperpine, and with indifference this common lodging-house of earth, and although I view mundane affairs with the same fine, calm, philosophic, satirical eye as if I were already a disembodied spirit, yet I do not like to be baffled. It makes me angry. But during this interview with Lola Brandt I had not time to be angry. I am angry now. In fact I am in a condition bordering on that of a mad dog. If Rogers came and disturbed me now, as I am writing, I would bite him. But I will set calmly down the story of this appalling afternoon.

Lola stood before me wringing her hands.

"What are you going to do?"

"I can get an introduction to the Chef de bureau of the information department of the Ministere de la Guerre in Paris," I replied after a moment's reflection. "He will be able to tell me whether Captain Vauvenarde is alive or dead."

"He is alive. He must be."

"Very well. But I doubt whether Captain Vauvenarde keeps the office informed of his movements."

"But you'll go in search of him, won't you?"

"The earth is rather a large place," I objected. "He may be in Dieppe, or he may be on top of Mount Popocatapetl."

"I'm sure you'll find him," she said encouragingly.

"You'll own," said I, "that there's something humourous in the idea of my wandering all over the surface of the planet in search of a lost captain of Chasseurs. It is true that we might employ a private detective."

"Yes!" she cried eagerly. "Why not? Then you could stay here—and I could go on seeing you till the news came. Let us do that."

The swiftness of her change of mood surprised me.

"What is the particular object of your going on seeing me?" I asked, with a smile.

She turned away and shrugged her shoulders and took up her pensive attitude by the fire.

"I have no other friend," she said.

"There's Dale."

"He's not the same."

"There's Sir Joshua Oldfield."

She shrugged her shoulders.

I lit a cigarette and sat down. There was a long silence. In some unaccountable way she had me under her spell again. I felt a perfectly insane dismay at the prospect of ending this queer intimacy, and I viewed her intrigue with Dale with profound distaste. Lola had become a habit. The chair I was sitting in was my chair. Adolphus was my dog. I hated the idea of Dale making him stand up and do sentry with the fire shovel, while Lola sprawled gracefully on the hearthrug. On the other hand the thought of remaining in London and sharing with my young friend the privilege of her society was intolerable.

I smoked, and, watching her bosom rise and fall as she leaned forward with one arm on the mantelpiece, argued it out with myself, and came to the paradoxical conclusion that I could pack her off without a pang to Kamtchatka and the embraces of her unknown husband, but could not hand her over to Dale without feelings of the deepest repugnance. A pretty position to find myself in. I threw away my cigarette impatiently.

Presently she said, not stirring from her pose:

"I shall miss you terribly if you go. A man like you doesn't come into the life of a common woman like me without"—she hesitated for a word—"without making some impression. I can't bear to lose you."

"I shall be very sorry to give up our pleasant comradeship," said I, "but even if I stay and send the private inquiry agent instead of going myself, I shan't be able to go on seeing you in this way."

"Why not?"

"It would be scarcely dignified."

"On account of Dale?"

"Precisely."

There was another pause, during which I lit another cigarette. When I looked up I saw great tears rolling down her cheeks. A weeping woman always makes me nervous. You never know what she is going to do next. Safety lies in checking the tears—in administering a tonic. Still, her wish to retain me was very touching. I rose and stood before her by the mantelpiece.

"You can't have your pudding and eat it too," said I.

"What do you mean?"

"You can't have Captain Vauvenarde for your husband, Dale for your cavaliere servente, and myself for your guide, philosopher and friend all at the same time."

"Which would you advise me to give up?"

"That's obvious. Give up Dale."

She uttered a sound midway between a sob and a laugh, and said, as it seemed, ironically:

"Would you take his place?"

Somewhat ironically, too, I replied, "A crock, my dear lady, with one foot in the grave has no business to put the other into the Pays du Tendre."

But all the same I had an absurd desire to take her at her word, not for the sake of constituting myself her amant en titre, but so as to dispossess the poor boy who was clamouring wildly for her among his mother's snuffy colleagues in Berlin.

"That's another reason why I shrink from your going in search of my husband," she said, dabbing her eyes. "Your ill-health."

"I shall have to go abroad out of this dreadful climate in any case. Doctor's orders. And I might just as well travel about with an object in view as idle in Monte Carlo or Egypt."

"But you might die!" she cried; and her tone touched my heart.

"I've got to," I said, as gently as I could; and the moment the words passed my lips I regretted them.

She turned a terrified look on me and seized me by the arms.

"Is it as bad as that? Why haven't you told me?"

I lifted my arms to her shoulders and shook my head and smiled into her eyes. They seemed true, honest eyes, with a world of pain behind them. If I had not regarded myself as the gentleman in the Greek Tragedy walking straight to my certain doom, and therefore holding myself aloof from such vain things, I should have yielded to the temptation and kissed her there and then. And then goodness knows what would have happened.

As it was it was bad enough. For, as we stood holding on to each other's shoulders in a ridiculous and compromising attitude, the door opened and Dale Kynnersley burst, unannounced, into the room. He paused on the threshold and gaped at us, open-mouthed.



CHAPTER IX

We sprang apart, for all the world like a guilty pair surprised. Luckily the room was in its normal dim state of illumination, so that to one suddenly entering, the expression on our faces was not clearly visible; on the other hand, the subdued light gave a romantic setting to the abominable situation.

Lola saved it, however. She rushed to Dale.

"Do you know what Mr. de Gex was just telling me? His illness—it is worse than any one thought. It's incurable. He can't live long; he must die soon. It's dreadful—dreadful! Did you know it?"

Dale looked from her to me, and after a slight pause, came forward.

"Is this true, Simon?"

A plague on the woman for catching me in the trap! Before Dale came in I was on the point of putting an airy construction on my indiscreet speech. I had no desire to discuss my longevity with any one. I want to keep my miserable secret to myself. It was exasperating to have to entrust it even to Dale. And yet, if I repudiated her implied explanation of our apparent embrace it would have put her hopelessly in the wrong. I had to support her.

"It's what the doctors say," I replied, "but whether it's true or not is another matter."

Again he looked queerly from me to Lola and from Lola back to me. His first impression of our attitude had been a shock from which he found it difficult to recover. I smiled, and, although perfectly innocent, felt a villain.

"Madame Brandt is good enough to be soft-hearted and to take a tragic view of a most commonplace contingency."

"But it isn't commonplace. By God, it's horrible!" cried the boy, the arrested love for me suddenly gushing into his heart. "I had no idea of it. In Heaven's name, Simon, why didn't you tell me? My dear old Simon."

Tears rushed into his eyes and he gripped my hand until I winced. I put my other hand on his shoulder and laughed with a contorted visage.

"My good Dale, the moribund are fragile."

"Oh, Lord, man, how can you make a jest of it?"

"Would you have me drive about in a hearse, instead of a cab, by way of preparation?"

"But what have the doctors told you?" asked Lola.

"My two dear people!" I cried, "for goodness' sake don't fall over me in this way. I'm not going to die to-morrow unless my cook poisons me or I'm struck by lightning. I'm going to live for a deuce of a time yet. A couple of weeks at least. And you'll very much oblige me by not whispering a word abroad about what you've heard this afternoon. It would cause me infinite annoyance. And meanwhile I suggest to you, Dale, as the lawyers say, that you have been impolite enough not to say how-do-you-do to your hostess."

He turned to her rather sheepishly, and apologised. My news had bowled him over, he declared. He shook hands with her, laughed and walked Adolphus about on his hind legs.

"But where have you dropped from?" she asked.

"Berlin. I came straight through. Didn't you get my wire?"

"No."

"I sent one."

"I never got it."

He swung his arms about in a fine rage.

"If ever I get hold of that son of Satan I'll murder him. He was covered up to his beastly eyebrows in silver lace and swords and whistles and medals and things. He walked up and down the railway station as if he owned the German navy and ran trains as a genteel hobby. I gave him ten marks to send the telegram. The miserable beast has sneaked the lot. I'll get at the railway company through the Embassy and have the brute sacked and put in prison. Did you ever hear of such a skunk?"

"He must have thought you a very simple and charming young Englishman," said I.

"You've done the same thing yourself!" he retorted indignantly.

"Pardon me," said I. "If I do send a telegram in that loose way, I choose a humble and honest-looking porter and give him the exact fee for the telegram and a winning smile."

"Rot!" said Dale, and turning to Lola—"He has demoralised the whole railway system of Europe with his tips. I've seen him give a franc to the black greasy devil that bangs at the carriage wheels with a bit of iron. He would give anybody anything."

He had recovered his boyish pride in my ridiculous idiosyncracies, and was in process of illustrating again to Lola what a "splendid chap" I was. Poor lad! If he only knew what a treacherous, traitorous, Machiavelli of a hero he had got. For the moment I suffered from a nasty crick in the conscience.

"Wouldn't he, Adolphus, you celestial old blackguard?" he laughed. Then suddenly: "My hat! You two are fond of darkness! It gives me the creeps. Do you mind, Lola, if I turn on the light?"

He marched in his young way across to the switches and set the room in the blaze he loved. My crick of the conscience was followed by an impulse of resentment. He took it for granted that his will was law in the house. He swaggered around the room with a proprietary air. He threw in the casual "Lola" as if he owned her. Dale is the most delightful specimen of the modern youth of my acquaintance. But even Dale, with all his frank charm of manner, has the modern youth's offhand way with women. I often wonder how women abide it. But they do, more shame to them, and suffer more than they realise by their indulgence. When next I meet Maisie Ellerton I will read her a wholesome lecture, for her soul's good, on the proper treatment a self-respecting female should apply to the modern young man.

Dale filled the room with his clear young laugh, and turned on every light in the place. Lola and I exchanged glances—she had adopted her usual lazy pantherine attitude in the armchair—and her glance was not that of a happy woman to whom a longed-for lover had unexpectedly come. Its real significance I could not divine, but it was more wistful than merely that of a fellow-conspirator.

"By George!" cried Dale, pulling up a chair by Lola's side, and stretching out his long, well-trousered legs in front of the fire. "It's good to come back to civilisation and a Christian language and a fireside—and other things," he added, squeezing Lola's hand. "If only it had not been for this horrible news about you, dear old man——"

"Oh, do forget it and give me a little peace!" I cried. "Why have you come back all of a sudden?"

"The Wymington people wired for me. It seems the committee are divided between me and Sir Gerald Macnaughton."

"He has strong claims," said I. "He has been Mayor of the place and got knighted by mistake. He also gives large dinners and wears a beautiful diamond pin."

"I believe he goes to bed in it. Oh, he's an awful ass! It was he who said at a public function 'The Mayor of Wymington must be like Caesar's wife—all things to all men!' Oh, he's a colossal ass! And his conceit! My word!"

"You needn't expatiate on it," said I. "I who speak have suffered much at the hands of Sir Gerald Macnaughton."

"If he did get into Parliament he'd expect an armchair to be put for him next to the Speaker. Really, Lola, you never saw such a chap. If there was any one else up against me I wouldn't mind. Anyway, I'm running down to Wymington to-morrow to interview the committee. And if they choose me, then it'll be a case of 'Lord don't help me and don't help the b'ar, and you'll see the derndest best b'ar fight that ever was.' I'll make things hum in Wymington!"

He went on eagerly to explain how he would make things hum. For the moment he had forgotten his enchantress who, understanding nothing of platforms and planks and electioneering machinery, smiled with pensive politeness at the fire. Here was the Dale that I knew and loved, boyish, impetuous, slangy, enthusiastic. His dark eyes flashed, and he threw back his head and laughed, as he enunciated his brilliant ideas for capturing the constituency.

"When I was working for you, I made love to half the women in the place. You never knew that, you dear old stick. Now I'm going in on my own account I'll make love to the whole crowd. You won't mind, Lola, will you? There's safety in numbers. And when I have made love to them one by one I'll get 'em all together and make love to the conglomerate mass! And then I'll rake up all the prettiest women in London and get 'em down there to humbug the men—"

"Lady Kynnersley will doubtless be there," said I; "and I don't quite see her—"

He broke in with a laugh: "Oh! the mater! I'll fix up her job all right. She'll just love it, won't she? And then I know a lot of silly asses with motor-cars who'll come down. They can't talk for cob-nuts, and think the Local Option has something to do with vivisection, and have a vague idea that champagne will be cheaper if we get Tariff Reform—but they'll make a devil of a noise at meetings and tote people round the country in their cars holding banners with 'Vote for Kynnersley' on them. That's a sound idea, isn't it?"

I gravely commended the statesmanlike sagacity of his plan of campaign, and promised to write as soon as I got home to one or two members of the committee whom I suspected of pro-Macnaughton leanings.

"I do hope they'll adopt you!" I cried fervently.

"So do I," murmured Lola in her low notes.

"If they don't," said Dale, "I'll ask Raggles to give me an unpaid billet somewhere. But," he added, with a sigh, "that will be an awful rotten game in comparison."

"I'm afraid you won't make Raggles hum," said I.

He laughed, rose and straddled across the hearthrug, his back to the fire.

"He'd throw me out if I tried, wouldn't he? But if they do adopt me—I swear I'll make you proud of me, Simon. I'll stick my soul into it. It's the least I can do in this horrid cuckoo sort of proceeding, and I feel I shall be fighting for you as well as for myself. My dear old chap, you know what I mean, don't you?"

I knew, and was touched. I wished him God-speed with all my heart. He was a clean, honest, generous gentleman, and I admired, loved and respected him as he stood there full of his youth and hope. I suddenly felt quite old and withered at the root of my being, like some decrepit king who hands his crown to the young prince. I rose to take my leave (for what advantage was there in staying?) and felt that I was abandoning to Dale other things beside my crown.

Lola's strong, boneless hand closed round mine in a more enveloping grip than ever. She looked at me appealingly.

"Shall I see you again before you go?"

"Before you go?" cried Dale. "Where are you off to?"

"Somewhere south, out of the fogs."

"When?"

"At once," said I.

He turned to our hostess. "We can't let him go like that. I wonder if you could fix up a little dinner here, Lola, for the three of us. It would be ripping, so cosy, you know."

He glowed with the preposterous inspiration. Lola began politely:

"Of course, if Mr. de Gex——"

"It would be delightful," said I, "but I'm starting at once—to-morrow or the day after. We will have the dinner when I come back and you are a full-blown Member of Parliament."

I made my escape and fled to my own cheerful library. It is oak-panelled and furnished with old oak, and the mezzo-tints on the walls are mellow. Of the latter, I have a good collection, among them a Prince Rupert of which I am proud. I threw myself, a tired man, into an armchair by the fire, and rang the bell for a brandy and soda. Oh, the comfort of the rooms, the comfort of Rogers, the comfort of the familiar backs of the books in the shelves! I felt loth to leave it all and go vagabonding about the cold world on my lunatic adventure. For the first time in my life I cursed Marcus Aurelius. I shook my fist at him as he stood on the shelf within easy reach of my hand. It was he who had put into my head this confounded notion of achieving eumoiriety. Am I dealing to myself, I asked, a happy lot and portion? Certainly not, I replied, and when Rogers brought me my brandy and soda I drank it off desperately. After that I grew better, and drew up a merry little Commination Service.

A plague on the little pain inside.

A plague on Lady Kynnersley for weeping me into my rash undertaking.

A plague on Professor Anastasius Papadopoulos for aiding and abetting Lady Kynnersley.

A plague on Captain Vauvenarde for running away from his wife; for giving up the army; for not letting me know whether he is alive or dead; for being, I'll warrant him, in the most uncomfortable and ungetatable spot on the globe.

A plague on Dale for becoming infatuated with Lola Brandt. A plague on him for beguiling me to her acquaintance; for bursting into the room at that unfortunate moment; for his generous, unsuspecting love for me; for his youth and hope and charm; for asking me to dine with Lola and himself in ripping cosiness.

A plague on myself—just to show that I am broad-minded.

And lastly, a plague, a special plague, a veritable murrain on Lola Brandt for complicating the splendid singleness of my purpose. I don't know what to think of myself. I have become a common conundrum—which provides the lowest form of intellectual amusement. It is all her fault.

Listen. I set out to free a young man of brilliant promise, at his mother's earnest entreaty, from an entanglement with an impossible lady, and to bring him to the feet of the most charming girl in the world who is dying of love for him. Could intentions be simpler or more honourable or more praiseworthy?

I find myself, after two or three weeks, the lady's warm personal friend, to a certain extent her champion bound by a quixotic oath to restore her husband to her arms, and regarding my poor Dale with a feeling which is neither more nor less than green-eyed jealousy. I am praying heaven to grant his adoption by the Wymington committee, not because it will be the first step of the ladder of his career, but because the work and excitement of a Parliamentary election will prohibit overmuch lounging in my chair in Lola Brandt's drawing-room.

Is there any drug I wonder which can restore a eumoirous tone to the system?

Of course, Dale came round to my chambers in the evening and talked about Lola and himself and me until I sent him home to bed. He kept on repeating at intervals that I was glorious. I grew tired at last of the eulogy, and, adopting his vernacular, declared that I should be jolly glad to get out of this rubbishy world. He protested. There was never such a world. It was gorgeous. What was wrong with it, anyway? As I could not show him the Commination Service, I picked imaginary flaws in the universe. I complained of its amateurishness of design. But Dale, who loves fact, was not drawn into a theological disputation.

"Do you know, I had a deuce of a shock when I came into Lola's this afternoon?" he cried irrelevantly, with a loud laugh. "I thought—it was a damnable and idiotic thing to come into my head—but I couldn't help thinking you had cut me out! I wanted to tell you. You must forgive me for being such an ass. And I want to thank you for being so good to her while I was away. She has been telling me. You like her, don't you? I knew you would. No one can help it. Besides being other things, she's is such a good sort, isn't she?"

I admitted her many excellencies, while he walked about the room.

"By Jove!" he cried, coming to a halt. "I've got a grand idea. My little plan has succeeded so well with you that I've a good mind to try it on my mother."

"What on earth do you mean?" I asked.

"Why shouldn't I take the bull by the horns and bring my mother and Lola together?"

I gasped. "My dear boy," said I. "Do you want to kill me outright? I can't stand such shocks to the imagination."

"But it would be grand!" he exclaimed, delighted. "Why shouldn't mother take a fancy to Lola? You can imagine her roping her in for the committee!"

I refused to imagine it for one instant, and I had the greatest difficulty in the world to persuade him to renounce his maniacal project. I am going to permit no further complications.



I have been busy for the past day or two setting my house in order. I start to-morrow for Paris. All my little affairs are comfortably settled, and I can set out on my little trip to Avernus via Paris and the habitat of Captain Vauvenarde with a quiet conscience. I have allayed the anxiety of my sisters, whispered mysterious encouragement to Maisie Ellerton, held out hopes of her son's emancipation to Lady Kynnersley, played fairy godmother to various poor and deserving persons, and brought myself into an enviable condition of glowing philanthropy.

To my great relief the Wymington committee have adopted Dale as their candidate at the by-election. He can scarcely contain himself for joy. He is like a child who has been told that he shall be taken to the seaside. I believe he lies awake all night thinking how he will make things hum.

The other side have chosen Wilberforce, who unsuccessfully contested the Ferney division of Wiltshire at the last general election. He is old and ugly. Dale is young and beautiful. I think Dale will get in.

I have said good-bye to Lola. The astonishing woman burst into tears and kissed my hands and said something about my being the arbiter of her destiny—a Gallic phrase which she must have picked up from Captain Vauvenarde. Then she buried her face in the bristling neck of Adolphus, the Chow dog, and declared him to be her last remaining consolation. Even Anastasius Papadopoulos had ceased to visit her. I uttered words of comfort.

"I have left you Dale at any rate."

She smiled enigmatically through her tears.

"I'm not ungrateful. I don't despise the crumbs."

Which remark, now that I come to think of it, was not flattering to my young friend.

But what is the use of thinking of it? My fire is burning low. It is time I ended this portion of my "Rule and Example of Eumoiriety," which, I fear, has not followed the philosophic line I originally intended.