"That's good," said Miss Gregory. She saw the three others exchange another glance.

The English youth was rapt; for some moments his eyes were unseeing, and his lips moved without sound. It was not difficult to see what home meant for him, a goal achieved at hazard, something familiar and sympathetic, worth all the rest of the world. He came back to his surroundings with a long sigh.

"You don't happen to know Clapham Junction, ma'am?" he suggested. "Not the station, I don't mean, but the place? No? Well, that's where I'm off to. I 'aven't seen a tramcar for eight years; it'll be queer at first, I expect." He looked round him slowly at the low bare room and the men in white clothes and the whispering night without. "My mother takes lodgers," he added inconsequently.

"She will be glad to see you," said Miss Gregory.

"She will that," he agreed. He dropped his voice to the tones of confidence. "I got an idea," he said. "Give her a surprise. I'll go along to the house just about dark and say I'm lookin' for a room. Eh? And she'll begin about terms. Then I'll begin. 'Never you mind about terms,' I'll say. ''Ere's the price of eight years sweatin', and God bless you, old lady!'" He blinked rapidly, for his eyes were wet. "What do you think of that for a surprise?"

"Capital!" agreed Miss Gregory. "Are you going down the Coast by the boat to-morrow?"

"That's it," he cried. "I'm going second-class, like a gentleman. Home, by gosh!"

"Then," suggested Miss Gregory, eyeing his sullen companions, "don't you think it would be best if you went and got some sleep now? You wouldn't care to miss the boat, I suppose?"

He stared at her. "No," he said, as if the contingency had just occurred to him. He sat back; his mild, insignificant face wore a look of alarm. "No, I shouldn't. It wouldn't do." His voice dropped again. "It wouldn't do," he repeated. "I've got it on me, an' this ain't what you call a moral place."

Miss Gregory nodded comprehendingly. "I know," she said. "So wouldn't it be as well on all accounts to get to bed behind a locked door?"

"You've hit it," he said. "That's what I got to do—and lock the door. That's common sense, that is." He stared at her for an instant, then rose with care and deliberation to his feet. He had altogether forgotten his companions; he did not even see them.

"That is, if it'll lock," he added, and held out his hand to Miss Gregory.

"Good-bye," she said, taking it heartily. "I'm glad to hear of your good fortune."

He gulped and left her, walking forth through the little tables with the uncanny straightness of the man "in liquor." Miss Gregory drank up her coffee and sat where she was.

She could see the men at the next table out of the corner of her eye; their heads were together, and they were whispering excitedly. The whole affair was plain enough to a veteran of the world's byways like Miss Gregory; the plan had been to make the youth drunk, help him forth, and rob him easily in some convenient corner. He was the kind of man who lends himself to being robbed; the real wonder was that it had not been done already. But, mingled with her contempt for his helplessness, Miss Gregory felt a certain softening. His homing instinct, as blind as that of a domestic animal, his rejoicing in his return, his childish plan for taking his mother by surprise, even his loyalty to the tramcars and all the busy littleness of Clapham Junction—these touched something in her akin to the goodness of motherhood. It occurred to her that perhaps he had been better off under the lights of the cafe than alone on his way to his bed; and at that moment the three men at the next table, their conference over, rose and went out. She sat still till they were clear; then, on an impulse of officiousness, got up and went out after them.

Their white clothes shone in the darkness to guide her; they cut across the square and vanished in one of those dark alleys she had already remarked. Miss Gregory straightened her felt hat, took a fresh grip of the stout umbrella, and followed determinedly. The corner of the alley shut out the lights behind her; tall walls with scarce windows fast shuttered hemmed her in; the vast night of the tropics drooped its shadow over her. Through it all she plodded at the gait familiar to many varieties of men from Poughkeepsie to Pekin, a squat, resolute figure, reckless alike of risk and ridicule, an unheroic heroine. There reached her from time to time the noises that prevail in those places—noises filtering thinly through shutters, the pad of footsteps, and once—it seemed to come from some roof invisible above her—the sound of sobbing, abandoned, strangled, heart-shaking sobs. She frowned and went on.

A spot where the way forked made her hesitate; the men she was following were no longer in sight. But as she pondered there came to guide her a sudden cry, clear and poignant, the shout of a startled man. It was from the right-hand path, and promptly, as though on a summons, she bent her grey head and broke into a run in the direction of it. As she ran, pounding valiantly, she groped in her pocket for a dog-whistle she had with her; she took it in her lips, and, never ceasing to run, blew shrill call upon call. Her umbrella was poised for war, but, rounding a corner, she saw that her whistling had done its work; three white jackets were making off at top-speed. It takes little to alarm a thief; Miss Gregory had counted on that.

It was not till she fell over him that she was aware of the man on the ground, who rolled over and cried out at the movement. She put a steady hand on him.

"Are you hurt?" she asked eagerly.

He groaned; his face was a pale blur against the earth.

"They've got me," he said. "They stuck a knife in my back. I'm bleeding; I'm bleeding."

"Get up," bade Miss Gregory. "Bleeding or not, we must get away from here. Up you get."

She pulled him to a sitting position, and he screamed and resisted, but Miss Gregory was his master. By voice and force she brought him upright; he could stand alone, and seemed surprised to find it out.

"Take my arm," she ordered him. "Lean on it; don t be afraid. Now, where are your rooms?"

"On this way," he sobbed.

Evidently he had an ugly wound, for at each few steps he had to stop and rest, and sometimes he swayed, and Miss Gregory had to hold him up. His breath came hastily; he was soft with terror. "They'll come back! they'll come back!" he gabbled, tottering on his feet.

"They're coming now; I can hear them," replied Miss Gregory grimly. "Here, lean in this doorway behind me, man. Stop that whimpering, will you! Now, keep close."

She propped him against the nail-studded door, and placed herself before, him, and the three robbers, bunched together in a group, stealing along the middle of the way, might almost have gone past without seeing them. But it was not a chance to trust to. Miss Gregory let them come abreast of her; her whole honest body was tense to the occasion; on the due moment she flung herself forward and the brandished umbrella rained loud blows on aghast heads; and at the same time she summoned to her aid her one accomplishment—she shrieked. She was a strong woman, deep-chested, full-lunged; her raw yell shattered the stillness of the night like some crazy trumpet; it broke from her with the suddenness of a catastrophe, nerve-sapping, ear-scaring, heart-striking. Before it and the assault of the stout umbrella the robbers broke; a panic captured them; they squealed, clasped at each other, and ran in mere senseless amaze. The Latin blood, when diluted with Coast mixtures, is never remarkable for courage; but braver men might have scattered at the alarm of that mighty discordancy attacking from behind.

Fortunately the door they sought was not far off; through it they entered a big untidy room, stone-floored as the custom is, and littered with all the various trifles a man gathers about him on the Coast. Miss Gregory put her patient on the narrow bed and turned to the door; true to his fears, it would not lock. The youth was very pale and in much fear; blood stained the back of his clothes, and his eyes followed her about in appeal.

"You must wait a little," Miss Gregory told him. "I'll look at that wound of yours when I've seen to the door. No lock, of course." She pondered frowningly. "It's a childish thing at the best," she added thoughtfully; "but it may be a novelty in these parts. Have you ever arranged a booby trap, my boy?"

"No," he answered, wonderingly.

Miss Gregory shook her head. "The lower classes are getting worse and worse," she observed. She put a chair by the door, which stood a little ajar, and looked about her.

"As you are going away you won't want this china." It was his ewer and wash-hand basin. "I don't see anything better, and it'll make a smash, at any rate."

"What you goin' to do, ma'am?" asked the man on the bed.

"Watch," she bade him. It was not easy, but with care she managed to poise the basin and the ewer in it on top of the door, so that it leaned on the lintel and must fall as soon as the door was pushed wider.

"Now," she said, when it was done, "let's have a look at that cut."

It was an ugly gash high in the back, to the left of the spine—a bungler's or a coward's attempt at the terrible heart-stab. Miss Gregory, examining it carefully, was of opinion that she could have done it better; it had bled copiously, but she judged it not to be dangerous. She washed it and made a bandage for it out of a couple of the patient's shirts, and he found himself a good deal more comfortable. He lay back on his bed with some of the color restored to his face, and watched her as she moved here and there about the room with eyes that were trustful and slavish.

"Well," said Miss Gregory, when she had completed an examination of the apartment, "there doesn't seem to be much more one can do. They'll come back, I suppose? But of course they will. How much money have you got about you?"

"About two thousand pounds, ma'am," he said, meekly.

"H'm!" Miss Gregory thought a moment. "And they know it? Of course." She added her little sharp nod of certainty. "Well, when they come we'll attend to them."

There was a tiny mirror hanging from a nail, and she went to it, patted her grey hair to neatness, and re-established her felt hat on top of it. The place was as still as the grave; no noise reached it from without. The one candle at the bedside threw her shadow monstrously up the wall; while she fumbled with her hatpins it pictured a looming giantess brandishing weapons.

She was still at the mirror, with hatpins held in her mouth, when the steps of the robbers made themselves heard. The man on the bed started up on his elbow, with wide eyes and a sagging mouth. Miss Gregory quelled him with a glance, then crossed the floor and blew the candle out. In the darkness she laid her hat down that it might not come to harm, and put a reassuring hand on the youth's shoulder, it was quaking, and she murmured him a caution to keep quiet. Together, with breath withheld, they heard the men in the entry of the house, three of them, coming guardedly. Miss Gregory realized that this was the real onslaught; they would be nerved for shrieks this time. She took her hand from the youth's shoulder with another whispered word, and stepped to the middle of the room and stood motionless. The noise of breathing reached her, then a foot shuffled, and on the instant somebody sprang forward and shoved the door wide.

The jug and basin smashed splendidly; whoever it fell on uttered a little shrill yell and paused, confounded by the darkness. Miss Gregory, her eyes more tuned to it, could make out the blur of white clothes; with noiseless feet she moved towards them. She was all purpose and directness; no tremor disturbed her. As calmly as she would have shaken hands with the Consul she reached forward, felt her enemy, and delivered a cool and well-directed thrust. An appalling yell answered her, and she stepped back a space, the hatpin held ready for another attack. There was a tense instant of inaction, and then the three rushed, and one bowled her over on the floor and fell with her.

Miss Gregory fell on her side, and before she was well down the steel hatpin, eight inches long of good Paris metal, plunged and found its prey. The man roared and wallowed clear, and she rose. The big room was wild with stamping feet and throaty noises such as dogs make. The bedside chair, kicked aside struck her ankles; she picked it up and threw it at the sounds. It seemed to complicate matters. The place was as dark as a well, and she moved groping with her hands towards the bed. Some one backed into her—another yell and a jump, and, as she stepped back, the swish of a blow aimed towards her that barely missed her. Then she was by the bed, feeling over it; it was empty.

She had some moments of rest; every one was still, save for harsh breathing. But she dared not stand long, lest their eyes too should adapt themselves to the dark. It was evident that nobody had firearms; there was that much to be thankful for. She gathered herself for an attack, a rush at the enemy with an active hatpin, when something touched her foot. She bent, swiftly alert for war, but arrested the pin on its way. It was a hand from under the bed; her protege had taken refuge there. She took his wrist and pulled; he whimpered, and there was a grunt from the middle of the room at the sound, but he came crawling. She dared not whisper, for those others were moving already, but with her cool, firm hand on his wrist, she sank down on all-fours and drew him on towards the door. It was impossible to make no noise, but at any rate their noise was disconcerting; the robbers could not guess what it betokened. Each of them had his stab, a tingling, unaccountable wound, a hurt to daunt a man, and they were separately standing guard each over his own life.

They encountered one half way across the room. He felt them near him, and sent a smashing blow with a knife into the empty air. Miss Gregory, always with that considered and careful swiftness that was so like deliberation, reared to her knees, her left hand still holding the youth's wrist, and lunged. Another yell, and the man, leaping back, fouled a comrade, who stabbed and sprang away. They heard the man fall and move upon the floor like a dying fish, with sounds of choking. Then the door was before them, and, crawling still, with infinite pains to be noiseless, they passed through it. From within the room the choking noises followed them till they gained the open air.

The tortuous alley received them like a refuge; they fled along it with lightened hearts, taking all turnings that might baffle a chase, till at last Miss Gregory smelt acacias and they issued again into the little square. To Miss Gregory it was almost amazing that the cafes should still be lighted, their tables thronged, the music insistent. While history had paced for her the world had stood still. She stood and looked across at the lights thoughtfully.

The youth at her side coughed. "The least I can do," he suggested inanely, "is ask you to 'ave a cup of coffee, ma'am."

Miss Gregory turned on him sharply.

"And then?" she asked. "After the coffee, what then?"

He shuffled his feet uneasily. "Well, ma'am," he said; "this hole in my back is more'n a bit painful. So I thought I'd get along to the hotel an' have a lie down."

She looked at him thoughtfully. Her head was bare, and the night breeze from the sea whipped a strand of grey hair across her brow. She brushed it away a little wearily.

"Unless there's anything more I can do for you," suggested the young man smoothly.

Anything more he could do for her! She smiled, considering him. The events of the night had not ruffled him; his blonde face was still mild, insignificant, plebeian. Of such men slaves are made; their part is to obey orders, to be without responsibility, to be guided, governed, and protected by their betters. Miss Gregory, sister of a Major-General, friend of Colonial Governors, aunt of a Member of Parliament, author of "The Saharan Solitudes," and woman of the world, saw that she had served her purpose, her work was done.

"Thank you," she said; "there is nothing more. You had better go to bed at once."

There was a broken fountain in the middle of the square, overgrown with sickly lichen, and round it ran a stone bench. The acacias sheltered it, and a dribble of water from the conduit sounded always, fitting itself to one's thoughts in a murmuring cadence. Here Miss Gregory disposed herself, and here the dawn found her, a little disheveled, and looking rather old with the chill of that bleak hour before the sun rises. But her grey head was erect, her broad back straight, and the regard of her eyes serene and untroubled always. She was waiting for the hour when the Consul would be accessible; he was the son of her dearest friend.

"And I must not forget," she told herself—"I really must not forget to attend to that hotel man."



VII

THE MASTER

Papa Musard, whenever he felt that he was about to die, which happened three times a year at least, would beckon as with a finger from the grimy Montmartre tenement in which he abode and call Rufin to come and bid him farewell. The great artist always came; he never failed to show himself humble to humble people, and, besides, Papa Musard had known Corot—or said that he had—and in his capacity of a model had impressed his giant shoulders and its beard on the work of three generations of painters.

The boy who carried the summons sat confidently on the kerb outside the restaurant at which Rufin was used to lunch, and rose to his feet as the tall, cloaked figure turned the corner of the street and approached along the sunlit pavement.

"Monsieur Musard said you would be here at one o'clock," he explained, presenting the note.

"Then it is very fortunate that I am not late," said Rufin politely, accepting it. "But how did you know me?"

The boy—he was aged perhaps twelve—gave a sophisticated shrug.

"Monsieur Musard said: 'At one o'clock there will approach an artist with the airs of a gentleman. That is he.'"

Rufin laughed and opened the note. While he read it the boy watched him with the admiration which, in Paris, even the rat-like gamin of the streets pays to distinction such as his. He was a tall man splendidly blonde, and he affected the cloak, the slouch hat, the picturesque amplitude of hair which were once the uniform of the artist. But these, in his final effect, were subordinate to 'a certain breadth and majesty of brow, a cast of countenance at once benign and austere, as though the art he practiced so supremely both exacted much and conferred much. He made a fine and potent figure as he stood, with his back to the bright street and the gutter-child standing beside him like a familiar companion, and read the smudged scrawl of Papa Musard.

"So Musard is very ill again, is he?" he asked of the boy. "Have you seen him yourself?"

"Oh yes," replied the boy; "I have seen him. He lies in bed and his temper is frightful."

"He is a very old man, you see," said Rufin. "Old men have much to suffer. Well, tell him I will come this afternoon to visit him. And this"—producing a coin from his pocket—"this is for you."

The gamin managed, in some fashion of his own, to combine, in a single movement, a snatch at the money with a gesture of polite deprecation. They parted with mutual salutations, two gentlemen who had carried an honorable transaction to a worthy close. A white- aproned waiter smiled upon them tolerantly and held open the door that Rufin might enter to his lunch.

It was in this manner that the strings were pulled which sent Rufin on foot to Montmartre, with the sun at his back and the streets chirping about him. Two young men, passing near the Opera, saluted him with the title of "maitre;" and then the Paris of sleek magnificence lay behind him and the street sloped uphill to the Place Pigalle and all that region where sober, industrious Parisians work like beavers to furnish vice for inquiring foreigners. Yet steeper slopes ascended between high houses toward his destination, and he came at last to the cobbled courtyard, overlooked by window-dotted cliffs of building, above which Papa Musard had his habitation.

A fat concierge, whose bulged and gaping clothes gave her the aspect of an over-ripe fruit, slept stonily in a chair at the doorway. Rufin was not certain whether Musard lived on the fourth floor or the fifth, and would have been glad to inquire, but he had not the courage to prod that slumbering bulk, and was careful to edge past without touching it. The grimy stair led him upward to find out for himself.

On the third floor, according to his count, a door looked like what he remembered of Musard's, but it yielded no answer to his knocking. A flight higher there was another which stood an inch or so ajar, and this he ventured to push open that he might look in. It yielded him a room empty of life, but he remained in the doorway looking.

It was a commonplace, square, ugly room, the counterpart of a hundred others in that melancholy building; but its window, framing a saw- edged horizon of roofs and chimneys, faced to the north, and some one, it was plain, had promoted it to the uses of a studio. An easel stood in the middle of the floor with a canvas upon it; the walls were covered with gross caricatures drawn upon the bare plaster with charcoal. A mattress and some tumbled bedclothes lay in one corner, and a few humble utensils also testified that the place was a dwelling as well as a workshop.

Rufin looked back to be sure that no one was coming up the stairs, and then tiptoed into the room to see what hung on the easel.

"After all," he murmured, "an artist has the right."

The picture on the easel was all but completed; it was a quarter- length painting of a girl. Stepping cautiously around the easel, he came upon a full view of it suddenly, and forthwith forgot all his precautions to be unheard. Here was a thing no man could keep quiet! With his first glance he saw—he, himself a painter, a creator, a judge—that he stood in the presence of a great work of art, a vision, a power.

"But here!" he exclaimed amazedly. "Of all places—here!"

The painted face looked out at him with all the sorrowful wisdom that is comprised in a life sharpened on the grindstone of a remorseless civilization. It was a girl such as one might find anywhere in that neighborhood, she had the hardy prettiness, the alertness, the predatory quality which belong to wild creatures civilized by force. It was set on the canvas with a skill that made Rufin smile with frank pleasure; but the skill, the artifice of the thing, were the least part of it. What was wonderful was the imagination, the living insight, that represented not only the shaped product of a harsh existence, but the womanhood at the root of it. It was miraculous; it was convincing as life is convincing; it was great.

Rufin, the painter whose fame was secure, upon whom Art had showered gifts, gazed at it, absorbed and reverent. He realized that in this picture his age had achieved a masterpiece; he was at least the contemporary of an immortal.

"Ah!" he said, with an impulse of high indignation. "And while he paints here and sleeps on the floor, they buy my pictures!"

He stepped back from the easel. He was equal to a great gesture, as to a great thought. As though he had greeted a living princess, he swept his hat off in a bow to the work of this unknown fellow.

Papa Musard in his bed, with his comforts—mostly in bottles— arranged within his reach, found it rather shocking that a distinguished artist should enter the presence of a dying man like— as he remarked during his convalescence—a dog going into a pond. He sat up in astonishment.

"Musard," demanded Rufin abruptly, "who is the artist who lives in the room below this?"

"Oh, him!" replied Papa Musard, sinking back on his pillow. "M'sieur Rufin, this is the last time I shall appeal to you. Before long I shall again be in the presence of the great master, of Corot, of him who——"

Rufin, it seemed, had lost all respect both for Corot and death. He waved an imperious arm, over which his cloak flapped like a black wing.

"Who is the artist in the room below?" repeated Rufin urgently. "Do you know him?"

"No," replied Papa Musard, with emphasis. "Know him—an Italian, a ruffian, an apache, a man with hair on his arms like a baboon! I do not know him. There!"

He was offended; a dying man has his privileges, at least. The face, gnarled and tempestuously bearded, which had been perpetuated by a hundred laborious painters, glared from the pillow at Rufin with indignation and protest.

Rufin suppressed an impulse to speak forcibly, for one has no more right to strip a man of his pose than of his shirt. He smiled at the angry invalid conciliatingly.

"See how I forget myself!" he said apologetically. "We artists are all alike. Show us a picture and our manners go by the board. With you, Musard, need I say more?"

"You have said a lot," grumbled the ancient of days. "Coming in roaring like a bull! What picture has upset you?"

"A picture you have not seen," said Rufin, "or you would be grasping my hand and weeping for joy—you who know pictures better than us all!" He surveyed the invalid, who was softening. Musard knew no more of pictures than a frame-maker; but that was a fact one did not mention in his presence.

"Since Corot," sighed Musard, "I have seen few pictures which were— en effet—pictures."

"You have great memories," agreed Rufin hastily. "But I have just seen a picture—ah, but a picture, my friend!"

The old cunning face on the pillow resisted the charm of his manner, the gentleness of his appeal.

"Not his?" demanded Papa Musard. "Not in the room underneath? Not one of the daubs of that assassin, that cut-throat, that Italian?"

Rufin nodded, as though confirming a pleasant surprise. "Is it not strange," he said, "how genius will roost on any perch? It is true, then, that he is a person who offends your taste? That is bad. Tell me about him, Musard."

He reached himself a chair and sat down near the foot of the bed.

"You are always making a fuss of some worthless creature," grumbled Musard. "I do not even know the man's name. They speak of him as Peter the Lucky—it is a nickname he has on the streets, an apache name. He has been in prison, too, and he bellows insults at his elders and betters when they pass him on the stairs. He is a man of no soul!"

"Yes," said Rufin. "But did you say he had been in prison?"

"I did," affirmed Musard. "Ask anyone. It is not that I abuse him; he is, in fact, a criminal. Once he threw an egg at a gendarme. And yet you come to me—a dying man—and declare that such a creature can paint! Bah!"

"Yes," said Rufin, "it is strange."

It was clearly hopeless to try to extract any real information from Papa Musard; that veteran was fortified with prejudices. Rufin resigned himself to the inevitable; and, although he was burning with eagerness to find the painter of the picture he had recently seen, to welcome him into the sunlight of fame and success, he bent his mind to the interview with Papa Musard.

"I have had my part in the development of Art," the invalid was saying at the end of three-quarters of an hour. "Perhaps I have not had my full share of recognition. Since Corot, no artist has been magnanimous; they have become tradesmen, shopkeepers."

"You are hard on us, Musard," said Rufin. "We're a bad lot, but we do our best. Here is a small matter of money that may help to make you comfortable. I'm sorry you have such an unpleasant neighbor."

"You are going?" demanded Musard.

"I must," said Rufin. "To-morrow I go into the country for some weeks, and nothing is packed yet."

"Corot would not have left an old man to die in solitude," remarked Musard thoughtfully.

Rufin smiled regretfully and got away while he could. Papa Musard in an hour could wear down even his patience.

The painter's room was still unlocked and unoccupied as he descended the stairs; he entered it for another look at the picture. He needed to confirm his memory, to be assured that he had not endowed the work with virtue not its own. The trivial, cheaply pretty face fronted him again, with its little artificial graces only half-masking the sore, tormented femininity behind it. Yes, it was the true art, the poignant vision, a thing belonging to all time.

In the courtyard the fat concierge was awake, in a torpid fashion, and knitting. She lifted her greedy and tyrannical eyes at the tall figure of Rufin, with its suggestion of splendors and dignities. But she was not much more informative than Papa Musard had been.

"Oh, the painter!" she exclaimed, when she understood who was in question. "Ah, M'sieur, it is two days since I have seen him. He is not of a punctual habit—no! How often have I waked in the blackness of night, upon a frightful uproar of the bell, to admit him, and he making observations at the top of his voice that would cause a fish to blush! An Italian, M'sieur—yes! But all the same it astonishes no one when he is away for two days."

"The Italians are like that," generalized Rufin unscrupulously. "His door is unlocked, Madame, and there is a picture in his room which is—well, valuable."

"He sold the key," lamented Madame, "and the catches of the window, and the bell-push, and a bucket of mine which I had neglected to watch. And he called me a she-camel when I remonstrated."

"In Italian it is a mere jest," Rufin assured her. "See, Madame, this is my card, which I beg you to give him. I am obliged to leave Paris to-morrow, but on my return I shall have the honor to call on him. And this is a five-franc piece!"

The big coin seemed to work on the concierge like a powerful drug. She choked noisily and was for the while almost enthusiastic.

"He shall have the card," she promised. "I swear it! After all, artists must have their experiences. Doubtless the monsieur who resides above is a great painter?"

"A very great painter," replied Rufin.

His work, during the next three weeks, exiled him to a green solitude of flat land whose horizons were ridged by poplars growing beside roads laid down as though with a ruler, so straight they were as they sliced across the rich levels. It was there he effected the vital work on his great picture, "Promesse," a revelation of earth gravid with life, of the opulent promise and purpose of spring. It is the greater for what lodged in his mind of the picture he had seen in the Montmartre tenement. It was constant in his thought, the while he noted on his canvas the very texture of the year's early light; it aided his brush. In honesty and humbleness of heart, as he worked, he acknowledged a debt to the unknown Italian who stole the key of the room to sell, and called his concierge a she-camel.

It was a debt he knew he could pay. He, Rufin, whose work was in the Luxembourg, in galleries in America, in Russia, in the palaces of kings, could assure the painter of Montmartre of fame. He went to seek him on the evening of his return to the city.

The fat concierge preserved still her burst and overripe appearance, and at the sight of him she was so moved that she rose from her chair and stood upright to voice her lamentations.

"Monsieur, what can I say? He is gone! It was a nightmare. It is true that he omitted to pay his rent—a defect of his temperament, without doubt. But the proprietor does not make these distinctions. After three weeks he would expel Michelangelo himself. The monsieur who was driven out—he resisted. He employed blasphemies, maledictions; he smote my poor husband on the nose and in the stomach—all to no purpose, for he is gone. I was overcome with grief, but what could I do?"

"At least you know whither he went?" suggested Rufin.

"But, M'sieur, how should I know? His furniture—it was not much—was impounded for the rent, else one might have followed it. He took away with him only one picture, and that by force of threats and assaults."

"Oh yes, of course he would take that," agreed the artist.

"He retired down the street with it, walking backward in the middle of the road and not ceasing to make outcries at us," said the concierge. "He uttered menaces; he was dangerous. Could I leave my poor husband to imperil myself by following such a one? I ask M'sieur could I?"

"I suppose not," said Rufin, staring at her absently. He was thinking, by an odd momentary turn of fancy, how well he could have spared this gruesome woman for another look at the picture.

"Who are his friends?" he inquired.

But the concierge could tell him nothing useful.

"He had no friends in the house," she said. "Our poor honest people— he treated them with contumely. I do not know his friends, M'sieur."

"Ah, well," said Rufin, "I shall come across him somehow."

He saluted her perfunctorily and was about to turn away, but the avidity of her face reminded him that he had a standard to live up to. He produced another five-franc piece and was pursued to the gate by the stridency of her gratitude.

A man—even a man of notable attributes and shocking manners—is as easily lost in Paris as anywhere; it is a city of many shadows. At the end of some weeks, during which his work had suffered from his new preoccupation, Rufin saw himself baffled. His man had vanished effectually, carrying with him to his obscurity the great picture. It was the memory of that consummate thing that held Rufin to his task of finding the author; he pictured it to himself, housed in some garret, making the mean place wonderful. He obtained the unofficial aid of the police and of many other people whose business in life is with the underworld. He even caused a guarded paragraph to appear in certain papers, which spoke temperately of a genius in hiding, for whom fame was ripe whenever he should choose to claim it. But Paris at that moment was thrilled by a series of murders by apaches, and the notice passed unremarked.

In the end, therefore, Rufin restored himself to his work, richer by a memory, poorer by a failure. Not till then came the last accident in the chain of accidents by which the matter had presented itself to him.

Some detail of quite trivial business took him to see an official at the Palais de Justice, In the great Salle des Pas Perdus there was, as always, a crowd of folk, jostling, fidgeting, making a clamor of mixed voices. He did not visit it often enough to know that the crowd was larger than usual and strongly leavened with an element of furtive shabby men and desperate calm women. He found his official and disposed of his affair, and the official, who was willing enough to be seen in the company of a man of Rufin's position, rose politely to see him forth, and walked with him into the noisy hall.

"You are not often here, Monsieur Rufin?" he suggested. "And yet, as you see, here is much matter for an artist. These faces, eh? All the brigands of Paris are here to-day. In there"—and he pointed to one of the many doors—"the trial is proceeding of those apaches."

"A great occasion, no doubt," said Rufin. He looked casually towards the door which his companion indicated. "Of course I have read of the matter in the newspapers, but——"

He ceased speaking abruptly. A movement in the crowd between him and the door had let him see, for a space of seconds, a girl who leaned against the wall, strained and pale, as though waiting in a patient agony for news, for tidings of the fates that were being decided within. From the moment his eyes rested on her he was sure; there was no possibility of a mistake; it was the girl whose face, reproduced, interpreted, and immortalized, looked forth from the canvas he had seen in the Montmartre tenement.

"Two of them held the gendarme, while the third cut his throat with his own sword. A grotesque touch, that—vous ne trouvez pas? tres fort!"—the official was remarking when Rufin took him by the arm.

"That girl," he said. "You see her?—against the wall there. I cannot talk with her in this crowd, and I must talk to her at once. Where is there some quiet Place?"

"Eh?" The little babbling official had a moment of doubt. But he reflected that one is not a great artist without being eccentric; and his amiable brow cleared.

"She is certainly a type," he said, peering on tiptoe. "Wonderful! You cast your eye upon all this crowd and at once, in a single glance, you pluck forth the type—wonderful! As to a place, that is easy. My office is at your service."

The girl lifted hunted and miserable eyes to the tall, grave man who looked down upon her and raised his hat.

"I have something to say to you," he said. "Come with me."

A momentary frantic hope flamed in her thin countenance. It sank, and she hesitated. Girls of her world are practiced in discounting such requests. But Rufin's courteous and fastidious face was above suspicion; without a word she followed him.

The office to which he led her was an arid, neat room, an economical legal factory for making molehills into mountains. A desk and certain chairs stood like chill islands about its floor; it had the forlorn atmosphere of a waiting-room. The little official whose workshop it was held open the door for them, followed them in, and closed it again. "Do not be alarmed, my child," he said to the tragic girl. "This gentleman is a great artist. You will be honored in serving him."

Rufin stilled him with an upraised hand and fetched a chair for the girl. She rested an arm on the back of it, but did not sit down. She did not understand why she had been brought to this room, and stared with hard, preoccupied eyes at the tall man with the mild, still face.

"I recognized you by a picture I saw some months ago in a room in Montmartre," said Rufin.

"It was a great picture, the work of a great man."

"Ah!" The girl let her breath go in a long sigh. "Monsieur knows him, then? And knows that he is a great man? For he is—he is a great man!"

She spoke with passion, with a living fervor of conviction, but her eyes still appealed.

"You and I both know it quite certainly, Mademoiselle," replied Rufin. "Everybody will know it very soon. It is a truth that cannot be hidden. But where is the picture?!"

"I have it," she answered.

"Take care of it, then," said Rufin. "You have a great trust. And the painter—have you got him, too?"

She stared at him, bewildered. "The painter? The painter of the picture?"

"Of course," said Rufin. "Who else?"

"But——" she looked from him to the benign official, who had the air of presiding at a ceremony. "Then you don't know? You haven't heard?"

Comprehension lit in her face; she uttered a wretched little laugh.

"Ah, v'la de la comedie!" she cried. "No, I haven't got him. They have taken him from me. They have taken him, and in there"—her forefinger shot out and pointed to the wall and beyond it—"in there, in a room full of people who stare and listen, they are making him into a murderer."

"Then—parbleu!" The little official was seized by comprehension as by a fit. "Then there is an artist—the artist of whom you talk—who is one of the apaches! It is unbelievable!"

At the word apaches the girl turned on him with teeth bared as though in a snarl. But at the sound of Rufin's voice she subsided.

"What is his name—quickly?" he demanded.

"Giaconi," she answered.

Rufin looked his question at the little official, who turned to the girl.

"Peter the Lucky?" he queried.

She nodded dejectedly.

The little official made a grimace. "It was he," he said, "who did the throat-cutting. Tiens! this begins to be a drama."

The girl, with drooping head, made a faint moan of protest and misery. Rufin signed the little man to be silent. The truth, if he had but given it entertainment, had offered itself to him from the first. All he had heard of the man, Papa Musard's slanderous-sounding complaints of him, the fat concierge's reports of his violence, had gathered towards this culmination. He had insisted upon thinking of him as a full-blooded man of genius, riotously making little of conventions, a creature abounding in life, tinctured a little, perhaps, with the madness that may spice the mind of a visionary and enrage his appetites. It was a figure ha had created to satisfy himself.

"It was false art," he reflected. "That is me—false art!"

Still, whatever he had seen wrongly, there was still the picture. Apache, murderer, and all the rest—the fellow had painted the picture. No one verdict can account for both art and morals, and there was reason to fear, it seemed, that the law which executed a murderer would murder a painter at the same time—and such a painter!

"No," said Rufin, unconsciously speaking aloud—"no; they must not kill him."

"Ah, M'sieur!" It was a cry from the girl, whose composure had broken utterly at his words. "You are also an artist—you know!"

In a hysteria of supplication she flung herself forward and was on her knees at his feet. She lifted clasped hands and blinded eyes; she was like a child saying its prayers but for the writhen torture of her face, where wild hopes and lunatic terrors played alternately.

"M'sieur, you can save him! You have the grand air, M'sieur; there is God in your face; you make men hear you! For mercy—for blessed charity—ah, M'sieur, M'sieur, I will carry your sins for you; I will go to hell in your place! You are great—one sees it; and he is great, too! M'sieur, I am your chattel, your beast—only save him, save him!"

It tore the barren atmosphere of the office to rags; it made the place august and awful. Rufin bent to her and took her clasped hands in one of his to raise her.

"I will do all that I can," he said earnestly. "All! I dare not do less, my child."

She gulped and shivered; she had poured her soul and her force forth, and she was weak and empty. She strained to find further expression, but could not. Rufin supported her to the chair.

"We must see what is happening in this trial," he said to the little official. "We have lost time as it is."

"I will guide you," replied the other happily. "It!-is a situation, is it not? Ah, the crevasses, the abysses of life! Come, my friend."

From the Salle des Pas Perdus a murmur reached them. They entered it to find the crowd sundered, leaving empty a broad alley.

"Qu'est ce qu'y a?" The little official was jumping on tiptoe to see over the heads in front of him. "Is it possible that the case is finished?"

A huissier came at his gesture and found means to get them through to the front of the crowd, which waited with a hungry expectation.

"The case is certainly finished," murmured the little man.

A double door opened at the head of the alley of people, and half a dozen men in uniform came out quickly. Others followed, and they came down toward the entrance. In the midst of them, their shabby civilian clothes contrasting abruptly with the uniforms of their guards, slouched four men, handcuffed and bareheaded.

"It is they," whispered the official to Rufin, and half turned his head to ask a question of the huissier behind them.

Three of them were lean young men, with hardy, debased, animal countenances. They were referable at a glance to the dregs of civilization. They had the stooped shoulders, the dragging gait, the half-servile, half-threatening expression that hallmarks the apache. It was to the fourth that Rufin turned with an overdue thrill of excitement. A young man—not more than twenty-five—built like a bull for force and wrath. His was that colossal physique that develops in the South; his shoulders were mighty under his mean coat, and his chained wrists were square and knotty. He held his head up with a sort of truculence in its poise; it was the head, massive, sensuous- lipped, slow-eyed, of a whimsical Nero. It was weariness, perhaps, that give him his look of satiety, of appetites full fed and dormant, of lusts grossly slaked. A murmur ran through the hall as he passed; it was as though the wretched men and women who knew him uttered an involuntary applause.

"There is Peter," said some one near Rufin. "Lucky Peter; Quel homme!"

The Huissier was memorizing for the little official the closing scene of the trial. Rufin heard words here and there in his narrative. "Called the judges a set of old . . . Laughed aloud when they asked him if . . . Yes, roared with laughter—roared." And then for the final phrase: "Condamnes a la mort!"

"You hear?" inquired the little official, nudging him. "It is too late. They are condemned to death, all of them. They have their affair!"

Rufin shrugged and led the way back to the office. But it was empty; the girl had gone.

"Tiens!" said the official. "No doubt she heard of the sentence and knew that there was no more to be done."

"Or else," said Rufin thoughtfully, frowning at the floor—"or else she reposes her trust in me."

"Ah, doubtless," agreed the little man. "But say, then! It has been an experience, hein? Piquant, picturesque, moving, too. For I am not like you; I do not see these dramas every day."

"And you fancy I do?" cried Rufin. "Man, I am terrified to find what goes on in the world. And I thought I knew life!" With a gesture of hopelessness and impotence he turned on his heel and went forth.

The business preserved its character of a series of accidents to the end; accidents are the forced effects of truth. Rufin, having organized supports of a kind not to be ignored in a republican state, even by blind Justice herself, threw his case at the wise grey head of the Minister of Justice—a wily politician who knew the uses of advertisement. The apaches are distinctively a Parisian produce, and if only Paris could be won over, intrigued by the romance and strangeness of the genius that had flowered in the gutter, and given to the world a star of art, all would be arranged and the guillotine would have but three necks to subdue. France at large would only shrug, for France is the husband of Paris and permits her her caprices. It rested with Paris, then.

But, as though they insisted upon a martyr, the apaches themselves intervened with a brisk series of murders and outrages, the last of which they effected on the very fringe of the show-Paris. It was not a sergent de ville this time, but a shopkeeper, and the city frothed at the mouth and shrieked for revenge.

"After that," said the Minister, "there is nothing to do. See for yourself—here are the papers! We shall be fortunate if four executions suffice."

Rufin was seated facing him across a great desk littered with documents.

"Why not try if three will serve?" he suggested.

The minister smiled and shook his head. He looked at Rufin half humorously.

"These Parisians," he said, "have the guillotine habit. If they take to crying for more, what old man can be sure of dying in his bed? My grandfather was an old man, and his head fell in the Revolution."

"But this," said Rufin, rustling the newspapers before him—"this is clamor. It is panic. It is not serious."

"That is why I am afraid of it," replied the Minister. "I am always afraid of a frightened Frenchman. But, sans blague, my friend, I cannot do what you wish."

Rufin put the piled newspapers from him and leaned forward to plead.

It was useless. The old man opposite him had a manner as deft and unassuming as his own; it masked a cynical inflexibility of purpose proof against any appeal.

"I cannot do it," was his single answer.

Rufin sighed. "Then it remains to see the President," he suggested.

"There is that," smiled the Minister. "See him by all means. If you are interested in gardening, you will find him charming. Otherwise, perhaps—but an honest man, I assure you."

"At least," said Rufin, "if everything fails, if the great painter is to be sacrificed to the newspapers and your epigrams—at least you will allow me to visit him before—before the——"

"But certainly!" the Minister bowed. "I am eager to serve you, Monsieur Rufin. When the date is fixed I will write you a permission. You three shall have an interview; it should be a memorable one."

"We three?" Rufin waited for an explanation.

"Exactly. You two great artists, Monsieur Rufin and Monsieur Giaconi, and also the murderer, Peter the Lucky."

The old man smiled charmingly; he had brought the negotiations to a point with a mot.

"Adieu, cher maitre," he said, rising to shake his visitor's hand across the wide desk.

Rufin seemed to have trodden into a groove of unsuccess. All his efforts were futile; he saw himself wasting time and energy while fate wasted none. The picture came to hang in his studio till the Luxembourg should demand it; daily its tragic wisdom and tenacious femininity goaded him to new endeavors, and daily he knew that he spent himself in vain.

He did not even realize how much of himself he had expended till that raw morning before the dawn when he drove across Paris in a damp and mournful cab, with the silent girl at his side, to a little square like a well shut in by high houses whose every window was lighted. There was already a crowd waiting massed under the care of mounted soldiers, and the cab slowed to a walk to pass through them. From the window at his side he saw, with unconscious appreciation, the picture it made, an arrangement of somber masses with yellow windows shining, and in the middle the gaunt uprights, the severe simplicity of the guillotine.

Faces looked in at him, strange and sudden, lit abruptly by the carriage-lamps. Somebody—doubtless a student—peered and recognized him. "Good morning, maitre," he said, and was gone. Maitre—master! Men did him honor in so naming him, gave him rank, deferred to him. But he acknowledged life for his master, himself for its pupil and servant.

The girl had not spoken since they started; she remained sitting still in her place when the cab halted at a door, and it needed his hand on her arm to rouse her to dismount. She followed him obediently between more men in uniform, and they found themselves in a corridor, where an officer, obviously waiting there for the purpose, greeted Rufin with marked deference.

"There is no need," he said, as Rufin groped in his pockets for the permit with which he had been provided. "I have been warned to expect Monsieur Rufin and the lady, and I congratulate myself on the honor of receiving them."

"He knows we are coming?" asked Rufin.

"Yes, he knows," replied the other. "At this moment his toilet is being made." He sank his voice so that the mute, abstracted girl should not overhear. "The hair above the neck, you know—they always shave that off. It might be better that mademoiselle should not see."

"Possibly," agreed Rufin, looking absently at his comely, insignificant face, which the lamps illuminated mercilessly.

The girl stood with her hands loosely joined before her, and her thin face vacant, staring, as though in a mood of deep thought, along the bare passage. Suddenly she addressed the officer.

"How long shall I be with him," she inquired, in tones of an almost arrogant composure, "before they cut his head off?"

The words, in their matter-of-fact directness, no less than the tone, seemed to startle the officer.

"Ah, Mademoiselle!" he protested, as though at an indelicacy or an accusation.

"How long?" repeated the girl.

"Kindly tell mademoiselle what she wishes to know," directed Rufin.

The officer hesitated. "It does not rest with me," he said uncomfortably. "You see, there is a regular course in these matters, a routine. I hope mademoiselle will have not less than ten minutes."

The girl looked at Rufin and made a face. It was as though she had been overcharged in a shop; she invited him, it seemed, to take note of a trivial imposture. Her manner and gesture had the repressed power of under-expression. He nodded to her in entire comprehension.

"But," began the officer excitedly, "how can I——" Rufin turned on him gravely, a somber, august figure of reproof.

"Sir," he said, "you are in the presence of a tragedy. I beg you to be silent."

The officer made a hopeless gesture; the shadow of it fled grotesquely up the walls.

A few moments later the summons came that took them along the passage to an open door, giving on to a room brilliant with lights and containing a number of people. At the farther end of it a table against the wall had been converted into a sort of altar, with wan candles alight upon it, and there was a robed priest among the uniformed men. Those by the door parted to make way for them. Rufin saw them salute him, and removed his hat.

Somebody was speaking. "Regret we cannot leave you alone, but——"

"It does not matter," said Rufin. The room was raw and aching with light; the big electrics were pitiless. In the middle of it a man sat on a chair and raised expectant eyes at his arrival. It was Giaconi, the painter, the murderer. There was some disorder of his dress which Rufin noted automatically, but it was not for some minutes that he perceived its cause—the collar of his coat had been shorn away. The man sat under all those fascinated eyes impatiently; his tired and whimsical face was tense and drawn; he was plainly putting a strong constraint upon himself. The great shoulders, the huge arms, all the compressed strength of the body, made the effect of some strong animal fettered and compelled to tameness.

"Rufin?" he said hesitatingly.

The painter nodded. "Yes, it is Rufin."

The girl glided past him toward the seated man. "And I, Pietro," she said.

He made a gesture with his hand as though to move her aside, for she stood between him and Rufin.

"Ah," she cried, "do you not need me at all—even now?"

"Oh, what is it?" said the condemned man, with a quick irritation. "Is this a time! There is not a moment to spare. I must speak to Rufin—I must. Yes, kneel down; that's right!"

She had sunk at his knee and laid her brown head upon it. As though to acknowledge the caress of a dog, he let one hand fall on her bowed shoulders. His eyes traveled across her to Rufin.

"They told me you would come. Say—is it because of my picture?"

"Yes," said Rufin. "I have done all that I could to save you because of that. But——"

"I know," said the other. "They have told me. You like it, then—my poor 'Mona Lisa' of Montmartre?"

Rufin stepped closer. It was not easy to utter all he desired to say under the eyes of those uniformed men, with the sad, attentive priest in the background.

"Monsieur," he said, "your picture is in my studio. Nothing shall ever hang in its place, for nothing will be worthy."

The seated man heard him hungrily. For the moment he seemed to have forgotten where he was and what was to happen to him ere he drew many more breaths.

"I knew," he said, "I knew. I can paint. So can you, Monsieur— sometimes. We two—-we know!"

He frowned heavily as realization returned to him. "And now I never shall," he said. "I never shall! Ah, it is horrible! A man is two people, and both die like a single soul. You know, for you are an artist."

"I—I have done my best," said Rufin despairingly. "If I could go instead and leave you to paint—oh, believe me, I would go now gladly, proudly, for I should have given the world pictures—great pictures."

A spasm of emotion filled his eyes with tears, and some one touched his arm and drew him aside. He strove with himself fiercely and looked up again to see that three men had entered the room and were going toward the prisoner. The priest had come forward and was raising the kneeling girl.

"A moment," cried the prisoner, as the three laid hands upon him. "Just a moment." They took no notice. "Monsieur Rufin," he cried, "it is my hand I offer you—only that."

Somebody near Rufin spoke a brief order and the three were still. He saw Giaconi's intent face across their shoulders, his open hand reaching forward between them. He clasped it silently.

The priest had set the girl on her knees before the improvised altar and stood beside her in silence. The three, with no word spoken, proceeded with their business. With deft speed they lashed their man's hands behind his back, forcing them back with rough skill. The chief of them motioned his subordinates to take him by the elbows and signed to the priest with his hand. The priest came forward, holding the crucifix, and took his place close to the prisoner. For a final touch of the grotesque the executioner produced and put on a tall silk hat.

"March!" he said, and they took the condemned man toward the door. He twisted his head round for a last glance at the room.

"Good-bye, little one!" he cried loudly. The kneeling girl only moaned.

"Good-bye, M'sieur Rufin."

Rufin stepped forward and bowed mechanically.

"Adieu, Maitre," he answered.

He saw that the condemned man's eyes lightened, a flush rose in his face; he smiled as if in triumph. Then they passed out, and Rufin, after standing for a moment in uncertainty, crossed the room and knelt beside the girl, with his hands pressed to his ears.



VIII

"PARISIENNE"

"At least," said the Comtesse, still staring at the brisk fire in the steel grate—"at least he saw them with his own eyes."

She was thinking aloud, and Elsie Gray, her distant relative and close companion, only looked up without reply. The Comtesse's face stood in profile against the bright appointments of the fireplace, delicate and serene; the tall salon, with its white panels gleaming discreetly in the light of the candles, made a chaste frame for her fragile presence. The window-curtains had been drawn to shut out the evening which shed its damp melancholy over the Faubourg, and to the girl the great, still room seemed like a stage set for a drama. She sat on a stool beside the Comtesse's chair, her fingers busy with many-colored skeins of silk, and the soft stir of the fire and the tick of a little clock worked themselves into her patient thoughts.

"He was to come at nine, I think," said the Comtesse at last, without turning her head.

"Yes," said Elsie, leaning forward to look at the little clock. "It still wants twenty minutes."

The Comtesse nodded slowly; all her gestures had the gentle deliberation of things done ceremonially.

"It is not much longer to wait, is it?" she said. "After twenty years, one should be patient. But to think! To-night, for the first time I hear of Jeanne from one who saw her at the end. Not a lawyer who has sought out the tale and rearranged it, but one who knew. You see, Elsie?"

Elsie put a hand on her arm, and her little thrill of excitement died out at once.

"Yes," said the girl; "I see, but you must be tranquil."

"I will be tranquil," promised the Comtesse. "I will have consideration for my heart. It is only the waiting which tries me."

"And that is nearly at an end." Elsie released her arm, and the Comtesse turned again to the fire. The tick of the clock renewed its tiny insistence; the great room again enveloped them in the austerity of its silence. The girl returned to the silk strings in her lap. She knew the occasion of the Comtesse's sudden emotion; it was a familiar tale, and not the loss familiar for being told in whispers. She had heard it first when she came from her English home to be the Comtesse's companion. It had been told to her officially, as it were, to guide her in her dealings with the Comtesse. A florid French uncle, with a manner of confidential discretion that made her blush, had been the mouthpiece of the family, and from him she had learned how Jeanne, the Comtesse's half-sister, had run away with a rogue, a man who got his deserts, an officer in a regiment stationed in Algeria.

"Eventually he committed suicide, but before that there were passages," the French uncle had said. The dreadful word "passages" seemed to contain the story, and he gave it an accent of unspeakable significance. "The Comtesse has suffered," he told her further. "It was a sad affair, and she had much tenderness for Jeanne." And that, at first, seemed to be the whole of it, though once or twice the uncle checked himself on the brink of details. But on this evening the tale was to be told afresh. There had arrived from Africa one Colonel Saval, who had served with the sorry hero of poor Jeanne's romance; he had known him and dealt with him; and he was appointed to come to the Comtesse in the quality of eye-witness.

He was punctual, at all events; the little clock was yet striking when the gaunt footman opened the door and spoke his name. The Comtesse looked up, and Elsie Gray rose to receive him; he advanced and made his bow.

"Madame la Comtesse?" he said, with a faint note of inquiry. The Comtesse's inclination answered him. "Madame la Comtesse honors me. I am happy to be of service."

He bowed to Elsie, who gave him "Good evening;" the footman set forward a chair for him and withdrew. His white hair stood about his head like a delicate haze; under it, the narrow wise face was brick- red, giving news of his long service under the sun of North Africa. He was short and slight, a tiny vivacious man, full of charming formalities, and there was about him something gentle and suave, that did not quite hide a trenchant quality of spirit. He stood before them, smiling in a moment of hesitation, half paternal, wholly gallant.

"Madame la Comtesse is suffering," said Elsie, in the spacious French idiom. "There is little that she can say. But she thanks Monsieur most sincerely for giving himself this trouble. But please be seated."

He was active in condolences at once. "I am most sympathetic," he said seriously. "And for the trouble"—he nicked it from him—"there is no trouble. I am honored."

The Comtesse bowed to him. "Monsieur is very amiable," she murmured.

He hitched up his chair and sat down, facing the pair of them. His shrewd eye took the measure of the Comtesse and her infirmity, without relinquishing a suggestion of admiration. He was a man panoplied with the civil arts; his long career in camps and garrisons had subtracted nothing of social dexterity. There was even a kind of grace in his attitude as he sat, his cane and hat in one hand, with one knee crossed upon the other. He spent a moment in consideration.

"It is of the Capitaine Bertin that I am to speak? Yes?" he asked suddenly.

The Comtesse stirred a little in her chair. "Yes," she answered, in a voice like a sigh—a sigh of relief, perhaps.

"Ah!" He made a little gesture of acknowledgment. "Le Capitaine Bertin! Then Madame will compose herself to hear little that is agreeable, for it is a tale of tragedy." His eyes wandered for a moment; he seemed to be renewing and testing again the flavor of memories. Under his trim moustache the mouth set and grew harder. Then, without further preamble, he began to speak.

"Bertin and I were of the same rank," he said, "and of much the same age. There was never a time when we were friends; there stood between us too pronounced a difference—a difference, Madame, of spirit, of aim, and even of physique. Bertin was large, sanguine, with the face of a bold lover, of a man noticeably gallant. I recall him most vividly as he sat in a cafe behind a little round table. It was thus one saw him most frequently, with his hard, swarthy face and moustaches that curled like a ram's horns. In such places he seemed most at home, with men about him and cards ready to his hand; and yet—has Madame seen the kind of man who is never wholly at his ease, who stands for ever on his guard, as it were! Bertin was such a one; there were many occasions when I remarked it. He would be in the centre of a company of his friends, assured, genial, dominant; and yet, at each fresh arrival in the room, he would look up with something furtive and defensive in his expression. I have seen deserters like that, but in Bertin it lacked an explanation."

"And there was a further matter yet. He was my fellow officer; I saw him on parade and at mess; but his life, the life of his own choice, was lived among those who were not our equals. How shall I make that clear to you, Madame? In those days, Europe drained into Algiers; it had its little world of men who gambled and drank much, and understood one another with a complete mistrust; it was with such as these that Bertin occupied his leisure. It was with them that his harshness and power were most efficacious. Naturally, it was not pleasant for us, his colleagues, to behold him for ever with such companions; the most of them seemed to be men connected with one sport or another, with billiards, or racing, or the like; but there was nothing to be done."

The Comtesse shifted slightly in her chair. "He had power," she said thoughtfully.

The little Colonel nodded twice. "He had power, as Madame observes. He had many good qualities—not quite enough, it is true, but many. There were even those that loved him, dogs, horses, waiters, croupiers and the poor women who made up the background of his life. I have thought, sometimes, that it is easy for a man to be loved, Madame, if he will take that responsibility. But what befell Bertin was not commonplace. He returned to France on leave, for six months, and it was then, I believe, that he first met the lady who became Madame Bertin?"

He gave the words the tone of a question, and the Comtesse answered with a slow gesture of assent.

"Yes, I have heard that it was so," said the Colonel. "Of what took place at that time I can tell nothing, naturally, and Madame is no doubt sufficiently informed. But I saw him—I saw them both—within a week of their return. Upon that occasion I dined at a hotel with two friends, Captain Vaucher and Lieutenant de Sailles. Bertin, with some friends and his wife, was at a table near-by. She was the only lady of the party; her place was between an Englishman, a lean, twisted man with the thin legs of a groom, and a Belgian who passed for an artist. It was de Sailles who pointed them out; and in effect it was a group to see with emotion. The lady—she was known to you, Madame? Then the position will be clear. She was of that complete and perfect type we honor as the Parisienne, a product of the most complex life in the world. She was slender and straight—ah! straight as a lance, with youth and spirit and buoyancy in the carriage of her head, the poise of her body, the color upon her cheeks. But it was not that— the beauty and the courage—that caused her to stand out among those men as a climbing rose stands out from an old wall; it was the schooled and perfected quality of her, the fineness and delicacy of her manner and expression, the—in short, the note of breeding, Madame, the unmistakable ensign of caste. The Englishman fidgeted and lounged beside her; the fat Belgian drank much and was boisterous; Bertin was harsh and rudely jovial and loud. It was as though she were enveloped in a miasma."

"'So that is what Bertin has brought back,' said Vaucher slowly, as his custom was."

"'It is a crime,' said de Sailles."

"'I wonder,' said Vaucher, and drank his wine. He was much my friend, a man with the courage and innocence of a good child; but his thought was not easy to follow. He gave Bertin's group another look under puckered brows, and then turned his back on it and began to talk of other matters. I might have known then that—but I must tell my tale in order."

"Bertin was not wise—if it were nothing more—to bring such a wife to Algiers. It turned eyes upon him. Those who had been aware of him merely as a man of low tastes now began to notice his particular actions. He had a house in a certain impasse, and one night there was a brawl there—an affair of a man drunk and angry, of a knife drawn and some one stabbed. Before, it might have passed; our discipline was indulgent; but now it took on the shape of a scandal. It was brief and ugly, but it marked a stage passed in Bertin's career. And it was only two days later that Vaucher came to me in my quarters with a manner at once deprecating and defiant. He sat in my arm-chair and laughed quietly before he spoke."

"'I am looking for friends,' he said; 'for a pair of friends.'"

"Then, of course, I understood. I bade him count on me. 'And there is also de Sailles,' I reminded him. 'He has a very just taste in these affairs. But who is our opponent?'"

"'It is Bertin,' he answered."

"I was astonished, and he told me all. It was an episode of quixotry, a thing entirely imprudent and altogether lovable in him. It chanced that on the evening of Bertin's little—er—fracas, Vaucher had passed by the impasse in which Bertin lived. He had heard the scream of the man with the knife in him and paused. It was a dark night, and in the impasse there was but one lamp which stood near Bertin's door. There was a babble of many voices after that scream—shouts of fury, the whining of the would-be assassin, and so on; he was about to pass on, when Bertin's door opened and a woman slipped out and stood listening on the pavement. Her attitude was that of one ready to flee, terrified but uncertain. As the noises within died down she relapsed from her tense pose and showed her face to Vaucher in the light of the lamp. It was Madame Bertin. She did not see him where he waited, and all of a sudden her self-possession snapped like a twig you break in your fingers. She was weeping, leaning against the wall, weeping desolately, in an abandonment of humiliation and impotence. But Vaucher was not moved when he told me of it."

"'That I could have endured,' he said. 'I held my peace and did not intrude upon her. But presently they brought the wounded man downstairs, and Bertin came forth to seek a fiacre to take him away. She heard him ere he came out and gained thus the grace of an instant. There was never anything in life so pitiful, so moving, as the woman's strength that strangled down her sobs, dried the tears at their source, and showed to her husband a face as calm as it was cold. He spoke to her and she gave him a word in answer. But'—and he leaned forward in my chair and struck his fist on the arm of it—'but that poor victory is sore in my memory like a scar."

"All that was comprehensible. Vaucher was a man of heart. 'But what is the quarrel?' I demanded."

"'The quarrel!' he repeated. 'Let me see; what was it, now?' He had actually forgotten. 'Oh yes. He spoke to me. That was it. He spoke to me, and I desired him not to speak to me for the future, of course.'

"Madame, up to the time when I went with Vaucher to the ground I had not given a thought to the issue of the affair. I had taken it for granted that Bertin would go down; at such seasons, one is blinded by one's sense of right. It lasted not two minutes. They fought with the saber—our custom at that time. Though it was early in the morning, there was a strong sun; it made a flame on the blades as they saluted before engaging. Bertin was very sober and serious, but one had only to glance at him to perceive a very heat of wrath masked under his heavy countenance. Vaucher was intent, wary, full of careful purpose. Their blades touched. 'All'ez!' There were a couple of moments of fencing, of almost formal escrime, and then Vaucher lengthened his arm and attacked. Bertin stepped back a pace, and, as Vaucher advanced, he slashed with a high open cut, and it was over. Vaucher threw up both hands and came to his knees. I remember that I stood, unable to move, staring aghast at this end to the affair; while Bertin threw down his sword, turned his back, and went to where his clothes lay. At that moment he seemed as vast against the morning sky as a monument, as a sphinx carved out of a mountain. He had spoken no word."

"We took Vaucher back to the city. It was a cut in the head. Madame shall be spared the particulars. I think he is living yet, but it was the end of him, none the less."

The little Colonel's voice dropped on the last words. He did not take the sympathy and friendship that waited for him in Elsie's grey eyes; he looked with a somber gaze at the Comtesse. She still held her favorite attitude, leaning a little to one side in her great chair, so that she could watch the shifting shapes in the fire. She was smiling slightly, but her smile vanished as the Colonel paused.

"He was a gallant gentleman," she said softly. Elsie turned her head to look at her, surprised, for the thing was said perfunctorily, in the manner of a commonplace of politeness.

Colonel Saval bowed. "Madame la Comtesse is only just," he said. But he glanced sharply at her serene, preoccupied face with a manner of some dissatisfaction.

He resumed his tale with a sigh. "After all," he said, "there is not much to tell. I was not fortunate enough to meet Madame Bertin frequently during the two years that followed. From time to time I saw her, always with some wonder, for she preserved to the end that delicate and superb quality which so distinguished her. The scandal of the brawl was the small thing that was needed to turn Bertin's course downhill; almost from that day one could mark his decline. It was not a matter of incidents; it was simply that within a year most of us were passing him without recognition, and there was talk of debts that troubled him. He had deteriorated, too; whereas of old he was florid, now he was inflamed and gross; where he had been merely loud, he was now coarse. Within eighteen months the Colonel had made him a scene, had told him sour truths, and shaken his finger at him. That power of his, Madame, was not the power that enables a man to hold his level. Even with the companions of his leisure, his ascendancy faded. I recollect seeing him once, at the corner of the Place du Gouvernement, in the centre of a group of them, raging almost tearfully, while they laughed at him. The horrible laughter of those outcasts, edged like a saw, cruel and vile! And he was purple with fury, shaking like a man in an ague, and helpless against them. I was young in those days and not incapable of generous impulses; I recollect that as I passed I jostled one of those creatures out of the path, and then turned and waited for the remonstrance which he decided not to make."

The Comtesse nodded at the fire, like one well pleased. The little Colonel gave her another of his shrewd glances and went on.

"As you see, Madame, it is not possible to describe to you the steps by which Bertin sank. The end came within two years of the duel. One knew—somehow—that it was at hand. There were things dropped in talk, things overheard and pieced together—a whole atmosphere of scandal, in which there came and went little items of plain fact. The trouble was with regimental funds; again I will spare Madame the details; but certain of them which should have passed through Bertin's hands had not arrived at their destination. Clerks from a bank came to work upon the accounts; strange, cool young men, who hunted figures through ledgers as a ferret traces a rat under a floor. You must understand that for the regiment it was a monstrous matter, an affair to hide sedulously; it touched our intimate honor. There was a meeting of the rest of us to consider the thing; finally, it was I that was deputed to go forthwith to Bertin and persuade him to leave the city, to vanish, to do his part to save our credit. And that evening, as soon as it was dark enough to be convenient, I went."

"There was still that light in the impasse by which my poor friend Vaucher had seen Madame Bertin weeping; but from the windows of the house there came none. It was shuttered like a fort. It was not till I had knocked many times upon the door that there came any response. At last I heard bolts being withdrawn—bolt after bolt, as if the place had been a prison or a treasury; and Madame Bertin herself stood in the entry. The one lamp in the impasse showed her my uniform, and she breathed like one who had been running."

"I saluted her and inquired for Bertin."

"'Captain Bertin?' she repeated after me. 'I do not know—I fear——'"

"'My business with him is urgent,' I told her, and at that she whitened. 'And unofficial,' I added, therefore."

"At that she stood aside for me to enter. I aided her to fasten the door again, and she led me up the stairs to a small room, divided by large doors from an inner chamber."

"'If you will please be seated,' she said, 'I will send Captain Bertin in to you.'"

"She was thinner, I thought, and perhaps a trifle less assured; but that was to be understood. For the rest, she had the deliberate tones of the salon, the little smile of a convention that is not irksome. Her voice, her posture, had that grace one knows and defers to at sight. It was all very wonderful to come upon in that house. As she left the room, her profile shone against the wall like a cameo, so splendid in its pallor and the fineness of its outline."

"She must have gone from the passage by another entrance to the room beyond the double doors, for I heard her voice there—and his. They spoke together for some minutes, she at length, but he shortly; and then the doors slid apart a foot or so, and he came through sideways. He gave me a desperate look, and pulled at the doors to close them behind him. They stuck and resisted him, and he ceased his efforts at once."

"'You wanted to speak to me?' he asked. He seemed to be frowning as a child will frown to keep from bursting into tears. 'But not officially, I believe? It is not official, is it?'"

"'No,' I answered. 'It is a message—quite private.'"

"He ceased to frown at that, staring at me heavily, and chewing his moustache."

"'Sit down,' he said suddenly, and came nearer, glancing over his shoulder at the aperture of the doors. Something in that movement gave me the suggestion that he was accustomed to guard against eavesdroppers; all those poor forlorn gamesters and wastrels are full of secrets and privacies. One sees them for ever in corners with furtive eyes for listeners, guiding their business like conspirators."

"I gave him my message at once. There was a need upon me for plain speech with the man, like that need for cold steel which came upon poor Vaucher."

"'There is time for you to make your packages and be gone,' I said. 'Time for that and no more, and I recommend you to let the packages be few. If you go, you will not be sought for. That is what I have to say to you.'"

"He glanced over his shoulder again and came a step nearer. 'You mean——'he said, and hesitated."

"'The money? Yes,' I answered. 'That is what I mean. You will go?"

"He stared at me a moment in silence. I felt as if I had struck him and spat in his face. But he had no such thought."

"'How long have I?' he asked suddenly."

"'You have to-night,' I answered."

"It seemed as if he were going to ask further questions, but at that moment Madame Bertin appeared in the doorway behind him. I knew she had heard our talk.

"'Your business is finished?' she asked carelessly, coming forward into the room."

"'It is quite finished,' I replied."

"She nodded, smiling. 'Captain Bertin has to catch a train,' she said, 'and if I did not watch the time for him, he would surely lose it. He has no idea of punctuality.'"

"'I hope he has not much packing to do,' I said."

"'I have seen to that,' she replied."

"'Then I will not intrude upon your adieux,' I said, preparing to depart. Ma foi, I was ready to weep, as Vaucher had wept, at the gay courage of her. But she stopped me."

"'Oh, the adieux are complete like the packing,' she said. 'And if you should have anything further to say to Captain Bertin, you can drive with him to the station.'"

"I could see her meaning in that; my company would guard him till he left. So I bowed."

"'I shall be very happy,' I said."

"'Then if you will send for a fiacre,' she suggested to her husband. He was standing between us, wordless and dull. He gave her a look of inquiry; she returned it with a clear, high gaze, and he went at once."

"'It is a good season for traveling, I believe!' she said, when the door had closed behind him."

"'Captain Bertin could not have chosen a better,' I assured her."

"Her composure was more than wonderful; by no sign, no hint of weakness or ill ease, did she make any appeal to me. To my sympathy, my admiration, my devotion, she offered only that bright surface of her schooled manner and disciplined emotions. While her house crumbled about her ears, while her world failed her, she deviated not a hairbreadth from the line of social amenity."

"'But he is hardly likely to have company?' she asked again."

"As for me, I had visions of the kind of company that was due to him —a formal sons-officer with a warrant of arrest, a file of stolid soldiers, with rigid faces and curious eyes."

"But I answered her in her own manner."

"'There is certainly that drawback,' I said, and I thought—I hoped— I saw gratitude in her answering look."

"Then Bertin returned, with the hat of a civilian and a cloak that covered him to the ears. I saw their farewell—his look of appeal at her, the smile of amusement which answered it. And next I was seated beside him in the fiacre and she was framed in the door, looking after us, slender and erect, pale and subtle, smiling still with a manner as of weariness. It is thus that I remember her best."

"It was not till we were out of her sight that Bertin spoke. He lit a cigarette and stared up at the great white stars."

"'She spoilt my luck from the first,' he said."

"I don't know why, but I laughed. At the moment it seemed to be a very droll saying. And at the sound of my laughter he grinned in sympathy. He was a wonderful man. When he was established in the train, he held out his hand to me."

"'Adieu,' he said. 'You have been kind in your way. You didn't do it for me, you know—so adieu!"

"I took his hand. It was a small thing to grant him, and I bad no other answer. As the train moved away, I saw his face at the window of the carriage, full of a kind of sly humor—gross, amiable, and tragic! He waved me a good-bye."

The Colonel paused, staring at his trimly booted toe. Madame la Comtesse looked at him thoughtfully.

"You saw him again? she asked.

"Yes," he answered. "But possibly the tale becomes too painful."

The Comtesse passed a hand over her eyes. "I must hear the rest," she said. "You saw her, too, again?"

"Yes," said the Colonel.

"She was very hard," said the Comtesse thoughtfully. "Very hard always. As a girl I remember——"

The Colonel was looking at her intently, as though some thought had suddenly brought him enlightenment. Both he and the Comtesse seemed quite to have forgotten Elsie, listening on her stool in bewilderment and compassion. She saw them now exchange guarded glances, as though measuring each other's penetration.

The Comtesse leaned back. "I beg you to proceed," she said, with a sigh. Elsie reached over the arm of the chair and took her hand and held it.

The little Colonel shrugged his shoulders.

"Since Madame la Comtesse wishes it," he said. "But some years elapsed before I saw either of them again. Madame Bertin had said nothing which could encourage me to call at the house in the impasse, and there was no message from him to carry thither. I heard—it was said—that she, too, left the city; Bertin's exit from the service was arranged, and thus the matter seemed to close. I preserved certain memories, which I still preserve; I was the richer by them. Then came active service, expeditions to the interior, some fighting and much occupation. It chanced that I was fortunate; I gained some credit and promotion; and by degrees the affair of Bertin sank to rest in the background of my life. It was a closed incident, and I was reconciled never to have it reopened. But it seems one can never be sure that a thing is ended; possibly Bertin in his hiding-place thought as I did and made the same mistake. I heard the news when I visited Algiers on my way to a post up-country at the edge of the desert. New powers had taken charge of our business; there was a new General, an austere, mirthless man, who knew of Bertin's existence, and resented it. He had been concerned here and there in more than one enterprise of an unpleasant flavor, and it was the General's intention to put a period to him. My friends in barracks told me of it, perfunctorily; and my chief sense was of disgust that Bertin should continue to be noticeable. And then I went away up-country, in a train that carried me beyond the borders of civilization, and set me down at last one dawn at a point where a military line trickled out into the vast yellow distance, against an undulated horizon of sandhills. It was in the chill hour of the morning; a few sentries walked their beats, and beyond them there was a plot of silent tents. The station was no more than planks laid on the ground beside some locked iron sheds, a tank for the engine, and a flagstaff. It was infinitely forlorn and empty, with an air of staleness and discomfort. At some distance, a single muffled figure sat apart on a seat; I thought it was some Arab waiting for the day. Be judge, then, of my amazement when it rose, as I would have passed it, and spoke."

"'This, also, is a good season for traveling?' it said, and I spun on my heel to face it. From the hood of a bernouse there looked out at me, pale and delicate still, the face of Madame Bertin."

"In my bewilderment and my—my joy, I caught at both her hands and held them for a moment. She smiled and freed herself gently, and her eyes mocked me. She was the same as ever, impregnably the same; stress of mind, sorrow, exile, loneliness—they could not avail to stir her from her pedestal of composure. That manner—it is the armor of the woman of the world."

"'I came here on a camel,' she told me, in answer to my inquiries. 'On a camel from my home. I understand now why chameau is a word of abuse.'"

"'I am not very sure that the season is good for traveling,' I said."

"She shrugged her shoulders. 'When one is acclimatized, seasons are no longer important.'"

"'And you are acclimatized, Madame?' I asked her."

"She showed me the bernouse. 'Even to this,' she said."

"Across the slopes of sand, one could hear the engine of the little military train grunting and wheezing as it collected its cars, and the strident voice of a man cursing Arab laborers."

"'You go by that train?' she asked me."

"'To Torah,' I answered."

"'I also,' she said, looking at me inquiringly.

"I said I was fortunate to have her company, and it was plain that she was relieved. For I guessed forthwith that it was at Torah that Bertin was, and she knew that if my going thither were to arrest him, I would spare her. I am sure she knew that."

"It was a journey of a day and a night, while that little train rolled at leisure through a world of parched sand, beyond the sandhills to the eye-wearying monotony of the desert. Sometimes it would halt beside a tank and a tent, while a sore-eyed man ran along the train to beg for newspapers. Over us, the sky rose in an arch from horizon to horizon, blue and blinding; the heat was like a hand laid on one's mouth. I had with me my soldier-servant and a provision of food; there was something of both ecstasy and anguish in serving her needs, in establishing her comfort. She talked little and always so that I stood at a distance from her, fenced apart by little graceful formalities, groping hopelessly and vainly towards her through the clever mesh of her adroit speech and skilful remoteness. I was already fifteen years in the country, and fifteen years her inferior in those civilized dexterities. But she thanked me very sweetly for my aid."

"Another dawn, and we were at Torah. A half-circle of dusty palms leaned away to one side of the place, the common ensign of a well on a caravan route. The post was but a few structures of wood and mud, and, a little way off, the tents of the camp. In the east, the sky was red with foreknowledge of the sun; its light already lay pale over the meanness of all the village. I helped her from the train, and demanded to know whither I should conduct her."

"'I will not give you further trouble,' she said; and though I protested, she was firm. And at last she walked away, alone, to the huddle of little buildings, and I saw her pass among them and out of my sight. Then I turned and went over to the camp, where my duty lay."

"That was a sorrowful place, that Torah. The troops were chiefly men of the Foreign Legion, of whom three in every four expressed in their eyes only patience and the bitterness of men whose lives are hidden things. With them were some elderly officers, whose only enthusiasms showed themselves in a crazy bravery in action, the callous courage of men who have already died once. From some of these I heard of Bertin. It was a brown, sun-dried man who told me."

"'Yes, we know him,' he said. 'He passes under various names, but we know him. A man wasted, thrown away, my friend! He should have joined us.'"

"'You would have accepted him?' I asked."

"'Why not?' was the answer. 'It is not honest men we ask for, nor true men, nor even brave men—only fighting men. And any man can be that.'"

"It made me wonder if it were yet too late for Bertin, 'and whether he might not still find a destiny in the ranks of that regiment where so many do penance. But when I saw him, a week later, I knew that the chance had gone by with his other chances, It was in a cafe in the village, a shed open at one side to the little street of sand, and furnished only with tables and chairs. A great Spahi, in the splendid uniform of his corps, lounged in one corner; a shrouded Arab tended the coffee apparatus in another; in the middle, with a glass before him, sat Bertin. The sun beat in at the open front of the building and spread the shadows in a tangle on its floor; he was leaning with both elbows on the table, gazing before him with the eyes of a dead man. He had always promised to be stout, but he was already fat—a flabby, blue-jowled heap of a man, all thick creases and bulges; and his face had patches of blue and purple in its hollows. He was ponderous, he was huge; and with it there was an aspect of horror, as though all that flesh were diseased."

"I paused by his table and slowly he looked up to me. His features labored with thought, and he recognized me."

"'Saval!' he ejaculated hoarsely. 'You—you want me?'"

"I sat down at his table. 'I haven't come to arrest you,' I told him. 'But you had better know that the authorities have decided to arrest you.'"

"He gasped. 'For—for——'"

"'I don't know what for,' I told him. 'For whatever you have been doing.'"

"He had to blink and swallow and wipe his brow before he mastered the fact. His mind, like his body, was a shameful ruin. But the fact that he was not to be arrested at the moment seemed to comfort him. He leaned over the table to me."

"'My wife's here,' he said, in a raucous whisper."

"'Yes; she knows,' I answered."

"He frowned, and seemed perplexed. 'She'll make me shoot myself,' he went on. 'I know what she means. I warn you, she'll make me do it. Have a drink?'"

"He was horrible, an offence to the daylight. He bawled an order to the Arab, and turned to me again."

"'That's what it'll come to,' he said. 'I warn you.'"

"He repeated the last phrase in whispers, staring at me heavily: 'I warn you; I warn you.'"

"'Have you a pistol?' I asked him. Yes, Madame, I asked him that."

"He smiled at me. 'No, I haven't,' he said, still confidentially. 'You see how it is? I haven't even a pistol. But I know what she means.'"