So Carlotta had nearly killed the dog of an unrecalled acquaintance.

"I do indeed recognise you now," said I, mendaciously. I seem to have been lying to-day through thick and thin. "But in the confusion of the disaster—"

"You sat next me at lunch one day last winter, at Mrs. Ordeyne's," interrupted the lady, "and you talked to me of transcendental mathematics."

I remembered. "The crime," said I, "has lain heavily on my conscience."

"I don't believe a word of it," she laughed, dismissing me with a bow. I raised my hat and joined Carlotta.

It was a Miss Gascoigne, a flirtatious intimate of Aunt Jessica's house. To this irresponsible young woman I had openly avowed that I was the guardian of a beautiful Mohammedan whose religious instinct compelled her to destroy little dogs. I shall hear of this from my Aunt Jessica.

I walked stonily away with Carlotta.

"You are cross with me," she whimpered.

"Yes, I am. You might have killed the poor little beast. It was very wicked and cruel of you."

Carlotta burst out crying in the midst of the promenade.

The tears did not romantically come into her eyes as they had done an hour before; but she wept copiously, after the unrestrained manner of children, and used her pocket-handkerchief. From their seats women put up their lorgnons to look at her, passers-by turned round and stared. The whole of the gaily dressed throng seemed to be one amused gaze. In' a moment or two I became conscious that reprehensory glances were being directed towards myself, calling me, as plain as eyes could call, an ill-conditioned brute, for making the poor young creature, who was at my mercy, thus break down in public. It was a charming situation for an even-tempered philosopher. We walked stolidly on, I glaring in front of me and Carlotta weeping. The malice of things arranged that ne. neighbouring chair should be vacant, and that the path should be unusually crowded. I had the satisfaction of hearing a young fellow say to a girl:

"He? That's Ordeyne—came into the baronetcy—mad as a dingo dog."

I was giving myself a fine advertisement.

"For heaven's sake stop crying," I said. Then a memory of far-off childhood flashed its inspiration upon me. "If you don't," I added, grimly, "I'll take you out and give you to a policeman."

The effect was magical. She turned on me a scared look, gasped, pulled down her veil, which she had raised so as to dab her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief, and incontinently checked the fountain of her tears.

"A policeman?"

"Yes," said I, "a great, big, ugly blue policeman, who shuts up people who misbehave themselves in prison, and takes off their clothes, and shaves their heads, and feeds them on bread and water."

"I won't cry any more," she said, swallowing a sob. "Is it also wicked to cry?"

"Any of these ladies here would sooner be burned alive with dyspepsia or cut in two with tight-lacing," I replied severely. "Let us sit down."

We stepped over the low iron rail, and passing through the first two rows of people, found seats behind where the crowd was thinner.

"Is Seer Marcous still angry with me?" asked Carlotta, and the simple plaintiveness of her voice would have melted the bust of Nero. I lectured her on cruelty to animals. That one had duties of kindness towards the lower creation appealed to her as a totally new idea. Supposing the dog had broken all its legs and ribs, would she not have been sorry? She answered frankly in the negative. It was a nasty little dog. If she had hurt it badly, so much the better. What did it matter if a dog was hurt? She was sorry now she had hurled it into space, because it belonged to my friends, and that had made me cross with her.

Of course I was shocked at the thoughtless cruelty of the action; but my anger had also its roots in dismay at the public scandal it might have caused, and in the discovery that I was known to the victim's owner. It is the sad fate of the instructors of youth that they must hypocritically credit themselves with only the sublimest of motives. I spoke to Carlotta like the good father in the "Swiss Family Robinson." I gave vent to such noble sentiments that in a quarter of an hour I glowed with pride in my borrowed plumes of virtue. I would have taken a slug to my bosom and addressed a rattlesnake as Uncle Toby did the fly. I wonder whether it is not through some such process as this that parsons manage to keep themselves good.

The soothing warmth of conscious merit restored me to good temper; and when Carlotta slid her hand into mine and asked me if I had forgiven her, I magnanimously assured her that all the past was forgotten.

"Only," said I, "you will have to get out of this habit of tears. A wise man called Burton says in his 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' a beautiful book which I'll give you to read when you are sixty, 'As much count may be taken of a woman weeping as a goose going barefoot.'"

"He was a nasty old man," said Carlotta. "Women cry because they feel very unhappy. Men are never unhappy, and that is the reason that men don't cry. My mamma used to cry all the time at Alexandretta; but Hamdi!—" she broke into an adorable trill of a chuckle, "You would as soon see a goose going with boots and stockings, like the Puss in the shoes—the fairy tale—as Hamdi crying. Hou!"

Half an hour later, as we were driving homewards, she broke a rather long silence which she had evidently been employing in meditation.

"Seer Marcous."

"Yes?"

She has a child's engaging way of rubbing herself up against one when she wants to be particularly ingratiating.

"It was so nice to dine with you on Saturday."

"Really?"

"Oh, ye-es. When are you going to let me dine with you again, to show me you have forgiven me?"

A hansom cab offers peculiar facilities for the aforesaid process of ingratiation.

"You shall dine with me this evening," said I, and Carlotta cooed with pleasure.

I perceive that she is gradually growing westernised.

July 8th.

In obedience to a peremptory note from Judith, I took Carlotta this afternoon to Tottenham Mansions. I shook hands with my hostess, turned round and said

"This, my dear Judith, is Carlotta."

"I am very pleased to see you," said Judith.

"So am I," replied Carlotta, not to be outdone in politeness.

She sat bolt upright, most correctly, on the edge of a chair, and responded monosyllabically to Judith's questions. Her demeanour could not have been more impeccable had she been trained in a French convent. Just before we arrived, she had been laughing immoderately because I had ordered her to spit out a mass of horrible sweetmeat which she had found it impossible to masticate, and she had challenged me to extract it with my fingers. But now, compared with her, Saint Nitouche was a Maenad. I was entertained by Judith's fruitless efforts to get behind this wall of reserve. Carlotta said, "Oh, ye-es" or "No-o" to everything. It was not a momentous conversation. As it was Carlotta in whom Judith was particularly interested, I effaced myself. At last, after a lull in the spasmodic talk, Carlotta said, very politely:

"Mrs. Mainwaring has a beautiful house."

"It's only a tiny flat. Would you like to look over it?" asked Judith, eagerly, flashing me a glance that plainly said, "Now that I shall have her to myself, you may trust me to get to the bottom of her."

"I would like it very much," said Carlotta, rising.

I held the door open for them to pass out, and lit a cigarette. When they returned ten minutes afterwards, Carlotta was smiling and self-possessed, evidently very well pleased with herself, but Judith had a red spot on each of her cheeks.

The sight of her smote me with an odd new feeling of pity. I cannot dismiss the vision from my mind. All the evening I have seen the two women standing side by side, a piteous parable. The light from the window shone full upon them, and the dark curtain of the door was an effective background. The one flaunted the sweet insolence of youth, health, colour, beauty; of the bud just burst into full flower. The other wore the stamp of care, of the much knowledge wherein is much sorrow, and in her eyes dwelled the ghosts of dead years. She herself looked like a ghost-dressed in white pique, which of itself drew the colour from her white face and pale lips and mass of faint straw-coloured hair, the pallor of all which was accentuated by the red spots on her cheeks and her violet eyes.

I saw that something had occurred to vex her.

"Before we go," I said, "I should like a word with you. Carlotta will not mind."

We went into the dining-room. I took her hand which was cold, in spite of the July warmth.

"Well, my dear," said I. "What do you think of my young savage from Asia Minor?"

Judith laughed—I am sure not naturally.

"Is that all you wanted to say to me?"

She withdrew her hand, and tidied her hair in the mirror of the overmantel.

"I think she is a most uninteresting young woman. I am disappointed. I had anticipated something original. I had looked forward to some amusement. But, really, my dear Marcus, she is bete a pleurer—weepingly stupid."

"She certainly can weep," said I.

"Oh, can she?" said Judith, as if the announcement threw some light on Carlotta's character. "And when she cries, I suppose you, like a man, give in and let her have her own way?" And Judith laughed again.

"My dear Judith," said I; "you have no idea of the wholesome discipline at Lingfield Terrace."

Suddenly with one of her disconcerting changes of front, she turned and caught me by the coat-lappels.

"Marcus dear, I have been so lonely this week. When are you coming to see me?"

"We'll have a whole day out on Sunday," said I.

As I walked down the stairs with Carlotta, I reflected that Judith had not accounted for the red spots.

"I like her," said Carlotta. "She is a nice old lady."

"Old lady! What on earth do you mean?" I was indeed startled. "She is a young woman."

"Pouf!" cried Carlotta. "She is forty."

"She is no such thing," I cried. "She is years younger than I."

"She would not tell me."

"You asked her age?"

"Oh, ye-es," said Carlotta. "I was very polite. I first asked if she was married. She said yes. Then I asked how her husband was. She said she didn't know. That was funny. Why does she not know, Seer Marcous?"

"Never mind," said I, "go on telling me how polite you were."

"I asked how many children she had. She said she had none. I said it was a pity. And then I said, 'I am eighteen years old and I want to marry quite soon and have children. How old are you?' And she would not tell me. I said, 'You must be the same age as my mamma, if she were alive.' I said other things, about her husband, which I forget. Oh, I was very polite."

She smiled up at me in quest of approbation. I checked a horrified rebuke when I reflected that, according to the etiquette of the harem, she had been "very polite." But my poor Judith! Every artless question had been a knife thrust in a sensitive spot. Her husband: the handsome blackguard who had lured her into the divorce court, married her, and after two unhappy years had left her broken; children: they would have kept her life sweet, and did I not know how she had yearned for them? Her age: it is only the very happily married woman who snaps her fingers at the approach of forty, and even she does so with a disquieting sense of bravado. And the sweet insolence of youth says: "I am eighteen: how old are you?"

My poor Judith! Once more, on our walk home, I discoursed to Carlotta on the differences between East and West.

"Seer Marcous," said Carlotta this evening at dinner—"I have decided now that she shall dine regularly with me; it is undoubtedly agreeable to see her pretty face on the opposite side of the table and listen to her irresponsible chatter: chatter which I keep within the bounds of decorum when Stenson is present, so as to save his susceptibilities, by the simple device, agreed upon between us (to her great delight) of scratching the side of my somewhat prominent nose—Seer Marcous, why does Mrs. Mainwaring keep your picture in her bedroom?"

I am glad Stenson happened to be out of the room. His absence saved the flaying of my nasal organ. I explained that it was the custom in England for ladies to collect the photographs of their men friends, and use them misguidedly for purposes of decoration.

"But this," said Carlotta, opening out her arms in an exaggerated way, "is such a big one."

"Ah, that," I answered, "is because I am very beautiful."

Carlotta shrieked with laughter. The exquisite comicality of the jest occasioned bubbling comments of mirth during the rest of the meal, and her original indiscreet question was happily forgotten.



CHAPTER X

10th July.

Judith and I have had our day in the country. We know a wayside station, on a certain line of railway, about an hour and a half from town, where we can alight, find eggs and bacon at the village inn and hayricks in a solitary meadow, and where we can chew the cud of these delights with the cattle in well-wooded pastures. Judith has a passion for eggs and bacon and hayricks. My own rapture in their presence is tempered by the philosophic calm of my disposition. She wore a cotton dress of a forget-me-not blue which suits her pale colouring. She looked quite pretty. When I told her so she blushed like a girl. I was glad to see her in gay humour again. Of late months she has been subject to moodiness, emotional variability, which has somewhat ruffled the smooth surface of our companionship. But to-day there has been no trace of "temperament." She has shown herself the pleasant, witty Judith she knows I like her to be, with a touch of coquetry thrown in on her own account. She even spoke amiably of Carlotta. I have not had so thoroughly enjoyable a day with Judith for a long time.

I don't think she set herself deliberately to please me. That I should resent. I know that women in order to please an unsuspecting male will walk weary miles by his side with blisters on their feet and a beatific smile on their faces. But Judith has far too much commonsense.

Another pleasing feature of the day's jaunt has been the absence of the appeal to sentimentality which Judith of late, especially since her return from Paris, has been overfond of making. This idle habit of mind, for such it is in reality, has been arrested by an intellectual interest. One of her great friends is Willoughby, the economic statistician, who in his humorous moments, writes articles for popular magazines, illustrated by scale diagrams. He will draw, for instance, a series of men representing the nations of the world, and varying in bulk and stature according to the respective populations; and over against these he will set a series of pigs whose sizes are proportionate to the amount of pork per head eaten by the different nationalities. To these queer minds that live on facts (I myself could as easily thrive on a diet of egg-shells) this sort of pictorial information is peculiarly fascinating. But Judith, who like most women has a freakish mental as well as physical digestion, delights in knowing how many hogs a cabinet minister will eat during a lifetime, and how much of the earth's surface could be scoured by the world's yearly output of scrubbing-brushes. I don't blame her for it any more than I blame her for a love of radishes, which make me ill; it is not as if she had no wholesome tastes. On the contrary, I commend her. Now, Willoughby, it seems, has found the public appetite so great for these thought-saving boluses of knowledge—unpleasant drugs, as it were, put up into gelatine capsules—that he needs assistance. He has asked Judith to devil for him, and I have to-day persuaded her to accept his offer. It will be an excellent thing for the dear woman. It will be an absorbing occupation. It will divert the current of her thoughts from the sentimentality that I deprecate, and provided she does not serve up hard-boiled facts to me at dinner, she will be the pleasanter companion.

The only return to it was when I kissed her at parting.

"That is the first, Marcus, for twelve hours," she said; very sweetly, it is true—but still reproachfully.

But Sacred Name of a Little Good Man! (as the depraved French people say), what is the use of this continuous osculation between rational beings of opposite sexes who set out to enjoy themselves? If only St. Paul, in the famous passage when he says there is a time for this and a time for that, had mentioned kissing, he would have done a great deal of practical good.

July 13th.

To-night, for the first time since I came into the family estates (such as they are), I feel the paralysis of aspiration occasioned by poverty. If I were very rich, I would buy the two next houses, pull them down and erect on the site a tower forty foot high. At the very top would be one comfortable room to be reached by a lift, and in this room I could have my being, while it listed me, and be secure from all kinds of incursions and interruptions. Antoinette's one-eyed cat could not scratch for admittance; Antoinette herself could not enter under pretext of domestic economics and lure me into profitless gossip; and I could defy Carlotta, who is growing to be as pervasive as the smell of pickles over Crosse & Blackwell's factory. She comes in without knocking, looks at picture-books, sprawls about doing nothing, smokes my best cigarettes, hums tunes which she has picked up from barrel-organs, bends over me to see what I am writing, munching her eternal sweetmeats in my ear, and laughs at me when I tell her she has irremediably broken the thread of my ideas. Of course I might be brutal and turn her out. But somehow I forget to do so, until I realise—too late—the havoc she has made with my work.

I did, however, think, when Miss Griggs mounted guard over Carlotta, and Antoinette and her cat were busied with luncheon cook-pans, that my solitude was unimperilled. I see now there is nothing for it but the tower. And I cannot build the tower; so I am to be henceforward at the mercy of anything feline or feminine that cares to swish its tail or its skirts about my drawing-room.

I was arranging my notes, I had an illuminating inspiration concerning the life of Francois Villon and the contemporary court of Cosmo de' Medici; I was preparing to fix it in writing when the door opened and Stenson announced:

"Mrs. Ordeyne and Miss Ordeyne."

My Aunt Jessica and Dora came in and my inspiration went out. It hasn't come back yet.

My aunt's apologies and Dora's draperies filled the room. I must forgive the invasion. They knew they were disturbing my work. They hoped I didn't mind.

"I wanted mamma to write, but she would come," said Dora, in her hearty voice. I murmured polite mendacities and offered chairs. Dora preferred to stand and gaze about her with feminine curiosity. Women always seem to sniff for Bluebeardism in a bachelor's apartment.

"Why, what two beautiful rooms you have. And the books! There isn't an inch of wall-space!"

She went on a voyage of discovery round the shelves while my aunt explained the object of their visit. Somebody, I forget who, had lent them a yacht. They were making up a party for a summer cruise in Norwegian fiords. The Thingummies and the So and So's and Lord This and Miss That had promised to come, but they were sadly in need of a man to play host—I was to fancy three lone women at the mercy of the skipper. I did, and I didn't envy the skipper. What more natural, gushed my aunt, than that they should turn to me, the head of the house, in their difficulty?

"I am afraid, my dear aunt," said I, "that my acquaintance with skipper-terrorising hosts is nil. I can't suggest any one."

"But who asked you to suggest any one?" she laughed. "It is you yourself that we want to persuade to have pity on us."

"I have—much pity," said I, "for if it's rough, you'll all be horribly seasick."

Dora ran across the room from the book-case she was inspecting.

"I would like to shake him! He is only pretending he doesn't understand. I don't know what we shall do if you won't come with us."

"You can't refuse, Marcus. It will be an ideal trip—and such a comfortable yacht—and the deep blue fiords—and we've got a French chef. You will be doing us such a favour."

"Come, say 'Yes,'" said Dora.

I wish she were not such a bouncing Juno of a girl. Large, athletic women with hearty voices are difficult for one to deal with. I am a match for my aunt, whom I can obfuscate with words. But Dora doesn't understand my satire; she gives a great, healthy laugh, and says, "Oh, rot!" which scatters my intellectual armoury.

"It is exceedingly kind of you to think of me," I said to my aunt, "and the proposal is tempting—the prospect is indeed fascinating—but—"

"But what?"

"I have so many engagements," I answered feebly.

My Aunt Jessica rose, smiling indulgently upon me, as if I were a spoilt little boy, and took me on to the balcony, while Dora demurely retired to the bookshelves in the farther room. "Can't you manage to throw them aside? Poor Dora will be inconsolable."

I stared at her for a moment and then at Dora's broad back and sturdy hips. Inconsolable? I can't make out what the good lady is driving at. If she were a vulgar woman trying to squeeze her way into society and needed the lubricant of the family baronetcy, I could understand her eagerness to parade me as her appanage. But titles in her drawing-room are as common as tea-cups. And the inconsolability of Dora—

"If I did come she would be bored to death," said I.

"She is willing to risk it."

"But why should she seek martyrdom?"

"There is another reason," said my aunt, ignoring my pertinent question, but glancing at me reassuringly "there is another reason why it would be well for you to come on this cruise with us." She sank her voice. "You met Miss Gascoigne in the park last week—"

"A very charming and kind young lady," said I.

"I am afraid you have been a little indiscreet. People have been talking."

"Then theirs, not mine, is the indiscretion."

"But, my dear Marcus, when you spring a good-looking young person, whom you introduce as your Mohammedan ward, upon London society, and she makes a scene in public—why—what else have people got to talk about?"

"They might fall back upon the doctrine of predestination or the price of fish," I replied urbanely.

"But I assure you, Marcus, that there is a hint of scandal abroad. It is actually said that she is living here."

"People will say anything, true or untrue," said I.

My aunt sighfully acquiesced, and for a while we discussed the depravity of human nature.

"I have been thinking," she said at last, "that if you brought your ward to see us, and she could accompany us on this cruise to Norway, the scandal would be scotched outright."

She glanced at me very keenly, and beneath her indulgent smile I saw the hardness of the old campaigner. It was a clever trap she had prepared for me.

I took her hand and in my noblest manner, like the exiled vicomte in costume drama, bent over it and kissed her finger-tips.

"I thank you, my dear aunt, for your generous faith in my integrity," I said, "and I assure you your confidence is well founded."

A loud, gay laugh from the other room interrupted me.

"Are you two rehearsing private theatricals?" cried Dora. As I was attired in a remarkably old college blazer and a pair of yellow Moorish slippers bought a couple of years ago in Tangier, and as my hair was straight on end, owing to a habit of passing my fingers through it while I work, my attitude perhaps did not strike a spectator as being so noble as I had imagined. I took advantage of the anti-climax, however, to bring my aunt from the balcony to the centre of the room, where Dora joined us.

"Well, has mother prevailed?"

"My dear Dora," said I, politely, "how can you imagine it could possibly be a question of persuasion?"

"That might be taken two ways," said Dora. "Like Palmerston's 'Dear Sir, I'll lose no time in reading your book.'" Dora is a minx.

"I fear," said I, "that my pedantic historical sense must venture to correct you. It was Lord Beaconsfield."

"Well, he got it from Palmerston," insisted Dora.

"You children must not quarrel," interposed my aunt, in the fond, maternal tone which I find peculiarly unpleasant. "Marcus will see how his engagements stand, and let us know in a day or two."

"When do you propose to start?" I asked.

"Quite soon. On the 20th.

"I will let you know finally in good time," said I.

As I accompanied them downstairs, I heard a door at the end of the passage open, and turning I saw Carlotta's pretty head thrust past the jamb, and her eyes fixed on the visitors. I motioned her back, sharply, and my aunt and Dora made an unsuspecting exit. The noise of their departing chariot wheels was music to my ears.

Carlotta came rushing out of her sitting-room followed by Miss Griggs, protesting.

"Who those fine ladies?" she cried, with her hands on my sleeve.

"Who are those ladies?" I corrected.

"Who are those ladies?" Carlotta repeated, like a demure parrot.

"They are friends of mine."

Then came the eternal question.

"Is she married, the young one?"

"Miss Griggs," said I, "kindly instil into Carlotta's mind the fact that no young English woman ever thinks about marriage until she is actually engaged, and then her thoughts do not go beyond the wedding."

"But is she?" persisted Carlotta.

"I wish to heaven she was," I laughed, imprudently, "for then she would not come and spoil my morning's work."

"Oh, she wants to marry you," said Carlotta.

"Miss Griggs," said I, "Carlotta will resume her studies," and I went upstairs, sighing for the beautiful tower with a lift outside.

July 14th.

Pasquale came in about nine o'clock, and found us playing cards.

He is a bird of passage with no fixed abode. Some weeks ago he gave up his chambers in St. James's, and went to live with an actor friend, a grass-widower, who has a house in the St. John's Wood Road close by. Why Pasquale, who loves the palpitating centres of existence, should choose to rusticate in this semi-arcadian district, I cannot imagine. He says he can think better in St. John's Wood.

Pasquale think! As well might a salmon declare it could sing better in a pond! The consequence of his propinquity, however, has been that he has dropped in several times lately on his way home, but generally at a later hour.

"Oh, please don't move and spoil the picture," he cried. "Oh, you idyllic pair! And what are you playing? Cribbage! If I had been challenged to guess the game you would have selected for your after-dinner entertainment, I should have sworn to cribbage!"

"An excellent game," said I. Indeed, it is the only game that I remember. I dislike cards. They bore me to death. So dus chess. People love to call them intellectual pastimes; but, surely, if a man wants exercise for his intellect, there are enough problems in this complicated universe for him to worry his brains over, with more profit to himself and the world. And as for the pastime—I consider that when two or more intelligent people sit down to play cards they are insulting one another's powers of conversation. These remarks do not apply to my game with Carlotta, who is a child, and has to be amused. She has picked up cribbage with remarkable quickness, and although this is only the third evening we have played, she was getting the better of me when Pasquale appeared.

I repeated my statement. Cribbage certainly was an excellent game. Pasquale laughed.

"Of course it is. A venerable pastime. Darby and Joan have played it of evenings for the last thousand years. Please go on."

But Carlotta threw her cards on the table and herself on the sofa and said she would prefer to hear Pasquale talk.

"He says such funny things."

Then she jumped from the sofa and handed him the box of chocolates that is never far from her side. How lithe her movements are!

"Pasquale says you were his schoolmaster, and used to beat him with a big stick," she remarked, turning her head toward me, while Pasquale helped himself to a sweet.

He was clumsy in his selection, and the box slipped from Carlotta's hand and the contents rolled upon the floor. They both went on hands and knees to pick them up, and there was much laughing and whispering.

It is curious that I cannot recall Pasquale having alluded, in Carlotta's presence, to our early days. It was on my tongue to ask when he committed the mendacity—for in that school not only did the assistant masters not have the power of the cane, but Pasquale, being in the sixth form at the time I joined, was exempt from corporal punishment—when they both rose flushed from their grovelling beneath the table, and some merry remark from Pasquale put the question out of my head.

All this is unimportant. The main result of Pasquale's visit this evening is a discovery.

Now, is it, after all, a discovery, or only the non-moral intellect's sinister attribution of motives?

"A baby in long clothes would have seen through it," said Pasquale. "Lord bless you, if I were in your position I would go on board that yacht, I'd make violent love to every female there, like the gentleman in Mr. Wycherley's comedy, I'd fill a salmon fly-book with samples of their hair, I'd make them hate one another like poison, and at the end of the voyage I'd announce my engagement to Carlotta, and when they all came to the wedding I'd make the fly-book the most conspicuous of wedding presents on the table, from the bridegroom to the bride. By George! I'd cure them of the taste for man-hunting!"

I wonder what impelled me to tell Pasquale of the proposed yachting cruise? We sat smoking by the open window, long after Carlotta had been sent to bed, and looking at a full moon sailing over the tops of the trees in the park; enveloped in that sensuous atmosphere of a warm summer night which induces a languor in the body and in the will. On such a night as this young Lorenzo, if he happens to have Jessica by his side, makes a confounded idiot of himself, to his life's undoing; and on such a night as this a reserved philosopher commits the folly of discussing his private affairs with a Sebastian Pasquale.

But if he is correct in his surmise, I am much beholden to the relaxing influences of the night. I have been warned of perils that encompass me: perils that would infest the base and insidiously scale the sides of the most inaccessible tower that man could build on the edge of the Regent's Park. A woman with a Matrimonial Purpose would be quite capable of gaining access by balloon to my turret window. Is it not my Aunt Jessica's design melodramatically to abduct me in a yacht?

"Once aboard the pirate lugger, and the man is ours!" she cries.

But the man is not coming aboard the pirate lugger. He is going to keep as far as he possibly can from the shore. Neither is he to be lured into bringing his lovely Mohammedan ward with him, as an evidence of good faith and unimpeachable morals. They can regard her as a Mohammedan ward or a houri or a Princess of Babylon, just as they choose.

Pasquale must be right. A hundred remembered incidents go to prove it. I recollect now that Judith has rallied me on my obtuseness.

The sole end of all my Aunt Jessica's manoeuvring is to marry me to Dora, and Dora, like Barkis, is willing. Marry Dora! The thought is a febrifuge, a sudorific! She would be thumping discords on my wornout strings all day long. In a month I should be a writhing madman. I would sooner, infinitely sooner, marry Carlotta. Carlotta is nature; Dora isn't even art. Why, in the name of men and angels, should I marry Dora? And why (save to call herself Lady Ordeyne) should she want to marry me? I have not trifled with her virgin affections; and that she is nourishing a romantic passion for me of spontaneous growth I decline to believe. For aught I care she can be as inconsolable as Calypso. It will do her good. She can write a little story about it in The Sirens' Magazine.

I am shocked. For all her bouncing ways and animal health and incorrect information, I thought Dora was a nice-minded girl.

Do nice-minded girls hunt husbands?

Good heavens! This looks like the subject of a silly-season correspondence in The Daily Telegraph.



CHAPTER XI

July 19th.

Campsie, N.B. Hither have I fled from my buccaneering relations. I am seeking shelter in a manse in the midst of a Scotch moor, and the village, half a mile away, is itself five miles from a railway station. Here I can defy Aunt Jessica.

After my conversation with Pasquale, I passed a restless night. My slumbers were haunted by dreams of pirate yachts flying the jolly Roger, on which the skull and crossbones melted grotesquely into a wedding-ring and a true lovers' knot. I awoke to the conviction that so long as the vessel remained on English waters I could find no security in London. I resolved on flight. But whither?

Verily the high gods must hold me in peculiar favour. The first letter I opened was from old Simon McQuhatty, my present host, a godfather of my mother, who alone of mortals befriended us in the dark days of long ago. He was old and infirm, he wrote, and Gossip Death was waiting for him on the moor; but before he went to join him he would like to see Susan's boy again. I could come whenever I liked. A telegram from Euston before I started would be sufficient notice. I sent Stenson out with a telegram to say I was starting that very day by the two o'clock train, and I wrote a polite letter to my Aunt Jessica informing her of my regret at not being able to accept her kind invitation as I was summoned to Scotland for an indefinite period.

My old friend's ministry in the Free Kirk of Scotland is drawing to a close; he has lived in this manse, a stone's throw from his grave, for fifty years, and the approaching change of habitat will cost him nothing. He will still lie at the foot of his beloved hills, and the purple moorland will spread around him for all eternity, and the smell of the gorse and heather will fill his nostrils as he sleeps. He is a bit of a pagan, old McQuhatty, in spite of Calvin and the Shorter Catechism. I should not wonder if he were the original of the story of the minister who prayed for the "puir Deil." He planted a rowan tree by his porch when he was first inducted into the manse, and it has grown up with him and he loves it as if it were a human being. He has had many bonny arguments with it, he says, on points of doctrine, and it has brought comfort to him in times of doubt by shivering its delicate leaves and whispering, "Dinna fash yoursel, McQuhatty. The Lord God is a sensible body." He declares that the words are articulate, and I suspect that in the depths of his heart he believes that there are tongues in trees and books in the running brooks, just as he is convinced that there is good in everything.

He is a ripe and whimsical scholar, and his talk, even in infirm old age, is marked by a Doric virility which has rendered his companionship for these five days as stimulating as the moorland air. How few men have this gift of discharging intellectual invigoration. Indeed, I only know old McQuhatty who has it, and a sportive Providence has carefully excluded mankind from its benefits for half a century. Stay: it once fostered a genius who arose in Campsie, and sent him strung with tonic to Edinburgh to become a poet. But the poor lad drank whisky for two years without cessation, so that he died, and McQuhatty's inspiration was wasted. What intellectual stimulus can he afford, for instance, to Sandy McGrath, an elder of the kirk whom I saw coming up the brae on Sunday? An old ram stood in the path and, as obstinate as he, refused to budge. And as they looked dourly at each other, I wondered if the ram were dressed in black broadcloth and McGrath in wool, whether either of their mothers would notice the metamorphosis. Yet my host declares that I see with the eyes of a Southron; that the Scotch peasant when he is not drunk is intellectual, and that there is no occasion on which he is not ready for theological disputation.

"But I dinna mind telling you," he added, "that I'd as lief talk with my rowan tree. It does nae blaze into a conflagration at a comfortable wee bit of false doctrine."

I should love to stay all the summer with my old friend, It seems that only from such a remote solitude can one view things mundane in the right perspective, and in their true proportion. One would see how important or unimportant portent in the cosmos was the agricultural ant's dream of three millimetres and an aphis compared with the aspirations of the English labourer. One would justly focus the South African millionaire, Sandy McGrath and the ram, and bring them to their real lowest common denominator. One would even be able to gauge the value of a History of Renaissance Morals. The benefits I should derive from a long sojourn are incalculable, but my new responsibilities call me back to London and its refracting and distorting atmosphere. If I had dwelt here for fifty years I should have perceived that Carlotta was but a speck in the whirlwind of human dust whose ultimate destiny was immaterial. As my five days' visit, however, has not advanced me to that pitch of wisdom, I am foolishly concerned in my mind as to her welfare, and anxious to dissolve the triumvirate, Miss Griggs, Stenson, and Antoinette, whom I have entrusted with the reins of government.

A month ago, in similar circumstances, I should have railed at Fate and anathematised Carlotta from the tip of her pink toes to the gold and bronze glory of her hair. But I am growing more kindly disposed towards Carlotta, and taking a keen interest in her spiritual development.

An inner voice, an ironical, sardonic inner voice with which there is no arguing, tells me that I am a hypocrite; that an interest in Carlotta's spiritual development is a nice, comforting, high-sounding phrase which has deluded philosophic guardians of female youth for many generations.

"What does it matter to you whether she has a soul or not," says the voice, "provided she can babble pleasantly at dinner and play cribbage with you afterwards?"

Well, what on earth does it matter?

July 21st.

She was at Euston to meet me. As soon as she saw my face at the carriage window she left Stenson and flew up the platform like a pretty tame animal, and when I alighted hung on my arms and frisked and gamboled around me in excess of joy.

"So you are glad to have me back, Carlotta?" I asked, as we were driving home.

She sidled up against me in her terrier fashion.

"Oh, ye-es," she cooed. "The day was night without you."

"That is the oriental language of exaggeration," I said. But all the same it was pleasant to hear, and the soft notes of her voice coiled themselves, as music sometimes dus, around my heart.

"I love dear Seer Marcous," she said.

I put my arm round her waist for a moment, as one would do to a child.

"You are a good little girl, Carlotta. That is to say," I added, remembering my responsibilities, "if you have been good. Have you?"

"Oh, so good. Antoinette has been teaching me how to cook, and I can make a rice pudding. It is so nice to cook things. I like the smell. But I burned myself. See."

She pulled off her glove and showed me a red mark on her hand. I kissed it to make it well, and she laughed and was very happy. And I, too, was happy. Something new and fresh and bright has come into my life. Stenson is an admirable servant; but his impassive face and correct salute which have hitherto greeted me at London railway termini, although suggestive of material comfort, cannot be said to invest my arrival with a special atmosphere of charm. Carlotta's welcome has been a new sensation. I look upon the house with different eyes. It was a pleasure, as I dressed for dinner, to reflect that I should not go down to a solemn, solitary meal, but would have my beautiful little witch to keep me company.

July 22d.

It appears that her conduct has not been by any means irreproachable. Miss Griggs reported that she took advantage of my absence to saturate herself with scent, one of the most heinous crimes in our domestic calendar. Mulier bene olet dum nihil olet is the maxim written above this article of our code. Once when she disobeyed my orders and came into the drawing-room reeking of ylang-ylang, I sent her upstairs to change all her things and have a bath, and not come near me till Antoinette vouched for her scentlessness. And "Ah, monsieur," I remember Antoinette replied, "that would be impossible, for the sweet lamb smells of spring flowers, de son naturel." Which is true. Her use of violent perfumes is thus a double offence. "There is something more serious," said Miss Griggs.

"I can hardly believe there can be anything more serious than making one's self detestable to one's fellow-creatures," said I.

"Unless it is making one's self too agreeable," said Miss Griggs, pointedly.

I asked her what she meant.

"I have discovered," she replied, "that Carlotta has been carrying on a clandestine flirtation with the young man who calls for orders from the grocer's."

"I am glad it wasn't the butcher's boy," I murmured.

Miss Griggs giggled in a silly way, as if I were jesting. At my stern request she recovered and unfolded the horrible tale. She had caught Carlotta kissing her hand to him. She had also seen him smuggle a three-cornered note between Carlotta's fingers, and Carlotta had definitely refused to surrender the billet-dour.

"What is the modern course of treatment," I asked, "prescribed for young ladies who flirt with grocers' assistants? In Renaissance times she could be whipped. The wise Margaret of Navarre used to beat her daughter, Jeanne d'Albrecht, soundly for far less culpable lapses from duty. Or she could be sent to a convent and put into a cell with rats, or she could be bidden to attend at a merry-making where the chief attraction was roast grocer's assistant. But nowadays—what do you suggest?"

The unimaginative creature could suggest nothing. She thought that I would know how to deal with the offence. Perhaps preventive measures would be more efficacious than punishment. But what do I know of the repressory methods employed in seminaries for young ladies? Burton in his "Anatomy" speaks cheerfully of blood-letting behind the ears. He also quotes, I remember, Hippocrates or somebody, who narrates that a noble maiden was cured of a flirtatious temperament by wearing down her back for three weeks a leaden plate pierced with holes. This I told Miss Griggs, who spoke contemptuously of the Father of Medicine.

"He also recommends—whether for this complaint, or for something similar I forget for the moment—" said I, "anointing the soles of the feet with the fat of a dormouse, the teeth with the ear-wax of a dog; and speaks highly of a ram's lungs applied hot to the fore part of the head. I am sorry these admirable remedies are out of date. There is a rich Rabelaisianism about them. Instead of the satisfying jorums of our forefathers we take tasteless pellets, which procure us no sensation at the time, and even the good old hot mustard poultice is a thing of the past."

"But what about Carlotta?" inquired Miss Griggs, anxiously.

That is just like a woman, to interrupt a man when he is beginning to talk comfortably on a subject that interests him. I sighed.

"Send Carlotta up to me," I said, resignedly.

Another morning's work spoiled. I turned to my writing-table. I had just transcribed on my MS. the anecdote told with such glee by Machiavelli about Zanobi del Pino, a sort of Admiral Byng of the early fifteenth century, who was locked up and given nothing to eat but paper painted with snakes, so that he died, fasting, in a few days. I had an apt epigram on the subject of Renaissance humour trembling on my pen-point, when Miss Griggs came in with her foolish gossip. I am sure the platitude I wrote afterwards is not that original flash of wit.

Carlotta entered and crossed the room to the side of my writing-chair, her great dark eyes fixed on me, and her hands dutifully behind her back. She looked a Greuze picture of innocence. I believed less than ever in the enormity of the offence.

"Do you know what you're here for?" I asked, magisterially.

She nodded.

"Then you have been making love to the young man from the grocer's?"

She nodded again. I began to conceive a violent dislike to the grocer's young man. It was one of the most humiliating sensations I have experienced. I think I have seen the individual—a thick-set, red-headed, freckled nondescript.

"What did you do it for?" I asked.

"He wanted to make love to me," replied Carlotta.

"He is a young scamp," said I.

"What is a scamp?" she asked sweetly.

"I am not giving you a lesson in philology," I remarked. "Do you know that you have been behaving in a shocking manner?"

"Now you are cross with me."

"Yes," I said, "infernally angry."

And I was. I expected to see her burst into tears. She did nothing of the kind; only looked at me with irritating demureness. She wore a red blouse and a grey skirt, and the audacious high-heeled red slippers. I began to feel the return of my early prejudice against her. Nobody so alluring could possess a spark of virtue.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said I. "I make many allowances for your lack of knowledge of our Western customs, but for a young lady to flirt with an ugly red-headed varlet of the lower orders is reprehensible all the world over."

"He gave me dates and dried fruits with sugar all over them," said Carlotta.

"Stolen from his employer," I said. "I will have that young man locked up in prison, and if you go on receiving his feloniously obtained presents they will put you in prison too, and I shall be delighted."

Carlotta maintained her demure expression and extracted from her skirt pocket a very dirty piece of paper.

"He writes poetry—about me," she remarked, handing me what I recognised as the three-cornered note.

I took the thing between finger and thumb, and glanced over the poem. I have read much indifferent modern verse in my time—I sometimes take a slush-bath after tea at the club—but I could not have imagined the English language capable of such emulsion. It was execrable. The first couplet alone contained an idea.

"Thou art a lovely girl and so very nice I dream till death upon your face."

To the wretch's ear it was a rhyme! I destroyed the noisome thing and cast it into the waste-paper basket.

"Prison," said I, "would be a luxurious reward for him. In a properly civilised country he would be bastinadoed and hanged."

"Yes, he is dam bad," said Carlotta, serenely.

"Good heavens!" I cried, "the ruffian has even taught you to swear. If you dare to say that wicked word again, I'll punish you severely. What is his horrid name?"

"Pasquale," said Carlotta.

"Pasquale?"

"Yes, he likes to hear me say 'dam.' Oh, the other? Oh, no, he is too stupid. He does not say anything. His name is Timkins. I only play with him. He is so funny. He can go and kill himself; I won't care."

"Never mind about Timkins," said I, "I want to hear about Pasquale. When did he teach you that wicked, wicked word?"

I think Carlotta flushed as she regarded the point of her red slipper.

"I went for a walk and he met me at the corner and walked here by my side. Was that wicked?"

"What would the excellent Hamdi Effendi have said to it?"

Woman-like she evaded my question.

"I hope Hamdi is dead. Do you think so?"

"I hope not. For if you behave in this naughty manner, I shall have to send you back to him."

She had imperceptibly moved nearer my chair until she stood quite close to my side, so that as I spoke the last words I looked up into her face. She put her arm about my shoulders. It is one of her pretty, caressing ways.

"I will be good—very good," she said.

"You will have to," said I, leaning back my head.

She must have caught a relenting note in my voice; for what happened I feel even now a curious shame in noting down. Her other arm flew under my chin to join its fellow, and holding me a prisoner in my chair, she bent down and kissed me. She also laid her cheek against mine.

I am still aware of the indescribable, soft, warm pressure, although she has gone to bed hours ago.

I vow that a man must be less a man than a petrified egg to have repulsed her. The touch of her lips was like the falling of dewy rose-petals. Her breath was as fragrant as new-mown hay. Her hair brushing my forehead had the odour of violets.

I sent her back to Miss Griggs. She ran out of the room laughing merrily. She has received plenary absolution for her shameless coquetry and her profane language. Worse than that she has discovered how to obtain it in future. The witch has found her witchcraft, and having once triumphantly exerted her powers, will take the earliest opportunity of doing so again. I am fallen, both in my own eyes and hers, from my high estate. Henceforward she will regard me only with good-humoured tolerance; I shall be to her but a non-felonious Timkins.

I was an idiot to have kissed her in return.

I have not seen her since. I lunched at the club, and paid a formal call on Mrs. Ralph Ordeyne and my cousin Rosalie, in their sunless house in Kensington.

I met a singular lack of welcome. Rosalie gave me a limper hand than usual, and took an early opportunity of leaving me tete-a-tete with her mother, who conversed frigidly about the warm weather. The very tea, if possible, was colder.

I met Judith by appointment in Kensington Gardens, and walked with her homewards. I mentioned my chilly reception.

"My dear man," she observed—I dislike this apostrophe, which Judith always uses by way of introduction to an unpleasant remark—"My dear man, I have no doubt that you have as unsavoury a reputation as any one in London. You are credited with an establishment like Solomon's—minus the respectable counter-balance of the wives, and your devout relatives are very properly shocked."

I said that it was monstrous. Judith retorted that I had brought the calumny upon myself.

"But what can I do?" I asked.

"Board her out with a suburban family, as you should have done from the first. Even I, who am not strait-laced, consider it highly improper for you to have her alone with you in the house."

"My dear," said I, "there is Antoinette."

"Tush"—or something like it—said Judith.

"And Stenson. No one seeing Stenson could doubt the irreproachable propriety of his master."

"I really have no patience with you," said Judith.

It is hopeless to discuss Carlotta with her. I shall do it no more.

We sat for a while under the trees, and conversed on rational topics. She likes her employment with Willoughby. The morning she spends among blue books and other waste matter at the British Museum, and she devotes the evening to sorting her information. Willoughby commends her highly.

"And there is something I know you'll be very pleased to hear," she continued. "Who do you think called on me yesterday? Mrs. Willoughby. Her husband wants me to spend August and September at a place they have taken in North Wales, and help him with his new book—as a private secretary, you know. I said that I never went into society. I must tell you this was the first time I had seen her. She put her hand on my arm in the sweetest way in the world and said: 'I know all about it, my dear, and that is why I thought I'd come myself as Harold's ambassador.' Wasn't it beautiful of her?"

She looked at me and her eyes were filled with tears.

"Marcus dear, I am not a bad woman, am I?"

"My dearest," I answered, very deeply touched, "you are the best woman in the world. So far from conferring a favour on you, Mrs. Willoughby has gained for herself the inestimable privilege of your friendship."

"Ah!" said Judith, "a man cannot tell what it means."

Really men are not such dullard dunderheads as women are pleased to imagine. I have the most crystalline perception of what Mrs. Willoughby's invitation means to Judith. Women appear to find a morbid satisfaction in the fiction that their sex is actuated by a mysterious nexus of emotions and motives which the grosser sense of man is powerless to appreciate. In her heart of hearts it is a prodigious comfort to a woman to feel herself misunderstood. Even she who is most perfectly mated, and is intellectually convinced that the difference of sex is no barrier to his complete knowledge of her, loves to cherish some little secret bit of her nature, to which he, on account of his masculinity, will be eternally blind. Of course there are dull men who could not understand a tabbycat or a professional cricketer, let alone an expert autothaumaturgist—a self-mystery-maker—like a woman. But an intelligent and painstaking man should find no difficulty in appreciating what, after all, is merely a point of view; for what women see from that point of view they are as indiscreet in revealing as a two-year-old babe. I have confessed before that I do not understand Judith—that is to say the whole welter of contradictions in which her ego consists—but that is solely because I have not taken the trouble to subject her to special microscopic study. Such a scientific analysis would, I think, be an immodest discourtesy towards any lady of my acquaintance, especially towards one for whom I bear considerable affection. It would be as unwarrantable for a decent-minded man to speculate upon her exact spiritual dimensions as upon those portions of her physical frame that are hidden beneath her attire. The charm of human intercourse rests, to a great extent, on the vague, the deliberately unperceived, the stimulating sense that an individual possesses more attributes than flash upon the bodily or mental eye. But this, I say, is deliberate. One knows perfectly well that beneath her skirts any young woman you please does not melt away into the scaly tail of a mermaid, but has a pair of ordinary commonplace legs. One knows that when she has passed through certain well defined experiences in life, a certain definite range of sentiments must exist behind whatever mask of facial expression she may choose to adopt. It is sheer nonsense, therefore, for Judith to say that I cannot enter into her feelings with regard to Mrs. Willoughby's invitation.

I developed this theme very fully to Judith as we sat in Kensington Gardens and during our subsequent, stroll diagonally through Hyde Park to the Marble Arch. She listened with great attention, and when I had finished regarded me in a pitying manner, a smile flickering over her lips.

"My dear Marcus," she said, "there is no man, however humble-minded, who has not one colossal vanity, his knowledge of women. He, at any rate, has established the veritable Theory of Women. And we laugh at you, my good friend, for the more you expound, the more do you reveal your beautiful and artistic ignorance. Oh, Marcus, the idea of you setting up as a feminine psychologist."

"And pray, why not?" I asked, somewhat nettled.

"Because you are that dear, impossible, lovable thing known as Marcus Ordeyne."

This was exceedingly pretty of Judith. But really woman is the Eternal Philistine, as Matthew Arnold has defined the term. Her supreme characteristic is inconvincibility. I had simply wasted my breath.



CHAPTER XII

August 3d.

Etretat, Seine-Injerieure:—A young fellow on the Casino terrace this evening caught my eye, looked at me queerly, and passed on. His face, though unfamiliar, stirred some dormant association. What was it? The profitless question pestered me for hours. At last, during the performance at the theatre, I slapped my knee and said aloud,

"I've got it!"

"What?" asked Carlotta in alarm.

"A fly," I answered. Whereat Carlotta laughed, and bent forward to get a view of the victim. I austerely directed her attention to the stage. It was a metaphorical fly whose buzzing I had stopped.

The young fellow was he who had pointed me out in Hyde Park to his companion, and lightly assured her that I was as mad as a dingo dog. From the moment after the phrase's utterance to that of the slapping of my knee, it had been altogether absent from my mind. Now it haunts me. It reiterates itself after the manner of a glib phrase. I am glad I am not in a railway carriage; the cranks would amuse the wheels with it all night long. As it is, the surf tries to thunder it out on the shingle just a few yards away from my window. I keep asking myself: why a dingo dog? If I am mad it is in a gentle, Jaquesian, melancholy manner. I do not dash at life, rabid and foaming at the mouth.

I think the idiot simile must have been merely the misuse of language so common among the half-educated youth of Great Britain.

Yet when I come to consider my present condition, I have doubts as to my complete sanity. Here am I, in a little, semi-fashionable French seaside place, away from my books and my comforts and my habits, as much interested in its vapid distractions as if the universe held no other pursuits worth the attention of a rational man. And I have been here a calendar month.

To please Carlotta I wear white duck trousers, a pink shirt, and a yachting-cap. I wired for them to my London tailor and they arrived within a week. The first time I appeared in the maniacal costume I slunk from the stony stare of a gendarme, as I was about to ascend the Casino steps, and hid myself among the fishing-boats lower down on the beach. Carlotta, however, was delighted and said that I looked pretty. Now I have grown callous, seeing other fools similarly apparelled. But a year ago, should I have dreamed it possible for me to strut about a fashionable plage in white ducks, a pink shirt, and a yachting-cap? I trow not. They are signs of some sort of madness—whether that of a Jaques or a dingo dog matters very little.

Pasquale was the main cause of my taking Carlotta away from London. He came far too frequently to the house, established far too great a familiarity with my little girl. She quoted him far too readily. She is at the impressionable age when young women fall easy victims to the allurements of a fascinating creature like Pasquale. If he showed himself in the light of a possible husband for Carlotta, I should have nothing to say. I should give the pair my paternal benediction. But I know my Renaissance and I know my Pasquale. Carlotta is merely a new sensation—that's all he seems to live for, the delectable scoundrel. But I am not going to have her heart broken by any cinquecento wolf in Poole's clothing. I assume that Carlotta has a heart, even if she is not possessed of a soul. As to the latter I am still in doubt. At all events I resolved to withdraw Carlotta from his influence, put her in fresh surroundings, and allow her to mix more freely among men and women, so as to divert and possibly improve her mind.

I perceive that Carlotta is becoming an occupation. Well, she is quite as profitable as collecting postage-stamps, or golf, or amateur photography.

I have spent a pleasant month in this little place. It is the mouth of a gorge in the midst of a cliff-bound coast. The bay, but a quarter of a mile in sweep, is shut in at each end by a projecting wall of cliff cut by a natural arch. Half the shingle beach is given up to fisherfolk and their boats and tarred Noah's arks where they keep their nets. The other half suddenly rises into a digue or terrace on which is built a primitive casino, and below the terrace are the bathing-cabins. We are staying at the most spotlessly clean of all clean French hotels. There are no carpets on the stairs; but if one mounts them in muddy boots, an untiring chambermaid emerges from a lair below, with hot water and scrubbing-brush and smilingly removes the traces of one's passage. Carlotta and Antoinette have adjoining rooms in the main building. I inhabit the annexe, sleeping in a quaint, clean, bare little chamber with a balconied window that looks over the Noah's Arks and the fishing-smacks and fisherfolk, away out to sea. This morning as I lay in bed I saw our Channel fleet lie along the arc of the horizon.

Antoinette dwells in continuous rapture at being in France again. Carlotta assures me that the smile does not leave her great red face even as she sleeps of nights. It is a little jest between us. She peeped in once to see. The good soul has filled herself up with French conversation as a starving hen gorges herself with corn. She has scraped acquaintance with every washerwoman, fish-wife, marchande, bathing woman and domestic servant on the beach. She is on intimate terms with the whole male native population. When the three of us happen to walk together it is a triumphal progress of bows and grins and nods. At first I thought it was I for whom this homage was intended. I was soon undeceived. It was Antoinette. She loves to parade Carlotta before her friends. I came upon her once entertaining an admiring audience in Carlotta's presence with a detailed description of that young woman's physical perfections—a description which was marked by a singular lack of reticence. The time of her glory is the bathing hour, when she accompanies Carlotta from her cabin to the water's edge, divests her of peignoir and espadrilles, but before revealing her to fashionable Etretat, casts a preliminary glance around, as who should say: "Prepare all men and women for the dazzling goddess I am about to unveil." Carlotta is undoubtedly bewitching in her bathing costume, and enjoys a little triumph of beauty. People fall into a natural group in order to look at her, while I, sitting on a camp-stool in my white ducks and pink shirt and smoking a cigarette, cannot repress a complacent pride of ownership. I do not object to her flicking her wet fingers at me when she comes dripping out of the sea; and I do not even reproach her when she puts her foot upon my sartorially immaculate knee, to show me a pebble-cut on her glistening pink sole.

Her conduct has been exemplary. I have allowed her to make the acquaintance of two or three young fellows, her partners at the Casino dances, and she walks up and down the terrace with them before meals. I have forbidden her, under penalty of immediate return to London and of my eternal displeasure, to mention the harem at Alexandretta. Young fellows are gifted with a genius for misapprehension. She is an ordinary young English lady, an orphan (which is true), and I am her guardian. Of course she looks at them with imploring eyes, and pulls them by the sleeve, and handles the lappels of their coats, and admits them to terms of the frankest intimacy; but I can no more change these characteristics than I can alter the shape of her body. She is the born coquette. Her delighted conception of herself is that she is the object of every man's admiration. I noticed her this morning playing a tune with her fingers on the old bathing-man's arm, as he was preparing to take her into the water, and I saw his mahogany face soften. In her indescribable childish way she would coquet with a tax-collector or a rag-and-bone man or the Archbishop of Canterbury. But she has committed no grave indiscretion, and I am sufficiently her lord and master to exact obedience.

I pretend, however, to be at her beck and call, and it is a delight to minister to her radiant happiness—to feel her lean on my arm and hear her cooing voice say:

"You are so good. I should like to kiss you."

But I do not allow her to kiss me. Never again.

"Seer Marcous, let us go to the little horses."

She has a consuming passion for petits chevaux. I speak sagely of the evils of gambling. She laughs. I weakly take lower ground.

"What is the good? You have no money."

"Oh-h! But only two francs," she says, holding out her hand.

"Not one. Yesterday you lost."

"But to-day I shall win. I want to give you something I saw in a shop. Oh, a beautiful thing." Then I feel a hand steal into the pocket of my dinner jacket where I carry loose silver for this very purpose, just as a lover of horses carries lumps of sugar for the nose of a favourite pony, and immediately it is withdrawn with a cry of joy and triumph, and she skips back out of my reach. Then she takes my arm and leads me from the sweet night-air into the hot little room with its crowd around the nine gyrating animals.

"I shall put it on 5. I always put on 5. He is a nice, clean, white, pretty horse."

She stakes two francs, watches the turn in a tense agony of excitement; she wins, comes running to me with sixteen francs clutched tight in her hand.

"See. I said I should win."

"Come away then and be happy."

But she makes a protesting grimace, and before I can stop her, runs back to stake again on 5. In twenty minutes she is ruined and returns to me wearing an expression of abject misery. She is too desolate even to try the fortune of the dinner-jacket pocket. I take her outside and restore her to beatitude with grenadine syrup and soda-water. She rejects the straws. With her elbows on the marble table, the glass held in both hands, she drinks sensuously, in little sips.

And I, Marcus Ordeyne, sit by watching her, a most contented philosopher of forty. A dingo dog could not be so contented. That young fellow, I unhesitatingly assert, must be the most brainless of his type. I suffer fools gladly, as a general rule, but if I see much of this one I shall do him some injury.

After dejeuner we strolled to the top of the west cliff and lay on the thick dry grass. The earth has never known a more perfect afternoon. A day of turquoise and diamond.

The air itself was diaphanous blue. Below us the tiny place slumbered in the sunshine; scarcely a sign of life save specks of washer-women on the beach bending over white patches which we knew were linen spread out to dry. The ebb-tide lapped lazily on the shingle, where the sea changed suddenly from ultramarine to a fringe of feathery white. A white sail or two flecked the blue of the bay. A few white wisps of cirrus gleamed above our heads. Around us, on the cliff-tops, the green pastures and meadows and, farther inland, the cornfields stacked in harvest, and great masses of trees. Lying on our backs, between sea and sky, we seemed utterly alone. Carlotta and I were the sole inhabitants of the earth. I dreamily disintegrated caramels from their sticky tissue-paper wrappings for Carlotta's consumption.

After a while unconquerable drowsiness crept over me; and a little later I had an odd sense of perfect quietude. I was lying amid moss and violets. In a languorous way I wondered how my surroundings had changed, and at last I awoke to find my head propped on Carlotta's lap and shaded by her red parasol, while she sat happy in full sunshine. I was springing from this posture of impropriety when she laughed and laid restraining hands on my shoulders.

"No. You must not move. You look so pretty. And it is so nice. I put your head there so that it should be soft. You have been sound asleep."

"I have also been abominably impolite," said I. "I humbly beg your pardon, Carlotta."

"Oh, I am not cross," she laughed. Then still keeping her hands on me, she settled her limbs into a more comfortable position.

"There! Now I can play at being a good little Turkish wife." She fashioned into a fan the Matin newspaper, which I had bought for the luxurious purpose of not reading, and fanned me. "That is what Ayesha used to do to Hamdi. And Ayesha used to tell him stories. But my lord does not like his slave's stories."

"Decidedly not," said I.

I have heard much of Ayesha, a pretty animal organism who appears to have turned her elderly husband into a doting fool. I am beginning to have a contempt for Hamdi Effendi.

"They are what you call improper, eh?" she laughed, referring to the tales. "I will sing you a Turkish song which you will not understand."

"Is it a suitable song?"

"Kim bilir—who knows?" said Carlotta.

She began a melancholy, crooning, guttural ditty; but broke off suddenly.

"Oh! but it is stupid. Like the Turkish dancing. Oh, everything in Alexandretta was stupid! Sometimes I think I have never seen Alexandretta—or Ayesha—or Hamdi. I think I always am with you."

This must be so, as of late she has spoken little of her harem life; she talks chiefly of the small daily happenings, and already we have a store of common interests. The present is her whole existence; the past but a confused dream. The odd part of the matter is that she regards her position with me as a perfectly natural one. No stray kitten adopted by a kind family could have less sense of obligation, or a greater faith in the serene ordering of the cosmos for its own private and peculiar comfort. When I asked her a while ago what she would have done had I left her on the bench in the Embankment Gardens, she shrugged her shoulders and answered, as she had done before, that either she would have died or some other nice gentleman would have taken care of her.

"Do you think nice gentlemen go about London looking for homeless little girls?" I asked on that occasion.

"All gentlemen like beautiful girls," she replied, which brought us to an old argument.

This afternoon, however, we did not argue. The day forbade it. I lay with my head on Carlotta's lap, looking up into the deep blue, and feeling a most curious sensation of positive happiness. My attitude towards life has hitherto been negative. I have avoided more than I have sought. I have not drunk deep of life because I have been unathirst. To me—

"To stand aloof and view the fight Is all the pleasure of the game."

My interest even in Judith has been of a detached nature. I have been like Faust. I might have said:

"Werd' ich zum Augenblicke sagen Werweile doch! Du bist so schon!

Then may the devil take me and do what he likes with me!"

I have never had the least inclination to apostrophise the moment in this fashion and request it to tarry on account of its exceeding charm. Never until this afternoon, when the deep summer enchantment of the turquoise day was itself ensorcelised by the witchery of a girl's springtide.

"You have three, four, five—oh, such a lot of grey hairs," said Carlotta, looking down on my reclining head.

"Many people have grey hair at twenty," said I.

"But I have none."

"You are not yet twenty, Carlotta."

"Do you think I will have them then? Oh, it would be dreadful. No one would care to have me."

"And I? Am I thus the object of every one's disregard?"

"Oh, you—you are a man. It is right for a man. It makes him look wise. His wife says, 'Behold, my husband has grey hair. He has wisdom. If I am not good he will beat me. So I must obey him."'

"She wouldn't run off with a good-for-nothing scamp of two-and-twenty?"

"Oh, no-o," said Carlotta. "She would not be so wicked."

"I am glad," said I, "that you think a sense of conjugal duty is an ineradicable element of female nature. But suppose she fell in love with the young scamp?"

"Men fall in love," she replied sagely. "Women only fall in love in stories—Turkish stories. They love their husbands."

"You amaze me," said I.

"Ye-es," said Carlotta.

"But in England, a man wants a woman to love him before he marries her."

"How can she?" asked Carlotta.

This was a staggering question.

"I don't know," said I, "but she dus."

"Then before I marry a man in England I must love him? But I shall die without a husband!"

"I don't think so," said I.

"I must begin soon," said Carlotta, with a laugh.

A sinuous motion of her serpentine young body enabled her to bend her face down to mine.

"Shall I love Seer Marcous? But how shall I know when I am in love?"

"When you appreciate the exceeding impropriety of discussing the matter with your humble servant," I replied.

"When a girl is in love she does not speak about it?"

"No, my dear. She lets concealment like a worm i' the bud feed on her damask cheek."

"Then she gets ugly?"

"That's it," I answered. "You keep on looking in the glass, and when you perceive you are hideous then you'll know you are in love."

"But when I am so ugly you will not want me," she objected. "So it is no use falling in love with you."

"You have a more logical mind than I imagined," said I.

"What is a logical mind?" asked Carlotta.

"It is the antiseptic which destroys the bacilli of unreason whereby true happiness is vivified."

"I do not understand," she said.

"I should be vastly surprised if you did," I laughed.

"Would you like me to marry and go away and leave you?" asked Carlotta, after a long pause.

"I suppose," I said with a sigh, "that some tin-pot knight will drive up one of these days to the castle in a hansom-cab and carry off my princess."

"Then you'll be sorry?"

"My dear," I answered, "do not let us discuss such gruesome things on an afternoon like this."

"You would like better for me to go on playing at being your Turkish wife?"

"Infinitely," said I.

Alas! The day is sped. I have asked the fleeting moment to tarry, and it laughed, and shook its gossamer wings at me, and flew by on its mad race into eternity.

As we lay, a cicada set up its shrilling quite close to us. I slipped my head from Carlotta's lap and idly parted the rank grass in search of the noisy intruder, and by good luck I found him. I beckoned Carlotta, who glided down, and there, with our heads together and holding our breath, we watched the queerest little love drama imaginable. Our cicada stood alert and spruce, waving his antenna with a sort of cavalier swagger, and every now and then making his corslet vibrate passionately. On the top of a blade of grass sat a brown little Juliet—a most reserved, discreet little Juliet, but evidently much interested in Romeo's serenade. When he sang she put her head to one side and moved as if uncertain whether to descend from her balcony. When he stopped, which he did at frequent intervals, being as it were timorous and tongue-tied, she took her foot from the ladder and waited, at first patiently and then with an obvious air of boredom. Messer Romeo made a hop forward and vibrated; Juliet grew tremulous. Alarmed at his boldness he halted and made a hop back; Juliet looked disappointed. At last another cicada set up a louder note some yards away and, without a nod or a sign, Juliet skipped off into space, leaving the most disconsolate little Romeo of a grasshopper you ever beheld. He gave vent to a dismal failure of a vibration and hopped to the foot of the faithless lady's bower.

Carlotta broke into a merry laugh and clapped her hands.

"I am so glad."

"She is the most graceless hussy imaginable," I cried. "There was he grinding his heart out for her, and just because a more brazen-throated scoundrel came upon the scene she must needs leave our poor friend in the lurch. She has no more heart than my boot, and she will come to a bad end."

"But he was such a fool," retorted my sage damsel, with a flash of laughter in her dark eyes. "If he wanted her, why didn't he go up and take her?"

"Because he is a gentleman, a cicada of fine and delicate feeling."

"Hou!" laughed Carlotta. "He was a fool. It served him right. She grew tired of waiting."

"You believe, then," said I, "in marriage by capture?"

I explained and discoursed to her of the matrimonial habits of the Tartar tribes.

"Yes," said Carlotta. "That is sense. And it must be such fun for the girl. All that, what you call it?—wooing?—is waste of time. I like things to happen, quick, quick, one after the other—or else—"

"Or else what?"

"To do nothing, nothing but lie in the sun, like this afternoon."

"Yes," said I dreamily, after I had again thrown myself by her side. "Like this afternoon."

I sit at my window and look out upon the strip of beach, the hauled-up fishing boats and the nets hung out to dry looming vague in the starlight, and I hear the surf's rhythmical moan a few yards beyond; and it beats into my ears the idiot phrase that has recurred all the evening.

But why should I be mad? For filling my soul with God's utmost glory of earth and sea and sky? For filling my heart with purest pleasure in the intimate companionship of fresh and fragrant maidenhood? For giving myself up for once to a dream of sense clouded by never a thought that was not serenely fair?

For feeling young again?

I shall read myself to sleep with La Dame de Monsoreau, which I have procured from the circulating library in the Rue Alphonse Karr—(the literary horticulturist is the genius loci and the godfather of my landlady)—and I will empty flagons with Pere Gorenflot and ride on errands of life and death with Chicot, prince of jesters, and walk lovingly between the valiant Bussy and Henri Quatre. By this, if by nothing else, I recognise the beneficence of the high gods—they have given us tired men Dumas.



CHAPTER XIII

September 30th.

Something is wrong with Antoinette. The dinner she served up this evening was all but uneatable. Something is wrong with Stenson, who has taken to playing his lugubrious hymn-tunes on the concertina while I am in the house; I won't have it. Something is wrong with the cat. He wanders round the house like a lost soul, sniffing at everything. This evening he actually jumped onto the dinner-table, looked at me out of his one eye, in which all the desolation of two was concentrated, and miaowed heart-rendingly in my face. Something is wrong with the house, with my pens which will not write, with my books which have the air of dry bones in a charnel-house, with the MS. of my History of Renaissance Morals, which stands on the writing-table like a dusty monument to the futility of human endeavour. Something is wrong with me.

Something, too, is wrong with Judith, who has just returned from her stay with the Willoughbys. I have been to see her this evening and found her of uncertain temper, and inclined to be contradictious. She accused me of being dull. I answered that the autumn world outside was drenched with miserable rain. How could man be sprightly under such conditions?

"In this room," said Judith, "with its bright fire and drawn curtains there is no miserable rain, and no autumn save in our hearts."

"Why in our hearts?" I asked.

"How you peg one down to precision," said Judith, testily. "I wish I were a Roman Catholic."

"Why?"

"I could go into a convent."

"You had much better go to Delphine Carrere," said I.

"I have only been back a day, and you want to get rid of me already?" she cried, using her woman's swift logic of unreason.

"I want you to be happy and contented, my dear Judith."

"H'm," she said.

Her slipper dangling as usual from the tip of her foot fell to the ground. I declare I was only half conscious of the accident as my mind was deep in other things.

"You don't even pick up my slipper," she said.

"Ten thousand pardons," I exclaimed, springing forward. But she had anticipated my intention. We remained staring into the fire and saying nothing. As she professed to be tired I went away early.

At the front door of the mansions, finding I had left my umbrella behind, I remounted the stairs, and rang Judith's bell. After a while I saw her figure through the ground-glass panel approach the door, but before she opened it, she turned out the light in the passage.

"Marcus!" she cried, rather excitedly; and in the dimness of the threshold her eyes looked strangely accusative of tears. "You have come back!"

"Yes," said I, "for my umbrella."

She looked at me for a moment, laughed, clapped her hands to her throat, turned away sharply, caught up my umbrella, and putting it into my hands and thrusting me back shut the door in my face. In great astonishment I went downstairs again. What is wrong with Judith? She said this evening that all men are cruel. Now, I am a man. Therefore I am cruel. A perfect syllogism. But how have I been cruel?

I walked home. There is nothing so consoling to the depressed man as the unmitigated misery of a walk through the London rain. One is not mocked by any factitious gaiety. The mind is in harmony with the sodden universe. It is well to have everything in the world wrong at one and the same time.

I have changed my drenched garments for dressing-gown and slippers. I find on my writing-table a letter addressed in a round childish hand. It is from Carlotta, who for the last fortnight has been staying in Cornwall with the McMurrays. I have known few fortnights so long. In a ridiculous schoolboy way I have been counting the days to her return—the day after to-morrow.

The letter begins: "Seer Marcous dear." The spelling is a little jest between us. The inversion is a quaint invention of her own. "Mrs. McMurray says, can you spare me for one more week? She wants to teach me manners. She says I have shocked the top priest here—oh, you call him a vikker—now I do remember—because I went out for a walk with a little young pretty priest without a hat, and because it rained I put on his hat and the vikker met us. But I did not flirt with the little priest. Oh, no! I told him he must not make love to me like the young man from the grocer's. And I told him that if he wrote poetry you would beat him. So I have been very good. And darling Seer Marcous, I want to come back very much, but Mrs. McMurray says I must stay, and she is going to have a baby and I am very happy and good, and Mr. McMurray says funny things and makes me laugh. But I love my darling Seer Marcous best. Give Antoinette and Polifemus (the one-eyed cat) two very nice kisses for me. And here is one for Seer Marcous from his

"CARLOTTA."

How can I refuse? But I wish she were here.

31st October.

I did not sleep last night. I have done no work to-day. The Renaissance has receded into a Glacial Epoch wherein, as far as its humanity is concerned, I have not a tittle of interest. I sought refuge in the club. Why should an old sober University club be such a haven of unrest? Ponting, an opinionated don of Corpus, seated himself at my luncheon table, and discoursed on political economy and golf. I manifested a polite ignorance of these high matters. He assured me that if I studied the one and played at the other, I should be physically and mentally more robust; whereupon he thumped his narrow chest, and put on a scowl of intellectuality. I fear that Ponting, like most of the men here, studies golf and plays at political economy. In serener moments I suffer Ponting gladly. But to-day his boast that he had done the course at Westward Ho! in seven, or seventeen, or seventy—how on earth should I remember?—left me cold, and his crude economics interfered with my digestion.

Strolling forlornly down Piccadilly I, came face to face with my sad-coloured Cousin Rosalie in a sad-coloured gown. She gave me a hasty nod and would have passed on, but I arrested her. Her white face was turned piteously upward and from her expressionless eyes flashed a glance of fear. I felt myself in a brutal mood.

"Why," I asked, "are you avoiding me as if I were a pestilence?"

She murmured that she was not avoiding me, but was in a hurry.

"I don't believe it," said I. "People have been telling you that I am a vile, wicked man who does unspeakable things, and like a good little girl you are afraid to talk to me. Tell people, the next time you see them, with my compliments, that they are malevolent geese."

I lifted my hat and relieving Rosalie of my terrifying presence, walked away in dudgeon. I felt abominably and unreasonably angry. I bethought me of my Aunt Jessica, whom I held responsible for her niece's behaviour. A militant mood prompted a call. After twenty minutes in a hansom I found myself in her drawing-room. She was alone, the girls being away on country-house visits. Her reception was glacial. I expressed the hope that the yachting cruise had been a pleasant one.

"Exceedingly pleasant," snapped my aunt.

"I trust Dora is well," said I, keeping from my lips a smile that might have hinted at the broken heart.

"Very well, thank you."

As I do not enjoy a staccato conversation, I remained politely silent, inviting her by my attitude to speak.

"I rather wonder, Marcus," she said at last, "at your referring to Dora."

"Indeed? May I ask why?"

"May I speak plainly?"

"I beseech you."

"I have heard of you at Etretat with your ward."

"Well?" I asked.

"Verbum sap," said my aunt.

"And you have let Mrs. Ralph and Rosalie know of my summer holiday and given them to understand that I am a monster of depravity. I am exceedingly obliged to you. I have just met Rosalie in the street, and she shrank from me as if I were the reincarnation of original sin."

"I have no doubt that in her innocent mind you are," replied my Aunt Jessica.

The indulgent smile wherewith she used to humour my eccentricities had gone, and her face was hard and unpitying.

"I am glad I have such charitable-minded relations," said I.

"I am a woman of the world," my aunt retorted, "but I think that when such things are flaunted in the face of society they become immoral."

I rose. "Do evil by stealth—as much as you like," said I, "but blush to find it fame."

With a gesture my aunt assented to the proposition.

"On the other hand," said I, heatedly, "I have been doing a certain amount of good both by stealth and openly, and I naturally blush with indignation to find it accounted infamous."

I looked narrowly into my aunt's eyes and I read in them entire disbelief in my protest. I swear, if I had proved my innocence beyond the shadow of doubt, that woman would have been grievously disappointed.

"Good-bye," said I.

She shook hands frigidly and turned to ring the bell. A moment later—I really believe she was moved by a kindly impulse—she intercepted me at the door.

"I know you are odd and quixotic, Marcus," she said in a softer tone. "I hope you will do nothing rash."

"What do you mean?" I asked in a white heat of unreasonable rage.

"I hope you won't try to repair things by marrying this—young person."

"To make an honest woman of her, do you mean?" I asked grimly.

"Yes," said my aunt.

Then suddenly the Devil leaped into me and stirred all the elements of unrest, anger, and longing together in a cauldron which I suppose was my heart. The result was explosion. I made a step forward with raised hands and my aunt recoiled in alarm.

"By heaven!" I cried, "I would give the soul out of my body to marry her!"

And I stumbled out of the house like a blind man.

From that moment of dazzling revelation till now I have nursed this infinite desire. To say that I love Carlotta is to express Niagara in terms of a fountain. I crave her with everything vital in heart and brain. She is an obsession. The scent of her hair is in my nostrils, the cooing dove-notes of her voice murmur in my ears, I shut my eyes and feel the rose-petals of her lips on my cheek, the witchery of her movements dances before my eyes.

I cannot live without her. Until to-day the house was desolate enough—a ghostly shell of a habitation. Henceforward, without her my very life will be void. My heart has been crying for her these two weeks and I knew it not. Now I know. I could stand on my balcony and lift up my hands toward the south where she abides, and lift up my voice, and cry for her passionately aloud. There is no infernal foolishness in the world that I could not commit tonight. The maddest dingo dog, if he could appreciate my state of being, would learn points in insanity.

It is two o'clock. I must go to sleep. I take from my shelves Epictetus, who might be expected to throw cold water on the most burning fever of the mind. I have not read far before I come across this consolatory apophthegm: "The contest is unequal between a charming girl and a beginner in philosophy." He is mocking me, the cold-blooded pedagogue! I throw his book across the room. But he is right. I am but a beginner in philosophy. No armour wherein my reason can invest me is of avail against Carlotta. I have no strength to smite. I am helpless.

But by heaven! Am I mad? Is not this on the contrary the sanest hour of my existence? I have lived like an automaton for forty years, and I suddenly awake to find myself a man. I don't care whether I sleep or not. I feel gloriously, exultingly young. I am but twenty. As I have never lived, I have never grown old. Life translates itself into music—a wild "Invitation to the Waltz" by some Archangel Weber. I laugh out loud. Polyphemus, who has been regarding me with his one bantering eye from Carlotta's corner on the sofa, leaps to the ground and grotesquely curvets round the room in a series of impish hops. Heigh, old boy? Do the pulsations of the music throb in your veins, too? Come along and let us make a night of it. To the Devil with sleep. We'll go together down to the cellar and find a bottle of Pommery, and we will drink to Life and Youth and Love and the Splendour and the Joy thereof.

He utters a little cry of delight and frisks around me. In the blackness of the cellar his one eye gleams like a star and he purrs unutterable rapture. My hand passed over his back produces a shower of sparks. We return up the silent stairs, I carry a bottle of Pommery and a milkjug—for you shall revel, too, Polyphemus; and as I have forgotten to bring a saucer, you shall drink, as no cat has drunk before, from an old precious platter bearing the arms of the Estes of Ferrara—over which Lucrezia Borgia laughed when the world was young. It is a pity cats don't drink champagne. I would have made you to-night as drunk as Bacchus. We drink, and in the stillness the glouglou of his tongue forms a bass to the elfin notes of the Pommery in the soda-water tumbler.

Ha! Twin purveyors of the milk of paradise, I wonder like Omar what you buy one-half so precious as the stuff you sell. Motor-cars for Mrs. Pommery and cakes for the little Grenos? I do not like to regard you as common humans addicted to silk hats and umbrellas and the other vices of respectability. Ye are rather beneficent demigods, Castor and Pollux of the vine, dream entities who pour from the sunset lands of Nowhere the liquid gold of life's joyousness.

A few words scribbled on this telegraph form would bring her here tomorrow night. But no. What is a week? Leaden-footed, it is an eternity; but winged with the dove's iris it is a mere moment. Besides, I must accustom myself to my youth. I must investigate its follies, I must learn the grammar of its wisdom. We'll take counsel together, Polyphemus, how to turn these chambers, fusty with decayed thought, into a bridal bower radiant and fragrant with innumerable loves. Let us drink again to her witchery. It is her breath itself distilled by the Heavenly Twins that foams against my lips. I would give the soul out of my body to marry her, did I say? It were like buying her for a farthing. I would pledge the soul of the universe for a kiss.

I catch up Polyphemus under the arm-pits, and his hind legs dangle. He continues to lick his chops and looks at me sardonically. He is stolid over his cups—which is somewhat disappointing. No matter; he can be shaken into enthusiasm.

"I care not," I cry, "for man or devil, Polyphemus.

'Que je suis grand ici! mon amour de feu Va de pair cette nuit avec celui de Dieu!'

You may say that it's wrong, that the first line is a syllable short, and that Triboulet said 'colere' instead of amour. You always were a dry-as-dust, pedantic prig. But I say amour-love, do you hear? I'll translate, if you like:

'Now am I mighty, and my love of fire To-night goes even with a god's desire.'

Yes; I'll be a poet even though you do scratch my wrist with your hind claws, Polyphemus."

There! Empty your milk-jug and I will empty my bottle. The wine smells of hyacinth. It is a revelation. Her hair smells of violets, but it is the delicate odour of hyacinth that came from her bare young arms when she clasped them round my neck; et sa peau, on dirait du satin. Carlotta is in the wine, Carlotta with her sorcery and her laughter and her youth, and I drink Carlotta.

"Quo me rapis Bacche pienum tui?"

To such a land of dreams, my one-eyed friend, as never before have I visited. You yawn? You are bored? I shoot the dregs of my glass into his distended jaws. He springs away spitting and coughing, and I lie back in my chair convulsed with inextinguishable laughter.

October 2d.

I have suffered all day from a racking headache, having awakened at six o'clock and crept shivering to bed. I realise that Pommery and Greno are not demi-gods at all, but mere commercial purveyors of a form of alcohol, a quart of which it is injudicious to imbibe, with a one-eyed tom-cat as boon companion, at two o'clock in the morning:

But I am unrepentant. If I committed follies last night, so much the better. I struggle no longer against the inevitable, when the inevitable is the crown and joy of earthly things. For in sober truth I love her infinitely.

October 6th.

She comes back to-morrow. Antoinette and I have been devising a welcome. The good soul has filled the house with flowers, and, usurping Stenson's functions, has polished furniture and book backs and silver and has hung fresh blinds and scrubbed and scoured until I am afraid to walk about or sit down lest I should tarnish the spotless brightness of my surroundings.

"You have forgotten one thing, Antoinette," I remarked, satirically. "You have omitted to strew the front steps with rose-leaves."

"I would cover them with my body for the dear angel to walk upon as she entered," said Antoinette.

"That would scarcely be rose-leaves," I murmured.

Antoinette laughed. "And Monsieur then! He is just as bad. Has he not put new curtains in the room of Mademoiselle, and a new toilette table, and a set of silver brushes and combs and I know not what, as for the toilette of a princess? And the eiderdown in pink satin? Regardez-moi ca! Monsieur can no longer say that it is I alone who spoil the dear angel."

"Monsieur," said I, at a loss for a better retort, "will say whatever Monsieur pleases."

"It is indeed the right of Monsieur," said Antoinette, respectfully, but with a twinkle in her eye not devoid of significance.

Does the crafty old woman suspect? Perhaps my preparations for Carlotta's return have been inordinate, for they have extended to the transformation of the sitting-room downstairs into a lady's boudoir. I have been busy this happy week. But what care I? It will not be long before I have to say to her, "Antoinette, there is going to be a wedding."

I must be on my guard lest, in the transports of her joy, she clasp me to her capacious bosom!



CHAPTER XIV

October 7th.

At Paddington I came upon Sebastian Pasquale lounging about the arrival platform. As I had not seen or heard of him since the end of July I had concluded that he was wandering as usual over the globe. He greeted me effusively, holding out both hands in his foreign fashion.

"My dear old Ordeyne! who would have thought of meeting you here? What wind blows you to Paddington?"

"I expect Carlotta by the Plymouth Express."

"The fair Carlotta? And how is she? And what is she doing at Plymouth?"

In the middle of my explanation he pulled out his watch.

"By Jove! I must get to the next platform and catch my train to Ealing. I was just killing time about the station. I like seeing a train come in—the gleam and smoke and rush and whirr of the evil-looking thing—and the sudden metamorphosis of its sleek sides into mouths belching forth humanity. I think of Hades. This, by the way, isn't a bad representation of it—the up-to-date Hades. They've got a railway bridge now across the Styx, and Charon has a gold band around his cap, and this might be the arrival platform of the damned souls."

"You forget," said I, "that it is the arrival platform of Carlotta."

He threw back his head and laughed boyishly.

"Well, consider it the Golden Gate terminus of the 'Earth, Hades and Olympus Railway' if you like. I'm off on a branch line to meet a beauteous duchessa at Ealing—oh, an authentic one, I assure you."