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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy
+Bulstrode, by Marie Van Vorst
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode
+
+Author: Marie Van Vorst
+
+Illustrator: Alonzo Kimball
+
+Release Date: October 13, 2010 [EBook #34065]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JIMMY BULSTRODE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: The amiable shopman pressed various toys on monsieur and
+madame "_pour les enfants_"]
+
+
+
+
+
+The Sentimental
+  Adventures of
+    Jimmy Bulstrode
+
+
+
+BY
+
+MARIE VAN VORST
+
+
+
+With Illustrations by
+
+ALONZO KIMBALL
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK
+
+HURST & COMPANY
+
+PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY
+
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+
+Published March, 1908
+
+
+
+
+TO THE MEMORY
+
+OF
+
+H. E. TESCHEMACHER
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+_THE FIRST ADVENTURE_
+
+In which he buys a Christmas tree
+
+
+_THE SECOND ADVENTURE_
+
+In which he tries to buy a portrait
+
+
+_THE THIRD ADVENTURE_
+
+In which he finds there are some things which one cannot buy
+
+
+_THE FOURTH ADVENTURE_
+
+In which he makes three people happy
+
+
+_THE FIFTH ADVENTURE_
+
+In which he makes nobody happy at all
+
+
+_THE SIXTH ADVENTURE_
+
+In which he discards a knave and saves a queen
+
+
+_THE SEVENTH ADVENTURE_
+
+In which he becomes the possessor of a certain piece of property
+
+
+_THE EIGHTH ADVENTURE_
+
+In which he comes into his own
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+From drawings by ALONZO KIMBALL
+
+
+_The amiable shopman pressed various toys on monsieur and madame "pour
+les enfants"_ . . . . . . Frontispiece
+
+"_I only like him like a kind, kind friend_"
+
+_In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing_
+
+"_I've had a telegram from my husband_"
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRST ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+I
+
+IN WHICH HE BUYS A CHRISTMAS TREE
+
+There was never in the world a better fellow than Jimmy Bulstrode.  If
+he had been poorer his generosities would have ruined him over and over
+again.  He was always being taken in, was the recipient of hundreds of
+begging letters, which he hired another soft-hearted person to read.
+He offended charitable organizations by never passing a beggar's
+outstretched hand without dropping a coin in it.  He was altogether a
+distressingly impracticable rich person, surrounded by people who
+admired him for what he really was and by those who tried to squeeze
+him for what he was worth!
+
+It was a general wonder to people who knew him slightly why Bulstrode
+had never married.  The gentleman himself knew the answer perfectly,
+but it amused him to discuss the question in spite of the pain, as well
+as for the pleasure that it caused him to consider--_the reason why_.
+
+Mary Falconer, the woman he loved, was the wife of a man of whom
+Bulstrode could only think in pitiful contempt.  But, thanks to an
+element of chivalry in the character of the hero of this story the
+years, as time went on, spread back of both the woman and the man in an
+honorable series, of whose history neither one had any reason to be
+ashamed.
+
+Nevertheless, it struck them both as rather humorous, after all, that
+of the three concerned her husband should be the only renegade and,
+notwithstanding, profit by the combined good faith of his wife and the
+man who loved her.
+
+Oh, there was nothing easy in the task that Jimmy set for himself!  And
+it did not facilitate matters that Mary Falconer scarcely ever helped
+him in the least!  She was a beautiful woman, a tender woman, and there
+were times when her friend felt that she cleverly and cruelly taunted
+him with Puritanism and with his simple, old-fashioned ideas and
+crystal clearness of vision, the _culte_ he had regarding marriage and
+the sacred way in which he held bonds and vows.  It was no help at all
+to think she rebelled and jested at his reserve; that she did her best
+to break it--and there were times when it was a brilliant siege.  But
+down in her heart she respected him, and as she saw around her the
+domestic wrecks with which the matrimonial seas are encumbered, and
+knew that her own craft promised to go safely through the storm, Mary
+Falconer more than once had been grateful to the man.
+
+As far as Bulstrode himself was concerned, each year--there had been
+ten of them--he found the situation becoming more difficult and
+dangerous.  Not only did the future appear to him impossible as things
+were, but he began to hate his arid past.  He was sometimes led to ask,
+what, after all, was he getting out of his colossal sacrifice?  The
+only reward he wanted was the woman herself, and, unless her husband
+died, she would never be his.  Bulstrode had not found that he could
+solve the problem, and now and then he let it go from sheer weariness
+of heart.
+
+
+In the face of the window of the drawing-room where Bulstrode sat on
+this afternoon of an especial winter's day the storm cast wreaths of
+snow that clung and froze, or dropped like feathers down against the
+sill.  The gentleman had his predilections even in New York, and in the
+open fireplace the logs crumbled and disintegrated to ashen caves
+wherein the palpitating jewels of the heat were held.  Except for this
+old-fashioned warmth, there was none other in the room, whose white
+wainscoting and pillars, low ceilings and quaint chimney-piece,
+characterized one of those agreeably proportioned houses still to be
+found in lower New York around Washington Square.
+
+Bulstrode had received about half an hour ago a letter whose qualities
+and suggestions were something disturbing to him:
+
+
+"There is such a thing, believe me" (Mary Falconer wrote in the pages
+which Bulstrode opened to read for the twentieth time), "as the _gloom_
+of Christmas, Jimmy.  People won't frankly own to it.  They're afraid
+of seeming sour and crabbed.  But don't you, who are so exquisitely apt
+to feelings--to other people's feelings,--at once confess it?  It
+attacks the spinster in the bustling winter streets as she is elbowed
+by some person, exuberantly a mother, and so arrogantly laden with
+delicious-looking parcels that she is almost a personal Christmas tree
+herself.  I'm confident this 'gloom of Christmas' grips the wretched
+little beings at toy-shop windows as they stand 'choosin'' their
+never-to-be-realized toys.  I'm sure it haunts the vagrant and the
+homeless in a city fairly redolent of holly and dinners, and where the
+array of other people's homes is terrifying.  And, my dear friend, it
+is so horribly subtle that no doubt it attacks others whose only grudge
+is that their hearths are not built for Christmas trees or the hanging
+of stockings.  But these unfortunates are not saying anything aloud,
+therefore we must not pry!
+
+"There's a jolly house-party on at the Van Schoolings'.  We're to go
+down to-morrow to Tuxedo and pass Christmas night, and you are, of
+course, asked and wanted.  Knowing your dread of these family
+feasts--possibly from just such a ghost of the gloom--I was sure you
+would refuse.  But it's a wonderful place for a talk or two, and I
+shall hope you will go--will come, not even follow, but go down with
+me."
+
+
+There was more of the letter--there always is more of women's letters.
+Their minds and pens are so charmingly facile; there is nothing a woman
+can do better than talk, except to write.
+
+Bulstrode smoked slowly, the pages between his fingers, his thoughts
+travelling like wanderers towards a home from which a ban had kept them
+aliens.  His eyes drifted to the beginning of the letter.  He wasn't
+familiar with the homeless vagrant class.  His charities to that part
+of the population consisted in donations to established societies, and
+haphazard giving called forth by a beggar's extended hand.
+
+If anybody may be immune to the melancholy of which his friend Mrs.
+Falconer spoke, it should surely be this gentleman, smoking his cigar
+before the fire.  The unopened letters--there was a pile of them--would
+have offered ample reason why.  No one of the lot but bore some
+testimony to the generous heart which, beneath dinner-jacket and behind
+the screw-faced watch with the picture in the back of it, beat so
+healthy and so well.
+
+But the bestowal of benefits, whilst it may beautify the giver, does
+not always transform itself into the one benefit desired and console
+the bestower!  Bulstrode had a charming home.  He was alone in it.  He
+had his clubs where bachelors like himself, more or less infected with
+Christmas gloom, would be glad to greet him.  He had his friends, many
+of them, and their home circles were complete.  His, by force of
+circumstances, began and ended with himself, and as if triumphant to
+have found so tempting a victim, the gloom came and possessed Bulstrode
+as he sat and mused.
+
+But the decided sadness that stole across his face bore no relation, to
+the season, to whose white mystery and holy beauty there was something
+in his boyish, kindly heart that always responded.
+
+The sadness Mrs. Falconer's letter awakened would not sleep.  What his
+Christmas _might_ be...!  He had only to order his motor, to call for
+her and drive over the ferry; to sit beside her in the train, to drive
+with her again across the wintry roads.  He had but to see her, watch
+her, talk with her, share with her the day and evening, to have his
+Christmas as nearly what a feast should be as dreams could ask.  The
+whole festival was there: joy, good-will--peace?  No.  Not peace for
+him or for her--not that; everything else, but not that.  And he had
+been travelling for five weary months in order to make himself keep for
+her that peace a little longer.
+
+Bulstrode sighed here, lifted the letter where there was more of it to
+his lips--held it out toward the fire as if the red jewels were to set
+themselves around it, thought differently, and putting it back in its
+envelope, thrust it in the pocket of his waistcoat.
+
+"Ruggles," he asked the servant who had come in, "you sent the despatch
+to Tuxedo?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"There'll be later a note to send.  I'll ring.  Well, what is it?"
+
+"There's a person at the door, sir, who insists on seeing you."
+
+The servant's tone--one particularly jarring to the ears of a man who
+had fellowship with more than one class of his kind--made the master
+look sharply up.  Ruggles was a new addition to the household, and
+Bulstrode did not like him.
+
+"A person," Bulstrode repeated, quietly; "what sort of a person?"
+
+"A man, sir."
+
+"Not a gentleman?  No," he nodded gently; "I see you do not think him
+one.  Yet that he is a man is in his favor.  There are some gentlemen
+who aren't men, you know.  Let him in."
+
+In doing so Ruggles seemed to let in the night.  Bulstrode had, in the
+warmth of his fragrant room, forgotten that outside was the wintry
+dark.  Ruggles, in letting the man in, had the air of thrusting him in,
+and shut the door behind the visitor with a click.
+
+The creature himself let in the cold; he seemed made of it.  The snow
+clung to his shoulders; his shoes, tied up with strings, were encrusted
+with it.  His coat, buttoned to his chin, frayed at the cuffs and
+edges, was thin and weather-stained.  He had a pale face, a royal
+growth of beard--this was all Bulstrode had time to remark.  He rose.
+
+"My servant says you want to see me.  Come near the fire, won't you?"
+
+The visitor did not stir.  Bewildered in the warmth of the room, he
+stood far back on the edge of the thick rug.  To all appearances he was
+a bit of driftwood from the streets, one of the usual vagrant class who
+haunt the saloons and park and steer from lockup to night-lodging,
+until they finally steer themselves entirely off the face of history,
+and the potter's field gathers them in.  Nothing but his entrance into
+this conventional room before this well-balanced member of decent
+society was peculiar.
+
+As he still neither moved nor spoke, Bulstrode, approaching him, again
+invited: "Come near the fire, won't you? and when you are warm tell me
+what I can do for you."
+
+"It's the storm," murmured the man, and a half-human look came across
+his face with his words.  "I mean to say, it's this hellish storm
+that's got in my throat and lungs.  I can't speak--it's so warm here.
+It will be better in a second.  No, not near the fire;
+thanks--chilblains."  He looked down at his poor feet.
+
+The voice which the storm had beaten and thrashed to painful hoarseness
+was entirely out of keeping with the man's appearance, and in
+intonation, accent, and language was a shock to the hearer.
+
+"Don't stand back like that--come into the room." Bulstrode wheeled a
+chair briskly about.  "There; sit down and drink this; it's a mild
+blend."
+
+"I'm very wet," said the man.  "I'll drip on the rug."
+
+"Hang the rug!"
+
+The tramp drained the glass given him at one swallow merely; it
+appeared to clear his throat and release his speech.  He gathered his
+rags together.
+
+"I beg pardon for forcing myself on you like this, but I fancy I
+needn't tell you I'm desperate--desperate!"  He held out his hand; it
+shook like a pale ghost's.  "I look it, I'm sure.  I haven't eaten a
+meal or slept in a bed for a fortnight.  I've begged work and charity.
+All day I've been shovelling snow, but I'm too weak to work now."
+
+He was being led to a chair.  He sank in it.  "Before they sent me to
+the Island I decided to try a ruse.  I went into a saloon and opened a
+directory, and I said, 'The first name I put my finger upon I'll take
+as good luck, and I'll go and see the person, man or woman.  I opened
+to James Thatcher Bulstrode, 9 Washington Square."  He half smiled; the
+pale, trembling hand was waving like a pitiful flag, a signal of
+distress to catch the sight of some bark that might lend aid.  "So I
+came here.  When there seemed actually to be some chance of my getting
+in, why, my courage failed me.  I don't expect you to believe my story
+or to believe anything, except that I am desperate--desperate.  It's
+below zero to-night out there--infernally cold."  He took the pin out
+of the collar turned up around his neck and let his coat fall back.
+Under it Bulstrode saw he wore a thin flannel shirt.  The tramp
+repeated to himself, as it were, "It's a bad storm."
+
+He looked up in a dazed fashion at his host as if for acceptance of his
+remark.  In the easy chair, half swathed in rags, pitiful in thinness,
+dripping from shoes and clothes water that the storm had drenched into
+him, he was a sorry object in the atmosphere of the well-ordered
+conventional room.  The heat and whiskey, the famine and exposure, cast
+a film across his eyes and brain.  He indistinctly saw his host pass
+into the next room and shut the door behind him.
+
+"By Jove!" he murmured under his breath in wonder find dumb thanks for
+the shelter.  "By Jove!"  The stimulant filtered agreeably through him;
+more charitable than any element with which he had been lately
+familiar, the fire's heat began to thaw the ice in his bones.  He laid
+his dripping hat on his knees, his thin hands folded themselves over
+it, his eyes closed.  For hours he had shuffled about the streets to
+keep from freezing.  At the charity organization they gave work he was
+too weak to do; he had not eaten a substantial meal in so long that he
+had forgotten the taste of food and had ceased to crave it.  In the
+soft light of lamp and fire he fell into a doze.  Bulstrode, if he had
+stolen softly in to look at his visitor, would have seen a man not over
+thirty years of age, although want and dissipation added ten to his
+appearance.  He would have been quick to take note of the fine,
+delicately cut face under the disfiguring beard, and of the slender,
+emaciated body deformed by its rags.
+
+Possibly he did so noiselessly come in and stand by the unconscious
+creature, but the sleeping vagabond, dreaming fitful, half-painful
+things, was ignorant of the visitor.  Finally across his mind's sharp
+despair came a sense of warmth and comfort, and in its spell he awoke.
+
+A servant, not the one who had thrust him into the drawing-room, but
+another with a friendly face, stood at his side, and in broken English
+asked the guest of Bulstrode to follow him; and gathering his scattered
+senses together and picking up his rags and what was left of himself,
+the creature obeyed a summons which he supposed was to hale him again
+into the winter streets.
+
+
+It was some three hours later that Bulstrode in his dining-room
+entertained his singular guest.
+
+"I have asked you to dine with me," he explained, with a certain
+graciousness, as if he claimed, not gave, a favor, "as I'm all alone
+to-night.  It's Christmas eve, you know--or perhaps you've been more or
+less glad to forget it?"
+
+The young man who took the chair indicated him was unrecognizable as
+the stranger who had staggered into 9 Washington Square three or four
+hours before.  Turned out in spotless linen and a good suit that fitted
+him fairly well, shaven face save for a mustache above his lip, bathed,
+brushed, refreshed by nourishment and sleep and repose, he looked like
+one who has been in the waters, possibly a long, long time; like one
+who has drifted, been bruised, shattered, and beaten, but who has
+nevertheless drifted to shore; and in spite of his borrowed clothes,
+his scarred, haggard face, he looked like a gentleman, and Bulstrode
+from the moment he spoke had recognized him as one.
+
+The food was a feast to the stranger, in spite of nourishment already
+given him by Prosper.  He restrained the ferocious hunger that woke at
+sight and smell of the good things, forced himself not to cry out with
+eagerness, not to tear and grasp the eatables off the plate, not to
+devour like a beast.  Every time he raised his eyes he met those of the
+butler Ruggles, and as quickly the stranger looked away.  The face of
+the servant standing by the sideboard, back of him the white and
+gleaming array of the Bulstrode family silver like piles of snow, was
+for some reason or other not a pleasant face; the stranger did not
+think it so.
+
+Once again seated in the room he had entered in his outcast state, a
+cup of coffee at his hand, a cigar between his lips, the agreeable
+atmosphere of the old room and its charming objects, the kindly look on
+the face of his host, all swam before him.  Looking frankly at
+Bulstrode, he said, not without grace of manner:
+
+"I give it up.  I can't--it's not to be made out or understood..."
+
+"Do you," interrupted the other, "feel equal to talking a little: to
+telling me how it happens that you are wandering, as you seem to be?
+For from the moment you first spoke----"
+
+The young man nodded.  "I'm a gentleman.  It's worse somehow--I don't
+know why, but it is."
+
+Bulstrode thought out for him: "It's like remembering agreeable places
+to which you feel you will never return.  Only," he quickly offered,
+"in your case you must, you know, go back."
+
+"No," said the young man, quietly.
+
+There was so much entire renunciation in what he said that the other
+could not press it.
+
+"Better still, you can then go on?"
+
+The vagrant looked at his companion as if to say: "Since I've known
+you--seen you--I have thought that I might."  But he said nothing more,
+and Bulstrode, reading a diffidence which did not displease him,
+finished:
+
+"You shall go on, and I'll help you."
+
+The stranger bowed his head, and the wine sent the color up until his
+cheeks took the flush of health.  Remaining a little bent over, his
+eyes on his feet clad in Bulstrode's shoes, he said:
+
+"I'm an Englishman.  My family is everything that's decent and all
+_that_, you know, and proud.  We've first-rate traditions.  I'm a
+younger son, and I've always been a thorn in the family's side.  I've
+been a sort of vagabond from the first, but never as bad as they
+thought or believed."
+
+He paused.  His recital was painful to him.  Bulstrode waited, then
+knocking off the ash from his cigar, urged:
+
+"Tell me about it, tell me frankly; it will, you see, be a relief.  We
+can do better that way--if I know."
+
+The stranger looked up at him quickly, then leaning forward in his
+chair, talked as it were to the carpet, and rapidly:
+
+"It's just a year ago.  I'd been going it rather hard and got into
+trouble more or less--lost at cards and the races, and been running up
+a lot of bills.  My father was awfully down on me.  I'd gone home for
+the holidays and had a talk with my father and asked him to pay up for
+me just this once more.  He refused, and we got very angry, both of us,
+and separated in a rage.  The house was full of people--a Christmas
+ball and a tree.  My father had, so it happened, quite a lot of money
+in the house.  I knew where it was--I had seen him count it and put it
+away.  That night for some reason the whole thing sickened me, in the
+mess I was in, and I left and went up to London without even saying
+good-by.  In the course of the week my brother came and found me drunk
+in my rooms.  It seems that the money had been taken from my father's
+safe, and they accused me."
+
+"But," interrupted Bulstrode, eagerly, "it was a simple thing to
+exculpate yourself."
+
+Ignoring his remark, the other continued: "I have never seen my father
+since that night."
+
+No amount of former deception can persuade a man that he is a lame
+judge of character.  The young Englishman's emaciated face, where eyes
+spoiled by dissipation looked out at his companion, was to this
+impulsive reader of humanity a good face.  Bulstrode, however, saw what
+he wanted to see in most people.  Given a chance to study them, or
+rather further to know them intimately, he might indeed have ended by
+finding in some cases a few of the imagined qualities.  Here misery was
+evident, degradation as well, timidity, and hesitation,--but honesty?
+Bulstrode fancied that its characters were not effaced, and he helped
+the recital:
+
+"Since you so left your people?"
+
+"The steady go down!" acknowledged the other.  "I worked my passage to
+the States on a liner--I stoked..."
+
+"Any chap," encouraged the gentleman, "who can do that can pull
+himself, I should say, out of a worse hole."
+
+"There's scarcely a bad habit I haven't had down in the hole with me,"
+confessed the other, "and they've held me there."
+
+They both remained for a few seconds without speaking, and the host's
+eyes wandered to where, over his mantel-shelf, in a great gold frame
+was the portrait of a lady done by Baker.  A quaint young lady in her
+early teens, with bare arms and frilled frock.  She had Bulstrode's
+eyes.  By her side was the black muzzle of a great hound, on whose head
+the little hand rested.  Under the picture, from a silver bowl of
+roses, came a fragrance that filled the room, and, close by stood a
+photograph of another lady, very modern, very mocking, and very lovely.
+
+Bulstrode, delicately drawing inferences from the influences in his
+life, and, if not consciously grateful, reflecting them charmingly,
+broke the silence:
+
+"You must have formed some plan or other in your mind when you came to
+my door?  What, in the event of your being received, did you intend to
+ask me to do?"
+
+The stranger lifted his head and his response was irrelevant: "It seems
+a hundred years since I stood there in that storm and your man pulled
+me in.  I haven't seen a place like this for long, not the inside of
+decent houses.  When I left the ship I managed to get down with a chap
+as far as Florida, where he had an orange-plantation, but the venture
+fell through.  I fancy the rest is as well forgotten.  When I came in
+here to-night I intended to ask you for a Christmas gift of money, and
+I should have gone out and drunk myself to hell."
+
+"You spoke"--Bulstrode fetched him back--"of your father and your
+brother; was there no one else?"
+
+The younger man looked up without reply.
+
+"There has been, then, no more kindly influence in your life--no
+sister--no woman?"
+
+Bulstrode brought out the words; in his judgment they meant so very
+much.  He saw a change cross the other's face.
+
+"I fancy there are not many men who haven't had a woman in their lives
+for good or bad," he said, with a short laugh.
+
+"Well," urged the gentleman, gently, "and for what was this woman?"
+
+As if he repelled the insistence, the young fellow stammered:
+
+"I say, this putting a fellow on the rack----"
+
+But Bulstrode leaned forward in his chair and rested his hand on his
+companion's knee and pleaded:
+
+"Speak out frankly--frankly--I believe I shall understand; it will free
+your heart to speak.  This influence which to a man should be the
+best--the best--what was it to you?"  Bulstrode sat back and waited,
+and the other man seemed quite lost in melancholy meditations for some
+few seconds.  Then Bulstrode put it: "For a young man, no matter how
+wild, to leave his home under the misapprehension you claim:--for him
+to make no effort to reinstate himself: with no attempt at justice: for
+him to become a wanderer--there must be an extraordinary reason, almost
+an improbable one----"
+
+"I don't ask you to hear," said the vagrant, quickly.
+
+"I wish to do so.  It would have been a simple matter to exculpate
+yourself--you had not the funds in your possession, had never had them.
+You took no means to clear yourself?"
+
+"None."
+
+Bulstrode looked hard at the face his care had revealed to him: the
+deep eyes, the neck, chin, the sensitive mouth--there was a certain
+distinction about him in his borrowed clothes.
+
+"Where is the woman now?"
+
+"She married my brother--she is Lady Waring--my name," tardily
+introduced the stranger, "is Cecil Waring."
+
+Bulstrode bowed.  "Tell me something of her, in a word--in a word."
+
+"Well, she is always clever," said the young man, slowly, "always very
+beautiful, and then very poor."
+
+"Yes," nodded Bulstrode.
+
+"She is like the rest of us--one of a fast wild set--a----"
+
+"A gambler?"  Bulstrode helped the description.
+
+"She played," acknowledged the young man, "as the rest do--bridge."
+
+"Were you engaged to her, Waring?"
+
+"Yes," he slowly acknowledged, as if each word hurt him.
+
+"And did she believe you guilty?"
+
+"I think," said the other, with an inscrutable expression, "she could
+not have done so."
+
+"But she let you go under suspicion?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Without a word of good faith, of comfort?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did she know of your embarrassments?"
+
+"Too well."
+
+"You tell me she was poor and--possibly she had embarrassments of her
+own?"
+
+"Possibly."
+
+Bulstrode came over to him.
+
+"Was she at the Christmas ball that night?"
+
+The young man rose as well, his eyes on his questioner's; the color had
+all left his face--he appeared fascinated--then he shook himself and
+unexpectedly laughed.
+
+"No," he said; "oh no."
+
+The older man bowed his head and replied, quite inaptly:
+
+"I understand!"
+
+He took a turn across the room.
+
+The few steps brought him in front of the mantel and the photograph of
+the modern lady in her furs and close hat.  He stood and met the fire
+of her mocking eyes.
+
+"And you _believe_ him, Jimmy!" he could hear her say in her delicious
+voice.
+
+"Yes," he mentally told her, "I believe him."
+
+"You think that to save a woman's name and honor he has become an
+outcast on the face of the earth ... Jimmy!"
+
+He still gently replied to her:
+
+"Men who love, you know, have but one code--the woman and honor."
+
+Still mocking, but gentle as would have been the touch of the roses in
+the bowl near the photograph, her voice told him,
+
+"Then he's worth saving, Jimmy."
+
+Worth saving ... he agreed, and turned to his guest.  In doing so he
+saw that Ruggles had come into the drawing-room to remove the
+coffee-tray.
+
+"Beg pardon, sir, but you mentioned there would be a letter to send
+shortly?"
+
+"By Jove! so I did!" exclaimed Bulstrode.  "I beg your pardon; will you
+excuse me while I write a line at the desk?"  The line was an order to
+the florist.
+
+For some reason the eyes of the Englishman had not quitted the butler's
+face, and Ruggles, with cold insolence, had stared at him in turn.
+Waring, albeit in another man's clothes, fed and seated before a
+friendly hearth, and once again within the pale of his own class, had
+regained something of his natural air and feeling of superiority.  He
+resented the servant's insolence, and his face was angrily flushed as
+Bulstrode gave his orders, and the man left the room.
+
+"I must go away," he said, rather brusquely.  "I can never thank you
+for what you have done.  I feel as if I had been in a dream."
+
+"Sit down."  His companion ignored his words.  "Sit down."
+
+"It's late."
+
+"For what, my friend?"
+
+"I must find some place to sleep."
+
+"You have found it," gently smiled Bulstrode.  "Your room is prepared
+for you here."  Then he interrupted: "No thanks--no thanks.  If what
+you tell me is all I think it is, I'm proud to share my roof with you,
+Waring."
+
+"Don't think well of me--don't!" blurted out the other.  "You don't
+know what a ruined vagabond I am.  When you send me out to-morrow I
+shall begin again; but let me tell you that although I've herded with
+tramps and thieves, been in the hospital and lock-up, and worked in the
+hell of a furnace in a ship's hold, nothing hurt me any more, not after
+I left England--not after those days when I waited in Liverpool for a
+word--for a sign--not after that, all you see the marks of now--nothing
+hurts now but the memory.  I'm immune."
+
+"You will feel differently--you will humanize."
+
+"Never!" exclaimed the tramp.
+
+"To-night," said Bulstrode, simply.
+
+Waring looked at him curiously.
+
+"What a wonderful man!" he half murmured.  "I was led to you by fate:
+you have forced me to lay my soul bare to you--and now..."
+
+"Let's look things in the face together," suggested the gentleman,
+practically.  "I have a ranch out West.  A good piece of property.
+It's in the hands of a clever Englishman and promises well.  How would
+you like to go out there and start anew?  He'll give you a welcome, and
+he's a first-rate business man.  Will you go?"
+
+Waring had with his old habit thrust his hands in his pockets.  He
+stood well on his feet.  Bulstrode remarked it.  He looked meditatively
+down between the soles of his shoes.
+
+"You mean to say you give me a chance--to--to----"
+
+"Begin anew, Waring."
+
+"I drink a great deal," said the young man.
+
+"You will swear off."
+
+"I've gambled away all the money I ever had."
+
+"You will be taking care of mine, and it will be a point of honor."
+
+"I'm under a cloud----
+
+"Not in my eyes," said Bulstrode, stoutly.
+
+"--which I can never clear."
+
+Bulstrode made a dismissing gesture.
+
+"I should want the chap out there to know the truth."
+
+"The truth," caught his hearer, and the other as quickly interrupted:
+
+"To know under what circumstances I left my people."
+
+"No, that is unnecessary," said Bulstrode, firmly.  "Nobody has any
+right to your past.  I don't know his.  That's the beauty of the
+plains--the freshness of them.  It's a new start--a clean page."
+
+Still the guest hesitated.
+
+"I don't believe it's worth while.  You see, I've batted about now so
+much alone, with nobody near me but the lowest sort; I've given in so
+long, with no care to do better, that I haven't any confidence in
+myself.  I don't want you to see me fail, sir,--I don't want to go back
+on you."
+
+Bulstrode had heard very understandingly part of the man's word, part
+of his excuse for his weakness.
+
+"That's it," he said, musingly.  "Butting about alone.  It's
+that--loneliness--that's responsible for so many things."
+
+Looking up brightly as his friend whose derelict dangerous vessel, so
+near to port and repair, was heading for the wide seas again, Bulstrode
+wondered: "If such a thing could be that some friend, not too
+uncongenial, could be found to go with you and stand as it were by
+you--some friend who knew--who comprehended----"
+
+Waring laughed.  "I haven't such a one."
+
+"Yes," said the older gentleman, "you have, and he will stand by you.
+I'll go West with you myself to-morrow--on Christmas day.  I need a
+change.  I want to get away for a little time."
+
+Waring drew back a step, for Bulstrode had risen.  Cold Anglo-Saxon as
+he was, the unprecedented miracle this gentleman presented made him
+seem almost lunatic.  He stared blankly.
+
+"It's simpler than it looks."  Bulstrode attempted conventionally to
+shear it of a little of its eccentricity.  "There's every reason why I
+should look after my property out there.  I've never seen it at all."
+
+"I'm not worth such a goodness," Waring faltered, earnestly,--"not
+worth it."
+
+"You will be."
+
+"Don't hope it."
+
+"I believe it," smiled the gentleman; "and at all events I'll stand by
+you till you are--if you'll say the word."
+
+Waring, whose lips were trembling, repeated vaguely, "The _word_?"
+
+"Well," replied Bulstrode, "you might say those--they're as good
+any--will you stand by _me_----?"
+
+Making the first hearty spontaneous gesture he had shown, the young man
+seized the other's outstretched hand.  "Yes," he breathed; "by Heaven!
+I will!"
+
+
+It was past midnight when Bulstrode, pushing open the curtains of his
+bedroom, looked out on the frozen world of Washington Square, where of
+tree and arch not an outline was visible under the disguising snow; and
+above, in the sky swept clear of clouds by the strongest of winds, rode
+the round full disk of the Christmas moon.
+
+The adoption of a vagrant, the quixotic decision he had taken to leave
+New York on Christmas day, the plain facts of the outrageous folly his
+impulsiveness led him to contemplate, had relegated his more worldly
+plans to the background.  Laying aside his waistcoat, he took out the
+letter in whose contents he had been absorbed when Cecil Waring crossed
+the threshold of his drawing-room.
+
+Well ... as he re-read at leisure her delightful plan for Christmas
+day, he sighed that he could not do for them both better than to go two
+thousand miles away!  "Waring thinks himself a vagrant--and so, poor
+chap, he has been; but there are vagrants of another kind."  Jimmy
+reflected he felt himself to be one of these others, and was led to
+speculate if there were many outcasts like himself, and what
+ultimately, if their courage was sufficient to keep them banished to
+the end, would be the reward?
+
+"Since," he reflected, "there's only one thing I desire--and it's the
+one thing forbidden--I fail sometimes to quite puzzle it out!"
+
+He had finished his preparations for the night and was about to turn
+out the light, when, with his hand on the electric button, he paused,
+for he distinctly heard from downstairs what sounded like a call--a cry.
+
+Taking his revolver from the top drawer, he went into the hall, to feel
+a draft of icy air blow up the staircase, to see over the balusters the
+open door of the dining-room and light within it, and to hear more
+clearly the sounds that had come to him through closed doors declare
+themselves to be scuffling--struggling--the half-cry of a muffled
+voice--a fall, then Bulstrode started.
+
+"I'm coming," he declared, and ran down the stairs like a boy.
+
+On the dining-room floor, close to the window wide open to the icy
+night, lay a man's form, and over him bent another man cruelly, with
+all the animus of a bird of prey.
+
+The under man was Ruggles, Bulstrode's butler, his eyes starting from
+their sockets, his mouth open, his color livid; he couldn't have called
+out, for the other man had seized his necktie, twisted it tight as a
+tourniquet around the man's gullet, and so kneeling with one knee on
+his chest, Waring held the big man under.
+
+"I say," panted the young man, "can you lend a hand, sir?  I've got
+him, but I'm not strong enough to keep him."
+
+Bulstrode thought his servant's eyes rolled appealingly at him.  He
+cocked his revolver, holding it quietly, and asked coolly:
+
+"What's the matter with him that he needs to be kept?"
+
+"Would you sit on his chest, Mr. Bulstrode?"
+
+"No," said that gentleman.  "I'll cover him so.  What's the truth?"
+
+"I heard a queer noise," panted the Englishman, "and came out to see
+what it was, and this fellow was just getting through the window.
+There was another chap outside, but he got away.  I caught this one
+from the back, otherwise I could never have thrown him."
+
+"You're throttling him."
+
+"He deserves it."
+
+"Let him up."
+
+"Mr. Bulstrode...!"
+
+"Yes," said that gentleman, decidedly, "let him up."
+
+But Ruggles, released from the hand whose knuckles had ground
+themselves into his windpipe, could not at once rise.  The breath was
+out of him, for he had been heavily struck in the stomach by a blow
+from the fist of a man whose training in sport had delightfully
+returned at need.
+
+Ruggles began to breathe like a porpoise, to grunt and pant and roll
+over.  He staggered to his feet, and with a string of imprecations
+raised his fist at Waring, but as Bulstrode's revolver was entirely
+ready to answer at command, he did not venture to leave the spot where
+he stood.
+
+"Now," said his master, "when you get your tongue your story will be
+just the same as Mr. Waring's.  You found him getting away with the
+silver.  The probabilities are all with you, Ruggles.  The police will
+be here in just about five minutes.  Ten to one the guilty man is known
+to the officers.  Now there's an overcoat and hat on the hat-rack in
+the hall.  I give both of you time to get away.  There's the front door
+and the window--which, by the way, you would better shut, Waring, as
+it's a cold morning."
+
+Neither man moved.  Without removing his eyes from the butler or
+uncovering him, Bulstrode, by means of the messenger-call to the right
+of the window, summoned the police.  The metallic click of the button
+sounded loud in the room.
+
+Ruggles shook his great hand high in air.
+
+"I'd--I'd----"
+
+"Never mind _that_," interrupted the householder.  "The man who's
+_going_ had better take his chance.  There's one minute lost."
+
+During the next half-second the modern philanthropist breathed in
+suspense.  It was so on the cards that he might be obliged to apologize
+to his antipathetic butler and find himself sentimentally sold by
+Waring!
+
+But Ruggles it was who with a parting oath stepped to the
+door--accelerating his pace as the daze began to pass a little from his
+brain, and snatched the hat and coat, unlocked the front door, opened
+it, looked quickly up and down the white streets, and then without a
+word cut down the steps and across Washington Square, slowly at first,
+and then on a run.
+
+Bulstrode turned to his visitor.
+
+"Come," he said, "let's go up to bed."
+
+"But," stammered the young man, "you're never going to let him go like
+that?"
+
+"Yes, I am," confessed the unpractical gentleman.  "I couldn't send a
+man to jail on Christmas day."
+
+"But the police----?"
+
+"I shall tell them out of my window that it was a false alarm."
+
+Bulstrode shut and locked his door, and turning to Waring, laughed
+delightedly.
+
+"I must tell you that when he let you in last night Ruggles did not
+think you were a gentleman.  He must have found out this morning that
+you were very much of a man.  It's astonishing where you got your
+strength, though.  He'd make two of you, and you're not fit in any way."
+
+He looked ghastly enough as Bulstrode spoke, and the gentleman put his
+arm under the Englishman's.  "I'll ring for the servants and have some
+coffee made and fetched to your room.  Lean on me."  He helped the
+vagabond upstairs.
+
+The New Yorker, whose sentimental follies were certainly a menace to
+public safety and a premium to begging and vagabondage and crime, slept
+well and late, and was awakened finally by the keen, bright ringing of
+the telephone at his side.  As he took up the receiver his whole face
+illumined.
+
+"Merry Christmas, Jimmy!"
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"What _wonderful_ roses!  Thanks a thousand times!"
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"But of course I knew!  No other man in New York is sentimental enough
+to have a woman awakened at eight o'clock by a bunch of flowers!"
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"Forgive you!"  (It was clear that she did.)
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"Jimmy, what a day for Tuxedo, and what a shame I can't go!"
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"You weren't going!  You mean to say that you had refused?"
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"I don't understand--it's the connection--West?"
+
+"Why, ranches look after themselves.  They always do.  They go right
+on.  You don't _mean_ it, on Christmas day!"
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"I shouldn't care for your reasons.  They're sure to be
+ridiculous--unpractical--unnecessary--don't tell them to me."
+
+There was a pause, and then the voice, which had undergone a slight
+change said:
+
+"Jack's ill again ... that's why I couldn't go to Tuxedo.  I shall pass
+the day here in town.  I called up to tell you this--and to
+suggest--but since you're going West..."
+
+Falconer's illnesses!  How well Bulstrode knew them, and how well he
+could see her alone in the familiar little drawing-room by a hearth not
+built for a Christmas tree!  He had promised Waring, "I'll stand by
+you."  It was a kind of vow--a real vow, and the poor tramp had lived
+up to his.
+
+"Jimmy."  There was a note he had never heard before; if a tone can be
+a tear, it was one.
+
+He interrupted her.
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"How dear of you!"
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"But I haven't any Christmas tree!"
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"You'll fetch one?  How _dear_ of you!  We'll trim it--with your
+roses--make it bloom.  Come early and help me dress the tree."
+
+
+Two hours later he opened the door into his breakfast-room with the
+guiltiness of a truant boy.  He wore culprit shame written all over his
+face, and the young man who stood waiting for him in the window might
+almost have read his friend's dejection in his embarrassed face.
+
+But Waring came eagerly forward, answered the season's greetings, and
+said quickly:
+
+"Are you still in the same mind about the West, Mr. Bulstrode?"
+
+(Poor Bulstrode!)
+
+"I mean to say, sir, if you still feel like giving me this chance, I've
+a favor to ask.  Would you let me go _alone_?"
+
+Bulstrode gasped.
+
+"Since last night a lot has happened to me, not only since you've
+befriended me, but since I tussled with that fellow here.  I'd like a
+chance to see what I can do alone.  If you, as you so generously plan,
+go with me, I shall feel watched--protected.  It will weaken me more
+than anything else.  I suppose I shall go all to pieces, but I'd like
+to try my strength.  If I could suddenly master that chap with my fists
+after months of dissipation----"
+
+Bulstrode finished for him:
+
+"You can master the rest."
+
+"Don't give me any extra money," pleaded the tramp, as if he foresaw
+his friend's impulse.  "Pay my ticket out West, if you will, and write
+to the man who is there, and I'll start in."
+
+Bulstrode beamed on him.
+
+"You're a man," he assured him--"a man."
+
+"I may become one."
+
+"You're a fine fellow."
+
+"You'll trust me, then?"
+
+"Implicitly."
+
+"Then let me start to-day.  I'm reckless--let me get away.  I may get
+off at the first station and pawn my clothes and drink and drink to a
+lower hell than before--but let me try alone."
+
+"You shall go alone--and go to-day."
+
+Prosper came in with the coffee; he, too, was beaming, and the servants
+below-stairs were all agog.  Waring was a hero.
+
+"Prosper," said his master, in French, "will you, after you have served
+breakfast, go out to the market quarters and see if you can discover
+for me a medium-sized, very well-proportioned little Christmas tree?
+Fetch it home with you."
+
+Waring smiled faintly.
+
+Bulstrode smiled too, and more comprehendingly, and Prosper smiled and
+said:
+
+"Mais certainement, monsieur."
+
+
+
+
+THE SECOND ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+II
+
+IN WHICH HE TRIES TO BUY A PORTRAIT
+
+Bulstrode was extremely fond of travel, and every now and then treated
+himself to a season in London or Paris, and in the May following his
+adventure with Waring he saw, from his apartments in the Hôtel Ritz,
+from Boulevard, Bois, and the Champs Elysées, as much of the
+maddeningly delicious Parisian springtime "as was good for him at his
+age," so he said!  It gave the feeling that he was a mere boy, and with
+buoyant sensations astir in him, life had begun over again.
+
+Any morning between eleven and twelve Bulstrode might have been seen in
+the Bois de Boulogne briskly walking along the Avenue des Acacias, his
+well-filled chest thrown out, his step light and assured; cane in hand,
+a boutonnière tinging the lapel of his coat; immaculate and fresh as a
+rose, he exhaled good-humor, kindliness, and well-being.
+
+From their traps and motors charming women bowed and smiled, the _fine
+fleur_ and the _beau monde_ greeted him cordially.
+
+"Regardez moi ce bon Bulstrode qui se promene," if it were a Frenchman,
+or, "There's dear old Jimmy Bulstrode!" if he were recognized by a
+compatriot.
+
+Bulstrode was rather slight of build, yet with an evident strength of
+body that indicated a familiarity with exercise, a healthful habit of
+sport and activity.  His eyes, clear-sighted and strong, looked through
+the medium of no glass happily and naïvely on the world.  Many years
+before his hair had begun to turn gray, and had not nearly finished the
+process; it grew thickly, and was quite dark about his ears and on his
+brow.  Having gained experience and kept his youth, he was as rare and
+delightful as fine wine--as inspiring as spring.  It was his heart
+(Mrs. Falconer said) that made him so, his good, gentle, generous
+heart!--and she should know.  His fastidiousness in point of dress, and
+his good taste kept him close to elegance of attire.
+
+"You turn yourself out, Jimmy, on every occasion," she had said, "as if
+you were on the point of meeting the woman you loved."  And Bulstrode
+had replied that such consistent hopefulness should certainly be
+ultimately rewarded.
+
+He gave the impression of a man who in his youth starts out to take a
+long and pleasant journey and finds the route easy, the taverns
+agreeable, and the scenes all the guide-book promised.  Midway--(he had
+turned the page of forty)--midway, pausing to look back, Bulstrode saw
+the experiences of his travels in their sunny valleys, full of goodly
+memories, and the future, to his sweet hopefulness, promised to be a
+pleasant journey to the end.
+
+During the time that he spent in Paris every pet charity in the
+American colony took advantage of the philanthropic Mr. Bulstrode's
+passing through the city, and came to him to be set upon its feet, and
+every pretty woman with an interest, hobby, or scheme came as well to
+this generous millionaire, told him about her fad and went away with a
+donation.
+
+One ravishing May morning Bulstrode, taking his usual constitutional in
+the Bois, paused at the end of the Avenue des Acacias to find it
+deserted and attractively quiet; he sat down on a little bench the more
+reposefully to enjoy the day and time.
+
+There are, fortunately, certain things which, unlike money, can be
+shared only with certain people; and Bulstrode felt that the pleasure
+of this spring day, the charm of the opposite wood-glades into which he
+meditatively looked, the tranquil as well as the buoyant joy of life,
+were among those personal things so delightful when shared--and which,
+if too long enjoyed alone, bring (let it be scarcely whispered on this
+bewildering May morning) something like sadness!
+
+Before his happier mood changed his attention was attracted by a woman
+who came rapidly toward the avenue from a little alley at the side.  He
+looked up quickly at the feminine creature who so aptly appeared upon
+his musings.  She was young; her form in its simple dress assured him
+this.  He could not see her face, for it was covered by her hands.
+Abruptly taking the opposite direction, she went over to a farther
+seat, where she sat down, and when the young girl put her arms on the
+back of the seat, her head upon her arms, and in the remoteness this
+part of the avenue offered, cried without restraint, the kind-hearted
+Bulstrode felt that it was too cruel to be true.
+
+But soft-hearted though he was, the gentleman was a worldling as well,
+and that the outburst was a ruse more than suggested itself to him as
+he went over to the lovely Niobe whose abundant fair hair sunned from
+under her simple straw hat and from beneath whose frayed skirt showed a
+worn little shoe.
+
+He spoke in French.
+
+"Pardon, madame, but you seem in great distress."
+
+The poor thing started violently, and as soon as she displayed her
+pretty tearful face the American recognized in her a compatriot.  She
+waved him emphatically away.
+
+"Oh, please don't notice me--don't speak to me--I didn't see that
+anybody was there."
+
+"I am an American, too: can't I do anything for you--won't you let me?"
+
+And he saw at once that she wanted to be left alone.  She averted her
+head determinedly.
+
+"No, no, please don't notice me.  Please go away!"
+
+He had nothing to do but to obey her, and as he reluctantly did so a
+smart pony-cart driven by a lady alone came briskly along and drew up,
+for the occupant had recognized him.
+
+"Get in!" she rather commanded.  "My dear Jimmy, how _nice_ to find you
+here, and how nice to drive you at least as far as the entrance!"
+
+As the rebuffed philanthropist accepted he cast a ruthful glance at the
+solitary figure on the bench.
+
+"Do you see that poor girl over there?  She's an American, and in real
+trouble."
+
+"My _dear_ Jimmy!"  His companion's tone left him in no doubt as to her
+scepticism.
+
+"Oh, I know, I know," he interrupted, "but she's not a fraud.  She's
+the real thing."
+
+They were already gayly whirling away from the sad little figure.
+
+"Did you make her cry?"
+
+"I?  Certainly not."
+
+"Then let the man who did wipe her tears away!"
+
+But Bulstrode had seen the face of the girl, and he was haunted by it
+all day until the Bois and its bright atmosphere became only the
+setting for an unhappy woman, young and lovely, whom it had been
+impossible for him to help.
+
+Somebody had said that Bulstrode should have his portrait done with his
+hands in his pockets, and Mrs. Falconer had replied, "Or rather with
+_other_ people's hands in his pockets!"
+
+The next afternoon he found himself part of a group of people who, out
+of charity and curiosity, patronized the Western Artists' Exhibition in
+the Rue Monsieur.
+
+Having made a ridiculously generous donation to the support of this
+league at the request of a certain lovely lady, Bulstrode followed his
+generosity by a personal effort, and with not much opposition on his
+part permitted himself to be taken to the exhibition.
+
+He was not, in the ultra sense of the word, a _connaisseur_, but he
+thought he knew a horror when he saw it!  So he said, and on this
+afternoon his eyes ached and his offended taste cried out before he had
+patiently travelled half-way down the line of canvases.
+
+"My dear lady," he confided _sotto voce_ to his friend, "I feel more
+inclined to establish a fund for sending all these young women back to
+the _prairies_, if that's where they come from, than to aid in this
+slaughter of public time and taste.  _Why_ don't they stay at home--and
+marry?"
+
+"That's a vulgar and limited point of view to take," his friend
+reproached him.  "Don't you acknowledge that a woman has many careers
+instead of one?  _You_ seem to be thoroughly enjoying your liberty!
+What if I should ask you why _you_ don't stay at home, and marry?"
+
+Bulstrode looked at his guide comprehensively and smiled gently.  His
+response was irrelevant.  "Look at this picture!  It's too dreadful for
+words."
+
+"Hush, you're not a judge.  Here and there there is evidence of great
+talent."
+
+They had drawn up before a portrait, and poor Bulstrode caught his
+breath with a groan:
+
+"It's too awful!  It's crime to encourage it."
+
+Mrs. Falconer tried to lead him on.
+
+"Well, this _is_ an unfortunate place to stop," she confessed.  "That
+portrait represents more tragedy than you can see."
+
+"It couldn't," murmured Bulstrode.
+
+"The poor girl who did it has struggled on here for two years, living
+sometimes on a franc a day.  Just fancy!  She has been trying to get
+orders so that she can stay on and study.  Poor thing!  The people who
+are interested say that she's been near to desperation.  She is awfully
+proud, and won't take any assistance but orders.  You can imagine
+_they're_ not besieging her!  She has come to her last cent, I believe,
+and has to go home to Idaho."
+
+"Let her go, my dear friend."  Bulstrode was earnest.  "It's the best
+thing she could possibly do!"
+
+His companion put her hand on his arm.
+
+"Please be quiet," she implored.  "There she is, standing over by the
+door.  That rather pretty girl with the disorderly blonde hair."
+
+Bulstrode looked up--saw her--looked again, and exclaimed:
+
+"Is _that_ the girl?  Do you know her?  Present me, will you?"
+
+"Nonsense."  She detained him.  "How you go from hot to cold!  _Why_
+should you want to meet her, pray?"
+
+"Oh," he evaded, "it's a curious study.  I want to talk to her about
+art, and if you don't present me I shall speak to her without an
+introduction."
+
+Not many moments later Bulstrode was cornered in a dingy little room,
+where tea that tasted like the infusion of a haystack was being served.
+He had skilfully disassociated Miss Laura Desprey from her Bohemian
+companions and placed her on a little divan, before which, with a
+teacup in his hand, he stood.
+
+She wore the same dress, the same hat--and he did not doubt the same
+shoes which characterized her miserable toilet when he had surprised
+her childlike display of grief on a bench in the Bois.  He had done
+quite right in speaking to her, and he thanked his stars that she did
+not in the least remember him.
+
+He thought with kind humor: "No wonder she cries if she paints like
+that!"
+
+But it was not in a spirit of criticism that he bent his friendly eyes
+on the Bohemian.  He had the pleasure of seeing her plainly this time,
+for the window back of her admitted a generous square of light against
+which her blonde head framed itself, and her untidy hair was like a
+dusty mesh of gold.  She regarded the amiable gentleman out of eyes
+child-like and purely blue.  Under her round chin the edges of a black
+bow tied loosely stood out like the wings of a butterfly.  Her dress
+was careless and poor, but she was grace in it and youth--"and what,"
+thought Bulstrode, "has one a right to expect more of any woman?"  He
+remembered her boots and shuddered.  He remembered the one franc a day
+and began his campaign.
+
+"I want so much to meet the painter of that portrait over there," he
+began.
+
+Her face lightened.
+
+"Oh, did you like it?"
+
+"I think it's wonderful, perfectly wonderful!"
+
+A slow red crept up the thin contour of her cheek.  She leaned forward!
+
+"Do you really mean that?"
+
+He said most seriously:
+
+"Yes, I can frankly say I haven't seen a portrait in a long time which
+impressed me so much."
+
+His praise was not in Latin Quarter vernacular, and coming from a
+Philistine, had only a certain value to the artist.  But to a lonely
+stranded girl the words were balm.  Bulstrode, in his immaculate dress,
+his conventional manner, was as foreign a person to the Bohemian
+student as if he had been an inhabitant of another planet.  Her speech
+was brusque and quick, with a generous burr in her "rs" when she
+replied.
+
+"I've studied at Julian's two years now.  This was my Salon picture,
+but it didn't get in."
+
+"If one can judge by those that _did_"--Bulstrode's tact was
+delightful--"you should feel honorably refused.  I suppose you are at
+work on another portrait?"
+
+The face which his interest had brightened clouded.
+
+"No, I'm going home--to Idaho--I'm not painting any more."
+
+All the tragedy to a whole-souled Latin Quarter art student that this
+implied was not revealed to Bulstrode, but, as it was, his sensitive
+kindness felt so much already that it ached.  He hastened toward his
+goal with eagerness:
+
+"I'm so awfully sorry!  Because, do you know, I was going to ask you if
+you couldn't possibly paint my portrait?"  It came from him on the spur
+of the moment.  His frank eyes met hers and might have quailed at his
+hypocrisy, but the expression of joy on her face, eclipsing everything
+else, dazzled him.
+
+She cried out impulsively:
+
+"Oh--goodness!" so loud that one or two tea-drinkers turned about.
+After a second, having gained control and half as though she expected
+some motive she did not understand:
+
+"But you never _heard_ of me before to-day!  I don't believe you
+_really_ liked that portrait over there so very much."
+
+With a candor that impressed her he assured her: "I give you my word of
+honor I've never felt quite so about any portrait before."
+
+Here Miss Desprey had a cup of tea handed her by a vague-eyed girl who
+stumbled over Bulstrode in her ministrations, much to her confusion.
+
+Laura Desprey drank her tea with avidity, put the cup down on the table
+near, and leaning over to her patron, exclaimed:
+
+"I just _can't_ believe I've got an order!"
+
+Bulstrode affirmed smiling: "You have, and if you could arrange to stay
+over for it--if it would," he delicately put, "be worth your while----"
+
+She said quietly:
+
+"Yes, it would be worth my while."
+
+A _distrait_ look passed over her face for a second, and Bulstrode saw
+he was forgotten in, as he supposed, a painter's vision of an order and
+its contingent technicalities.
+
+"I can begin at once."  He lost no time.  "I'm quite free."
+
+"But--I have no studio."
+
+"There must be studios to rent."
+
+Yes.  She knew of one; she could secure it for a month.  It would take
+that time--she was a slow worker.
+
+"But we haven't discussed the price."  Before so much poverty and
+struggle--not that it was new to him, but clothed like this in beauty
+it was rare and appealed to him--he was embarrassed by his riches.
+"Now the price.  I want," he meditated, "a full-length portrait, with a
+great deal of background, just as handsome and expensive looking as you
+can paint it."
+
+He exquisitely sacrificed himself and winced at his own words, and saw
+her color with amusement and a little scorn, but he went on bravely:
+
+"Now for a man like me, Miss Desprey--I am sure you will know what I
+mean--a man who has never been painted before--this picture will have
+to cost me a lot of money.  You see otherwise my friends would not
+appreciate it."
+
+In the vulgarian he was making himself out to be his friends would not
+have recognized the unpretentious Bulstrode.
+
+"Get the place, Miss Desprey, and let me come as soon as you can.  All
+this change of plans will give you extra expenses--I understand about
+that!  Every time I change my rooms it costs me a fortune.  Now if you
+will let me send you over a check for half payment on the picture, for,
+let us say"--he made it as large as he dared and a quarter of what he
+wanted.  They were alone in the tea-room, the motley gathering had
+weeded itself out.  Miss Desprey turned pale.
+
+"No," she gasped; "I couldn't take anything like half so much for the
+whole thing."
+
+Bulstrode said coldly:
+
+"I'm afraid I must insist, Miss Desprey; I couldn't order less than a
+fifteen-hundred dollar portrait.  It's the sum I have planned to pay
+when I'm painted."
+
+"But a celebrated painter would paint it for that."
+
+Bulstrode smiled fatuously.
+
+"Can't a man pay for his fads?  I want to be painted by the person who
+did that portrait over there, Miss Desprey."
+
+
+In a tiny studio--the dingy chrysalis of a Bohemian art
+student--Bulstrode posed for his portrait.
+
+Each morning saw him set forth from the Ritz alert and debonaire in his
+fastidious toilet---saw him cross the Place Vendôme, the bridge, and
+lose his worldly figure in the lax nonchalant crowd of the Quarter
+Latin.  At the end of an alley as narrow and picturesque as a lane in a
+colored print he knocked at a green door, and was admitted to the
+studio by his protégée.  In another second he had assumed his
+prescribed position according to the pose, and Miss Desprey before her
+easel began the _séance_.
+
+On these May days the glass roof admitted delightful gradations of
+glory to the commonplace _atelier_.  A few cheap casts, a few yards of
+mustard-toned burlaps, some Botticelli and Manet photographs, a mangy
+divan, and a couple of chairs were the furnishings.  It had been
+impossible for Bulstrode to pass indifferently the venders of flowers
+in the festive, brilliant streets, and great bunches of _giroflé_,
+hyacinths, and narcissi overflowed the earthenware pitchers and vases
+with which the studio was plentifully supplied.  The soft, sharp
+fragrance rose above the shut-in odor of the _atelier_, and, while Miss
+Desprey worked, her patron looked at her across waves of spring perfume.
+
+Her painting-dress, a garment of _beige_ linen, half belted in at the
+waist and entirely covering her, made her to Bulstrode, from the crown
+of her fair hair to the tip of her old tan shoes, seem all of one
+color.  He had taken tremendous interest in his pose, in the progress
+of the work.  He would have looked at the portrait every few moments,
+but Miss Desprey refused him even a glimpse.  He was to wait until all
+manner of strange things took place on the canvas, till "schemes and
+composition" were determined, "proper values" arrived at, and he
+listened to her glib school terms with respect and a sanguine hope that
+with the aid of such potent technicalities and his interest she might
+be able to achieve this time something short of atrocious.
+
+He posed faithfully for Miss Desprey, and smiled at her with friendly
+eyes whenever he caught anything more personal than the squinting
+glance with which she professionally regarded him, putting him far away
+or fetching him near, according to her art's requirements.  They talked
+in his rest, and he took pleasure in telling her how he enjoyed his
+morning walks from his hôtel, how the outdoor life delighted him, and
+how all the suburban gardens seemed to have been brought to Paris to
+glow and blossom in the venders' carts or in little baskets on the
+backs of women and boys, and how thoroughly well worth living he
+thought life in Paris was.
+
+"There is," he finished, "nothing in the world which compares to the
+Paris spring-time, I believe, but I have never been West.  What is
+spring like in Idaho?"
+
+Miss Desprey laughed, touched her ruffled hair with painty fingers,
+blushed, and mused.
+
+"Oh, it's all right, I guess.  There's a trolley-line in Centreville,
+an electric plant and the oil works--no trees, no flowers, and the
+people all look alike.  So you see"--she had a dazzling way of shaking
+her head, when her fine white teeth, her sunny dishevelled hair, her
+bright cheeks and eyes seemed all to flash and chime together--"so you
+see, spring in Centreville and _Paris_ isn't the same thing at all!
+Things are beautiful everywhere," she assured him slowly as she
+painted, "if you're happy--and I was very unhappy in Centreville, so I
+thought I'd come away and try to have a career."  She poured out a long
+stream of _garance_ from the tube on to her palette.  Bulstrode
+watched, fascinated.
+
+"And here in Paris, are you--have you been happy here?"
+
+"Oh, dear no!" she laughed; "perfectly miserable.  And it used to seem
+as though it was cruel of the city to be so gay and happy when I
+couldn't join in--"  Bulstrode, remembering the one franc a day and the
+very questionable inspiration her poor art could impart, understood;
+his face was full of feeling--"until," she went slowly on, "lately."
+She stepped behind the canvas and was lost to sight.  "I've been
+awfully happy in Paris for the first time.  I do like beautiful
+things--but I like beautiful people better--and you're
+beautiful--beautiful."
+
+She finished with a blush and a smile.
+
+Bulstrode grew to think nothing at all about his portrait further than
+fervently to hope it would not shock him beyond power to disguise.  But
+Miss Desprey was frightfully in earnest, and worked until her eyes
+glowed with excitement and her cheeks burned.  Strong and vigorous and
+(Bulstrode over and over again said) "young, so young!" she never
+evinced any signs of fatigue, but stood when his limbs trembled under
+him and looked up radiant when he was ready to cry "_Grâce!_"  In her
+enthusiasm she would have given him two sittings a day, but this his
+worldly relations would not permit.  As she painted, painted, her head
+on one side sometimes, sometimes thrown back, her eyes half closed, he
+studied her with pleasure and delight.
+
+"What a pity she paints so dreadfully ill!  What a pity she paints at
+all!  What difference, after all, does it make _what_ she does?  She's
+so pretty and feminine!"  She was a clinging, sweet creature, and the
+walk and the flower debauch he permitted himself, the long quiet hours
+of companionship with this lovely girl in the _atelier_, illumined,
+accentuated, and intensified Bulstrode's already fatuous appreciation
+of the spring in Paris.
+
+During Bulstrode's artistic mornings there distilled itself into the
+studio a magic to which he was not insensitive.  Whether or not it came
+with the flowers or with the delicate filtering of the sun through the
+studio light, who can say, but as he stood in his assumed position of
+_nonchalance_ he was more and more charmed by his painter.  The spell
+he naturally felt should, and for long indeed did, emanate from the
+slender figure, lost at times behind her canvas, and at times
+completely in his view.
+
+For years Bulstrode had been the victim of hope, or rather in this case
+of intent, _to love again_--to love anew!  Neither of these statements
+is the correct way of putting it.  He tried with good faith to prove
+himself to be what was so generally claimed for him by his
+friends--susceptible; alas, he knew better!
+
+As he meditatively studied the blonde young girl he spun for himself to
+its end the idea of picking her up, carrying her off, marrying her,
+shutting Idaho away definitely, and opening to her all that his wealth
+and position could of life and the world.  He grew tender at the
+thought of her poor struggle, her insufficient art, her ambition.  It
+fascinated him to think of playing the good fairy, of touching her
+gray, hard life to color and beauty, and as the beauty and the holy
+intimacy of home occurred to him, and marriage, his thoughts wandered
+as pilgrims whose feet stray back in the worn ways and find their own
+old footprints there, ... and after a few moments Miss Desprey was like
+to be farther away from his meditations than Centreville is from Paris,
+and the personality of the dream-woman was another.  Once Miss
+Desprey's voice startled him out of such a reverie by bidding him,
+"_Please_ take the pose, Mr. Bulstrode!"  As he laughed and apologized
+he caught her eyes fixed on him with, as he thought, a curious
+expression of affection and sympathy--indeed, tears sprang to them.
+She reddened and went furiously back to work.  She was more personal
+that day than she had yet been.  She seemed, after having surprised his
+absent-mindedness, to feel that she had a right to him--quite ordered
+him about, and was almost petulant in her exactions of his positions.
+
+Her work evidently advanced to her satisfaction.
+
+As she stood elated before her easel, her hair in sunny disorder, her
+eyes like stars, Bulstrode was conscious there was a change in her--she
+was excited and tremulous.  In her frayed dress, sagging at the edges,
+her paint-smeared apron, her slender thumb through the hole in the
+palette, she came over to him at the close of the sitting, started to
+speak, faltered, and said:
+
+"You don't know what it means to me--all you have done.  And I can't
+ever tell you."
+
+"Oh, don't," he pleaded, "pray don't speak of it!"
+
+Miss Desprey, half radiant and half troubled, turned away as if she
+were afraid of his eyes.
+
+"No, I won't try to tell you.  I couldn't, I don't dare," she
+whispered, and impulsively caught his hand and kissed it.
+
+When he had left the studio finally it was with a bewildering sense of
+having kissed her hand--no, both of her hands! but one held her palette
+and he _couldn't_ have kissed that one without having got paint on his
+nose--perhaps he had!  He was not at peace.
+
+
+That same night a telegram brought him news to the effect that Miss
+Desprey was ill and would not expect him to pose the following day; and
+relieved that it was not required of him to resume immediately the
+over-charged relations, he went back to his old habit, rudely broken
+into by his artistic escapade, and walked far into the Bois.
+
+He thought with alarming persistency of Miss Desprey.  He was
+chivalrous with women, old-fashioned and clean-minded and
+straight-lived.  In the greatest, in the only passion of his life, he
+had been a Chevalier Bayard, and he could look back upon no incidents
+in which he had played the part which men of the world pride themselves
+on playing well.  Women were mysterious and wonderful to him.  Because
+of one he approached them all with a feeling not far from worship; and
+he had no intention of doing a dishonorable thing.  Puzzled,
+self-accusing--although he did not quite know of what he was guilty--he
+sat down as he had done several weeks before on the bench in the Avenue
+des Acacias.  With extraordinary promptness, as if arranged by a
+scene-setter, a girl's figure came quickly out of a side alley.  She
+was young--her figure betrayed it.  She went quickly over to a seat and
+sat down.  She was weeping and covered her face with her hands.
+Bulstrode, this time without hesitation, went directly over to her:
+
+"My dear Miss Desprey----"
+
+She sprang up and displayed a face disfigured with weeping.
+
+"_You_!" she exclaimed with something like terror.  "Oh, Mr. Bulstrode!"
+
+Her words shuddered in sobs.
+
+"Don't stay here!  Why did you come?  Please go--please."
+
+Bulstrode sat down beside her and took her hands.
+
+"I'm not going away--not until I know what your trouble is.  You were
+in distress when I first saw you here and you wouldn't let me help you
+then.  Now you can't refuse me.  What is it?"
+
+He found she was clinging to his hands as she found voice enough to say:
+
+"No, I can't tell you.  I couldn't ever tell you.  It's not the same
+trouble, it's a new one and worse.  I guess it's the worst thing in the
+world."
+
+Bulstrode was pitiless:
+
+"One that has come lately to you?"
+
+"Oh, yes!"
+
+She was weeping more quietly now.
+
+"Please leave me: please go, Mr. Bulstrode."
+
+"A trouble with which I have had anything to do?"
+
+She waited a long time, then faintly breathed:
+
+"Yes."
+
+The hand he firmly held was gloveless and cold--before he could say
+anything further she drew it away from him and cried:
+
+"Oh, I ought never to have let you guess!  You were so good and kind,
+you meant to help me so, but it's been the worst help of all, only you
+couldn't know that," she pleaded for him.  "Please forgive me if I seem
+ungrateful, but if I had known that I was going to suffer like this I
+would have wished never to see you in the world."
+
+Bulstrode was trying to speak, but she wouldn't let him:
+
+"I never can see you again.  Never!  You mustn't come any more."
+
+But here she half caught her breath and sobbed with what seemed naïve
+and adorable daring:
+
+"Unless you can help me through, Mr. Bulstrode--it is your fault, after
+all."
+
+If this were a virtual throwing of herself into his arms, they were all
+but open to her and the generous heart was all but ready "to see her
+through."  Bulstrode was about to do, and say, the one rash and
+irrevocable perfect thing when at this minute fate again at the ring of
+the curtain opportuned.  The tap, tapping, of a pony's feet was heard
+and a gay little cart came brightly along.  Bulstrode saw it.  He
+sprang to his feet.  It was close upon them.
+
+"You will let me come to-morrow?" he asked eagerly,
+
+"Oh, yes," she whispered; "yes, I shall count on you.  I beg you will
+come."
+
+
+"Jimmy," said the lady severely as he accepted her invitation to get
+into the cart, "this is the second wicked rendezvous I have
+interrupted.  I didn't know you were anything like this, and I've seen
+that girl before, but I can't remember where."
+
+"Don't try," said Bulstrode.
+
+"And she was crying.  Of course you made her cry."
+
+"Well," said Bulstrode desperately, "if I did, it's the first woman
+that has ever cried for me."
+
+
+As the reason why Bulstrode had never married was again in Paris, he
+went up in the late afternoon to see her.
+
+The train of visitors who showed their appreciation of her by thronging
+her doors had been turned away, but Bulstrode was admitted.  The man
+told him, "Mrs. Falconer will see you, sir," by which he had the
+agreeably flattered feeling that she would see nobody else.
+
+When he was opposite her the room at once dwindled, contracted, as
+invariably did every place in which they found themselves together,
+into one small circle containing himself and one woman.  Mrs. Falconer
+said at once to Bulstrode:
+
+"Jimmy, you're in trouble--in one of your quandaries.  What useless
+good have you been doing, and who has been sharper than a serpent's
+tooth to you?"
+
+Bulstrode's late companionship with youth had imparted to him a boyish
+look.  His friend narrowly observed him, and her charming face clouded
+with one of those almost imperceptible _nuances_ that the faces of
+those women wear who feel everything and by habit reveal nothing.
+
+"I'm not a victim."  Bulstrode's tone was regretful.  "One might say,
+on the contrary, this time that I was possibly overpaid."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I haven't," he explained and regretted, "seen you for a long time."
+
+"I've been automobiling in Touraine."  Mrs. Falconer gave him no
+opportunity to be delinquent.
+
+"And I," he confessed, "have been posing for my portrait.  Don't," he
+pleaded, "laugh at me--it isn't for a miniature or a locket; it's
+life-size, horribly life-size.  I've had to stand, off and on with the
+rests, three hours a day, and I've done so _every day for three weeks_."
+
+Mrs. Falconer regarded him with indulgent amusement.
+
+"It's your fault--you took me to see those awful school-girl paintings
+and pointed out that poor young creature to me."  And he was
+interrupted by her exclamation:
+
+"Oh, how _dear_ of you, Jimmy! how sweet and kind and ridiculous!  It
+won't be fit to be seen."
+
+"Oh, never mind that," he waved; "no one need see it.  I haven't--she
+won't let me."
+
+He had accepted a cup of tea from the lady's hand; he drank it off and
+sat down, holding the empty cup as if he held his fate.
+
+"Tell me," she urged, "all about it.  It was just like you--any other
+man would have found means to show charity, but you have shown
+unselfish goodness, and that's the rarest thing in the world.  Fancy
+posing every day!  How ghastly and how wonderful of you!"
+
+"No," he said slowly, "it wasn't any of these things.  I wanted to do
+it.  It amused me at first, you see.  But now I am a little
+annoyed--rather bothered to tell the truth--He met her eyes with almost
+an appeal in his.  Mrs. Falconer was in kindness bound to help him.
+
+"Bothered?  How, pray?  With what part of it?  You're not chivalrous
+about it, are you?  You're not by the way of feeling that you have
+compromised her by posing?"
+
+"Oh, no, no," he hurried; "but I do feel, and I am frank to
+acknowledge, that it was a mistake.  Because--do you know--that for
+some absurd reason I am afraid she has become fond of me."  He blushed
+like a boy.  Mrs. Falconer said coldly:
+
+"Yes?  Well, what of it?"
+
+"This--"  Bulstrode's voice was quiet and determined--"if I am right I
+shall marry her."
+
+Mrs. Falconer had the advantage over most women of completely
+understanding the man with whom she dealt.  She knew that to attempt to
+turn from its just and generous source any intent of Mr. Bulstrode
+would have been as futile as to attempt to turn a river from its parent
+fountain.
+
+"You're quixotic, I know, but you're not demented, and you won't
+certainly marry this nobody--whose fancies or love-affairs have not the
+least importance.  You won't ever see her again unless you are in love
+with her yourself."
+
+Bulstrode interrupted her hastily:
+
+"Oh, yes, I shall."
+
+He got up and walked over to the window that looked down on Mrs.
+Falconer's trim little garden.  A couple of iron chairs and a table
+stood under the trees.  Early roses had begun to bloom in the beds
+whose outlines were thick and dark with heart's-ease.  Beyond the iron
+rail of the high wall the distant rumble of Paris came to his ears.
+Mrs. Falconer's voice behind him said:
+
+"She's a very pretty girl, and young enough to be your daughter."
+
+"No," he said quietly, "not by many years."
+
+As he turned about and came back to the lady the room seemed to have
+grown darker and she to sit in the shadow.  She leaned toward him,
+laughing:
+
+"So you have come to announce at last the famous marriage of yours we
+have so often planned together."
+
+Bulstrode stood looking down on her.
+
+"I feel myself responsible," he said gravely.  "She was going home, and
+by a mistaken impulse I came in and changed her plans.  She is
+perfectly alone and perfectly poor, and I am not going to add to her
+perplexities.  I have no one in the world to care what I do.  I have no
+ties and no duties."
+
+"No," said Mrs. Falconer; "you are wonderfully free."
+
+He said vehemently:
+
+"I am all of a sudden wonderfully miserable."
+
+He had been in the habit for years of suddenly leaving her without any
+warning, and now he put out his hand and bade her good-by, and before
+she could detain him had made one of many brusque exits from her
+presence.
+
+
+On the following day--a Sunday, as from his delightful apartments in
+the Ritz he set forth for the studio, Bulstrode bade good-by to his
+bachelor existence.  He knew when he should next see the Place Vendôme
+it would be with the eyes of an engaged man.  His life hereafter was to
+be shared by a "total stranger."  So he pathetically put it, and his
+sentimental yearning to share everything with a lovely woman had died a
+sudden death.
+
+"There's no one in the world to care a rap what I do--really," he
+reflected, "and in this case I have run up against it--that's the long
+and the short of the matter--and I shall see it through."
+
+As he set out for Miss Desprey's along his favorite track he remarked
+that the gala, festive character of Paris had entirely disappeared.
+The season had gone back on him by several months, and the melancholy
+of autumn and dreary winter cast a gloom over his boyish spirits.  A
+very slight rain was falling.  Bulstrode began to feel a twinge of
+rheumatism in his arm and as he irritably opened his umbrella his
+spirits dropped beneath it and his brisk, springy walk sagged to
+something resembling the gait of a middle-aged gentleman.  But he urged
+himself into a better mood, however, at the sight of a flower-shop
+whose delicate wares huddled appealingly close to the window.  He went
+in and purchased an enormous bunch of--he hesitated--there were certain
+flowers he _could_ not, would _not_ send!  The selection his
+sentimental reserve imposed therefore consisted of sweet-peas,
+_giroflés_, and a big cluster of white roses, all very girlish and
+virginal.  His bridal offering in his hand, he took a cab and drove to
+the other side of the river with lead at his good heart and, he almost
+fancied, a lump in his throat.  He paid the coachman, whose careless
+spirits he envied, and slowly walked down the picturesque alley of
+Impasse du Maine.
+
+"There isn't a man I know--not a man in the Somerset Club--who would be
+as big a fool as this!"
+
+He had more than a mind to leave the flowers on the doorstep and run.
+Bulstrode would have done so now that he was face to face with his
+quixotic folly, but his cab had been heard as well as his steps on the
+walk, and the door was opened by Miss Desprey herself.  The girl's
+colorless face, her eyes spoiled with tears, and a pretty, sad dignity,
+which became her well, struck her friend with the sincerity and depth
+of her grief, and as the good gentleman shook hands with her he
+realized that less than ever in the world could he add a featherweight
+of grief to the burden of this helpless creature.
+
+"My dearest child!"  He lifted her hand to his lips.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode, I'm so glad you've come, I was so afraid you
+wouldn't--after yesterday!"
+
+His arms were still full of white paper, roses, and sweet-peas.
+
+"Oh, don't give them to me, Mr. Bulstrode!  Oh, why, did you bring
+them?  Oh, dear, what will you think of me?"  She had possessed herself
+of the flowers and with agitation and distress hastily thrust them, as
+if she wanted to hide them, behind the draperies of the couch.
+Bulstrode murmured something of whose import he was scarcely conscious.
+As she came tearfully back to him she let him take her hands.  He felt
+that she clung to him.  "It would have spoiled my life if you hadn't
+come.  I would have just gone and jumped in the Seine.  I may yet.  Oh,
+you don't understand!  It's been hard to be poor--I've been often
+hungry--but this last thing was too much.  When you found me yesterday
+I didn't want to live any more."
+
+Bulstrode's kind clasp warmed the cold little hands.  As tenderly as he
+could he looked at her agitated prettiness.
+
+"Don't talk like that"--he tried for her first name and found it.
+"Laura, you will let me make it all right, my dear?  You will let me,
+won't you?  You shall never know another care if I can prevent it."
+
+She interrupted with hasty gratitude:
+
+"Nobody else can make it all right but you."
+
+He tried softly:
+
+"Did I, then, make it so very wrong?"
+
+She murmured, too overcome to trust herself to say much:
+
+"Yes!"
+
+She was standing close to him, and lifted her appealing face to his.
+Her excitement communicated itself to him; he bent toward her about to
+kiss her, when the door of the studio sharply opened, and before
+Bulstrode could do more than swiftly draw back and leave Miss Desprey
+free an exceedingly tall and able-bodied man entered without ceremony.
+
+The girl gave a cry, ran from Bulstrode, and, so to speak, threw
+herself against the arms of the stranger, for there were none open to
+receive her.
+
+"Oh, here's Mr. Bulstrode, Dan!  I knew he'd come; and he'll tell
+you--won't you, Mr. Bulstrode?  Tell him, please, that I don't care
+anything at all about you and you don't care anything about me....
+That you don't want to marry me or anything.  Oh, please make him
+believe it!"
+
+The poor gentleman's senses and brain whirling together made him giddy.
+He felt as though he had just been whisked up from the edge of a
+precipice over which he ridiculously dangled.  Dan, who represented the
+rescuer, was not prepossessing.  He was the complete and unspoiled type
+of Western youth; the girl herself was an imperfect and exquisite
+hybrid.
+
+"I don't know that this gentleman can explain to me"--the young fellow
+threw his boyish head back--"or that I care to hear him."
+
+She gave a cry, sharp and wounded.  The sound touched the now normal,
+thoroughly grateful patron, who had come out of his ordeal with as much
+kindly sensibility as he went in.
+
+"Of course, my dear young lady"--he perfectly understood the
+situation--"I will tell your friend the facts of our acquaintance.
+That's what you want me to do, isn't it?"
+
+She was weeping and hanging on to the unyielding arm of her cross
+lover, who glared at the intruding Bulstrode with a youthful jealousy
+at which the older man smiled while he envied it.  He pursued
+impressively:
+
+"Miss Desprey has been painting my portrait for the past few weeks.  I
+gave her the order at the Art League; other than painter and sitter we
+have no possible interest in each other--Mr.----"
+
+"Gregs," snapped the stranger, "Daniel Gregs!"
+
+The slender creature, whose eyes never left the stolid, uncompromising
+face, repeated eagerly:
+
+"_No possible interest_--Dan--none!  He doesn't care anything about me
+at all!  You heard what he said, didn't you?  I only like him like a
+kind, kind friend."
+
+[Illustration: "I only like him like a kind, kind friend"]
+
+Her voice, soft as a flower, caressed and pleaded with the passionate
+tenderness of a woman who feels that an inadvertent word may keep for
+her or lose for her the man she adores.
+
+"My dear man," exclaimed Bulstrode in great irritation, "you ought to
+be ashamed to let her cry like that!  Can't you _understand_--don't you
+see?"
+
+"No," shortly caught up the other, "I don't!  I've come here from South
+Africa, where I'm prospecting some mines for a company at Centreville,
+and I heard she was poor and unhappy, and I hurried up my things so I
+could come to Paris and marry her and take her with me, and here I find
+her painting every day alone with a rich man, her place all fixed up
+with flowers, and a thousand dollars in the bank"--his cheek
+reddened--"I don't like it!  And that's all there is to it!" he
+finished shortly.
+
+"No, my friend," said the other severely, "there's a great deal more.
+If, from what you say, and the way you speak, you wish me to understand
+you have a real interest in Miss Desprey, you can follow me when I say
+that I came here and found her a lonely, forsaken girl, obliged to
+return to Idaho when she didn't want to go, without any money or any
+friends.  May I ask you why, if there was any one in the world who
+cared for her, she should be left so deserted?"
+
+The girl here turned her face from her lover to her champion.
+
+"Don't please blame Dan for that.  He was so poor, too.  He didn't have
+anything when he went to South Africa; it was just a chance if he would
+succeed.  And he was working for me, so that he could get married."
+
+Gregs interrupted:
+
+"I don't owe this gentleman any explanation!"
+
+"No," accepted the other gently, "perhaps not, but you mustn't, on the
+other hand, refuse to hear mine.  Be reasonable.  Why _shouldn't_ Miss
+Desprey have an order for a portrait?"
+
+Gregs, over the golden head against his arm, looked at Bulstrode:
+
+"_She_ can't paint!"  His tone was gentler.  "Laura can't paint, and
+you know it!"
+
+"Dan!" she whispered; "how cruel you are to me!"
+
+And here the desperate Bulstrode broke in:
+
+"He is, indeed, Miss Desprey, cruel and unjust, and I frankly ask leave
+to tell him so.  You don't deserve the girl, Mr. Gregs, if she's yours,
+as she seems to be."
+
+But the girl clung closer, as if she still feared Bulstrode might try
+to rescue her.
+
+"That's all right," frowned the miner.  "I am no better and no worse
+than any man about his girl, and I'm going to know _just where I
+stand_!"
+
+The gentleman's reply was caustic.  "I should be inclined to say you'd
+find it hard to be in a better place."
+
+Laura Desprey had wound her arms around Mr. Gregs.  Bulstrode held out
+his hand.  She couldn't take it, nor could her lover.  With arrogant
+obstinacy he had folded his arms across his chest.
+
+"Come, can't we be friends?" urged the amiable gentleman.  "I seem to
+have made trouble when I only wanted to be friendly.  Let me set it
+right before I go.  I am lunching in Versailles, and I have to take the
+noon train from the Gare Montparnasse."
+
+But Daniel Gregs did not unbend to the affable proposition.  Miss
+Desprey said:
+
+"When you saw me yesterday in the park, Mr. Bulstrode, Dan had just
+come back the day before.  I was putting the flowers you sent me in
+fresh water when he came in on me all of a sudden.  Oh, it was so
+splendid at first!  I was _so_ happy--until he asked all about you, and
+then he grew so angry and said unless you could explain to him a lot of
+things he would go away and never see me again, and when you found me I
+was crying because I thought he had left me forever.  I hadn't seen him
+for two years, and if you hadn't helped me to stay on here I should
+have had to go to Idaho, and I wouldn't have seen him at all.  You
+ought to _thank_ him, Dan."
+
+Bulstrode interrupted:
+
+"Indeed, Mr. Gregs, you should, you know!--you should thank me; come,
+be generous."
+
+Dan relaxed his grim humor a little.
+
+"When I get through with this South African business I'm going back to
+Centreville, and if I ever get her out of this Paris _she'll_ never see
+it again!"
+
+"Dan," she breathed, "I don't want to.  Centreville is good enough for
+me."
+
+(Centreville!  The horrible environment he was to have snatched her
+from.  Bulstrode smiled softly.)
+
+"But this money," pursued the dogged lover, returning to his grudge.
+"You've got to take it back, Mr. Bulstrode.  No picture on earth is
+worth a thousand dollars, and certainly not Laura's."
+
+"Oh, Dan!" she exclaimed.
+
+But her friend said firmly: "The portrait is mine.  Come, don't be
+foolish.  If Miss Desprey is willing to marry you and go out to Idaho,
+take the money and buy her some pretty clothes and things."
+
+Here the girl herself interrupted excitedly:
+
+"No, no!  We couldn't take it.  I don't want any new clothes.  If Dan
+doesn't care how shabby I am, I don't.  I don't want anything in the
+world but just to go with Dan."
+
+At this sweet tenderness Dan's face entirely changed, his arms
+unfolded; he put them around her.
+
+"That's all right, little girl."  His tone thrilled through Bulstrode
+more than the woman's tears had done.  He understood why she wanted to
+go to him, and how she could be drawn.  He had at times in his life
+lost money, and sometimes heavily, and he had never felt poor before.
+In the same words, but in a vastly different tone, Dan Gregs held out
+his hand to Bulstrode.
+
+"That's all right, sir.  When a fellow travels thousands and thousands
+of miles to get his girl and hasn't much more than his car fare and he
+runs up against another fellow who has got the rocks and all and who he
+thinks is sweet on his girl, it makes him crazy--just crazy!"
+
+"I see"--Bulstrode sympathetically understood--"and I don't at all
+wonder."
+
+They were all three shaking hands together and Bulstrode said:
+
+"Would you believe it, I haven't seen my portrait, Miss Desprey."
+
+Dan Gregs grinned.
+
+"Don't," he said, "don't look at it.  It's what made all the trouble.
+When I saw it yesterday and Laura told me it had drawn a thousand
+dollars--why I said 'there isn't a man living who would give you fifty
+cents for it.'  That made her mad at first.  Then she told me you
+thought she was a great portrait-painter, and I knew you must be sweet
+on her.  I'm fond of her all right, but I decided that you were bound
+to have her and didn't care how you dealt your cards, and I thought I'd
+clear out."
+
+His face fell and threatened to cloud over, but it cleared again as
+with the remembrance of his doubts came the actual sense of the woman
+whose face was hidden on his breast, and he lightly touched the dusty
+golden hair.
+
+When in a few seconds Bulstrode took leave of them, Miss Desprey, in
+her dingy painting-dress, seemed completely swallowed up in the embrace
+of the big Dan Gregs.  From where he stood by the door Bulstrode could
+see the white corner of his _fiançailles_ bouquet sticking out from the
+draperies of the couch.  The paper was open and in the heat of the warm
+little _atelier_ the fresh odor of the pungent flowers came strongly on
+the air.
+
+Bulstrode as he said good-by seemed to say it--and to look at the
+lovers--through a haze of perfume--a perfume that, like the most
+precious things in the world, pervades and affects, suggests and
+impresses, while its existence is unseen, unknown to the world.
+
+
+Once in his train, he had been able to catch it at the Invalides after
+all, Jimmy drew a long breath and settled back into himself, for, he
+had been, poor dear, during the past three weeks, in another man's
+shoes and profiting by another man's identity.  It was perfectly
+heavenly to feel that he had been liberated by the merciful providence
+which takes care to provide the right lover for the right place.  He
+couldn't be too grateful for the miracle which saved him from a
+sacrifice alongside of which Abraham's would have been a jest indeed.
+
+The June morning was warm and through the open car window, as the train
+went comfortably along, the perfume of the country came into him where
+he sat.  Opposite, a pair of lovers frankly and naturally showed their
+annoyance at the third person's intrusion, and Bulstrode,
+sympathetically turned himself about and became absorbed in Suburban
+Paris.  His heart beat high at the fact of his deliverance.  His
+gratitude was sincere--moreover, his thoughts were of an agreeable
+trend, and he was able to forget everybody else within twelve miles.
+Secure in his impersonality and in the indifference of his broad
+unseeing back, the lovers kissed and held hands.
+
+Bulstrode wandered slowly up from the Versailles station to the Hôtel
+des Reservoirs, crossed the broad square of the Palace Court, found the
+pink and yellow façade more mellow and perfect than ever, and toward
+twelve-thirty strolled into the yard of the old hostelry.  Breakfast
+had been set for twelve-thirty, but his host was not there.
+
+"Ah--mais, bon jour, Monsieur Bulstrode!"  The proprietor knew and
+appreciated this client greatly.
+
+Monsieur Falconer, it seemed, had been called suddenly to Paris....
+Yes--well--there were, now and then, in the course of life, bits of
+news that could be borne with fortitude.  "And Madame has also been
+called to Paris?"
+
+"Mais non!"  Madame had a few minutes since gone out in the Park, the
+proprietor thought she would not be very far away.
+
+Bulstrode thanked him, and crossed over to the hedge and the gateway
+and through it to the Palace Gardens.  On all sides the paths stretched
+broad and inviting toward the various alleys, and upon the terrace to
+his left there shone a thousand flowers in June abundance.  The
+gentleman chose the first path that opened, and went carelessly down
+it, and in a few moments the pretty ring of an embowered circle spread
+before him, but, although there was an inviting marble bench under a
+big tree at one side, and several eighteenth century marbles on their
+pedestals, illuminated by the bland eighteenth century smile, there was
+not a living woman in sight to make him, the visitor, welcome!  He went
+a little further along and found another felicitous, harmonious circle,
+where a small fountain threw its jets on the June air.  At the sound of
+the water Bulstrode remembered that the Grands Eaux were to play on
+this afternoon at Versailles.
+
+"Ah, _that_ is why they especially wanted me to come out to-day," he
+decided.
+
+On the other side of the fountain, the vivid white of her summer dress
+making a flash like moonlight on the obscurity of the woods, a lady was
+standing looking across at Mr. Bulstrode.
+
+"Hush!" she said; "come over softly, Jimmy; there is a timid third
+party here."
+
+On a branch at her side, where an oriole sat, his head thrown back, his
+throat swelling, there was a little stir and flutter of leaves, for
+although the lady had put her finger to her lips, her voice broke the
+spell, and a bit of yellow flashed through the trees.
+
+"I don't believe _he_ will ever forgive you!" she cried; "you spoiled
+his solo, but I'll forgive you.  What brought you out to Versailles
+to-day?"
+
+"The fountains," Bulstrode told her; "I have never seen them play.
+Then, too--there are certain places to which, when I am asked to
+luncheon, I always go."
+
+"That's quite true," she accepted; "you _were_ invited!--but, to be
+perfectly frank, I did not expect you, so your coming on this occasion
+has only the pleasure of a surprise.  As a rule, I hate them.  My
+husband informed me that he would telephone you to meet him in Paris,
+but I think he must have forgotten you, Jimmy."
+
+She was taking him in from his fresh panama to his boots, and she
+apparently found an air of festivity about him.
+
+"Was it," she asked, "in honor of the fountains' playing that you have
+made yourself so beautiful?"
+
+Bulstrode took the boutonnière out of his coat lapel and handed it to
+her.  "Can't you pin it in somewhere?"  Mrs. Falconer laughed and
+thrust the carnation into her bodice.
+
+"I dressed to-day, more or less," Mr. Bulstrode confessed, "in order to
+attend--well, what shall I call it--a betrothal?  That's a good
+old-fashioned word."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed the lady, "a _fiançailles_?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The two had wandered slowly along, out of the Bosquet towards the
+canals.
+
+"They make a great deal of these functions in France," Mrs. Falconer
+said.
+
+Her companion agreed.  "They made a great deal, rather more than usual,
+out of this one."  And his tone was so suggestive that his companion
+looked up at him quickly.
+
+"Who _are_ your mysterious lovers?" she asked, "are they French?  Do I
+know them?"
+
+"They are not in the least mysterious," Bulstrode assured her.  "I
+never saw anything less complex and more simple.  They are Americans."
+
+She seemed now to understand that she was to hear of "one of Jimmy's
+adventures," as she called his dashes in other people's affairs.
+
+"I hope, Jimmy, in this case, that you have pulled the affair off to
+your credit, and that if you have made a match the creatures will be
+grateful to you for once!  And, by the way," she bethought; "whatever
+has happened to the pretty girl whom you were quixotic enough to think
+you had to marry?"
+
+"The last time I saw her she appeared to be in the best of
+circumstances," Bulstrode answered cheerfully.  "In point of fact--it
+was, singularly enough, to _her_ engagement party that I went to-day!"
+
+And Mrs. Falconer now showed real interest and feeling.  "No! how
+delightful.  So she is really off your hands, Jimmy.  Well, that is too
+good to be true.  There's one at least whom you don't have to marry,
+Jimmy!"
+
+"Oh, they grow beautifully less," he agreed.
+
+Mrs. Falconer smiled softly.
+
+"They are narrowing down every year," Jimmy went on; "when I am about
+sixty the number will be reduced, I dare say, to the proper quantity."
+
+"What a goose you are," she said jestingly.  "What a tease and a bother
+you are, Jimmy Bulstrode; _I'll_ find you a proper wife!"
+
+He accepted warmly.  "Do, do!  I leave myself quite in your hands."
+
+His companion extended him her hand as she spoke, and after lifting it
+to his lips, Bulstrode drew it through his arm.  It was clothed in a
+glove of pale coffee-color suede.  It was a soft, dear hand, and rested
+as if it were at home on Bulstrode's gray sleeve.  Side by side the two
+friends walked slowly out toward the broader avenues leading to the
+canals.  The sky was faintly blue, touched with the edges of some
+drifting cloud, like dashes of foam.  The trees about them lifted dark
+velvet masses and the air was sweet with the scent of the woods and
+flowers.
+
+"Isn't this the most beautiful garden in the world?" murmured Mrs.
+Falconer.  "Isn't it _too_ beautiful!"
+
+"Very," he incorrectly and vaguely answered.  And the lady went on to
+say how brilliant she found the place with the suggestions and memories
+of the past royal times, whilst Bulstrode said nothing at all, because
+he did not want to tell her that Versailles and the charming alleys,
+and France, and the great big world, from limit to limit, was full of
+no ghosts to him, but of just one woman.
+
+
+
+
+THE THIRD ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+III
+
+IN WHICH HE FINDS THERE ARE SOME THINGS WHICH ONE CANNOT BUY
+
+After not a great deal of hesitation, toward the middle of a warm June,
+Bulstrode permitted himself to become the proprietor of a palace: not
+an inhabitant of the ordinary dwelling modelled after some old-world
+wonder, wherein American millionaires choose to spend their leisure in
+their own country--but of a real traditional palace, in whose charming
+rooms no object was younger than Bulstrode's great-grandfather, and
+where the enchanting women of the Fragonards and Nattiers almost made
+him, as he mused upon them, lose sight for a moment of a living lady.
+
+On the very first day he went over the Hôtel Montensier from _grenier_
+to _caves_, Jimmy Bulstrode gave in, and accepted the Duc de
+Montensier's proposition to "fetch his traps for a few months to the
+hôtel and turn Parisian."  He was in the heart of Paris, yet all around
+him, shut in by high walls, was a garden, to which the terraces of the
+house gave in flights of marble steps.  When his friend suggested that
+Bulstrode turn Parisian, Jimmy laughed.  "Do you think," he had asked,
+"that a chap born in Providence, educated in Harvard, and, if
+cosmopolitan, thoroughly American from start to finish, could, _mon
+cher_, turn Parisian?"  And the Duc had assured him that he did not
+think Bulstrode had a "Latin eyelash," and that he needn't be at all
+afraid to try his luck at what a French house would do for him!  "Why,
+your coat alone--the cut of it--" Montensier had laughed, "speaks of
+Poole with a Boston compromise!
+
+The Duc had been in the United States--moreover, the Frenchman had
+plans of his own and he wanted very much to go to Newport and leave his
+house in the care of Jimmy Bulstrode.  Whether the Puritan in him led
+Bulstrode to excuse to himself his enjoyment of so much luxury, at any
+rate he apologized, saying that nobody could expect a man with a love
+of the beautiful, and who had more or less a desire to shut himself up
+and to shut himself away for a time, to refuse.
+
+The Falconers were off somewhere _en auto_.  He had thought they had
+gone through Spain.  It was pretty hot to do such a thing, however, and
+he did not really know.  He wanted very much to be able not to let
+himself follow them, and he knew that there was little chance of his
+reaching such stoicism unless he began by not finding out where they
+were going!  So he shut himself up with the books which the library
+offered and gave many charming little dinners and parties on his
+terraces in the bland summer nights, and tried with all his might and
+main to forget the flight of a certain motor over the fair white roads
+and, above all, to nerve himself up to refuse an invitation for the
+middle of July.
+
+Directly opposite the white façade of the Montensiers' hôtel was a
+hostelry for beggars, for domestics without places; for poor
+professors; for actors with no stages but the last; for laborers with
+no labor; in short, for the riff-raff of the population, for those who
+no longer hold the dignity of profession or pay rent for a term.
+Sometimes Bulstrode would look out at the tenement, whose windows in
+this season were wide open; and the general aspect indicated that
+dislocated fortunes flourished.  In one window, pirouetting or dancing
+in it, calling out of it, leaning perilously over the sill of it, was a
+child--as far as Bulstrode could decide, a creature of about six years
+of age.  She was too small to see much of, but all he saw was activity,
+gesticulation, and perpetual motion.  When the day was hot she fanned
+herself with a bit of paper.  She called far out to the wine-merchant's
+wife, who sat with her family before the shop while her pretty children
+played in the gutter.
+
+
+In Paris, when the weather climbs to eighty, Parisians count themselves
+in the tropics and the people, who lived apparently out of doors
+altogether, wore a melted, disheartened air.  But the De Montensier
+garden, full of roses and heliotrope, watered and refreshed by the
+fountains' delightful falling, was a retreat not to be surpassed by
+many suburbs.  Bulstrode gave little dinners on the terrace; little
+suppers after the theatre, when rooms and garden were lighted with
+fairy lanterns, and his chef outdid his traditions to please his
+American master.
+
+One day as the American sat smoking on the terrace with nothing more
+disturbing than the drip of the fountain and the remote murmur of Paris
+to break his reverie, Prosper, his confidential man, made a tentative
+appearance.
+
+"Would m'sieu, _who is so good_, see a young lady?"
+
+His master smiled as he rose, instinctively at the words "jeune
+demoiselle," throwing away his cigar.
+
+"Pardon, m'sieu, I thought it might amuse m'sieu--" and Prosper stepped
+back.
+
+Bulstrode had been intently thinking of the caravansary opposite him,
+and he now saw that part of the _hôtel meublé_ had come across the
+street; he recognized it immediately for the smallest part.  Before him
+stood the ridiculous and pathetic figure of a dirty little girl in
+rags, tatters, and furbelows, her legs clad in red silk stockings
+evidently intended for fuller, shapelier limbs; her feet slipped about
+in pattens.  She had on a woman's bodice, a long flounced skirt pinned
+up to keep her from tripping.  Her head was adorned by a torn straw
+hat, also contrived and created for the coquetry of maturity.
+
+"Monsieur is so good," she began in a flute-like voice.  "I have come
+to thank monsieur with all my heart."
+
+Bulstrode looked toward Prosper for enlightenment, but that individual
+had cleverly disappeared.
+
+"To thank me, my child?  But for what?"
+
+"Why, for the eggs and butter and sugar that monsieur was so good as to
+send me.  I have made the cake.  It is beautiful!  Monsieur le
+cuisinier of this house baked it for me.  It is perhaps a little
+flat--but that was because I got tired stirring.  See--it says--"  She
+had, so he now saw, a book under her arm; letting fall a fold of her
+cumbersome dress with both hands and opening a filthy cook-book, she
+laid it on the table, bending over it.  "It says stir briskly half an
+hour."  (Her "rs" rolled in her throat like tiny cannons in a rosy
+hollow.)  "Quelle idée!  It was _too_ stupid!  Half an hour!  I just
+mixed it round once or twice and then--voila! it has white on the top
+and shall have a candle."
+
+"So you've made a cake?" he said kindly.  "I'm sure it's a good one."
+
+She nodded brightly.  "It is for that I came to thank monsieur and to
+ask if he would accept a piece of it."
+
+Poor Bulstrode, with dreadful suspicion, looked to see part of the
+horror immediately offered for his degustation.  "I don't, my dear,
+understand.  Why should you thank _me_--what had I to do with it?"
+
+Her gesture was delightful.  "But for monsieur it would not exist; for
+butter, eggs, and flour.  Monsieur Prosper, when he gave them, said it
+was of the kindness of '_Monsieur Balstro_.'"
+
+(Oh, Prosper!  "I have corrupted _him_," his master thought.  "He is as
+bad as I am!")
+
+"Well, I'm very glad indeed," and he said it heartily.  "But what did
+you especially want to make it for--with the one candle?  That means
+one year old.  Who's birthday may it then be?"
+
+"It is the birthday of maman."  She shut the book, and as she did so
+raised her great black eyes, which dirt and neglect could not spoil.
+There was in her appearance so little suggestion of maternal care that
+Bulstrode nearly incredulously asked, "Your mother?  And what, then,
+does your mother do?"
+
+"She's a fish," informed the child tranquilly.  And Bulstrode, although
+startled, could believe it.  It too perfectly accounted for the
+cold-blooded indifference to this offspring.  Not even a mermaid could
+have been guilty of so little care for her child.  Still, he repeated:
+
+"A fish?"
+
+"Oui, a devil-fish in the aquarium at Bostock's.  Oh, que c'est beau!"
+she clasped her little hands.  "Maman wears a costume of red--quite a
+small, thin dress," she described eagerly.  "And it is all spangles,
+like fire when she dives into the water.  I have been; the waiter at
+the café downstairs took me.  I screamed.  I thought maman was drowned.
+But no--she comes up always!"  The child threw her head back and lifted
+her eyes in ecstasy.  "C'est magnifique!"
+
+"What is your mother's name?"
+
+"Mademoiselle Lascaze."
+
+"And yours?"
+
+"Simone."
+
+"What do you do all day, Simone?"
+
+"I wash and cook and sew and play--I have much to do--oh, much."  She
+assumed an important air.  "The bad air of the room makes maman ill, so
+she's out--'to breathe,' she says--and she locks me safely in.  I play
+Bostock and dive like maman.  And sometimes"--she lowered her voice,
+and looking back to see if they were alone--confided, "I cry."
+
+"Ah!" sympathized Bulstrode.
+
+"But, yes," she insisted, "when maman forgets to come home, and the
+night is so black; then the seamstress next door knocks on the wall,
+and I knock back for company."
+
+"I see," he understood gently, "for company."
+
+He rang for Prosper.  "You will conduct mademoiselle home, Prosper, and
+give her everything she needs for her kitchen always."
+
+"Yes, monsieur; I knew that monsieur would----"
+
+At sight of Prosper the mite gathered up her voluminous skirts and bade
+her new friend a cordial good-by.
+
+From the corrupted Prosper Bulstrode extracted what he wished to know
+concerning the child.
+
+"It is of a scandalousness, monsieur!  Four nights of the seven the
+poor little object is alone.  The mother appears to have money enough,
+she pays her rent regularly, and there is therefore nothing to do.  She
+sometimes even fetches her companions home with her, and Simone, when
+she is not making sport for them, is tied to a chair to keep her from
+falling off in her sleep."
+
+Bulstrode expressed himself strongly, violently for him, went to see a
+lawyer and a charitable French countess and found out that so long as
+the mother did not actually ill-treat the child she could not be
+replaced by any other guardian.
+
+"Mon cher ami," said the spirituelle lady, "leave the fish to her
+deviltry, and her child in her care.  We are _fin de race_, if you
+like, and in direct opposition to your American progressive schemes,
+but we have a tradition that the family is sacred, and that, however
+bad it may be, a child is better off in its home than elsewhere.  You
+will find it difficult to replace a mother by a _machine_ or an
+_institution_, believe me."
+
+And Bulstrode at the words felt a new sense of failure in
+philanthropies, and his benevolence seemed pure dilletantism.  What was
+he likely to accomplish in the case of this child?  Nothing more than
+the momentary pleasure a few toys and a few hours of play could secure.
+"And yet," as he mused he philosophically put it to himself, "isn't it,
+after all, about the sum total any of us get out of destiny?"
+
+In New York he would have quite known how to proceed in order to help
+the child, but in the face of French law and strong family prejudice he
+came up against a stone wall.
+
+"I'm no sort of a real benefactor," he remorsefully acceded, "and I
+don't believe I'm fit to be trusted alone with the poor."
+
+Nevertheless he did not relinquish his idea entirely, and confided
+Simone to Prosper's sympathetic care and that of an emotional
+maid-servant, with the result that a cleaning woman penetrated by hook
+or crook into the room of "the fish" and treated it to more _aqua pura_
+than the piscatory individual had cognizance of outside of the aquarium.
+
+The gentleman in this particular charity was surprised to find how
+simple it sometimes is to do good.  In this case no one had come to him
+with a petition or a demand; on the contrary, a note of undeserved
+thanks had, with the strange little creature, been presented to him.
+It was so pleasantly easy to help a child!  There were no _arrières
+pensées_--not that they would have troubled him, but there were none;
+there were no wire-pullings, no time infringements, no suggestion or
+criticism, no--he believed--expectations.  Everything he could do was
+so annoyingly little!  The charwoman cleaned, Simone had a complete
+wardrobe, the larder was full, and there remained nothing but toys to
+buy.  The little thing was so womanly and capable--he had seen it and
+marvelled in their interviews at her age and accomplishments--her hands
+were so apt and almost creative, that toys seemed inadequate.  She took
+her benefits charmingly; rushed over at the least provocation to pour
+out her gratitude, and Bulstrode, who hated thanks, liked these.
+Childhood, if it had been for sale on the Boulevard, even that he would
+have bought Simone if he could!  As it was, he found himself pausing
+before a series of shops other than chemisièrs--florists, and
+jewellers'--shops where diminutive objects were displayed--and one
+afternoon had been standing ridiculously long in front of a certain
+window on the Rue de Rivoli when he was accosted by an agreeable and
+familiar voice.
+
+"Jimmy!  It isn't possible! don't tell me it has come so cruelly
+_soon_?"
+
+The gentleman gave a violent, but an entirely happy start.  Well, there
+were rewards then for people who didn't follow speeding motors through
+France!  She was back and in Paris.
+
+"What--has come so soon?" he asked.
+
+Mrs. Falconer, on her way from a hat shop in her automobile, stopped by
+his side.
+
+"Why, your second childhood, my dear man.  Do you know what shop you
+are standing before?"
+
+Bulstrode seemed to be perfectly aware of his dotage and to delight in
+it.  Behind the big window pane there was a bright and very juvenile
+display.
+
+Ships sailed there; dolls hung gaudily and smilingly aloft; giant
+parti-colored balls rounded out their harlequin sides; tiny dishes for
+pygmy festivals were piled with delicious carrots and artichokes on
+little white, blue-rimmed platters.
+
+"Have you a moment to spare?" Bulstrode asked her.
+
+"I have bought all my hats," she replied; "after that a woman's time
+hangs heavy on her hands."
+
+"Ah!" he was as radiant as she had the genius for making him.  "Come,
+then, in with me and help me choose a _doll_."
+
+It was not the first purchase during the course of a long friendship
+which Bulstrode had made with this charming woman by his side, but for
+some reason he enjoyed it more than former errands.  The bachelor and
+the childless woman were hard to please and their choice consumed an
+unconscionable time.  As they lingered, the amiable shopman pressed
+various toys on monsieur and madame "_pour les enfants_," and the lady,
+finally depositing her friend with his parcels at the door of his
+hôtel, realized as she drove away that she knew nothing of the child
+for whom the purchases had been made.  On her way up the Champs Elysées
+she smiled softly.  "It's what you _share_," she mused, "what you give
+of _yourself--with_ yourself--_that's_ charity!  Jimmy gives himself.
+I wonder who his new love is?"
+
+Bulstrode, in order to share what should be his "new love's" ecstasy at
+first sight of the miraculous toy, sent for Simone.  The Rue de Rivoli
+doll, on a small chair designed for diminutive ladies of the eighteenth
+century or for the king's dwarfs, held out stiff but cordial arms and
+was naturally, to a child, the first and sole object of the
+drawing-room.
+
+"_Monsieur!_"
+
+"For you, Simone."
+
+"_Monsieur!_"
+
+She said nothing else as she clasped her hands, and the color rushed
+into her face, but she felt the doll, touched reverently its feet,
+hair, dress, incontinently forgot Bulstrode, and quite suddenly,
+passionately, caught the image of life to her heart.  Just over its
+blonde head, for it was nearly as large as herself, she met the
+gentleman's eyes.
+
+"It's my child!  I've prayed for it always, always!  I've never had a
+doll, a _bébé_, m'sieu."
+
+The tea-table with cakes and chocolate called them all too soon and, as
+Prosper served, the fountains sang, the heat stole through the garden
+and called up agreeable odors of sod and roses, the late afternoon sky
+spread its expanse over the terrace of the hôtel, where, perfectly
+happy both of them, animated by as gentle and harmless pleasure as any
+two in Paris that day, the child of the people and an American
+gentleman chatted over their tea.
+
+Bulstrode, being an original, erratic, and reckless giver of alms,
+quite by this time knew that, more than often, for him to give was, if
+not to regret, to have at least misgivings whether in the hands of some
+colder, less poetic person his money would not have accomplished more
+good.  In the case of Simone he had, as usual, happily gone on with
+abandon, relegating any remorse to a future which he hoped would never
+arrive.
+
+
+But the middle of July did come and with it came poor Jimmy's exquisite
+temptation.  A telephone helped it dreadfully.  There was something so
+wonderful in the fact that in a couple of hours he could, if he would,
+let himself reach the side of the lovely voice which called to him over
+the wires.  And being nothing but a human man, he threw all his good
+resolves to the wind, and went down and stayed three days at
+Fontainebleau.
+
+Out under the sky, where the elastic earth sprang softly beneath her
+feet and the embowered forests were sifted through with gold, Mary
+Falconer finally asked him, "And your doll, Jimmy?  Have you broken her
+yet?"  Bulstrode felt a guilty twinge, for he had not once thought of
+the little girl, nor did Mrs. Falconer's mention of her bring the
+subject near enough for Bulstrode to tell her the pretty story.  He had
+other things to say, and many things not to say, and this, as it always
+did when he was with his lady, kept him very absorbed and occupied.  On
+this occasion he forgot all about little Simone.
+
+The night of his return Paris was _en fête_ and in no sense impatient
+to reach his lonely house--for it seemed to him this night the
+loneliest house in the world--he walked without haste up town along the
+quays.
+
+It was hard to forget that not fifty miles away he had left the cool
+forests, their tempting roads, their alluring alleys.  He had forgotten
+that it was the annual celebration and that at this late hour the
+_fête_ would be in full swing, and as he strolled meditating along the
+Seine the spirit of the gay populace--good-humor, reckless pleasure,
+and the _joie de vivre_--poured itself out around him like cordial,
+like a generous gift from an over-charged horn of cheer.  In his gray
+clothes, modish panama, a little white rose plucked by a dear hand from
+the trellis at Fontainebleau still in his buttonhole, Bulstrode
+scarcely remarked the crowds or heard the music as he passed outdoor
+dancing stands and was jostled by a dancing throng.
+
+His own street, as he approached it, welcomed him with a strong odor of
+onions and fried potatoes; it had apparently turned itself out of doors
+and all of the houses seemed to have emptied themselves into the narrow
+alley.  A hurdy-gurdy playing before the _hôtel meublê_ tinkled and
+jangled in the centre of a crowd of merry-makers, and the metallic
+melody and wild ascending octaves were the first sounds Bulstrode
+consciously heard since he left Fontainebleau.
+
+In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing like a mad child,
+hair, arms, and feet flying; her voice, thin and piercing, every now
+and then above the rattle of the hand-organ, cried out the lines of a
+popular song whose meaning on her lips was particularly horrifying.
+The wine-shop family encircled her, encoring her vociferously.  As she
+paused for breath the light from over the shop-door shone on her
+excited little face.
+
+[Illustration: In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing]
+
+"I tired!  Mon Dieu, que non!  I could dance till morning.  Play again,
+monsieur l'organiste.  Play again."
+
+Bulstrode, on the crowd's edge, watched her, and for once in his
+philanthropic history made no attempt to rescue.  As Prosper let his
+master in he said:
+
+"It's a shame, isn't it, monsieur?  The people over there have let her
+run quite crazy.  The poor little thing!  Heaven knows where the mother
+is!"
+
+Of which celestial knowledge Bulstrode had his doubts.  It was close to
+twelve, and dismissing Prosper for the night, he took his cigar out on
+the terrace and to what solitude his garden might extend.  Before long
+the noise of the music subsided, the people, tired out with hours of
+festivity, dispersed, and the alley settled into quiet.  From the
+distance now and then came the soft, dull explosion of fireworks, the
+rumble and roar of Paris was a little accelerated; otherwise the
+silence about Bulstrode's garden grew and deepened as the night
+advanced.
+
+It was rare for him to allow himself to be the object of his own
+personal consideration, or that indeed he at all thought of himself,
+and when he did the man he had long ignored had his revenge and made
+him pay up old scores.
+
+On the late afternoon of this very day he was to have walked for miles
+through the Fontainebleau woods with Mrs. Falconer, and instead he had
+fled.  Pleading a sudden summons to Paris, he left Fontainebleau.
+
+It was well past four o'clock when he at last threw his cigar away and
+rose.  He had been musing all night in his chair.
+
+A sudden gust of noise blew down the quiet little street, the sound of
+loud singing and the shrill staccato of a woman's laugh.  By the time
+the revellers had passed his house and the hubbub had died away,
+Bulstrode, with an idea at length of going up to his room, walked
+across the salon and prepared to extinguish the electricity, but the
+sound of some one tapping without caught his ear, and going over to the
+window that gave on the street, he looked out.  From end to end the
+alley was deserted except for the figure of a woman.  As he saw in the
+ruddy light of early morning she huddled against the threshold of the
+_hôtel meublé_--knocking persistently at the door.  The tattered gauze
+of her dress, whose bold _decolletée_ left her neck and shoulders bare,
+a garland of roses on the bandeaux of her black hair, she epitomized
+the carnival just come to its end--its exhaustion, its excess, spent at
+length, surfeited, knocking for entrance at last to rest.  Bulstrode,
+as he remarked the sinuous figure that swayed as the woman stood,
+exclaimed to himself with illumination: "Why, she's the _fish_, of
+course!  Simone's mother!  And this is the state in which she goes to
+the miserable child!"
+
+As, knocking at intervals, the object leaned there a few moments
+longer, evidently scarcely able to stand, his pity wakened and he
+slowly left the window, shut in its blinds, and crossed his
+ante-chamber, where the artificial light of electricity was met by the
+full sunshine of the breaking day streaming in through the open window
+of his terrace.  Not entirely sure of his motive or to what excess of
+folly it might lead him, he nevertheless opened wide his front door,
+only to see that the woman on the opposite street had gone.  She had
+been let in.  With a glance of relief up and down the street where the
+_confetti_ in disks of lilac and yellow and red lay in dirty piles or
+swam on the flushing gutters that sparkled in the light, Bulstrode shot
+to his door on the Parisian world and after a _nuit blanche_ went
+upstairs to his rooms.
+
+
+And there had intensely come to him during the period of his dressing
+the next morning after a tardy wakening the idea of taking the child,
+of--he was certain it could be done--buying the mother off.  He would,
+in short, if he could, legally adopt the Parisian _gamine_ for his own.
+It would give him a distinct interest, and life was empty for want of
+one; this, in a manner, however short of perfect, would supply the need
+of a loving living creature in his environment and would--his thrill at
+the idea proved to him how lonely he had been--give him companionship
+and a responsibility of a tender, personal sort.  He could make a home
+at last for a child.  Men are more paternal than they are credited with
+being, and Bulstrode directly foresaw delightful _causeries_ in the
+future with--(he knew many women)--_with one woman_ whose pretty taste,
+whose wit and humor, should counsel him in his new rôle.  Mrs. Falconer
+would dress Simone--her hand should be wonderfully in it all.
+Bulstrode had let his fancy linger over the scheme.  Certainly, during
+the hour in which he spun his fanciful plan, there was not one bar to
+its execution.  Nor did there come to him any hint of its intrinsic
+sterility, or the idea that it was possibly an excuse for the
+interweaving of another interest more closely with his life--no idea
+that he was simply strengthening an old bond, or by means of this
+little tug pushing a mighty vessel nearer port.
+
+He almost happily mused until a nursery grew out of thin air, a child's
+little garments lay on a chair, and festivities, whose charm is of the
+most mysterious, illuminated his reverie.  Bulstrode, even without the
+shudder of the climatician, contemplated the rigors of his own country,
+for a rosy room grew out of his dream, fire-lit and fragrant with fir
+and holly, and in the centre shone The Tree, whose shiny globes and
+marvels were reflected till they danced in a child's eyes.
+
+There had been an hour earlier the quick, brusque dash of a French
+thunder-storm, and the cooled air came refreshingly from the garden as
+Bulstrode stood out on the terrace before going into the noonday
+breakfast.  Prosper, fetching his master's coffee at nine o'clock, had
+been informed that they were leaving Paris that day and received
+instructions as to the setting in order of the hôtel before returning
+it to its proprietor.  Where his wanderings were to take him Bulstrode
+had not as yet made up his mind.  It, after all, mattered so very
+little what a bachelor did with his leisure!  It was the height of the
+season along the seacoast and a dozen places brilliantly beckoned;
+there were tri-weekly boats to the country, where he should most
+properly be.
+
+"There is," he with recurrent leeway to his inclinations reflected,
+"always plenty of time to decide what one does not want to do!"
+
+As he glanced at the little breakfast spread temptingly there for him
+on the terrace he was arrested by the sound of French voices in quick,
+agitated discussion, and looked up to see the unceremonious entrance of
+quite a little band of people who had in point of fact penetrated his
+seclusion.  In a second of time a group was before him and he
+remembered afterward that certain figures in a twinkling assumed
+familiar shapes: the wine-shop keeper, his wife, one or two other
+patrons of the hôtel; but in the centre--he was sure of her!--pale and
+staring, stood little Simone, her big doll clasped in her arms.
+
+Before the gentleman could ask their errand Madame Branchard, eager to
+tell it, pushed forward.  Bulstrode afterward, when he thought of the
+scene, could always distinctly see her important red face, sleek, oily
+hair, and in spite of summer heat the crocheted shawl over her cotton
+gown.
+
+"We decided at once to address to monsieur, who is so good"--(he was
+growing accustomed to the formula) "to monsieur who has been so like a
+father to the poor little thing.  Not but that we are ready ourselves
+to do all we can for her--she is so sweet, so intelligent!"
+
+"The sweet, intelligent child" appeared, as Bulstrode's pitying gaze,
+never leaving her, saw, to have shrunk overnight.  In their midst she
+stood of a ridiculous smallness, her big doll nearly hiding her and
+over its blonde head Simone's eyes peered pathetically into, as it
+were, a vague and terrifying world.  Bulstrode asked shortly in the
+face of the theatrical prelude:
+
+"What is this all about?  What have you come to tell me?"
+
+"Ah, monsieur!"  Madame Branchard's voice, particularly suited to
+retailing the tragedies of the streets, quavered.  "There has been a
+_malheur_--it is too horrible--the mother!"
+
+"Stop!"  Bulstrode put out his hand.  "Simone!"
+
+The little thing dragged herself to him with a new timidity, as though
+she believed him in league with the world against her.
+
+"Come," he encouraged, "come out here on the terrace, where you have so
+often played with your doll, and don't be frightened, _mon enfant_;
+everything will be all right."
+
+When he had so settled her in the smallest of chairs he went back to
+the other bit of Paris street-life which had seethed in to him.
+
+Madame Branchard, whom his manner had reduced to, for her, marvellous
+quiet and ease, approached impressively and lowered her voice as deeply
+as it would fall.
+
+"Mademoiselle Lascaze, whom monsieur knows has been my tenant for
+months past, is dead--dead, monsieur!"
+
+Bulstrode echoed, "Dead?" and his first thought was: "It was not she,
+then, whom I saw striving for entrance this morning.  Ah, poor
+creature!  Drowned?"
+
+"Monsieur then knows?"
+
+Knows--how should he know?  He had thought of the aquarium and her
+often repeated feat.
+
+"Monsieur is right, she is drowned; but it is not the aquarium--it is
+the Seine.  It appears," the wine-merchant's wife went on, "that last
+night she made _la fête_ in the streets.  We over here lock up, well,
+at a decent hour, as monsieur will understand.  Those who are in stay,
+those who are out--well, monsieur will understand----"
+
+Yes, he understood.  Would she go on?
+
+"Mademoiselle Lascaze had evidently lost her key of entry--so it
+appears.  We have this story from her comrades, a bad lot, like
+herself.  She tried to get in about five o'clock--they left her
+knocking at the door.  She must then have wandered the streets for an
+hour, for it was six when they met her again by chance quite by the
+Pont des Arts.  They all had something to drink and started across the
+river, when the poor thing offered to give an exhibition of her circus
+feat and, before anyone could stop her, had dived off the bridge into
+the Seine."
+
+He had, then, seen her knocking there in the dawn, and if he had
+hastened a little--not held conventionally back----
+
+"It is all _en règle_," assured Madame Branchard.  "As my husband will
+tell monsieur, he has been to the morgue to identify her."
+
+The wine-merchant now at his cue, nodded impressively.  "Mais oui, I
+assure monsieur she was quite natural--and she was une belle femme tout
+le même----"
+
+His wife glanced at him scornfully.  "She was a bad mother, and all the
+house will tell you so.  Many times, monsieur, I have gone in with my
+pass-key and taken the poor little thing downstairs in my arms to give
+her all the supper she would have had, and many a time, on cold nights,
+when there was not a stick of fire in their room, and the woman
+abroad--many a time I have had her sleep in our bed with us--my husband
+will tell monsieur."
+
+The wine-merchant nodded assent.  "She speaks the truth, monsieur."
+
+Bulstrode found presence of mind to wonder.  "I suppose Mademoiselle
+Lascaze left debts?"
+
+The husband and wife exchanged glances.
+
+"_En vérité_, monsieur," confessed Madame Branchard, "she has left a
+few, but they are small and not significant; a hundred francs will
+cover them.  It is not for our pockets we are come to monsieur."
+
+Here the sentimentality having been disposed of by the woman, the
+husband broke in:
+
+"It is like this, Monsieur Balstro" (Bulstrode saw how intimately the
+_hôtel meublé_ knew him): "In a few moments even the authorities will
+be here to take charge of the woman's effects and Simone will become
+the property of the State.  She has no relatives, as Monsieur will
+understand.  Thinking, therefore, that monsieur, _who is so good_,
+might for some reason care to take an interest in the child's
+future----"
+
+Branchard coughed and paused.  Having given Mr. Bulstrode ample time to
+speak, to show some signs of life and of his usual quick benevolence,
+and being greeted with nothing other than quiet, meditative silence,
+the merchant shrugged and comprehensively relinquished suppositions and
+hopes in one large gesture.
+
+"In which case" (evidently that of taking for granted that Bulstrode
+was less good than they had supposed), "in that case we shall put in a
+plea ourselves for Simone and adopt her."
+
+Madame's voice, now in full and customary volume, expressed frankly
+_her_ goodness.  "We have five children and our means are modest,
+but"--and she put it sublimely--"_one is not a mother for nothing_."
+
+Her tirade, however, was quite lost on Bulstrode, who was occupied with
+his own projects of benevolence.  Turning to this contingent of the
+_hôtel meublé_ a back scarcely more imperturbable than his face had
+been, he went out of the room to the terrace, where Simone sat just as
+he had left her.  She was, on her low chair, so tiny that in order more
+nearly than ever before to approach her little point of view, to come
+into her little sphere, Bulstrode knelt down on one knee.
+
+"Don't look so frightened, my child.  Nothing will harm you--I assure
+you of that; don't you"--he called her loyally to answer--"don't you
+believe me, Simone?"
+
+The little thing drew in a struggling breath and whispered: "Oui,
+m'sieu."
+
+"Good!"  He was smiling at her and had taken her ice-cold, dirty,
+little hands.  "You are fond of me, Simone--you like a little M'sieu
+Balstro'?"
+
+"Oh," she caught at her frightened voice and more clearly whispered,
+"oh, oui, m'sieu!"
+
+"Bien encore!"
+
+He wanted tactfully to break the ice which shock and terror had formed
+around the poor little heart, and yet not to prolong the moment.
+
+"_Voyons_," he said to her lightly, as if he were only to bid her come
+and play in his garden, and not ask her to decide her destiny.
+"_Voyons_, how would you like to come and live with me? to have toys
+and pretty clothes and good things to eat--to be"--the bachelor put it
+bravely--"to be _my_ little girl.  How, Simone, would you like it?"
+
+If further startled she was humanized by his warmth, which was melting
+her; her breast heaved, her lips trembled, and she asked: "Et
+puis--maman?"
+
+Here Madame Branchard, in whom all feelings were subordinate to
+curiosity and motherhood, had approached until she stood directly
+behind the two on the terrace.  Tears had sprung to her eyes and she
+sniffled and wiped them frankly away with her hand.
+
+Bulstrode, singularly relieved by her appearance, turned and asked her,
+"What does she then know?"
+
+"Nothing, m'sieur, nothing at all."
+
+Simone got up on her feet and her big doll fell with a crash on the
+marble of the terrace and broke in a dozen pieces, but the catastrophe
+did not touch her.
+
+"And maman?" she repeated.  "Where is she?  She did not come home last
+night?"
+
+Bulstrode had descended to one knee in order to approach her, but
+Madame Branchard got down on both knees and tenderly put her arms
+around the child.
+
+"Look, ma petite--your mother has gone away forever to a beautiful
+country, and she has left you here to be a good girl and do whatever
+this kind gentleman says.  Will you go to be his little girl?  He will
+give you everything in the world."  She closed with this magnificent
+promise, whose breadth and wealth no child-mind could grasp.  In order
+to give her more complete liberty in which to make her decision the
+wine-merchant's wife, after kissing her, set her free.
+
+Simone made no audible reflection of wonder at her seeming desertion,
+no exhibition of distress, no melodramatic outburst of grief or
+surprise.  She stood silent, absorbed, desolate, and ashamed, twisting
+in and out between her frail little fingers the fringe of Madame
+Branchard's black shawl.
+
+"Or," brightly continued the good woman, "you can come home with me and
+play with Marie and Jeannette and have what we have.  You can be my
+little girl, as you will--it is for you to decide--chez moi, or with
+this bon monsieur."
+
+Was it fair of them--thus to lay on her six years the burden of her own
+destiny?
+
+Simone raised her head; her cheeks had reddened a little at Madame
+Branchard's last words.  She was unable to grasp the benefits that
+Bulstrode's magnificence offered, but she knew Marie and Jeannette--she
+knew the hands of Madame Branchard could tuck one in at night, and how
+warm and soft was the bosom on which she had already wept her little
+griefs.  There were many beautiful things in the world, but Simone just
+then only wanted one.  Madame Branchard was not _her_ mother--but she
+was still _a_ mother!  Simone whispered so low that only the woman
+heard:
+
+"I will go with you."
+
+
+Prosper having embarked on a sea of indiscretion, went through the day
+consistently.  With a love of the melodramatic in his Latin temperament
+he had admitted the _hôtel meublé sans cérémonie_: and late that
+afternoon he gave entrance to another group of quite a different order,
+and without formality ushered the lady and her friends to the terrace,
+where the solitary inhabitant of another man's house was taking a
+farewell beverage before leaving Paris.
+
+"We have caught you in time, Jimmy!" Mrs. Falconer made a virtue of it.
+"If you are absconding with the Montensier treasures, then let me show
+Molly and the Marquis at least what has been left behind."
+
+His bags and boxes in the hall, his automobile at the door, and
+Bulstrode himself in travelling trim, it looked very much like a
+flight, indeed.  Miss Molly and the Marquis, it transpired, were able
+to explore for themselves and to find in the gallery and salons
+pictures and objects of interest to excuse a prolonged absence.
+
+"They're engaged," Mrs. Falconer explained to her host.  "Isn't it
+ridiculous?  As you know, she hasn't a cent in the world, and his
+family are not in the secret, but Molly and De Presle-Vaulx _are_, and
+_I_ am, and I brought them off in pity for a spin to Paris."
+
+The apparition of the lady, whose mocking beauty had a fresh charm
+every time he saw her--her worldly wisdom and her keen
+reasonableness--made, as he stood talking with her, his past debauch in
+philanthropies seem especially grotesque.  With a long breath of joy at
+the sight of her Bulstrode also realized how wonderfully separated from
+her the introduction of another life into his environment would have
+made him.
+
+"Your garden is a waste," the lady criticised, "dusty and dull.  I
+don't wonder you're getting away.  Fontainebleau, too, was only a
+_faute de mieux_, and I have left it.  One should get really far away
+at this season.  It's the time when only the persons who are actually
+bred in its stones can stay in Paris--certainly the birds of passage
+may now, if ever, fly."
+
+"We are going to Trouville," she said; "we are all going to motor
+through Normandy.  Won't you come--won't you come?"  He shook his head.
+
+Mrs. Falconer looked across the terrace to where a little chair had
+been overturned, and on the floor by its side lay a broken doll.
+
+"Jimmy!" she laughed in triumph at the sight.  "You _have_ broken your
+doll!"
+
+Bulstrode said: "Yes, beyond repair, and I don't want another."  Then
+in a few words, briefly, a little impatient, and still smarting under
+the child's defection, he gave her the story.
+
+Listening, absorbed, her charming eyes on him or at one moment turned
+suspiciously away, the lady heard him to the end, and at the end said
+softly:
+
+"Jimmy, my poor Jimmy!  What have you nearly done!  What _would_ people
+have thought?  Not that it matters in the least--it's what people _do_
+that counts--but oh, I tremble for your next folly!"
+
+"It might"--he spoke with something like bitterness--"be less harmless
+and leave me less alone."
+
+She had finished a glass of iced tea, put her goblet down on the tray
+and rose, coming over to where Bulstrode stood; she lightly laid her
+hand on his arm.
+
+"You are, then, so very lonely?  So lonely that you would be capable of
+doing this foolish thing?  Oh, you would have found, as I have found,
+that it is those things which come into our lives, not those which we
+by force _take_, which mean all we want them to mean!  This wasn't
+_your child_!"  Mrs. Falconer's face softened as he had never seen it.
+"Nor yet is she the child of some woman you love.  Believe me, it would
+have made you far lonelier if it so happened--if you should ever come
+to love--if you ever had loved----"
+
+Bulstrode interrupted her abruptly:
+
+"Yes, in that case I should no doubt be glad that Simone had gone back
+on me."  He waited silent for a second, and then continued gently, "I
+_am_ glad, very glad indeed!"
+
+
+
+
+THE FOURTH ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+IV
+
+IN WHICH HE MAKES THREE PEOPLE HAPPY
+
+There were times when Bulstrode decided that he never could see the
+woman he loved any more: there were times when he felt he must follow
+her to the ends of the world, just in order to assure himself that she
+was alive and serene.  Such is the gentleman's character and point of
+view, that she must always be serene, no matter what his own troubled
+emotions might be.
+
+He had the extraordinary idea that he could not himself be happy or
+make a woman happy over the dishonor of another man.  It was
+old-fashioned and unworldly of Bulstrode: still, that was the way he
+was constituted.
+
+It was on one of the imperious occasions when he felt as if he must
+follow her to the ends of the earth, that he steered his craft toward a
+little town on the edge of the Norman coast, to a very fashionable bit
+of France--Trouville.  As soon as he understood that Mrs. Falconer was
+to be in Normandy for the race week, he packed his things and ran down
+and put up at the Hôtel de Paris.  On this occasion the gentleman
+followed so fast that he overleaped his goal, and arrived at the
+watering-place before the others appeared.  Bulstrode took his own
+rooms, and in response to a telegram, engaged the Falconers'
+apartments.  He liked the way the little salon gave on the heavenly
+blue sea, and with a nice fancy to make it something more home-like for
+his friend to begin with, he filled it with flowers ... ran what
+lengths he dared in putting a few rare vases and several pieces of old
+Italian damask here and there.
+
+"Falconer," he consoled himself, "will be too taken up with his horses
+to notice the _inside_ of anything but a stable!  And I shall tell the
+others that the hôtel proprietor is a collector: most of these Norman
+innkeepers are collectors."  And, as his idea grew, he went to greater
+lengths, with the curiosity shops on either side the Rue de Paris to
+tempt him.  The result was that when Mrs. Falconer came, she found the
+hôtel room wonderfully mellow and harmonious, and as a woman who revels
+in beauty she responded to its charm.  She was delighted, her eyes
+sparkled, her cheeks glowed.  And Jimmy Bulstrode had a moment of high
+happiness as she looked at him and touched with her pretty hands the
+flowers he had himself arranged.  It was a delightful moment, a moment
+that was much to him.
+
+The Falconers arrived with the usual lot of servants and motors and,
+moreover, with a racing outfit, for Falconer had decided to enter his
+English filly, Bonjour, for the events of August.  There was also with
+them a Miss Molly Malines and a young sprig of nobility, the Marquis de
+Presle-Vaulx, to whom Bulstrode was a trifle paternal.
+
+"He can't, at least, be after Molly's _millions_," he reflected; "he
+can't, at any rate, be a _fortune_ hunter, for the girl's face is the
+only fortune she has!"
+
+On a bright and beautiful morning, the first of all the days for many
+weeks--for Bulstrode reckoned his calendar in broken bits, beginning a
+New Year each time he saw his lady again--a bright and beautiful
+morning he walked out at the fashionable hour of noon and turned into
+the Rue de Paris.
+
+The eyes of many women followed Bulstrode.
+
+Being an early riser, he had already taken a brisk walk over the
+cliffs, had swum out beyond the buoys, and now in his flannels, his
+panama, a gay rose in the lapel of his coat, amongst the many
+debonnaire and pleasing people who filled the little fishing town, his
+was a distinguished figure.  He trusted very much to instinct to
+discover his friend, and after a few moments found her at the extreme
+end of the street which the papers of Paris tell you is "the most
+worldly and fashionable in any part of the Continent, during race week
+at Trouville."  Mary Falconer was of course dressed in the very height
+of the mode.  She looked up and saw Bulstrode before he saw her, but
+she could wait until he made his leisurely way down to her side.  She
+waited for him a great deal.  He did not know how much, but then her
+point of view and her feelings have never come into the history.  It
+amused her to make him her many clever little bits of speech, for he
+was so appreciative of everything she said, and looking up at him now
+as he approached she said: "These people never seem to have anything to
+do, do they?  Leisure is like money: to enjoy thoroughly either money
+or leisure one should only have a little of each.  Now for us
+good-for-nothings who have no occupation it doesn't make much
+difference what we do or where we do it!"
+
+The lady's camp-stool had been set down at the end of the street.
+Those who are not promenading opened little _chaises pliantes_ and
+watched from their little seats.  Mrs. Falconer sat facing the ocean,
+or what was visible of it between the bathing tents.  Pagodas gay with
+children's shovels and bright pails, striped bonbons and the sea of
+muslins, ribbons and feathers and sunshades of the midsummer crowd.
+All the capitals of Europe had poured themselves into Trouville, and
+the resort overflowed with beauty and fashion.
+
+'"It's perfectly bewitching," Bulstrode said to her, "perfectly
+bewitching, and it makes one feel as though there were nothing but
+pleasure in the world."
+
+She wore a white dress and her hat was bright with flowers.  She opened
+her rose-lined parasol over her head.
+
+"Jimmy," she said abruptly, and brought his eyes to hers like a flash,
+for he had been looking over the scene, "do you know I begin to see
+where the innkeeper found his rare treasures; _there are a great many
+other things_ that suggest them in this little street!"
+
+Bulstrode replied, "You don't want him to take them away, do you?"
+
+She shook her head.  "No," she said slowly, "they have been a great
+pleasure, but I don't want to _buy_ them from him, either."
+
+"I don't _think_ he'd sell them," Bulstrode was certain of it, "they're
+extremely precious in his eyes."
+
+"I'm a good judge of works of art, however," she said after a moment,
+"that is to say, I know a good thing when I see it.  There was a little
+picture in one of the shops back of me that I would have given a lot to
+own."
+
+Her friend exclaimed: "Are you going to buy it!  That is to say, will
+Falconer buy it for you?"
+
+"My dear soul--with his horse running to-morrow!  At any rate, the
+bijou is already bought above my head.  I went in yesterday to see what
+was the least they would take for it, and found the Prince Pollona, the
+Englishman who buys for the Wallace Collection, and somebody who, they
+tell me, was the Rockefeller of St. Petersburg.  Well, my little
+picture was what they all wanted, and you can imagine that _I_ retired
+from the running...!  But I tell you this," she said, "only to show you
+how very good my taste is, and so that you may rely on my selections."
+
+Bulstrode smiled in a way that said he thought he might rely on her,
+but still he asked rather quizzically, "Well, what are you going to
+recommend to me _now_?"
+
+The lady at the moment, not having anything in mind, looked suddenly
+up, gave him whimsically:
+
+"Molly and her Marquis."
+
+The two young people with Jack Falconer were coming slowly along the
+Rue de Paris toward them.  The grace of the girl, her freshness under
+her wide hat where flowers and ribbons danced and blended; the radiant
+pleasure she exhaled, the swing of her dress, her youth, expressed so
+happily the joy of life, recommended themselves easily in a flash....
+
+"Oh, _Molly_--she's perfect!"
+
+"And the Marquis?"
+
+"He is perfectly in _love_," ... Bulstrode allowed him so much.
+
+"My dear friend, remember I know my _objets d'art_."
+
+"Oh, as an _objet d'art_...!"
+
+Bulstrode took the young man in: his white immaculateness, his
+boutonnière, his panama--(not less than forty dollars a straw, as Jimmy
+knew) his monocle.
+
+"As an _objet d'art_," he further conceded to her, "he's perfect, too!"
+
+"As an _homme de race_," said the American lady eagerly, with the true
+Republican appreciation of blood and title, "as an _homme du monde_, as
+a..."
+
+"Title?" he finished for her.  "Oh, the Presle-Vaulx are all right!
+I'll grant him a perfect title, sound as a bell, first Crusade--_Léonce
+de Presle-Vaulx main droite, or sur azur--Pour toi seule_.  It's a good
+old tradition--a good old name."
+
+She scented his lack of sympathy.  "Oh, I'll stand for him, Jimmy.  I
+know the _pâte_, as they say.  I know the ring and the tone; and you
+must, at my valuation, take him."
+
+"Molly, dear lady, has done the taking."  Bulstrode lifted his hat as
+the trio came up.  "And what, after all, can we--the rest of us do?"
+
+"The rest of them" watched the young couple with mingled emotions: Mary
+Falconer with all the romance in her, and in spite of unusual cool
+reasonableness she had a feminine share--Jimmy with the sympathy of a
+kindly nature, a certain sting of jealousy at the decidedly perfect
+completeness of young love, and with a singularly wide-awake practical
+common sense for an impulsive gentleman whose pleasure in life is to
+pour into people's hands the things they most long for and cannot
+without him ever hope to enjoy!
+
+
+Bulstrode, although owning his share of horse-flesh and a proper number
+of automobiles and keeping, for the best part of the time, a yacht out
+of commission, was a sport only in a certain sense of the word.  The
+people who liked him best and who were themselves able to judge, said
+he was a "dead game sport," but Jimmy smiled at this and knew that the
+human element interested him in life above all, and that he only cared
+for amusements as they helped others to enjoy.  He was backing
+Falconer's horse, although he felt certain the winnings would go to the
+Rothschild's gelding.  On the afternoon, however, when De Presle-Vaulx
+came up to him in the Casino and said: "On what are you going to put
+your money, Monsieur?" Bulstrode looked at him thoughtfully.  He had
+stood by the young man the night before at baccarat and seen him lose
+enough to keep a little family of Trouville fisherfolk for a year.
+
+"Are you going to play the races, Marquis?"
+
+"But naturally!" ...
+
+De Presle-Vaulx had an attractive frankness, and his smile
+was--Bulstrode understood what a girl would think about it!
+
+"... But of course!  One doesn't come to Trouville in _la grande
+semaine_ not to play!"
+
+He put his hand cordially on Bulstrode's arm.
+
+"Entre nous," he said, "I don't believe Falconer's horse has a chance
+against Rothschild's Grimace.  And you?"
+
+"Oh, I shall back Jack Falconer's mare," the older man replied.
+
+The Marquis played with his moustache.  "She doesn't stand a show."
+
+Bulstrode was walking slowly down the grand staircase by his
+companion's side.  "And you will back Grimace?"  He ignored the young
+man's prognostication.
+
+De Presle-Vaulx said ingenuously: "_I_?  Oh, seriously, I'm not
+betting.  I lost at baccarat last night, and I haven't a sou for the
+race."
+
+He looked boyish and regretful.  The American put his hand in his
+pocket and took out his portefeuille.
+
+"Let me," he suggested pleasantly, "be your banker."
+
+The light dry rustle of French bank-notes came agreeably from between
+his fingers.
+
+The young man hesitated, then put out his hand.
+
+"A thousand thanks, Monsieur, you are too good--I _will_ back Grimace,
+and after the race----"
+
+Jimmy handed him the notes to choose from.
+
+At the stair foot stood Molly and Mrs. Falconer.
+
+"We went this afternoon to see Jack's horse," Miss Malines said to the
+Marquis.  Whatever she said, no matter how general, she said to
+him--others might gather what they could.  "Bon Jour's a beauty--a
+dear, and as fit as possible.  Oh, she's in great form!  Jack's crazy
+about her, and so is the jockey.  I know Bon Jour will win!  I'm going
+to put twenty-five francs on her to-morrow."
+
+Mary Falconer smiled radiantly.  "And you, Jimmy," she took for
+granted, "are of course betting on the favorite?"
+
+"If you mean Grimace--" his tone was indifferent--"no, I shall back
+your husband's horse."
+
+"_Jimmy_!"  Her tone changed, and her expression as well.
+
+De Presle-Vaulx saw it, and he knew what women's voices can mean.  He
+was a Frenchman, and he understood what a slow, delicious flush, a
+darkening of the eyes, a sharp note in the voice can signify of
+feeling--as well as of gratitude, surprise and a little scorn.  There
+was all this in Mary Falconer's exclamation and her face.
+
+"And Maurice!" Molly said, "of course, you're doing the same?"
+
+The Marquis met his fiancée's clear eyes, her girlish enthusiasm and
+her confidence.  He bit his lip, shrugged, hesitated, looked at
+Bulstrode, at Molly, and laughed.  The presence of the others and the
+custom of his country made it only a pretty courtesy--he lifted Molly's
+hand to his lips.
+
+"Of course--_chère Mademoiselle_, I am backing Bon Jour with all my
+heart, _cela va sans dire_!"
+
+Miss Malines regarded her friend with a pretty grimace and a smile.
+
+As they walked along together all four, Bulstrode said to himself:
+
+"He's a sport, a true sport--that's five thousand francs to the bad.
+He was game, however, he's a good sport and, better yet, he's a true
+lover!"
+
+Whether or not Mary Falconer really had an exalted idea of the merits
+of Bon Jour, or whether she thoroughly understood the situation, how
+was her friend to know?
+
+Falconer adored the horse, and the lady showed in the matter, as in
+everything else, a fine loyalty to her husband, which was undoubtedly
+one of the reasons why--but this is going too deeply into the domain of
+Bulstrode's feelings, which, since he keeps them honorably sealed, it
+is unworthy to surprise even in the interest of psychology.
+
+Bulstrode saw that his friend was pleased: her color, her mounting
+spirits at dinner, showed it.  She spoke with interest of the races,
+and with confidence greater than she had hitherto evinced in the
+fortunes of her husband's racer--indeed she talked horse to Molly's
+edification, her husband's delight, and Bulstrode's admiration.  All
+this--the sense that the party was, so to speak, with him--put Jack
+Falconer in the best of spirits, and the unruffled course of the
+dinner, and, above all, the humor of the elder of the two ladies, quite
+repaid Jimmy Bulstrode for the sure loss of his stakes.
+
+"Does she really think that I have faith in the horse?" he
+wondered---meeting her charming eyes over the glass of champagne she
+was drinking.  They did not answer in text his question, but their glow
+and the light of content in them answered for him other questions which
+were perhaps of greater interest.
+
+She was not unhappy.  All his life, since his acquaintance with her, it
+had been his aim, in so far as he could aid it, that she should not be
+unhappy.  His idea of affection was that in all cases it should bring
+to the object--joy.  In his own life these things which brought him, no
+matter how pleasant they might be, the after taste of regret and misery
+he strove with all his manliness to tear out: "and surely," he so
+argued, "if my presence in her life cause her for one moment anything
+but peace, it would be better that we had never looked into each
+other's eyes."
+
+There was nothing especially buoyant, in the attitude of the young
+Marquis!  His inclination to feminine will had cost him--he was so
+familiar with the turf and the next day's programme to feel sure--five
+thousand francs, which he had not the means to pay.
+
+
+Later in the evening, very much later, indeed well on to one o'clock,
+Bulstrode, wandering through the baccarat rooms--for no other purpose,
+it would be said from his indifferent air, than to study types--saw
+Maurice de Presle-Vaulx just leaving the Casino.
+
+Bulstrode's air was as friendly and as naïve as though he had not a
+pretty clear idea of just how the tide of events was fluctuating toward
+misfortune in the case of this young nobleman.
+
+"What do you say," he suggested, "to getting something to drink or eat?
+What do you say to a piece of _perdreau_ and some champagne?"
+
+The Frenchman followed the older man, who in contrast to his pallor
+looked the picture of health and spirits.  Bulstrode cheerily led him
+to a small table in the corner of the restaurant, where they sat
+opposite one another, and for a little time applied themselves in
+silence to the light supper served them.
+
+The Marquis drank more than he ate, and Bulstrode dutifully finished
+the game and toast, quite glad, in truth, to break the fast of a long
+evening which he had spent in the close rooms: for no other reason than
+unseen, to befriend--and unasked, to chaperone Molly's lover.  Finally,
+when he felt that the right moment to say something had come, he smiled
+at the young man, and said frankly:
+
+"Voyons, mon ami, don't you feel that you can talk to me a little more
+freely than you could possibly to even so kind and charming a friend as
+Mrs. Falconer?  We are not of the same race, perhaps, but then under
+certain circumstances such distinctions are not important.  How do
+you"--he handled the words as though in presenting them to the young
+man he was afraid they might prick him--"How do _you_ now stand?--I
+mean to say, the luck has been rather against you, I'm afraid."
+
+Bulstrode would never be so near forty again, and De Presle-Vaulx was a
+spoiled child--at all events, all that could be spoiled in him had been
+taken care of by his mother, and in his own way he had spoiled a large
+part of what remained.  He looked up smartly, for he had been following
+the pattern of the table-cloth.  If the frankness of the other
+threatened to offend him, as he met the kind eyes of the American he
+found nothing there that could do otherwise than please him.  He
+shrugged with his national habit, then threw out his hands without
+making any verbal reply, but his smile and his gesture comprehended so
+much that Bulstrode intelligently exclaimed:
+
+"Oh, but you don't mean to _say_----?"
+
+"I have not, monsieur, much to lose," the scion of an old house replied
+simply.  "We have the reputation of being poor; but to-night and last
+night have quite 'wiped me out,' as you say in America.  Je suis ruiné."
+
+Bulstrode lit his cigar.  De Presle-Vaulx took from his pocket one of
+his own cigarettes and puffed at it gently.  Bulstrode smoked silently,
+and thought of the young man without looking at him.  He liked him, and
+did not understand him at all: not at all!  He supposed, that with his
+different traditions, his Puritanism, his New World point of view, he
+could _never_ understand him, but he would enjoy trying to do so, for
+aside from the quality of spoiled boy, there was something of the man
+in De Presle-Vaulx to which the New Englander extremely responded.
+
+His next remark was impersonal:
+
+"Bon Jour, then, you think is not likely----?"
+
+"_Mon cher Monsieur_! ... She is not even mentioned for place!  Even in
+the event of her winning," De Presle-Vaulx was gloomy, "I should be
+able to discharge my debt to you and nothing more."  Again he looked up
+quickly.  "I shall, of course, be quite able to discharge _that_; I
+only mean to say that _en somme_, I am _roulé completément roulé_."
+
+"What, then, are you going to do?"
+
+De Presle-Vaulx looked at the end of his cigarette as though he took
+counsel from it, and said measuredly:
+
+"There is, in my position, but one thing possible for a man to do."
+
+"You mean to say, marry, make a rich marriage?"
+
+The Marquis flashed at him:
+
+"A month ago, yes! that would have been the one way out of my
+embarrassment: but I am no longer in the market.  It is the other
+alternative."
+
+Bulstrode in no case caring to hear put in words a tragically
+disagreeable means of solving the problems of debt and love, and having
+less faith in this extravagant, explosive alternative than in the
+_marriage de convenance_, did not urge the Frenchman further.  He
+simply brought out--his quiet eyes fixed on the other:
+
+"And the little girl?--Molly--Miss Malines?----"
+
+He gave him three chances to think of the pretty child, and for the
+first De Presle-Vaulx's expression changed.  He had with a nonchalance
+submitted to the discussion of his fortune and his fate, but now he
+distinctly showed dignity.
+
+"Don't, I beg of you, _speak_ of Mademoiselle Malines!" and then he
+said more gently, "mille pardons, mon cher ami!"
+
+Bulstrode smoked his Garcia meditatively.  He had not attempted the
+solving of other people's questions, had not played the good fairy for
+a long time.  He had the hazy feeling--such as he often experienced
+just before stepping into the mysterious excitement of doing some good
+deed, of undergoing the effects of a narcotic which put to sleep reason
+and practical common-sense, and left alive only a desire to befriend.
+In this case, determined not again to be the victim of sentimentality,
+determined for once to unite common sense and common humanity, he
+forcibly dissipated the haze and said:
+
+"Your family!  I have, as you know, understood from Mrs. Falconer, the
+facts of the case.  You must not be formal with me."  He smiled
+delightfully.  "I am an American; you know we have all sorts of
+barbarous privileges.  We rush in quite where the older races fear to
+tread ... and Molly Malines' father is an old friend of mine."
+
+(Mr. Bulstrode did not say what kind of an old friend!  or even allow
+himself to remember the I.O.U.s and loans that his bankers had made to
+the visionary, good-humored, sanguine, unfortunate stockbroker.)
+
+"Your family--how do they take the idea of your marriage to a poor
+American?"
+
+De Presle-Vaulx pushed his coffee cup aside, leaned his arms on the
+table, bent over, and said with more confidence:
+
+"Oh, they are entirely opposed to it.  That's one reason, to be quite
+frank with you, why I have been so reckless."
+
+He added: "My mother has refused her consent, and I can never hope to
+alter my father's attitude.  I have their letters to-day as well as
+telegrams from Presle-Vaulxoron--they bid me 'come home immediately,'
+and so far as my people are concerned, their refusal puts an end to the
+affair!"
+
+There was a mixture of amusement and reproach in Bulstrode's tone--"and
+you have found nothing better to do than to throw away at baccarat what
+money you had, and have found no other solution for the future than
+to...?" he eyed the young man keenly, and a proper severity came into
+his expression.  "Nonsense," he said, and repeated the word with more
+indulgence: "nonsense, _mon ami_!"
+
+His reproof was borne:
+
+"We are an old race, M. Bulstrode----"
+
+Bulstrode had heard this allocution before.  It gave lee-way to so
+much; permitted so much; excused so much!
+
+"... I don't need to tell you our traditions, or recall our customs.
+You of course know them.  If I marry without my parents' consent I
+shall probably, during my mother's lifetime, never see her again, and I
+am her only son.  It means that I sever all relations with my people."
+
+Bulstrode knocked the ash off his cigar and said thoughtfully:
+
+"It's too bad!  A choice, if there _is_ one, is always too bad.  There
+should in real things _be_ no choice.  As soon as such a contingent
+arises, it proves that neither thing is really worth while!  When a man
+loves a woman there can be no choice.  My dear friend, when a
+_man_"--he paused--"loves--there is nothing in the world _but the
+woman_."
+
+The Marquis looked at the fine face of the elder man.  Years had, with
+their gentle history, and kindly records, touched Jimmy Bulstrode
+lightly.  Every experience made him better to look at; "like a good
+picture," Mrs. Falconer had said, "painted by a master, and only
+growing more splendid."  Nothing of the worldliness of the roué marked
+his expression.  His memories were clear and honorable, and the
+Frenchman experienced a sensation of surprise and also one of
+enlightenment as he looked at him and responded to his expression.  He
+had never seen any one quite like this man of the world, could not
+think of his prototype in France.
+
+He repeated:
+
+"Nothing but the woman in the world--?  Honor--" Bulstrode quickly
+added, "and the woman--they are synonymous."
+
+In watching his companion he wondered in how much of a tangle the
+Frenchman's mind was, and just how deep his feet were sunk in the
+meshes of conventionality and tradition, and decided: "Oh, is it too
+much to believe that he could----!"
+
+As if in answer to his thoughts, De Presle-Vaulx spoke in the simplest
+manner possible:
+
+"J'aime Molly."
+
+Quite surprised at the simplicity, Bulstrode beamed on him and waited.
+
+Then the other added:
+
+"But I can't ask any woman to share poverty and debts, and I have no
+way of making a living; I'm not bred for it."
+
+"You are not an invalid?"
+
+"On the contrary."
+
+"You can work."
+
+De Presle-Vaulx smiled: "I am afraid not!  No De Presle-Vaulx has done
+a stroke of work in three hundred years."
+
+"It's time, then"--Bulstrode was tart--"that you broke the record.  Why
+don't you?"  He said as though suddenly illumined--"make me your
+banker, draw on me for whatever sum you will, and since you have faith
+in her and are so well supported by the public opinion--bet on Grimace.
+I believe, with you, that he is sure to win.  You would recoup much of
+your loss here."
+
+De Presle-Vaulx pushed back his chair and exclaimed: "Monsieur!"
+
+"Oh," shrugged Bulstrode, "a woman's caprice, my dear fellow!  A
+foolish little whim of a girl!  You can't be expected to mix sport and
+flirtation to the tune of two or three thousand dollars."
+
+He smiled deceptively.
+
+The young man laughed bitterly:
+
+"So that is something of what you think of me? for I see you are not
+serious!  It's a folly, of course, a sentimental folly," he met
+Bulstrode's eyes that silently accused him of a like--"but only a man
+in love knows what sentimental follies are worth!  There is"--the young
+man was suddenly serious, "a sort of prodigality in love only
+understood by certain temperaments, certain races: it may be
+degenerate: I suppose it is, and to push it quite to the last phase,
+is, of course, cowardly, certainly very weak, and men like you,
+Monsieur, will deem it so."
+
+"You mean--?" and now Bulstrode's tone urged him to make himself clear.
+
+"I mean," said De Presle-Vaulx firmly, "rather than renounce this woman
+I adore I will without doubt--(given the tangle in which the whole
+matter is!...") and he could not for the life of him put his intention
+into words.  He smiled nevertheless unmistakably.  Bulstrode leaned
+across the table and put his hand on the other's arm.
+
+"Then you don't love her well enough not to break her heart?  Or well
+enough to live a commonplace life for her?"
+
+"I don't know how to do it."
+
+"Well," said Bulstrode, "I have run upon quite a good many hard
+moments, perhaps some, in their way, as difficult as this, and I have
+never thought of getting out of the muddle.  Perhaps it _is_ a
+question, as you say, of temperament and race.  I am inclined also to
+think, stubbornly, that it is a question of the quality of the love
+that one has for the woman.  You won't think it impertinent of me, my
+dear friend,"--and his tone was such that no one could have thought it
+impertinent--"you won't, I am sure, take it amiss if we talk this over
+to-morrow, and if I try to show you something that means _life_,
+instead of what you plan."
+
+
+"You know you as good as stood for De Presle-Vaulx."
+
+Bulstrode held Mrs. Falconer's parasol, her fan, as well as a gold bag
+purse full of louis, a handkerchief and his own cane and field-glass.
+For the lady, standing on a chair the better to see the race-track, was
+applauding with enthusiasm the result of the first handicap.  She had
+placed a bet on a horse called Plum-Branch "from a feeling of
+sentiment," as she said, because she had, that day, quite by chance,
+selected a hat with a decorative plum-branch amongst other garnitures.
+
+"I am _standing_, certainly, Jimmy," she replied to his remark, "and to
+the peril of my high heels!-- _There_, I've won! and won't you, like an
+angel, go and cash my bets?--give me the purse, you might have your
+hand picked!  You can put my winnings in your pocket; they're not so
+enormous."
+
+During his absence she watched the scene around her with animation.
+The spotless day, if one might so call it, when the sky and the turf
+and the whole world looked as though washed clean, and nature, seen in
+the warm sunlight, seemed to palpitate and flutter in the wind that
+gently stirred ends of ribbon or tips of plumes, and set the fragrance
+of the country air astir.  Back of the lady the tribune was like a
+floral display: here and there a corner red as roses, there a mass of
+lily-white dresses enlivened by pink and blue parasols, and the green
+_pesage_ stretched between the spectators and the race-track in bands
+of emerald, whilst across it promenaded or stood in groups those
+interested in the races.  Mrs. Falconer acknowledged a friend here and
+there, glanced affectionately over to where Molly and the Marquis,
+seated near, fixed their attention on the race-course, where the
+winner, flying his blue ribbon, cantered triumphantly around the track.
+
+One of a little group Falconer, the worse for many cocktails, stood by
+the railing, talking familiarly with his jockey, whilst Bon Jour,
+blanketed to the eyes, was being led up and down the outside track
+alongside of her rival, Rothschild's Grimace.
+
+Bulstrode returning, gave his friend a handful of gold, which she put
+into her purse, and he repeated: "You remember that you stood, as it
+were, for De Presle-Vaulx?"
+
+"I do," she said, "if you think the race-course is the place to take me
+to account for anything so serious, I do remember, and I do stand.
+What is the trouble that he needs me?"
+
+"He needs," Bulstrode was serious, "a good many things, it seems to me,
+in order to get firmly on the plane where he should be!"
+
+"And that is----?"
+
+"On his feet, my dear friend."
+
+"Well, he is head over heels in love," she nodded, "but when he finally
+lands I think you will find Maurice perfectly perpendicular."
+
+"He won't," returned the other, "at all events, land in the bosom of
+his family."
+
+"No?"--she looked away from the race-course and laughed--"you mean to
+say, Jimmy, has he heard, then?"
+
+"I mean to say that _they_ are quite clear in their minds about his
+marriage!  They seem to have all the firmness that the young man lacks.
+Tell me," he asked his friend, "just what do you know about the matter?
+What happened that you so strongly took up his cause with Molly?  You
+have not told me yet."
+
+She relinquished the interests of the moment to those of the
+sentimental question.
+
+"It seems," she said, lowering her tone, "that they have been secretly
+engaged for a year.  Nothing that an American girl can do would
+surprise me, but you can imagine that I was overwhelmed at his part in
+the matter.  When Molly joined me in Fontainebleau, De Presle-Vaulx
+promptly followed, and I naturally obliged her to tell me everything.
+I was dismayed at the lack of _tenue_ he had shown.  I had a plain talk
+with him.  He said that he had first met Molly at some dance or other
+in the American colony, I don't know where; that he understood that
+American girls disposed of their own lives; that he loved her and
+wanted to marry her, and that he was only waiting to gain the consent
+of his family before writing to her father.  He seemed delighted to
+talk with me and perfectly conventional in his feelings.  He further
+told me that his parents until now knew nothing, that he had not been
+able to tear himself away from Molly long enough to go down to the
+country where they were and see them.  I forced him to write at once;
+exacted myself that until he received their answer there should be
+nothing between Molly and him but the merest distant acquaintance.  I
+did not know that he had heard from the Marquise or his father.  You
+seemed to have suddenly entirely gained his confidence and taken my
+place."  She looked over at the young couple.  "Poor Molly!" she
+exclaimed.  "He has not, I should say, told her: she looks so happy and
+so serene!  It's of course only a question of _dot_, otherwise there
+could be no possible objection.  She is perfectly beautiful, the
+sweetest creature in the world; and she is a born Marquise!"
+
+Bulstrode interrupted her impatiently:
+
+"It would be more to the purpose if he were a born bread-winner and she
+were a dairy-maid!"
+
+"Jimmy, how vulgar you are!"
+
+"Very--" he was wonderfully sarcastic for him--"money is a very vulgar
+thing, my dear friend; it's as vulgar as air and bread and butter.  It
+is like all other clean, decent vulgarity, it can be abused, but it's
+necessary to life."
+
+Mrs. Falconer opened her eyes wide on this new Bulstrode.
+
+"Why, what has happened to you?"
+
+He made a comprehensive gesture: "Oh, I am always supporting a family!"
+he said with an amusing attempt at irritability.  "I am always
+supporting a family that is not mine, that does not sit at my
+hearthstone or at my table.  I am always marrying other people to some
+one else, and dressing other people's children!"
+
+He finished with a laugh: "There, No. 5 is up!  Aren't you interested
+in this race?"
+
+Mrs. Falconer and Bulstrode had walked a little from where the young
+couple chattered indifferent to everything but each other.
+
+"No; I am only interested in what you are saying.  What have you
+planned to do or thought out for them, Jimmy?  What do your rebellious
+phrases imply?  _Are_ you really going to make a home for----?"
+
+Bulstrode said stubbornly.  "No!  I am going to show him how to make
+one for himself."
+
+He stopped short where he stood: he had resumed the care of her
+parasol, her fan, and purse.
+
+Her face, as she took in his exposition of his plan for the
+regeneration of a decayed nobility, was inscrutable.  Instead of
+exclaiming, she stopped to speak a moment to some people who passed,
+shook hands with the owner of the favorite, and when they were once
+again alone said to her friend:
+
+"Isn't it too delightful! the whole scene?  I mean to say, how
+perfectly they do it all.  How thoroughly gay it is, how debonnair,
+graceful, and _bien compris_.  Look at the wonderful color of the
+_pesage_, and the life of the whole thing!  These Latin most thoroughly
+understand the art of living.  You scarcely ever see a care-worn face
+in France.  Look at Jack now!  Did you ever see such anxiety as he
+represents?  If Bon Jour is beaten I don't know _what_ will become of
+him.  What shall I do with him?"
+
+Bulstrode's interest on this subject was tepid.
+
+"Oh, he'll be all right!" he said indifferently.  "Take him to the
+Dublin Horse Fair."
+
+And then as though she had not capriciously left the other topic, Mrs.
+Falconer asked:
+
+"Just what _is_ your plan for Molly and her Marquis?  May I not know?"
+
+And Bulstrode who had never in any way thought out a plan or scheduled
+a scheme for the wise distribution of the good he intended to do,
+educated now, so he fondly hoped, by his failures, wiser, he was proud
+to believe, by several sharp lessons--with no little confidence and
+something of pride, said to his companion:
+
+"I have a ranch out West, you know; a little property I took for a bad
+debt once.  It has turned out to be a great and good piece of luck.
+That time I was fortunate--" (his tone, was congratulatory and Mrs.
+Falconer smiled prettily).  "I now need a second overseer again--a man
+of brains, good temper, and physical endurance, who can keep accounts.
+Experience isn't at all necessary.  There's my Englishman there, my
+Christmas tramp, you recall; he'll show De Presle-Vaulx his duties.
+It's a good enough berth for any determined chap who has his way to
+make and an ideal to work for.  I purpose to send this Frenchman out on
+a salary and to see what stuff he's made of.  After a year or two, with
+good sense and push, he will be in a position to ask any girl to be his
+wife.  I'll raise his salary, and if Molly is the girl I take her for,
+she will help him there."
+
+"And his family, Jimmy?"
+
+"Damn his family!" risked the aroused Bulstrode.
+
+Mrs. Falconer laughed.
+
+"Really!  It is casual of you! but you don't know them and can't!  But
+they can quite spoil the whole thing as far as Molly is concerned.  His
+tradition and race, his home and all it means to him--why you can't
+roughly run against all the old conventions like that, my dear man!"
+
+"Well," said the ruthless gentleman, "then he can go and feed on their
+charity, can take to his flesh-pots and give up the girl.  She is far
+too good for any foreign fortune-hunter anyway.  You spoil a man, all
+of you.  You'd prefer a disreputable roué to a cowboy with money in his
+pocket and a heart."
+
+"Would it then prove to you De Presle-Vaulx's heart if he threw over
+his family and went West?"
+
+"Yes," said the other quickly.  "It would prove he loves the girl."
+
+"You forget his mother."
+
+Bulstrode fumed.
+
+"I have not the honor to forget her; I don't know the Marquise de
+Presle-Vaulx."
+
+"I do," interrupted his friend.  "She is a charming, gentle old dear;
+narrow, if you call it so, clear-headed and delightful.  She adores her
+only son, and thinks quite properly that his name, his estates,
+beautiful if mortgaged, are a fair exchange for an American _dot_.
+Maurice de Presle-Vaulx, after all, does not go poverty-stricken to the
+woman he marries.  There are not so many ways to live after one is
+twenty-five, and to uproot this scion of an old race, to exact such a
+sacrifice----"
+
+"It would make a man of him."
+
+"He is one already.  There are all kinds, I need not tell you so."
+
+"He is head over heels in debt."
+
+Mrs. Falconer laughed again.
+
+"We make him out an acrobat between us."
+
+"He gambles on borrowed money."
+
+"You mean that you have forced him to borrow from you?  He will pay
+what he owes, I am sure of him."
+
+Bulstrode wheeled and scrutinized her, and said with the natural
+asperity of a man who is bored by a woman's too generous championship
+of another man:
+
+"You stand for him warmly."
+
+Mrs. Falconer, reading him, said quickly:
+
+"Oh, I know him thoroughly!  He has the faults of his race, but as an
+individual he is the right sort."
+
+With their pretty habit, her cheeks had grown red in the course of the
+discussion.
+
+"Please give me my parasol; it's awfully hot here."
+
+He opened it for her and she held its rosy lining against the sun.
+
+Mr. Falconer, who from the rail had been observing, through the haze
+formed by countless cocktails, the figure of his wife in her white
+dress, as well as the figure of her faithful squire, here came
+swaggering up to them both.  He was never jealous, but Mr. Bulstrode's
+uniform courtesy and attention to the woman neglected by her husband
+often piqued him to attention.  As he drew near, Mrs. Falconer asked
+quickly:
+
+"And the Marquis, Jimmy?  What do you suppose he will say to your Wild
+West scheme?"
+
+Bulstrode smiled.
+
+"Oh, you women understand us even when we are stupid mysteries to
+ourselves!  Tell me, how will he take this?"
+
+"He will refuse."  The lady was quick in her decision.  "He cannot in
+consistence do otherwise.  He will consider your plan provincial and
+Yankee, and he will consider, what you ignore, that it will kill his
+mother.  If he cannot marry Molly with the family consent in proper
+French fashion he will naturally give her up.  But first of all, my
+dear Jimmy, he will put _you_ in your place!"
+
+Bulstrode cast a fatherly glance to where the young people sat talking
+together: the Marquis in gray clothes of the latest London make, a
+white rose in his button-hole, and monocle in his eye, a figure more
+unlike the traditional cowboy one could scarcely conceive.
+
+"Your taste is good, ma chere amie," his voice was delighted.  "Your
+instinct as a connoisseur is faultless; but you are not quite sure of
+your _objet d'art_ this time."  He nodded kindly at the Parisian--"He's
+all right! he's a true sport, a lover and a man.  De Presle-Vaulx knows
+my Wild West scheme and has accepted."
+
+
+Molly had put twenty-five francs on Bon Jour and expected to win it.
+The money Bulstrode played would have bought a very handsome present
+for his lady, and he felt as if he were making an anonymous gift to the
+woman he loved.
+
+At the ringing of the bell Falconer left his post by the railing and
+came up and joined the little group of his friends just below the Grand
+Stand.  He lit a cigar, threw down the match furiously, smoked
+furiously, and nerved himself for the strain.
+
+Nodding toward the betting contingent he muttered: "They're sheep.
+They're all betting on the favorite naturally.  Bon Jour wasn't
+mentioned for place even, poor little girl!"
+
+The ignored little racer had ambled around the field, her jockey in
+crimson and white, doubled up upon her back after the manner of his
+profession.  Bon Jour was as golden red as a young chestnut; she had
+four white feet that twinkled on the fragrant turf whose odors of
+crushed blades and green blades, of earth and the distant smell of the
+sea went to her pretty head.  She threw it up eagerly as her disputants
+filled the field.  There were nine horses scheduled, but only five
+qualified.  The Rothschild gelding, an English gray, and two others
+named for probable places.
+
+"She's cool as a rose," murmured Bon Jour's owner, "and just look at
+her form, will you!"
+
+It was charming, and already the American's horse was attracting
+attention.
+
+Molly, with De Presle-Vaulx's aid, rose on her chair, from which her
+excitement threatened at any moment to precipitate her.
+
+"Oh, Maurice--of course she'll win.  Isn't she a _dear_?  How much
+shall I make on twenty-five francs?"
+
+Bulstrode smiled.
+
+"A frightful amount!  There are twenty to one up on her, Molly."
+
+The girl mentally calculated, exclaimed with pleasure and, with
+sparkling eyes, watched the lining-up of the racers.  Neck to neck they
+stood, a splendid showing of satin and shine from fetlock to forelock,
+equine beauty enough to gladden a sporting man's heart, and all five
+were away before Miss Malines was even sure which one was the great
+Grimace.
+
+From the first the favorite's nose was to the good.  His shapely body
+followed, and when the horses came in sight again beyond the right-hand
+hedge, he had put four lengths between himself and the others.  The
+winner of the Grand Prix had all the field with him.  But the gray
+gelding who strained at Grimace's flanks had no staying powers,
+although he was backed as strongly for place as was Grimace to win; as
+he fell back Bon Jour began to attract notice.
+
+Bulstrode and De Presle-Vaulx exchanged glances over the absorbed
+figure of Jack Falconer.  "She may yet win place," murmured the younger
+man.
+
+As they came up the wide turf sweep that lay like an emerald sea
+crested by the dark waves of the hedges, as the horses rocked like
+ships over the obstacle--Bon Jour closely followed the favorite.
+
+At the moment Miss Malines cried: "Oh, a jockey's off!  Oh, Jack, it's
+Bon Jour!  She's _thrown_ her jockey!  I see the red and white."
+
+But Falconer biting his cigar fiercely, laughed in scorn.  "She's
+thrown _them_ all right.  She's left them all _behind_ her--see!" he
+pointed, "there are only three running."  And, indeed, as they came
+again in sight, one of the horses was seen to be wandering loose about
+the course, and another cantered nonchalantly some hundred yards behind.
+
+"She's not even trying," murmured her enchanted owner.  "She's cool as
+a rose."
+
+The cries which had named the Rothschild gelding from the start were
+now mingled, and Bon Jour, flying around the emerald course, might have
+heard her name for the first on the public lips.  She was running
+gracefully, her head even with the favorite's saddle and the English
+gray was a far-off third.  Bon Jour was pressing to fame.
+
+At the last hurdle as they appeared flying in full sight of the Grand
+Stand it was evident the pretty creature had made her better good.  The
+horses leapt simultaneously and came down on all fours, with Grimace to
+the rear, and amongst the frantic acclamation with which the public is
+always ready to greet the surprise of unlooked-for merit, Bon Jour
+passed Grimace by half a metre at the goal.  Jack Falconer was an
+interesting figure on the turf; his horse was worth twenty thousand
+pounds.
+
+
+Several hours later, Bulstrode, early in the salon, walked up and down
+waiting the arrival of the ladies.  He had paid downstairs a hundred
+francs for the privilege of dining in the window of the restaurant,
+because Mrs. Falconer chanced to remark that one saw the room better
+from that point.  And the head waiter even after this monstrous tip
+said if "_ces dames_" were late there would be no possibility to keep
+this gilt-edged table for them.  It was the night of the year at
+Trouville: Boldi and his Hungarians played to five hundred people in
+the dining-room.
+
+Bulstrode looked at the clock; they had yet ten minutes' grace.
+
+Extremely satisfied with himself, with Bon Jour, above all with the
+French Marquis--he felt a glow of affection for the whole French nation.
+
+"How we misjudge them!" he mused; "how we accuse them of clinging to
+their families' apron strings, of being bad colonists; call them
+hearthstone huggers, degenerates; and declare that they lack nerve and
+force to rescue themselves from degeneration!  And here without
+hesitation this young man----"  At this moment the salon door opened,
+and one of the ladies he had been expecting came in, the youngest one,
+Miss Molly Malines, in a tulle dress, an enormous white hat, a light
+scarf over her shoulders, and the remains of recent tears on her face.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode!" she exclaimed, half putting out her hand and
+drawing it back again, as she bit her lips: "I thought I should find
+Mary here; I wanted to see her first to _cry_ with! but of course it is
+you I _should_ see and not cry with!"
+
+She gave a little gasp and put her handkerchief to her eyes to his
+consternation; then to his relief controlled herself.
+
+"Maurice has just told me _everything_," she repeated the word with
+much the same desperation that De Presle-Vaulx had put into a gesture
+which to Bulstrode had signified ruin.
+
+"He's too wonderful! too _glorious_, Mr. Bulstrode, isn't he?  I loved
+him before, but I _adore_ him now!  He's glorious.  I never heard
+anything so terrible and so silly!"
+
+Bright tears sprang to brighter eyes, and she dashed them away.
+
+("She's adorable") he was obliged to acknowledge it.
+
+"Why, how could you be so cruel; yes, I will say it, so cruel, so hard,
+so brutal?"
+
+"_Brutal_?"--he fairly whispered the word in his surprise.
+
+"Why, fancy Maurice in the West, in the dreadful Western life, in that
+climate----!"
+
+"Why, it is the Garden of Eden," murmured Bulstrode.
+
+"Oh, I mean to say with cattle and cowboys."
+
+"Come," interrupted her father's friend, practically, "you don't know
+what you are talking about, Molly.  You don't talk like an American
+girl.  They've spoiled De Presle-Vaulx, and this will make a man of
+him!"
+
+Miss Malines called out in scorn:
+
+"_A man of him_!  What do you think he is?  He's the finest man I ever
+saw.  You don't know him.  Just because he has a title and his mother
+spoils him, and because he has been a little reckless in debts and
+things, you throw him over as you do all the French race without
+knowing them!"
+
+Her tears had dried and her cheeks flamed.
+
+"Why, Maurice has served three years as a common soldier in the
+Madagascar Army; and _that's_ no cinch!  Cuba's a joke to it.  He's had
+the fever and marched with it.  He's slept all night with no covering
+but the clothes he had worn for weeks.  He's eaten bread and drunk
+dirty water.  He's been a soldier three years.  The way I came to know
+him was at Dinard where he swam out into the sea to save a fisherman
+who couldn't swim, and all the town was out in the storm to welcome
+him!  They carried him up the streets in their arms--" she waited a
+minute to steady her voice--"He's been two years exploring in Abyssinia
+with a native caravan--no white man near him, he's the youngest man
+wearing the Legion d'Honneur in France.  _And you want to send him out
+to make a cowboy of him in the American West to turn him into a man_!"
+
+Mr. Bulstrode had never heard such impressive youthful scorn.  Molly
+threw back her pretty head and laughed.
+
+"Do you know many cowboys who have been three years a soldier;
+travelled through unexplored countries; written a book that was crowned
+by an academy?  Well, I don't!" she said boldly.  "Of course I like his
+title, of course I am proud of his traditions.  They're fine!  And it
+is no dishonor to love his château and his Paris hôtel, and I'd love
+his mother, too--if she'd let me.  But I adore Maurice _as he is_, and
+he's man enough for me!"
+
+The floor seemed to quiver under poor Bulstrode, who could scarcely see
+distinctly the lovely excited face as he ventured timidly:
+
+"I didn't know all these things, Molly."
+
+She was still unpitying.
+
+"Of course not!  Americans never do know.  They only _judge_.  You
+didn't think Maurice would tell you all his good points!  He doesn't
+think they are anything.  He only sees the fact that he has debts and
+that we are both poor and his family won't give their consent."
+
+Mr. Bulstrode smiled and said:
+
+"He is naturally forced to see these things, my dear child."
+
+The girl softened at his tone and said more gently:
+
+"Well, they are terrible facts, of course.  It only means that my heart
+is broken, but it doesn't mean that I will consent to your plan, or to
+his plan, Mr. Bulstrode.  I won't make him break his mother's heart and
+ruin his career for me."
+
+The gentleman came up and took her hands: his voice was very gentle:
+
+"What, then, will you do?"
+
+"Oh, wait," she said with less spirit.  "Wait until his mother
+consents, or until she dies...."  She began to hang her head.  Her
+eulogy of her lover over, only the dry facts of the present remained.
+She had no more enthusiasm with which to animate her voice.
+
+Here Mrs. Falconer and the Marquis opened the door, and started back as
+the animated picture of beauty being consoled by kindness met their
+view.
+
+"Oh, come along in!" cried the girl cheerily.  "I have just been
+ballyragging Mr. Bulstrode!"
+
+De Presle-Vaulx came eagerly forward:
+
+"Don't listen to her, Monsieur!  Molly's tired out after so much
+success."
+
+The startled benefactor looked doubtfully from her to the young man.
+
+"And you?"
+
+"Oh, I?" shrugged De Presle-Vaulx, "I'm already half cowboy!"
+
+Mary Falconer put her arm round Molly's waist, drew her to her, "and
+Molly is more than half Marquise."
+
+"Mr. Bulstrode," again cried the girl impetuously.  "_Please_ reason
+with him!  He's horribly obstinate.  You have put this dreadful idea in
+his head; now please tell him how _ridiculous_ it is.  If he goes West
+and spoils his career and breaks with his family, I'll never marry him!
+As it is, I will wait for ever!"
+
+"But my dear child!"  Mary Falconer was determined to have the whole
+thing out before them, "you don't seem to get it into your head that
+you have neither of you a sou, and Maurice can never earn any money in
+France."
+
+Miss Malines, to whom money meant that she drew on her father, the
+extravagant stockbroker whose seat even in the Stock Exchange was
+mortgaged, and who had not ten thousand dollars' capital in the
+world--lost countenance here at the cruel and vulgar introduction of
+the commodity on which life turns.  She sighed, her lips trembled, and
+she capitulated:
+
+"Oh, if that's really true ... as I suppose it is----"
+
+Bulstrode watched her, she had grown pale--she drew a deep breath, and,
+looking up, not at her lover, but at the elder man, said softly:
+
+"Why, I guess I'll have to give him quite up then."
+
+But here De Presle-Vaulx made an exclamation, and before them all took
+Molly in his arms:
+
+"No," he said tenderly, "never, never!  _That_ the last of all!  Mr.
+Bulstrode is right.  I must work for you, and I will.  We'll both go
+West together.  Couldn't you?  Wouldn't you come with me?"
+
+... "And your mother?" asked the girl.
+
+"Nothing--" De Presle-Vaulx whispered, "nothing, counts but _you_."
+
+Over their heads Bulstrode met his friend's eye, and in his were--he
+could not help it--triumph, keen delight, and in hers there was anger
+at him and tears.
+
+At this moment the waiter put his head in at the door and implored
+Monsieur to come down if he wanted the seat in the window.
+
+"Oh, we're coming!" Mrs. Falconer cried impatiently.  "Molly, there's
+some eau-de-cologne on the table.  Put it on your eyes.  Don't be long
+or we'll lose our place.  The West will keep!"
+
+She went out of the door and Bulstrode followed her.  In the hall she
+said tartly:
+
+"Well, I hope you're satisfied!  I never saw a more perfect inquisitor.
+Why didn't you live at the time of the Spanish persecution?"
+
+He ignored her scathing question:
+
+"I am satisfied," he said happily, "with both of them; they're bricks."
+
+The lady made no reply as she rustled along by his side to the elevator.
+
+From the floors below came the clear, bright sound of the Hungarian
+music in an American cake-walk and the odor of cigars and wines and the
+distinct suggestion of good things to eat came tempting their nostrils.
+
+As Bulstrode followed the brilliant woman, a sense of defeat came over
+him and with less conviction he repeated:
+
+"I _am_ satisfied, but you, my friend, are not."
+
+"Oh," shrugged Mary Falconer desperately, "you know _I've_ no right to
+think, or feel, or criticise!  I never pretend to run people's lives or
+to act the benefactor or to take the place of Fate."
+
+The light danced and sparkled on the jet in her black dress, on the
+jewels on her neck.  Under her black feather-hat her face, brilliant
+and glowing, seemed for once to be defiant to him, her handsome eyes
+were dark with displeasure.
+
+The poor fellow could never recall having caused a cloud to ruffle her
+face before in his life.  It was not like her.  Her tenderness for a
+second had gone.  He could not live without that, he knew it, what ever
+else he must forego.
+
+He said, with some sadness, "I suppose you're right: if one can buy
+even _a honeymoon_ for another couple he shouldn't lose the
+opportunity."
+
+She looked up at him quickly.  They had reached the ground floor--they
+had left the elevator and they stood side by side in the hall.  The
+lady had a very trifle softened, not very much, still he noticed the
+change and was duly grateful.
+
+"We must wait here," she said, "for the others to come down.  I can't
+let Molly go in alone, and I don't know where my husband is; I haven't
+seen him all day."
+
+Bulstrode continued spiritlessly: "Molly, if you remember, begged me to
+tell De Presle-Vaulx how 'perfectly ridiculous' my scheme for the Wild
+West is.  I will tell him this--you will coach me,--there'll be some
+pleasure in that, at least! and then I'll find out for what sum the
+Marquise de Presle-Vaulx will sell her son.  I'll buy him," he said,
+"for Molly, and of course," he brought it out quite simply, "I shall
+_dot_ the girl."
+
+And then the lady stepped back and looked at him.  He felt, before that
+she had merely swept him with her eyes; now she looked at him.  She
+cried his name out--"Jimmy!"--that was all.
+
+But in the exclamation, in the change of her mobile face, in the lovely
+gesture that her hand made, as if it would have gone to his, Bulstrode
+was forced to feel himself eminently, gloriously repaid, and it is not
+too much to say that he did.
+
+
+
+
+THE FIFTH ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+V
+
+IN WHICH HE MAKES NOBODY HAPPY AT ALL
+
+Bulstrode stood before the entrance of the Hôtel de Paris bidding his
+friends good-night.  Watching them, at least one of them, enter in
+under the shelter of the glass pavilion, he considered how much more
+lonely he was at that special moment than he could remember having been
+before.  Of course he had bidden Mary Falconer good-night a hundred
+dozen times in the course of his life, but it seemed to come with a
+more sublime significance than ever how he gave her up every time he
+said good-by and how he was himself left alone.  And yet, had Mrs.
+Falconer been asked, she would have said that she never found her
+friend more cold and more constrained.  In his correct evening dress
+with the flower she herself had given him in his buttonhole, his panama
+in his hand, he had been absorbed in her beauty, in the grace of her
+dark dress, bright with scintillating ornaments--her big feathered hat
+under which her face was more lovely, more alluring than ever; and
+nothing in his eyes told the woman what he thought and felt.
+
+She touched his arm, saying:
+
+"Look, Jimmy."
+
+"Isn't that the lovely woman we've so often remarked?  See, she's all
+alone, how curious!  She's going over to the Casino to play, I suppose.
+_What_ can have happened to the man who has been with her all this
+time?  Where is the Prince Pollona?"
+
+As Bulstrode turned his head in the direction indicated, through the
+trees passed along the figure of a slender woman, trailing her thin
+gown over the pebbles and the grass.  She disappeared in the lighted
+doorway of the Casino.
+
+"You're quite bearish to-night," Mrs. Falconer said reproachfully,
+"quite a bear.  I believe you're angry!  Dear Jimmy, you may, I
+promise, carry out all your philanthropies without my interference; I
+won't even criticise or tease.  I promise you next time you shall go
+sweetly and serenely on your foolish way!"
+
+"Oh," he got out with effort, "I believe I've suddenly grown awfully
+selfish, for I find I'm so ridiculous as only to want things for
+myself----"
+
+(When he stopped she did not help him but, instead, persisted gently
+with the wicked feminine way she had of urging him, tempting him on.)
+
+"What, then, what do you wish?  Can't you tell me?"
+
+He laughed almost roughly and said, "No, it's a secret, and I'm one of
+those unusual creatures who can keep a secret."
+
+The woman's face changed.  He saw the shadow that crossed it.  "Come,"
+she sighed, "you must bid me good-night..."
+
+And at this moment he had seen Jack Falconer emerge from a still more
+shadowy corner, a cigar between his teeth.  Drawing his wife's arm
+through his, Falconer nodded to the other man and said they had all
+better be going up.  Bulstrode noted bitterly the satisfaction on
+Falconer's bestial, indulgent face and the content that man felt with
+himself this evening, his triumph at the race's termination.  His horse
+had won the stakes and was famous, his wife had been called to-day the
+loveliest woman in Trouville, and not for the first time Bulstrode
+suffered from it, the proprietorship with which Falconer considered his
+wife.  For the smallest part of a second he fancied that the woman drew
+away, half turned away, looked toward him; and in dread that he might,
+if he met her eyes, see some look like appeal, Bulstrode avoided
+meeting her glance.  He saw them pass under the glass roof of the hôtel
+leaving him standing alone.
+
+The deserted lover waited until they had disappeared; then, turning
+abruptly, vaguely in search of human beings with whom he might exchange
+a word should he feel inclined to talk, dreading the deserted gardens
+ami finding his own rooms the dreariest prospect of all, he went into
+the Casino with the intention of waiting for the Frenchman who he
+thought more than likely would come and join him there.  The Marquis
+failing him, Bulstrode chose a place not far from the table where the
+lovely woman, that Mrs. Falconer and himself had remarked, seated
+herself before the game.
+
+Bulstrode's sense of desolation and loneliness would not leave him.  If
+his luck had been bad, the excitement of the sport might have brought
+him some sensation; but, on the contrary, he won.  "Only," he said
+humorously, as he gathered up his winnings, "only unlucky in love!"
+
+It was well on in the night when he thrust his last roll of bank notes
+into his pocket.  He had beaten the bank; he had raked up and stuffed
+away a small fortune.  As he wandered out through the deserted rooms,
+he noted, bent over the table, her head in her hand, the woman who, in
+spite of his sincere absorption in Mary Falconer, had, like a
+temptation, crossed his mind when he first came into the Casino.  No
+one disturbed her, and she had remained in this dejected posture for
+some time.  This one amongst the many women in Trouville, Bulstrode and
+his friends had remarked for several days.  She had first appeared
+alone; made a discreet _début_ on the beach, passed through the Rue de
+Paris and kept away from the more public parts of the town.  Later she
+had been joined by a man well known in the world, the Prince Pollona,
+who was travelling incognito.  The woman's beauty and manner were such
+that her actual standing was a mooted question; it had even been
+remarked that she was the princess herself incognita, but that they all
+knew to be impossible.
+
+Before the official who waited to see the last players leave the
+_salle_ could speak to her, she rose of her own accord, gathering her
+silken cloak about her, and went quickly from the gambling room.  Once
+on the stairway, however, her footsteps halted and she went slowly down
+as if reluctant to leave the shelter of the brightly lighted
+apartments.  Bulstrode following her, observed her closely; tall, very
+slender, with a fine carriage and a lovely blonde head set on the most
+graceful of necks, older than Molly and younger than Mrs. Falconer, she
+was quite as _comme il faut_.  All along she had worn a collar and rope
+of pearls which had excited Molly's enthusiasm.  To-night she was
+denuded of her jewels; her neck was bare.  Bulstrode remarked this as
+he walked behind in full view of the soft adorable _nuque_ below the
+curls of the girl's fair hair.  She trailed her dress slowly through
+the garden walks, her white figure in the darkness escaping from him a
+little as the trees made an avenue for her.  But Bulstrode distinctly
+felt that he was expected to follow.  Whether or not he might intrude
+he did not ask, as he came along, surprised however to see her actually
+stop short within a few feet of him.  Under the full light of one of
+the big lamps, she stood motionless, her arms by her side, her chin
+raised.  Now that he was quite near her he found her more lovely than
+he had even imagined.
+
+He went up directly to her and, without asking how she might take his
+interference, said: "You cannot remain here alone, Madame, the gardens
+are deserted.  What can I do for you?"
+
+As he so spoke in his kind voice the woman lifted her head and looked
+full at him; Bulstrode was surprised at her words and more particularly
+at her voice.
+
+"You--" she breathed, "you?"
+
+Taking it for granted that for some reason or other it might be him
+more than any other man, Bulstrode went on.  "You seem more or less to
+be in trouble, if I may say so.  Won't you please let me be of some
+service to you--let me at least see you out of these gloomy gardens?"
+
+But the woman, whose face had flushed, exclaimed: "Oh, no, no!  Please
+don't bother; please leave me.  I want to be alone."  And, as she
+spoke, she turned and went away from him some few steps.
+
+Jimmy Bulstrode never knew what impulse made him spring forward and
+with one sudden gesture dash from her hand what it held.  But the
+little object fell some distance away, hard down in the grass, to be
+found the next morning by the guardians of the place and considered as
+a relic of the fortunes of Casino hazard.
+
+"Heavens!" exclaimed the gentleman, and he caught in his hand the
+slender wrist from which he had just dashed the weapon.  "My good God!
+You poor child, why, why----" and he could go no further.  The woman's
+face, although moved, was singularly tranquil for the face of a woman
+on the verge of self-destruction.
+
+"Won't you leave me," she whispered and Bulstrode, gathering himself
+together, said firmly:
+
+"Leave you?  Not now, certainly, not for anything in the world.  And
+you must let me take you home."
+
+After a few moments' silence in which she bit her lip and apparently
+controlled a burst of hysterical weeping, the young woman accepted his
+offer and very lightly put her hand on his arm.  "You may, if you
+like," she consented, "take me home, as you call it.  I am staying at
+the Hôtel des Roches Noires."
+
+From the Casino gardens through the silent town without exchanging one
+word with her--for he saw she wished to be silent--Jimmy took the lady,
+as he called it, home.  Once in the big corridor of the vast hôtel,
+into whose impersonal shelter they entered as the only late comers, he
+stood for a second before bidding her good-night, whilst the porter
+eyed them, scarcely with curiosity, so used was he to late entrances of
+this kind which he imagined he fully understood.
+
+"Good-night--"  Bulstrode started and at once cut himself short, for he
+did not really intend to say it then--he had not spoken to her and he
+knew he would never leave her until at least he was sure she would not
+take her life before the next morning.
+
+The girl extended her hand, her beautiful face was gray.  "Will you
+not," she asked, "come up with me to my drawing-room?  I am quite
+alone."
+
+Bulstrode bowed and without hesitation followed her up the stairs to
+the conventional suite of hôtel rooms, where, in the little salon,
+trunks stood about in the evident indications of hasty packing.
+
+The girl threw her gloves, her handkerchief and her soft silken cloak
+on the table.  She then seated herself in a corner of the sofa by an
+open dressing-bag and Bulstrode, at her invitation, took a chair
+opposite.  He scarcely knew how to begin his conversation with her, but
+he determined at once to go toward what he believed to be the most
+crying need.
+
+"You lost to-night," he said.  "I saw it.  As it happened, I was lucky.
+I have no need of money, none."  He had drawn from his pocket piles of
+louis; he took out from his wallet a roll of notes.
+
+He saw, too, as well as the look of passion and admiration, that her
+face was familiar, at least that there was about it something that
+suggested remembrance.
+
+"This," she said, "is a fortune!"  Her accent was British and her voice
+very soft and sweet.  "It is quite a large fortune, isn't it?  My debts
+here are small.  I have not fifty pounds in the world," she said
+smiling, "I work for my living, too.  I have been extravagant, for I
+had really made a lot of money, but lately I've thrown everything away.
+Yesterday my pearls were sold, and my jewels went last week; the races
+and the Casino did the rest!  This would make me quite rich."
+
+"Work for her living!" Bulstrode thought, with a pang as he looked at
+her.  "Heavens, poor dear!"  A thousand questions came to his lips, but
+he asked her none.  He was mastering the feelings her personality, her
+trouble, and the night, aroused.  He also decided to go at once, while
+there was still time.
+
+"It is very droll that this money should have come from _you;_" she
+repeated "from you," with the insistence on the pronoun that he had
+before remarked as strange.  "Even now you don't know me, do you?
+Don't you know who I am?"
+
+"No," Bulstrode wondered, "and yet I have certainly seen you before,
+but save as I have noticed and admired you here, I don't _think_ I know
+you.  Should I?"
+
+"You _have_ seen me then here?" she caught delighted, "you have
+actually noticed me?  You said 'admire'; did you perhaps find something
+in me to like?"
+
+"Who," he said with sincerity, "could help himself!  Of course I've
+seen you and remarked you with your friend."
+
+Here she bit her lip and put up her hand.  "Oh, please," she frowned,
+"Oh, please!"
+
+Bulstrode, surprised at her accents of distress, murmured an excuse and
+said he was much at fault, he should remember.  But here the girl
+smiled.  "Well, it is not exactly a duty to know me; my name is not
+quite unknown.  I play in 'The Shining Lights Company,' 'The Warren
+Company,' I am Felicia Warren--_now_, haven't you seen me play!"
+
+He was sorry, very, very sorry that he had not!  Oh, but he knew her
+name and her success; they were famous.  He wished he could have
+assured her that he had admired her before the footlights ...!
+
+Felicia Warren's eyes strayed down at the table on which the money was
+so alluringly spread.
+
+"I've been touring in Australia and the Colonies, still I go now and
+then to the Continent, though I am almost always in London."  She
+paused, then regarded him fully with her great blue eyes.  "Don't you
+remember, Mr. Bulstrode, a great many years ago when you took a
+shooting-box in Glousceshire?  Don't you remember...?"
+
+Staring at her, trying to place the image which was now taking form, he
+did; he _did_ remember it and she?
+
+"There was a mill there on the place.  Rugby Doan was the miller, he is
+the miller still."  Didn't Mr. Bulstrode remember that Doan had a
+daughter?  She had been fifteen years old then, she had ambitions, she
+was altogether a ridiculous and silly little thing; didn't he remember?
+
+Bulstrode was silent.
+
+The gentleman, Mr. Bulstrode, took a strong liking to Doan; he gave him
+the money to educate his daughter.  Oh, dear me, such a generous lot of
+money!  Then, as the girl was extraordinarily silly (she had ambitions)
+she went on the stage.  Her father never forgave her; poor father!  She
+had never seen him since.  "Mr. Bulstrode, don't you remember Felicia
+Doan?--I am the miller's daughter."
+
+Bulstrode extended his hand.  He wanted to say: "My poor child, my poor
+little girl," but Miss Warren's dignity forbade it.  "No wonder your
+face was familiar," he said quietly; "no wonder!  How I wish I might
+have seen you play, but we must do something to make your father look
+at things in a reasonable way.  What can we do?"
+
+The girl shook her head.  "Nothing" she said absently, "oh, nothing.
+You know what an English yeoman is! or perhaps you don't!  My greatest
+kindness is to keep away from the Mill on the Rose" ...
+
+But Felicia Warren was not thinking of Glousceshire or of her father.
+Still looking down at the money on the table, not even toward her
+newly-found friend, she went on, "It is not half as curious, our
+meeting here, as one might think.  I knew you were here when I came and
+I have watched you every day with--with your friend."  A slight
+expression of amusement crossed her face as, looking up, she caught his
+puzzled expression.  "Ah, you wonder about it!" she laughed gently.
+Coming a little nearer to him, she went on: "You see, you have been my
+benefactor, haven't you?"
+
+(Bulstrode wondered in just how far he _had_ been beneficent!)  "It's
+natural I should remember you with gratitude, isn't it?  Thanks to you
+I have made my name."  Her pride was touching.  "You've made it
+possible for me to know the world, to know life and to realize my
+career.  And now," she emphasized, "you've come to save my life and
+afterward give me a little fortune."  Here she again pointed to the
+money.  "My father took your money for years, Mr. Bulstrode, but _this,
+this_ must all go back.  You must take it back soon--not that it could
+really tempt me, but it hurts me to see it there."
+
+Bulstrode, more wretched than he had yet been in his philanthropic
+failures stared at her helplessly.  This blind beneficence, this gift
+made to the miller in a moment of enthusiasm had produced--how could he
+otherwise believe--fatal results?  Here was this delicate creature in
+the fastest place in Europe, deserted by a man who had brought her
+here--on the verge of suicide.
+
+Whilst speaking, Felicia Warren gathered up the gold and notes and she
+was thrusting the money into his hand.
+
+"Please, please be reasonable," he pleaded.  "You must let me help you.
+There isn't any question of delicacy in the situation where you find
+yourself to-night.  If ever a man should be a woman's friend, I should
+be that friend to you, and you must let me.  Don't refuse.  Money is
+such a little thing, such a stupid little thing."
+
+Miss Warren shook her head obstinately.  "Oh, that depends!  I've
+worked so hard that money often seems to me everything.  Indeed, I
+thought so to-night when I had not a sou!  I shall think so to-morrow
+when they seize my trunks for the hôtel bill."
+
+"Seize your trunks!" he exclaimed.  "Why--you don't mean to say----?"
+
+The actress blushed crimson.  "Oh, of course you thought otherwise,"
+she said, throwing up her pretty head.  "I pay for my own livelihood,
+Mr. Bulstrode," she told him proudly, "I pay for _everything_ I have
+and wear and eat and do.  Don't feel badly at misunderstanding," she
+comforted him sweetly--"You have nothing to apologize for.  Why should
+you or anyone think otherwise?  But I don't care in the least what
+people say or think; that is, _I only care what one person says_."
+
+With some of his gold in her palm and some of his bills in her hands,
+Felicia Warren put both her hands on Bulstrode's arm.  "No," she said
+softly, "_I only care what one person thinks_.  Can't you see that you
+mustn't give me this?"
+
+"No," he persisted doggedly, charmed by her beyond his reason and angry
+to find that she would not let him help her in the way he wished, "I do
+_not_ see!  You must let me help you, you shall not be driven to
+desperation."
+
+"Driven to desperation!" her expression seemed to say.  Yes, so she had
+been, but not through financial anxieties.
+
+"Why, I had rather starve than take your money.  I could far sooner
+have taken it from poor Pollona; and he left me so dreadfully angry
+this morning."
+
+For a second neither spoke.  He saw the soft mobile face touched to its
+finest.  Felicia's eyes were violet and large, and their expression at
+the moment pierced him with its appeal.
+
+"Don't you see?" she whispered.  Her voice broke here.  Her hands
+trembled on his arm, some of the gold rattled on the floor and rolled
+under the divan.  She swayed and Bulstrode caught her.
+
+"... Ever since you came to the mill," she whispered,
+"ever--since--you--came--to--the--mill."
+
+Before Bulstrode had time to realize what she said, or the fact that
+his arm was about her, she had rushed across the room, thrown open the
+window and gone out on the balcony.  Left alone with what her words
+implied, Bulstrode watched her go.
+
+The clock on the mantel pointed to three and through the open window
+came the long, rushing sound of the sea on the beach.  The day was
+breaking and Bulstrode could see the white figure of Felicia Warren
+between the lighted room and the dawn.
+
+He told himself that there was no reason why he should look upon her as
+anything but an adventuress--and a very clever one--a very dangerous
+one.  But, at all events, there _was_ no doubt that she was Felicia
+Doan.  She refused his money, and she told him that she loved him.  But
+Jimmy Bulstrode, man of the world as he was, did not reason at all
+along those lines.  Whether because he was vain, as most men are, or
+because he was susceptible as he always told himself he was, he
+believed what she said.  More than once during the week at Trouville,
+when she should have been absorbed in Polonna, Bulstrode had caught her
+eyes fastened upon himself and as soon as she had met his own she had
+turned hers away.  He had no difficulty now in recalling the Mill on
+the Rose, or the lovely bit of country where his shooting-box had held
+him captive for nearly the whole hunting season.  Nor had he any
+difficulty in recalling the miller and his pretty daughter.  Felicia
+even then had been a wonder of good looks, and very intelligent and
+mature.  He could even see her as a child more plainly than he could
+recall the woman who had just left him.  She had been a pretty,
+romantic girl and--she had deeply charmed him.  He had walked with her
+under the willows; he had told her many things; he had gone boating
+with her on the Rose; he had tramped with her along the English lanes.
+Of course he had been wrong.  He had known it at the time--he had known
+it.  And perhaps one reason why he never reverted willingly to the days
+spent with the girl was because his conscience had not left him free.
+The money given to Doan, Bulstrode had always felt, was a sort of
+recompense for hours of pleasure to which he had no right.  Even at the
+time he had feared that he had disturbed the girl's peace, and because
+he had not wished to disturb his own, he had given up his lease and
+left the place.  Twelve years!  Well, they had altered her enormously,
+and her life had altered her and her experiences, and she was a very
+charming creature.  She was, in a measure, his very own work--almost
+his creation.  He had helped her to change her station, to alter her
+life.  What had she become?
+
+Bulstrode's reflections consumed twenty minutes by the clock.  He had
+smoked a cigarette and walked up and down the deserted room, passing
+many times the table where his gold lay scattered.
+
+Finally--he did not dare to trust himself to go out to her--he called
+her name, Felicia Warren's name, gently, and she came directly in.
+
+Whilst alone on the balcony she had wept.  Bulstrode could see the
+trace on her cheeks and she was paler even than when he had struck the
+pistol from her hand in the gardens of the Casino.  She came over to
+where he stood and said:
+
+"It's not a ruse, Mr. Bulstrode.  Girls like me always have ideals.  It
+is fame with some, money with others, dress and a social craze for a
+lot of them.  But with me, ever since you came it has been
+YOU--everything you said to me twelve years ago I have remembered.
+Silly as it seems, I could almost tell the very words.  I have seen a
+lot of men since, too many," she said, "and known them too well.  But I
+have never seen anybody like you."
+
+Bulstrode tried to stop her.
+
+"But no," she pleaded, "let me go on.  I've dreamed I might grow great,
+and that some day you would see me play and that I should play so well
+that you would go crazy about me!  I have thought this really, and I
+have lived for it, really--until--until----"
+
+As he did not question her or interrupt, she went on:
+
+"I said it was an ideal.  Thinking of you and what I'd like to grow for
+you kept me, in spite of everything--and I fancy you know in my
+profession what that means--good."
+
+Here Felicia Warren met his eyes frankly with the same look of entire
+innocence with which she might have met his eyes under the willows near
+her father's mill.
+
+"I've been so horribly afraid that when you _did_ come there might be
+heaps of things you would not like that I have been awfully hard on
+myself, awfully!"
+
+She was lacing and unlacing her slender fingers as she talked.
+
+"I went to Paris this spring because I saw that you were there, and
+after passing you several times in the Bois and seeing that as far as I
+could judge you were just the same as you had been, I took a new
+courage hoping, waiting, for you, and being the best I knew.  It seems
+awfully queer to hear a woman talk like this to a man," she understood
+it herself--"but you see I am used to speaking in public and I suppose
+it is easier for me than for most women."
+
+Bulstrode, more eager than anything else to know what her life had
+really been, surprised and incredulous at everything she said, broke in
+here:
+
+"But this--this man?"
+
+"Oh, Pollona," she replied, "has been there for years, for years.  He
+has loved me ever since I first made my _début_ and he follows me
+everywhere like a dog.  I have never looked at any of them, until this
+week."
+
+With a sigh as if she renounced all her dreams, she said: "I grew tired
+of my romantic folly.  I was ill and nervous and could not play any
+more, and that was dreadful.  So, when Pollona came to me in Paris this
+spring, I gave him a sort of promise.  I told him that I was going to
+Trouville for the Grande Semaine, that I would think things over and
+that I would send him word."
+
+She picked up her handkerchief from the table where it lay beside her
+gloves and her cloak and twisted the delicate object in her hands,
+whose whiteness and transparency Bulstrode remarked.  They were clever
+hands, and showed her temperament and showed also singular breeding for
+one born in the state of life from which she had come.
+
+"Well," she said shortly, "as you have seen, I gave in--I gave in at
+last."
+
+"Why," Bulstrode asked abruptly, "did he leave you?"
+
+But instead of answering him, the girl said: "But you don't ask me why
+I sent for him to come?"
+
+He was silent.
+
+Here she hid her face and through her fingers he could see the red rise
+all along her cheek.  Her attitude, and more what she implied than what
+she said, and what he thought and feared, made the situation too much
+for him.  With a slight exclamation he put his arm about her and drew
+her to him.  As she rested against him he could feel her relax, hear
+her sigh deeply.  But, as he bent over her, she besought him to let her
+go, to set her free, and he obeyed at once.
+
+"There," she said, "don't do that again--don't!  Pollona left me
+because he was jealous of you."
+
+But at this, in sheer unbelief, her hearer exclaimed: "Oh, my dear
+girl!"
+
+"Oh, yes," she nodded, "when he found that I did not love him, that I
+could never love him, he forced me to tell him the truth.  Oh, don't be
+afraid," she said, as though she anticipated his anger, "you are in no
+wise connected with it.  He thinks of me as a romantic, foolish girl.
+He has laughed at me, tried to shake my faith, to destroy my ideal, but
+at least he was honest enough to believe me; and that is all I asked of
+him."
+
+Not for a moment did Bulstrode feel that she was weaving a web for him.
+There was something about her so sincere and simple, she was so fragile
+and fine and fair, there was so much of distinction in all she did and
+said that it put her well nigh, one might say touchingly, apart from
+the class to which she belonged.  Her art and her knocking about,
+instead of coarsening her, had refined her.  She looked like a bit of
+ivory, worn by experience, and struggle, to a fine polish; there was a
+brilliance about her and he understood and felt, he instinctively saw
+and knew, that she was unspoiled.
+
+It took him some half second to pull himself together.  Then to turn
+her thoughts from him, his from her, if he might, he questioned:
+
+"What sort of a man is Prince Pollona?"
+
+"Oh," she cried warmly, "the best! a kind, good, honorable friend.  He
+deserves something better than the horrors I have put him through, poor
+dear!"
+
+"He seemed very devoted to you," Bulstrode said, "if one could judge."
+
+Not without pride she admitted that he was, and that the Prince had
+always wanted to marry her.  "I might have married him," she repeated,
+"easily a score of times.  But how it appears to interest you----" she
+said jealously.
+
+"Only as he interests you," replied Bulstrode, "and what you tell me is
+a great satisfaction.  To be the Princess Pollona is an honor that many
+women would be glad to have conferred upon them."  Felicia Warren's
+good looks were undeniable, her _genre_ was exquisite, and Bulstrode,
+again with no effort, believed all she said.  Princes had married far
+less royal-looking women, of far more humble antecedents than Felicia
+Warren.
+
+"Oh, his rank didn't dazzle me," she murmured absently, "they seem all
+alike, and when they find out that I am not a certain kind they ask me
+to marry them...  But if I could only get back to the Mill on the Rose,
+Mr. Bulstrode!  If I might again see it as I used, if I could see you
+there as I used to see you--walk by your side; row with you on the
+river; if I could hear the wheel again as I used to hear it, then"--her
+voice was delicious, a very note of the river of which she spoke.  Oh,
+she must act well, there was no doubt about that; no wonder she had
+been a success: "If I might walk there with you--titles, even my art
+and all the rest"--she did not apparently dare to look at him as she
+spoke, but fixed her eyes across the room as if she saw back twelve
+years into ----shire ... "if I could _only, only_ go back again with
+you!"
+
+In spite of himself, carried away by her voice, Bulstrode said:
+
+"You shall, you shall go back with me!"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," she gave a little cry and caught his hand,
+steadying herself by the act.
+
+"Wait," he murmured, "wait, let me think it all out."  And, as she had
+done, Bulstrode walked over to the window, to the balcony where the
+fresh air met his face, where the breath from the sea fanned him,
+blended with the scent of the meadow.  Before Bulstrode the first
+reflection of the morning lay like silver on the sea.
+
+When he finally went back into the room, Felicia Warren had not moved.
+Just as he left her, she sat, deep back into the divan, leaning on her
+hand, with something like the glory of a dream on her face.  Standing
+in front of her, he said slowly:
+
+"I'm entirely free.  No one in the world depends upon me.  I have no
+tie, or bond to my life.  I have freedom and money.  So far--if what
+you say is all true, don't start so, for I believe it, every word--so
+far, I have spoiled your life."
+
+But the girl shook her head.
+
+"Oh, no, _you haven't_," she assured him.  "We make our own lives, I
+expect, and I told you that I could remember everything you ever said
+to me in the past--you never lied to me, and you were never anything
+but kind and dear.  I've been a fool, a fool!"
+
+Sitting there in her fragile evening dress, its ruffles torn where they
+had trailed across the pebbles in the street, the disorder of the room
+around her, its evidence of a homeless, wandering life, she seemed like
+a bit of flotsam that, no matter from what ship it had been blown, had
+at last drifted along the shore to his feet.  Unhappy and deserted, she
+reached the very tenderest part of Bulstrode's nature.  Cost him what
+it would, he must save her.
+
+But, as though the girl, with an instinctive fineness divined, she rose
+and going over to him very gently, laid her hand on his shoulder:
+
+"You must go _now_: that is what I ask you to do.  I have seemed, and
+indeed I have thrown myself upon your mercy; but, in reality, I don't
+do any such thing.  You will soon forget me, as you have been able to
+do all these years.  The table is full of your money.  I am poor, and
+yet I don't take it.  Doesn't _that_ prove a little my good faith?
+Doesn't it?  Only think of me as the most romantic dreamer you ever
+saw, and of nothing more.  Oh, _no_," she breathed softly, "_no_, a
+thousand times...!
+
+"I've answered your question before you've asked it!  No, I couldn't;
+no woman who wants love is content with pity.  I would rather starve
+than take money from you although I have lived on your money for years.
+I would rather be unhappy than take what you could offer me for love.
+You mustn't speak; you mustn't ask me.  The temptation is very great,
+you know, and it _might_ wreck me.  No, Mr. Bulstrode, and the reason
+why I say it is because I've seen."
+
+"'I've seen?'" he repeated her words.  "You've seen, but what do you
+mean--what have you seen?"
+
+"I'm going to tell you why I sent for Prince Pollona, although you
+don't ask me.  I came to Trouville alone.  I saw you; I've watched you
+with your friends."  Bulstrode accepted quietly.  "The two young people
+are engaged to be married and the other two are husband and
+wife--well...?"
+
+A spasm of pain crossed Felicia Warren's face and she put what she had
+to say with singular delicacy for an actress who had risen from the
+people.
+
+"I know," she said, "I understand, but when I saw you, I knew that
+there was no hope for any other woman who loved you--and I gave you up
+then.  I sent for Pollona."
+
+The introduction of even so little into the room as the suggestion of
+the woman he loved, startled Bulstrode as nothing else under the
+circumstances could have done.  It struck him like a lash.  He was
+disenchanted, and he more quietly considered the girl whose confession
+and whose beauty had made him nearly disloyal.
+
+Felicia Warren, as though she took it in her own hands and, mistress of
+herself, knew how much she could take and what she could deny herself,
+laid her hand on his arm.
+
+"You can do nothing at all, just as you have always done--and I--I can
+learn to forget.  But I have refused your money to-night," she said
+piteously, "haven't I? and I am penniless; I have refused more too;
+perhaps what no woman who loves could refuse as well.  Don't you think
+that there is something due me?  Answer me this?  Tell me.  You _do_
+love her, you _do_?"
+
+As she leaned against him, the years seemed to fall away and to leave
+her a girl again, nothing more than a child he had known.  He took her
+face between his hands and looked into it as one might look into a
+well.  He saw nothing but his own reflection there.
+
+"God knows," he said deeply, "I could not willingly pain a living
+creature, and to think that I should have made you suffer, have made a
+woman suffer for years.  Let me do all I can, my dear, let me--let me!"
+
+"You love her?" she persisted.
+
+His hands dropped to his side.  "With all my soul," he said, "with all
+my soul!"  He thought she would sink to the floor, but instead she
+caught fast hold of the table on which his money lay.  She leaned on it
+heavily, refusing his aid.  He took one of the girl's cold hands in his.
+
+"Listen, listen!  Let me say a word.  How do you think it makes a man
+feel to hear what you have told me to-night? to see you as you are, to
+grow to know you in such a short--in such a terrible way, and in a few
+hours to grow to know you so well, to find you dear, desirable, and
+then to leave you, as you tell me I must leave you.  I can't do it; I
+have never been so miserable in my life, and if I find I am entirely
+helpless to serve you I can never get over the regret."
+
+Felicia Warren turned a little.
+
+"I have found you near disaster," Bulstrode urged, "I must and will see
+you to the shore.  If you utterly refuse to let me take care of you as
+I can and will, will you then," he hesitated, then brought it
+out--"Will _you marry_ Prince Pollona?"
+
+She drew from him with a cry, and by what he said she seemed to have
+gained sudden strength.
+
+"My God!" she breathed, "You ask me _that_?  Oh, it proves, it proves
+how less than nothing I am..."
+
+Bulstrode saw he could not, must not undeceive her.
+
+"If you wish me to do _that_," she cried.  "Oh, how dreadfully, how
+cruelly, it breaks my dream!"
+
+Bulstrode said authoritatively, "Listen! listen for one moment."
+
+The eyes of the girl were dark with defiance; she brushed her hair off
+her brow with the back of her hand and stared straight before her.
+
+"--Otherwise," said Bulstrode, "I will remain here; I shall not leave
+these rooms till morning and you will then be forced to marry me, and
+since you think as you do, since I have told you my secret, ruin
+perhaps three lives."
+
+He had her at bay, and for a brief second, he thought she would accept
+his menace.  But then in a sudden her anger vanished and her face
+softened.
+
+"You know," she said, "that, loving you as I do, whatever you tell me
+to do, I must.  But let me go on with my career.  Let me work, let me
+work, and be free!"
+
+He said decidedly, "No!  You must be protected from yourself; you must
+have some one with you who will take care of you as I cannot do.  You
+must do this for me.  Is Pollona distasteful to you?" he pursued, "do
+you _hate_ him?"
+
+She made an indifferent shrug of her shoulders.
+
+Bulstrode was watching her face keenly, and after a second said, "No,
+you do not hate him.  You sent for him to come to you here.  He was the
+one to whom you turned, Felicia; turn to him now."
+
+As she wavered and hesitated, he insisted, coming close to her:
+
+"You have an ideal, you told me--well we can't get on without them.
+Your ideal has helped you, hasn't it?  It seems pretty well to have
+stood by you.  I have one too, you must understand that, and I ask you
+to help me to keep it secret now."
+
+"Why, what do you mean?" she questioned breathlessly.
+
+"I mean," he said gravely, "that I am a very lonely man.  My days are
+absolutely desolate excepting for those things that I can put into
+them.  I have nothing in my life and I am not meant for such a lot.  I
+am not meant for that!  Such an existence has bitter temptations for
+every man, and although I have never seen you before, possibly my fate
+and Pollona's rest to-night with you."
+
+Felicia Warren turned her great eyes with a sort of wonder to him.
+They rested on him with a tenderness that he could not long have borne.
+
+"You must not remain unmarried," he said, "you must not."
+
+Without answering him she went slowly over to her little desk.  She
+wrote a few seconds there and came back and handed to him a little slip
+of paper.
+
+"When the telegraph office opens to-day, will you send this dispatch
+for me?  It will fetch Prince Pollona to me no matter where he may be.
+I have asked him to meet me in Paris and I will take the morning train
+from here myself."
+
+She turned to the table on which his money lay and taking a roll of
+notes said, "I will pay up everything I owe here.  I think I have given
+you every proof, every proof."
+
+Bulstrode made no advance towards her.  He saw how she struggled with
+her emotion.  He let her get herself in hand.  Finally, with more
+composure, she spoke again:
+
+"I play next month in London.  Will you come to see me play?"
+
+"Oh, many times."
+
+"No," Felicia Warren murmured, "only once, and after that I shall never
+see you again."
+
+He would have protested, but she repeated, "never again," with such
+intensity that he bowed his head and he found that her decision brought
+a pang whose sharpness he wondered would last how long.
+
+He had started, with her last words, toward the door and she followed
+him over to it.  There, detaining him by her hand, she asked softly:
+"Does she, too, love you as much as this?"
+
+Bulstrode hesitated; then said, "I do not know."
+
+"Not know?" cried the girl, "you don't know?"
+
+It was with the greatest difficulty that Bulstrode could at any time
+bring to his lips even the name of the woman he loved.  At this moment
+the vision of her as he had seen her lately on her husband's arm going
+in under the pavilion of the hôtel crossed his mind with a cruel
+despair and cruel disgust.  A sense of his solitude, of his defrauded
+life, rushed over him as he looked into the eyes of this woman who
+loved him.
+
+"No," he said intensely, "I do not know, I do not know.  I have a code
+of honor a million years old, but I live up to it.  She is a wife, I
+have never told her that I love her."
+
+The girl's incredulity and surprise were great.  It showed in the smile
+which, something like happiness, crossed her lips.  She drew a long
+breath; she held his eyes with hers, then she laid both her arms around
+his neck and Bulstrode bent and kissed her.  He held her for one moment
+and his heart, if it beat for another woman, beat hard and fast and its
+pulse ran through her own.  Then Felicia heard the door close and the
+footsteps of the man died away.
+
+It was seven o'clock when Bulstrode found himself out in the streets.
+The fresh air in a keen, salt wind poured over him.  Down on the beach,
+for a couple of francs he bribed an attendant to open a bath-house for
+him, and a few moments later, shivering a little in the keen air, he
+could have been seen running down to the sea, and in a few moments more
+his strong swift strokes had carried him far out into the waters which
+the summer sun even at this early hour was fast turning into blue.
+
+
+When Jimmy came to himself, he found that without either seeing Mrs.
+Falconer again or having even bidden a decent good-bye or godspeed to
+his fiancée, he was back again in Paris.  He had run away.  Well, that
+wasn't any new thing, he was always at it.  Paris, in the month of
+August, gave him a hot, desolate welcome, and it was with difficulty
+that he could find a lawyer who would help him down to bedrock and put
+in motion the business of winding up the affairs of Molly and her
+Marquis.
+
+De Presle-Vaulx came to town and found his champion there and brought
+him many messages from the ladies as well as a letter which Bulstrode
+put in his pocket to read down in the country at the château of
+Vaulxgoron in the seclusion of his own room.
+
+Bulstrode played the part of the "American Uncle" to perfection.  He
+let the old Marquis beat him at backgammon; he wandered all over the
+property with the Marquise.  He bought the young man for Molly Malines
+and closed up his beneficent affairs in a very decent manner indeed,
+but on the night when Mrs. Falconer and Miss Malines should have
+arrived at the château, Bulstrode ran away again.  From then on he
+became a wandering Jew.  He ran up to Norway, fished a little, then
+took a motor and some people, who did not know any one whom he had ever
+known, and drove them through Italy.  He continued to travel a little
+longer, working his way northward until finally--so he put it--dusty as
+"Dusty Dog Dingo," tired as "Tired Dog Dingo," Bulstrode found himself
+in London, drew a deep breath and capitulated.
+
+
+
+
+THE SIXTH ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+VI
+
+IN WHICH HE DISCARDS A KNAVE AND SAVES A QUEEN
+
+The morning he left for Westboro' Castle, Bulstrode remembers as being
+the most beautiful of days; it came to him like a golden gift of
+unrivalled loveliness as it broke and showered sunlight over England.
+
+"The very crannies of the island," he smiled at his own conceit, "must
+filter out this gold to the sea."
+
+England lay like a viking's cup full to the brim of sunlight;
+especially entrancing because unusual in the British calendar, and
+enchanting to the American gentleman because it absolutely accorded
+with his own mood.
+
+It was middle November, and yet there was not--so it seemed as one
+looked at yellow and copper luxuriance--a leaf lost from the suave
+harmony of the trees.  Farms, tiled and thatched, basked in summery
+warmth, forest, hedge and copse, full-foliaged and abundant, shone out
+in copper and bronze, and the air's stillness, the patient
+tranquillity, enfolding the land, made it seem expectantly to wait for
+some sudden wind that should ultimately cast devastation through the
+forests.
+
+On leaving his ship at Plymouth the day before, Bulstrode found amongst
+other letters in his mail the Duke of Westboro's invitation for a
+week's shooting in the west of England: "There were sure to be heaps of
+people Jimmy would know"--and Bulstrode eagerly read the subjoined list
+of names until he saw in a flash the name of the One Woman in the
+World.  He at once telegraphed his acceptance.
+
+The following afternoon he threw his evening papers and overcoat into a
+first-class carriage whilst the guard placed his valise and
+dressing-case in the rack.
+
+As there had been several minutes to starting time, he had not
+immediately taken his seat, but had stood smoking by the side of his
+carriage.  He might, and did, doubtless, pass with others of the well
+set-up, well-looking men travelling on that day, for an Englishman, but
+closer observation showed his attire to be distinguished by that
+personal note which marks the cosmopolitan whose taste has been more or
+less tempted by certain fantasies of other countries.  Bulstrode's
+clothes were brown, his gloves, cravat, and boots all in the same color
+scheme--one mentions a man's dress only on rare occasions, as on this
+certain day one has been led to mention the weather.  That a man is
+perfectly turned out should, like the weather, be taken for granted.
+Bulstrode on this day, travelling as he was towards a goal, towards the
+one person he wanted above all to see, had spent some unusual thought
+on his toilet.  At all events, on passing a florist's in Piccadilly,
+after giving his order for flowers to be boxed and expressed to
+Westboro', he had selected a tiny reddish-brown chrysanthemum which now
+covered the button-hole of his coat's lapel; it created a distinctive
+scheme of color.  In point of fact it caught the eye of the lady who,
+hurrying from the waiting-room towards the Westboro' express, caught
+sight of the American and started.  It appeared as if she would speak
+to him, half advanced, thought better of it, and said to the guard, who
+was about to fasten a placard on the window of a carriage:
+
+"Please---just a second--won't you, guard?"
+
+The bell rang, and Bulstrode found himself helping the lady into his
+own compartment.  The guard shut the door, which closed with the
+customary soft thick sound of a lock setting, and pasted over the
+window the exclusive and forbidding paper--RESERVED.
+
+Then it was in his corner by the window, once chimney pots and suburbs
+left behind, that the traveller to Westboro' watched the landscape with
+the pale, transparent smoke from the little farms floating like veils
+across the golden atmosphere; the slow winding streams between
+low-bushed, rosy shores, and red-tinged thickets; the flocks of rooks
+across fields long harvested: the flocks of sheep on the gently
+swelling downs.
+
+"England, England," he murmured, as if it were a refrain in whose
+melody he found much charm, as if his traditions of insular forebears
+might in some way be recalled in the word, as if it spoke more than a
+chance traveller's appreciation for the melodious countryside.
+
+He had letters, read them, and put his correspondence aside, then
+comfortably settling himself in his corner, began to construct for
+himself a picture of Westboro', whose lines and architecture he knew
+from photographs, although he had never been there.  It was agreeable
+to him as he mused to fancy himself for the first time with Mrs.
+Falconer in England, in the country they preferred to all the others in
+the Old World.  They were in sympathy with English life and manners,
+and here, if (oh, of course, a world of "ifs")--here no doubt they
+would both choose to live when abroad, were there any choice for them
+of mutual life.
+
+Westboro' is Elizabethan and of vast proportions.  The house would
+naturally be very full--how much of the time would they discover for
+themselves?  There would decidedly be occasions.  Mary Falconer did not
+hunt, and although Jimmy Bulstrode could recall having postulated that
+"there are only two real occupations for a real man--to kill and to
+love," he also knew what precedence he himself gave, and how little the
+sportsmen of Westboro' would have cause to fear his concurrence if by
+lucky chance in more or less of solitude he should find his lady there.
+
+It was months since he had seen Mrs. Falconer--months.  It had been a
+long exile.  Each time that he started out to run away, it was just
+that--running away--it was with a curious wonder whether or not on his
+return he should not find a change.  Time and absence--above all, time,
+worked extraordinary infidelities in other people.  Why should they two
+believe themselves immune?  The long months might have altered _her_.
+The mischief was yet to be seen.  But when in the list of noble names
+he had in his hand, his eyes fell upon the single prefix--_Mrs._--and
+found it followed by _The Name_, if he had not sincerely known before,
+his pulse at sight of the written words told Jimmy that he had not, at
+all events, changed!
+
+Thinking at this point to light a cigarette, he became at the second
+mindful of the other passenger in his carriage and that they were
+alone.  As he looked across towards the lady who had unwound her dark
+veil, he observed that she was herself smoking, holding the cigarette
+in her hand as with head turned from him she scanned the landscape
+through the window of the compartment.
+
+He saw with a little start of pleasure what a delight she gave to the
+eye, tastefully dressed as she too was, in leaf brown from head to
+foot, with the slightest indication of forest green at buttons and hem
+of her dress.  Her hat, with its drooping feathers, fell rather low
+over her wonderful hair, bronze in its reflections.  Indeed, the lady
+blended well with the November landscape, and as she apparently was not
+conscious of her companion, he enjoyed the harmonious note she made to
+the full.
+
+"What scope," he mused, "what scope they all have--and how prettily
+they most of them know it!  So just to sit and be a thing of beauty;
+with head half-drooping, and eyelash meditative, one hand ungloved, and
+such a perfectly lovely hand...!  (It held the half-smoked cigarette,
+but his taste was not offended.)  He thought her a whim too debonnaire
+for a Parisian of the best world, and of _that_ she most distinctly
+was--Austrian more than likely.  Every woman has her history--only when
+she is part of several has she a past.  What had this woman so to
+meditate upon?  She turned and he met her eyes.
+
+"You have naturally waited for me to speak first," she said with a
+gracious gesture of her bare hand.  "And _I_ was waiting till you
+should have finished your letters!  I, too, have wanted to think."
+
+Her familiar address, perfectly courteous and made in a pleasant voice,
+with a very slight accent, was a surprise to her companion, who
+mechanically lifted his hat as he bowed to her across the narrow
+distance between their seats.
+
+"The guard," she smiled, "came very near putting the placard on the
+other window!  But I think we are now quite sure to be alone!"  She
+pointed to the seat opposite.  "Sit there," she more commanded than
+permitted, "we can talk better and I can watch your kind face, which
+always looks as if you understood--and I shall be able to please you
+better--perhaps to make you not unkind to me."
+
+He obeyed, taking the place indicated without hesitation, and as he sat
+facing her, he saw her to be one of the most beautiful women he had
+ever seen.  There was at once something dazzling about her--and at the
+same time familiar...  He had surely met her, and not long ago.  Where?
+And how stupid of him to have forgotten!  Or had he only seen her
+photograph and remarked her as a celebrity whose type of looks had
+pleased him?  But no, she knew him: that was clear.  He met her
+friendly eyes, where liking was evident as well as the suggestion of
+something akin to an appeal.  Bulstrode was greatly intrigued.
+
+"Unkind?" he repeated vaguely.  "But why should you think that?  Please
+me?"--and his graciousness did not fall short of her own--"But why
+should you...?"
+
+"Oh, true," she interrupted him, "quite true.  There is no reason
+why--" and she made a rather petulant gesture--"yet every woman wants
+to please, and none of us relishes being judged.  Never mind, however,
+don't think of me as a _person_--just let me talk to you frankly, be
+myself for once with someone if I can."
+
+Jimmy Bulstrode gathered himself together and sat back in his corner.
+She was very lovely at it, this being herself.  Gallantry would not let
+him bluntly tell her that she had made a mistake.  A second more would
+clear the matter and would be quite soon enough, for him at least, to
+find that they were total strangers.  Unless, indeed, he had met her
+and forgotten it.  They had possibly held some conversation together in
+a London drawing-room.  But how could he have been such a boor as to
+forget her?  She was neither a crook nor a mad woman--she might be an
+adventuress; if so, she was an unusual one.  He glanced at her luggage
+as if it might help him--a dark-covered dressing-case, bundle of furs,
+and rugs--new, everything new.  Her left hand was bare of rings, she
+clasped it with her gloved fellow and said warmly:
+
+"I can't believe it possible that you came, actually came, and that we
+have so smoothly met!  I can't believe nothing has hitched or missed,
+or that everything is so cleverly planned and arranged for me, and
+least of all I can believe that it should be _you_ who are so sublimely
+doing this."
+
+"Ah--"  But here Bulstrode tardily started up.  _He_ doing it all?  At
+least if he was, then he must, if nothing else--know!  He smiled at her
+with a pleasant sense of being in the secret and with indulgent
+amusement at her mistake.
+
+"I think--you made a mistake," he began it with commonplaceness, but
+his gesture softened the words.
+
+But the lady made a little annoyed "tchk" with her tongue against her
+teeth, and threw up her head with an impatient toss, an intensely
+foreign way of dismissing his interpolation.
+
+"Don't, in pity's sake, talk like this," she exclaimed.  "_Mistake_?
+Who under the blue heavens _doesn't_ make them--Certa!  Haven't you,
+yourself, in spite of your moral, spotless life, haven't even _you_
+made them?"
+
+"How," flushed the naïve gentleman, on the sudden betrayed into a
+mental frankness of self-approval near to conceit, "how does _she_ know
+me so well?"
+
+"Who is there," his companion gave him the question in a challenging
+tone "to tell each other and every one of us what is or will be a
+mistake in his life?  Where were everyone's eyes when I married?--Why
+didn't someone tell me then that my marriage was a hideous mistake?  As
+for the rest of it..." she turned away for a second towards the window,
+and Bulstrode saw how the hot blood had mounted and her eyes had
+changed when after a moment she came back to him again.  She put out
+towards him a beseeching hand: "_You_ above all men, who are faithful
+to an ideal, must not give me old platitudes!"
+
+Bulstrode's head reeled.  He felt like a man who after a narcotic finds
+his brain suddenly alight and real things grow strange.  He wanted to
+rub his eyes.  She appeared singularly to appreciate his daze.
+
+"It is as strange to me as it is to you, to find myself here with a man
+to whom I have never spoken before--to be under his protection, and to
+talk with him like this; and yet I have seen you so often, I have
+watched you in the distance, and long since I singled you out as the
+one man in whom I could fancy confiding--the one man to whom I could
+give a sacred trust."
+
+With these words the incognita drew herself up, and her manner, with
+amazing swiftness, changed from a childlike confidence to a dignity not
+without a certain rigidness, and as Bulstrode remarked this, he also
+noticed that she was very young, and he was conscious in her of a
+something he had never quite met in a woman before--an extreme dignity,
+an ultra poise, an assurance.--Who was she?--And whom did she take him
+to be?  With every turn of the fast wheels of the express it was
+growing more difficult to explain.  She would more keenly feel the fact
+that he had not cut her frankness short--he had no right to her
+confidences even though she took their mutual knowledge of each other
+for granted.
+
+"When," he ventured it delicately--"did you last see me?"  It was bold,
+but it did perfectly.
+
+"Oh, an age ago, isn't it?  You were last on the Continent I think in
+August at Trouville, during La Grande Semaine."
+
+Ah, he reflected, _of course_!  _That_ was where, amongst so many other
+celebrities and beauties, she had attracted his attention.  But his
+rapid mental calculations of those seven days could reveal to him no
+woman's face but one.  He found himself even in this unique moment
+recalling the time following hard on Molly's formal engagement to her
+Marquis ... and those days were amongst the brightest in his life.  No,
+there had been no foreign element at Trouville for him in the dazzle
+and freedom of that worldly fortnight--for Jimmy Bulstrode, in all the
+scene she summoned up, there was but one woman.  He came back with a
+start to the other.
+
+"Then yesterday, as you passed our table at the Carlton, and it seemed
+as if heaven had sent you to us to help us--at least so we both felt."
+
+And Bulstrode doubtfully smiled and, now determined, broke in, or would
+have done so, but she waved him imperiously.
+
+"Your mind," she spoke indulgently, "is on the wrong side to-day.  Try
+to think only of the happiness towards which I am going so rapidly, so
+rapidly." Then, as she with her word glanced out of the window, she
+cried: "Oh, what if something should happen to the train--what if some
+horrible delay----"
+
+And he shook himself to action.
+
+"My dear lady," he began gravely, "you must hear me.  You have made and
+are making a great mistake.  I am certainly not the man..."
+
+"I _command_ you, sir," she flashed out at him--"surely you will not
+disobey me--you will not make me think as well that I am making a
+mistake in you."
+
+"Ah, but that," he gasped, and caught her words gratefully, "is just
+the point."
+
+She smiled.  "Please...!  Let me judge!  Only don't condemn me.  Only
+be glad you can so marvellously help a human soul to happiness--can so
+generously lend yourself for these few hours to aid in my escape."
+
+She was escaping!  Well, he had nearly guessed it!  The new luggage
+alone was an indication.  Unless her mania was for taking strangers to
+be intimate friends, she wasn't fleeing a madhouse!  From what did she
+so determinedly run?--and how in heaven's name was he helping her?  Did
+she think he was going to marry her?  Into what tangle had the man he
+was unwittingly impersonating got himself--and in default of his
+appearing on the scene in what would his absence involve poor Bulstrode?
+
+He took off his hat and put it down on the seat--thus his fine head was
+fully revealed to the lady's view.
+
+"I do not know you," he said determinedly.  "You do not know me, but
+you seem bent on not acknowledging this fact or permitting me to state
+it."
+
+But even this plain statement did him no good, for she said, quite
+agreeing with him:
+
+"If I had ever spoken with you--been near you before, I would not be
+here now.  You see it is just your _impersonality_--your _having_ no
+connection with anything in my life that makes it possible!  But why,"
+she exclaimed impatiently, "do you spend these few hours with me in
+this meaningless warfare?  You should, it seems, take the honor more
+graciously, and since you are here, have consented to be here, show me
+a little kindness.  Since, after all, willingly or not, you are in
+effect nobly helping me to do what I am doing."
+
+And this brought him wonderfully up to the question of what was he
+doing?  What was he supposed to be furthering here?  It was his
+expression, no doubt, that made her ask with curious aptness: "Just how
+much _do_ you know?"
+
+The poor gentleman threw out his hands desperately.  "You can't think
+how in the dark I am!  How beyond words mystified."
+
+"How droll!" she laughed sweetly, "and how amusing and all the more
+beautiful and like you, to be, in spite of yourself, here.  You see we
+have switched off--just as you said we would do."
+
+So they had indeed: they had stopped, and the fact fetched him to his
+feet.  He looked out: it was a fast express, a through train--the first
+stop should have been Westboro' Abbey.
+
+"Yes, we're switched off!" she cried delightedly, "as you know: as you
+arranged so cleverly!--and the Westboro' people will go on without us."
+
+Would they indeed!  Lucky people, but not if he could prevent it.  But
+his attention to the train's procedure had come too late.
+
+He opened the window and looked out.  They stood at the side of a
+switch some three hundred yards above a small squat station, and in the
+far distance Bulstrode could see the end of a disappearing train.  He
+drew in his head and quietly asked his companion:
+
+"What has happened to us, do you know?"
+
+She laughed deliciously.  "Know?  Why, of course, I do.  You're
+delightful!  Of course I have followed every step of the plan--the
+special for Dover picks us up here in three-quarters of an hour,
+doesn't it?  We make the boat for Calais, and there Gela meets me and
+_your_ mission is done!"
+
+The gentleman opposite her listened quietly, and before speaking waited
+a second, staring down at her, his hands in his pockets: there they
+touched a little coin which he always carried: a coin that opened at a
+sacred point to discover to his eyes alone a picture of a woman as
+lovely as this woman, as human, and one whom he had good cause to
+suppose loved another man than her husband.  The woman opposite him was
+escaping from her husband.  _That_ was what she was doing!  He who had
+striven for fifteen years to prevent the like in the life of the one
+woman of all, now appeared to be helping this poor thing to the same
+thing.  He did not believe he was to be waylaid and robbed, or that any
+trick had been played upon him.  The only thing he did _not_ believe
+was that the woman knew him!  Before, however, brushing the delusion
+aside, he asked, his candid eyes upon her: "And my mission being so
+done, what then becomes of you?"
+
+The shrug of her shoulders was neither an indication of indifference
+nor a pretty desperation! it rather was a relinquishing of herself
+wholly to Fate--an abandon.
+
+"What becomes of a happy woman who goes with the man she loves?"
+
+"Her Fate," said her companion, "has no single history.  She is most
+often disillusioned, many times tragic, and always disgraceful."
+
+"Ah, hush," she said angrily, "you presume too far.  If you only
+intended to lecture me--to condemn me--why did you come?"
+
+At this sincerely humorous challenge Bulstrode smiled.
+
+"I did not, to be quite accurate, come," he said, "and I assure you I
+am here against my will.  You refuse to listen to me; you turn my
+efforts to put things straight against me--and now."
+
+The handsome creature gave him a flash from angry eyes.
+
+"Your Excellency is scarcely polite.  But I understand.  Even my rank
+doesn't protect me: and although your old friendship for Gela did
+overcome your scruples, and our letters did touch you--still we should
+have remembered that you are, above all else, the King's friend."
+
+Bulstrode fell a step back.  Before he could take in the curious honors
+that were being thrust upon him, the lady went hotly on:
+
+"You know how indulgent of me the King has been: how he adores me
+still, how blind he is, and you pity him and have no mercy for me."
+
+Here, for she, too, had left her seat, she went over to the compartment
+window and turning her back full on Bulstrode, stood looking out, and
+she thus gave him time and he took it, not to consider his part of the
+affair, but, as if it had been suddenly revealed to him by her words,
+the woman's part in it.  After all it was scarcely important whom, in
+error, she believed him to be.  In a strange fashion, through some
+trick of resemblance, he was here and in her confidence in another's
+stead--impersonating some man who, in spite of the reputation for
+goodness and honor accredited him by this lady, would scarcely,
+Bulstrode felt confident, be as scrupulous regarding the adventure as
+he himself was fast becoming.  The woman--the woman was all that
+mattered.  She was a Queen then?  A Queen!  And he had so naïvely
+ignored her perquisites, been so innocently guilty of
+_lèse-majesté_--that she, poor thing, attributed his _sans gêne_ to her
+fallen state!
+
+Kings and Queens, poor dears, how human they are!  What royalty could
+she be?  And what King's friend was he so closely supposed to be?  The
+King's friend--well, so he was--so he must be in spite of his quick
+pity for the lovely creature--in spite of chivalry and the trust she
+displayed.  But to be practical: what in half an hour could he hope to
+accomplish--how could he keep a determined woman from wrecking her life?
+
+His mind flew to Paddington, and his first sight of the lady on the
+platform.  There had been near the hour two trains for Westboro', one
+of them a local which left London some few minutes later than the
+Western express.  _That_ later train, no doubt of it, would fetch the
+real accomplice to the eloping lady.  Bulstrode argued that, should he
+declare himself to the Queen at this point for a total stranger, the
+revelation would plunge her in despair, anger and frighten her, and
+lose him his cause--There was, in view of the cause, he now felt and
+nerved himself to the deception, nothing to do but to assume his rôle
+in earnest and play it as well as he might.  He had never sat alone in
+a travelling carriage and hobnobbed with a Queen, but he gracefully
+made his try at the proper address: "Your Majesty," he began, and she
+whirled quickly round, pleasure on her face.
+
+"Oh, Gresthaven!" she exclaimed with touching gratitude, extending her
+hand.  "Thanks, mon ami!  I shall not have my title long, and I shall,
+I suppose, miss it with other things."
+
+Bulstrode, with her naming of him, knew at length who he was, and
+recalled his supposed likeness to a certain Lord Almouth
+Gresthaven--famous explorer, traveller and diplomat, cosmopolitan in
+his tastes and a dabbler in the politics of other and less significant
+countries than his own.  In accepting his new personality, the American
+winced a little as he bowed over the royal little hand and kissed it.
+
+"Your Majesty will miss many things indeed," he said gravely--"your
+kingdom, your people, and the King--the King," he repeated, dwelling on
+the word, "who, as you say, loves you."
+
+"My good friend," the lady made a little _moue_--"I know everything you
+would say.  You can't suppose I haven't thought of it all?  To be so
+far on my way must I not have carefully considered every step?  One is,
+after all, a woman--and I am a woman in love."
+
+"One word then," pleaded her unwilling imposter--"one word.  Have you
+also asked yourself: what chance for happiness a woman can possibly
+hope for with a man who allows her to make the sacrifice you are about
+to make?"
+
+If his words were straws before the wind to the woman, his simplicity
+was impressive to her.  "It has seemed to me," Jimmy Bulstrode said,
+"that there is a great distinction between love and passion--and that
+however great his passion for her, a man should supremely--_supremely
+love_ the woman he singles out of all the world."
+
+The Queen of Poltavia looked at the gentleman before her, who stood
+very straight, his head alone bent, his clear fine eyes fixed upon her
+own.
+
+"Love!" she repeated softly, "how well you say the word."
+
+A slight flush stole up the American's cheek.
+
+"Supreme love," he ventured to continue, "means protection to the
+woman...."
+
+Here the Queen made an impatient gesture as though she shook away the
+impression his tone made.
+
+"My dear Gresthaven," she exclaimed, "love means above all else
+happiness!  One is happy with one person and miserable with another.
+It's all a lottery and unless our plans miscarry I am going towards the
+greatest happiness in the world.  But come"--She altered her tone to
+one of practical command--"Let us address ourselves to our flight.  You
+have your train schedule of course?  The Dover train is due here at
+4:50 and it only waits for the taking on of our carriage."  As she
+looked up at him she saw the trouble in his face, and a solicitude for
+her to which she was unaccustomed.
+
+"Mon cher ami," she said quizzically, "what, may I ask, since your
+scruples are so great, ever led you to accept this mission....?"
+
+"Frankly," he eagerly answered, and was honest in it, "the hope, the
+desire that I might...."
+
+"Persuade a woman in love against her heart?" she smiled, and so
+sweetly, so convincingly, and so reasonably, he was for an instant all
+on her side.
+
+"I see my folly, your Majesty."
+
+"There's nothing but _force majeure_, Gresthaven...."
+
+"Yes" ... he admitted reluctantly.  "Let me go out now and see to our
+manoeuvres here."  He was able to open the door which a passing guard
+had unlocked unobserved....
+
+The innocent royalty let him pass, thanking him with a smile, and saw
+him go down the track toward the little squat station, with the guards.
+
+
+Bulstrode, whose mind as he walked along was busy with train schedules,
+recalled, nevertheless, the Duke's letter, which he still had in his
+letter case, and he took it from his pocket and re-read it.
+
+"... We are to have over the week-end a dash of royalty.  Carmen-Magda,
+the Queen of the petty kingdom of Poltavia."  (This mention of the
+Westboro' guests had quite escaped Bulstrode's mind in his
+contemplation of the last page of the Duke's note....  "We are to have
+a compatriot of your own, a Mrs. Jack Falconer.")  And royalty being
+very relative to the unsnobbish American, he had simply transferred the
+title (with possibly a possessive pronoun before it) to the other lady!
+He smiled as he reflected that the Westboro' express was destined to
+arrive at the Abbey without either the royal guest or Mr. James
+Thatcher Bulstrode.  But more to the point, more instantly absorbing
+was the fact, that within ten minutes the slow train from London to
+Westboro' would arrive at Radleigh Bucks, the little station before
+which he now stood, and from it, undoubtedly, would descend the real
+Lord Gresthaven.  If Jimmy needed encouragement in his self-imposed
+rôle of Master of Fate, if he needed to forget the ardor and the
+determination of the little Queen, if he needed to forget how, in
+youth, he had cordially hated those interfering people who, on
+horseback and in chaises, tore after flying lovers to waylay them at
+Gretna Green--he found his stimulus in recalling that he was "the
+King's friend."
+
+"It's after all something of a distinction," he mused, entertained by
+the idea, "a sort of royal _noblesse oblige_--and since the poor dear
+herself has so made me out to be, given King the precedence, how could
+I, in the cause of gallantry, have proceeded otherwise!  It's this
+diabolical little brown chrysanthemum," he mentally laid the fault
+there.  "It is evidently a telling mark.  People in books are always
+meeting unknowns who are to wear a red flower in the right lapel of the
+coat".... and he had unintentionally gone over into a romance--and his
+_triste_ part in it was that of an unsympathetic spoiler of a romance.
+
+As after a prolonged parley with the station officials he walked
+leisurely back to his carriage, his wallet grown very thin indeed and
+his honest heart suffering many sincere pangs at the contemplation of
+his conduct altogether, he argued: "She is absurdly young--she will,
+after a little, go back to her allegiance (he put it so), and I don't
+take much stock in that barbaric Gela anyway, he probably is a
+Hungarian band-master or a handsome ticket-agent, a plebian creature
+whose very remoteness from her own life has fascinated her."
+
+Bulstrode, not quite sure just whom he was supposed to be by the train
+people, found himself bowed and escorted back to the carriage which had
+been turned and manipulated and side-tracked--reswitched and displaced,
+till even its own locomotive and train of cars would have been at a
+loss to find it.  He had the sense of being a traitor, brute, imposter,
+and Providence all in one--which combination of qualities was
+sufficient to explain his embarrassment and his nervous manner when he
+at length rejoined the Queen.
+
+There was a slight transformation in the lady whose dressing bag had
+aided, evidently, a brisk toilet.  Under her chin flowered out a snowy
+bow of tulle, and she had swathed herself in the thick veil she had
+worn when first boarding the train.  Indicating her disguise to
+Bulstrode, she said with her pretty accent: "I think it well to be
+thus."  And he agreed that it was well.
+
+His own agitation as the other train rushed in, slowed and halted, was
+scarcely less than hers, indeed perhaps greater, for Carmen-Magda, pale
+and quiet, her handsome brown eyes fixed on the window-pane, gave no
+sign of life, until after a series of jerks, jolts and bumps, they
+slowly but certainly became part of a moving train, once more
+undertaking its journey.  Then Bulstrode, who stood determinedly in the
+window, filled it up on the station side, giving her no chance to look
+out had she wished to do so, nor did he think it needful to tell the
+Queen what he saw: A distinguished-looking man in rough brown clothes,
+and oh, the curious coincidence: a reddish-brown chrysanthemum in his
+buttonhole.  His Striking Resemblance was accompanied by another
+gentleman--short and stout with military mustaches, and swarthy
+complexion.  The two men were gesticulating wildly together, and as the
+train pulled away from them, Bulstrode turned about and faced the
+little Queen.
+
+She had again lifted her veil, and he thought her pallor natural; in
+the momentary excitement her large eyes were fastened upon him with a
+touching confidence that nearly made the soft-hearted imposter regret
+the boldest act of his history.
+
+"Are you sure," she asked him softly, "that this is the right train?"
+
+The coquetry of her bow of snowy tulle, the debonnaire costume of brown
+and green, her gray hat with its feathers, were pathetic to him--her
+attire contrasted sadly with her pale face.  She was to him like a
+wilful child.  Not more, he decided for the sixth time, than twenty
+years old.  She was like a paper queen out of a child's fairy book, all
+but her anxious face.  "She regrets," he joyfully caught at the thought
+to arm himself and give himself right.  "Poor little thing, she already
+regrets."
+
+Leaning forward, he suggested kindly:
+
+"Can't your Majesty rest a little?"
+
+As he spoke the hypocrite knew that in less time than it would take to
+settle her they would bump into the station at Westboro' Abbey.
+
+But Carmen-Magda made no sign of recalcitrancy or regret that she was
+_en route_ for her plebian Gela.  She leaned over and picked up one of
+the illustrated papers upon the seat and idly turned over the pages,
+reverting finally back to the frontispiece where a colored photograph
+displayed a young woman in hunting dress leaning on the arm of a
+military-looking gentleman with black mustaches and swarthy skin.  She
+held it out to Bulstrode and said:
+
+"It's a poor enough picture of me, but excellent, isn't it, of the
+King?"
+
+Bulstrode looked at it attentively with an inscrutable illumination on
+his face.
+
+"Yes, it is good of the King, very good indeed," he exclaimed with much
+animation.  It was strikingly so, he could with truth say it.
+
+Gresthaven had proved himself to be the friend of the King par
+excellence--the King seemed to have many friends---and the poor little
+woman opposite--with her fetching bow of tulle and her mad confidence
+in a stranger--her madder confidence in Lord Almouth Gresthaven--where
+were _her_ friends?  Jimmy leaned to her, and Mrs. Falconer could have
+told that it was his voice of goodness that spoke, the voice "that
+Jimmy seemed able to call at will from some wonderfully dear part of
+his nature: it was for people in trouble, for people he was determined
+to help in spite of themselves."
+
+"Your Majesty has done me great honor," Bulstrode said.  "You have said
+I was the King's friend, I should like instead to be _your_ friend.
+Women need friends ... even queens.  Would it be too vast a presumption
+if I should from henceforth feel myself to be...."  He waited and
+dared--"Carmen-Magda's friend?"
+
+His innocent lèse-majesté, coupled with the tone he used, reached the
+woman in her---not to speak of his personal charm.
+
+"Didn't I imply friendship when I chose you for this mission?" she said.
+
+He winced.  "Of course--but I mean from now on----"
+
+She nodded sweetly.  "_Cela va sans dire_, Gresthaven."
+
+"Don't call me so," he interrupted, "say _friend_, to please me."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"You are too amusing.  I will say it for you then in Poltavian.  It's a
+sacred word with us," and she called him friend in her own tongue with
+the prettiest accent and a royal inclination of her head as if she
+knighted him.  It cut him and pleased him at once, and he hurried to
+ask her:
+
+"What would you think of Gresthaven if, instead of meeting you, as you
+had arranged he should do--he should betray you--should have warned
+your husband and have gone so far _as to fetch the King to waylay you
+and stop your flight_!"
+
+But Carmen-Magda only laughed, and dismissed the ridiculous supposition
+with a word of disbelief.
+
+"Tell me," Bulstrode urged, "tell me what would you think?"
+
+She drew herself up haughtily at his insistence as if his hypothesis
+were real to her at last:
+
+"He would be the most despicable traitor in the world."
+
+Bulstrode pursued: "What--would you think of Gresthaven--if in order to
+save you, to give you time, time to think, to reflect, to perhaps alter
+your decision--he had used other means less cruel possibly, but as
+surely betraying your good faith?"
+
+Here she looked keenly through him--read him--then waited a second
+before intensely exclaiming:
+
+"Gresthaven--_what have you done_?"
+
+His heart came into his throat and his voice nearly failed him.  He did
+not know Poltavians nor the queenly temper, nor did he know how all
+women take any one given thing, but he knew how women the world over
+admit of no change of caprice saving that variability which arises in
+their own minds.
+
+"Oh, dear," he thought, "if for no matter _what_ reason, she had only
+changed her _own_ mind!"
+
+"In five minutes," he said bravely--"your Majesty will be at Westboro'
+Abbey station, our carriage has been attached to the other train which
+followed us from London."
+
+With a smothered cry the Queen sprang to her feet, rushed to the window
+and stared out where nothing in the golden afternoon beauty revealed to
+her in what part of England she was.  Bulstrode had put his hand out
+before her as if he feared she meditated climbing through the open
+window.
+
+"Oh," she cried furiously, shrinking back from him, "how have you dared
+... dared?"
+
+... "To save your Majesty?  Well, it _was_ hard!" he acknowledged
+practically.  "Harder than you will ever believe.  I may say that no
+decision was ever more difficult to make.  To be so trusted by you, and
+to feel myself a double-dyed villain wasn't agreeable, but the issue
+was a warrant for any treachery."
+
+"Great heavens!" she exclaimed.  "Who made _you_ judge of my actions,
+who gave _you_ leave to decide my fate, what a fool I was to trust
+you--what a fool!  You have spoiled my life!" she accused him--"You
+have taken from me everything in the world."
+
+If she had been alone he knew she would have wept, and he kept his face
+turned from her for some few seconds.  "I have certainly established a
+precedent for myself," he mused with humor.  "_I_ can never run away
+with a woman now--never."
+
+Small as were the limits of the little carriage she found means to walk
+it up and down several times, her head thrown back, her eyes flashing.
+She spoke, he supposed, in Poltavian, for he could not follow the
+meaning of her few staccato, angry words, but he did not recognise
+among the incoherences that she called him friend!
+
+As the flying scenes grew farm-like and pastoral, and the lines and
+sweep of what he took to be park property, caught his eyes he once more
+ventured to speak.
+
+"I am not the cold-blooded traitor I seem, believe me," he tried to
+plead, "and until we definitely passed the station at Redleigh Bucks I
+was miserable to think I had, as it seems, betrayed your Majesty.  But
+when as we came up to the station I saw the King on the platform----"
+
+She stopped short in front of him: "The King!" she exclaimed
+incredulously.
+
+Bulstrode nodded in a matter-of-fact way as if stray kings on
+mid-country platforms were the common occurrence of his travelling
+experiences.
+
+"He had evidently followed you that far, and if the plan formed to
+attach your carriage to the Dover express had been attempted, you would
+have been stopped by your husband himself.  As it is you are simply
+going where you are expected to go--to Westboro' Castle."
+
+This dénouement, putting a summary end to her tragic anger, left her no
+place for ecstatics.  She sat down in front of Bulstrode and repeated,
+dazed:--
+
+"The _King_!  The King had followed me!  He had been warned then, but
+by whom?  You above all did not....?"
+
+"Oh no!"  He was glad to be honestly able to disclaim at least this
+disloyalty.  "I had nothing to do with it.  The King had come on with
+the man who had played your Majesty false all along, the man who is
+indeed more the King's friend than he is Carmen-Magda's."
+
+And sitting there, bewildered and appealing before him, she heard him
+say: "I mean Lord Almouth Gresthaven."
+
+She murmured some words in Poltavian, then besought: "Why, why do you
+play with me?"  The tears started to her eyes.
+
+"Lord Gresthaven," Bulstrode hurried now to his confession--"has
+plainly betrayed you.  Either he failed to meet you as planned, or else
+he came too late and thought better of his connivance against your
+husband--at all events, both he and the King took the slow train."
+
+"But _you_," she interrupted, staring at him--"You are not Lord
+Gresthaven?"
+
+"No," he said quietly, "no, I am an American, nothing more than a
+friend and guest of the Duke of Westboro'.  I tried over and over again
+to tell you this, but you would not hear me and I finally accepted the
+rôle you gave me with the firm intention of taking you with me to
+Westboro' Castle.  My name is James Thatcher Bulstrode, I am from
+Boston, in the United States."  Bulstrode thus tardily introduced
+himself.
+
+And Jimmy, not pretending ever to have counted greatly on the favor of
+princes, was nevertheless taken aback.  Not that he had any
+preconceived notion of what Carmen-Magda would do--when she eventually
+knew.  He had been too absorbed in his mission, its entanglements, and
+his climax.  He may have been prepared for some exhibition of scorn,
+but he more than likely looked for a social and commonplace ending to
+their ride, but for what Carmen-Magda did he was entirely unprepared.
+
+As if in his declaration of himself and his identity he had taken a
+sponge and quite wiped himself off the slate, the Queen, after
+speechlessly staring at him for a few moments, quietly removed her
+attention from him altogether.  She took from a little bag at her wrist
+a rouge stick with which she carefully touched her lips; from a tiny
+gold box she lightly dusted her cheeks with powder; she adjusted her
+tulle bow and her veil and then sat serenely back waiting until the
+train should arrive at her forced destination.
+
+Although, one might say, unused to the manners of royalty, Jimmy was
+dumbfounded; the beautiful woman in forest-brown clothes picked out
+with hunting green had become as strange to him as in the first moment
+when she attracted his attention some few miles beyond London.  That
+she should be angry at his interference he could admit, but that she
+should not be grateful to be saved from her husband's wrath he did not
+understand.  Was he too plebeian for her to notice?  He, of course, did
+not speak to her again, nor did she break the singular silence, and for
+some reason he did not even care to ask her forgiveness.  Finally, he
+decided that she was thinking solely of Gela, the man at the other end
+of the route who would wait for her in vain, and when this sentimental
+view of the case occurred to him, he would have felt _de trop_ had he
+not seen how completely he was ignored.
+
+They flashed past the last miles of wooded valley and hillside.
+Westboro' was very soft in line and very mellow in the evening light.
+The landscape, through a half-mist, was as brown and green as the dress
+of the beautiful silent woman in the opposite corner of the travelling
+carriage.
+
+Bulstrode, looking at her rather timidly, felt as if he were in a dream.
+
+At Westboro' Abbey the guard unlocked the compartment door and
+Bulstrode, who got out first, helped the Queen of Poltavia to descend.
+As she put foot to the ground she said, half leaning on the arm he
+gave: "I thank you--very much indeed."
+
+He caught the few words eagerly, and was fatuous enough to fancy that
+she meant something more than the common courteous acknowledgment of a
+man's help from a travelling carriage.
+
+The station was deserted.  The express having arrived some half hour
+before without them, there had evidently been no preparation made to
+meet this train.
+
+Surrounded by her luggage, her brand new luggage, the Queen waited on
+the side of the station that faced the open country, whilst Bulstrode
+made inquiries about telephoning or getting word to the castle.
+
+At this juncture, down the lane, between red thickets and golden
+hedges, a smart dog-cart tooled along driven by a lady.  She waved a
+welcoming hand.
+
+"Jimmy," she said as she drove up and leaned out and nodded to him, "I
+knew you'd miss the express, you're so absent-minded about trains; and
+who could be expected to distinguish between a 3.50 and a 3.53?  So, as
+you see, I drove down on the chance."
+
+He had not greeted her in words.  The long afternoon, the romantic
+extravagant episode, of which he had been unwillingly a part, made this
+woman seem so real.  He felt as if from a burlesque extravaganza he had
+come out into the fresh air; their eyes had met and Mrs. Falconer did
+not miss any other greeting.
+
+"That lady," he then said, "whom you see standing on the edge of the
+platform surrounded by her luggage, like a shipwrecked being on a
+desert island, is the Queen of Poltavia."
+
+"Heavens!" exclaimed Mrs. Falconer.
+
+"Yes," he said indifferently, "we came down from London together."
+
+"Why, the whole castle is in a state about her.  A coach and postillion
+went to fetch her at the express.  Telegrams are flying all over the
+country.  Why did she take a local--and with you--Jimmy?"
+
+"Perhaps she is absent-minded about trains as well," he smiled, "at all
+events here she certainly is and it will be charming of you to drive
+her up."
+
+"But I don't know her!"
+
+"Oh," he shrugged, "one doesn't exactly _know_ queens, I don't know her
+either, but that wouldn't prevent my doing her a service.  I am sure
+she'd rather be driven up to a cup of tea and a fire by an American
+than stand here waiting for a postilion and four.  It will be nice of
+you to speak to her," he suggested, and stepped back.
+
+Gathering up her reins, Mrs. Falconer whisked her horse about and drove
+up to the lady's side.  Bulstrode, from a little distance, watched her
+graceful inclination and heard her lovely voice.  He saw Carmen-Magda
+lift her disguising veil, displaying her dark, foreign face.  Slowly
+going up to the dog-cart's side, together with the groom's help, he
+bestowed the Queen's belongings in the trap.
+
+"I will walk on slowly up the road," he suggested, "and most possibly
+you will send back for me."
+
+"Oh, I'll drive back myself."  She was quite certain about it.  As he
+helped the Queen into the dog-cart, as she leaned on his supporting
+hand, she said:
+
+"Thank you, thank you very much indeed."  And he was so vain as to
+fancy that into tone and words Carmen-Magda put more warmth, more of
+meaning, than a woman usually puts into the phrase of recognition of a
+man's helping hand.  He could not, moreover, have sworn that at the end
+of the sentence was not murmured a word in a foreign tongue which might
+in Poltavian mean "friend," but as he did not understand the language
+of the country he could not be sure.
+
+As he watched the trap up the hedged lanes out of sight, he rubbed his
+eyes as if he were not certain whether or not he had not dozed and
+dreamed in his compartment on the slow train from London....  But at
+any rate he had the delightful heavenly certainty that this was
+Westboro' of an Indian summer afternoon--and that of the two women who
+had just driven up the lane out of sight, one at least was adorably
+real.
+
+
+
+
+THE SEVENTH ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+VII
+
+IN WHICH HE BECOMES THE POSSESSOR OF A CERTAIN PIECE OF PROPERTY
+
+As Bulstrode stood in the window of his room at Westboro' Castle, his
+face turned toward the country, it seemed to beckon him.  It called him
+from the park's end where suave and smooth the curving downs met the
+preciser contour of the eastern field; from hedges holding snugly in
+the roadways, the roads themselves running off on pleasant excursions
+to townships whose names are suggestive of romance, whose gentle
+beauties have mellowed with the ages which give them value and leave
+them perfect.
+
+With the sweetness of a bell, with the invitingness of a beckoning
+hand, the English countryside summoned the gentleman to come out to it,
+to explore and penetrate for himself.  He gazed charmed and entranced
+at the expanse of rippling meadow where, enclosed by the curtains of
+soft old trees, the thatch of the eaves lifted their breast to the sun
+and mist, and chimneys black with immemorial fires indicated the farms
+of Westboro', rich, homely and respectable, as they left upon the
+landscape harmonious color and history of thrift.  To the east was the
+dim suggestion of the little town, and some few miles in a hollow lay
+the farmlands known as The Dials, and each second growing more
+distinctly visible in the deepening light rose the towers of Penhaven
+Abbey.
+
+At the Duke's urging, Bulstrode had been led to stop on at Westboro'
+Castle after the house party had dissolved at the end of their week's
+sojourn; and there had since been many long tramps across country, with
+the dogs at his heels and by his side the Duke, for the time diverted
+from his semi-melancholy, semi-egotistical cynicism, and transformed
+into an enthusiastic sport.
+
+The Duke of Westboro' was a _désenchanté_, more truly speaking a victim
+of other peoples' temperaments.  There were, however, not a few little
+scores in the character of moral delinquencies which at least, so he
+felt, he had been called upon quite fully to discharge.
+
+The American man gave himself over to his host, and from the time
+Westboro' put out a bait of "Oh, you're decidedly not turning in at
+this hour, old man?" he flanked the Duke on the opposite side of the
+fireplace in the East Library, there after coffee to wear away half the
+night.  During the following fortnight, Bulstrode found that he had
+tallied up with his friend very closely the scores of the last few
+miserable years.
+
+Westboro's friendship with him dated back some ten years.  Bulstrode
+had first known the Englishman at Newport where, then not a young man,
+he had come obviously and frankly in search of an American wife.  The
+search was unusual in that it was not for money, but, as Westboro' put
+it, for type and race.  His mother had been an American.  He had adored
+her, and wanted an American mother for his children.  The woman
+herself--and how Bulstrode saw it as he followed the deserted husband's
+narrative--the woman had been a secondary thing.  He recalled easily
+the summary and conventional courtship and the vulgar brilliance of the
+wedding.  He had been one of Westboro's ushers, and his smaller part of
+the affair left him with the distressing idea that he had assisted at a
+sacrifice.
+
+It would be euphemistic to say that Westboro' poured out his heart to
+Bulstrode; Englishmen do not have such refreshments.  Little by little,
+rather in short curt phrases, a cynical word whose mocking fellow only
+followed after some moments' silence--little by little, whilst the
+smoky wreaths of the men's cigars veiled their confidences, the Duke
+slowly told the story of ten years of married life.  In this intimacy
+he disclosed the history of the separation which formed at the moment
+the subject of general public comment.  Jimmy was relieved when the
+moment came that the Duke thought opportune to say:
+
+"There, old chap, you have the whole story!  It's this cursed tradition
+of marriage, and you're a lucky fellow to be free.  I have never spoken
+to any one before--you know it.  I don't need to tell you so, but you
+were in, as it were, at the start, and what do you think of the finish?"
+
+Bulstrode reserved his opinion.
+
+Westboro' Castle had been built in the sixteenth century by a lover of
+the Virgin Queen.  The stones were paved with memories.  In the Picture
+Hall the ardent gentleman three hundred years before had for one sole
+hour entertained Elizabeth at a feast.  She left him, obdurate and
+unyielding, and he went crazy and followed the royal coach to the park
+gate, weeping, his hands before his face; and there on the ground, his
+fair curls torn, and the dust from the departing vehicles alone of the
+glory that touched him, his people found him.
+
+"How they prate of inequality, and of the crime of grafting the
+American rose on these old stalks," Bulstrode mused.  The beauty of
+Frances, Duchess of Westboro', he had himself been one of the first to
+concede; a portrait of her by Lehnbach did not to his eyes do her
+justice.  The fresh purity of her type had not been seized by the
+German.  She would be an ideal Duchess, he had said of her when the
+mission of Westboro' to America had been bruited, and Westboro' had
+thought: "She's a strong, fine woman, and will bear me beautiful
+children."
+
+She had borne him two.  Bulstrode, in passing through the house, had
+seen the low gates at the doors of two sunny rooms, the toys spread as
+they had been lain.  His own were the only apartments in that wing of
+the castle, and the silence at the end of the hall was never broken.
+When Westboro' had come to this part of his narrative, he had waited
+quiet so long that his companion had naturally taken the evening to be
+at its end.  The Duke had thrown his cigar away, and lifting from the
+table near him a leather case, opened it and handed over to Bulstrode
+the photograph of two little bare-legged boys in sailor clothes.  They
+stood hand in hand, a pretty pair.  Looking at it, and gently turning
+it over on the other side, Bulstrode read:
+
+"Frederick Cecil John Edward, Marquis of Wotherington, three years old.
+Guy Perceval, Lord Feversham, aged two years."
+
+Westboro's voice had a dull sound as he took the case from his friend's
+hand.
+
+"They are Westboro's I think, neck and crop.  Scarlet fever--in three
+days, Bulstrode--both in three days."
+
+And that had been all.
+
+Bulstrode had left the Duke and gone up-stairs.  On the other side of
+his cheerful rooms the empty nurseries in the ghostly moonlight held
+their doors wide open as if to welcome at the low gates those bright
+heads if they should come.
+
+Jimmy, whose sentimentality consisted in his acting immediately when
+anything was to be done, mixed a whiskey and soda from the array of
+drinks that always exists at an Anglo-Saxon's elbow, and after a turn
+or two in his dressing-room brought practically out:
+
+"It's ridiculous!  Sheer nonsense.  There should be children here.  The
+woman is selfish and puritanical, and the man is no lover--_that's_
+what's the matter!  But Westboro' certainly loves her in his big, cold,
+affectionate way."  Jimmy smiled at his own fashion of putting it.  And
+how any woman, with a mind and common-sense, could help loving
+Westboro' Castle and countryside, as well as Cecil, tenth Duke of the
+line, the American visitor failed to see.
+
+As the Duke of Westboro' thought of the members of his recent house
+party--the women of it passed before his mental mirror.  There were
+several images of an American lady whose frocks and hats, whose wit and
+grace, whose dark beauty had made her stay at Westboro' brilliant and
+memorable.  Possibly the remembrance of Mrs. Falconer, one night at
+dinner, was what most persistently lingered in the Duke's mind.  She
+had sat on his left in a gown he remembered as becoming, and her jewels
+had shone like fire on her bosom.  He had particularly remarked them in
+thinking of the idle jewels of his own house, left behind by the flight
+of the Duchess.  Mary Falconer had been more brilliant than her
+ornaments, and Westboro' had thoroughly enjoyed his guest.  He had
+asked this woman especially because she charmed him; without forming
+the reason he had a latent hope that she might do more than charm.  He
+wanted to forget and to be eased from the haunting memory that stung
+and never soothed.  From his first tête-a-tête with Mrs. Falconer he
+had at once seen that there was nothing there for him.
+
+Bulstrode had said that Westboro' was not a lover.  Reserved as far as
+all feeling was concerned, he had made no advances to the beautiful
+American, but contented himself with watching her.  She could not be in
+love with her brutish husband who, out of the week spent at Westboro'
+was visible only two days.  Then Bulstrode had come.  Pictures of the
+two talking in the long twilights, riding together, walking on the
+terrace side by side, came vividly to Westboro's recollection.
+
+"That," he decided, "is a real flesh-and-blood woman, the kind of woman
+I should have married.  Bulstrode is a lucky devil."
+
+
+"A chap," Westboro' said to Jimmy in a mild unpretentious mood of
+philosophy, "is, of course, a husband; more naturally than people give
+him credit for, a father; but first of all--and that's what so few
+women take into consideration--_he is a man_."
+
+The Duke had fallen into the habit of breaking through the silences
+when each man, following his own thoughts, would forget the other.  And
+remarks such as these his companion knew, referred in sense and detail
+to the long talks whose intenser personalities had ceased.
+
+This day Westboro' brought out his little paragraph as, between the
+hedges of a lowland lane, the two rode at a walk after a long hard
+canter from Penhaven, some eight miles behind them on the hill.  On
+either side the top of the thorn was veiled with rime.  Down the
+hedge's thickness from his seat on his horse, Bulstrode could look into
+the dark tangled interstices of the thicket and its delicious browns
+and greens.  Into the thorns here and there dried leaves had fallen,
+and from the hedge as well as from the country, clouded and gray with
+mist, came a sharpened sweetness; a blended smell of fields over which
+early winter had passed; a smell of woods over which the fires cast
+smoky veils.  In the freshness and with the eager exercise, Bulstrode's
+cheeks had reddened.  He sat his horse well, and his enjoyment of life,
+his ease with it, his charming spirit, shone in the face he turned to
+the Duke.  For some miles given over to the sympathetic task of
+managing his horse, he had enjoyed like a boy, and during the ride had
+thought of nothing but the physical delight of the open air and the
+motion.
+
+"Yes," he returned to his friend's remark, "as far as any point of
+interest goes, we may grant you that we began as men.  I mean to say
+that monkeys aren't useful in one's deductions for emotional
+hypotheses, at any rate.  I'll grant you for our use that we were men
+to begin with."
+
+"Damn it all," said his host, "aren't we just as much so to-day, for
+all our civilization?"
+
+"Well, we don't primarily knock on the head a woman whose physique has
+pleased us, and carry her off while she's unconscious."
+
+"It might in some cases be a good thing if we did," Westboro' growled.
+
+Bulstrode ran his hand along the silky neck of his horse, from whose
+nostrils smoke came in little puffs that met the moisture of the air.
+
+"Oh, we're not, you know, so awfully far away from our instincts in
+anything, old man!  There isn't any cast-iron rule about feelings.
+They depend on the individual."
+
+"Oh, you've never married," Westboro' tried frankly to irritate him,
+"and you can't, you know----"
+
+The sweet temper of the other accepted the Duke's scorn.  "I'm not
+married, or very theoretical about it, either.  One can only, after
+all, have his own point of view."
+
+"We're not, I expect, fair to the women," the Duke generously
+acknowledged.  "We look for so much in them.  We expect them to be so
+much."
+
+"A wife," Bulstrode completed for him, "a mother, a friend."
+
+And Westboro' finished it.  "For them and for other men.  And a
+mistress."
+
+And here Bulstrode took him up for the first time with a note of
+challenge in his voice.
+
+"And what, my dear man, did you intend that the Duchess should take you
+for?  No, I mean to say, quite man to man, given that any woman could
+or does contain all the qualities you so temperately ask?"
+
+Westboro' smiled at the first curtness he had ever heard in his
+friend's voice.
+
+"Oh, you know, we men don't fuss about ourselves."
+
+"You married her at eighteen," Bulstrode said.  "You made her a
+Duchess.  You had already lived a life and she was a child beside you
+in experience.  You required motherhood of her, and in return...."
+
+"Well," Westboro' turned about in his saddle and faced his earnest
+friend.  "What then, in your opinion, might I have been?"
+
+"You might have been from the start," Bulstrode said it shortly, "a
+lover.  It's not a bad rôle.  We Anglo-Saxons have no sentimental
+education.  Our puritanism makes us half the time timid at courtship
+and love."
+
+The gentlemen rode a little on with slackened rein.  Westboro's
+eyeglass cord was almost motionless as he stared out between his
+horse's ears down the lane.
+
+"Perhaps, after all," he fetched it out slowly, "there's something in
+what you say."
+
+Whether or not there was any truth in Bulstrode's commonplace remark,
+it lingered in his host's mind all day.  It gave him, for the first
+time, a link to follow--an idea--and the Duke, entirely unused to
+analysis, accustomed to act if not on impulse, certainly according to
+his will and pleasure without concession, harked back in a groping,
+touching fashion like an awkward boy looking for a lost treasure,
+upsetting, as he went, old haunts, turning over things for years not
+brought to the light of day.  And it took him all the afternoon and a
+good part of the evening to reach the place where he thought he had
+lost originally his joy.  Unlike the happier boy, he could not seize
+his bliss once recovered, and stow it away; it was only remembrance
+that brought him back, and with a tightening heart as he realized once
+more the form and quality of his lost happiness--there he must leave it
+and see it fade again into the past.
+
+
+Jimmy gave his host a chance to follow his absorbed reflections.  He
+effaced himself, and behind a book whose lightness of touch made him
+agreeably forget the heavier hand of current and daily events, he sat
+in his dressing-room reading "The Vicar of Wakefield."
+
+When Westboro' came in to him Jimmy looked up and quoted aloud: "When
+lovely woman stoops to folly and finds at length that men betray...."
+
+"Oh, they console themselves quickly," Westboro' finished.  "Don't
+fancy anything else, my dear fellow, they console themselves."
+
+"They may pretend to do so."
+
+"They succeed."
+
+Westboro' took the little book from his friend's hand and shut it
+firmly as if afraid that the rest of the verse might slip out and
+refute him.
+
+"Bulstrode, she consoles herself, she is perfectly happy."
+
+"How are you then so sure?"
+
+"Oh, I hear of her in Paris."  The Duke's features contracted.  "She's
+contriving to pass her time--to pass her time."
+
+Bulstrode leaned over towards his friend and, for Westboro' sat
+opposite him, he put his hand on the Duke's knee.
+
+"You must certainly go to her."
+
+Westboro' stroked his moustache before he answered:
+
+"Not if I never see her again."
+
+"You should decidedly go to her."
+
+The other shook his head.  "Not if it meant twice the hell it is now."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I went to her once.  I may say twice," he slowly said, "since we
+separated."  And as he stopped speaking Bulstrode could only imagine
+what the result had been.
+
+"I don't think I'm a Westboro' really, for I couldn't follow any
+woman's carriage puling like a schoolboy as my ancestor did.  There's a
+great deal of my mother's blood in me, and it's a different blend."
+
+Bulstrode's eyes were on the little book between the Duke's
+aristocratic hands.
+
+"She has, I grant you, a lot to forgive; but she quite well knows all
+the blame I acknowledge, quite well.  I don't believe I'm any worse
+than the run of mankind, and whether I am or not, I've made all the
+amends I can and I have nothing more to say."
+
+His eyeglass had dropped; his face looked worn; he showed his age more
+than a happier man would have done at his years His mood of thinking it
+out by himself continued for so long that Bulstrode finally asked:
+
+"What, if I may be so near you as to question, do you mean, old chap,
+to do?"
+
+Westboro' had it all laid out for himself--his ready answer showed it.
+
+"You say I'm not a lover," he reminded his friend; "no doubt you're
+right, but I'm an affectionate chap, at any rate, I can't bear this--"
+He looked about hopelessly.  The words were forced out by the high mark
+of his unhappiness: "--this infernal solitude.  Even when a good
+comrade like yourself is in it, the house seems to speak to me from the
+empty rooms in this wing."  (Bulstrode knew he was thinking of the
+nurseries with the low latches and little gates.)  "I can't stand it.
+When I get out of England and abroad the place fetches me back again
+like a magnet.  I'm a home-keeping sort of man, and I want my home."
+
+His friend gently urged in the silence: "Well?"
+
+"I shall wait," the Duke went on with the plan he had been forced to
+make out for himself.  "I shall hold on, keep along a bit, and then--_I
+shall go to the other woman_."  And the Duke, as he raised his eyes to
+his companion, fixed his glass firmly and felt that he challenged in
+every way Bulstrode's disapproval.  "The Duchess will get her
+divorce--it goes without saying--will get her divorce.  Why she has not
+already done so I can't imagine."
+
+As Westboro' appeared inclined to leave the subject there, Bulstrode
+pressed him further: "And then?"
+
+"I fancy I shall marry the other woman."
+
+Bulstrode started.  The complexion of the idea was so foreign to him
+that he could not for a moment let himself think that he understood it.
+
+"You will," he said, "marry one woman whilst you distinctly love
+another?"
+
+The Duke nodded.  "Love," he reflected, "I begin to believe I don't
+know anything about.  It must, of course, suppose some sort of return.
+If, as you say, I love another woman, I'm not made of the stuff that
+can go along doing so without anything on her side."
+
+The dressing clock at the bedside on the little stand chimed the hour.
+It was two o'clock.  The Duke of Westboro' rose.
+
+"You must think me a colossal ass, my dear friend, but if it had not
+been for your awfully good companionship and your kindness, I dare say
+that by now I should have already made some sort of fatal blunder."
+
+At the door Bulstrode put his hand on his friend's arm, and, as though
+nothing in the conversation apart from the Duchess had any real
+significance, he said simply:
+
+"You are then, in sum, simply waiting...?"
+
+"Oh, yes," agreed the other rather blankly.  And the other man knew
+that he had been told only half the thought in his friend's mind.
+
+"She may get a divorce at any time, you know, quite easily, without my
+taking any further steps."
+
+"Oh, I see perfectly," Jimmy accepted; and as the door closed after his
+host, he said, almost aloud: "He thinks, then, there is half a chance
+that the Duchess will return."  And wondering very much how far a woman
+is willing to sacrifice herself for a man, granted that she loves him,
+he did not finish his phrase.
+
+
+The next day Bulstrode, no longer able to resist the beckoning country,
+went out, as it were, to it as if he said "Here I am--what will you do
+with me?"
+
+If Glousceshire could, for a while, make him forget the problems he had
+been housed with, brush him up a bit, he thought it would be a good
+thing.  Therefore, when his horse came up to the door he threw himself
+on the animal in a nervous haste to be gone, and setting off in the
+direction of Penhaven, obeyed its summons at last.
+
+Westboro' had run up to London for overnight, and Bulstrode, at the
+Duke's something more than invitation, a sort of appeal, was to stay
+indefinitely on.  It must be confessed that he rather selfishly looked
+forward to the course of an untroubled afternoon, to an evening amongst
+the books whose files had tempted him for days.
+
+But the pity of all he had sympathetically been closeted with was great
+in his mind.  Whereas his native delicacy and slow judgment had led him
+to keep silent until now towards his host, it was in no wise because
+Jimmy had not quite made up his mind that he would not spare Westboro'
+at all when the moment, if it ever came, should present itself for him
+to speak.
+
+As he rode along he thought of the Duchess naturally in Paris,
+surrounded by a train of ardent admirers; she had them always,
+everywhere.  She was disillusioned, of course, probably angry, piqued,
+and unfortunately she had been betrayed; and he shrugged with a gentle
+desperation as he made a mental picture of the last scene: the
+inevitable divorce, the wrecking of another household,
+unless--unless--one of them loved sufficiently to save the situation.
+
+His thoughts came to a standstill as his horse stopped short before a
+gate: his riding had fetched him up before it.  The mare stretched out
+her long neck, set free by a relaxing rein; she sniffed the latch and
+put her head over the wicket, and the rider saw that they had come
+across fields, and were at the entrance of a deserted property.  The
+gate gave access to a forest road where the thick underbrush was
+untidy, and on whose walk the piles of leaves lay as they had fallen.
+He could see no farther in, and thinking to come at the end upon a
+forsaken garden, the precincts of an untenanted country house, he
+leaned down, tried the gate which fairly swung into his hand, and the
+mare passed through.  There was the delicious intimacy about the woods
+which the sense of coming alone and unexpectedly upon the old and
+forsaken gives the traveller.  He is a discoverer of secrets, a
+legitimate spy upon stories which he flatters himself he is the first
+to read.  He becomes intimate with another man's past, and as he must
+necessarily, in all ignorance, tell himself his own tales, indiscretion
+may be said to be a doubtful quantity.
+
+A bit back in the bare brown woods he saw the flash of a marble pillar;
+it shone white and clear in the setting of russet and against the boles
+of the trees.  A little farther away gleamed another figure on its base
+of fluted marble, and still farther along, leaf-overlaid and thus
+effaced, he could discern the contour of a sunken garden.  The place
+grew more pretentious as he slowly picked his way, and he was
+unprepared for coming suddenly onto a gravel path from which he thought
+the leaves had been blown away.  Here Bulstrode dismounted, and, with
+the bridle over his arm, walked towards the path's end, pleasantly
+interested, and now, as he thought it should by this do, the house
+struck on him through an archway contrived by the training of old trees
+over a circle of stone.  The house broke on him in the shape of an
+Elizabethan manse; long and old with soft rose-color of brick in
+places, and the color of a faded leaf in others where the dampness had
+soaked in and had, through countless mid-summer suns, been burned out
+again.  Before the windows flashed the red of bright curtains.  The
+house was distinctly, and he thought it seemed happily, occupied.  He
+stopped where he stood by the arch, a little confused and a little
+balked in his romantic treat, and not the less feeling himself an
+intruder.  But before he could turn his horse and unobtrusively lead
+her back the way they had come, the house's occupant, no doubt she who
+gave it the air of being so happily tenanted, had come out with a
+garden hat on her head, a pair of garden shears in her hands, and with
+the precision of intention, turned sharply towards the arched forest
+walk, and in this way squarely upon Bulstrode.
+
+The surprise to him was, without doubt, the greater, for she knew him
+at once, and he for a second did not recognize her.  Her extreme
+English air--the straw hat tied under her chin and the face it framed,
+so decidedly altered, bewildered him.  His first greeting, mentally,
+before he spoke aloud to her, was masculine.  "Why, her beauty!  What
+in heaven's name had she done with it?"
+
+"_What_ are you doing here?"
+
+They both asked it at once, and the lady having lived so long in an
+insular country was adept in its possibilities of great hospitality as
+well as of freezing out an unwelcome visitor.  She froze the poor
+gentleman and then, touched by his utter bewilderment and his innocence
+of wilful intrusion, she smiled more humanly.
+
+"Won't you, since you _are_ here, Mr. Bulstrode, come in and have a cup
+of tea?"
+
+She at once followed their mutual question by saying: "As for being
+here, you will admit that given the part of the country it is, no one
+has a better right!"
+
+"Oh, I'll admit anything you like," he laughed, "if you'll only admit
+us.  You see we are two."
+
+The lady came up to him in a more friendly manner; she gave him her
+hand and she really smiled beautifully.  Then she put her hand on the
+nose of the horse, with the touch one has for familiar things.
+
+"She's a perfect dear, isn't she--a dear.  So you are riding her then?
+Well, you'll find her easy to tie, she stands well.  There's nothing
+she can spoil, that's the charm of such an old, tumble-down place."
+
+As Bulstrode followed after the trailing dress just touching the gravel
+with a rustling sound, he had the feeling of being suddenly,
+willy-nilly, taken and put into the heart of a story book.  He smiled.
+"Well, I've done the first chapter and now I've got to go on in the
+book, I suppose, whether I want to be here or not, to the end."
+
+"I thought I was making a voyage of discovery," he told her as they sat
+in the low room before a fire and before her table and tea cups.  "I
+fancied I was the only person within miles round.  I expect no one has
+a right to be so bold, but I really didn't dream the place was lived
+in, as, of course, you know."
+
+"Drink your tea," she bade, "and eat your toast before I make you tell
+me if you have come to see me as a messenger."
+
+"And if I have?"
+
+It was delicious tea, and the American of her had somehow found cream
+for it, which, un-English luxury, the American in him fully
+appreciated.  The liquid in the blue-and-white cups was pale as saffron
+and the toast was a feather.
+
+"At five o'clock there's nothing like it in the world," he breathed.
+"I didn't hope for this to-day.  I had recklessly thrown five o'clock
+over, for I'm alone at the castle."  He drank his tea, finished, and
+with a sigh.  Then he said: "I can actually venture to ask you for
+another cup, for I am nobody's messenger or envoy, my dear, nobody's.
+I'm just an indiscreet, humdrum individual who has been too charmingly
+rewarded for an intrusion.  You saw my surprise, didn't you?  And I'm
+not very clever at putting on things."
+
+The Duchess tacitly accepted, it is to be supposed, for she made him a
+second cup of tea, slowly.
+
+"You don't know that I've been thinking about you all day," he said,
+"and I can frankly say that I've been making a very different picture
+of you indeed."
+
+She took no notice whatsoever of his personality.
+
+"You are in England, then," she said rather formally.  "I never think
+of my own country people as being here.  I always think of Americans as
+being in the States, men above all, for they fit so badly in the
+English atmosphere, don't they?  It's always incongruous to me to hear
+their "r's" and "a's" rattling about in this soft language.  It's
+horrid of me to speak so.  You, of course, are out of the category.
+But as you stood there, with Banshee's nose over your shoulder you
+fitted quite beautifully in with everything.  I don't believe I should
+mind you, ever, anywhere, and yet I more naturally think of you at
+Newport, don't you see?"
+
+Her companion cried: "Oh, no, I'm in England, and you can't alter the
+fact, at least if you can, please don't; for Newport on the fifteenth
+of December, and with no such tea or fire----"
+
+"Oh," she permitted, "you may stay.  I said you fitted--only----"
+
+Bulstrode interposed: "Don't at least for a few moments entertain any
+'buts' and 'onlys'--they are nearly as bad as those magical travelling
+trunks that would transport me to the United States.  It is so--let me
+say--neutral in this place, I should think I might remain.  I don't
+know why you are here or with whom, nor for how long, or for how deep,
+but it is singularly perfect to have found you."
+
+His hostess had left her seat behind the table, and taking a chair by
+the fireside where Bulstrode was sitting, undid the ribbons of her
+garden hat and let the basket-like object fall on the floor.
+
+"You must promise me, first of all, that you will not say you have seen
+me.  Otherwise I shall leave here to-morrow and nobody shall ever again
+know where I am."
+
+However her command might conflict with what was in his mind, he was
+obliged to give her his word.  He had no right not to do so.
+
+"And nothing," she said, "must make you break this promise, Mr.
+Bulstrode.  I know how good you are, and how you do all sorts of
+Quixotic funny things, but in this case please--please----"
+
+"Mind my own business?" he nodded.  "I will, Duchess, I will."
+
+She looked at him steadily a moment and seemed satisfied, for she
+relaxed the tensity of her manner, which was the first Americanism she
+had displayed, and in her pretty soft drawl asked him, with less
+perfunctory interest than her words implied: "You are at Westboro'?"
+
+"Yes, since the twenty-fifth."
+
+"And you're staying on?"
+
+"I seem to be more or less of a fixture--until the holidays, I expect."
+
+"Lucky you," she breathed, and at his expression of candid surprise she
+half laughed.  "Oh, I mean as far as the castle goes--isn't it really
+too delightful?"
+
+He was able to say honestly: "Quite the most beautiful house I have
+ever seen."
+
+"Yes, I think so too," she nodded.  "It's not so important as many
+others but it's more perfect, more like a home."
+
+Bulstrode sat back in his chair and tried to make her forget him.
+Between the fire and the shadow he wanted to watch her face from which
+he now saw that the beauty he remembered had not faded but had been
+transformed.  She was beautiful in another way: the brilliant, blooming
+girl, fully blown at eighteen, with the dazzling charm of health, no
+longer existed in the Duchess of Westboro'.  She had refined very much
+indeed.  The aggressive bearing of the American princess had been
+replaced by the colder, more serene hauteur of the English Duchess.
+She was evidently a very proud woman, the arch of her brows said so,
+and the line of her lips.  All her lines were sharper and finer.  Her
+color, and he could not, as he studied her, quite regret it; her color
+was quite gone.  Her pallor made her more delicate, and her eyes--it
+was in them that Bulstrode thought he saw the greatest change of all;
+they were now fixed upon him, there was something melancholy in their
+profound and deeply circled gray.
+
+"What rooms will they have given you?" she asked after a moment.
+Then--"Wait," she commanded, "I know.  The south wing, the Henry IV.
+rooms that look into the gardens.  I always gave those to the men.
+There's something extremely homelike about them, don't you think so?
+And have you ever seen anything like those winter roses in that court?
+Did any bloom this year?  The trellis runs up along the terrace
+balustrade--or possibly you don't care for flowers?  Of course you
+wouldn't as a girl does."
+
+A _girl_--with that face and those eyes?  Why, she must have been
+talking back ten years.  Bulstrode drew a breath.
+
+"I know the roses you mean.  It would be difficult to forget them.
+Your gardener takes such pride in them.  For some reason they are never
+gathered; they fall as they hang.  The gardener, it so happened, told
+me so."
+
+She was looking at him with an intensity almost painful, but she said
+nothing further, and after a moment more Bulstrode replied to another
+question.
+
+"As it happens I don't occupy the Henry IV. rooms.  I have mine quite
+on the other side of the castle.  Don't they call them the 'West
+Rooms'?"
+
+She caught her breath a little, but she was in splendid training with
+all her years of English life behind her.  Her face, nevertheless,
+showed how well she knew those rooms, without the added note in her
+voice as she said:
+
+"Oh, those West Rooms--you have those."
+
+And in the quiet that fell as her eyes sought the fire, he quite knew
+how her thoughts travelled down the hall to the open nursery doors with
+their waiting gates.  Whatever were her reasons for being here,
+Bulstrode saw that he had surprised her in a moment of sadness, and
+that his visit in spite of his indiscretion, was not wholly unwelcome.
+But in the sudden way coming upon some one connected with her own life,
+she had been completely taken unawares, and her lapse into something
+like sentiment was short.  Even as he looked at her she hardened.
+
+"You have naturally not asked me anything, Mr. Bulstrode," she said,
+coldly enough now, "and more naturally still I have no explanations to
+give.  By to-morrow I may be gone.  I may live here for the rest of my
+life.  I never leave my garden, I am quite unknown to the people about.
+If any one in Westboro' learns that I am here I shall leave at once.
+You will not come again.  It is discourteous to say so--to ask it."
+
+He had risen from his chair.
+
+"Oh, but it's quite, quite dark.  However will you manage?"
+
+"We'll pick our way back well enough," he assured her.  "The distance
+to the road is nothing, and from here on it runs straight to the abbey."
+
+The Duchess followed him slowly to the door, and there she asked
+abruptly: "Is Westboro' to be down all winter?  I didn't know it.  I
+thought he was out of England or I should not have come here at all."
+
+"Oh," Bulstrode answered, "he's too restless to be long anywhere.  I
+expect he'll pack up and be off before we know it.  He's away just now
+at any rate, and I'm kicking my heels up there quite alone.  I'm not to
+return--ever?" he ventured.  "You may so fully trust me that--" and he
+saw that she hesitated and pursued, "I shall ride up to the little gate
+again, and if it is unlatched...."
+
+"Oh, don't count on it," she advised him, "don't--it's against all my
+plans."
+
+Somebody in the shape of a lad had unfastened the mare, and preceded
+Bulstrode on foot with a lantern, by whose flicker, with much delicate
+caution and pretended shyness, Banshee picked her way to the road,
+through the woods which Bulstrode an hour before had fancied led into a
+deserted garden.
+
+
+"You see," he put it to her delicacy to understand, "it's scarcely, in
+a way, fair to him--I feel it so at least.  It gives me the sensation
+of knowing more than he does in his own house about that which
+presumably should be Westboro's secret."
+
+"You mean to say,"--the Duchess pinned him down, "that you'll give me
+away because of one of those peculiar crises of honor that makes a
+person betray a trust in order to salve his conscience?"
+
+
+Bulstrode had come again faithfully, making the pilgrimage to the
+forest road, and he was not surprised that it should have finally
+turned out so that one day the gate yielded to his touch, and he found
+the Duchess if not waiting for him, distinctly there.  During their
+delightful little talks--and they had been so--not once had the name of
+Bulstrode's host been mentioned; and if the lady had a curiosity
+concerning her lord and once master, she did not display it to the
+visitor.
+
+"I mean to say," Bulstrode replied in answer to her challenge which was
+fiery, "that I really don't want to play false to Westboro', more false
+than I shall in the course of events be forced to be.  Of course, your
+secret--I need not say so--is entirely safe.  But the Duke comes back
+in a day or two, and rather than face him with this silence which you
+have imposed upon me I am going back to London before he returns."
+
+The sewing she had chosen to finger--a Duchess, and an American one at
+that, is not expected to do more--lay at her feet.  By her side was a
+basket of considerable proportions, and it was full to the brim with
+linen: the very fine white stuff overflowed from the basket like snow.
+The Duchess of Westboro's handiwork had already caught the eye of her
+guest.  And now, as her long hands and her long finger, tipped by its
+golden thimble, handled her sewing, Bulstrode watched her interestedly
+and found great loveliness in her bending face.
+
+"I didn't think any of you knew how to sew," he mused aloud.
+
+"Any of us!" she smiled.  "Do you, by that, mean American Duchesses?
+Or do you mean women who have left their husbands?  Or in just what
+class do you think of me, regarding your last remark?"
+
+She folded up her work and dropped her thimble in the nest of snow.
+Bulstrode acknowledged that his conclusion, whatever it had been, was
+wrong.
+
+"When I married," the Duchess said, "I was the best four-in-hand whip
+for a woman in my set.  I don't think I am a keen needlewoman, really,
+and I know then I didn't recognize a needle by sight.  When my little
+boys were born I sent to Paris for everything they wore, and I can
+remember that I didn't even know for what the little clothes were
+intended, many of them, when they came home in my first son's layette.
+I have learned to sew since I came here to The Dials.  I've been three
+months here, now, and I really must have proved a clever pupil, for I
+assure you that they tell me I have made some pretty things."  As she
+spoke she held up the seam she ran, and Bulstrode, who himself
+confessed to not knowing a needle by sight, was forced to peer over the
+seam and endeavor to find her tiny stitches.  He exclaimed:
+
+"Three months!  You must have been terribly dull!"
+
+"No."
+
+"You are known," he said, "throughout the countryside--not that I've
+been making inquiries, but in spite of myself I have heard--as a
+stranger, presumably a Frenchwoman, a widow who will probably buy The
+Dials."
+
+"Oh, I shall never buy the place," she assured him, and then abruptly:
+"Had you been free to speak of me, what would you have told Westboro'?"
+
+He waited a second, then answered her lightly, but with a feeling which
+she did not mistake: "I should have asked him to come and see you run
+up that seam."
+
+"He would not have come."
+
+Remembering very clearly how determined Westboro's decision had been,
+he did not affirm to the lady his belief that Westboro' would in
+reality have flown to her.
+
+At the door, later, she bade him good-bye and appeared to gather her
+courage together, and, with a lapse into a simplicity so entire that
+she seemed only Frances Denby and to possess no more of title or
+distinction than any lovely woman, she said to him:
+
+"Mr. Bulstrode, please don't leave the castle."
+
+"Oh, I couldn't sit opposite my friend at dinner, I couldn't meet his
+eyes now, my dear child."
+
+The Duchess touched his arm.  "It's sweet of you to call me so.  You
+are really as young as I am, and certainly I feel an age beyond you.
+Please stay."
+
+The pleasure which his visits had been to her had brought something of
+an animation and interest to her cold face.  Dressed in a dark and
+simple gown, her fur stole about her neck, she had this afternoon
+followed him out of the house into the garden and walked slowly along
+by his side towards the gate.
+
+"Of all the people in the world one would choose you, I think, to be
+the friend of..."  She caught herself up.  "I mean to say, can't you
+forget those stupid little ideas of honor and friendship and all that?"
+She put it beautifully.  "I, of course, will give up seeing you," she
+renounced, "but it will be a world of comfort just to feel that you are
+there."
+
+As he did not at once succumb to her blandishments, she asked point
+blank:
+
+"Promise me to stop on."
+
+"I at least won't go without letting you know of it."
+
+"Without my permission?"
+
+"I won't say that."
+
+"But I'm sure that you mean it," she nodded happily, "and you're _such_
+a help."
+
+She was so affectionate as she bade him good-bye, that only at the
+little road did he begin to wonder just what help he was.  Was he
+aiding her to detective poor Westboro'?  Was he adding an air of
+protection to some feminine treachery?
+
+"Oh, no," he decided; "she's incapable of any thing of the sort.  But I
+must clear out;" and he decided that at once, so soon as Westboro'
+should be at home, he would take himself to ground still more neutral
+than The Dials had proved to be.  But Westboro' showed no intention of
+coming immediately home.  Instead, with a droll egoism, as if the fact
+that he had made poor Bulstrode a party to his unhappiness gave him
+thereafter a right to the other's time even in absence, he laid a firm
+hold on Jimmy.  Westboro' finally put pen to paper, and the scrappy
+letter touched the deserted visitor; it proved to have been written at
+a _bureau de poste_ in Paris:
+
+"Don't, for God's sake, go off, old man.  Keep up your end."  (His
+end!)  "Stop on at Westboro'--Use the place as if it were all put up
+for your amusement.  Just live there so I may feel it's alive.  Let me
+find a human being at home when I turn up.  I'll wire in a day or so."
+
+"So he is in Paris, then."  Bulstrode had supposed so, and did not
+doubt that the Duke had gone there to find news of his wife, possibly
+as well to see Madame de Bassevigne.
+
+Poor fellow, if he were searching for the Duchess!  Well, Bulstrode
+would keep up his end, he had nothing else for the time being to do but
+to mind other people's business.  He put it so to himself.  Indeed he
+could not but believe it was fortunate for more than one person that
+something could keep him from minding his own.
+
+An undefined discretion kept him from going to the Moated Grange, as to
+himself he styled the retreat the Duchess had made of The Dials.  And,
+in spite of the absolute freedom now given him to prowl about amongst
+the books, in spite of his "evenings out" as he called them, Jimmy
+found the time at Westboro' to drag lamentably.  His own affairs, which
+he so faithlessly denied, came to him in batches of letters whose
+questions could not be solved by return mail.  He became over his own
+thoughts restless, and he sent a telegram to his host: "Better have a
+look at things here yourself.  Can't possibly stop on longer than...."
+And he set a day.
+
+"If Westboro', poor devil, has to look forward to a life of this
+unaccompanied grandeur," he pitied him.  The lines and files of
+soft-footed, impersonal servants, the perfect stilted attention, the
+silence, and the inhumanness of a man's lonely life, became intolerable
+to Jimmy Bulstrode.  Even though Frances, Duchess of Westboro', had
+truly said that the castle was a delightful home, Bulstrode began to
+wonder what that word comprised or meant: certainly nothing like his
+occupation of another man's house or like any life that is lived alone.
+
+At the end of the week that the American spent at Westboro' he had
+condensed the castle, as he said to himself, as far as possible, to the
+proportions of a Harlem flat, and he lived in it.  In the almost small
+breakfast room whose windows gave on the terrace, and where all the
+December sun that was visible came to find him, he took his meals; each
+of them but dinner, which was determinedly and imperially served by
+five men in one of the dining-rooms, and at which function, as he
+expressed it, he shut his eyes and just ate blindly through.  He lived
+out of doors all day, took his tea in his dressing-room, and read and
+smoked until the august dinner hour called him down to dress and dine
+alone.  For a week he lived "without sight of a human being," so he
+said, for the domestics were only machines.  And, towards the end of
+the week, he would have gone to see any one: an enemy would have been
+too easy, and the only person within range was, of course, the Duchess
+of Westboro'.
+
+
+Westboro' had made a confidant of Bulstrode, and the woman had not.
+Bulstrode liked it in her.  To be sure, the cases were quite different:
+there was no reason why the man deserted and bruised in his pride and
+in his heart, should not have talked to his old friend.  Westboro'
+accused himself of weakness.
+
+"I've blabbed like a woman," he acknowledged ruefully.
+
+The Duchess had not spoken nor had she, on the other hand, with the
+fine courage of the true woman, been in any eager haste to discover
+what her husband had said of her, nor had she asked if he had spoken at
+all.  On the other hand, aided by an extreme patience and with still
+greater delicacy, she had waited, understanding that her guest, whose
+mettle and character she knew would not permit him to betray a trust,
+might, however naïvely, disclose what he knew without being conscious
+of it.
+
+But if Bulstrode gave himself or his host away, the Duchess made no
+sign that she had profited by indiscretions.  The impersonality of
+their conversations was indeed a relief to Bulstrode, and it made it
+possible for him to feel himself less a traitor at the Duke's hearth.
+But she talked very sweetly, too, of her children.  She had the second
+picture to the Duke's of the little boys, a picture like the one
+Bulstrode had seen at the castle, and showed it to him as the father
+had done.
+
+"Westboro' has the companion to this," he had not minded telling her as
+they sat together in the small room he had grown to know as well as the
+larger rooms of the castle.  And at the end of a few moments Bulstrode
+quite blurted out: "Why, in Heaven's name do you women make men suffer
+so?"
+
+The Duchess, who had been working, dropped her bit of muslin and
+looked, with her cherry lips parted and her great serious eyes, for all
+the world like a lady in a gift book.  Her face was eighteenth century
+and child-like.
+
+Bulstrode nodded.  "Oh, yes, you've got so easily the upper hand, the
+very least of you, you know, over the best of us.  It's such an unfair
+supremacy.  You've got such a clever knowledge of little things, such a
+sense of the scale of the feelings, and you certainly make the very
+most of your power over us all.  Can't you--" and his eyes, half
+serious and half reproachful, seemed, as he looked at her, to question
+all the womankind he knew--"Can't you ever love us well enough just
+quite simply to make us happy?"
+
+The Duchess had taken up her sewing again, and her eyes were upon it.
+Bulstrode waited for a little, following her stitches through the
+muslin and the flash of her thimble in the light.
+
+"Can't you?" he softly repeated.  "Isn't it, after all, a good sort of
+way of spending one's life, this making another happy?"
+
+"American women aren't taught so, you know," she said.  "It isn't
+taught us that the end and aim of our existence is to make a man happy."
+
+Her companion didn't seem at all surprised.
+
+"And so you see," she went on, "those of us that do learn that after
+all there may be something in what you say--those of us that learn,
+only find it out after a lot of hard experiences, and it is sometimes
+too late!"
+
+She seemed to think his direct question called for a distinct answer,
+for she admitted: "Oh, yes, of course there are some of us who would
+give a great deal to try.  And you see, moreover," she went on with her
+subject as she turned the corner of her square, "you put it well when
+you said 'love enough.'  You see that's the whole thing, Mr. Bulstrode,
+to love enough.  One can, of course, in that case, do nearly all there
+is to do, can't one?"
+
+"Nearly all," he had smiled, and added: "_And a great deal more_."
+
+
+The household gods, whose dignity and harmony had not been disturbed
+during the absence of the master of Westboro', were unable, however, to
+give him very much comfort on his return.  The Duke's motor cut quickly
+up the long drive and severed--clove, as it were--a way through the
+frosty air and let him into the park.  The poor man had only a sense of
+wretchedness on coming home--"coming back," he now put it.  Huddled
+down deep in his fur coat, its collar hunched round his ears, his face
+was as gloomy as that of a man dispossessed of all his goods; doors
+thrown open into the fragrant and agreeably warmed halls fetched him
+further home.  But the knowledge that the house had been lived in
+during his absence was not ungrateful.  He sniffed the odor of a
+familiar brand of cigar, and before he had quite plumbed the melancholy
+of the place to its depths, Jimmy Bulstrode had sunned out of one of
+the inner rooms, and the grasp of the friendly hand and the sound of
+the cheerful voice struck a chord in Westboro' that shook him.
+
+"I've been like a fiend possessed," he said to Jimmy, in the evening
+when they found themselves once more before the fire.  "I've scarcely
+known what I've been doing, or why; but I know one thing, and that is
+that I'm the most wretched man alive."
+
+Bulstrode nodded.  "You _did_ go to Paris, then!"
+
+"Yes," said the Duke, "and what I've found out there has driven me
+insane."
+
+Although ignorant of the variations of his friend's discovery,
+Bulstrode was pretty certain of one that had not been made.
+
+"You may, old chap," he said smoothly, "not have found out all the
+truth, you know."
+
+Westboro' raised his hand.  "Come," he said, "no palliations; you can't
+smooth over the facts.  Frances is not in Paris.  She has not been in
+Paris for several months."  He paused.
+
+"In itself not a tragedy," murmured his friend.  "Paris is considered
+at times a place as well _not_ to be in."
+
+But Bulstrode's remark did not distract his friend from his narrative.
+
+"She has not been in Paris since I saw her twelve months ago, and she
+has left no sign or trace of where she has gone.  There is no address,
+no way that I can find her.  Not that a discovery is not of course
+ultimately possible, but what, in the interval, if I should wish to
+write to her?  What if I should need to see her?  What if I should die?"
+
+"Would you, in any of those cases, send for her?"
+
+"I don't know," the Duke admitted.
+
+"But," Jimmy asked him, "did you go to Paris this time to see the
+Duchess?"
+
+"Since you ask me frankly," the Duke admitted, "I don't think that I
+did."
+
+"At all events," the other said, "you surely did not go to spy on her,
+Westboro'?"
+
+The Duke was silent, then answered quietly:
+
+"I should never ask a question--not if it meant a certain discovery of
+something that I feared or suspected.  I don't think I should ever seek
+to find out something she didn't want me to know."
+
+Bulstrode, at the blindness of a man regarding his own intentions,
+smiled behind his cigar.  "Well?" he helped.
+
+"I went over to France," said the Duke--"and I suppose you'll scarcely
+believe a man who you say is not a lover to be capable of such
+sentimentality--simply, if possible, to have a sight of my wife, to see
+her go out of the door, or to see her go in, to see her possibly get
+into a carriage; and how did I know that it would not be with another
+man?"
+
+"How did you find out that she had left?"
+
+"I asked for her at her hôtel."
+
+"The first question, then," Jimmy smiled.
+
+"A fair one?"
+
+"Oh, perfectly."
+
+"I was told that the Duchess had left Paris months before."
+
+"And then?" the other man's voice was placid as he spoke for the Duke.
+"Then you went to her bankers, her bakers and candlestick makers; in
+short, you asked all over the place, didn't you?"
+
+The Duke swore gently.  "Well, what would you have a man do?"
+
+"Why I would have him do that," nodded Jimmy, "by all means.  Any man
+would have done so."
+
+In the half second of interval whilst the Duke was obliged to swallow
+his friend's sarcasm, Bulstrode had time to think: "Here I am, once
+more in the heart of an intrigue.  Its fetters are all about me and I
+am wretchedly bound by honor not to do the simple, natural thing."
+Then he asked boldly: "Well, what do you think about it, Westboro'?"
+
+"Think?" Westboro' repeated, "why, that she has deliberately escaped
+from me, put herself out of any possible reach; she doesn't want a
+reconciliation and she has gone away.  She may have gone away alone and
+she may not, that I don't know, and I don't believe I want to know."
+
+"Oh, you'll find her."  It was with the most delightful security and
+contentment that his friend was able to tell the Duke this.  But the
+cheerful note struck the poor husband the disagreeablest of blows.
+
+"Gad!" he laughed, "what a cold brand of creature a bachelor is!  'Find
+her!' as one might speak of finding an umbrella that you've left by
+mistake at your club.  Of course she can be found.  There are not many
+mysteries that search can't solve in these days.  And Duchesses don't
+drop off the face of the earth.  I could no doubt have found her in
+twenty-four hours, but I didn't try to.  I don't know that I want to
+find her.  It isn't the fact of where she's gone that counts--that she
+wanted to go--that she has voluntarily made the separation final and
+complete."
+
+"Then," persisted the bachelor, "you don't really _want_ to find her?"
+
+"Jove!" the Duke turned on him.  "You don't know what it is to love a
+woman!  You've got some imagination--try to use it, can't you?  Can't
+you?"
+
+He met the American's handsome eyes.  A flush rose under Bulstrode's
+cheek.  Westboro' put his hand on his friend's shoulder.  "I beg your
+pardon, dear old chap."
+
+"Oh, that's all right, old chap," Bulstrode assured cheerfully.
+
+
+"My dear Duchess, it seems an unconscionable waste of time and life for
+any one to ignore the inevitable!  It's such a prodigal throwing out of
+the window of riches!"
+
+Bulstrode took her hands, both of them, in his as she stood in the
+winter sunshine, the open house door behind her, the terrace and its
+broken stairs of crumbling stone before her.
+
+"Why, my dear lady, if I kept a diary of daily events I couldn't write
+down one page of good reasons why you should be living here and
+Westboro' up there, and I a comic go-between, in the secret of both and
+the confidence of one."
+
+"Oh," she interrupted, "then you're in the confidence...?"
+
+"Of your husband, yes," Bulstrode found himself startled into betrayal.
+
+She drew her hands from him and walked on a little in the sunshine, and
+he followed by her side.
+
+"I don't mind," she permitted, "you're such a perfect dear.  I
+shouldn't mind at all if I thought that the confidence were a good one."
+
+Her tone was light and cool, but the gentleman never failed to notice
+when the Duchess spoke of the Duke that there was a tremor under her
+words, a warmth, an agitation, which she vainly tried to control.
+
+"Confidences," she said, "are very rarely just, you know, and _les
+absents ont toujours tort_."
+
+"Oh, you don't mean...?" Jimmy emphasized.
+
+"It was a confidence, wasn't it?"
+
+"A real one," she was assured.
+
+"Well then, you'll keep it, of course."
+
+She drew the stole up round her long fair neck; her delicate head came
+out of the soft fur like a flower.  But before she could follow up her
+words Bulstrode said:
+
+"You, of course, then know how he loves you."
+
+He felt more than knew that she trembled, and he saw an instinctive
+gesture which he understood meant that he should be silent.
+
+"You and I put it quite clearly, Mr. Bulstrode, the other day."  Her
+voice was serene again.  "If only one cares enough--that's the
+necessary thing for every question."
+
+"Well?"
+
+She half shrugged, made a little motion with her white hands, and this
+answer said for her: "That is indeed the question, and I haven't solved
+it."
+
+They stopped at the terraced walk.  The low stones, dark and black,
+were filled in their interstices with fine lines of greenish moss.  On
+the sunny corner the dial's shadow fell across the noon.  The Duchess
+put her hand on the warmed stones.
+
+"It's a heavenly day," she said, "I don't believe that the Riviera is
+warmer.  I never have seen such an English December."
+
+Her eyes, which had been fixed on the woods below the garden, now
+turned towards the house and rested on one of the upper windows where
+the sun fell on the little panes.  The Duchess remained looking up a
+few seconds, then she came back to her guest.
+
+"I started, you know, to tell you something," Bulstrode smiled at her.
+"I once served on a jury in the West, and although the case was a
+miserably sad one in every way, I suppose, I couldn't take it as
+seriously as I should have done, for from the first the whole thing
+seemed so unnecessary, and the crisis could so easily have been
+avoided."
+
+"I know," she interrupted him, "but you're rather wrong.  Not from the
+first."
+
+He capitulated.  "Well, grant it so if you like, only agree with me
+when I say from my own--" he put his hand down on the dial's edge.
+"From this lovely noon-time on, every hour you waste is clear loss.
+The Duke loves you as women are rarely loved, and after all," he said
+with something like passion in his agreeable voice "what _do_ you all
+expect?  Love doesn't hang on every tree for a woman to pluck at will,
+and you have the great luck, my dear Duchess, to be loved by your own
+husband.  Why don't you go to him?"
+
+"Go to him?" she echoed.
+
+He curtly replied: "Why not?"
+
+"My dear friend!"
+
+"Why, didn't you forbid him to go to you?"
+
+"Ah," she nodded, "the confidence, it was intimate indeed.  But since
+you have got it, won't you agree that any man, if he loved a woman,
+would disobey her?"
+
+"Westboro' would not."
+
+The Duchess said coldly: "Pride is not love."
+
+"You didn't mean him, then, to keep his vow?"
+
+"Yes," she slowly thought out, "I did indeed, with all my heart."
+
+"And now?"
+
+She turned towards the house again, and as she walked back, said: "I
+don't quite know."
+
+And Bulstrode asked her: "That is why you are here, to find out?"
+
+"Partly."
+
+Her companion's face grew stern.  The Duchess did not see it for her
+eyes had again swept the upper window.  At her side Bulstrode went on:
+"You have taken ten years to discover that you did not love your
+husband.  You have taken one year to begin to wonder, to doubt, to
+suspect, to half think that you do; it's an unstable state of heart,
+Duchess, terribly unstable."
+
+The woman stopped short at his side, and now as she lifted up her eyes
+and saw him, was a little startled if not frightened at his expression.
+
+"Unstable," she repeated, with a world of scorn in her voice.  "How can
+you use that word to me, knowing the facts of the case?"
+
+"Oh, a man," said Bulstrode rather impatiently, "is a worthless,
+wretched piece of mechanism altogether.  I grant you that--utterly
+unworthy the love and confidence of any good woman.  He is capable of
+all the vagaries and infidelities possible.  We'll judge him so.  But,"
+he continued, "these wandering, vagrant derelicts have been known to
+tie fast, to find port, to drop anchor.  They have even brought great
+riches and important treasure into harbor, fetched a world of good luck
+home.  There's only one thing in the universe that can keep a man,
+Duchess, only one."
+
+"Well?" she encouraged him.
+
+"A woman's heart," he said deeply, "a woman's true tenderness; and it
+needs all that heart, all its love, all its patience and sacrifice to
+keep that man--all and forever."
+
+He saw her bosom heave; she had thrown her fur off, as if its warmth
+stifled her.  Vivid color had come into her face.  Her pallor for the
+time was destroyed, and as she flashed a rebellious look at him, a look
+of revolt and selfhood, he seemed to see again the American
+girl--wilful, egotistical, spoiled--an imperious creature whose
+caprices had been opposed to the Duke's Anglo-Saxon temperament and
+national egoism.
+
+At this moment, the window the Duchess looked towards opened part way:
+it was under the eaves and there must have been a dovecote near, for
+there came the soft sound of cooing like the call of a young bird.
+Possibly the gentle note reached the woman's hearing as well, for her
+face transcendently softened.
+
+"I think," she said with evident effort to speak in a commonplace tone,
+"it would be quite futile to urge Cecil to come."
+
+"Oh, I shan't advise him so."
+
+Bulstrode's quick answer made her look at him in so much surprise that
+he went on to say: "I would not, in justice to him, in justice to the
+great love I have been permitted to see, advise him to come."
+
+The Duchess, during the months of analysis, suffering and experience,
+had not admitted to herself that should her husband return she would
+receive him, nor had she decided as to quite how obdurate she would be,
+and she was curious at the attitude of this gentle friend.  She naïvely
+asked:
+
+"Why would you not advise him so?"
+
+Bulstrode said, still continuing his pleasant sententiousness, "The
+woman's heart must be as stable as the man's is uncertain, and the man
+who comes back after such a separation must not find a woman who does
+not know her own mind.  He must, on the contrary, find one who has no
+mind or will or life but his."
+
+As he looked at the person to whom he spoke he was somewhat struck by
+the maternal look in her: he had never clearly discovered it before.
+Her breast from which the fur had fallen, as it rose and fell under her
+soft gown, was full, generous, and beautiful; even as he spoke in a
+certain accusation against her, she seemed to have altered.
+
+"Westboro'," he said a little confused, "must come back to a woman,
+Duchess, to a woman--to a consoler.  I wish I could express
+myself--almost to a mother--as well as to a wife."
+
+The ardent color dyed her face again; her lips moved.  She put out her
+hand towards him, and as he took it he understood that she wished him
+to bid her good-by and to leave her alone.  He heard what she struggled
+to say:
+
+"He must not come, he must not come."
+
+"No," he accepted sadly for his friend, "No, he must not come."
+
+
+Bulstrode had chosen those times for going to The Dials when his host
+was least likely to take note of his absence; but it happened that more
+than once the Duke missed him at just the wrong moment, and more than
+once had been given the direction in which Bulstrode's footsteps had
+turned.
+
+One morning, during a talk with his agent, Westboro'--the map of the
+district before him--enquired what had ever been done with the property
+known as The Dials, and into whose hands the old place had fallen.  It
+seemed that it had been let for some months to a foreigner, a widow,
+who lived there, and alone.
+
+Westboro' considered the farms and forests, as they lay mapped out
+before him, at the extreme foot of the castle's parks.  It was a little
+square of some fifty acres by itself; it had never interested him
+before.
+
+How long did the lease run on?  Did the agent know?  He believed for
+another year.
+
+The Duke gave instructions to have the property looked into, with a
+view to purchase.  And as the man put up his papers, he vouchsafed to
+his employer:
+
+"The present tenant is very exclusive; she sees nobody, has never, I
+believe, even been to the Abbey.  An old gardener who has been kept on
+says the servants are all foreign."
+
+The Duke gave only a tepid interest to the information which would have
+passed entirely from his mind had it not been for his next meeting with
+Jimmy Bulstrode.
+
+As much to shake off the impression his last talk with the Duchess had
+left on his mind, as to prolong his exercise, Jimmy had gone down out
+of the garden and across the place on foot over the rough winter fields
+with their rimy furrows and their barren floors.  As he made his way
+towards the bottom hedge, looking for a stile he knew would be there a
+little farther on, cutting an entrance out through the thorn to the
+road, he met Westboro', like himself, on foot, and with his hand upon
+the stile.  The presence of the Duke where Bulstrode knew he was least
+thought to be, and where he was now sadly sure he was not opportune,
+made Jimmy stop short, troubled, and, not for a moment thinking that
+the fact of his being there _himself_ was singular, he made his way
+determinedly through the stile.  As he greeted his friend, his own
+demeanor was decidedly one which said: "Don't go on in that direction,
+follow rather out of the turnstile with _me_."  And he led his friend
+rather brusquely down the bank, hitching his arm in Westboro's, forced
+him along with him into the road.
+
+"I ran down here to look over these meadows," said Westboro.'  "You
+seem yourself, in a way, to be pacing the land off!"
+
+"Oh, I _love_ cross-country walking," said Bulstrode warmly.
+
+"You must," smiled the Duke, "to have cut off into those barren fields.
+Were you lost?"  Westboro' stopped and looked back.  "You must have
+come directly down through The Dials."
+
+"_The Dials_?" the American helplessly repeated.  "Do you mean the old
+house and garden?"
+
+Bulstrode's manner and speech were rarely curt and evasive, but he
+seemed this time embarrassed and taken unawares.  As the two men sat in
+the motor which waited for the Duke down the road, Westboro' fixed his
+glass in his eye and looked hard for a second at his friend.
+Bulstrode's cheerful face was distinctly disturbed.
+
+"I'm thinking something of buying The Dials," Westboro', after a
+moment, said against the wind.
+
+Poor Jimmy.  If the house had not sufficiently up till now materialized
+out of his fancy as a possession, it declared itself at once, without
+doubt, as something he must look after.  It was only a little bit of
+England, luckily----
+
+"Well," he exclaimed, "to be frank, old man, I've, too, been thinking I
+should like to buy that property.  You could surely spare me this
+little corner of Glousceshire."
+
+"Spare it!" cried Westboro', "my dear chap, fancy how ripping to have
+you a landlord here!  To catch and hold you so!  We'll go over the
+whole place together.  My agent shall put the matter through for you."
+
+"Good God, no!" said Bulstrode, "don't let your man have wind of any
+such a deal.  The place would go up like a rocket in price.  If you
+really yourself care to withdraw as much as possible, that's the most
+you can do.  But for God's sake keep off the place, like a good fellow."
+
+Behind his long moustaches the Duke covered a smile, but he conciliated
+his agitated friend.
+
+"I'll keep off the grass until the turf is all your own, my dear
+Bulstrode."
+
+"Thanks!" said the other cordially, and sat back with a sigh of relief.
+"There," he reflected peacefully, "my presence is explained--it's quite
+perfect.  I shall be a landowner in England.  At all events, it's lucky
+the property is sympathetic.  I'm glad I didn't get balled up in this
+affair in, let us say, _New Jersey_, and find myself forced to purchase
+the Hackensack Meadows.
+
+"Did the old house look deserted?" asked the Duke wickedly.
+
+"Oh, rather!" replied the other gentleman.
+
+"Really!" wondered Westboro'.  "Why, they tell me that it is let to a
+Donna Incognita--a foreign lady."
+
+Bulstrode, whether at his own lie or at the shock of his companion's
+knowledge, blushed, and his friend saw him redden.  And the Duke, in
+whom candor was a charm, stared at his friend, half-opened his mouth,
+and then sat speechless.  The suggestiveness of the whole affair rushed
+over him so rapidly that he had not time to ask himself whether he
+credited his suspicions or not.
+
+"Good heavens!  _Jimmy_ carrying on a vulgar intrigue in a simple
+country village!"  He looked at the face of the man by his side, but
+Jimmy, leaning forwards, addressed some remark to the chauffeur, and
+showed no intention of meeting the Duke's eyes.  If it were not a
+vulgar intrigue, what could it be?  How difficult it grew to connect
+such a _liason_ with his friend.  But as he thought on, the Duke began
+to ask why, after all, should it be so extraordinary!  Why should he
+suppose Jimmy so unlike the rest of his set?  More scrupulous, more
+sinless than other men--than himself?  He couldn't answer his own
+question, but he did so think of Bulstrode, and since his late house
+party had believed that Jimmy cared for Mrs. Falconer.  The lady at The
+Dials was certainly not she.
+
+Bulstrode, in the shadow of this delinquence, surrounded certainly in
+the mind of the Duke by an atmosphere of intrigue, became very human,
+rather consolingly human.  In their mutual intercourse the Duke had
+felt himself living in a clearer atmosphere than he usually breathed.
+Along by Bulstrode's mode of life, points of view and principles, his
+own life had seemed more mistaken than he had ever thought it to be.
+And although Jimmy had never breathed a word of criticism, he had felt
+himself judged by the man's just, though gentle codes.
+
+By the time he had reached this point in his reflections the motor had
+stopped at one of the side doors of the castle.
+
+"There is, of course, some perfectly proper explanation--" the Duke
+decided.  It's a harmless flirtation, if any flirtation at all.
+Perhaps it's a beneficent bit of benevolence; at any rate it's Jimmy's
+own affair, and after all, he's going to _buy_ the property--perhaps
+he's going to marry.  Why not?
+
+Ashamed to have placed his friend, if only momentarily, in an equivocal
+position, he turned about as they got out of the car and put an
+affectionate hand on the American's shoulder.
+
+"Oh, I expect, old man, that you've got some wonderful scheme up your
+sleeve!  You're going to be married and fetch your bride to The Dials."
+
+Poor Bulstrode unfortunately echoed: "_Married_!" with a world of scorn
+in his tone.  "My poor Westboro,' after what I've lately seen and heard
+here--forgive me if I say that for the time at least I'm not too
+sharply tempted."
+
+
+"Since," he said as he greeted her, "you appear to be intending to live
+here forever, you'll welcome me when I come back from London.  I'm
+coming back for Christmas, but if I don't run in before you'll
+understand, won't you, that it is because I simply haven't dared.
+Westboro' has already seen me cut across to this place."
+
+The Duchess interrupted him.  "Oh, in that case, I shall, of course, be
+obliged to move away."  And to her great surprise Bulstrode quickly
+agreed with her.
+
+"I should think it wise--not of course in the least knowing why you
+originally came."
+
+She looked at him rather quizzically.
+
+"You mean to say then that you don't really know?"
+
+"Oh,"--he was truthful--"I have rather an idea, and I hope a more or
+less true one."
+
+But the lady did not confess or in anywise help him.  He went on to say:
+
+"Your love for the castle couldn't, of course, long continue to keep
+you mewed up here; and you'll be shortly discovered.  As far as your
+own interests are concerned it will be rather better to obtain the
+divorce as soon as possible."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," she interposed, "don't misread me."
+
+He nodded sagely.  "On the contrary, I am translating you from sight,
+my dear Duchess.  And you are decidedly in your right regarding the
+Duke."
+
+She was so at his mercy that she hardly moved her lips, watching his
+face.  And as Bulstrode lit the cigarette she permitted him, and took
+his seat before the tea things which she had set at his elbow, he went
+on to make out her case for her.
+
+"He has quite spoiled your life.  He has been a brute, and not in the
+least worth your----"
+
+But the Duchess had dropped her tongs; they fell ringing on the
+hard-wood floor.  She raised a scarlet face to him.
+
+"It's a _piége_," she murmured, "an _autodafé_."
+
+"No," he said quietly, "it's a plain truth.  Westboro' has told me
+everything.  I must think that he has done so.  The man of me naturally
+condones him, and the friend in me is inclined to be lenient.  But the
+justice and right, my dear Duchess, are all on your side."
+
+"Oh, justice and right!" she dismissed, "only criminals need such
+words."
+
+Bulstrode said cooly: "But Westboro' has been a criminal!"
+
+"If he were," emphasized the Duchess, "didn't I forgive him?"
+
+"Of course, you did, my dear," her friend agreed warmly, "how
+wonderfully, how beautifully, everyone knows.  And he is all the more,
+therefore, dreadfully to be blamed."
+
+She said passionately: "What do you mean, Mr. Bulstrode?  How--why do
+you speak to me like this?"
+
+Her extraordinary guest drank his tea with singular peace of mind.
+
+"I think he is dreadfully to be blamed."
+
+"But why should you tell it to me?"
+
+"Why not?" he returned, his charming eyes on hers with the greatest
+tribute of affection and sympathy--"I've known you for years, I'm fond
+of you, you've been horribly wronged, and I'm going to see that things
+are made right for you.  I've been very blind.  I have longed for a
+reconciliation, I admit, with this husband who, poor stuff as he is,
+loves you still.  But I see what a sentimental ass I've been, and how
+right you are."
+
+She put her hand to her throat as if the soft lace suffocated her; she
+had grown very pale indeed.
+
+"What," she gasped, "do you know of my plans and my intentions, Mr.
+Bulstrode?  I have not told them to you."
+
+"But I've been able to guess them," he replied.
+
+"You've dared to, then?" she flashed.
+
+"Oh, don't blame me," he returned.  "Seeing you as I have all the
+while, I've been forced to make out something--to attach some reason to
+your living in this isolation.  You've wanted, not unnaturally and very
+cleverly, I acknowledge, to see what's been going on at Westboro', what
+the Duke's been up to."
+
+Her voice was suffocated as she said:
+
+"Oh, stop, please!  Whatever has come to you, Mr. Bulstrode, I don't
+know, or why you dare to speak to me as you do."
+
+Seeing her agitation he said smoothly: "My dear child, you're so right
+in everything you've done, and of course I shall stand by you."
+
+She made a dismissing gesture.  "Oh, I don't need you, I don't want
+you."
+
+He smiled benignly on her.  "But I'm here, and I'm going to see you
+through."
+
+"See me through what?"
+
+"Through your divorce," he said practically.
+
+"But you're Westboro's friend," she stammered, and he repudiated with
+just a little hesitation in his voice:
+
+"Oh, not so much as yours.  But I'm the friend of both of you in this.
+It's the best thing all round."
+
+The gentleman's attitude so baffled her, he was so serious, and yet he
+took it so lightly, apparently, that she was obliged to believe he
+meant what he said.
+
+"You talked to me very differently," she reminded him, and he shrugged.
+
+"Oh, I've been far too emotional and unpractical.  I'm going henceforth
+to look at things from the worldly and conventional stand-point."
+
+She put out her hand beseechingly.  "Oh, leave that for the rest of us.
+It quite spoils you."
+
+"I don't pretend to think--"  He made his gaze small as he looked past
+her in an attitude of reflection.  "Oh, I don't claim that, it's an
+ideal way of looking at things.  But there is not much idealism in the
+modern divorce, is there?"
+
+The Duchess took a turn across the floor, twisting her fair hands
+together, then came round to his side and sat down on a low chair near
+him.
+
+"Are you quite serious?" she asked.  "But I know that you are not.  Let
+me at least think so.  Your words shock me horribly"--and she looked
+piteously at him.  "I have felt you to be such a gentle person, and
+yours is such an understanding atmosphere."
+
+Bulstrode had given himself methodically another cup of tea, and helped
+himself now to sugar.
+
+"Oh, atmosphere!" he repeated scornfully.  "One can't live on air, you
+know.  And I have been of the most colorless kind."
+
+"Well, you've changed terribly," she accused him.
+
+"I've only come down to solid earth," he explained.  "And the earth's
+after all where we belong, Duchess.  Stand firm, keep to your own part
+of it, and don't cloud-gaze, or somebody with a claim will knock you
+off your little foothold."
+
+"Oh, _heavens_!" exclaimed his companion.
+
+The gentleman, who appeared at length quite to have finished his
+material enjoyment of the tea, put his second empty cup down and looked
+at the lady.
+
+"You should have married an American husband," he said to her, "a man
+who would have idolized you, not cared whether you developed or not.  A
+duchess isn't far enough up.  An American empress is higher."
+
+The lady listening to him, shuddered a little.
+
+"As it is," he went on regretfully, "you've been forced to develop,
+whether or not you wanted to, to grow finer and freer, to go farther
+on, to become more delightful.  Here you are progressed and civilized,
+after years of education, experience and suffering, and, my poor child,
+here you are all alone."
+
+She cried out, "Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," with a little gasp.
+
+"Oh, no, no," he softly ejaculated, "it is not fair!  You're terribly
+wasted, and you've been, as you too well know, terribly betrayed."
+
+But here he felt her hand on his arm with a strong grasp.  She shook
+the arm a little.
+
+"Don't go on," she said deeply.  "I tell you not to go on."  After a
+few seconds, in which he heard the fire and the slow bubbling of the
+gently boiling water and the cooing of the doves without, under the
+eaves, the Duchess said: "Listen to me.  I haven't talked at all to
+you, let me say something now."
+
+Her companion reflected to himself: "Well, at all events, she's not
+going to malign the Duke; that's a foregone conclusion."
+
+The Duchess clasped her hands round her knee and raised her face to him.
+
+"Do you think," she asked, "that there's any egoist as nasty as a
+feminine one?  Men are admitted to be generally selfish, but we
+specialize, and each one of us has the faculty of getting up some new
+and peculiar brand, I begin to believe.  At any rate, when I married, I
+was an egoist, and I've stayed on being one until a very little time
+ago.  I suppose I must in a way have more or less ornamented my
+position, as the papers say.  I did have two children as well, and in
+that way fulfilled my duty as a Westboro'.  But really and truly, I
+have never in the least been a wife, and very little of a mother.  I
+was as silly and vain as could be, and I never for a moment valued my
+husband.  I wasn't indifferent to my children, but I was absorbed by my
+worldly life, and when my little boys were taken ill and died, I was on
+a dahabeah on the Nile, and I don't think that Cecil ever forgave us
+for being so far away."
+
+She remained quiet for a long time, looking down at her hands, and when
+she lifted her face Bulstrode saw that she had wept.
+
+"That," she went on, "broke the ice round my heart, when I came home to
+those empty rooms."
+
+He said soothingly, "There, there, my child."
+
+"Oh, let me go on," she urged him, "let me speak.  I shall probably
+never feel like doing so again.  But at that time when I turned to find
+my husband, I discovered that I had no power over him, and I realized
+that for years I had not possessed his love.  I suppose you'll tell me
+that it is unusual for a woman to see so clearly as this.  Perhaps it
+is.  At any rate, just because I did so clearly, I forgave him when he
+came to me last year, at Cannes."
+
+"You were wonderful!" he repeated again, "perfectly noble, and, as I
+said before, Westboro' did not deserve you."
+
+She did not here, as she had done before, catch him up; on the
+contrary, after a few moments, she asked him point-blank:
+
+"What then do you advise us, knowing us both, to do?"
+
+He was distinctly disappointed that she should have put the question to
+him, and gave her time to withdraw it as he asked tentatively: "You
+really feel that you must ask me, Duchess?"
+
+"Tell me, at all events."
+
+"You are quite sure that you could not go back to your husband?"
+
+After a little pause, she lingeringly said:
+
+"Yes, quite sure.  You must know that he will not be the first to break
+the ice now."  Then she pushed: "You would advise my filing my papers
+for divorce?"
+
+Held in this way pitilessly for a direct challenge, he met her eyes
+with his own, asking her gently:
+
+"Is there nothing that speaks for Westboro' more distinctly than
+anything I can say?  And more appealingly than anything which you in
+all your pride feel?"
+
+The Duchess assented that there was, with a movement of her lips; she
+put her hands over her face and so sat quietly for a few moments, and
+when she spoke again to her visitor, her words were irrelevant.  When
+some few moments after she bade him good-by, she regretted his absence
+in London and begged him to come and see her as soon as he returned.
+
+"Come," she said, "at least to see whether I am here or whether I have
+pitched my tent and gone away."
+
+As Bulstrode stood in the doorway she asked him: "I understand there
+are a lot of people at the castle for Christmas, and among them will be
+Mrs. Falconer?  Isn't it so?  Is she really so very lovely?"
+
+"It's a different type of loveliness from yours," Bulstrode returned.
+And the Duchess supposed: "A happier type?"
+
+"Well, she's rather happy I think, take it all together," Jimmy said.
+
+"Has she children?"
+
+"None."
+
+"Is she in love with her husband?"
+
+And he was so long searching for a reply that the Duchess laughed
+quietly.
+
+"Poor man," she said, "don't bother.  But then since she's so happy,
+she must be in love with somebody else's husband."
+
+But he put her right immediately.
+
+"I don't think she in the least is.  And why," he went on, "since
+happiness is so greatly the question of other people's state of mind,
+might we not let it go at the fact that she is herself very much loved?"
+
+The Duchess looked at her guest rather absently.  She was thinking of
+the happy beauty, the woman of a different type from her own, whose
+presence at Westboro' had been sought by her husband for the second
+time.
+
+"Oh," she answered rather absently, giving Jimmy her hand, "she
+wouldn't, you know, be happy if the feeling were all on the other side."
+
+
+When the Duke had casually asked his guest's plans for Christmas week,
+Bulstrode had come near to offending his host by declaring that he
+could not possibly be one of a second house party.
+
+"Do you, then," Westboro' had asked, "_hate_ the holidays?"
+
+The genial Bulstrode had assured him to the contrary.
+
+"Nor do I," continued the Duke, "even though I'm a miserable man on the
+verge of a divorce.  I expect there's too long a line of jolly
+Christmases back of the Westboro's for me to mope through the season.
+But I don't want to have Christmas coming to an empty house, my dear
+fellow"--He put it pathetically, "there's no one in this gloomy place
+but yourself and myself.  We must have a Christmas party.  The tenants
+will, of course, be noisy and cheerful, but I'm going to ask a lot of
+people down and make the list out now."
+
+And Bulstrode had, however, firmly insisted that he could not really
+stop on--that he must go away.  "There are," he wound up his arguments,
+"a thousand reasons why I should go."
+
+But Westboro' had comprehendingly suggested that they might together
+bring "every reason" down to the country.  "And," continued his Grace,
+"we'll narrow things into the most intimate circle possible.  For I
+shall ask the Ravensworths of Surrey and their children, there are
+eight of them, ripping little things; they used to play with my boys.
+We'll turn them loose and have a tree, old man."
+
+Jimmy watched his face with a keen pity, for there had not been one ray
+of light in it as he planned for his celebration.
+
+"But you arrange to come back for Christmas Eve.  There _must_ be some
+one in charge--I mean to say, some one so that if the whole thing is
+too much for me, why I'll bolt and you'll have to stand by."
+
+He was, as he spoke, writing the names on a sheet of paper.  Bulstrode
+felt the plan to be rather _triste_ and lifeless, and he knew that he
+could not and would not keep the Duchess' secret much longer, let its
+revelation cost him what it would.
+
+"Westboro'," he said, "I shall have to be getting off to-morrow.  You
+know I would stand by you if I could possibly see my way clear."
+
+"I know perfectly well," the Duke acknowledged, "what a rotten bore
+I've been, and how sick of me you must be."  He wrote on: "I shall ask
+Mrs. Falconer (her husband is in the States); she is quite alone in
+town at Lady Sorgham's."  As he quoted this last name the Duke folded
+his list up.  He nodded affectionately at Jimmy.  "You'll arrange
+perhaps to come down with Mrs. Falconer on the Friday train?"
+
+And Bulstrode capitulating weakly, murmured, "Oh, we'll fetch the toys
+and things for the tree," he offered.
+
+"Ripping!" his Grace nodded.
+
+
+Jimmy, on his way at last to London, stopped once more at The Dials,
+and was hurrying across the forest when the Duchess herself appeared to
+him at the big dial.  She wore her furs, muff, and big enveloping
+stole, her hat with fur on it, and a veil.  She was not in house or
+garden trim.  The urban air of her toilet was a surprise to Bulstrode,
+and he took in her readiness for something he had not expected,
+something great, something decisive.
+
+"It's good of you to come when you must be full of delightful ways of
+passing your time, Mr. Bulstrode," she said, "and I wanted so much to
+see you again."
+
+"Again?"
+
+"Of course," she replied nodding, "again and many times.  But I mean I
+wanted to see you _here_."  Bulstrode did not want her to tell him a
+piece of final news.  He did not care to learn of an arbitrary
+departure, and he said, laughing: "Then you don't like my property?
+Any repairs you...?"
+
+"Oh, I adore The Dials," she said gravely, "and I can't think why they
+ever let you buy it, or what you'll do with it after I'm gone."  She
+smiled.  ".... or with whom."  Before he could speak she added: "Where
+is my husband to-day?"
+
+"I left him wandering about the house like a lost spirit," Bulstrode
+replied.  "Looking," he went on, "all about for something or other.  I
+expect he himself didn't quite know what.  For something to cheer up
+the empty rooms."
+
+"Oh, don't," she murmured.
+
+But he seemed pleased with the picture he drew.  "I doubt if Westboro'
+stops in the house alone; he's probably gone out shooting."
+
+"But he has a house full of people....?"
+
+"No one has come, or is coming, after all."
+
+"You don't mean to say that they've all refused!"
+
+"Yes," Jimmy said, "every man of them, and all the women as well."
+
+The Duchess put out her hand quickly, and said touchingly: "Oh, but you
+don't for a moment think----"
+
+"That it's because of the scandal, dear lady?" he smiled.  "Well, that
+would be a new phase.  No, I think on the other hand they would revel,
+and the only reason in the world that they have not come down is that
+they were really asked too late.  Christmas week, you know--
+
+"And, of course, then, Mrs. Falconer," the Duchess's face brightened.
+"She----"
+
+"Oh, _she_!" Bulstrode exclaimed, "she's as right as possible.  She's
+sure to be along in good season."
+
+"Oh!" accepted the Duchess, "and with whom does she come?"
+
+Bulstrode waited.  "Well, of course, the poor thing expects to find
+more or less some one to help her bear up her end.  And I can't say how
+she will take the fact of only us two."
+
+The Duchess interrupted cheerfully:
+
+"Why, she, of course, will go directly back!  You don't think for a
+second that she would stop on alone like that?"
+
+"Alone?" Bulstrode gave her with a little malice.  "But she'll have
+Westboro' and me so entirely to herself and one can always ask in the
+rector or curate or corral a neighbor."
+
+But the Duchess shook her head as if she understood.  "Oh, no, not at
+this time."
+
+Bulstrode miscomprehended blithely: "Christmas time?  You see, I know
+the visiting lady pretty well, and I believe she'll feel me to be more
+or less of a standby, and I know her spirit and her human kindness.  I
+am inclined to think that she will feel it's up to her not to run off
+like a hare; to think that Westboro' may, in a way, need her; and that
+when she finds everybody's gone back on the poor man, and there's to be
+no tree after all, why, I'm tempted, by jove, to think----"
+
+The Duchess helped him: "That she'll make a charity of it."
+
+"Yes, if you like," he laughed.  "Or be a sport," he preferred to put
+it.  "Stay on, stand by.  It will be perfectly ripping of her, you
+know."
+
+But the Duchess had no sympathy for the other woman.  Her eyes fixed
+themselves on the trees before her, and as a shot rang out in the
+distance she said abruptly: "Why, that might be Cecil, mightn't it?
+Does he shoot birds on your premises?"
+
+Bulstrode wondered very much for what reason she was habited in street
+dress and furs, whether she had planned to leave The Dials or had
+intended going up to see her husband.
+
+"Forgive me," he said, "if I seem to be shockingly in a hurry, but I
+must have a look at the time, for as it happens, even in this far-off
+place, I have an engagement."
+
+Impulsively putting out her hand the Duchess exclaimed: "I can't ever,
+ever thank you."
+
+"Oh, after your divorce----"
+
+But she cried out so against his words that he hastened: "You want me
+to think then that you do not believe...."
+
+"Believe!" she ardently repeated, "Oh, I don't know what I believe or
+think," and he saw that the poor thing spoke the truth.  "It's I who am
+as unstable as the sea, I who am the derelict."
+
+He contradicted her gently: "My dear, you're only trying to solve alone
+a problem which it takes two to answer.  When you see Westboro' you
+will know."
+
+She turned on him with the first sparkle of humor he had ever seen her
+display.  "Why don't you marry Mrs. Falconer?"
+
+He didn't start; indeed, the idea had such a familiar sound it would
+have been hard to frighten him with it from any corner.
+
+"I thought you didn't believe in divorces?"
+
+"Oh, but you'd make a wonderful husband!"
+
+He laughed.  "No one has ever thought so--_la preuve_....?"
+
+With great frankness in her gesture and a great--he was quick to see
+it--a great affection--she put out her hand to him and said: "Oh, yes,
+you'd make a wonderful companion, and you've been a wonderful friend.
+If anything good comes to me now, I shall in great measure owe it to
+you."
+
+He protested: "You owe me nothing, nothing."
+
+There were tears in her eyes as she said: "But I want to, I like to,
+and I do.  I don't know," she went on, "that I might not have been
+reconciled ultimately to my husband, but I feel quite sure it would
+only have been the basting up of the seam--it would have ripped away
+again.  Did you ever--" she challenged him with still a little sparkle
+of humor, "hear of a thing called a change of heart?"
+
+"Yes, at Methodist meetings."
+
+She said gravely: "That's not what I mean.  But whatever _has_ happened
+it's only been since you told me things."
+
+Her face was so girlish, her eyes so sweet, her humility so sudden,
+that her companion found himself embarrassed and could hardly find
+words to say good-by to her.  She went on to say, in a tone so low that
+he bent a little over the dial to hear her.  "You told me you could not
+advise my husband to come to me."
+
+Ah, had he!  It was hard to remember that.  _Had_ he said so?
+
+"I think," she whispered, "you need not keep him away now, if he should
+want to come."
+
+As her friend said nothing, she added in a voice more like a child than
+a great Duchess, "You may trust me.  I _want_ him to come--  There,
+I've said it.  I _hope_ he'll come.  If he doesn't--
+
+"Why, then, you'll go away," he finished.  "You can't bear it."
+
+The Duchess shook her head.  "I'll go to him, on the contrary."
+
+"You were going?"
+
+"Yes, when you came."
+
+He cried out: "Oh, I'm off then, I'm off for London, and I shan't be
+back for the Christmas holidays.  You may count on me."
+
+The Duchess smiled delightfully, and was in a second the elusive woman,
+intangible, and impossible to seize.
+
+"No, no," she said, "please don't exile yourself either to-day or
+to-morrow.  It isn't after all the moment, and I want to prove to you
+that I'm not jealous.  I've decided to wait until that lovely woman has
+gone away."
+
+
+The waste of his territory, its largesse to no purpose, its vastness
+through which only unbearable silences echoed; accumulated revenues and
+hereditary title, only added to the Duke's melancholy.
+
+He had planned the Christmas house party too late as it proved, and
+refusals, one after another, came in during the week.  The poor
+gentleman's mood led him to resent each fresh defection on the part of
+his guests as personal wounds inflicted by old friends at a time when
+charity would have been sweet.  And it was with really tragic
+melancholy that he threw the last letter down exclaiming:
+
+"And they all with one consent began to make excuse."
+
+He quite waited for a line from Mrs. Falconer, which would tell him
+that she, too, had decided to abandon him: and the thought of what he
+believed to be Jimmy's complications at The Dials caused him half to
+regard the matter with a pity for her.
+
+"If Jimmy _isn't_ married, he's the most whited of sepulchres!"
+
+The satin shine of holly, the glimmer of pearly mistletoe, the odor of
+spruce and pine, and heavier scent of hemlock bewitched the castle
+throughout with their fragrance.  Setting and decoration suggested a
+feast, and the Duke as he passed through the upper halls, and by the
+doors of his children's rooms, saw holly wreaths on the walls and that
+the little gates were twisted with green.
+
+The day was dampish and the Duke, unable to bear the silence of the
+house, with his gun and his dogs and with a lack of resource and
+superfluity of ennui to urge him from the castle, started to tramp off
+his unrest.  The afternoon was young, and the bare, naked sunlight fell
+over the bare nakedness of the land.  The little low clumps of
+neutral-colored underbrush, the reddish-brown thickets between wood and
+field, would hide the birds well, and with his gun across his back, his
+hands in his pockets, his Grace covered many miles before he at length
+stopped to take in the length of the land or to listen for wings.
+
+Coveys had flown up and away unseen by him, and their whirring unheard.
+His dogs had run off, and without being abruptly brought to heel,
+skulked back by themselves shamefaced and bewildered by the hunter's
+indifference.  The holly reddened on the hedges, the scarlet berries
+bright among the glowing leaves; high in the poplars the parasite
+mistletoe with crystal balls, hung tiny white globules like fairy
+grapes; holiday in the air, and over the grey winter landscape the
+finest possible powder of snow lay pale under the furtive sun.  As the
+forest edges closed about him and the Duke with still no idea of where
+he was going, continued to tramp, he unconsciously entered the property
+Bulstrode had lately acquired, and which he had begged his friend to
+avoid.
+
+There was something in the country air, in its pungent sweetness, and
+in the season, that penetrated even Westboro's melancholy, and every
+now and then he lifted his head to breathe in deeply the fragrance of
+hemlock and the cold earthy aroma, the spice of bracken and the balm of
+a fragrant thicket that smelled like a rose.  It was winter, however,
+and although a snow bird piped in it and the sun was out, there was a
+December quality that, in the mood he was in, overcame all the
+festivities of the time.  He heard the bird who was persistent and
+sharp-voiced, and, for the first time thinking of the other game he had
+come out for, he paused.  His dogs were gone, the beggars!  He called
+them to no purpose, whistled and waited.  They were a new brace and
+young.  God knew where they had cut away to.
+
+Before him, as he stood, the brown vistas of the winter forest opened
+out here and there into ochre circles and filled at this hour with
+brilliant sunlight, their round openings overflowing; the light
+filtered gently out and was swallowed up by the cold and closer wood.
+Under his feet there was only the faint ghost of the late snowfall on
+the turned-up, curled-up edges of the dry leaves.  There beeches, red
+as copper, and iron-strong oaks struck their roots deep down into the
+mould.  Westboro' did not know where he had wandered to, but here and
+there through the bare trees gleamed the white of a statue on its mossy
+base, and a little farther along, a broken pedestal held its slender
+column up amongst the tree trunks as mossy and veined as they, and
+right in the heart of the bowl, on a brick pedestal was a sundial, a
+round brass disc, cut into with the tooth of time, and all black and
+green.  The sun at this moment shone full on it and its slight shadow
+fell along the noon.  The Duke stooped down and through the glass read
+the inscription:
+
+_Utere dum licet_.
+
+"I'm a trespasser," he thought.  "This is Bulstrode's property."
+
+Through an opening just to the right he could see a brown path, and at
+the end of it a gate.
+
+"What the deuce could Jimmy have so wanted this old place for?  What
+was he hiding here?"
+
+He turned back with the intention of taking as sudden leave of the
+place as he had made an entrance.  He saw his dogs in front of him and
+called them.  Before him lay the clean low fall of the meadow with the
+line of high hedge, and directly opposite him he could see the elms of
+his own park.  He had not gone more than a couple of hundred feet away
+before he paused again and turned about to have one last look back at
+the enchanting place.  As he stood thus, in Jimmy's property, he at
+first took it to be a trick of vision, for he stood perfectly rigid,
+peering back at the opening he had left not five minutes before.  He
+leaned forwards, setting his eyeglass and staring at two figures who
+had come into the bowl and stood close by the big dial.
+
+He set his gun on the ground and leaned upon it.  There was a cordial
+meeting; he could hear the voices but he could not distinguish their
+words, and during all the interview, which must have consumed some
+fifteen minutes, the Duke never stirred.  Finally, and curiously enough
+it seemed a short time to him, they took leave of each other, the man
+going out of the forest by a different path, the woman slowly turning
+down the neat walk that led to the brick arch, and to the old house.
+Whether or not the Duke had at this moment the vaguest suspicion of
+her, suspicion of his friend or of his wife that did them wrong, he
+never had time or clearness to reflect or to ask himself.  A dense
+blindness took his senses away from him.  He put his hands out to
+steady himself in vain, and staggered.  His dogs were at his feet, he
+fell over them, struggled to get his balance back and like a stricken
+tree went down.  In his heavy fall on his gun it discharged, filling
+his upper arm and shoulder with a quantity of bird shot.  The
+scattering pain, instead of finishing his faint, roused him with a
+sharp, ugly sting, and the rush of the warm, wet blood.  He half picked
+himself up, and then, aware of the pain tearing his muscles and flesh,
+he fell back like a dog on his haunches.  Through his confusion he
+still contrived to remember a little path, and inch by inch he dragged
+himself towards it.  He pulled along over the leaves and russet paths
+of ground.  His bare hand finally struck the bricks of the little walk
+and he could still know that he was wonderfully in the road.  There was
+a cloud before his swimming eyes and his troubled mind; his face, pale
+as death, was lifted towards the arch; leaving a bloody trail as he
+crawled along the ground, he contrived to reach the gate and fell
+across its threshold.  His head lay on his arm, the string of his
+broken eyeglass wound pathetically about his wrist.  The Duke proved to
+be a modern replica of the poor knight who fell, face downwards, on the
+grass when Elizabeth's carriage passed him by, some four hundred years
+before the present Duke.
+
+
+After Bulstrode had left her, the Duchess of Westboro' hurried back to
+the house that was not her home; to the little long drawing-room that
+was not hers.  For the first time since her voluntary exile, since her
+occupation of this asylum, she found it bereft of charm and the cosey,
+dear place as cold to her as if the snows had drifted in and filled a
+deserted nest.  It had nevertheless been a cloister, and she knew it,
+where the best of her had prayed, where the true woman--and the true
+woman is always something of a saint--had folded submissive hands,
+where self had gone away and left nothing at all but love.
+
+On this Christmas Eve, The Dials was the loneliest corner of England.
+The scarcely occupied house suggested to the Duchess the thought of a
+stocking hung before a chimney when there were no children who cared
+whether it was filled or not, when there was no reason why St. Nicholas
+should pass.  But it was only the very edge of her thoughts that
+touched anything so fantastic as this picture.  The Duchess was serious
+and lonely.  With a sigh, and winking back tears she threw off her
+furs, laid off her hat, and, after poking up the fire into sparkling
+brightness, she wandered up-stairs to the apartment that she had made
+her bedroom.  Under the low eaves the bed-chamber shone out gay with
+chintz, fresh and sweet as a midwinter bouquet, the frostiness coming
+in around it through the slightly opened window, and there was the
+scent of the firs and the cedar wood that closely hemmed the old place
+in.
+
+"Heavens!" thought the Duchess, half aloud.  "How dreadfully in love
+Jimmy Bulstrode is, how dreadfully, faithfully in love!"  And then she
+went on to say: "How dreadfully I am myself in love, and no one is
+hurrying to _me_!"
+
+She walked aimlessly about the pretty room, irritated and annoyed at
+the cloister effect.  She found it too remote, too virgin, and no room
+for a wife.  "I promised," she mused, "to wait until Mrs. Falconer has
+gone.  I shall break my promise.  Oh, I can't really wait at all!  If
+things are going to be as bad as this, I want to leave England, I want
+at least to know.  And Jimmy will forgive me, it's such a wonderfully
+good cause ... a woman going to find her husband on Christmas Eve!"
+
+The Duchess threw open the window to its widest.  Down in the garden on
+the stone wall the big dial lay in the shadow of the afternoon.  She
+could not read its motto, but she knew perfectly what it said--_Utere
+dum licet_.  As she leaned out above her garden, under her window the
+snowballs hung their waxen globes in a green tree.  There were a few
+winter roses blooming, and the English garden had the beauty of summer
+in winter time.
+
+The Duchess heard a sharp sound close to the house.  It was a rifle
+shot, and died instantly on the still air.  Shots were not uncommon in
+this season, but here in The Dials woods they were entirely out of
+character; in fact, they were quite inadmissible.  There was no
+shooting let, and a shot could only mean poaching, or something more
+serious.  The Duchess waited a few moments, but no other sound
+followed.  She nevertheless drew the casement in, and, going down
+stairs threw her stole about her shoulders and opened the house door
+into the garden.  At the sight of her, down by the other end of the
+wall, the gardener lifted up his bent form, and with a little pannier
+of hot-house violets in his hands, hurried towards his lady.
+
+"Mellon," said she, "have you any violets?"
+
+The Duchess took the fragrant basket with its delicate burden.
+
+"A mort, my lady."
+
+"Pick them all, Mellon, and all the flowers from the green-house too,
+every one of them, and fetch up whatever there is to the cottage."
+
+The old man was deaf, as well as discreet, and if this sudden command
+to vandalism surprised him, he did not say so.  Holding his hand behind
+his ear, he nodded.
+
+"I shall send them," the Duchess thought, "up to Jimmy Bulstrode.  I
+think he will understand, and I will ask him at the same time to take
+his friend off somewhere in a motor that I may go unobserved to the
+castle."
+
+She said a few more words to the old man, asked him a few questions,
+then with the basket on her arm she was about to turn away when she
+remembered the shot.
+
+"Did you hear a shot, Mellon?  They should not be shooting about here,
+you know."  But the old man had heard nothing, and, intending to find
+the lodgekeeper who was clipping the trees on the lower terrace and ask
+him to go through the woods for her, the Duchess walked toward the gate
+and in the direction of the brick path.
+
+As she came up to it she gave a low cry, lifted her hands to her heart;
+the basket of flowers fell to the earth and scattered their purple
+blooms at her feet.  Then the hands that had gone to her heart
+extended, she held out her arms and went forwards, crying her husband's
+name.
+
+The Duke of Westboro' had managed to pick himself up.  He was a strong
+man, in the fulness of health and vigor; there was nothing of the
+mollycoddle about the last Duke of the line.  The sound of voices had
+reached his dull ear, his swoon was over, and he had manfully, with a
+few sturdy curses, pulled himself up and now stood, albeit very pale,
+clinging to the gatepost, leaning on it, finding his legs shaking and
+his balance not all he could wish.  Before him was a little brick
+house, with bright curtains in the windows, and between it and himself,
+lovely as a ghost, and no less white, was his wife, and her arms were
+extended towards him.
+
+"Cecil!" she cried.  "Oh, my God!  Cecil, what has happened to you?"
+
+Before Westboro' knew it, the arms to which he had gone in visions were
+about him and the soft shoulder gave him a prop more fragile perhaps
+than the stone against which he leaned, but it was a living support,
+and it felt warm and wonderful.
+
+"Don't," he said vaguely, "get near me.  I'm nasty and bloody.  It's
+all right; I'm only a bit scratched, really.  A lot of beastly shot has
+gone off into my shoulder.  Just call some one to help me, will you?"
+
+"Cecil," she said, "lean on me, put your arm around my shoulder; you
+can perfectly well get along with only me.  Come, come!"
+
+The Duke saw that he could perfectly get along with another faint--he
+was near to it, but something besides his wound and his light head kept
+him manfully to his feet.  With his left hand he very firmly pushed the
+Duchess a little away from him.
+
+"Come?" he repeated.  "Come where?"
+
+"Home," said the Duchess with a catch in her voice--she was bearing up.
+"Oh, lean on me!  You'll fall, you'll fall!  Mellon!" she cried.  "O
+Mellon!"
+
+But the Duke put up his hand.  "I'm all right," he said.  "Don't call.
+What house is that?  What home do you mean?"
+
+"Mine," said the Duchess, "my house--that is, I mean to say, Mr.
+Bulstrode's."
+
+The Duchess saw a slight wave of red rush up her husband's pale cheek.
+
+"Damn Bulstrode!" he breathed.  "What the devil does he do here?  I saw
+you together--I saw you not half an hour since--that is the whole
+mischief of it--it was too much for me--it took away my senses and I
+fell on my gun, and the beastly thing went off.  If I ever get back to
+where Bulstrode is----"
+
+"Cecil!" cried the Duchess.  She again wound her arms around him, and
+it was as well that she was a strong, fine creature and that the
+columns of the gate were back of him, for Westboro' was swaying like a
+child that has just learned to walk.
+
+"He is fainting!" she cried.  "Mellon, Mellon!"
+
+The old man had not heard his mistress but he had seen her, and after
+staring open-mouthed at the couple at the gate, he came scurrying like
+a rabbit, dropping his shears on the wall.  They hit the big dial with
+a ring.
+
+The Duke heard the steps and tried to start forwards; also tried weakly
+to extricate himself from his wife's embrace.  "I beg your pardon," he
+said, with a coolness that had something of the humorous in its
+formality--"I beg your pardon, but I am _not_ going to Bulstrode's
+house, you know."
+
+"_Cecil_," pleaded the woman tenderly, "how ridiculous you are!
+Bulstrode's house!  Why, it's mine!  Oh, don't break my heart.  He's
+only bought it, you know, that's all."
+
+"Break her heart!"  It was a new voice that spoke to the Duke of
+Westboro'.  He had never heard it in all his life.  It was warm and
+struggling for clearness, it was full of tears and quivering, it was
+the voice of love, and unmistakable, certainly, to a lover.
+
+"What was Bulstrode doing here?" he persisted.
+
+"Going to Mrs. Falconer," breathed the Duchess.
+
+The Duke moved a step forwards: "What are you doing here?"
+
+"Going to you, Cecil--I have _been_ going to you all day.  I think I
+have been going to you ever since you left me that night on the
+Riviera; at any rate, I was on my way to the castle as you came."
+
+The Duke halted again on his crawling way.  Mellon, who had really
+reached his side, was doing his best to be of some use and kept himself
+well under the wounded arm, on which the blood had clotted and dried,
+but ceased to flow.
+
+"Lean hard on me, your Grace," pleaded the gardener, and with his word,
+he looked over at his mistress to see if she realized who their noble
+visitor was.
+
+With fine disregard for his help or existence, the Duke said crossly:
+"Send this damned gardener away."
+
+"Oh, Cecil, no, no; you can't stand without him."
+
+They had reached the garden wall, just at the place where the big dial,
+round and shining, had come a little out of the shadow and the last of
+the afternoon sun touched its edges.  Westboro' lurched towards the
+wall.  "Send this man away," he commanded.
+
+"He is deaf, Cecil, as the stones."  But at her husband's face she
+motioned to Mellon: "Stand away a bit.  His Grace wants to rest on the
+wall.  I'll call you."
+
+With his wife's arms about him, Westboro' leaned on the garden wall,
+his ashen face lifted to her.
+
+"I've only one arm," he said.  He put it around her and he drew her
+down as close to him as he could.  He felt her face warm against his,
+wet against his with tears.  As the Duke, who, Bulstrode said, was no
+lover, kissed his wife, the dial seemed to sing its motto aloud.
+
+"You _were_ coming to me?" he breathed.  "Do you forgive me? ... Then,"
+said Westboro', satisfied by what he heard, "I'm cured.  I love you--I
+love you."
+
+The woman could not find her voice, but as she held him she was the
+warmest, sweetest prop that ever a wounded man leaned upon.  After a
+few seconds she helped him to rise, helped him on, and he found his
+balance and his equilibrium to be very wonderful under the
+circumstances, and managed to reach the door-sill.  Mellon and the
+maids were there, and as the Duchess passed in, leading her husband,
+she bade them send for a doctor as fast as they could and to send at
+once for Bulstrode at the castle.
+
+Westboro's wound had become a sort of intoxication to him, and he
+assured her, "I'll be all right in an hour.  I need no one but you;
+send them all away, all away."
+
+He had never commanded her before, he had let her rule him, he had been
+indifferent to her disobedience.  But now she did what he bade her, and
+led him to the drawing-room, suddenly repossessed of all its old charm;
+led him to the lounge, where he sank down.  Here, by his side, she gave
+him stimulants and bathed his head and hands, waiting for the doctor to
+come; and Westboro', like his ancestors who had fought in the King's
+wars, bore up like a man with no resemblance whatsoever to the amorous
+cavalier whose curls had met the dust of the road for love of Queen
+Elizabeth.
+
+The Duchess found him that best of all things--very much of a man, and
+knew that he was hers.  And he, more wild with love for her than
+suffering physical pain, found her a woman and knew that she loved him
+and that she was his.
+
+The house, so deserted and desolate an hour ago, grew fresh, warm, and
+rosy as over the west meadows the sunset, gilding the wall and The
+Dials, flushed the windows red, and the deserted bird's-nest, lately
+"filled with snow" appeared to have, as the light rained upon it,
+filled itself with roses.  So, an hour later, it seemed to Bulstrode,
+when he came and found it housing the lovers.
+
+
+
+
+THE EIGHTH ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+IN WHICH HE COMES INTO HIS OWN
+
+England, the heart of the countryside, freshened by December and
+drifted over by delicate breaths that are scarcely fog, and through
+which like a chrysanthemum seen behind ground glass the sun contrives
+to shine, the English country in December is one thing, London quite
+another.
+
+Jimmy wandered across from Paddington to his destination, part of the
+time on foot, part of the time peering from a crawling hansom in
+immediate peril of collision with every other object that like himself
+lost bearings in the nightmarish yellow fog.
+
+He fetched up before No. ----, Portman Square, at mid-day, and rang the
+door bell of Lady Sorgham's town-house, and in his eagerness to find
+his friend did not ask himself how the time accorded with calling hours.
+
+She was at home.
+
+An insignificant footman told him this, and the gentleman reflected
+that it was astounding what the words, heard often in the course of ten
+years, meant to him still.
+
+In the sitting-room, before a coal fire, a writing table at her side, a
+pen in her hand, he found Mrs. Falconer.
+
+He sincerely struggled with an inability to speak at once, even the
+consoling how-d'-dos that cover for us a multitude of feelings, were
+not at his tongue's end.
+
+The fire had burned away a few feet of fog and lighted lamps and
+candles shone pallidly through an obscurity about whose existence there
+could be no doubt.
+
+The inmates of Lady Sorgham's thoroughly English and thoroughly
+comfortable drawing-room were aliens, possessing neither of them a
+hearthstone within range of several thousand miles.  But no sooner had
+they greeted--Bulstrode triumphantly peering at her through both real
+and mental haze--shaken hands, and each found a seat before the grate,
+than an enchanting homeliness overspread the place.  Bulstrode felt it
+and smiled with content to think she did as well, and remembered an
+occasion in America when they had both of them missed a train for some
+out-of-the-way place and found themselves side by side in a mid-country
+station to pass there three hours of a broiling afternoon.  The flies
+and mosquitoes buzzed about them, the thermometer registered ninety
+degrees, but happy, cool and unruffled Mary Falconer, smiling up at him
+from her hard bench, had said:
+
+"Jimmy, let's _build_ here!"
+
+
+"No one, Jimmy, is old"--Mrs. Falconer had once said to him on an
+occasion when a word regarding gray hairs had drifted into their
+conversation.  Noticing the smooth reflection of the light along her
+hair, Bulstrode had spoken of its golden quality, and the lady had
+suddenly covered the strand with her hand; she knew that there ran a
+line she did not want him to see.
+
+"No one is old, Jimmy, who has even the least little bit of future
+towards which he looks!  It's only those people whose doors are all
+shut, whose window blinds are all drawn to, who, no matter which way
+they look, see no opening into a distance towards which they will want
+to go--only those people are old!"
+
+And as for Bulstrode, if Mrs. Falconer's idea were right, he was a very
+young man still, for at the end of every path others opened and led
+rapidly away.  Scene gave on to scene, dissolved and grew new again.
+Every door gave to rooms whose suites were delightful, indefinite, and
+all followed towards a future whose existence Bulstrode never doubted.
+But there were certainly times, as the days went methodically on, there
+were decidedly many times when it took all his faith and his spirit to
+endure the _étape_ that lay between self and life.  Such a little
+tranquil home as a certain property he had lately acquired was what he
+dreamed of sharing with Mrs. Falconer.  He did not, with any degree of
+anxiety, ask himself whether or not it were dead men's shoes he was
+waiting for, and no clear, formulated thought of tangible events took
+existence in his mind.  But he knew that he waited for his own.
+
+It was with some such personal feeling that in something that looked
+like a future he might one day lead the woman he loved home, that he
+had taken any pleasure whatsoever in his involuntary purchase of the
+old property known as The Dials.  The gray house down in Glousceshire
+in its half-forsaken seclusion, the lie of the land round it, its
+shut-offness from the world, its ancient beauty, had been a constant
+suggestion to him of a future dwelling, and the doors, the windows, the
+low-inviting rooms, the shadowy stairways, ingles, gables, terraces,
+the dials and sunken gardens, had appeared to him conceived, planned
+and waiting to be the settings for a life of his own.  He wanted very
+much to tell Mrs. Falconer all about the lovely English country-seat.
+
+In the room where they now talked, wreaths of fog filled the corners
+like spiders' dusty webs that poised and swung.  The odor that stamps
+England hung in the mist, furthermore permeated with the scent of a
+bouquet at Mrs. Falconer's elbow and which at one moment of his visit
+Jimmy recognized for a lot of roses sent by parcel post from the
+Westboro' greeneries.
+
+"Do you ever sew?" he asked her, and she admitted to a thimble which
+persistently, with a suggestion of reproach, turned up every now and
+then amongst her belongings; now falling out from a jewel box, then
+stowed away in a handkerchief case, out of place and continually
+reproachful: kept because it had been her mother's.
+
+If he did not speak other than in a general way of the rather long
+visit he had been making to the Duke of Westboro' in Glousceshire, he
+did tell his friend all about The Dials and dwelt on the fascination
+that the old place possessed.  The Dials was, in point of fact, very
+agreeably described to Mrs. Falconer, who looked it out on the map of
+Glousceshire, and Bulstrode's purchase (for he had legally gone in for
+it, the whole thing), was made to seem a very jewel of a property.
+
+"It's as lovely as an old print," she said, "as good as a Turner.
+You're a great artist along your lines, Jimmy.  Don't have it rebuilt
+by some more than designing architect in trouble, or landscape-gardened
+by some inebriated Adam out of charity.  Leave it beautifully alone."
+
+"Oh, I will," he assured her.  "It shall tumble away and crush away in
+peace.  You shall see it all, however," he assured, "for you really
+will come down for Christmas?  You see, poor old fellow, Westboro's
+house is rather empty."
+
+"Yes," nodded Mrs. Falconer.
+
+"You see, every one else has gone back on him."
+
+"Poor dear," sympathized the lady.  "Of course we'll go down."
+
+No matter to what extent he had thought of her, and it was pretty sure
+to be a wide one, her beauty struck him every time afresh.  There was
+the fine exquisiteness of _fin de race_ in Mary Falconer.  Her father
+had been an Irishman born, and the type of his island's lovely women
+was repeated in his daughter's blue eyes, the set of her head and her
+arms; her taper and small-boned little wrists, her cool hands with the
+slender fingers told of muscle and moulding and completed the
+well-finished, well turned-out creature whose race it had taken
+generations to perfect.  These distinctions her clever father
+bequeathed her as well as her laugh and her wit, her blue eyes and her
+curling hair.
+
+Bulstrode stayed on in the dingy delightful room, until at an order of
+his hostess, luncheon was served them on a small table, and over the
+good things of an amazingly well-understood buffet and a bottle of
+wine, they were left alone.  Bulstrode stayed on until the fog in the
+corners darkened to the blackest of ugly webs and choked the fire and
+clutched the candles' slender throats as if to suffocate the flame.
+Tea was served and put away and the period known as _entre chien et
+loup_ at length stole up Portman Square alongside the fog and found
+Bulstrode still staying on....
+
+Later, much later, when the lamps in the street and the square found
+themselves, with no visible transition, lighting night-time as they had
+lighted day--when the hansoms began to swing the early diners along to
+their destinations, a hansom drew up before No. ----, Portman Square.
+
+It was at the hour soft-footed London had ceased to roll its rubber
+tires down the little street, and only an occasional cab slipped by
+unheard.  But a small hand cart on which a piano organ was installed
+wheeled by No. ----, Portman Square, and stopped directly under the
+Sorghams' window and a man began to sing:
+
+  "I'll sing thee songs of Araby
+  And tales of old Cashmere."
+
+
+The creature was singing for his living, for his supper doubtless,
+certainly for his breakfast, but he chanced to possess a remarkable
+gift and he evidently loved his trade.  The silence--wherein all London
+appeared to listen, the quiet wherein the magically suspended room had
+swung and swung until even Bulstrode's clear mind and good sense began
+fatally to blur and swing with the pendulant room--was broken into by
+the song.
+
+And as Bulstrode moved and turned away his eyes from the woman's lovely
+face, she sighed and covered her own eyes with her hands.  The small
+coffee table had been taken away.  Mrs. Falconer was in a low chair
+leaning forwards, her hands lying loosely in her lap.  The distance
+between the two his hand could have bridged in one gesture.  The voice
+of the street singer was superb, liquid and sweet.  He sang his ballad
+well.
+
+  "I'll sing thee songs of Araby
+  And tales of old Cashmere."
+
+
+Mrs. Falconer's guest rose.
+
+"You'll come down for Christmas," he said, "and I'll meet you as we
+have arranged, to-morrow."
+
+"Jimmy," she protested, "it's only ten o'clock."
+
+"I must, however, go."
+
+"Nonsense.  Where will you pass the next hour and a half?  There's not
+a cat in town."
+
+"Nevertheless, I promised a man to meet him at the...."
+
+"_Jimmy_!"
+
+He had reached the door, making his way with a dogged determination
+and, like a man who has touched terra firma after months on a dancing
+brig, still not feeling quite sure of the land or its tricks.
+
+"How you hurry from me," she said softly.
+
+"Oh, I'm hurrying off," he explained brightly, "because I want to get
+hold of that chap out there and take him to supper, and to find out why
+he isn't on the operatic stage.  He's got a jolly voice.  Good night,
+good night."
+
+He was gone from her with scant courtesy and a brusquerie she knew
+well, adored and hated!  During these last years she had done her cruel
+best, her wicked best, to soften and change and break it down.
+
+The curtains, as she drew them back, showed that the fog had for the
+most part lifted, and she was just in time to see the piano and the two
+musicians disappear in the mist which still tenaciously held the end of
+the street in shadow--a gentleman in long evening cloak and high hat
+hurried after the street people.  The woman's face was tender as she
+watched the distinguished figure melt into the fog, and at her last
+glimpse of her friend she blew a kiss against the pane.
+
+
+Bulstrode did not go back that night to Westboro'.  He wired out that
+Mrs. Falconer and himself would be down for dinner the following day
+and he also wired for a motor to meet him some few miles from Penhaven
+Abbey, as the motor did the next day.
+
+As he speeded towards Penhaven Bulstrode leaned towards the man who
+drove him.
+
+"Stop first at the inn, will you, Bowles?  I'll order tea there, and
+then drive on to the station at the Hants.  It's the three o'clock from
+London we're to meet, you know, and we've just the time."
+
+The Abbey and its clustering village hung on the hill side some fifteen
+lovely miles away to the south of them.  And Bulstrode, who was at
+length obediently answering the call of it, and in response to the
+fancied bell of the entire country side, religiously hastening to
+whatever might reward him, settled himself back in his corner.
+
+He saw the mist fly by him as his carriage cut out its way rapidly
+through Glousceshire.  The air was not too cold in spite of the
+dampness, for the vapor rose high, and above and below it the
+atmosphere was clear.
+
+Mrs. Falconer herself had chosen Penhaven as a place possible to drive
+over to as far as Bulstrode was concerned, and far enough away to stop
+over in, for tea.  Bulstrode carried in his pocket the note of it, she
+had written out for him.  It bore the arrivals of trains, the address
+of the inn; she had herself written this, recurring to a pretty fallacy
+she liked to indulge in that Jimmy forgot trains, missed them, and
+forgot rendezvous, and that he never really knew.  Well, at all events,
+he was not likely to miss meeting this one.  He had thought about
+nothing else since he left her in London and prepared for her as he was
+always preparing for her as one makes ready for the dearest guest at a
+feast.
+
+The fact that not only had she divinely consented to the Penhaven
+scheme, but that she had herself arranged the whole thing, made the
+romance of the idea first appeal to herself and then readily to
+Bulstrode; the fact that she had been the creator of the little
+excursion that gave them to each other for several hours before what
+the castle had to offer them of surprise or dulness--did not in any
+measure rob the occasion of the charm of the _imprévue_ for the lady
+herself.  Nor did she in the least feel that it was any the less his
+because it was so essentially her own plan.
+
+It proved either too cold or too late to see the cathedral, to see
+anything more than the close which, side by side, they had wandered
+through together a few moments before tea.  Penhaven's distinguished
+gloom was not disturbed, and in their subterranean vaults lying all
+along their stones, the dukes and the abbés and the duchesses remained
+unlit in their stern crypts by the verger's candle on this Christmas
+Eve.
+
+At the little vulgar inn (in a stuffy sitting-room a fire had
+spluttered for some quarter of an hour before the train arrived), Mrs.
+Falconer had made Jimmy his tea in a vulgar little bowl-like teapot,
+and as her hands touched the pottery's blue glaze served very well for
+a halo.  As she buttered him slices of toast herself, and spread them
+with gooseberry jam and herself ate and drank and laughed and
+chattered, she had been, with the tea things about her and her sleeves
+turned back as she cut and buttered and spread, she had been with the
+roundness of her wrists and the suave grace of her capable hands, most
+adorably a woman, most adorably dear.
+
+Her furs and coat laid aside, the hat at his asking laid aside in
+order, although he did not tell her so, that the air of home might be
+more complete for them.  _Vis-à-vis_ they had eaten together and
+laughed together and talked together till it grew later and later, and
+the motor waited without in the yard amongst the ravens and the ducks
+who peered from the straw of their winter quarters at the big awkward
+machine.
+
+"Jimmy" ... she had started when the crumbs and dishes had been cleared
+away, and for some seconds did not follow up his name with any other
+word.  It was always Bulstrode who took wonderful care of the time.  It
+was he who gave her her hat, its pins, her coat, her furs, her gloves,
+one by one, her muff last, his eyes on her, as each article slowly went
+to place, until her big white veil wound and wound and pinned and
+fastened and hid her.  "Jimmy," she whispered, as he ruthlessly and
+definitely opened the door and the cold rushed in, "let's build _here_."
+
+Still it was she who took all the blame of their tardy departure from
+the homely hospitality of the inn; she assured him that she could make
+a wonderful toilet and in an incredibly short time, and that for once
+she wouldn't be late for dinner at the castle.
+
+"Not," Bulstrode assured her, "that it in the least matters, but the
+Duke, as likely as not, would choose to dine alone; he was a man of
+moods."
+
+"In which case," she had stopped with her foot on the auto step,
+"Penhaven isn't a bad place for tea, and why wouldn't dinner at this
+perfect inn...."
+
+But Bulstrode met her words with a shake of his head and a shrug of his
+shoulders, and helped her firmly into the motor and sat again by her
+side.
+
+"I can't tell you," he said, "what will be going on at the castle.  I
+haven't been back since I left it two days ago, and almost anything can
+have happened in that time.  The Duchess of Westboro' herself, in the
+interval, may have gone back to her husband."
+
+"Heavens!" Mrs. Falconer exclaimed, "in which case how horribly _de
+trop_ we shall be."
+
+But Bulstrode consoled her with the thought that if they were _de trop_
+they would at least be _de trop ensemble_.
+
+
+Amongst the handful of letters waiting for her in her dressing-room at
+the castle there had been a despatch from America.  Even this, and a
+hasty look at her mail had not succeeded in holding her attention or
+even carrying it beyond the house.  Her husband had expected to land in
+Liverpool at the end of the coming week; he was to take her home with
+him.  And until he arrived she was breathing, as she always did in his
+absence, deeply.
+
+There had been no one to greet them as Bulstrode and herself came into
+the castle, and she had hurried to her rooms to begin without loss of
+time her boasted rapid toilet.  The dress, whose harmony had impressed
+her host, the Duke, on a former visit at the castle, had been laid out
+for her; its sumptuous color overspread the bed.  But the lady chose
+instead a white gown whose art of holding to her, and holding her, in
+its simple lines and splendid sheen, made its beauty.
+
+There was much of the true woman in this entirely lovely creature, as
+she stood before her glass and saw herself, the best example of the
+really beautiful American.  Her naturalness gave her a freedom, a
+frankness, a grace, a certain imperial set of the head.
+
+Bulstrode had once said to the Duchess of Westboro' that a woman should
+above all "console."  Mary Falconer would have known what he meant.
+That sex she gloriously represented!  The sweetness and dearness of
+her.  Well, there were few women no doubt like her.  Jimmy hoped so for
+the sake of the race, for the sake of the hearts of other men.  She was
+the ideal fireside of home, and when, as she had twice done, she bade
+him, as that time she had said, "Build here," he knew what she meant
+and felt, and that she herself was exquisitely home.
+
+Leaning over her dressing-table she scrutinized not her face, whose
+ardent beauty seemed to bloom upon the glass, but her hair as it fell
+and rippled and flowed round her brows.  Along the edge of one of the
+lustrous waves was a touch as if her powder puff had brushed her hair.
+Mrs. Falconer put up her hand, smoothed the line, then let it lie as it
+grew.  It so declared itself to be the first unmistakable white.  A
+gardener's basket full of roses and camelias, gardenias and carnations
+had been sent up for her; but under the diamond at her breast she chose
+rather to fasten in a spray of mistletoe with its pale, grape-like
+berries.  A long green scarf fell over her arm and against the
+whiteness of her dress like a branch of spring verdure, and permitted
+by the fashion of the day, there shook and trembled in her ears long,
+pear-shaped pearls which, like her thimble, had been her mother's.
+
+As she left the security of her room and fire for the corridors and the
+publicity of the lower rooms, for the first time in her life she had a
+sudden feeling of _pruderie_ at the bare beauty of her neck and arms.
+She felt as if she were coming unclad into the street, and drew her
+scarf across her breast.  But she found herself to be quite alone in
+the drawing-room, and before she had time to be bewildered at her long
+desertion, a letter was handed her with a few murmured words by a
+footman.  It perhaps served her right, she reflected, for so blandly
+coming into a house during a state of domestic upheaval, that she
+should turn out to be not alone the only guest, but without host or
+friend!  The letter told her, as gently as it could without the
+satisfaction of any explanation, that both Bulstrode and the Duke of
+Westboro' were unavoidably absent.  She turned the letter over with
+keen disappointment.  Her dress, her beauty which the drive from
+Penhaven and the afternoon's happiness had heightened to a point that
+she might be pardoned for seeing, was then all for nothing!  On what
+extravagant bent could the two men have gone?
+
+"Both of them," she soliloquized with a shrug, "off on a hunt, I dare
+say, after a fool of a woman who doesn't know enough to stop at home."
+
+Before she could further lash at her absent hostess, she found herself
+a few seconds later taking the scarcely palpable arm of the rector,
+whom the Duke, in a moment of abstraction, had asked to the
+Christmas-tree and whom he had subsequently forgotten to put off.  The
+rector alone, of all the expected, turned up, his smile vacuous and his
+appetite in order.  At the table laid for four, and great enough for
+forty, the clergyman and the lady faced each other.  Mrs. Falconer
+smiled kindly, for as her friend had told the Duchess on the same
+afternoon, she was kind; and if she resented the apology for a man her
+slender _vis-à-vis_ presented, she did not show her scorn; she smiled
+kindly at him.  His cloth and habit, and cut even, wore the air of
+disapproval.  Her jewels, the bare splendor of her neck and arms,
+seemed out of place, and yet she could not but be perfectly sure that
+even the dull eyes of her _vis-à-vis_ not alone reflected, but
+confirmed, how lovely she was.
+
+The reverend gentleman was new to Glouceshire, but it turned out that
+he already knew its hearsays and its _on dits_ and he knew when she
+asked him, something of the country and The Dials.  It may have been
+that the bright aspect of the lady, her light mockery--for as she would
+she could not help falling into them even with this half-human
+creature--wickedly drew him on, gave the man license as he thought, to
+descend to scandal; at all events, after dinner, over a cigar smoked in
+her presence, the empty glass of Benedictine at his elbow, in his
+cheeks a muddy red diffused from his wine, the gentleman leaned
+forward, and tried to adapt his speech and topic to the worldly vein
+which he imagined was the habitual tenor of a fashionable woman's life.
+
+"Even this lovely shire," he drawled its beauty--"cannot, so it would
+seem, be free from scandal.  And where a minister would naturally look
+for help, wretchedly enough for the most part he only finds examples
+and warnings."
+
+The rector lifted his eyes to the fine old ceiling as if in its shields
+and blazons he was impressed by the blots of recent sins.
+
+His hand touched the little liqueur glass.  He picked it up and in a
+second of abstraction tried to drain its oily emptiness.
+
+"Let me ring," said Mrs. Falconer, "and send for some more Benedictine,
+or better still, for some _fine_."
+
+"No," he refused, and sedately put her right.  "No more of anything, I
+think, unless it might be a bottle of soda.  You spoke of lovely
+Glousceshire and then spoke of The Dials.  Do you know the place?"
+
+Only, she told him, by hearsay.
+
+He solemnly supposed so; so he himself chiefly knew it, as indeed all
+the country side was growing to know it.
+
+The eyes of the lady to whom the rector was retailing his little gossip
+were intently on him.  But Mrs. Falconer in reality was not looking at
+him, neither did she at once find ready words to refute, to cast down,
+to blot out, his hideous suggestion that filled the room with it sooty
+blot.
+
+Mrs. Falconer, who had good-humoredly been amused by his intense
+Britishness thus far, his pale lack of individuality, his perfect type,
+now looked sharply at her companion.
+
+The rector had been more than right, Mrs. Falconer was used to the
+indifferent, rather brutal handling by society of human lives.
+Possibly as she adored people, no one of her set was more interested in
+the comedies and dramas of her _contemporains_.  But there are ways and
+channels: what runs clear in one runs muddy in another.
+
+The rector, in his own way, told her that for several weeks a very
+beautiful lady had been living at The Dials.  She had, it appeared,
+never been out of the garden gate, and the servants were foreign, all
+save a deaf old gardener.  But the beautiful lady who sought such
+peculiar seclusion, had a very constant visitor.  Of course the rector
+was not able or sufficiently daring to affirm; with a cleverness worthy
+a better story he left his hearer to guess, imagine, who the visitor
+might be.
+
+"Don't you think," Mrs. Falconer breathed, after a very short lapse
+into silence, "that we might let such ghosts alone on Christmas Eve?"
+
+She rose and stood before him in her soft, luminous dress; her eyes
+were intent on him, but in reality she was not looking at him.
+
+He had grown so detestable that she could bear his presence no longer;
+she found herself, however, wanting to learn all his knowledge to its
+finest detail.  She found that she despised herself for any interest
+she might take.  She got rid of him at length, how, she never knew.
+But she saw him leave her presence with relief.
+
+
+When the miserable man, as she called him, had taken his leave, the
+deserted guest looked about her rather defiantly, as if the objects
+with which the room was filled were hostile.  Then, with a half-audible
+exclamation she sank down in a chair, her elbow on the left arm of it,
+and her chin in her hand.
+
+Well, the imputation, the character of what she had just heard vulgarly
+said and to which, for a bewildered second, she had perhaps vulgarly
+listened--was highly dreadful, highly disordering to her fashion of
+thinking and believing about Jimmy Bulstrode!  Oh, for a moment she had
+half believed what that creature said, and her eyes had winked fast at
+the game before them!  In the swiftness of the revolutions it had
+seemed for a sole flash real; but now that the noise had stopped and
+the carousel as well, she saw how _wooden_ the horses were and that
+they were as dead as doornails!  If she had been disturbed, she came
+loyally back now, with a glow and a rush of tenderness as she instantly
+re-instated what could never lose caste.
+
+Oh, The Dials!  She couldn't conceive what Jimmy had in reality,
+rashly, delightfully done there; what he had planted or installed, if
+he had planted or installed anything.  But whatever the truth was, it
+was sure to be essentially right, as far as ethics went--she knew that
+at least.  But Jimmy's delicacy and his heart were all too fine for the
+crude wisdom of the world or for her common-sense, which would have
+told him no doubt, had he cared to ask, that he was rash and wild.
+
+She was prepared to hear that he had made some Magdalen a home in this
+prudish country place.  At this possibility Jimmy's kindness and
+charity stood out graciously in strong contrast to the prudish judgment.
+
+There were several long mirrors set in the panels of the room like
+lakes between green shores of old brocade, and they reflected her as
+she leaned forwards in her chair and looked about her, taking in the
+brightness of the perfect little room.  It had been cut off from the
+wider, grander spaces for more intimate passages in the social course
+of events, but there was nothing newly planned in its colors and
+tapestries, its hangings and furnishings; the effect was sombre rather,
+the objects had the air of use, of having participated in past
+existences, and like faithful servants, they seemed to wait to serve
+perfectly new events.
+
+The especial brightness of the room came from the gay festooning that
+had found its way throughout the castle.  The mirrors were dark with
+the velvet rounds of hemlock from which the miserable face of scandal,
+the sardonic face of divorce, under the conditions of the present
+domestic situation might well grin satyr-like from the Christmas
+wreaths.  No doubt there were lots of ghosts about, ready to stride, to
+flutter, or to walk; the American woman put their histories and their
+legends impatiently by.
+
+The facile way in which the Duchess of Westboro' had slipped out from
+the chafing of domestic harness, the egotistical _geste_ with which she
+had so widely thrown over her responsibilities, fetched Mrs. Falconer
+up to her own life, from whose problems indeed her husband's absence
+alone set her free.  Her affairs had lately rapidly progressed, flying,
+whirling.  The circles the event of her marriage had originally
+created, touched at last the farthest limit; there was nothing left for
+them now but to scatter.  The vortex had rapidly narrowed down, was
+narrowing down, and nothing remained but a sole object in the bed of
+the clear water; and as Mary Falconer looked at it she knew that the
+thing was a stone.
+
+"We spend," she had once said to Bulstrode, "half our lives forging
+chains, and the other half trying to make ourselves free."  Hadn't she
+wrenched with all her might to be rid of hers? materially she still
+wore her bonds and moved with a ball.
+
+As she had driven away from Charing Cross Station, a month ago, after
+seeing her husband aboard the Dover and Calais special, she had
+breathed--breathed--breathed--stretched her arms and hands out to
+London, felt on her eye and brow a dew that meant the very dawning of
+liberty broke for her, and that she was for the time at least blessed
+by it, and free.
+
+The Sorghams' London house had opened its refuge wide for her, and she
+had gone into it like a child, to sleep and rest, and there she had
+grown up again, to begin to think and to plan, project and puzzle as
+those who grow up must do.  She had never thought to such practical
+purpose as she did in these days, and never come so nearly reaching an
+end.
+
+Just before dressing for dinner on this night, at the sensation the
+touch of her husband's telegram gave her, she realized how near to a
+not unusual decision she was, and when she put the envelope by with the
+rest of her mail, the part of her mind which she would not let herself
+look into was in confusion and doubt.
+
+More effectively than Falconer's coming could have done, his few
+telegraphed words brought him to his wife's consideration.  And the
+fantastic story of The Dials helped her, ridiculous as it was,
+burlesque as it was, to think; in the very humor of it, a shock, and
+helped her more reasonably to consider what otherwise her feelings
+would have turned to tragedy.
+
+Jimmy's ecstasies about the place recurred to her with renewed
+cordiality.  He had spent an hour at least describing it, and when he
+had finished with "A woman must be there, it is made for a woman," Mary
+Falconer had only seen herself in the frame that the old place
+presented.  She exclaimed aloud: "Oh, no, no," and continued to affirm
+to herself that it was too fantastically absurd--"Jimmy!"
+
+"It's only some delightful bit of charity, and he's too afraid of my
+wretched conservatism and my ironies to have told me frankly about it."
+
+Having in a very unfeminine way opened a crack for reason, its honest
+face peered through, and Mary Falconer glanced at it with a sigh and a
+half-amused recognition, as if she had not been face to face with
+anything so cool and eminent for a long time.
+
+Jimmy had hinted to her of a secret, in London; there was something he
+said he wished to tell her about, would tell her in full later,
+something that involved much happiness to others, and could it have
+been this?  Could it have been that he was really secretly married?
+That at last the step of which he had constantly spoken, for which
+indeed there had been times when together they had half-heartedly
+planned for it, could it be that the one safeguard for them both had
+actually been formed by him, and alone?  But only a second would she
+permit this conception of The Dials to obtain hold.  "Ridiculous!" she
+repeated, "ridiculous!  Not that I believe a word or any innuendo of
+the shocking old wizard, but it only shows, it only shows the
+helplessness of a woman who is not bound to a man, and how entirely the
+man is free!"
+
+Nothing a man does counts well for him with a woman but those things he
+does in accordance with her estimate of what his attitude towards her
+should be!  And Bulstrode's high-minded control, the reserve--which
+since her marriage had been maintained, only counted now against him.
+
+Wasn't she, in it all, rather counting without her host?  Their bond
+was so tacit, so silent, so unworded.  Indeed, he had made no bond, had
+asked her for no pledge.  She was tied hand and foot, but he was free.
+And over that freedom what vague right had she?  What dominion could
+she have?  Isn't it, after all, in the life of a clever, delightful
+man, something not strictly a burden, the soul-absorbing entire
+devotion of a woman not too old and more or less not generally
+disliked?  What did it--heavens, but she was analyzing--what did it
+cost him?  Hadn't he always gone from her at a moment's warning, and
+stopped away for months and months?  Imperious as by nature she was,
+she had always been wise enough to reserve a summons from her that, she
+had every reason to believe, would fetch him from any distance to her
+side.  She never tested him, she scarcely ever wrote to him; she had
+been at the Sorghams', and alone for a month, and save for one
+perfectly delightful day he had not once turned up to keep her company.
+
+As the woman's thoughts encompassed the subject they brought it up to
+this: that as far as things went, at all events, there was no blame: no
+matter how society had coupled their names, she had at least the
+conscience of her acts clear.  Jimmy was to be thanked for it from
+beginning to end; as far as the conscience of her thoughts went, well,
+those were her own affair.  Oh, she could recall skirmishes and narrow
+impasses!  Her tactics had more than once been those only permitted by
+the codes of battle, and of another passion.
+
+Her chair, which she had left, she passed and repassed as she walked up
+and down, trailing her soft dress across the floor.  She stood before
+the fire, her foot held out to the fervent flame.
+
+Her face softened as there came out clearly to her the real picture of
+Jimmy that always kept itself somewhere between her eyes and her brain.
+Ah, there were men of talent and fashion, who did not hesitate to make
+merry, who were more or less good, more or less anti-pathetic, and for
+whom society never had a word of reproach--but Jimmy! distinguished and
+charming, with every taste and means to gratify them, with--so to put
+it--the woman of his heart at his very doors--how did he live?  Why,
+for everybody in the world but for himself.  And through it all, in
+spite of the fact that he appeared blindly to shut his eyes against
+their mutual love, he lived for her.  Oh, he was the best, the best!
+
+She listened as she stood there for the hum of the motor which might
+tell her he was coming back.  She wanted to ask him to tell her the
+truth about The Dials.  She wanted, above all else, to see him again.
+
+She remembered them, one by one, the happy occasions they had caught
+and made the most of, and each after the other they became lovely
+harbors where like ships her thoughts lay at anchor.  Penhaven was
+certainly one of the best.  She congratulated herself that she had
+conceived that day, and without any blame she acknowledged it to
+herself, that if Jimmy had only wished it they would have been there
+together now.
+
+She had taken her chair again and sat back deeply in the great
+fauteuil.  The brocade made a dark-hued background against which her
+head, frankly thrown back, defined its charming lines.  Her bare arms
+folded across her breast, her foot swinging gently to and fro, she
+continued to muse and dream, and as she thought of Bulstrode, to love
+him.
+
+Some one came in and piled up the fire and slipped out, but no message
+was brought her to tell her what had become of her host and her friend.
+
+The long sympathetic silence beginning at the fireside flowed through
+the vast rooms and corridors, and out into the night, down the lanes
+and the road until its completeness and tonelessness were broken by the
+memory of the bells of Penhaven, as she and Jimmy had heard them whilst
+they rang the angelus in the close.  And the discordant note of The
+Dials was drowned, confused and lost in her intense listening to the
+Penhaven bells.  Some chord or other, or some fine spring touched as
+she so thought on, brought back to her the fact of the despatch
+upstairs, which if it had any, had an imperative importance.  Falconer
+had sent it from Palm Beach where he had gone to get rid of a
+troublesome grippe.  He did not, in the few lines which told he was
+seedy and had put off his sailing, suggest that she should go back.
+But he would not resent her return, she knew that, he would probably
+treat her decently for at least a fortnight.
+
+"I don't know a creature," she praised herself, "who would have stayed
+on with Jack, and nothing but Jimmy has helped me to stick it out.  If
+he really loved me would he have let me go on as I have gone on?  I
+don't know.  Unless he loved me could he have helped me at all?  I
+think not."
+
+Round the figure of her friend there began to group, as if for some
+special purpose, the kindnesses and charities she had seen him display.
+One by one she added up his gifts and benefits until the poor and
+outcast and forgotten and despised claimed all of them to be his
+friends; they gathered round him and in place of the categoric
+histories of self-love and indulgence, of passion that had in more or
+less degree characterized the men of her set, these things came till
+the dawn of them and the light of them made his figure shine.  How, she
+thought, could he ever have been what he so wonderfully is, if he had
+lived for himself or been anything but the best?  Upstairs, in her
+room, a few hours before, the mark of silver on her hair had been a
+whip to urge on her rebellion; to tell her to seize and make the most
+of the fleeting time, to warn her of the age which when her beauty and
+her youth were gone, was all that could remain for them both.  But now
+there began to blow across her soul a freshness.  She had indeed been
+drawing long breaths in her husband's absence, but free as they were
+they left her stifled and panting, as if to get the oxygen she had been
+obliged to climb too far.  Now, on the contrary, she was lifted as by
+wings, and whilst they fluttered about her she breathed evenly yet
+fully, and the air on the heights was something better than wine.
+
+There is an unspoiled enjoyment in the thing which has never given us
+pain.  It may be a sensual and ecstatic prerogative of passion to make
+the object suffer, but there is a different sense of happiness in that
+which never does harm or hurt or wrong to the thing it loves.  So she
+could think of Bulstrode, without pain, without regret, without
+reproach.  And if the ardor and passion in her became suffused and
+slowly paled, there was a starry brightness, a beauty in her face and
+in her eyes such as Bulstrode, when he came in to find her waiting, had
+never seen before.
+
+
+With every mile of the short run from The Dials back to the castle,
+Mrs. Falconer's friend had been preparing himself for his meeting with
+the woman he had left some few hours before.  All his emotions
+culminated in a high, swinging excitement.  The fact that he was going
+back alone to find Mary Falconer there, was the big motif, and as he
+thought of the dark, charming envelope the castle made, holding the
+treasure she was, keeping her there for him, his heart beat so high
+that he knew there was nothing more for him to feel.  The ecstasy he
+had witnessed in the little house his chivalry had purchased, the
+meeting of the husband and wife, come together there after so much
+unhappiness, put it poignantly to him that sterile love is a very
+unsatisfactory thing indeed.  And if the highest quality of gallantry
+is to consider a woman's honor before her love, it at least makes real
+happiness--so he felt then--impossible in the world.
+
+One false swerve of the motor at the pace they were going, and there
+would not be any more problems to solve.  If he died now he might
+justly say that he had not lived, he had not lived!  Who would give him
+back what he had missed?  The motto on the dials repeated itself to
+him: _Utere dum licet_.
+
+He pushed into the castle on his arrival, hurried to dress, and went
+downstairs.  It seemed to him as he put aside the portières, that these
+curtains were at last all there was between himself and her, that he
+was going home, coming home at last; that ways he had for years seen
+approaching, met at length to-night here.  It was with the very clear
+realization of the culmination of the time that Bulstrode went in to
+find his friend.
+
+He had stopped to make himself irreproachable, and expected to find her
+waiting and friendly and lovely.  What, had he found her anything else?
+But as rising from her chair, the scarf slipping back from her bare
+shoulders, she put out her hand and greeted him, the dazzling sense
+that breaks on a man's consciousness when he finds himself alone with
+the woman he loves, proved for a second that he had need of all his
+control.  He could not speak.
+
+"Jimmy!" she exclaimed, "you're as white as a ghost!  You look as
+though you'd been to a wake; and I don't believe you've had a mouthful
+of dinner."
+
+He remembered that it might be polite to apologize to her for the
+entire desertion of the household.
+
+"My poor friend, what in Heaven's name must you think of us all!"
+
+"Of you all?"  (True enough, there had been another!)  She had thought
+volumes, comedies, tragedies, melodramas, but what she thought didn't
+so much matter as did the fact that he had not, whatever festivities he
+had honored, dined.  Shouldn't they have something here together before
+the fire?
+
+"I seem," she said, "to have a blighting effect upon my host."
+
+"My friend Westboro' is the happiest man in Glousceshire."
+
+"Which means that he has found his Duchess?"
+
+"He has found his Duchess."
+
+When her friend entered the room, by the light on his face like the
+brightness of the morning as he caught sight of her, Mary Falconer saw
+that for Jimmy Bulstrode she was still the one woman in the world.  In
+the relief that this knowledge brought her she half attempted to play
+with what had been her suspicions, and to tease him, but this mood
+passed.
+
+"That's a horrid old parson they chose to have me dine with," she said.
+"He told me dreadful scandals but I think now that I see through them
+all.  The Duchess of Westboro' has been living incognita at The Dials,
+hasn't she, and her husband at last found her there?"
+
+Bulstrode acknowledged that she had read the drama correctly.  And Mary
+Falconer laughed.
+
+"Yes, evidently the Duchess has a strong dramatic sense; she's very
+romantic, isn't she?"
+
+And the man absently exclaimed: "Oh, I dare say, I dare say."  Then
+turning to her with unusual vehemence: "Do, for Heaven's sake leave
+them and everybody.  I want to forget them all."
+
+He threw up his hand with a sort of supplication.  He had seated
+himself on a tapestried stool close beside the chair she had taken
+again.  Using her Christian name for one of the rare times in his life,
+he pleaded: "Can't we leave all other people, Mary, can't we?"
+
+She looked at him startled and said that their host seemed pretty
+effectually to have left _them_, rising from her chair with the words,
+and crossing the room to one of the long windows, drew back the curtain.
+
+The cold glass against which she pressed her cheek sent a shock through
+her, but she stayed for a second close to the pane as if she would
+implore the newer transport, the stiller transport, of the icy cold to
+transfuse her veins.
+
+The changed temperature had chased away the fog, and the night spread
+its serene beauty over the park, where the moonlight lay along the
+terrace like snow.  Far down the slope rose the outlines of the bare
+trees, and the wide landscape shone and shone until it finally was lost
+in the mists.
+
+Bulstrode had followed over and stood by Mary Falconer's side, and the
+scene before him seemed full of joy, full of gifts, full of largesse.
+The ornament on the woman's bosom stirred with her breathing, shot a
+million fine sparkles, and below it the spray of mistletoe rose and
+fell, rose and fell.
+
+He put his hand out and took the spray and fastened it in his
+buttonhole, saying that the mistletoe was above her head.
+
+His voice, one she had never heard, made her unwisely turn to meet his
+eyes, to shake with the emotion of the adventurer trembling on the edge
+of the precipice; just to hang over which, and to shudder, he has
+climbed high.  She put her hand out between them, holding him back.
+
+"I've had a telegram from my husband.  He's very ill.  He's in Palm
+Beach and I'm going over to him next week."
+
+[Illustration: "I've had a telegram from my husband"]
+
+Falconer's name was sovereign for breaking spells as far as Jimmy was
+concerned, but the wife's phrase this time gave him only a more violent
+revelation of his cruel hope.  She went on:
+
+"It's not alarming, but with a heart like Jack's, anything might
+happen.  It's only when I'm with him that he keeps up any sort of
+shape."
+
+The fact of his holding in his the hand that she had put out to keep
+him from her, did not serve to aid in a serene continuation of her
+plans, and the silence became a burden which if she did not herself
+lift would crush her.
+
+She said hurriedly: "And you will help me to go."
+
+And then Bulstrode spoke: "No," he said, "Oh, no."
+
+For the briefest space she yielded to what he meant and was at last
+wicked enough and human enough to promise to do.  But she had on this
+solemn evening--for it had so been--come too far, gone up too high to
+drag down all the way with him on a single word.  In supremest
+happiness, however, at what he said and how he said it, she gave a
+little soft laugh, and although she was under the mistletoe, she felt
+that she looked down on him, loving him so much more that in adorable
+weakness he had suddenly grown small and dear.
+
+"Oh, Jimmy," she whispered, "how heavenly of you, but you can't go back
+on ten years in one week.  You can't, you know!  You've thrown me like
+a giant so _far_, I've gone right on up."
+
+Still looking at her he shook his head as she repeated: "You'll help
+me, you'll help me!  You can't go back!"
+
+"I _can_ go back," he said deeply, "_on everything and everybody in the
+world_."
+
+At the frank simple words, and the sense of what they meant, at the
+sound of his new voice, it was as if all the dykes at last were down;
+and strong, bright, but most beautiful, the sea came rushing in.  As
+she saw him coming toward her and knew that in a moment more she would
+be in his arms, and that at his first touch she would let everything
+go, she found one word to say and it proved only to be his name:
+
+"Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy!"
+
+But there was in it an appeal.  She could count the times she had wept
+in her life, very nearly, she had often said that a woman weeps only
+when she has nothing else to do, and there had always been so much,
+every minute in her life; and as if in logical affirmation there seemed
+now for her nothing to do but to cry.  The tears which covered her face
+and fell into her palms and against the chair on which she leaned,
+comforted her in a measure and served to loosen the tension of her
+mind.  She had succeeded in miraculously keeping away from him, just
+within touch of her, held back by a hand whose white gentleness was not
+so exquisitely strong but that he loved her too well to break the
+tender barrier.  She never afterward knew what appeals she made or how
+she besought, but it must have been of great force to keep him so
+transfixed and pale.
+
+"Oh, you _have_ told me over and over again!  Do you think I am deaf or
+blind, or that I have found you dumb?  Such love, Jimmy, such high,
+sweet perfectness!  Why, there isn't a woman in a million who has known
+it or even dreamed what such love could mean.  Why, there hasn't been a
+day or an hour for ten years that you have not spoken it to me in the
+most adorable way, in the most beautiful way; and in every kind thing
+you have done, in every foolish, dear thing, I have been so vain as to
+think that I counted for something in it, that you did it a little for
+me.  Other women have had their lovers, their scandals, their great
+passions.  But I have had you without flaw, without a change, without
+regret.  Hush!" she cried, wiping her tears away, "Hush.  It's quite
+safe to let me go on.  The only fear is that _you_ may speak."
+
+The arm which she had held out to keep him from her had fallen upon his
+shoulder, lay about his neck as he knelt by her chair.
+
+"It's been horrible!" she said, shaking her head, "Horrible--the days
+and the nights, the days and the nights!  There have been times when I
+could have killed him and killed myself as well.  But then you've come,
+and your presence has helped me, and that's the way I've pulled along;
+because by your silence you told me to pull along, because by the fact
+that you didn't speak I understood that you thought I should be brave,
+and I have been--thanks to you, and I shall be--thanks to you!  Oh!"
+she cried passionately, "if you think because I am saying it all out
+that I want to go back, that I don't see what I am running away from,
+and what you mean, you're cruel, you're cruel!"
+
+Her other hand had found its fellow and they both lay on his shoulders.
+
+"I only think of you," he breathed, "and of how..."
+
+She covered his lips.  "Oh, hush, hush, you have told me, in the only
+way there was to tell.  I'm too stupid to be able to combine a lover
+and a husband.  The day and the hour you spoke I should never have seen
+my husband again.  And that's where it stands; that's how it is, and
+you know it.  You loved me because I was like that, and I love you
+because you are the bravest of the brave.  There you are!" she cried,
+and drew away from him triumphantly, letting her arms fall.  "There we
+both are!"
+
+"Have you any vague conception of what this is for me?" Bulstrode asked.
+
+"Oh, I dare say," she exclaimed, with a kind of petulance, "that I am
+only thinking of my own bewildering happiness.  There," she exclaimed
+at his face, "I see you have a new weapon: pity.  Oh, don't use that
+against me, and I warn you that everything in the world will crumble if
+you speak."
+
+Her hands, which he was holding closely, she drew from him and laid
+them both on his breast and met his eyes full with her own.  Her lips
+were slightly trembling, and she was as white as a winter day.  In the
+moment of silence they passed like this, she seemed to him like some
+great precious pearl, some priceless rose fragrant, lustrous, made for
+him, gathered for him, and yet beyond his right.  She seemed, above
+all, the woman, the mate; her glorious sex, her tenderness, her
+humanness, drew him and dazzled him; and, nevertheless, through his
+daze and over his desire, he heard with his finest her cry:
+
+"Jimmy, Jimmy, don't speak, don't speak.  Ah, if you really love me..."
+
+He really loved her.  Rising from where he knelt by her chair,
+Bulstrode went over, stood a second by the chimneypiece, and then took
+a few paces up and down the room, came back to her and said the thing
+the real man says to the woman he really loves:
+
+"I want to make you happy, Mary.  I will do whatever you wish me to do."
+
+"Ah, then, go!"
+
+Bulstrode looked wearily about as though of its own accord a door might
+unclose or a portière lift.
+
+"Go where, pray, at this time of night, or morning?"
+
+"Oh, to The Dials.  Ring for a motor; they will take you in again; or
+go to the rector's."
+
+The last of the fire had flared up.  The flame went out.
+
+Sinking back in her chair, she waited in a tranced stillness, her eyes
+on the ashes of the fire.  She had said her say out, perhaps the man
+knew it, and as she leaned back in the cushions he saw how completely
+it all lay with him at the end.  She thought he came back and waited a
+second at her side; she thought he bent a moment over her, but she did
+not stir until the cold wind from an opening door, till the clicking of
+a latch made her start, and then she turned to see that he had gone.
+
+
+Bulstrode came back to the castle Christmas Day at nine o'clock.  But
+the hour had the effect of being much earlier.  The winter morning
+panoplied with festivity began its life slowly, and not all the day's
+brightness through which he had speeded his motor had yet come into the
+house.  Bulstrode, drawn by it, went directly back to the room he had
+left several hours before, as though he expected still to find the
+woman he loved sitting before the extinguished fire.
+
+Two parlor maids were whisking their skirts and dusters out of the
+opposite door, a footman at their heels.  Touches of the inevitable
+order which reduces an agreeable disarray to the impersonal had already
+been put to the scene of Jimmy's tenderness, and the curtains drawn
+well away from the long windows let in the morning that entered broadly
+and fell across the hearth and the fresh-lit fire.
+
+Clean logs replaced the cold ashes: the match had just finished with
+the kindlings, and Bulstrode went over to welcome the crackling of the
+young blaze.  The absence of his host, the castle once more handed over
+to him for the time, gave him a feeling of proprietorship in the bright
+cordial room, but looking up at the portraits of Westboro's in puffs
+and velvets, Jimmy couldn't find an ancestor!  Their amours and
+indulgences had written brilliant and amusing history; the gentlemen
+had gone mad at ladies' carriage wheels, they had carried off their
+scandals with the highest of hands, and still held their heads well.
+They had carved and raped and loved their way down to the present time,
+and were none the less a proud line of pure British blood.  The
+American bachelor, about whose fine head nothing picturesque or worthy
+of history circled, looked up at the Dukes of Westboro' musingly, and
+there was not a peer or a noble better to look upon or who had been at
+heart a truer lover, although he did not know it.
+
+During the lapse of time between leaving this same room and his present
+return, Bulstrode had not tossed on a sleepless bed; he had slept
+soundly, and during his rest the several dials had called out like
+bells, their voice, _Utere dum licet_; and finally a real bell had
+roused him to the fact that it was day, a new day, and that unless he
+was killed en route to the castle, nothing could keep him from the
+place and from her.
+
+He had no consolation in the fact that the honor and decency of society
+were by him strengthened and retained, nor did he plan out the sane,
+wise project of not seeing her again.  Nor did he weigh or balance his
+charge or responsibility.  There had been a cessation of vibration of
+any kind, and only one supreme, sovereign reality took possession of
+the world and of himself, and the limitless beauty and the limitless
+delight he had breathed in ever since he left her and knew how she
+loved him.  Nothing in life, he had so felt, could dull or tarnish the
+glory of her face; nothing, no matter what life held for them both,
+could efface the touch she had laid upon him, as her arms were about
+him.  Through the interval his past life appeared to have been, on
+through the new and unlived interval to come, she would be as last
+night she had been, she would look at him as last night she had looked.
+"Heavens!" he meditated, in the faces of the self-indulgent, cynical
+Westboro's, "I am not going to be blasé through six paradises just
+because there happens to be a seventh!"
+
+A new fire spun its lilac flames behind his back.  The spicy breath of
+the wreaths of hemlock was deliciously sweet.  Little by little the sun
+had made its eastern way and sparkled at the pane outside, and in the
+radiant clarity the terrace and its charming railing, the urns with the
+little cedars, stood out clearly; and more than all else, the truth
+cried itself to him, that whatever happened, she was still here, still
+in the house with him.
+
+He had chosen a Christmas gift for her in London, and determined to
+send it up to her now with some roses, and in this way to announce the
+fact that he had come back from The Dials and was ready to use the day
+as she liked.  He felt only how beautiful it would be to see her, that
+it did not for a second occur to him to wonder if she on her part would
+feel a certain embarrassment.
+
+In answer to his ring, not a man servant, but the perfect housekeeper
+rustled in, her crisp silks, her cameos, and her "Christmas face," as
+one of the little Westboro' chaps had called her rosy countenance, on
+one of his few Christmas days.
+
+"Where would Mr. Bulstrode please to have breakfast?"
+
+"Why, wherever it best suited, went with the house, with the day.
+Where, indeed, and that was more to the point, would Mrs. Falconer have
+it?"
+
+"Mrs. Falconer?  Why, Mr. Bulstrode didn't know then that Mrs. Falconer
+had gone?"
+
+She saw by his face that he knew nothing less in the world.
+
+Why, directly the despatch had been fetched over from the Abbey
+station.  There had been but twenty minutes between the getting of it
+and her starting away.  A motor had been sent with her and the maid,
+and Mrs. Falconer had fortunately been able to make the train; the only
+one, it so happened, being Christmas Day, that connected with the Dover
+and Calais special.
+
+The matter-of-fact bit of news came to Bulstrode so coldly and so
+ruthlessly that it took some seconds for the bitter thought that she
+had gone because she couldn't trust him, to penetrate.  Then this gave
+place to an effulgent hope that it might be _herself_ she couldn't
+trust!  But the discovery that she had left him no message of any kind,
+and that she was above all irrevocably gone, struck him more cruelly
+than had any blow in his kindly life.  He could not suffer in peace
+before the bland creature in silks and cameos.  Crises and departures,
+battle, murder, and sudden death, he felt the housekeeper would accept
+serenely should any of them chance to occur at Westboro', and above all
+if they were part of the sacred family history.  But Mrs. Falconer and
+he were not Westboro's, and he wanted to be rid of his companion and to
+find himself alone in order to consult time tables, to find out why it
+had been imperative to go to Calais, with what boat for America a
+Christmas-Day train could possibly connect, and to turn it all over in
+his mind.  He at first believed that there had never been any telegram
+and that she had only employed a polite ruse in order to facilitate her
+flight.
+
+Why, at all events, couldn't she have left him a line?  She might, he
+ruefully complained, have strained a point and wished him a Merry
+Christmas!  As he walked to and fro in the room now supremely deserted,
+he began slowly to approach a certain hypothesis which as soon as he
+granted, he as violently discarded.  But the thought was imperious:
+something of its kind always haunted him like a bad ghost.  It could
+usually be dismissed, but now it was persistent.  A despatch from
+Falconer had certainly come the night before.  Another might have
+followed on this morning, hard upon it?  To have been sent over from
+the Abbey on a holiday must have been a very grave message indeed; "a
+matter," as the old term went, "of life and death."  The phrase began
+to repeat itself and the conviction to grow, and as he was obliged to
+give it admittance and to face it, and to wonder what the shock would
+be to her, and what the news would be to him, how it would change
+things, and how they would both meet it--his promenade to and fro in
+the room brought him up before the centre table and he looked down upon
+it at length with a seeing eye.  Why not? why not? he was wondering.
+We are all essentially mortal, and lightning never had struck yet, _why
+not in this place_?  And since there had been neither shame nor blame,
+why couldn't he face the possibility of a perfectly natural mortality?
+Before him on the table lay Mrs. Falconer's green scarf, and as
+Bulstrode lifted the soft thing he saw that underneath it lay a
+despatch.
+
+Then he knew instantly that Mary Falconer had left both scarf and
+telegram there, and that this was her message to him.  He seemed, as
+the word he had not yet read met him in this form, to have been waiting
+all his life for just this news.  The road, so long in winding home,
+had wound home at length, and now that he believed the crisis was
+really reached, there was something infinitely stilling in its
+solemnity.
+
+Bulstrode could not at once draw the sheet from its envelope.  He lit a
+cigar and sat down before the fire.
+
+He knew, as though he saw it all before his eyes, how the despatch had
+found her this early Christmas Day, in her room--he knew how she had
+read it first and borne it well--for she was a brave, strong woman--he
+knew that his absence had been a relief to her.  He knew how she had
+worn her long, dark cloak and thick veil, and had gone out to travel
+home alone.  Oh, he knew her, and as he thought of the picture she had
+made, and how she would begin her sad and dreadful journey, he for the
+first time thought of himself--of themselves.  He was too human not to
+know that there would be a future and that they would build anew.  In
+the new house there would be no driftwood now; nor would they ever be
+haunted by the sound of a bell in the dark, for with the few brave
+souls who sail across the seas of life they had both of them stood by
+the sinking ship until it put into port.
+
+Mrs. Shawles came in again presently and told him that she had laid his
+breakfast in the little room facing the gardens.  Then she waited, and
+as Bulstrode looked up at her he forced himself to smile faintly and
+wished her a Merry Christmas.
+
+She thanked him, gave him many, and said it was a happy morning for all
+of the Westboro's, and that the castle and the house would see new
+times and better things, and when he had stirred himself to the point
+of putting what he had for her into her hand, he was not sure whether
+he wanted her to go, or not, this time and leave him alone.
+
+She still hesitated.  It was a custom with them, she told him, with the
+Westboro's, to have hall prayers on holidays.  When the Duke himself
+was there, he always read them; the servants and the children of the
+place had already come in.  In the absence of the family _would_ Mr.
+Bulstrode...?
+
+"Oh, no, on no account, on no account," he hurried.  "Wasn't there some
+one else?"
+
+"Well, to be sure, there was Portman."
+
+The guest was sure that Portman would do it quite in the proper way,
+and as for himself, he would have his breakfast in a few moments, he
+thanked her.
+
+And Mrs. Shawles, who had expected a more favorable answer, left open
+on the table the little Book which she had brought in with her.
+
+Bulstrode took it up after she was gone.
+
+In a few seconds he heard from the distance the sound of the children
+singing.  Their voices ceased, to be followed by the subdued murmur of
+reading.  As Bulstrode opened the Book he held, the leaves fell apart
+at the marriage rite.  He hurriedly passed this over, and his eyes were
+arrested by the opening lines of a more solemn service.  He paused to
+read the beautiful, pitiful words, and then, still with the open Book
+in his hands, he drew the telegram out of its cover....
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy
+Bulstrode, by Marie Van Vorst
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JIMMY BULSTRODE ***
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+The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode,
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+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy
+Bulstrode, by Marie Van Vorst
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode
+
+Author: Marie Van Vorst
+
+Illustrator: Alonzo Kimball
+
+Release Date: October 13, 2010 [EBook #34065]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JIMMY BULSTRODE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="img-front"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-front.jpg" ALT="The amiable shopman pressed various toys on monsieur and madame &quot;<I>pour les enfants</I>&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="483" HEIGHT="762">
+<H4 CLASS="h4center" STYLE="width: 483px">
+The amiable shopman pressed various toys on monsieur and madame &quot;<I>pour les enfants</I>&quot;
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+The Sentimental<BR>
+Adventures of<BR>
+Jimmy Bulstrode<BR>
+</H1>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+BY
+</H4>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+MARIE VAN VORST
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+With Illustrations by
+<BR>
+ALONZO KIMBALL
+</H4>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+NEW YORK
+<BR>
+HURST &amp; COMPANY
+<BR>
+PUBLISHERS
+</H4>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H5 ALIGN="center">
+COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY
+<BR>
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+<BR><BR>
+Published March, 1908
+</H5>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+TO THE MEMORY
+<BR>
+OF
+<BR>
+H. E. TESCHEMACHER
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CONTENTS
+</H3>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%">
+<A HREF="#chap01">
+<I>THE FIRST ADVENTURE</I>
+</A>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+In which he buys a Christmas tree
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%">
+<A HREF="#chap02">
+<I>THE SECOND ADVENTURE</I>
+</A>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+In which he tries to buy a portrait
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%">
+<A HREF="#chap03">
+<I>THE THIRD ADVENTURE</I>
+</A>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+In which he finds there are some things which one cannot buy
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%">
+<A HREF="#chap04">
+<I>THE FOURTH ADVENTURE</I>
+</A>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+In which he makes three people happy
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%">
+<A HREF="#chap05">
+<I>THE FIFTH ADVENTURE</I>
+</A>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+In which he makes nobody happy at all
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%">
+<A HREF="#chap06">
+<I>THE SIXTH ADVENTURE</I>
+</A>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+In which he discards a knave and saves a queen
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%">
+<A HREF="#chap07">
+<I>THE SEVENTH ADVENTURE</I>
+</A>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+In which he becomes the possessor of a certain piece of property
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%">
+<A HREF="#chap08">
+<I>THE EIGHTH ADVENTURE</I>
+</A>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+In which he comes into his own
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+</H2>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+From drawings by ALONZO KIMBALL
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-front">
+<I>The amiable shopman pressed various toys on monsieur and madame <BR>
+"pour les enfants"</I> . . . . . . Frontispiece
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-070">
+"<I>I only like him like a kind, kind friend</I>"
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-100">
+<I>In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing</I>
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-360">
+"<I>I've had a telegram from my husband</I>"
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap01"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE FIRST ADVENTURE
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+I
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IN WHICH HE BUYS A CHRISTMAS TREE
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+There was never in the world a better fellow than Jimmy Bulstrode.  If
+he had been poorer his generosities would have ruined him over and over
+again.  He was always being taken in, was the recipient of hundreds of
+begging letters, which he hired another soft-hearted person to read.
+He offended charitable organizations by never passing a beggar's
+outstretched hand without dropping a coin in it.  He was altogether a
+distressingly impracticable rich person, surrounded by people who
+admired him for what he really was and by those who tried to squeeze
+him for what he was worth!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a general wonder to people who knew him slightly why Bulstrode
+had never married.  The gentleman himself knew the answer perfectly,
+but it amused him to discuss the question in spite of the pain, as well
+as for the pleasure that it caused him to consider&mdash;<I>the reason why</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mary Falconer, the woman he loved, was the wife of a man of whom
+Bulstrode could only think in pitiful contempt.  But, thanks to an
+element of chivalry in the character of the hero of this story the
+years, as time went on, spread back of both the woman and the man in an
+honorable series, of whose history neither one had any reason to be
+ashamed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nevertheless, it struck them both as rather humorous, after all, that
+of the three concerned her husband should be the only renegade and,
+notwithstanding, profit by the combined good faith of his wife and the
+man who loved her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oh, there was nothing easy in the task that Jimmy set for himself!  And
+it did not facilitate matters that Mary Falconer scarcely ever helped
+him in the least!  She was a beautiful woman, a tender woman, and there
+were times when her friend felt that she cleverly and cruelly taunted
+him with Puritanism and with his simple, old-fashioned ideas and
+crystal clearness of vision, the <I>culte</I> he had regarding marriage and
+the sacred way in which he held bonds and vows.  It was no help at all
+to think she rebelled and jested at his reserve; that she did her best
+to break it&mdash;and there were times when it was a brilliant siege.  But
+down in her heart she respected him, and as she saw around her the
+domestic wrecks with which the matrimonial seas are encumbered, and
+knew that her own craft promised to go safely through the storm, Mary
+Falconer more than once had been grateful to the man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As far as Bulstrode himself was concerned, each year&mdash;there had been
+ten of them&mdash;he found the situation becoming more difficult and
+dangerous.  Not only did the future appear to him impossible as things
+were, but he began to hate his arid past.  He was sometimes led to ask,
+what, after all, was he getting out of his colossal sacrifice?  The
+only reward he wanted was the woman herself, and, unless her husband
+died, she would never be his.  Bulstrode had not found that he could
+solve the problem, and now and then he let it go from sheer weariness
+of heart.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+In the face of the window of the drawing-room where Bulstrode sat on
+this afternoon of an especial winter's day the storm cast wreaths of
+snow that clung and froze, or dropped like feathers down against the
+sill.  The gentleman had his predilections even in New York, and in the
+open fireplace the logs crumbled and disintegrated to ashen caves
+wherein the palpitating jewels of the heat were held.  Except for this
+old-fashioned warmth, there was none other in the room, whose white
+wainscoting and pillars, low ceilings and quaint chimney-piece,
+characterized one of those agreeably proportioned houses still to be
+found in lower New York around Washington Square.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode had received about half an hour ago a letter whose qualities
+and suggestions were something disturbing to him:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="letter">
+"There is such a thing, believe me" (Mary Falconer wrote in the pages
+which Bulstrode opened to read for the twentieth time), "as the <I>gloom</I>
+of Christmas, Jimmy.  People won't frankly own to it.  They're afraid
+of seeming sour and crabbed.  But don't you, who are so exquisitely apt
+to feelings&mdash;to other people's feelings,&mdash;at once confess it?  It
+attacks the spinster in the bustling winter streets as she is elbowed
+by some person, exuberantly a mother, and so arrogantly laden with
+delicious-looking parcels that she is almost a personal Christmas tree
+herself.  I'm confident this 'gloom of Christmas' grips the wretched
+little beings at toy-shop windows as they stand 'choosin'' their
+never-to-be-realized toys.  I'm sure it haunts the vagrant and the
+homeless in a city fairly redolent of holly and dinners, and where the
+array of other people's homes is terrifying.  And, my dear friend, it
+is so horribly subtle that no doubt it attacks others whose only grudge
+is that their hearths are not built for Christmas trees or the hanging
+of stockings.  But these unfortunates are not saying anything aloud,
+therefore we must not pry!
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="letter">
+"There's a jolly house-party on at the Van Schoolings'.  We're to go
+down to-morrow to Tuxedo and pass Christmas night, and you are, of
+course, asked and wanted.  Knowing your dread of these family
+feasts&mdash;possibly from just such a ghost of the gloom&mdash;I was sure you
+would refuse.  But it's a wonderful place for a talk or two, and I
+shall hope you will go&mdash;will come, not even follow, but go down with
+me."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+There was more of the letter&mdash;there always is more of women's letters.
+Their minds and pens are so charmingly facile; there is nothing a woman
+can do better than talk, except to write.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode smoked slowly, the pages between his fingers, his thoughts
+travelling like wanderers towards a home from which a ban had kept them
+aliens.  His eyes drifted to the beginning of the letter.  He wasn't
+familiar with the homeless vagrant class.  His charities to that part
+of the population consisted in donations to established societies, and
+haphazard giving called forth by a beggar's extended hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If anybody may be immune to the melancholy of which his friend Mrs.
+Falconer spoke, it should surely be this gentleman, smoking his cigar
+before the fire.  The unopened letters&mdash;there was a pile of them&mdash;would
+have offered ample reason why.  No one of the lot but bore some
+testimony to the generous heart which, beneath dinner-jacket and behind
+the screw-faced watch with the picture in the back of it, beat so
+healthy and so well.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the bestowal of benefits, whilst it may beautify the giver, does
+not always transform itself into the one benefit desired and console
+the bestower!  Bulstrode had a charming home.  He was alone in it.  He
+had his clubs where bachelors like himself, more or less infected with
+Christmas gloom, would be glad to greet him.  He had his friends, many
+of them, and their home circles were complete.  His, by force of
+circumstances, began and ended with himself, and as if triumphant to
+have found so tempting a victim, the gloom came and possessed Bulstrode
+as he sat and mused.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the decided sadness that stole across his face bore no relation, to
+the season, to whose white mystery and holy beauty there was something
+in his boyish, kindly heart that always responded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sadness Mrs. Falconer's letter awakened would not sleep.  What his
+Christmas <I>might</I> be...!  He had only to order his motor, to call for
+her and drive over the ferry; to sit beside her in the train, to drive
+with her again across the wintry roads.  He had but to see her, watch
+her, talk with her, share with her the day and evening, to have his
+Christmas as nearly what a feast should be as dreams could ask.  The
+whole festival was there: joy, good-will&mdash;peace?  No.  Not peace for
+him or for her&mdash;not that; everything else, but not that.  And he had
+been travelling for five weary months in order to make himself keep for
+her that peace a little longer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode sighed here, lifted the letter where there was more of it to
+his lips&mdash;held it out toward the fire as if the red jewels were to set
+themselves around it, thought differently, and putting it back in its
+envelope, thrust it in the pocket of his waistcoat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ruggles," he asked the servant who had come in, "you sent the despatch
+to Tuxedo?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There'll be later a note to send.  I'll ring.  Well, what is it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's a person at the door, sir, who insists on seeing you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The servant's tone&mdash;one particularly jarring to the ears of a man who
+had fellowship with more than one class of his kind&mdash;made the master
+look sharply up.  Ruggles was a new addition to the household, and
+Bulstrode did not like him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A person," Bulstrode repeated, quietly; "what sort of a person?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A man, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not a gentleman?  No," he nodded gently; "I see you do not think him
+one.  Yet that he is a man is in his favor.  There are some gentlemen
+who aren't men, you know.  Let him in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In doing so Ruggles seemed to let in the night.  Bulstrode had, in the
+warmth of his fragrant room, forgotten that outside was the wintry
+dark.  Ruggles, in letting the man in, had the air of thrusting him in,
+and shut the door behind the visitor with a click.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The creature himself let in the cold; he seemed made of it.  The snow
+clung to his shoulders; his shoes, tied up with strings, were encrusted
+with it.  His coat, buttoned to his chin, frayed at the cuffs and
+edges, was thin and weather-stained.  He had a pale face, a royal
+growth of beard&mdash;this was all Bulstrode had time to remark.  He rose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My servant says you want to see me.  Come near the fire, won't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The visitor did not stir.  Bewildered in the warmth of the room, he
+stood far back on the edge of the thick rug.  To all appearances he was
+a bit of driftwood from the streets, one of the usual vagrant class who
+haunt the saloons and park and steer from lockup to night-lodging,
+until they finally steer themselves entirely off the face of history,
+and the potter's field gathers them in.  Nothing but his entrance into
+this conventional room before this well-balanced member of decent
+society was peculiar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he still neither moved nor spoke, Bulstrode, approaching him, again
+invited: "Come near the fire, won't you? and when you are warm tell me
+what I can do for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's the storm," murmured the man, and a half-human look came across
+his face with his words.  "I mean to say, it's this hellish storm
+that's got in my throat and lungs.  I can't speak&mdash;it's so warm here.
+It will be better in a second.  No, not near the fire;
+thanks&mdash;chilblains."  He looked down at his poor feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The voice which the storm had beaten and thrashed to painful hoarseness
+was entirely out of keeping with the man's appearance, and in
+intonation, accent, and language was a shock to the hearer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't stand back like that&mdash;come into the room." Bulstrode wheeled a
+chair briskly about.  "There; sit down and drink this; it's a mild
+blend."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm very wet," said the man.  "I'll drip on the rug."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hang the rug!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tramp drained the glass given him at one swallow merely; it
+appeared to clear his throat and release his speech.  He gathered his
+rags together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I beg pardon for forcing myself on you like this, but I fancy I
+needn't tell you I'm desperate&mdash;desperate!"  He held out his hand; it
+shook like a pale ghost's.  "I look it, I'm sure.  I haven't eaten a
+meal or slept in a bed for a fortnight.  I've begged work and charity.
+All day I've been shovelling snow, but I'm too weak to work now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was being led to a chair.  He sank in it.  "Before they sent me to
+the Island I decided to try a ruse.  I went into a saloon and opened a
+directory, and I said, 'The first name I put my finger upon I'll take
+as good luck, and I'll go and see the person, man or woman.  I opened
+to James Thatcher Bulstrode, 9 Washington Square."  He half smiled; the
+pale, trembling hand was waving like a pitiful flag, a signal of
+distress to catch the sight of some bark that might lend aid.  "So I
+came here.  When there seemed actually to be some chance of my getting
+in, why, my courage failed me.  I don't expect you to believe my story
+or to believe anything, except that I am desperate&mdash;desperate.  It's
+below zero to-night out there&mdash;infernally cold."  He took the pin out
+of the collar turned up around his neck and let his coat fall back.
+Under it Bulstrode saw he wore a thin flannel shirt.  The tramp
+repeated to himself, as it were, "It's a bad storm."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked up in a dazed fashion at his host as if for acceptance of his
+remark.  In the easy chair, half swathed in rags, pitiful in thinness,
+dripping from shoes and clothes water that the storm had drenched into
+him, he was a sorry object in the atmosphere of the well-ordered
+conventional room.  The heat and whiskey, the famine and exposure, cast
+a film across his eyes and brain.  He indistinctly saw his host pass
+into the next room and shut the door behind him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By Jove!" he murmured under his breath in wonder find dumb thanks for
+the shelter.  "By Jove!"  The stimulant filtered agreeably through him;
+more charitable than any element with which he had been lately
+familiar, the fire's heat began to thaw the ice in his bones.  He laid
+his dripping hat on his knees, his thin hands folded themselves over
+it, his eyes closed.  For hours he had shuffled about the streets to
+keep from freezing.  At the charity organization they gave work he was
+too weak to do; he had not eaten a substantial meal in so long that he
+had forgotten the taste of food and had ceased to crave it.  In the
+soft light of lamp and fire he fell into a doze.  Bulstrode, if he had
+stolen softly in to look at his visitor, would have seen a man not over
+thirty years of age, although want and dissipation added ten to his
+appearance.  He would have been quick to take note of the fine,
+delicately cut face under the disfiguring beard, and of the slender,
+emaciated body deformed by its rags.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Possibly he did so noiselessly come in and stand by the unconscious
+creature, but the sleeping vagabond, dreaming fitful, half-painful
+things, was ignorant of the visitor.  Finally across his mind's sharp
+despair came a sense of warmth and comfort, and in its spell he awoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A servant, not the one who had thrust him into the drawing-room, but
+another with a friendly face, stood at his side, and in broken English
+asked the guest of Bulstrode to follow him; and gathering his scattered
+senses together and picking up his rags and what was left of himself,
+the creature obeyed a summons which he supposed was to hale him again
+into the winter streets.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+It was some three hours later that Bulstrode in his dining-room
+entertained his singular guest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have asked you to dine with me," he explained, with a certain
+graciousness, as if he claimed, not gave, a favor, "as I'm all alone
+to-night.  It's Christmas eve, you know&mdash;or perhaps you've been more or
+less glad to forget it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man who took the chair indicated him was unrecognizable as
+the stranger who had staggered into 9 Washington Square three or four
+hours before.  Turned out in spotless linen and a good suit that fitted
+him fairly well, shaven face save for a mustache above his lip, bathed,
+brushed, refreshed by nourishment and sleep and repose, he looked like
+one who has been in the waters, possibly a long, long time; like one
+who has drifted, been bruised, shattered, and beaten, but who has
+nevertheless drifted to shore; and in spite of his borrowed clothes,
+his scarred, haggard face, he looked like a gentleman, and Bulstrode
+from the moment he spoke had recognized him as one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The food was a feast to the stranger, in spite of nourishment already
+given him by Prosper.  He restrained the ferocious hunger that woke at
+sight and smell of the good things, forced himself not to cry out with
+eagerness, not to tear and grasp the eatables off the plate, not to
+devour like a beast.  Every time he raised his eyes he met those of the
+butler Ruggles, and as quickly the stranger looked away.  The face of
+the servant standing by the sideboard, back of him the white and
+gleaming array of the Bulstrode family silver like piles of snow, was
+for some reason or other not a pleasant face; the stranger did not
+think it so.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Once again seated in the room he had entered in his outcast state, a
+cup of coffee at his hand, a cigar between his lips, the agreeable
+atmosphere of the old room and its charming objects, the kindly look on
+the face of his host, all swam before him.  Looking frankly at
+Bulstrode, he said, not without grace of manner:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I give it up.  I can't&mdash;it's not to be made out or understood..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you," interrupted the other, "feel equal to talking a little: to
+telling me how it happens that you are wandering, as you seem to be?
+For from the moment you first spoke&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man nodded.  "I'm a gentleman.  It's worse somehow&mdash;I don't
+know why, but it is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode thought out for him: "It's like remembering agreeable places
+to which you feel you will never return.  Only," he quickly offered,
+"in your case you must, you know, go back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said the young man, quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was so much entire renunciation in what he said that the other
+could not press it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Better still, you can then go on?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The vagrant looked at his companion as if to say: "Since I've known
+you&mdash;seen you&mdash;I have thought that I might."  But he said nothing more,
+and Bulstrode, reading a diffidence which did not displease him,
+finished:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You shall go on, and I'll help you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stranger bowed his head, and the wine sent the color up until his
+cheeks took the flush of health.  Remaining a little bent over, his
+eyes on his feet clad in Bulstrode's shoes, he said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm an Englishman.  My family is everything that's decent and all
+<I>that</I>, you know, and proud.  We've first-rate traditions.  I'm a
+younger son, and I've always been a thorn in the family's side.  I've
+been a sort of vagabond from the first, but never as bad as they
+thought or believed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused.  His recital was painful to him.  Bulstrode waited, then
+knocking off the ash from his cigar, urged:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me about it, tell me frankly; it will, you see, be a relief.  We
+can do better that way&mdash;if I know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stranger looked up at him quickly, then leaning forward in his
+chair, talked as it were to the carpet, and rapidly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's just a year ago.  I'd been going it rather hard and got into
+trouble more or less&mdash;lost at cards and the races, and been running up
+a lot of bills.  My father was awfully down on me.  I'd gone home for
+the holidays and had a talk with my father and asked him to pay up for
+me just this once more.  He refused, and we got very angry, both of us,
+and separated in a rage.  The house was full of people&mdash;a Christmas
+ball and a tree.  My father had, so it happened, quite a lot of money
+in the house.  I knew where it was&mdash;I had seen him count it and put it
+away.  That night for some reason the whole thing sickened me, in the
+mess I was in, and I left and went up to London without even saying
+good-by.  In the course of the week my brother came and found me drunk
+in my rooms.  It seems that the money had been taken from my father's
+safe, and they accused me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But," interrupted Bulstrode, eagerly, "it was a simple thing to
+exculpate yourself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ignoring his remark, the other continued: "I have never seen my father
+since that night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No amount of former deception can persuade a man that he is a lame
+judge of character.  The young Englishman's emaciated face, where eyes
+spoiled by dissipation looked out at his companion, was to this
+impulsive reader of humanity a good face.  Bulstrode, however, saw what
+he wanted to see in most people.  Given a chance to study them, or
+rather further to know them intimately, he might indeed have ended by
+finding in some cases a few of the imagined qualities.  Here misery was
+evident, degradation as well, timidity, and hesitation,&mdash;but honesty?
+Bulstrode fancied that its characters were not effaced, and he helped
+the recital:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Since you so left your people?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The steady go down!" acknowledged the other.  "I worked my passage to
+the States on a liner&mdash;I stoked..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Any chap," encouraged the gentleman, "who can do that can pull
+himself, I should say, out of a worse hole."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's scarcely a bad habit I haven't had down in the hole with me,"
+confessed the other, "and they've held me there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They both remained for a few seconds without speaking, and the host's
+eyes wandered to where, over his mantel-shelf, in a great gold frame
+was the portrait of a lady done by Baker.  A quaint young lady in her
+early teens, with bare arms and frilled frock.  She had Bulstrode's
+eyes.  By her side was the black muzzle of a great hound, on whose head
+the little hand rested.  Under the picture, from a silver bowl of
+roses, came a fragrance that filled the room, and, close by stood a
+photograph of another lady, very modern, very mocking, and very lovely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode, delicately drawing inferences from the influences in his
+life, and, if not consciously grateful, reflecting them charmingly,
+broke the silence:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must have formed some plan or other in your mind when you came to
+my door?  What, in the event of your being received, did you intend to
+ask me to do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stranger lifted his head and his response was irrelevant: "It seems
+a hundred years since I stood there in that storm and your man pulled
+me in.  I haven't seen a place like this for long, not the inside of
+decent houses.  When I left the ship I managed to get down with a chap
+as far as Florida, where he had an orange-plantation, but the venture
+fell through.  I fancy the rest is as well forgotten.  When I came in
+here to-night I intended to ask you for a Christmas gift of money, and
+I should have gone out and drunk myself to hell."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You spoke"&mdash;Bulstrode fetched him back&mdash;"of your father and your
+brother; was there no one else?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The younger man looked up without reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There has been, then, no more kindly influence in your life&mdash;no
+sister&mdash;no woman?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode brought out the words; in his judgment they meant so very
+much.  He saw a change cross the other's face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I fancy there are not many men who haven't had a woman in their lives
+for good or bad," he said, with a short laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," urged the gentleman, gently, "and for what was this woman?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As if he repelled the insistence, the young fellow stammered:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say, this putting a fellow on the rack&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Bulstrode leaned forward in his chair and rested his hand on his
+companion's knee and pleaded:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Speak out frankly&mdash;frankly&mdash;I believe I shall understand; it will free
+your heart to speak.  This influence which to a man should be the
+best&mdash;the best&mdash;what was it to you?"  Bulstrode sat back and waited,
+and the other man seemed quite lost in melancholy meditations for some
+few seconds.  Then Bulstrode put it: "For a young man, no matter how
+wild, to leave his home under the misapprehension you claim:&mdash;for him
+to make no effort to reinstate himself: with no attempt at justice: for
+him to become a wanderer&mdash;there must be an extraordinary reason, almost
+an improbable one&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't ask you to hear," said the vagrant, quickly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish to do so.  It would have been a simple matter to exculpate
+yourself&mdash;you had not the funds in your possession, had never had them.
+You took no means to clear yourself?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"None."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode looked hard at the face his care had revealed to him: the
+deep eyes, the neck, chin, the sensitive mouth&mdash;there was a certain
+distinction about him in his borrowed clothes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is the woman now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She married my brother&mdash;she is Lady Waring&mdash;my name," tardily
+introduced the stranger, "is Cecil Waring."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode bowed.  "Tell me something of her, in a word&mdash;in a word."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, she is always clever," said the young man, slowly, "always very
+beautiful, and then very poor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," nodded Bulstrode.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She is like the rest of us&mdash;one of a fast wild set&mdash;a&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A gambler?"  Bulstrode helped the description.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She played," acknowledged the young man, "as the rest do&mdash;bridge."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Were you engaged to her, Waring?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," he slowly acknowledged, as if each word hurt him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And did she believe you guilty?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think," said the other, with an inscrutable expression, "she could
+not have done so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But she let you go under suspicion?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Without a word of good faith, of comfort?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did she know of your embarrassments?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Too well."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You tell me she was poor and&mdash;possibly she had embarrassments of her
+own?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Possibly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode came over to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was she at the Christmas ball that night?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man rose as well, his eyes on his questioner's; the color had
+all left his face&mdash;he appeared fascinated&mdash;then he shook himself and
+unexpectedly laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he said; "oh no."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The older man bowed his head and replied, quite inaptly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I understand!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took a turn across the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The few steps brought him in front of the mantel and the photograph of
+the modern lady in her furs and close hat.  He stood and met the fire
+of her mocking eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you <I>believe</I> him, Jimmy!" he could hear her say in her delicious
+voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," he mentally told her, "I believe him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You think that to save a woman's name and honor he has become an
+outcast on the face of the earth ... Jimmy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He still gently replied to her:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Men who love, you know, have but one code&mdash;the woman and honor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Still mocking, but gentle as would have been the touch of the roses in
+the bowl near the photograph, her voice told him,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then he's worth saving, Jimmy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Worth saving ... he agreed, and turned to his guest.  In doing so he
+saw that Ruggles had come into the drawing-room to remove the
+coffee-tray.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Beg pardon, sir, but you mentioned there would be a letter to send
+shortly?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By Jove! so I did!" exclaimed Bulstrode.  "I beg your pardon; will you
+excuse me while I write a line at the desk?"  The line was an order to
+the florist.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For some reason the eyes of the Englishman had not quitted the butler's
+face, and Ruggles, with cold insolence, had stared at him in turn.
+Waring, albeit in another man's clothes, fed and seated before a
+friendly hearth, and once again within the pale of his own class, had
+regained something of his natural air and feeling of superiority.  He
+resented the servant's insolence, and his face was angrily flushed as
+Bulstrode gave his orders, and the man left the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must go away," he said, rather brusquely.  "I can never thank you
+for what you have done.  I feel as if I had been in a dream."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sit down."  His companion ignored his words.  "Sit down."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's late."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For what, my friend?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must find some place to sleep."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have found it," gently smiled Bulstrode.  "Your room is prepared
+for you here."  Then he interrupted: "No thanks&mdash;no thanks.  If what
+you tell me is all I think it is, I'm proud to share my roof with you,
+Waring."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't think well of me&mdash;don't!" blurted out the other.  "You don't
+know what a ruined vagabond I am.  When you send me out to-morrow I
+shall begin again; but let me tell you that although I've herded with
+tramps and thieves, been in the hospital and lock-up, and worked in the
+hell of a furnace in a ship's hold, nothing hurt me any more, not after
+I left England&mdash;not after those days when I waited in Liverpool for a
+word&mdash;for a sign&mdash;not after that, all you see the marks of now&mdash;nothing
+hurts now but the memory.  I'm immune."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will feel differently&mdash;you will humanize."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never!" exclaimed the tramp.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To-night," said Bulstrode, simply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Waring looked at him curiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a wonderful man!" he half murmured.  "I was led to you by fate:
+you have forced me to lay my soul bare to you&mdash;and now..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let's look things in the face together," suggested the gentleman,
+practically.  "I have a ranch out West.  A good piece of property.
+It's in the hands of a clever Englishman and promises well.  How would
+you like to go out there and start anew?  He'll give you a welcome, and
+he's a first-rate business man.  Will you go?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Waring had with his old habit thrust his hands in his pockets.  He
+stood well on his feet.  Bulstrode remarked it.  He looked meditatively
+down between the soles of his shoes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean to say you give me a chance&mdash;to&mdash;to&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Begin anew, Waring."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I drink a great deal," said the young man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will swear off."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've gambled away all the money I ever had."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will be taking care of mine, and it will be a point of honor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm under a cloud&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not in my eyes," said Bulstrode, stoutly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"&mdash;which I can never clear."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode made a dismissing gesture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should want the chap out there to know the truth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The truth," caught his hearer, and the other as quickly interrupted:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To know under what circumstances I left my people."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, that is unnecessary," said Bulstrode, firmly.  "Nobody has any
+right to your past.  I don't know his.  That's the beauty of the
+plains&mdash;the freshness of them.  It's a new start&mdash;a clean page."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Still the guest hesitated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't believe it's worth while.  You see, I've batted about now so
+much alone, with nobody near me but the lowest sort; I've given in so
+long, with no care to do better, that I haven't any confidence in
+myself.  I don't want you to see me fail, sir,&mdash;I don't want to go back
+on you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode had heard very understandingly part of the man's word, part
+of his excuse for his weakness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's it," he said, musingly.  "Butting about alone.  It's
+that&mdash;loneliness&mdash;that's responsible for so many things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Looking up brightly as his friend whose derelict dangerous vessel, so
+near to port and repair, was heading for the wide seas again, Bulstrode
+wondered: "If such a thing could be that some friend, not too
+uncongenial, could be found to go with you and stand as it were by
+you&mdash;some friend who knew&mdash;who comprehended&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Waring laughed.  "I haven't such a one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said the older gentleman, "you have, and he will stand by you.
+I'll go West with you myself to-morrow&mdash;on Christmas day.  I need a
+change.  I want to get away for a little time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Waring drew back a step, for Bulstrode had risen.  Cold Anglo-Saxon as
+he was, the unprecedented miracle this gentleman presented made him
+seem almost lunatic.  He stared blankly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's simpler than it looks."  Bulstrode attempted conventionally to
+shear it of a little of its eccentricity.  "There's every reason why I
+should look after my property out there.  I've never seen it at all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm not worth such a goodness," Waring faltered, earnestly,&mdash;"not
+worth it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will be."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't hope it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I believe it," smiled the gentleman; "and at all events I'll stand by
+you till you are&mdash;if you'll say the word."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Waring, whose lips were trembling, repeated vaguely, "The <I>word</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," replied Bulstrode, "you might say those&mdash;they're as good
+any&mdash;will you stand by <I>me</I>&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Making the first hearty spontaneous gesture he had shown, the young man
+seized the other's outstretched hand.  "Yes," he breathed; "by Heaven!
+I will!"
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+It was past midnight when Bulstrode, pushing open the curtains of his
+bedroom, looked out on the frozen world of Washington Square, where of
+tree and arch not an outline was visible under the disguising snow; and
+above, in the sky swept clear of clouds by the strongest of winds, rode
+the round full disk of the Christmas moon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The adoption of a vagrant, the quixotic decision he had taken to leave
+New York on Christmas day, the plain facts of the outrageous folly his
+impulsiveness led him to contemplate, had relegated his more worldly
+plans to the background.  Laying aside his waistcoat, he took out the
+letter in whose contents he had been absorbed when Cecil Waring crossed
+the threshold of his drawing-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well ... as he re-read at leisure her delightful plan for Christmas
+day, he sighed that he could not do for them both better than to go two
+thousand miles away!  "Waring thinks himself a vagrant&mdash;and so, poor
+chap, he has been; but there are vagrants of another kind."  Jimmy
+reflected he felt himself to be one of these others, and was led to
+speculate if there were many outcasts like himself, and what
+ultimately, if their courage was sufficient to keep them banished to
+the end, would be the reward?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Since," he reflected, "there's only one thing I desire&mdash;and it's the
+one thing forbidden&mdash;I fail sometimes to quite puzzle it out!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had finished his preparations for the night and was about to turn
+out the light, when, with his hand on the electric button, he paused,
+for he distinctly heard from downstairs what sounded like a call&mdash;a cry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Taking his revolver from the top drawer, he went into the hall, to feel
+a draft of icy air blow up the staircase, to see over the balusters the
+open door of the dining-room and light within it, and to hear more
+clearly the sounds that had come to him through closed doors declare
+themselves to be scuffling&mdash;struggling&mdash;the half-cry of a muffled
+voice&mdash;a fall, then Bulstrode started.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm coming," he declared, and ran down the stairs like a boy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the dining-room floor, close to the window wide open to the icy
+night, lay a man's form, and over him bent another man cruelly, with
+all the animus of a bird of prey.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The under man was Ruggles, Bulstrode's butler, his eyes starting from
+their sockets, his mouth open, his color livid; he couldn't have called
+out, for the other man had seized his necktie, twisted it tight as a
+tourniquet around the man's gullet, and so kneeling with one knee on
+his chest, Waring held the big man under.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say," panted the young man, "can you lend a hand, sir?  I've got
+him, but I'm not strong enough to keep him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode thought his servant's eyes rolled appealingly at him.  He
+cocked his revolver, holding it quietly, and asked coolly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the matter with him that he needs to be kept?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would you sit on his chest, Mr. Bulstrode?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said that gentleman.  "I'll cover him so.  What's the truth?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I heard a queer noise," panted the Englishman, "and came out to see
+what it was, and this fellow was just getting through the window.
+There was another chap outside, but he got away.  I caught this one
+from the back, otherwise I could never have thrown him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're throttling him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He deserves it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let him up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Bulstrode...!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said that gentleman, decidedly, "let him up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Ruggles, released from the hand whose knuckles had ground
+themselves into his windpipe, could not at once rise.  The breath was
+out of him, for he had been heavily struck in the stomach by a blow
+from the fist of a man whose training in sport had delightfully
+returned at need.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ruggles began to breathe like a porpoise, to grunt and pant and roll
+over.  He staggered to his feet, and with a string of imprecations
+raised his fist at Waring, but as Bulstrode's revolver was entirely
+ready to answer at command, he did not venture to leave the spot where
+he stood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," said his master, "when you get your tongue your story will be
+just the same as Mr. Waring's.  You found him getting away with the
+silver.  The probabilities are all with you, Ruggles.  The police will
+be here in just about five minutes.  Ten to one the guilty man is known
+to the officers.  Now there's an overcoat and hat on the hat-rack in
+the hall.  I give both of you time to get away.  There's the front door
+and the window&mdash;which, by the way, you would better shut, Waring, as
+it's a cold morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Neither man moved.  Without removing his eyes from the butler or
+uncovering him, Bulstrode, by means of the messenger-call to the right
+of the window, summoned the police.  The metallic click of the button
+sounded loud in the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ruggles shook his great hand high in air.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd&mdash;I'd&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never mind <I>that</I>," interrupted the householder.  "The man who's
+<I>going</I> had better take his chance.  There's one minute lost."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During the next half-second the modern philanthropist breathed in
+suspense.  It was so on the cards that he might be obliged to apologize
+to his antipathetic butler and find himself sentimentally sold by
+Waring!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Ruggles it was who with a parting oath stepped to the
+door&mdash;accelerating his pace as the daze began to pass a little from his
+brain, and snatched the hat and coat, unlocked the front door, opened
+it, looked quickly up and down the white streets, and then without a
+word cut down the steps and across Washington Square, slowly at first,
+and then on a run.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode turned to his visitor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come," he said, "let's go up to bed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But," stammered the young man, "you're never going to let him go like
+that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I am," confessed the unpractical gentleman.  "I couldn't send a
+man to jail on Christmas day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But the police&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall tell them out of my window that it was a false alarm."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode shut and locked his door, and turning to Waring, laughed
+delightedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must tell you that when he let you in last night Ruggles did not
+think you were a gentleman.  He must have found out this morning that
+you were very much of a man.  It's astonishing where you got your
+strength, though.  He'd make two of you, and you're not fit in any way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked ghastly enough as Bulstrode spoke, and the gentleman put his
+arm under the Englishman's.  "I'll ring for the servants and have some
+coffee made and fetched to your room.  Lean on me."  He helped the
+vagabond upstairs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The New Yorker, whose sentimental follies were certainly a menace to
+public safety and a premium to begging and vagabondage and crime, slept
+well and late, and was awakened finally by the keen, bright ringing of
+the telephone at his side.  As he took up the receiver his whole face
+illumined.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Merry Christmas, Jimmy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What <I>wonderful</I> roses!  Thanks a thousand times!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But of course I knew!  No other man in New York is sentimental enough
+to have a woman awakened at eight o'clock by a bunch of flowers!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Forgive you!"  (It was clear that she did.)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jimmy, what a day for Tuxedo, and what a shame I can't go!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You weren't going!  You mean to say that you had refused?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't understand&mdash;it's the connection&mdash;West?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, ranches look after themselves.  They always do.  They go right
+on.  You don't <I>mean</I> it, on Christmas day!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shouldn't care for your reasons.  They're sure to be
+ridiculous&mdash;unpractical&mdash;unnecessary&mdash;don't tell them to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a pause, and then the voice, which had undergone a slight
+change said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jack's ill again ... that's why I couldn't go to Tuxedo.  I shall pass
+the day here in town.  I called up to tell you this&mdash;and to
+suggest&mdash;but since you're going West..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Falconer's illnesses!  How well Bulstrode knew them, and how well he
+could see her alone in the familiar little drawing-room by a hearth not
+built for a Christmas tree!  He had promised Waring, "I'll stand by
+you."  It was a kind of vow&mdash;a real vow, and the poor tramp had lived
+up to his.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jimmy."  There was a note he had never heard before; if a tone can be
+a tear, it was one.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He interrupted her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How dear of you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I haven't any Christmas tree!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'll fetch one?  How <I>dear</I> of you!  We'll trim it&mdash;with your
+roses&mdash;make it bloom.  Come early and help me dress the tree."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Two hours later he opened the door into his breakfast-room with the
+guiltiness of a truant boy.  He wore culprit shame written all over his
+face, and the young man who stood waiting for him in the window might
+almost have read his friend's dejection in his embarrassed face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Waring came eagerly forward, answered the season's greetings, and
+said quickly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you still in the same mind about the West, Mr. Bulstrode?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+(Poor Bulstrode!)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean to say, sir, if you still feel like giving me this chance, I've
+a favor to ask.  Would you let me go <I>alone</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode gasped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Since last night a lot has happened to me, not only since you've
+befriended me, but since I tussled with that fellow here.  I'd like a
+chance to see what I can do alone.  If you, as you so generously plan,
+go with me, I shall feel watched&mdash;protected.  It will weaken me more
+than anything else.  I suppose I shall go all to pieces, but I'd like
+to try my strength.  If I could suddenly master that chap with my fists
+after months of dissipation&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode finished for him:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can master the rest."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't give me any extra money," pleaded the tramp, as if he foresaw
+his friend's impulse.  "Pay my ticket out West, if you will, and write
+to the man who is there, and I'll start in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode beamed on him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're a man," he assured him&mdash;"a man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I may become one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're a fine fellow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'll trust me, then?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Implicitly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then let me start to-day.  I'm reckless&mdash;let me get away.  I may get
+off at the first station and pawn my clothes and drink and drink to a
+lower hell than before&mdash;but let me try alone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You shall go alone&mdash;and go to-day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Prosper came in with the coffee; he, too, was beaming, and the servants
+below-stairs were all agog.  Waring was a hero.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Prosper," said his master, in French, "will you, after you have served
+breakfast, go out to the market quarters and see if you can discover
+for me a medium-sized, very well-proportioned little Christmas tree?
+Fetch it home with you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Waring smiled faintly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode smiled too, and more comprehendingly, and Prosper smiled and
+said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mais certainement, monsieur."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap02"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE SECOND ADVENTURE
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+II
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IN WHICH HE TRIES TO BUY A PORTRAIT
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode was extremely fond of travel, and every now and then treated
+himself to a season in London or Paris, and in the May following his
+adventure with Waring he saw, from his apartments in the Hôtel Ritz,
+from Boulevard, Bois, and the Champs Elysées, as much of the
+maddeningly delicious Parisian springtime "as was good for him at his
+age," so he said!  It gave the feeling that he was a mere boy, and with
+buoyant sensations astir in him, life had begun over again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Any morning between eleven and twelve Bulstrode might have been seen in
+the Bois de Boulogne briskly walking along the Avenue des Acacias, his
+well-filled chest thrown out, his step light and assured; cane in hand,
+a boutonnière tinging the lapel of his coat; immaculate and fresh as a
+rose, he exhaled good-humor, kindliness, and well-being.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From their traps and motors charming women bowed and smiled, the <I>fine
+fleur</I> and the <I>beau monde</I> greeted him cordially.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Regardez moi ce bon Bulstrode qui se promene," if it were a Frenchman,
+or, "There's dear old Jimmy Bulstrode!" if he were recognized by a
+compatriot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode was rather slight of build, yet with an evident strength of
+body that indicated a familiarity with exercise, a healthful habit of
+sport and activity.  His eyes, clear-sighted and strong, looked through
+the medium of no glass happily and naïvely on the world.  Many years
+before his hair had begun to turn gray, and had not nearly finished the
+process; it grew thickly, and was quite dark about his ears and on his
+brow.  Having gained experience and kept his youth, he was as rare and
+delightful as fine wine&mdash;as inspiring as spring.  It was his heart
+(Mrs. Falconer said) that made him so, his good, gentle, generous
+heart!&mdash;and she should know.  His fastidiousness in point of dress, and
+his good taste kept him close to elegance of attire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You turn yourself out, Jimmy, on every occasion," she had said, "as if
+you were on the point of meeting the woman you loved."  And Bulstrode
+had replied that such consistent hopefulness should certainly be
+ultimately rewarded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He gave the impression of a man who in his youth starts out to take a
+long and pleasant journey and finds the route easy, the taverns
+agreeable, and the scenes all the guide-book promised.  Midway&mdash;(he had
+turned the page of forty)&mdash;midway, pausing to look back, Bulstrode saw
+the experiences of his travels in their sunny valleys, full of goodly
+memories, and the future, to his sweet hopefulness, promised to be a
+pleasant journey to the end.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During the time that he spent in Paris every pet charity in the
+American colony took advantage of the philanthropic Mr. Bulstrode's
+passing through the city, and came to him to be set upon its feet, and
+every pretty woman with an interest, hobby, or scheme came as well to
+this generous millionaire, told him about her fad and went away with a
+donation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One ravishing May morning Bulstrode, taking his usual constitutional in
+the Bois, paused at the end of the Avenue des Acacias to find it
+deserted and attractively quiet; he sat down on a little bench the more
+reposefully to enjoy the day and time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There are, fortunately, certain things which, unlike money, can be
+shared only with certain people; and Bulstrode felt that the pleasure
+of this spring day, the charm of the opposite wood-glades into which he
+meditatively looked, the tranquil as well as the buoyant joy of life,
+were among those personal things so delightful when shared&mdash;and which,
+if too long enjoyed alone, bring (let it be scarcely whispered on this
+bewildering May morning) something like sadness!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before his happier mood changed his attention was attracted by a woman
+who came rapidly toward the avenue from a little alley at the side.  He
+looked up quickly at the feminine creature who so aptly appeared upon
+his musings.  She was young; her form in its simple dress assured him
+this.  He could not see her face, for it was covered by her hands.
+Abruptly taking the opposite direction, she went over to a farther
+seat, where she sat down, and when the young girl put her arms on the
+back of the seat, her head upon her arms, and in the remoteness this
+part of the avenue offered, cried without restraint, the kind-hearted
+Bulstrode felt that it was too cruel to be true.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But soft-hearted though he was, the gentleman was a worldling as well,
+and that the outburst was a ruse more than suggested itself to him as
+he went over to the lovely Niobe whose abundant fair hair sunned from
+under her simple straw hat and from beneath whose frayed skirt showed a
+worn little shoe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He spoke in French.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pardon, madame, but you seem in great distress."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The poor thing started violently, and as soon as she displayed her
+pretty tearful face the American recognized in her a compatriot.  She
+waved him emphatically away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, please don't notice me&mdash;don't speak to me&mdash;I didn't see that
+anybody was there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am an American, too: can't I do anything for you&mdash;won't you let me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he saw at once that she wanted to be left alone.  She averted her
+head determinedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no, please don't notice me.  Please go away!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had nothing to do but to obey her, and as he reluctantly did so a
+smart pony-cart driven by a lady alone came briskly along and drew up,
+for the occupant had recognized him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Get in!" she rather commanded.  "My dear Jimmy, how <I>nice</I> to find you
+here, and how nice to drive you at least as far as the entrance!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the rebuffed philanthropist accepted he cast a ruthful glance at the
+solitary figure on the bench.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you see that poor girl over there?  She's an American, and in real
+trouble."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My <I>dear</I> Jimmy!"  His companion's tone left him in no doubt as to her
+scepticism.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I know, I know," he interrupted, "but she's not a fraud.  She's
+the real thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were already gayly whirling away from the sad little figure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you make her cry?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I?  Certainly not."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then let the man who did wipe her tears away!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Bulstrode had seen the face of the girl, and he was haunted by it
+all day until the Bois and its bright atmosphere became only the
+setting for an unhappy woman, young and lovely, whom it had been
+impossible for him to help.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Somebody had said that Bulstrode should have his portrait done with his
+hands in his pockets, and Mrs. Falconer had replied, "Or rather with
+<I>other</I> people's hands in his pockets!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next afternoon he found himself part of a group of people who, out
+of charity and curiosity, patronized the Western Artists' Exhibition in
+the Rue Monsieur.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Having made a ridiculously generous donation to the support of this
+league at the request of a certain lovely lady, Bulstrode followed his
+generosity by a personal effort, and with not much opposition on his
+part permitted himself to be taken to the exhibition.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was not, in the ultra sense of the word, a <I>connaisseur</I>, but he
+thought he knew a horror when he saw it!  So he said, and on this
+afternoon his eyes ached and his offended taste cried out before he had
+patiently travelled half-way down the line of canvases.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear lady," he confided <I>sotto voce</I> to his friend, "I feel more
+inclined to establish a fund for sending all these young women back to
+the <I>prairies</I>, if that's where they come from, than to aid in this
+slaughter of public time and taste.  <I>Why</I> don't they stay at home&mdash;and
+marry?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's a vulgar and limited point of view to take," his friend
+reproached him.  "Don't you acknowledge that a woman has many careers
+instead of one?  <I>You</I> seem to be thoroughly enjoying your liberty!
+What if I should ask you why <I>you</I> don't stay at home, and marry?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode looked at his guide comprehensively and smiled gently.  His
+response was irrelevant.  "Look at this picture!  It's too dreadful for
+words."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hush, you're not a judge.  Here and there there is evidence of great
+talent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They had drawn up before a portrait, and poor Bulstrode caught his
+breath with a groan:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's too awful!  It's crime to encourage it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Falconer tried to lead him on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, this <I>is</I> an unfortunate place to stop," she confessed.  "That
+portrait represents more tragedy than you can see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It couldn't," murmured Bulstrode.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The poor girl who did it has struggled on here for two years, living
+sometimes on a franc a day.  Just fancy!  She has been trying to get
+orders so that she can stay on and study.  Poor thing!  The people who
+are interested say that she's been near to desperation.  She is awfully
+proud, and won't take any assistance but orders.  You can imagine
+<I>they're</I> not besieging her!  She has come to her last cent, I believe,
+and has to go home to Idaho."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let her go, my dear friend."  Bulstrode was earnest.  "It's the best
+thing she could possibly do!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His companion put her hand on his arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Please be quiet," she implored.  "There she is, standing over by the
+door.  That rather pretty girl with the disorderly blonde hair."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode looked up&mdash;saw her&mdash;looked again, and exclaimed:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is <I>that</I> the girl?  Do you know her?  Present me, will you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nonsense."  She detained him.  "How you go from hot to cold!  <I>Why</I>
+should you want to meet her, pray?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," he evaded, "it's a curious study.  I want to talk to her about
+art, and if you don't present me I shall speak to her without an
+introduction."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not many moments later Bulstrode was cornered in a dingy little room,
+where tea that tasted like the infusion of a haystack was being served.
+He had skilfully disassociated Miss Laura Desprey from her Bohemian
+companions and placed her on a little divan, before which, with a
+teacup in his hand, he stood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She wore the same dress, the same hat&mdash;and he did not doubt the same
+shoes which characterized her miserable toilet when he had surprised
+her childlike display of grief on a bench in the Bois.  He had done
+quite right in speaking to her, and he thanked his stars that she did
+not in the least remember him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He thought with kind humor: "No wonder she cries if she paints like
+that!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But it was not in a spirit of criticism that he bent his friendly eyes
+on the Bohemian.  He had the pleasure of seeing her plainly this time,
+for the window back of her admitted a generous square of light against
+which her blonde head framed itself, and her untidy hair was like a
+dusty mesh of gold.  She regarded the amiable gentleman out of eyes
+child-like and purely blue.  Under her round chin the edges of a black
+bow tied loosely stood out like the wings of a butterfly.  Her dress
+was careless and poor, but she was grace in it and youth&mdash;"and what,"
+thought Bulstrode, "has one a right to expect more of any woman?"  He
+remembered her boots and shuddered.  He remembered the one franc a day
+and began his campaign.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want so much to meet the painter of that portrait over there," he
+began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her face lightened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, did you like it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think it's wonderful, perfectly wonderful!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A slow red crept up the thin contour of her cheek.  She leaned forward!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you really mean that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He said most seriously:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I can frankly say I haven't seen a portrait in a long time which
+impressed me so much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His praise was not in Latin Quarter vernacular, and coming from a
+Philistine, had only a certain value to the artist.  But to a lonely
+stranded girl the words were balm.  Bulstrode, in his immaculate dress,
+his conventional manner, was as foreign a person to the Bohemian
+student as if he had been an inhabitant of another planet.  Her speech
+was brusque and quick, with a generous burr in her "rs" when she
+replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've studied at Julian's two years now.  This was my Salon picture,
+but it didn't get in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If one can judge by those that <I>did</I>"&mdash;Bulstrode's tact was
+delightful&mdash;"you should feel honorably refused.  I suppose you are at
+work on another portrait?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The face which his interest had brightened clouded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I'm going home&mdash;to Idaho&mdash;I'm not painting any more."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All the tragedy to a whole-souled Latin Quarter art student that this
+implied was not revealed to Bulstrode, but, as it was, his sensitive
+kindness felt so much already that it ached.  He hastened toward his
+goal with eagerness:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm so awfully sorry!  Because, do you know, I was going to ask you if
+you couldn't possibly paint my portrait?"  It came from him on the spur
+of the moment.  His frank eyes met hers and might have quailed at his
+hypocrisy, but the expression of joy on her face, eclipsing everything
+else, dazzled him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She cried out impulsively:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh&mdash;goodness!" so loud that one or two tea-drinkers turned about.
+After a second, having gained control and half as though she expected
+some motive she did not understand:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you never <I>heard</I> of me before to-day!  I don't believe you
+<I>really</I> liked that portrait over there so very much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a candor that impressed her he assured her: "I give you my word of
+honor I've never felt quite so about any portrait before."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here Miss Desprey had a cup of tea handed her by a vague-eyed girl who
+stumbled over Bulstrode in her ministrations, much to her confusion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laura Desprey drank her tea with avidity, put the cup down on the table
+near, and leaning over to her patron, exclaimed:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I just <I>can't</I> believe I've got an order!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode affirmed smiling: "You have, and if you could arrange to stay
+over for it&mdash;if it would," he delicately put, "be worth your while&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She said quietly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, it would be worth my while."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A <I>distrait</I> look passed over her face for a second, and Bulstrode saw
+he was forgotten in, as he supposed, a painter's vision of an order and
+its contingent technicalities.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can begin at once."  He lost no time.  "I'm quite free."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But&mdash;I have no studio."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There must be studios to rent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes.  She knew of one; she could secure it for a month.  It would take
+that time&mdash;she was a slow worker.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But we haven't discussed the price."  Before so much poverty and
+struggle&mdash;not that it was new to him, but clothed like this in beauty
+it was rare and appealed to him&mdash;he was embarrassed by his riches.
+"Now the price.  I want," he meditated, "a full-length portrait, with a
+great deal of background, just as handsome and expensive looking as you
+can paint it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He exquisitely sacrificed himself and winced at his own words, and saw
+her color with amusement and a little scorn, but he went on bravely:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now for a man like me, Miss Desprey&mdash;I am sure you will know what I
+mean&mdash;a man who has never been painted before&mdash;this picture will have
+to cost me a lot of money.  You see otherwise my friends would not
+appreciate it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the vulgarian he was making himself out to be his friends would not
+have recognized the unpretentious Bulstrode.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Get the place, Miss Desprey, and let me come as soon as you can.  All
+this change of plans will give you extra expenses&mdash;I understand about
+that!  Every time I change my rooms it costs me a fortune.  Now if you
+will let me send you over a check for half payment on the picture, for,
+let us say"&mdash;he made it as large as he dared and a quarter of what he
+wanted.  They were alone in the tea-room, the motley gathering had
+weeded itself out.  Miss Desprey turned pale.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," she gasped; "I couldn't take anything like half so much for the
+whole thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode said coldly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm afraid I must insist, Miss Desprey; I couldn't order less than a
+fifteen-hundred dollar portrait.  It's the sum I have planned to pay
+when I'm painted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But a celebrated painter would paint it for that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode smiled fatuously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can't a man pay for his fads?  I want to be painted by the person who
+did that portrait over there, Miss Desprey."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+In a tiny studio&mdash;the dingy chrysalis of a Bohemian art
+student&mdash;Bulstrode posed for his portrait.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Each morning saw him set forth from the Ritz alert and debonaire in his
+fastidious toilet&mdash;-saw him cross the Place Vendôme, the bridge, and
+lose his worldly figure in the lax nonchalant crowd of the Quarter
+Latin.  At the end of an alley as narrow and picturesque as a lane in a
+colored print he knocked at a green door, and was admitted to the
+studio by his protégée.  In another second he had assumed his
+prescribed position according to the pose, and Miss Desprey before her
+easel began the <I>séance</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On these May days the glass roof admitted delightful gradations of
+glory to the commonplace <I>atelier</I>.  A few cheap casts, a few yards of
+mustard-toned burlaps, some Botticelli and Manet photographs, a mangy
+divan, and a couple of chairs were the furnishings.  It had been
+impossible for Bulstrode to pass indifferently the venders of flowers
+in the festive, brilliant streets, and great bunches of <I>giroflé</I>,
+hyacinths, and narcissi overflowed the earthenware pitchers and vases
+with which the studio was plentifully supplied.  The soft, sharp
+fragrance rose above the shut-in odor of the <I>atelier</I>, and, while Miss
+Desprey worked, her patron looked at her across waves of spring perfume.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her painting-dress, a garment of <I>beige</I> linen, half belted in at the
+waist and entirely covering her, made her to Bulstrode, from the crown
+of her fair hair to the tip of her old tan shoes, seem all of one
+color.  He had taken tremendous interest in his pose, in the progress
+of the work.  He would have looked at the portrait every few moments,
+but Miss Desprey refused him even a glimpse.  He was to wait until all
+manner of strange things took place on the canvas, till "schemes and
+composition" were determined, "proper values" arrived at, and he
+listened to her glib school terms with respect and a sanguine hope that
+with the aid of such potent technicalities and his interest she might
+be able to achieve this time something short of atrocious.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He posed faithfully for Miss Desprey, and smiled at her with friendly
+eyes whenever he caught anything more personal than the squinting
+glance with which she professionally regarded him, putting him far away
+or fetching him near, according to her art's requirements.  They talked
+in his rest, and he took pleasure in telling her how he enjoyed his
+morning walks from his hôtel, how the outdoor life delighted him, and
+how all the suburban gardens seemed to have been brought to Paris to
+glow and blossom in the venders' carts or in little baskets on the
+backs of women and boys, and how thoroughly well worth living he
+thought life in Paris was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is," he finished, "nothing in the world which compares to the
+Paris spring-time, I believe, but I have never been West.  What is
+spring like in Idaho?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Desprey laughed, touched her ruffled hair with painty fingers,
+blushed, and mused.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, it's all right, I guess.  There's a trolley-line in Centreville,
+an electric plant and the oil works&mdash;no trees, no flowers, and the
+people all look alike.  So you see"&mdash;she had a dazzling way of shaking
+her head, when her fine white teeth, her sunny dishevelled hair, her
+bright cheeks and eyes seemed all to flash and chime together&mdash;"so you
+see, spring in Centreville and <I>Paris</I> isn't the same thing at all!
+Things are beautiful everywhere," she assured him slowly as she
+painted, "if you're happy&mdash;and I was very unhappy in Centreville, so I
+thought I'd come away and try to have a career."  She poured out a long
+stream of <I>garance</I> from the tube on to her palette.  Bulstrode
+watched, fascinated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And here in Paris, are you&mdash;have you been happy here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, dear no!" she laughed; "perfectly miserable.  And it used to seem
+as though it was cruel of the city to be so gay and happy when I
+couldn't join in&mdash;"  Bulstrode, remembering the one franc a day and the
+very questionable inspiration her poor art could impart, understood;
+his face was full of feeling&mdash;"until," she went slowly on, "lately."
+She stepped behind the canvas and was lost to sight.  "I've been
+awfully happy in Paris for the first time.  I do like beautiful
+things&mdash;but I like beautiful people better&mdash;and you're
+beautiful&mdash;beautiful."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She finished with a blush and a smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode grew to think nothing at all about his portrait further than
+fervently to hope it would not shock him beyond power to disguise.  But
+Miss Desprey was frightfully in earnest, and worked until her eyes
+glowed with excitement and her cheeks burned.  Strong and vigorous and
+(Bulstrode over and over again said) "young, so young!" she never
+evinced any signs of fatigue, but stood when his limbs trembled under
+him and looked up radiant when he was ready to cry "<I>Grâce!</I>"  In her
+enthusiasm she would have given him two sittings a day, but this his
+worldly relations would not permit.  As she painted, painted, her head
+on one side sometimes, sometimes thrown back, her eyes half closed, he
+studied her with pleasure and delight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a pity she paints so dreadfully ill!  What a pity she paints at
+all!  What difference, after all, does it make <I>what</I> she does?  She's
+so pretty and feminine!"  She was a clinging, sweet creature, and the
+walk and the flower debauch he permitted himself, the long quiet hours
+of companionship with this lovely girl in the <I>atelier</I>, illumined,
+accentuated, and intensified Bulstrode's already fatuous appreciation
+of the spring in Paris.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During Bulstrode's artistic mornings there distilled itself into the
+studio a magic to which he was not insensitive.  Whether or not it came
+with the flowers or with the delicate filtering of the sun through the
+studio light, who can say, but as he stood in his assumed position of
+<I>nonchalance</I> he was more and more charmed by his painter.  The spell
+he naturally felt should, and for long indeed did, emanate from the
+slender figure, lost at times behind her canvas, and at times
+completely in his view.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For years Bulstrode had been the victim of hope, or rather in this case
+of intent, <I>to love again</I>&mdash;to love anew!  Neither of these statements
+is the correct way of putting it.  He tried with good faith to prove
+himself to be what was so generally claimed for him by his
+friends&mdash;susceptible; alas, he knew better!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he meditatively studied the blonde young girl he spun for himself to
+its end the idea of picking her up, carrying her off, marrying her,
+shutting Idaho away definitely, and opening to her all that his wealth
+and position could of life and the world.  He grew tender at the
+thought of her poor struggle, her insufficient art, her ambition.  It
+fascinated him to think of playing the good fairy, of touching her
+gray, hard life to color and beauty, and as the beauty and the holy
+intimacy of home occurred to him, and marriage, his thoughts wandered
+as pilgrims whose feet stray back in the worn ways and find their own
+old footprints there, ... and after a few moments Miss Desprey was like
+to be farther away from his meditations than Centreville is from Paris,
+and the personality of the dream-woman was another.  Once Miss
+Desprey's voice startled him out of such a reverie by bidding him,
+"<I>Please</I> take the pose, Mr. Bulstrode!"  As he laughed and apologized
+he caught her eyes fixed on him with, as he thought, a curious
+expression of affection and sympathy&mdash;indeed, tears sprang to them.
+She reddened and went furiously back to work.  She was more personal
+that day than she had yet been.  She seemed, after having surprised his
+absent-mindedness, to feel that she had a right to him&mdash;quite ordered
+him about, and was almost petulant in her exactions of his positions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her work evidently advanced to her satisfaction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she stood elated before her easel, her hair in sunny disorder, her
+eyes like stars, Bulstrode was conscious there was a change in her&mdash;she
+was excited and tremulous.  In her frayed dress, sagging at the edges,
+her paint-smeared apron, her slender thumb through the hole in the
+palette, she came over to him at the close of the sitting, started to
+speak, faltered, and said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't know what it means to me&mdash;all you have done.  And I can't
+ever tell you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, don't," he pleaded, "pray don't speak of it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Desprey, half radiant and half troubled, turned away as if she
+were afraid of his eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I won't try to tell you.  I couldn't, I don't dare," she
+whispered, and impulsively caught his hand and kissed it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he had left the studio finally it was with a bewildering sense of
+having kissed her hand&mdash;no, both of her hands! but one held her palette
+and he <I>couldn't</I> have kissed that one without having got paint on his
+nose&mdash;perhaps he had!  He was not at peace.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+That same night a telegram brought him news to the effect that Miss
+Desprey was ill and would not expect him to pose the following day; and
+relieved that it was not required of him to resume immediately the
+over-charged relations, he went back to his old habit, rudely broken
+into by his artistic escapade, and walked far into the Bois.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He thought with alarming persistency of Miss Desprey.  He was
+chivalrous with women, old-fashioned and clean-minded and
+straight-lived.  In the greatest, in the only passion of his life, he
+had been a Chevalier Bayard, and he could look back upon no incidents
+in which he had played the part which men of the world pride themselves
+on playing well.  Women were mysterious and wonderful to him.  Because
+of one he approached them all with a feeling not far from worship; and
+he had no intention of doing a dishonorable thing.  Puzzled,
+self-accusing&mdash;although he did not quite know of what he was guilty&mdash;he
+sat down as he had done several weeks before on the bench in the Avenue
+des Acacias.  With extraordinary promptness, as if arranged by a
+scene-setter, a girl's figure came quickly out of a side alley.  She
+was young&mdash;her figure betrayed it.  She went quickly over to a seat and
+sat down.  She was weeping and covered her face with her hands.
+Bulstrode, this time without hesitation, went directly over to her:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear Miss Desprey&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She sprang up and displayed a face disfigured with weeping.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>You</I>!" she exclaimed with something like terror.  "Oh, Mr. Bulstrode!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her words shuddered in sobs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't stay here!  Why did you come?  Please go&mdash;please."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode sat down beside her and took her hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm not going away&mdash;not until I know what your trouble is.  You were
+in distress when I first saw you here and you wouldn't let me help you
+then.  Now you can't refuse me.  What is it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He found she was clinging to his hands as she found voice enough to say:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I can't tell you.  I couldn't ever tell you.  It's not the same
+trouble, it's a new one and worse.  I guess it's the worst thing in the
+world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode was pitiless:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One that has come lately to you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was weeping more quietly now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Please leave me: please go, Mr. Bulstrode."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A trouble with which I have had anything to do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She waited a long time, then faintly breathed:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The hand he firmly held was gloveless and cold&mdash;before he could say
+anything further she drew it away from him and cried:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I ought never to have let you guess!  You were so good and kind,
+you meant to help me so, but it's been the worst help of all, only you
+couldn't know that," she pleaded for him.  "Please forgive me if I seem
+ungrateful, but if I had known that I was going to suffer like this I
+would have wished never to see you in the world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode was trying to speak, but she wouldn't let him:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never can see you again.  Never!  You mustn't come any more."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But here she half caught her breath and sobbed with what seemed naïve
+and adorable daring:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unless you can help me through, Mr. Bulstrode&mdash;it is your fault, after
+all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If this were a virtual throwing of herself into his arms, they were all
+but open to her and the generous heart was all but ready "to see her
+through."  Bulstrode was about to do, and say, the one rash and
+irrevocable perfect thing when at this minute fate again at the ring of
+the curtain opportuned.  The tap, tapping, of a pony's feet was heard
+and a gay little cart came brightly along.  Bulstrode saw it.  He
+sprang to his feet.  It was close upon them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will let me come to-morrow?" he asked eagerly,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes," she whispered; "yes, I shall count on you.  I beg you will
+come."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+<P>
+"Jimmy," said the lady severely as he accepted her invitation to get
+into the cart, "this is the second wicked rendezvous I have
+interrupted.  I didn't know you were anything like this, and I've seen
+that girl before, but I can't remember where."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't try," said Bulstrode.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And she was crying.  Of course you made her cry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said Bulstrode desperately, "if I did, it's the first woman
+that has ever cried for me."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+As the reason why Bulstrode had never married was again in Paris, he
+went up in the late afternoon to see her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The train of visitors who showed their appreciation of her by thronging
+her doors had been turned away, but Bulstrode was admitted.  The man
+told him, "Mrs. Falconer will see you, sir," by which he had the
+agreeably flattered feeling that she would see nobody else.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he was opposite her the room at once dwindled, contracted, as
+invariably did every place in which they found themselves together,
+into one small circle containing himself and one woman.  Mrs. Falconer
+said at once to Bulstrode:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jimmy, you're in trouble&mdash;in one of your quandaries.  What useless
+good have you been doing, and who has been sharper than a serpent's
+tooth to you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode's late companionship with youth had imparted to him a boyish
+look.  His friend narrowly observed him, and her charming face clouded
+with one of those almost imperceptible <I>nuances</I> that the faces of
+those women wear who feel everything and by habit reveal nothing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm not a victim."  Bulstrode's tone was regretful.  "One might say,
+on the contrary, this time that I was possibly overpaid."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I haven't," he explained and regretted, "seen you for a long time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've been automobiling in Touraine."  Mrs. Falconer gave him no
+opportunity to be delinquent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I," he confessed, "have been posing for my portrait.  Don't," he
+pleaded, "laugh at me&mdash;it isn't for a miniature or a locket; it's
+life-size, horribly life-size.  I've had to stand, off and on with the
+rests, three hours a day, and I've done so <I>every day for three weeks</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Falconer regarded him with indulgent amusement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's your fault&mdash;you took me to see those awful school-girl paintings
+and pointed out that poor young creature to me."  And he was
+interrupted by her exclamation:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, how <I>dear</I> of you, Jimmy! how sweet and kind and ridiculous!  It
+won't be fit to be seen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, never mind that," he waved; "no one need see it.  I haven't&mdash;she
+won't let me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had accepted a cup of tea from the lady's hand; he drank it off and
+sat down, holding the empty cup as if he held his fate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me," she urged, "all about it.  It was just like you&mdash;any other
+man would have found means to show charity, but you have shown
+unselfish goodness, and that's the rarest thing in the world.  Fancy
+posing every day!  How ghastly and how wonderful of you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he said slowly, "it wasn't any of these things.  I wanted to do
+it.  It amused me at first, you see.  But now I am a little
+annoyed&mdash;rather bothered to tell the truth&mdash;He met her eyes with almost
+an appeal in his.  Mrs. Falconer was in kindness bound to help him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bothered?  How, pray?  With what part of it?  You're not chivalrous
+about it, are you?  You're not by the way of feeling that you have
+compromised her by posing?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no, no," he hurried; "but I do feel, and I am frank to
+acknowledge, that it was a mistake.  Because&mdash;do you know&mdash;that for
+some absurd reason I am afraid she has become fond of me."  He blushed
+like a boy.  Mrs. Falconer said coldly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes?  Well, what of it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This&mdash;"  Bulstrode's voice was quiet and determined&mdash;"if I am right I
+shall marry her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Falconer had the advantage over most women of completely
+understanding the man with whom she dealt.  She knew that to attempt to
+turn from its just and generous source any intent of Mr. Bulstrode
+would have been as futile as to attempt to turn a river from its parent
+fountain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're quixotic, I know, but you're not demented, and you won't
+certainly marry this nobody&mdash;whose fancies or love-affairs have not the
+least importance.  You won't ever see her again unless you are in love
+with her yourself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode interrupted her hastily:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, I shall."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He got up and walked over to the window that looked down on Mrs.
+Falconer's trim little garden.  A couple of iron chairs and a table
+stood under the trees.  Early roses had begun to bloom in the beds
+whose outlines were thick and dark with heart's-ease.  Beyond the iron
+rail of the high wall the distant rumble of Paris came to his ears.
+Mrs. Falconer's voice behind him said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's a very pretty girl, and young enough to be your daughter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he said quietly, "not by many years."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he turned about and came back to the lady the room seemed to have
+grown darker and she to sit in the shadow.  She leaned toward him,
+laughing:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So you have come to announce at last the famous marriage of yours we
+have so often planned together."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode stood looking down on her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I feel myself responsible," he said gravely.  "She was going home, and
+by a mistaken impulse I came in and changed her plans.  She is
+perfectly alone and perfectly poor, and I am not going to add to her
+perplexities.  I have no one in the world to care what I do.  I have no
+ties and no duties."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Mrs. Falconer; "you are wonderfully free."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He said vehemently:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am all of a sudden wonderfully miserable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had been in the habit for years of suddenly leaving her without any
+warning, and now he put out his hand and bade her good-by, and before
+she could detain him had made one of many brusque exits from her
+presence.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+On the following day&mdash;a Sunday, as from his delightful apartments in
+the Ritz he set forth for the studio, Bulstrode bade good-by to his
+bachelor existence.  He knew when he should next see the Place Vendôme
+it would be with the eyes of an engaged man.  His life hereafter was to
+be shared by a "total stranger."  So he pathetically put it, and his
+sentimental yearning to share everything with a lovely woman had died a
+sudden death.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's no one in the world to care a rap what I do&mdash;really," he
+reflected, "and in this case I have run up against it&mdash;that's the long
+and the short of the matter&mdash;and I shall see it through."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he set out for Miss Desprey's along his favorite track he remarked
+that the gala, festive character of Paris had entirely disappeared.
+The season had gone back on him by several months, and the melancholy
+of autumn and dreary winter cast a gloom over his boyish spirits.  A
+very slight rain was falling.  Bulstrode began to feel a twinge of
+rheumatism in his arm and as he irritably opened his umbrella his
+spirits dropped beneath it and his brisk, springy walk sagged to
+something resembling the gait of a middle-aged gentleman.  But he urged
+himself into a better mood, however, at the sight of a flower-shop
+whose delicate wares huddled appealingly close to the window.  He went
+in and purchased an enormous bunch of&mdash;he hesitated&mdash;there were certain
+flowers he <I>could</I> not, would <I>not</I> send!  The selection his
+sentimental reserve imposed therefore consisted of sweet-peas,
+<I>giroflés</I>, and a big cluster of white roses, all very girlish and
+virginal.  His bridal offering in his hand, he took a cab and drove to
+the other side of the river with lead at his good heart and, he almost
+fancied, a lump in his throat.  He paid the coachman, whose careless
+spirits he envied, and slowly walked down the picturesque alley of
+Impasse du Maine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There isn't a man I know&mdash;not a man in the Somerset Club&mdash;who would be
+as big a fool as this!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had more than a mind to leave the flowers on the doorstep and run.
+Bulstrode would have done so now that he was face to face with his
+quixotic folly, but his cab had been heard as well as his steps on the
+walk, and the door was opened by Miss Desprey herself.  The girl's
+colorless face, her eyes spoiled with tears, and a pretty, sad dignity,
+which became her well, struck her friend with the sincerity and depth
+of her grief, and as the good gentleman shook hands with her he
+realized that less than ever in the world could he add a featherweight
+of grief to the burden of this helpless creature.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dearest child!"  He lifted her hand to his lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode, I'm so glad you've come, I was so afraid you
+wouldn't&mdash;after yesterday!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His arms were still full of white paper, roses, and sweet-peas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, don't give them to me, Mr. Bulstrode!  Oh, why, did you bring
+them?  Oh, dear, what will you think of me?"  She had possessed herself
+of the flowers and with agitation and distress hastily thrust them, as
+if she wanted to hide them, behind the draperies of the couch.
+Bulstrode murmured something of whose import he was scarcely conscious.
+As she came tearfully back to him she let him take her hands.  He felt
+that she clung to him.  "It would have spoiled my life if you hadn't
+come.  I would have just gone and jumped in the Seine.  I may yet.  Oh,
+you don't understand!  It's been hard to be poor&mdash;I've been often
+hungry&mdash;but this last thing was too much.  When you found me yesterday
+I didn't want to live any more."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode's kind clasp warmed the cold little hands.  As tenderly as he
+could he looked at her agitated prettiness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't talk like that"&mdash;he tried for her first name and found it.
+"Laura, you will let me make it all right, my dear?  You will let me,
+won't you?  You shall never know another care if I can prevent it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She interrupted with hasty gratitude:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nobody else can make it all right but you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He tried softly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did I, then, make it so very wrong?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She murmured, too overcome to trust herself to say much:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was standing close to him, and lifted her appealing face to his.
+Her excitement communicated itself to him; he bent toward her about to
+kiss her, when the door of the studio sharply opened, and before
+Bulstrode could do more than swiftly draw back and leave Miss Desprey
+free an exceedingly tall and able-bodied man entered without ceremony.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl gave a cry, ran from Bulstrode, and, so to speak, threw
+herself against the arms of the stranger, for there were none open to
+receive her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, here's Mr. Bulstrode, Dan!  I knew he'd come; and he'll tell
+you&mdash;won't you, Mr. Bulstrode?  Tell him, please, that I don't care
+anything at all about you and you don't care anything about me....
+That you don't want to marry me or anything.  Oh, please make him
+believe it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The poor gentleman's senses and brain whirling together made him giddy.
+He felt as though he had just been whisked up from the edge of a
+precipice over which he ridiculously dangled.  Dan, who represented the
+rescuer, was not prepossessing.  He was the complete and unspoiled type
+of Western youth; the girl herself was an imperfect and exquisite
+hybrid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know that this gentleman can explain to me"&mdash;the young fellow
+threw his boyish head back&mdash;"or that I care to hear him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She gave a cry, sharp and wounded.  The sound touched the now normal,
+thoroughly grateful patron, who had come out of his ordeal with as much
+kindly sensibility as he went in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course, my dear young lady"&mdash;he perfectly understood the
+situation&mdash;"I will tell your friend the facts of our acquaintance.
+That's what you want me to do, isn't it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was weeping and hanging on to the unyielding arm of her cross
+lover, who glared at the intruding Bulstrode with a youthful jealousy
+at which the older man smiled while he envied it.  He pursued
+impressively:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Desprey has been painting my portrait for the past few weeks.  I
+gave her the order at the Art League; other than painter and sitter we
+have no possible interest in each other&mdash;Mr.&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gregs," snapped the stranger, "Daniel Gregs!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The slender creature, whose eyes never left the stolid, uncompromising
+face, repeated eagerly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>No possible interest</I>&mdash;Dan&mdash;none!  He doesn't care anything about me
+at all!  You heard what he said, didn't you?  I only like him like a
+kind, kind friend."
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-070"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-070.jpg" ALT="&quot;I only like him like a kind, kind friend&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="482" HEIGHT="741">
+<H4 CLASS="h4center" STYLE="width: 482px">
+&quot;I only like him like a kind, kind friend&quot;
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Her voice, soft as a flower, caressed and pleaded with the passionate
+tenderness of a woman who feels that an inadvertent word may keep for
+her or lose for her the man she adores.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear man," exclaimed Bulstrode in great irritation, "you ought to
+be ashamed to let her cry like that!  Can't you <I>understand</I>&mdash;don't you
+see?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," shortly caught up the other, "I don't!  I've come here from South
+Africa, where I'm prospecting some mines for a company at Centreville,
+and I heard she was poor and unhappy, and I hurried up my things so I
+could come to Paris and marry her and take her with me, and here I find
+her painting every day alone with a rich man, her place all fixed up
+with flowers, and a thousand dollars in the bank"&mdash;his cheek
+reddened&mdash;"I don't like it!  And that's all there is to it!" he
+finished shortly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, my friend," said the other severely, "there's a great deal more.
+If, from what you say, and the way you speak, you wish me to understand
+you have a real interest in Miss Desprey, you can follow me when I say
+that I came here and found her a lonely, forsaken girl, obliged to
+return to Idaho when she didn't want to go, without any money or any
+friends.  May I ask you why, if there was any one in the world who
+cared for her, she should be left so deserted?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl here turned her face from her lover to her champion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't please blame Dan for that.  He was so poor, too.  He didn't have
+anything when he went to South Africa; it was just a chance if he would
+succeed.  And he was working for me, so that he could get married."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gregs interrupted:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't owe this gentleman any explanation!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," accepted the other gently, "perhaps not, but you mustn't, on the
+other hand, refuse to hear mine.  Be reasonable.  Why <I>shouldn't</I> Miss
+Desprey have an order for a portrait?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gregs, over the golden head against his arm, looked at Bulstrode:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>She</I> can't paint!"  His tone was gentler.  "Laura can't paint, and
+you know it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dan!" she whispered; "how cruel you are to me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And here the desperate Bulstrode broke in:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is, indeed, Miss Desprey, cruel and unjust, and I frankly ask leave
+to tell him so.  You don't deserve the girl, Mr. Gregs, if she's yours,
+as she seems to be."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the girl clung closer, as if she still feared Bulstrode might try
+to rescue her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's all right," frowned the miner.  "I am no better and no worse
+than any man about his girl, and I'm going to know <I>just where I
+stand</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The gentleman's reply was caustic.  "I should be inclined to say you'd
+find it hard to be in a better place."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Laura Desprey had wound her arms around Mr. Gregs.  Bulstrode held out
+his hand.  She couldn't take it, nor could her lover.  With arrogant
+obstinacy he had folded his arms across his chest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come, can't we be friends?" urged the amiable gentleman.  "I seem to
+have made trouble when I only wanted to be friendly.  Let me set it
+right before I go.  I am lunching in Versailles, and I have to take the
+noon train from the Gare Montparnasse."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Daniel Gregs did not unbend to the affable proposition.  Miss
+Desprey said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When you saw me yesterday in the park, Mr. Bulstrode, Dan had just
+come back the day before.  I was putting the flowers you sent me in
+fresh water when he came in on me all of a sudden.  Oh, it was so
+splendid at first!  I was <I>so</I> happy&mdash;until he asked all about you, and
+then he grew so angry and said unless you could explain to him a lot of
+things he would go away and never see me again, and when you found me I
+was crying because I thought he had left me forever.  I hadn't seen him
+for two years, and if you hadn't helped me to stay on here I should
+have had to go to Idaho, and I wouldn't have seen him at all.  You
+ought to <I>thank</I> him, Dan."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode interrupted:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed, Mr. Gregs, you should, you know!&mdash;you should thank me; come,
+be generous."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan relaxed his grim humor a little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When I get through with this South African business I'm going back to
+Centreville, and if I ever get her out of this Paris <I>she'll</I> never see
+it again!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dan," she breathed, "I don't want to.  Centreville is good enough for
+me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+(Centreville!  The horrible environment he was to have snatched her
+from.  Bulstrode smiled softly.)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But this money," pursued the dogged lover, returning to his grudge.
+"You've got to take it back, Mr. Bulstrode.  No picture on earth is
+worth a thousand dollars, and certainly not Laura's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Dan!" she exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But her friend said firmly: "The portrait is mine.  Come, don't be
+foolish.  If Miss Desprey is willing to marry you and go out to Idaho,
+take the money and buy her some pretty clothes and things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here the girl herself interrupted excitedly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no!  We couldn't take it.  I don't want any new clothes.  If Dan
+doesn't care how shabby I am, I don't.  I don't want anything in the
+world but just to go with Dan."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At this sweet tenderness Dan's face entirely changed, his arms
+unfolded; he put them around her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's all right, little girl."  His tone thrilled through Bulstrode
+more than the woman's tears had done.  He understood why she wanted to
+go to him, and how she could be drawn.  He had at times in his life
+lost money, and sometimes heavily, and he had never felt poor before.
+In the same words, but in a vastly different tone, Dan Gregs held out
+his hand to Bulstrode.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's all right, sir.  When a fellow travels thousands and thousands
+of miles to get his girl and hasn't much more than his car fare and he
+runs up against another fellow who has got the rocks and all and who he
+thinks is sweet on his girl, it makes him crazy&mdash;just crazy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see"&mdash;Bulstrode sympathetically understood&mdash;"and I don't at all
+wonder."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were all three shaking hands together and Bulstrode said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would you believe it, I haven't seen my portrait, Miss Desprey."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan Gregs grinned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't," he said, "don't look at it.  It's what made all the trouble.
+When I saw it yesterday and Laura told me it had drawn a thousand
+dollars&mdash;why I said 'there isn't a man living who would give you fifty
+cents for it.'  That made her mad at first.  Then she told me you
+thought she was a great portrait-painter, and I knew you must be sweet
+on her.  I'm fond of her all right, but I decided that you were bound
+to have her and didn't care how you dealt your cards, and I thought I'd
+clear out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His face fell and threatened to cloud over, but it cleared again as
+with the remembrance of his doubts came the actual sense of the woman
+whose face was hidden on his breast, and he lightly touched the dusty
+golden hair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When in a few seconds Bulstrode took leave of them, Miss Desprey, in
+her dingy painting-dress, seemed completely swallowed up in the embrace
+of the big Dan Gregs.  From where he stood by the door Bulstrode could
+see the white corner of his <I>fiançailles</I> bouquet sticking out from the
+draperies of the couch.  The paper was open and in the heat of the warm
+little <I>atelier</I> the fresh odor of the pungent flowers came strongly on
+the air.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode as he said good-by seemed to say it&mdash;and to look at the
+lovers&mdash;through a haze of perfume&mdash;a perfume that, like the most
+precious things in the world, pervades and affects, suggests and
+impresses, while its existence is unseen, unknown to the world.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Once in his train, he had been able to catch it at the Invalides after
+all, Jimmy drew a long breath and settled back into himself, for, he
+had been, poor dear, during the past three weeks, in another man's
+shoes and profiting by another man's identity.  It was perfectly
+heavenly to feel that he had been liberated by the merciful providence
+which takes care to provide the right lover for the right place.  He
+couldn't be too grateful for the miracle which saved him from a
+sacrifice alongside of which Abraham's would have been a jest indeed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The June morning was warm and through the open car window, as the train
+went comfortably along, the perfume of the country came into him where
+he sat.  Opposite, a pair of lovers frankly and naturally showed their
+annoyance at the third person's intrusion, and Bulstrode,
+sympathetically turned himself about and became absorbed in Suburban
+Paris.  His heart beat high at the fact of his deliverance.  His
+gratitude was sincere&mdash;moreover, his thoughts were of an agreeable
+trend, and he was able to forget everybody else within twelve miles.
+Secure in his impersonality and in the indifference of his broad
+unseeing back, the lovers kissed and held hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode wandered slowly up from the Versailles station to the Hôtel
+des Reservoirs, crossed the broad square of the Palace Court, found the
+pink and yellow façade more mellow and perfect than ever, and toward
+twelve-thirty strolled into the yard of the old hostelry.  Breakfast
+had been set for twelve-thirty, but his host was not there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah&mdash;mais, bon jour, Monsieur Bulstrode!"  The proprietor knew and
+appreciated this client greatly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Monsieur Falconer, it seemed, had been called suddenly to Paris....
+Yes&mdash;well&mdash;there were, now and then, in the course of life, bits of
+news that could be borne with fortitude.  "And Madame has also been
+called to Paris?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mais non!"  Madame had a few minutes since gone out in the Park, the
+proprietor thought she would not be very far away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode thanked him, and crossed over to the hedge and the gateway
+and through it to the Palace Gardens.  On all sides the paths stretched
+broad and inviting toward the various alleys, and upon the terrace to
+his left there shone a thousand flowers in June abundance.  The
+gentleman chose the first path that opened, and went carelessly down
+it, and in a few moments the pretty ring of an embowered circle spread
+before him, but, although there was an inviting marble bench under a
+big tree at one side, and several eighteenth century marbles on their
+pedestals, illuminated by the bland eighteenth century smile, there was
+not a living woman in sight to make him, the visitor, welcome!  He went
+a little further along and found another felicitous, harmonious circle,
+where a small fountain threw its jets on the June air.  At the sound of
+the water Bulstrode remembered that the Grands Eaux were to play on
+this afternoon at Versailles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, <I>that</I> is why they especially wanted me to come out to-day," he
+decided.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the other side of the fountain, the vivid white of her summer dress
+making a flash like moonlight on the obscurity of the woods, a lady was
+standing looking across at Mr. Bulstrode.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hush!" she said; "come over softly, Jimmy; there is a timid third
+party here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On a branch at her side, where an oriole sat, his head thrown back, his
+throat swelling, there was a little stir and flutter of leaves, for
+although the lady had put her finger to her lips, her voice broke the
+spell, and a bit of yellow flashed through the trees.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't believe <I>he</I> will ever forgive you!" she cried; "you spoiled
+his solo, but I'll forgive you.  What brought you out to Versailles
+to-day?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The fountains," Bulstrode told her; "I have never seen them play.
+Then, too&mdash;there are certain places to which, when I am asked to
+luncheon, I always go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's quite true," she accepted; "you <I>were</I> invited!&mdash;but, to be
+perfectly frank, I did not expect you, so your coming on this occasion
+has only the pleasure of a surprise.  As a rule, I hate them.  My
+husband informed me that he would telephone you to meet him in Paris,
+but I think he must have forgotten you, Jimmy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was taking him in from his fresh panama to his boots, and she
+apparently found an air of festivity about him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was it," she asked, "in honor of the fountains' playing that you have
+made yourself so beautiful?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode took the boutonnière out of his coat lapel and handed it to
+her.  "Can't you pin it in somewhere?"  Mrs. Falconer laughed and
+thrust the carnation into her bodice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I dressed to-day, more or less," Mr. Bulstrode confessed, "in order to
+attend&mdash;well, what shall I call it&mdash;a betrothal?  That's a good
+old-fashioned word."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!" exclaimed the lady, "a <I>fiançailles</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two had wandered slowly along, out of the Bosquet towards the
+canals.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They make a great deal of these functions in France," Mrs. Falconer
+said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her companion agreed.  "They made a great deal, rather more than usual,
+out of this one."  And his tone was so suggestive that his companion
+looked up at him quickly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who <I>are</I> your mysterious lovers?" she asked, "are they French?  Do I
+know them?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are not in the least mysterious," Bulstrode assured her.  "I
+never saw anything less complex and more simple.  They are Americans."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She seemed now to understand that she was to hear of "one of Jimmy's
+adventures," as she called his dashes in other people's affairs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope, Jimmy, in this case, that you have pulled the affair off to
+your credit, and that if you have made a match the creatures will be
+grateful to you for once!  And, by the way," she bethought; "whatever
+has happened to the pretty girl whom you were quixotic enough to think
+you had to marry?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The last time I saw her she appeared to be in the best of
+circumstances," Bulstrode answered cheerfully.  "In point of fact&mdash;it
+was, singularly enough, to <I>her</I> engagement party that I went to-day!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Mrs. Falconer now showed real interest and feeling.  "No! how
+delightful.  So she is really off your hands, Jimmy.  Well, that is too
+good to be true.  There's one at least whom you don't have to marry,
+Jimmy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, they grow beautifully less," he agreed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Falconer smiled softly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are narrowing down every year," Jimmy went on; "when I am about
+sixty the number will be reduced, I dare say, to the proper quantity."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a goose you are," she said jestingly.  "What a tease and a bother
+you are, Jimmy Bulstrode; <I>I'll</I> find you a proper wife!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He accepted warmly.  "Do, do!  I leave myself quite in your hands."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His companion extended him her hand as she spoke, and after lifting it
+to his lips, Bulstrode drew it through his arm.  It was clothed in a
+glove of pale coffee-color suede.  It was a soft, dear hand, and rested
+as if it were at home on Bulstrode's gray sleeve.  Side by side the two
+friends walked slowly out toward the broader avenues leading to the
+canals.  The sky was faintly blue, touched with the edges of some
+drifting cloud, like dashes of foam.  The trees about them lifted dark
+velvet masses and the air was sweet with the scent of the woods and
+flowers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Isn't this the most beautiful garden in the world?" murmured Mrs.
+Falconer.  "Isn't it <I>too</I> beautiful!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very," he incorrectly and vaguely answered.  And the lady went on to
+say how brilliant she found the place with the suggestions and memories
+of the past royal times, whilst Bulstrode said nothing at all, because
+he did not want to tell her that Versailles and the charming alleys,
+and France, and the great big world, from limit to limit, was full of
+no ghosts to him, but of just one woman.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap03"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE THIRD ADVENTURE
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+III
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IN WHICH HE FINDS THERE ARE SOME THINGS WHICH ONE CANNOT BUY
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+After not a great deal of hesitation, toward the middle of a warm June,
+Bulstrode permitted himself to become the proprietor of a palace: not
+an inhabitant of the ordinary dwelling modelled after some old-world
+wonder, wherein American millionaires choose to spend their leisure in
+their own country&mdash;but of a real traditional palace, in whose charming
+rooms no object was younger than Bulstrode's great-grandfather, and
+where the enchanting women of the Fragonards and Nattiers almost made
+him, as he mused upon them, lose sight for a moment of a living lady.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the very first day he went over the Hôtel Montensier from <I>grenier</I>
+to <I>caves</I>, Jimmy Bulstrode gave in, and accepted the Duc de
+Montensier's proposition to "fetch his traps for a few months to the
+hôtel and turn Parisian."  He was in the heart of Paris, yet all around
+him, shut in by high walls, was a garden, to which the terraces of the
+house gave in flights of marble steps.  When his friend suggested that
+Bulstrode turn Parisian, Jimmy laughed.  "Do you think," he had asked,
+"that a chap born in Providence, educated in Harvard, and, if
+cosmopolitan, thoroughly American from start to finish, could, <I>mon
+cher</I>, turn Parisian?"  And the Duc had assured him that he did not
+think Bulstrode had a "Latin eyelash," and that he needn't be at all
+afraid to try his luck at what a French house would do for him!  "Why,
+your coat alone&mdash;the cut of it&mdash;" Montensier had laughed, "speaks of
+Poole with a Boston compromise!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duc had been in the United States&mdash;moreover, the Frenchman had
+plans of his own and he wanted very much to go to Newport and leave his
+house in the care of Jimmy Bulstrode.  Whether the Puritan in him led
+Bulstrode to excuse to himself his enjoyment of so much luxury, at any
+rate he apologized, saying that nobody could expect a man with a love
+of the beautiful, and who had more or less a desire to shut himself up
+and to shut himself away for a time, to refuse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Falconers were off somewhere <I>en auto</I>.  He had thought they had
+gone through Spain.  It was pretty hot to do such a thing, however, and
+he did not really know.  He wanted very much to be able not to let
+himself follow them, and he knew that there was little chance of his
+reaching such stoicism unless he began by not finding out where they
+were going!  So he shut himself up with the books which the library
+offered and gave many charming little dinners and parties on his
+terraces in the bland summer nights, and tried with all his might and
+main to forget the flight of a certain motor over the fair white roads
+and, above all, to nerve himself up to refuse an invitation for the
+middle of July.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Directly opposite the white façade of the Montensiers' hôtel was a
+hostelry for beggars, for domestics without places; for poor
+professors; for actors with no stages but the last; for laborers with
+no labor; in short, for the riff-raff of the population, for those who
+no longer hold the dignity of profession or pay rent for a term.
+Sometimes Bulstrode would look out at the tenement, whose windows in
+this season were wide open; and the general aspect indicated that
+dislocated fortunes flourished.  In one window, pirouetting or dancing
+in it, calling out of it, leaning perilously over the sill of it, was a
+child&mdash;as far as Bulstrode could decide, a creature of about six years
+of age.  She was too small to see much of, but all he saw was activity,
+gesticulation, and perpetual motion.  When the day was hot she fanned
+herself with a bit of paper.  She called far out to the wine-merchant's
+wife, who sat with her family before the shop while her pretty children
+played in the gutter.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+In Paris, when the weather climbs to eighty, Parisians count themselves
+in the tropics and the people, who lived apparently out of doors
+altogether, wore a melted, disheartened air.  But the De Montensier
+garden, full of roses and heliotrope, watered and refreshed by the
+fountains' delightful falling, was a retreat not to be surpassed by
+many suburbs.  Bulstrode gave little dinners on the terrace; little
+suppers after the theatre, when rooms and garden were lighted with
+fairy lanterns, and his chef outdid his traditions to please his
+American master.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One day as the American sat smoking on the terrace with nothing more
+disturbing than the drip of the fountain and the remote murmur of Paris
+to break his reverie, Prosper, his confidential man, made a tentative
+appearance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would m'sieu, <I>who is so good</I>, see a young lady?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His master smiled as he rose, instinctively at the words "jeune
+demoiselle," throwing away his cigar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pardon, m'sieu, I thought it might amuse m'sieu&mdash;" and Prosper stepped
+back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode had been intently thinking of the caravansary opposite him,
+and he now saw that part of the <I>hôtel meublé</I> had come across the
+street; he recognized it immediately for the smallest part.  Before him
+stood the ridiculous and pathetic figure of a dirty little girl in
+rags, tatters, and furbelows, her legs clad in red silk stockings
+evidently intended for fuller, shapelier limbs; her feet slipped about
+in pattens.  She had on a woman's bodice, a long flounced skirt pinned
+up to keep her from tripping.  Her head was adorned by a torn straw
+hat, also contrived and created for the coquetry of maturity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Monsieur is so good," she began in a flute-like voice.  "I have come
+to thank monsieur with all my heart."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode looked toward Prosper for enlightenment, but that individual
+had cleverly disappeared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To thank me, my child?  But for what?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, for the eggs and butter and sugar that monsieur was so good as to
+send me.  I have made the cake.  It is beautiful!  Monsieur le
+cuisinier of this house baked it for me.  It is perhaps a little
+flat&mdash;but that was because I got tired stirring.  See&mdash;it says&mdash;"  She
+had, so he now saw, a book under her arm; letting fall a fold of her
+cumbersome dress with both hands and opening a filthy cook-book, she
+laid it on the table, bending over it.  "It says stir briskly half an
+hour."  (Her "rs" rolled in her throat like tiny cannons in a rosy
+hollow.)  "Quelle idée!  It was <I>too</I> stupid!  Half an hour!  I just
+mixed it round once or twice and then&mdash;voila! it has white on the top
+and shall have a candle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So you've made a cake?" he said kindly.  "I'm sure it's a good one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She nodded brightly.  "It is for that I came to thank monsieur and to
+ask if he would accept a piece of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Poor Bulstrode, with dreadful suspicion, looked to see part of the
+horror immediately offered for his degustation.  "I don't, my dear,
+understand.  Why should you thank <I>me</I>&mdash;what had I to do with it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her gesture was delightful.  "But for monsieur it would not exist; for
+butter, eggs, and flour.  Monsieur Prosper, when he gave them, said it
+was of the kindness of '<I>Monsieur Balstro</I>.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+(Oh, Prosper!  "I have corrupted <I>him</I>," his master thought.  "He is as
+bad as I am!")
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I'm very glad indeed," and he said it heartily.  "But what did
+you especially want to make it for&mdash;with the one candle?  That means
+one year old.  Who's birthday may it then be?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is the birthday of maman."  She shut the book, and as she did so
+raised her great black eyes, which dirt and neglect could not spoil.
+There was in her appearance so little suggestion of maternal care that
+Bulstrode nearly incredulously asked, "Your mother?  And what, then,
+does your mother do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's a fish," informed the child tranquilly.  And Bulstrode, although
+startled, could believe it.  It too perfectly accounted for the
+cold-blooded indifference to this offspring.  Not even a mermaid could
+have been guilty of so little care for her child.  Still, he repeated:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A fish?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oui, a devil-fish in the aquarium at Bostock's.  Oh, que c'est beau!"
+she clasped her little hands.  "Maman wears a costume of red&mdash;quite a
+small, thin dress," she described eagerly.  "And it is all spangles,
+like fire when she dives into the water.  I have been; the waiter at
+the café downstairs took me.  I screamed.  I thought maman was drowned.
+But no&mdash;she comes up always!"  The child threw her head back and lifted
+her eyes in ecstasy.  "C'est magnifique!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is your mother's name?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mademoiselle Lascaze."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And yours?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Simone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you do all day, Simone?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wash and cook and sew and play&mdash;I have much to do&mdash;oh, much."  She
+assumed an important air.  "The bad air of the room makes maman ill, so
+she's out&mdash;'to breathe,' she says&mdash;and she locks me safely in.  I play
+Bostock and dive like maman.  And sometimes"&mdash;she lowered her voice,
+and looking back to see if they were alone&mdash;confided, "I cry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah!" sympathized Bulstrode.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, yes," she insisted, "when maman forgets to come home, and the
+night is so black; then the seamstress next door knocks on the wall,
+and I knock back for company."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see," he understood gently, "for company."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He rang for Prosper.  "You will conduct mademoiselle home, Prosper, and
+give her everything she needs for her kitchen always."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, monsieur; I knew that monsieur would&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At sight of Prosper the mite gathered up her voluminous skirts and bade
+her new friend a cordial good-by.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the corrupted Prosper Bulstrode extracted what he wished to know
+concerning the child.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is of a scandalousness, monsieur!  Four nights of the seven the
+poor little object is alone.  The mother appears to have money enough,
+she pays her rent regularly, and there is therefore nothing to do.  She
+sometimes even fetches her companions home with her, and Simone, when
+she is not making sport for them, is tied to a chair to keep her from
+falling off in her sleep."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode expressed himself strongly, violently for him, went to see a
+lawyer and a charitable French countess and found out that so long as
+the mother did not actually ill-treat the child she could not be
+replaced by any other guardian.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mon cher ami," said the spirituelle lady, "leave the fish to her
+deviltry, and her child in her care.  We are <I>fin de race</I>, if you
+like, and in direct opposition to your American progressive schemes,
+but we have a tradition that the family is sacred, and that, however
+bad it may be, a child is better off in its home than elsewhere.  You
+will find it difficult to replace a mother by a <I>machine</I> or an
+<I>institution</I>, believe me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Bulstrode at the words felt a new sense of failure in
+philanthropies, and his benevolence seemed pure dilletantism.  What was
+he likely to accomplish in the case of this child?  Nothing more than
+the momentary pleasure a few toys and a few hours of play could secure.
+"And yet," as he mused he philosophically put it to himself, "isn't it,
+after all, about the sum total any of us get out of destiny?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In New York he would have quite known how to proceed in order to help
+the child, but in the face of French law and strong family prejudice he
+came up against a stone wall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm no sort of a real benefactor," he remorsefully acceded, "and I
+don't believe I'm fit to be trusted alone with the poor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nevertheless he did not relinquish his idea entirely, and confided
+Simone to Prosper's sympathetic care and that of an emotional
+maid-servant, with the result that a cleaning woman penetrated by hook
+or crook into the room of "the fish" and treated it to more <I>aqua pura</I>
+than the piscatory individual had cognizance of outside of the aquarium.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The gentleman in this particular charity was surprised to find how
+simple it sometimes is to do good.  In this case no one had come to him
+with a petition or a demand; on the contrary, a note of undeserved
+thanks had, with the strange little creature, been presented to him.
+It was so pleasantly easy to help a child!  There were no <I>arrières
+pensées</I>&mdash;not that they would have troubled him, but there were none;
+there were no wire-pullings, no time infringements, no suggestion or
+criticism, no&mdash;he believed&mdash;expectations.  Everything he could do was
+so annoyingly little!  The charwoman cleaned, Simone had a complete
+wardrobe, the larder was full, and there remained nothing but toys to
+buy.  The little thing was so womanly and capable&mdash;he had seen it and
+marvelled in their interviews at her age and accomplishments&mdash;her hands
+were so apt and almost creative, that toys seemed inadequate.  She took
+her benefits charmingly; rushed over at the least provocation to pour
+out her gratitude, and Bulstrode, who hated thanks, liked these.
+Childhood, if it had been for sale on the Boulevard, even that he would
+have bought Simone if he could!  As it was, he found himself pausing
+before a series of shops other than chemisièrs&mdash;florists, and
+jewellers'&mdash;shops where diminutive objects were displayed&mdash;and one
+afternoon had been standing ridiculously long in front of a certain
+window on the Rue de Rivoli when he was accosted by an agreeable and
+familiar voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jimmy!  It isn't possible! don't tell me it has come so cruelly
+<I>soon</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The gentleman gave a violent, but an entirely happy start.  Well, there
+were rewards then for people who didn't follow speeding motors through
+France!  She was back and in Paris.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What&mdash;has come so soon?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Falconer, on her way from a hat shop in her automobile, stopped by
+his side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, your second childhood, my dear man.  Do you know what shop you
+are standing before?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode seemed to be perfectly aware of his dotage and to delight in
+it.  Behind the big window pane there was a bright and very juvenile
+display.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ships sailed there; dolls hung gaudily and smilingly aloft; giant
+parti-colored balls rounded out their harlequin sides; tiny dishes for
+pygmy festivals were piled with delicious carrots and artichokes on
+little white, blue-rimmed platters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you a moment to spare?" Bulstrode asked her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have bought all my hats," she replied; "after that a woman's time
+hangs heavy on her hands."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah!" he was as radiant as she had the genius for making him.  "Come,
+then, in with me and help me choose a <I>doll</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was not the first purchase during the course of a long friendship
+which Bulstrode had made with this charming woman by his side, but for
+some reason he enjoyed it more than former errands.  The bachelor and
+the childless woman were hard to please and their choice consumed an
+unconscionable time.  As they lingered, the amiable shopman pressed
+various toys on monsieur and madame "<I>pour les enfants</I>," and the lady,
+finally depositing her friend with his parcels at the door of his
+hôtel, realized as she drove away that she knew nothing of the child
+for whom the purchases had been made.  On her way up the Champs Elysées
+she smiled softly.  "It's what you <I>share</I>," she mused, "what you give
+of <I>yourself&mdash;with</I> yourself&mdash;<I>that's</I> charity!  Jimmy gives himself.
+I wonder who his new love is?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode, in order to share what should be his "new love's" ecstasy at
+first sight of the miraculous toy, sent for Simone.  The Rue de Rivoli
+doll, on a small chair designed for diminutive ladies of the eighteenth
+century or for the king's dwarfs, held out stiff but cordial arms and
+was naturally, to a child, the first and sole object of the
+drawing-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Monsieur!</I>"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For you, Simone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Monsieur!</I>"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She said nothing else as she clasped her hands, and the color rushed
+into her face, but she felt the doll, touched reverently its feet,
+hair, dress, incontinently forgot Bulstrode, and quite suddenly,
+passionately, caught the image of life to her heart.  Just over its
+blonde head, for it was nearly as large as herself, she met the
+gentleman's eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's my child!  I've prayed for it always, always!  I've never had a
+doll, a <I>bébé</I>, m'sieu."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tea-table with cakes and chocolate called them all too soon and, as
+Prosper served, the fountains sang, the heat stole through the garden
+and called up agreeable odors of sod and roses, the late afternoon sky
+spread its expanse over the terrace of the hôtel, where, perfectly
+happy both of them, animated by as gentle and harmless pleasure as any
+two in Paris that day, the child of the people and an American
+gentleman chatted over their tea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode, being an original, erratic, and reckless giver of alms,
+quite by this time knew that, more than often, for him to give was, if
+not to regret, to have at least misgivings whether in the hands of some
+colder, less poetic person his money would not have accomplished more
+good.  In the case of Simone he had, as usual, happily gone on with
+abandon, relegating any remorse to a future which he hoped would never
+arrive.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+But the middle of July did come and with it came poor Jimmy's exquisite
+temptation.  A telephone helped it dreadfully.  There was something so
+wonderful in the fact that in a couple of hours he could, if he would,
+let himself reach the side of the lovely voice which called to him over
+the wires.  And being nothing but a human man, he threw all his good
+resolves to the wind, and went down and stayed three days at
+Fontainebleau.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Out under the sky, where the elastic earth sprang softly beneath her
+feet and the embowered forests were sifted through with gold, Mary
+Falconer finally asked him, "And your doll, Jimmy?  Have you broken her
+yet?"  Bulstrode felt a guilty twinge, for he had not once thought of
+the little girl, nor did Mrs. Falconer's mention of her bring the
+subject near enough for Bulstrode to tell her the pretty story.  He had
+other things to say, and many things not to say, and this, as it always
+did when he was with his lady, kept him very absorbed and occupied.  On
+this occasion he forgot all about little Simone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The night of his return Paris was <I>en fête</I> and in no sense impatient
+to reach his lonely house&mdash;for it seemed to him this night the
+loneliest house in the world&mdash;he walked without haste up town along the
+quays.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was hard to forget that not fifty miles away he had left the cool
+forests, their tempting roads, their alluring alleys.  He had forgotten
+that it was the annual celebration and that at this late hour the
+<I>fête</I> would be in full swing, and as he strolled meditating along the
+Seine the spirit of the gay populace&mdash;good-humor, reckless pleasure,
+and the <I>joie de vivre</I>&mdash;poured itself out around him like cordial,
+like a generous gift from an over-charged horn of cheer.  In his gray
+clothes, modish panama, a little white rose plucked by a dear hand from
+the trellis at Fontainebleau still in his buttonhole, Bulstrode
+scarcely remarked the crowds or heard the music as he passed outdoor
+dancing stands and was jostled by a dancing throng.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His own street, as he approached it, welcomed him with a strong odor of
+onions and fried potatoes; it had apparently turned itself out of doors
+and all of the houses seemed to have emptied themselves into the narrow
+alley.  A hurdy-gurdy playing before the <I>hôtel meublê</I> tinkled and
+jangled in the centre of a crowd of merry-makers, and the metallic
+melody and wild ascending octaves were the first sounds Bulstrode
+consciously heard since he left Fontainebleau.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing like a mad child,
+hair, arms, and feet flying; her voice, thin and piercing, every now
+and then above the rattle of the hand-organ, cried out the lines of a
+popular song whose meaning on her lips was particularly horrifying.
+The wine-shop family encircled her, encoring her vociferously.  As she
+paused for breath the light from over the shop-door shone on her
+excited little face.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-100"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-100.jpg" ALT="In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing" BORDER="2" WIDTH="482" HEIGHT="740">
+<H4 CLASS="h4center" STYLE="width: 482px">
+In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"I tired!  Mon Dieu, que non!  I could dance till morning.  Play again,
+monsieur l'organiste.  Play again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode, on the crowd's edge, watched her, and for once in his
+philanthropic history made no attempt to rescue.  As Prosper let his
+master in he said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a shame, isn't it, monsieur?  The people over there have let her
+run quite crazy.  The poor little thing!  Heaven knows where the mother
+is!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of which celestial knowledge Bulstrode had his doubts.  It was close to
+twelve, and dismissing Prosper for the night, he took his cigar out on
+the terrace and to what solitude his garden might extend.  Before long
+the noise of the music subsided, the people, tired out with hours of
+festivity, dispersed, and the alley settled into quiet.  From the
+distance now and then came the soft, dull explosion of fireworks, the
+rumble and roar of Paris was a little accelerated; otherwise the
+silence about Bulstrode's garden grew and deepened as the night
+advanced.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was rare for him to allow himself to be the object of his own
+personal consideration, or that indeed he at all thought of himself,
+and when he did the man he had long ignored had his revenge and made
+him pay up old scores.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the late afternoon of this very day he was to have walked for miles
+through the Fontainebleau woods with Mrs. Falconer, and instead he had
+fled.  Pleading a sudden summons to Paris, he left Fontainebleau.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was well past four o'clock when he at last threw his cigar away and
+rose.  He had been musing all night in his chair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A sudden gust of noise blew down the quiet little street, the sound of
+loud singing and the shrill staccato of a woman's laugh.  By the time
+the revellers had passed his house and the hubbub had died away,
+Bulstrode, with an idea at length of going up to his room, walked
+across the salon and prepared to extinguish the electricity, but the
+sound of some one tapping without caught his ear, and going over to the
+window that gave on the street, he looked out.  From end to end the
+alley was deserted except for the figure of a woman.  As he saw in the
+ruddy light of early morning she huddled against the threshold of the
+<I>hôtel meublé</I>&mdash;knocking persistently at the door.  The tattered gauze
+of her dress, whose bold <I>decolletée</I> left her neck and shoulders bare,
+a garland of roses on the bandeaux of her black hair, she epitomized
+the carnival just come to its end&mdash;its exhaustion, its excess, spent at
+length, surfeited, knocking for entrance at last to rest.  Bulstrode,
+as he remarked the sinuous figure that swayed as the woman stood,
+exclaimed to himself with illumination: "Why, she's the <I>fish</I>, of
+course!  Simone's mother!  And this is the state in which she goes to
+the miserable child!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As, knocking at intervals, the object leaned there a few moments
+longer, evidently scarcely able to stand, his pity wakened and he
+slowly left the window, shut in its blinds, and crossed his
+ante-chamber, where the artificial light of electricity was met by the
+full sunshine of the breaking day streaming in through the open window
+of his terrace.  Not entirely sure of his motive or to what excess of
+folly it might lead him, he nevertheless opened wide his front door,
+only to see that the woman on the opposite street had gone.  She had
+been let in.  With a glance of relief up and down the street where the
+<I>confetti</I> in disks of lilac and yellow and red lay in dirty piles or
+swam on the flushing gutters that sparkled in the light, Bulstrode shot
+to his door on the Parisian world and after a <I>nuit blanche</I> went
+upstairs to his rooms.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+And there had intensely come to him during the period of his dressing
+the next morning after a tardy wakening the idea of taking the child,
+of&mdash;he was certain it could be done&mdash;buying the mother off.  He would,
+in short, if he could, legally adopt the Parisian <I>gamine</I> for his own.
+It would give him a distinct interest, and life was empty for want of
+one; this, in a manner, however short of perfect, would supply the need
+of a loving living creature in his environment and would&mdash;his thrill at
+the idea proved to him how lonely he had been&mdash;give him companionship
+and a responsibility of a tender, personal sort.  He could make a home
+at last for a child.  Men are more paternal than they are credited with
+being, and Bulstrode directly foresaw delightful <I>causeries</I> in the
+future with&mdash;(he knew many women)&mdash;<I>with one woman</I> whose pretty taste,
+whose wit and humor, should counsel him in his new rôle.  Mrs. Falconer
+would dress Simone&mdash;her hand should be wonderfully in it all.
+Bulstrode had let his fancy linger over the scheme.  Certainly, during
+the hour in which he spun his fanciful plan, there was not one bar to
+its execution.  Nor did there come to him any hint of its intrinsic
+sterility, or the idea that it was possibly an excuse for the
+interweaving of another interest more closely with his life&mdash;no idea
+that he was simply strengthening an old bond, or by means of this
+little tug pushing a mighty vessel nearer port.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He almost happily mused until a nursery grew out of thin air, a child's
+little garments lay on a chair, and festivities, whose charm is of the
+most mysterious, illuminated his reverie.  Bulstrode, even without the
+shudder of the climatician, contemplated the rigors of his own country,
+for a rosy room grew out of his dream, fire-lit and fragrant with fir
+and holly, and in the centre shone The Tree, whose shiny globes and
+marvels were reflected till they danced in a child's eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There had been an hour earlier the quick, brusque dash of a French
+thunder-storm, and the cooled air came refreshingly from the garden as
+Bulstrode stood out on the terrace before going into the noonday
+breakfast.  Prosper, fetching his master's coffee at nine o'clock, had
+been informed that they were leaving Paris that day and received
+instructions as to the setting in order of the hôtel before returning
+it to its proprietor.  Where his wanderings were to take him Bulstrode
+had not as yet made up his mind.  It, after all, mattered so very
+little what a bachelor did with his leisure!  It was the height of the
+season along the seacoast and a dozen places brilliantly beckoned;
+there were tri-weekly boats to the country, where he should most
+properly be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is," he with recurrent leeway to his inclinations reflected,
+"always plenty of time to decide what one does not want to do!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he glanced at the little breakfast spread temptingly there for him
+on the terrace he was arrested by the sound of French voices in quick,
+agitated discussion, and looked up to see the unceremonious entrance of
+quite a little band of people who had in point of fact penetrated his
+seclusion.  In a second of time a group was before him and he
+remembered afterward that certain figures in a twinkling assumed
+familiar shapes: the wine-shop keeper, his wife, one or two other
+patrons of the hôtel; but in the centre&mdash;he was sure of her!&mdash;pale and
+staring, stood little Simone, her big doll clasped in her arms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before the gentleman could ask their errand Madame Branchard, eager to
+tell it, pushed forward.  Bulstrode afterward, when he thought of the
+scene, could always distinctly see her important red face, sleek, oily
+hair, and in spite of summer heat the crocheted shawl over her cotton
+gown.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We decided at once to address to monsieur, who is so good"&mdash;(he was
+growing accustomed to the formula) "to monsieur who has been so like a
+father to the poor little thing.  Not but that we are ready ourselves
+to do all we can for her&mdash;she is so sweet, so intelligent!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The sweet, intelligent child" appeared, as Bulstrode's pitying gaze,
+never leaving her, saw, to have shrunk overnight.  In their midst she
+stood of a ridiculous smallness, her big doll nearly hiding her and
+over its blonde head Simone's eyes peered pathetically into, as it
+were, a vague and terrifying world.  Bulstrode asked shortly in the
+face of the theatrical prelude:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is this all about?  What have you come to tell me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, monsieur!"  Madame Branchard's voice, particularly suited to
+retailing the tragedies of the streets, quavered.  "There has been a
+<I>malheur</I>&mdash;it is too horrible&mdash;the mother!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stop!"  Bulstrode put out his hand.  "Simone!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The little thing dragged herself to him with a new timidity, as though
+she believed him in league with the world against her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come," he encouraged, "come out here on the terrace, where you have so
+often played with your doll, and don't be frightened, <I>mon enfant</I>;
+everything will be all right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he had so settled her in the smallest of chairs he went back to
+the other bit of Paris street-life which had seethed in to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Madame Branchard, whom his manner had reduced to, for her, marvellous
+quiet and ease, approached impressively and lowered her voice as deeply
+as it would fall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mademoiselle Lascaze, whom monsieur knows has been my tenant for
+months past, is dead&mdash;dead, monsieur!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode echoed, "Dead?" and his first thought was: "It was not she,
+then, whom I saw striving for entrance this morning.  Ah, poor
+creature!  Drowned?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Monsieur then knows?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Knows&mdash;how should he know?  He had thought of the aquarium and her
+often repeated feat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Monsieur is right, she is drowned; but it is not the aquarium&mdash;it is
+the Seine.  It appears," the wine-merchant's wife went on, "that last
+night she made <I>la fête</I> in the streets.  We over here lock up, well,
+at a decent hour, as monsieur will understand.  Those who are in stay,
+those who are out&mdash;well, monsieur will understand&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes, he understood.  Would she go on?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mademoiselle Lascaze had evidently lost her key of entry&mdash;so it
+appears.  We have this story from her comrades, a bad lot, like
+herself.  She tried to get in about five o'clock&mdash;they left her
+knocking at the door.  She must then have wandered the streets for an
+hour, for it was six when they met her again by chance quite by the
+Pont des Arts.  They all had something to drink and started across the
+river, when the poor thing offered to give an exhibition of her circus
+feat and, before anyone could stop her, had dived off the bridge into
+the Seine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had, then, seen her knocking there in the dawn, and if he had
+hastened a little&mdash;not held conventionally back&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is all <I>en règle</I>," assured Madame Branchard.  "As my husband will
+tell monsieur, he has been to the morgue to identify her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The wine-merchant now at his cue, nodded impressively.  "Mais oui, I
+assure monsieur she was quite natural&mdash;and she was une belle femme tout
+le même&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His wife glanced at him scornfully.  "She was a bad mother, and all the
+house will tell you so.  Many times, monsieur, I have gone in with my
+pass-key and taken the poor little thing downstairs in my arms to give
+her all the supper she would have had, and many a time, on cold nights,
+when there was not a stick of fire in their room, and the woman
+abroad&mdash;many a time I have had her sleep in our bed with us&mdash;my husband
+will tell monsieur."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The wine-merchant nodded assent.  "She speaks the truth, monsieur."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode found presence of mind to wonder.  "I suppose Mademoiselle
+Lascaze left debts?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The husband and wife exchanged glances.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>En vérité</I>, monsieur," confessed Madame Branchard, "she has left a
+few, but they are small and not significant; a hundred francs will
+cover them.  It is not for our pockets we are come to monsieur."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here the sentimentality having been disposed of by the woman, the
+husband broke in:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is like this, Monsieur Balstro" (Bulstrode saw how intimately the
+<I>hôtel meublé</I> knew him): "In a few moments even the authorities will
+be here to take charge of the woman's effects and Simone will become
+the property of the State.  She has no relatives, as Monsieur will
+understand.  Thinking, therefore, that monsieur, <I>who is so good</I>,
+might for some reason care to take an interest in the child's
+future&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Branchard coughed and paused.  Having given Mr. Bulstrode ample time to
+speak, to show some signs of life and of his usual quick benevolence,
+and being greeted with nothing other than quiet, meditative silence,
+the merchant shrugged and comprehensively relinquished suppositions and
+hopes in one large gesture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In which case" (evidently that of taking for granted that Bulstrode
+was less good than they had supposed), "in that case we shall put in a
+plea ourselves for Simone and adopt her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Madame's voice, now in full and customary volume, expressed frankly
+<I>her</I> goodness.  "We have five children and our means are modest,
+but"&mdash;and she put it sublimely&mdash;"<I>one is not a mother for nothing</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her tirade, however, was quite lost on Bulstrode, who was occupied with
+his own projects of benevolence.  Turning to this contingent of the
+<I>hôtel meublé</I> a back scarcely more imperturbable than his face had
+been, he went out of the room to the terrace, where Simone sat just as
+he had left her.  She was, on her low chair, so tiny that in order more
+nearly than ever before to approach her little point of view, to come
+into her little sphere, Bulstrode knelt down on one knee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't look so frightened, my child.  Nothing will harm you&mdash;I assure
+you of that; don't you"&mdash;he called her loyally to answer&mdash;"don't you
+believe me, Simone?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The little thing drew in a struggling breath and whispered: "Oui,
+m'sieu."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good!"  He was smiling at her and had taken her ice-cold, dirty,
+little hands.  "You are fond of me, Simone&mdash;you like a little M'sieu
+Balstro'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," she caught at her frightened voice and more clearly whispered,
+"oh, oui, m'sieu!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bien encore!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He wanted tactfully to break the ice which shock and terror had formed
+around the poor little heart, and yet not to prolong the moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Voyons</I>," he said to her lightly, as if he were only to bid her come
+and play in his garden, and not ask her to decide her destiny.
+"<I>Voyons</I>, how would you like to come and live with me? to have toys
+and pretty clothes and good things to eat&mdash;to be"&mdash;the bachelor put it
+bravely&mdash;"to be <I>my</I> little girl.  How, Simone, would you like it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If further startled she was humanized by his warmth, which was melting
+her; her breast heaved, her lips trembled, and she asked: "Et
+puis&mdash;maman?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here Madame Branchard, in whom all feelings were subordinate to
+curiosity and motherhood, had approached until she stood directly
+behind the two on the terrace.  Tears had sprung to her eyes and she
+sniffled and wiped them frankly away with her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode, singularly relieved by her appearance, turned and asked her,
+"What does she then know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing, m'sieur, nothing at all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Simone got up on her feet and her big doll fell with a crash on the
+marble of the terrace and broke in a dozen pieces, but the catastrophe
+did not touch her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And maman?" she repeated.  "Where is she?  She did not come home last
+night?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode had descended to one knee in order to approach her, but
+Madame Branchard got down on both knees and tenderly put her arms
+around the child.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look, ma petite&mdash;your mother has gone away forever to a beautiful
+country, and she has left you here to be a good girl and do whatever
+this kind gentleman says.  Will you go to be his little girl?  He will
+give you everything in the world."  She closed with this magnificent
+promise, whose breadth and wealth no child-mind could grasp.  In order
+to give her more complete liberty in which to make her decision the
+wine-merchant's wife, after kissing her, set her free.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Simone made no audible reflection of wonder at her seeming desertion,
+no exhibition of distress, no melodramatic outburst of grief or
+surprise.  She stood silent, absorbed, desolate, and ashamed, twisting
+in and out between her frail little fingers the fringe of Madame
+Branchard's black shawl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Or," brightly continued the good woman, "you can come home with me and
+play with Marie and Jeannette and have what we have.  You can be my
+little girl, as you will&mdash;it is for you to decide&mdash;chez moi, or with
+this bon monsieur."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Was it fair of them&mdash;thus to lay on her six years the burden of her own
+destiny?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Simone raised her head; her cheeks had reddened a little at Madame
+Branchard's last words.  She was unable to grasp the benefits that
+Bulstrode's magnificence offered, but she knew Marie and Jeannette&mdash;she
+knew the hands of Madame Branchard could tuck one in at night, and how
+warm and soft was the bosom on which she had already wept her little
+griefs.  There were many beautiful things in the world, but Simone just
+then only wanted one.  Madame Branchard was not <I>her</I> mother&mdash;but she
+was still <I>a</I> mother!  Simone whispered so low that only the woman
+heard:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will go with you."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Prosper having embarked on a sea of indiscretion, went through the day
+consistently.  With a love of the melodramatic in his Latin temperament
+he had admitted the <I>hôtel meublé sans cérémonie</I>: and late that
+afternoon he gave entrance to another group of quite a different order,
+and without formality ushered the lady and her friends to the terrace,
+where the solitary inhabitant of another man's house was taking a
+farewell beverage before leaving Paris.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We have caught you in time, Jimmy!" Mrs. Falconer made a virtue of it.
+"If you are absconding with the Montensier treasures, then let me show
+Molly and the Marquis at least what has been left behind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His bags and boxes in the hall, his automobile at the door, and
+Bulstrode himself in travelling trim, it looked very much like a
+flight, indeed.  Miss Molly and the Marquis, it transpired, were able
+to explore for themselves and to find in the gallery and salons
+pictures and objects of interest to excuse a prolonged absence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They're engaged," Mrs. Falconer explained to her host.  "Isn't it
+ridiculous?  As you know, she hasn't a cent in the world, and his
+family are not in the secret, but Molly and De Presle-Vaulx <I>are</I>, and
+<I>I</I> am, and I brought them off in pity for a spin to Paris."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The apparition of the lady, whose mocking beauty had a fresh charm
+every time he saw her&mdash;her worldly wisdom and her keen
+reasonableness&mdash;made, as he stood talking with her, his past debauch in
+philanthropies seem especially grotesque.  With a long breath of joy at
+the sight of her Bulstrode also realized how wonderfully separated from
+her the introduction of another life into his environment would have
+made him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your garden is a waste," the lady criticised, "dusty and dull.  I
+don't wonder you're getting away.  Fontainebleau, too, was only a
+<I>faute de mieux</I>, and I have left it.  One should get really far away
+at this season.  It's the time when only the persons who are actually
+bred in its stones can stay in Paris&mdash;certainly the birds of passage
+may now, if ever, fly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We are going to Trouville," she said; "we are all going to motor
+through Normandy.  Won't you come&mdash;won't you come?"  He shook his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Falconer looked across the terrace to where a little chair had
+been overturned, and on the floor by its side lay a broken doll.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jimmy!" she laughed in triumph at the sight.  "You <I>have</I> broken your
+doll!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode said: "Yes, beyond repair, and I don't want another."  Then
+in a few words, briefly, a little impatient, and still smarting under
+the child's defection, he gave her the story.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Listening, absorbed, her charming eyes on him or at one moment turned
+suspiciously away, the lady heard him to the end, and at the end said
+softly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jimmy, my poor Jimmy!  What have you nearly done!  What <I>would</I> people
+have thought?  Not that it matters in the least&mdash;it's what people <I>do</I>
+that counts&mdash;but oh, I tremble for your next folly!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It might"&mdash;he spoke with something like bitterness&mdash;"be less harmless
+and leave me less alone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had finished a glass of iced tea, put her goblet down on the tray
+and rose, coming over to where Bulstrode stood; she lightly laid her
+hand on his arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are, then, so very lonely?  So lonely that you would be capable of
+doing this foolish thing?  Oh, you would have found, as I have found,
+that it is those things which come into our lives, not those which we
+by force <I>take</I>, which mean all we want them to mean!  This wasn't
+<I>your child</I>!"  Mrs. Falconer's face softened as he had never seen it.
+"Nor yet is she the child of some woman you love.  Believe me, it would
+have made you far lonelier if it so happened&mdash;if you should ever come
+to love&mdash;if you ever had loved&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode interrupted her abruptly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, in that case I should no doubt be glad that Simone had gone back
+on me."  He waited silent for a second, and then continued gently, "I
+<I>am</I> glad, very glad indeed!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap04"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE FOURTH ADVENTURE
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IV
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IN WHICH HE MAKES THREE PEOPLE HAPPY
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+There were times when Bulstrode decided that he never could see the
+woman he loved any more: there were times when he felt he must follow
+her to the ends of the world, just in order to assure himself that she
+was alive and serene.  Such is the gentleman's character and point of
+view, that she must always be serene, no matter what his own troubled
+emotions might be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had the extraordinary idea that he could not himself be happy or
+make a woman happy over the dishonor of another man.  It was
+old-fashioned and unworldly of Bulstrode: still, that was the way he
+was constituted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was on one of the imperious occasions when he felt as if he must
+follow her to the ends of the earth, that he steered his craft toward a
+little town on the edge of the Norman coast, to a very fashionable bit
+of France&mdash;Trouville.  As soon as he understood that Mrs. Falconer was
+to be in Normandy for the race week, he packed his things and ran down
+and put up at the Hôtel de Paris.  On this occasion the gentleman
+followed so fast that he overleaped his goal, and arrived at the
+watering-place before the others appeared.  Bulstrode took his own
+rooms, and in response to a telegram, engaged the Falconers'
+apartments.  He liked the way the little salon gave on the heavenly
+blue sea, and with a nice fancy to make it something more home-like for
+his friend to begin with, he filled it with flowers ... ran what
+lengths he dared in putting a few rare vases and several pieces of old
+Italian damask here and there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Falconer," he consoled himself, "will be too taken up with his horses
+to notice the <I>inside</I> of anything but a stable!  And I shall tell the
+others that the hôtel proprietor is a collector: most of these Norman
+innkeepers are collectors."  And, as his idea grew, he went to greater
+lengths, with the curiosity shops on either side the Rue de Paris to
+tempt him.  The result was that when Mrs. Falconer came, she found the
+hôtel room wonderfully mellow and harmonious, and as a woman who revels
+in beauty she responded to its charm.  She was delighted, her eyes
+sparkled, her cheeks glowed.  And Jimmy Bulstrode had a moment of high
+happiness as she looked at him and touched with her pretty hands the
+flowers he had himself arranged.  It was a delightful moment, a moment
+that was much to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Falconers arrived with the usual lot of servants and motors and,
+moreover, with a racing outfit, for Falconer had decided to enter his
+English filly, Bonjour, for the events of August.  There was also with
+them a Miss Molly Malines and a young sprig of nobility, the Marquis de
+Presle-Vaulx, to whom Bulstrode was a trifle paternal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He can't, at least, be after Molly's <I>millions</I>," he reflected; "he
+can't, at any rate, be a <I>fortune</I> hunter, for the girl's face is the
+only fortune she has!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On a bright and beautiful morning, the first of all the days for many
+weeks&mdash;for Bulstrode reckoned his calendar in broken bits, beginning a
+New Year each time he saw his lady again&mdash;a bright and beautiful
+morning he walked out at the fashionable hour of noon and turned into
+the Rue de Paris.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The eyes of many women followed Bulstrode.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Being an early riser, he had already taken a brisk walk over the
+cliffs, had swum out beyond the buoys, and now in his flannels, his
+panama, a gay rose in the lapel of his coat, amongst the many
+debonnaire and pleasing people who filled the little fishing town, his
+was a distinguished figure.  He trusted very much to instinct to
+discover his friend, and after a few moments found her at the extreme
+end of the street which the papers of Paris tell you is "the most
+worldly and fashionable in any part of the Continent, during race week
+at Trouville."  Mary Falconer was of course dressed in the very height
+of the mode.  She looked up and saw Bulstrode before he saw her, but
+she could wait until he made his leisurely way down to her side.  She
+waited for him a great deal.  He did not know how much, but then her
+point of view and her feelings have never come into the history.  It
+amused her to make him her many clever little bits of speech, for he
+was so appreciative of everything she said, and looking up at him now
+as he approached she said: "These people never seem to have anything to
+do, do they?  Leisure is like money: to enjoy thoroughly either money
+or leisure one should only have a little of each.  Now for us
+good-for-nothings who have no occupation it doesn't make much
+difference what we do or where we do it!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lady's camp-stool had been set down at the end of the street.
+Those who are not promenading opened little <I>chaises pliantes</I> and
+watched from their little seats.  Mrs. Falconer sat facing the ocean,
+or what was visible of it between the bathing tents.  Pagodas gay with
+children's shovels and bright pails, striped bonbons and the sea of
+muslins, ribbons and feathers and sunshades of the midsummer crowd.
+All the capitals of Europe had poured themselves into Trouville, and
+the resort overflowed with beauty and fashion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+'"It's perfectly bewitching," Bulstrode said to her, "perfectly
+bewitching, and it makes one feel as though there were nothing but
+pleasure in the world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She wore a white dress and her hat was bright with flowers.  She opened
+her rose-lined parasol over her head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jimmy," she said abruptly, and brought his eyes to hers like a flash,
+for he had been looking over the scene, "do you know I begin to see
+where the innkeeper found his rare treasures; <I>there are a great many
+other things</I> that suggest them in this little street!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode replied, "You don't want him to take them away, do you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She shook her head.  "No," she said slowly, "they have been a great
+pleasure, but I don't want to <I>buy</I> them from him, either."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't <I>think</I> he'd sell them," Bulstrode was certain of it, "they're
+extremely precious in his eyes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm a good judge of works of art, however," she said after a moment,
+"that is to say, I know a good thing when I see it.  There was a little
+picture in one of the shops back of me that I would have given a lot to
+own."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her friend exclaimed: "Are you going to buy it!  That is to say, will
+Falconer buy it for you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear soul&mdash;with his horse running to-morrow!  At any rate, the
+bijou is already bought above my head.  I went in yesterday to see what
+was the least they would take for it, and found the Prince Pollona, the
+Englishman who buys for the Wallace Collection, and somebody who, they
+tell me, was the Rockefeller of St. Petersburg.  Well, my little
+picture was what they all wanted, and you can imagine that <I>I</I> retired
+from the running...!  But I tell you this," she said, "only to show you
+how very good my taste is, and so that you may rely on my selections."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode smiled in a way that said he thought he might rely on her,
+but still he asked rather quizzically, "Well, what are you going to
+recommend to me <I>now</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lady at the moment, not having anything in mind, looked suddenly
+up, gave him whimsically:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Molly and her Marquis."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two young people with Jack Falconer were coming slowly along the
+Rue de Paris toward them.  The grace of the girl, her freshness under
+her wide hat where flowers and ribbons danced and blended; the radiant
+pleasure she exhaled, the swing of her dress, her youth, expressed so
+happily the joy of life, recommended themselves easily in a flash....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, <I>Molly</I>&mdash;she's perfect!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the Marquis?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is perfectly in <I>love</I>," ... Bulstrode allowed him so much.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear friend, remember I know my <I>objets d'art</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, as an <I>objet d'art</I>...!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode took the young man in: his white immaculateness, his
+boutonnière, his panama&mdash;(not less than forty dollars a straw, as Jimmy
+knew) his monocle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As an <I>objet d'art</I>," he further conceded to her, "he's perfect, too!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As an <I>homme de race</I>," said the American lady eagerly, with the true
+Republican appreciation of blood and title, "as an <I>homme du monde</I>, as
+a..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Title?" he finished for her.  "Oh, the Presle-Vaulx are all right!
+I'll grant him a perfect title, sound as a bell, first Crusade&mdash;<I>Léonce
+de Presle-Vaulx main droite, or sur azur&mdash;Pour toi seule</I>.  It's a good
+old tradition&mdash;a good old name."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She scented his lack of sympathy.  "Oh, I'll stand for him, Jimmy.  I
+know the <I>pâte</I>, as they say.  I know the ring and the tone; and you
+must, at my valuation, take him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Molly, dear lady, has done the taking."  Bulstrode lifted his hat as
+the trio came up.  "And what, after all, can we&mdash;the rest of us do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The rest of them" watched the young couple with mingled emotions: Mary
+Falconer with all the romance in her, and in spite of unusual cool
+reasonableness she had a feminine share&mdash;Jimmy with the sympathy of a
+kindly nature, a certain sting of jealousy at the decidedly perfect
+completeness of young love, and with a singularly wide-awake practical
+common sense for an impulsive gentleman whose pleasure in life is to
+pour into people's hands the things they most long for and cannot
+without him ever hope to enjoy!
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode, although owning his share of horse-flesh and a proper number
+of automobiles and keeping, for the best part of the time, a yacht out
+of commission, was a sport only in a certain sense of the word.  The
+people who liked him best and who were themselves able to judge, said
+he was a "dead game sport," but Jimmy smiled at this and knew that the
+human element interested him in life above all, and that he only cared
+for amusements as they helped others to enjoy.  He was backing
+Falconer's horse, although he felt certain the winnings would go to the
+Rothschild's gelding.  On the afternoon, however, when De Presle-Vaulx
+came up to him in the Casino and said: "On what are you going to put
+your money, Monsieur?" Bulstrode looked at him thoughtfully.  He had
+stood by the young man the night before at baccarat and seen him lose
+enough to keep a little family of Trouville fisherfolk for a year.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you going to play the races, Marquis?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But naturally!" ...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+De Presle-Vaulx had an attractive frankness, and his smile
+was&mdash;Bulstrode understood what a girl would think about it!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"... But of course!  One doesn't come to Trouville in <I>la grande
+semaine</I> not to play!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He put his hand cordially on Bulstrode's arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Entre nous," he said, "I don't believe Falconer's horse has a chance
+against Rothschild's Grimace.  And you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I shall back Jack Falconer's mare," the older man replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Marquis played with his moustache.  "She doesn't stand a show."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode was walking slowly down the grand staircase by his
+companion's side.  "And you will back Grimace?"  He ignored the young
+man's prognostication.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+De Presle-Vaulx said ingenuously: "<I>I</I>?  Oh, seriously, I'm not
+betting.  I lost at baccarat last night, and I haven't a sou for the
+race."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked boyish and regretful.  The American put his hand in his
+pocket and took out his portefeuille.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me," he suggested pleasantly, "be your banker."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The light dry rustle of French bank-notes came agreeably from between
+his fingers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man hesitated, then put out his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A thousand thanks, Monsieur, you are too good&mdash;I <I>will</I> back Grimace,
+and after the race&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jimmy handed him the notes to choose from.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the stair foot stood Molly and Mrs. Falconer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We went this afternoon to see Jack's horse," Miss Malines said to the
+Marquis.  Whatever she said, no matter how general, she said to
+him&mdash;others might gather what they could.  "Bon Jour's a beauty&mdash;a
+dear, and as fit as possible.  Oh, she's in great form!  Jack's crazy
+about her, and so is the jockey.  I know Bon Jour will win!  I'm going
+to put twenty-five francs on her to-morrow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mary Falconer smiled radiantly.  "And you, Jimmy," she took for
+granted, "are of course betting on the favorite?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you mean Grimace&mdash;" his tone was indifferent&mdash;"no, I shall back
+your husband's horse."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Jimmy</I>!"  Her tone changed, and her expression as well.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+De Presle-Vaulx saw it, and he knew what women's voices can mean.  He
+was a Frenchman, and he understood what a slow, delicious flush, a
+darkening of the eyes, a sharp note in the voice can signify of
+feeling&mdash;as well as of gratitude, surprise and a little scorn.  There
+was all this in Mary Falconer's exclamation and her face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And Maurice!" Molly said, "of course, you're doing the same?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Marquis met his fiancée's clear eyes, her girlish enthusiasm and
+her confidence.  He bit his lip, shrugged, hesitated, looked at
+Bulstrode, at Molly, and laughed.  The presence of the others and the
+custom of his country made it only a pretty courtesy&mdash;he lifted Molly's
+hand to his lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course&mdash;<I>chère Mademoiselle</I>, I am backing Bon Jour with all my
+heart, <I>cela va sans dire</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Malines regarded her friend with a pretty grimace and a smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As they walked along together all four, Bulstrode said to himself:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's a sport, a true sport&mdash;that's five thousand francs to the bad.
+He was game, however, he's a good sport and, better yet, he's a true
+lover!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whether or not Mary Falconer really had an exalted idea of the merits
+of Bon Jour, or whether she thoroughly understood the situation, how
+was her friend to know?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Falconer adored the horse, and the lady showed in the matter, as in
+everything else, a fine loyalty to her husband, which was undoubtedly
+one of the reasons why&mdash;but this is going too deeply into the domain of
+Bulstrode's feelings, which, since he keeps them honorably sealed, it
+is unworthy to surprise even in the interest of psychology.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode saw that his friend was pleased: her color, her mounting
+spirits at dinner, showed it.  She spoke with interest of the races,
+and with confidence greater than she had hitherto evinced in the
+fortunes of her husband's racer&mdash;indeed she talked horse to Molly's
+edification, her husband's delight, and Bulstrode's admiration.  All
+this&mdash;the sense that the party was, so to speak, with him&mdash;put Jack
+Falconer in the best of spirits, and the unruffled course of the
+dinner, and, above all, the humor of the elder of the two ladies, quite
+repaid Jimmy Bulstrode for the sure loss of his stakes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Does she really think that I have faith in the horse?" he
+wondered&mdash;-meeting her charming eyes over the glass of champagne she
+was drinking.  They did not answer in text his question, but their glow
+and the light of content in them answered for him other questions which
+were perhaps of greater interest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was not unhappy.  All his life, since his acquaintance with her, it
+had been his aim, in so far as he could aid it, that she should not be
+unhappy.  His idea of affection was that in all cases it should bring
+to the object&mdash;joy.  In his own life these things which brought him, no
+matter how pleasant they might be, the after taste of regret and misery
+he strove with all his manliness to tear out: "and surely," he so
+argued, "if my presence in her life cause her for one moment anything
+but peace, it would be better that we had never looked into each
+other's eyes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was nothing especially buoyant, in the attitude of the young
+Marquis!  His inclination to feminine will had cost him&mdash;he was so
+familiar with the turf and the next day's programme to feel sure&mdash;five
+thousand francs, which he had not the means to pay.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Later in the evening, very much later, indeed well on to one o'clock,
+Bulstrode, wandering through the baccarat rooms&mdash;for no other purpose,
+it would be said from his indifferent air, than to study types&mdash;saw
+Maurice de Presle-Vaulx just leaving the Casino.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode's air was as friendly and as naïve as though he had not a
+pretty clear idea of just how the tide of events was fluctuating toward
+misfortune in the case of this young nobleman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you say," he suggested, "to getting something to drink or eat?
+What do you say to a piece of <I>perdreau</I> and some champagne?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Frenchman followed the older man, who in contrast to his pallor
+looked the picture of health and spirits.  Bulstrode cheerily led him
+to a small table in the corner of the restaurant, where they sat
+opposite one another, and for a little time applied themselves in
+silence to the light supper served them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Marquis drank more than he ate, and Bulstrode dutifully finished
+the game and toast, quite glad, in truth, to break the fast of a long
+evening which he had spent in the close rooms: for no other reason than
+unseen, to befriend&mdash;and unasked, to chaperone Molly's lover.  Finally,
+when he felt that the right moment to say something had come, he smiled
+at the young man, and said frankly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Voyons, mon ami, don't you feel that you can talk to me a little more
+freely than you could possibly to even so kind and charming a friend as
+Mrs. Falconer?  We are not of the same race, perhaps, but then under
+certain circumstances such distinctions are not important.  How do
+you"&mdash;he handled the words as though in presenting them to the young
+man he was afraid they might prick him&mdash;"How do <I>you</I> now stand?&mdash;I
+mean to say, the luck has been rather against you, I'm afraid."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode would never be so near forty again, and De Presle-Vaulx was a
+spoiled child&mdash;at all events, all that could be spoiled in him had been
+taken care of by his mother, and in his own way he had spoiled a large
+part of what remained.  He looked up smartly, for he had been following
+the pattern of the table-cloth.  If the frankness of the other
+threatened to offend him, as he met the kind eyes of the American he
+found nothing there that could do otherwise than please him.  He
+shrugged with his national habit, then threw out his hands without
+making any verbal reply, but his smile and his gesture comprehended so
+much that Bulstrode intelligently exclaimed:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, but you don't mean to <I>say</I>&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have not, monsieur, much to lose," the scion of an old house replied
+simply.  "We have the reputation of being poor; but to-night and last
+night have quite 'wiped me out,' as you say in America.  Je suis ruiné."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode lit his cigar.  De Presle-Vaulx took from his pocket one of
+his own cigarettes and puffed at it gently.  Bulstrode smoked silently,
+and thought of the young man without looking at him.  He liked him, and
+did not understand him at all: not at all!  He supposed, that with his
+different traditions, his Puritanism, his New World point of view, he
+could <I>never</I> understand him, but he would enjoy trying to do so, for
+aside from the quality of spoiled boy, there was something of the man
+in De Presle-Vaulx to which the New Englander extremely responded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His next remark was impersonal:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bon Jour, then, you think is not likely&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Mon cher Monsieur</I>! ... She is not even mentioned for place!  Even in
+the event of her winning," De Presle-Vaulx was gloomy, "I should be
+able to discharge my debt to you and nothing more."  Again he looked up
+quickly.  "I shall, of course, be quite able to discharge <I>that</I>; I
+only mean to say that <I>en somme</I>, I am <I>roulé completément roulé</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What, then, are you going to do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+De Presle-Vaulx looked at the end of his cigarette as though he took
+counsel from it, and said measuredly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is, in my position, but one thing possible for a man to do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean to say, marry, make a rich marriage?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Marquis flashed at him:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A month ago, yes! that would have been the one way out of my
+embarrassment: but I am no longer in the market.  It is the other
+alternative."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode in no case caring to hear put in words a tragically
+disagreeable means of solving the problems of debt and love, and having
+less faith in this extravagant, explosive alternative than in the
+<I>marriage de convenance</I>, did not urge the Frenchman further.  He
+simply brought out&mdash;his quiet eyes fixed on the other:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the little girl?&mdash;Molly&mdash;Miss Malines?&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He gave him three chances to think of the pretty child, and for the
+first De Presle-Vaulx's expression changed.  He had with a nonchalance
+submitted to the discussion of his fortune and his fate, but now he
+distinctly showed dignity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't, I beg of you, <I>speak</I> of Mademoiselle Malines!" and then he
+said more gently, "mille pardons, mon cher ami!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode smoked his Garcia meditatively.  He had not attempted the
+solving of other people's questions, had not played the good fairy for
+a long time.  He had the hazy feeling&mdash;such as he often experienced
+just before stepping into the mysterious excitement of doing some good
+deed, of undergoing the effects of a narcotic which put to sleep reason
+and practical common-sense, and left alive only a desire to befriend.
+In this case, determined not again to be the victim of sentimentality,
+determined for once to unite common sense and common humanity, he
+forcibly dissipated the haze and said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your family!  I have, as you know, understood from Mrs. Falconer, the
+facts of the case.  You must not be formal with me."  He smiled
+delightfully.  "I am an American; you know we have all sorts of
+barbarous privileges.  We rush in quite where the older races fear to
+tread ... and Molly Malines' father is an old friend of mine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+(Mr. Bulstrode did not say what kind of an old friend!  or even allow
+himself to remember the I.O.U.s and loans that his bankers had made to
+the visionary, good-humored, sanguine, unfortunate stockbroker.)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your family&mdash;how do they take the idea of your marriage to a poor
+American?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+De Presle-Vaulx pushed his coffee cup aside, leaned his arms on the
+table, bent over, and said with more confidence:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, they are entirely opposed to it.  That's one reason, to be quite
+frank with you, why I have been so reckless."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He added: "My mother has refused her consent, and I can never hope to
+alter my father's attitude.  I have their letters to-day as well as
+telegrams from Presle-Vaulxoron&mdash;they bid me 'come home immediately,'
+and so far as my people are concerned, their refusal puts an end to the
+affair!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a mixture of amusement and reproach in Bulstrode's tone&mdash;"and
+you have found nothing better to do than to throw away at baccarat what
+money you had, and have found no other solution for the future than
+to...?" he eyed the young man keenly, and a proper severity came into
+his expression.  "Nonsense," he said, and repeated the word with more
+indulgence: "nonsense, <I>mon ami</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His reproof was borne:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We are an old race, M. Bulstrode&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode had heard this allocution before.  It gave lee-way to so
+much; permitted so much; excused so much!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"... I don't need to tell you our traditions, or recall our customs.
+You of course know them.  If I marry without my parents' consent I
+shall probably, during my mother's lifetime, never see her again, and I
+am her only son.  It means that I sever all relations with my people."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode knocked the ash off his cigar and said thoughtfully:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's too bad!  A choice, if there <I>is</I> one, is always too bad.  There
+should in real things <I>be</I> no choice.  As soon as such a contingent
+arises, it proves that neither thing is really worth while!  When a man
+loves a woman there can be no choice.  My dear friend, when a
+<I>man</I>"&mdash;he paused&mdash;"loves&mdash;there is nothing in the world <I>but the
+woman</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Marquis looked at the fine face of the elder man.  Years had, with
+their gentle history, and kindly records, touched Jimmy Bulstrode
+lightly.  Every experience made him better to look at; "like a good
+picture," Mrs. Falconer had said, "painted by a master, and only
+growing more splendid."  Nothing of the worldliness of the roué marked
+his expression.  His memories were clear and honorable, and the
+Frenchman experienced a sensation of surprise and also one of
+enlightenment as he looked at him and responded to his expression.  He
+had never seen any one quite like this man of the world, could not
+think of his prototype in France.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He repeated:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing but the woman in the world&mdash;?  Honor&mdash;" Bulstrode quickly
+added, "and the woman&mdash;they are synonymous."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In watching his companion he wondered in how much of a tangle the
+Frenchman's mind was, and just how deep his feet were sunk in the
+meshes of conventionality and tradition, and decided: "Oh, is it too
+much to believe that he could&mdash;&mdash;!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As if in answer to his thoughts, De Presle-Vaulx spoke in the simplest
+manner possible:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"J'aime Molly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quite surprised at the simplicity, Bulstrode beamed on him and waited.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the other added:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I can't ask any woman to share poverty and debts, and I have no
+way of making a living; I'm not bred for it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are not an invalid?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On the contrary."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can work."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+De Presle-Vaulx smiled: "I am afraid not!  No De Presle-Vaulx has done
+a stroke of work in three hundred years."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's time, then"&mdash;Bulstrode was tart&mdash;"that you broke the record.  Why
+don't you?"  He said as though suddenly illumined&mdash;"make me your
+banker, draw on me for whatever sum you will, and since you have faith
+in her and are so well supported by the public opinion&mdash;bet on Grimace.
+I believe, with you, that he is sure to win.  You would recoup much of
+your loss here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+De Presle-Vaulx pushed back his chair and exclaimed: "Monsieur!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," shrugged Bulstrode, "a woman's caprice, my dear fellow!  A
+foolish little whim of a girl!  You can't be expected to mix sport and
+flirtation to the tune of two or three thousand dollars."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He smiled deceptively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man laughed bitterly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So that is something of what you think of me? for I see you are not
+serious!  It's a folly, of course, a sentimental folly," he met
+Bulstrode's eyes that silently accused him of a like&mdash;"but only a man
+in love knows what sentimental follies are worth!  There is"&mdash;the young
+man was suddenly serious, "a sort of prodigality in love only
+understood by certain temperaments, certain races: it may be
+degenerate: I suppose it is, and to push it quite to the last phase,
+is, of course, cowardly, certainly very weak, and men like you,
+Monsieur, will deem it so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean&mdash;?" and now Bulstrode's tone urged him to make himself clear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean," said De Presle-Vaulx firmly, "rather than renounce this woman
+I adore I will without doubt&mdash;(given the tangle in which the whole
+matter is!...") and he could not for the life of him put his intention
+into words.  He smiled nevertheless unmistakably.  Bulstrode leaned
+across the table and put his hand on the other's arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you don't love her well enough not to break her heart?  Or well
+enough to live a commonplace life for her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know how to do it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said Bulstrode, "I have run upon quite a good many hard
+moments, perhaps some, in their way, as difficult as this, and I have
+never thought of getting out of the muddle.  Perhaps it <I>is</I> a
+question, as you say, of temperament and race.  I am inclined also to
+think, stubbornly, that it is a question of the quality of the love
+that one has for the woman.  You won't think it impertinent of me, my
+dear friend,"&mdash;and his tone was such that no one could have thought it
+impertinent&mdash;"you won't, I am sure, take it amiss if we talk this over
+to-morrow, and if I try to show you something that means <I>life</I>,
+instead of what you plan."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"You know you as good as stood for De Presle-Vaulx."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode held Mrs. Falconer's parasol, her fan, as well as a gold bag
+purse full of louis, a handkerchief and his own cane and field-glass.
+For the lady, standing on a chair the better to see the race-track, was
+applauding with enthusiasm the result of the first handicap.  She had
+placed a bet on a horse called Plum-Branch "from a feeling of
+sentiment," as she said, because she had, that day, quite by chance,
+selected a hat with a decorative plum-branch amongst other garnitures.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am <I>standing</I>, certainly, Jimmy," she replied to his remark, "and to
+the peril of my high heels!&mdash; <I>There</I>, I've won! and won't you, like an
+angel, go and cash my bets?&mdash;give me the purse, you might have your
+hand picked!  You can put my winnings in your pocket; they're not so
+enormous."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During his absence she watched the scene around her with animation.
+The spotless day, if one might so call it, when the sky and the turf
+and the whole world looked as though washed clean, and nature, seen in
+the warm sunlight, seemed to palpitate and flutter in the wind that
+gently stirred ends of ribbon or tips of plumes, and set the fragrance
+of the country air astir.  Back of the lady the tribune was like a
+floral display: here and there a corner red as roses, there a mass of
+lily-white dresses enlivened by pink and blue parasols, and the green
+<I>pesage</I> stretched between the spectators and the race-track in bands
+of emerald, whilst across it promenaded or stood in groups those
+interested in the races.  Mrs. Falconer acknowledged a friend here and
+there, glanced affectionately over to where Molly and the Marquis,
+seated near, fixed their attention on the race-course, where the
+winner, flying his blue ribbon, cantered triumphantly around the track.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One of a little group Falconer, the worse for many cocktails, stood by
+the railing, talking familiarly with his jockey, whilst Bon Jour,
+blanketed to the eyes, was being led up and down the outside track
+alongside of her rival, Rothschild's Grimace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode returning, gave his friend a handful of gold, which she put
+into her purse, and he repeated: "You remember that you stood, as it
+were, for De Presle-Vaulx?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do," she said, "if you think the race-course is the place to take me
+to account for anything so serious, I do remember, and I do stand.
+What is the trouble that he needs me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He needs," Bulstrode was serious, "a good many things, it seems to me,
+in order to get firmly on the plane where he should be!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And that is&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On his feet, my dear friend."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, he is head over heels in love," she nodded, "but when he finally
+lands I think you will find Maurice perfectly perpendicular."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He won't," returned the other, "at all events, land in the bosom of
+his family."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No?"&mdash;she looked away from the race-course and laughed&mdash;"you mean to
+say, Jimmy, has he heard, then?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean to say that <I>they</I> are quite clear in their minds about his
+marriage!  They seem to have all the firmness that the young man lacks.
+Tell me," he asked his friend, "just what do you know about the matter?
+What happened that you so strongly took up his cause with Molly?  You
+have not told me yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She relinquished the interests of the moment to those of the
+sentimental question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It seems," she said, lowering her tone, "that they have been secretly
+engaged for a year.  Nothing that an American girl can do would
+surprise me, but you can imagine that I was overwhelmed at his part in
+the matter.  When Molly joined me in Fontainebleau, De Presle-Vaulx
+promptly followed, and I naturally obliged her to tell me everything.
+I was dismayed at the lack of <I>tenue</I> he had shown.  I had a plain talk
+with him.  He said that he had first met Molly at some dance or other
+in the American colony, I don't know where; that he understood that
+American girls disposed of their own lives; that he loved her and
+wanted to marry her, and that he was only waiting to gain the consent
+of his family before writing to her father.  He seemed delighted to
+talk with me and perfectly conventional in his feelings.  He further
+told me that his parents until now knew nothing, that he had not been
+able to tear himself away from Molly long enough to go down to the
+country where they were and see them.  I forced him to write at once;
+exacted myself that until he received their answer there should be
+nothing between Molly and him but the merest distant acquaintance.  I
+did not know that he had heard from the Marquise or his father.  You
+seemed to have suddenly entirely gained his confidence and taken my
+place."  She looked over at the young couple.  "Poor Molly!" she
+exclaimed.  "He has not, I should say, told her: she looks so happy and
+so serene!  It's of course only a question of <I>dot</I>, otherwise there
+could be no possible objection.  She is perfectly beautiful, the
+sweetest creature in the world; and she is a born Marquise!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode interrupted her impatiently:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It would be more to the purpose if he were a born bread-winner and she
+were a dairy-maid!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jimmy, how vulgar you are!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very&mdash;" he was wonderfully sarcastic for him&mdash;"money is a very vulgar
+thing, my dear friend; it's as vulgar as air and bread and butter.  It
+is like all other clean, decent vulgarity, it can be abused, but it's
+necessary to life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Falconer opened her eyes wide on this new Bulstrode.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, what has happened to you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He made a comprehensive gesture: "Oh, I am always supporting a family!"
+he said with an amusing attempt at irritability.  "I am always
+supporting a family that is not mine, that does not sit at my
+hearthstone or at my table.  I am always marrying other people to some
+one else, and dressing other people's children!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He finished with a laugh: "There, No. 5 is up!  Aren't you interested
+in this race?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Falconer and Bulstrode had walked a little from where the young
+couple chattered indifferent to everything but each other.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; I am only interested in what you are saying.  What have you
+planned to do or thought out for them, Jimmy?  What do your rebellious
+phrases imply?  <I>Are</I> you really going to make a home for&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode said stubbornly.  "No!  I am going to show him how to make
+one for himself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stopped short where he stood: he had resumed the care of her
+parasol, her fan, and purse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her face, as she took in his exposition of his plan for the
+regeneration of a decayed nobility, was inscrutable.  Instead of
+exclaiming, she stopped to speak a moment to some people who passed,
+shook hands with the owner of the favorite, and when they were once
+again alone said to her friend:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Isn't it too delightful! the whole scene?  I mean to say, how
+perfectly they do it all.  How thoroughly gay it is, how debonnair,
+graceful, and <I>bien compris</I>.  Look at the wonderful color of the
+<I>pesage</I>, and the life of the whole thing!  These Latin most thoroughly
+understand the art of living.  You scarcely ever see a care-worn face
+in France.  Look at Jack now!  Did you ever see such anxiety as he
+represents?  If Bon Jour is beaten I don't know <I>what</I> will become of
+him.  What shall I do with him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode's interest on this subject was tepid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, he'll be all right!" he said indifferently.  "Take him to the
+Dublin Horse Fair."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then as though she had not capriciously left the other topic, Mrs.
+Falconer asked:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just what <I>is</I> your plan for Molly and her Marquis?  May I not know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Bulstrode who had never in any way thought out a plan or scheduled
+a scheme for the wise distribution of the good he intended to do,
+educated now, so he fondly hoped, by his failures, wiser, he was proud
+to believe, by several sharp lessons&mdash;with no little confidence and
+something of pride, said to his companion:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have a ranch out West, you know; a little property I took for a bad
+debt once.  It has turned out to be a great and good piece of luck.
+That time I was fortunate&mdash;" (his tone, was congratulatory and Mrs.
+Falconer smiled prettily).  "I now need a second overseer again&mdash;a man
+of brains, good temper, and physical endurance, who can keep accounts.
+Experience isn't at all necessary.  There's my Englishman there, my
+Christmas tramp, you recall; he'll show De Presle-Vaulx his duties.
+It's a good enough berth for any determined chap who has his way to
+make and an ideal to work for.  I purpose to send this Frenchman out on
+a salary and to see what stuff he's made of.  After a year or two, with
+good sense and push, he will be in a position to ask any girl to be his
+wife.  I'll raise his salary, and if Molly is the girl I take her for,
+she will help him there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And his family, Jimmy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Damn his family!" risked the aroused Bulstrode.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Falconer laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Really!  It is casual of you! but you don't know them and can't!  But
+they can quite spoil the whole thing as far as Molly is concerned.  His
+tradition and race, his home and all it means to him&mdash;why you can't
+roughly run against all the old conventions like that, my dear man!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said the ruthless gentleman, "then he can go and feed on their
+charity, can take to his flesh-pots and give up the girl.  She is far
+too good for any foreign fortune-hunter anyway.  You spoil a man, all
+of you.  You'd prefer a disreputable roué to a cowboy with money in his
+pocket and a heart."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would it then prove to you De Presle-Vaulx's heart if he threw over
+his family and went West?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said the other quickly.  "It would prove he loves the girl."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You forget his mother."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode fumed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have not the honor to forget her; I don't know the Marquise de
+Presle-Vaulx."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do," interrupted his friend.  "She is a charming, gentle old dear;
+narrow, if you call it so, clear-headed and delightful.  She adores her
+only son, and thinks quite properly that his name, his estates,
+beautiful if mortgaged, are a fair exchange for an American <I>dot</I>.
+Maurice de Presle-Vaulx, after all, does not go poverty-stricken to the
+woman he marries.  There are not so many ways to live after one is
+twenty-five, and to uproot this scion of an old race, to exact such a
+sacrifice&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It would make a man of him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is one already.  There are all kinds, I need not tell you so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is head over heels in debt."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Falconer laughed again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We make him out an acrobat between us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He gambles on borrowed money."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean that you have forced him to borrow from you?  He will pay
+what he owes, I am sure of him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode wheeled and scrutinized her, and said with the natural
+asperity of a man who is bored by a woman's too generous championship
+of another man:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You stand for him warmly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Falconer, reading him, said quickly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I know him thoroughly!  He has the faults of his race, but as an
+individual he is the right sort."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With their pretty habit, her cheeks had grown red in the course of the
+discussion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Please give me my parasol; it's awfully hot here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He opened it for her and she held its rosy lining against the sun.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Falconer, who from the rail had been observing, through the haze
+formed by countless cocktails, the figure of his wife in her white
+dress, as well as the figure of her faithful squire, here came
+swaggering up to them both.  He was never jealous, but Mr. Bulstrode's
+uniform courtesy and attention to the woman neglected by her husband
+often piqued him to attention.  As he drew near, Mrs. Falconer asked
+quickly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the Marquis, Jimmy?  What do you suppose he will say to your Wild
+West scheme?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you women understand us even when we are stupid mysteries to
+ourselves!  Tell me, how will he take this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He will refuse."  The lady was quick in her decision.  "He cannot in
+consistence do otherwise.  He will consider your plan provincial and
+Yankee, and he will consider, what you ignore, that it will kill his
+mother.  If he cannot marry Molly with the family consent in proper
+French fashion he will naturally give her up.  But first of all, my
+dear Jimmy, he will put <I>you</I> in your place!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode cast a fatherly glance to where the young people sat talking
+together: the Marquis in gray clothes of the latest London make, a
+white rose in his button-hole, and monocle in his eye, a figure more
+unlike the traditional cowboy one could scarcely conceive.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your taste is good, ma chere amie," his voice was delighted.  "Your
+instinct as a connoisseur is faultless; but you are not quite sure of
+your <I>objet d'art</I> this time."  He nodded kindly at the Parisian&mdash;"He's
+all right! he's a true sport, a lover and a man.  De Presle-Vaulx knows
+my Wild West scheme and has accepted."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Molly had put twenty-five francs on Bon Jour and expected to win it.
+The money Bulstrode played would have bought a very handsome present
+for his lady, and he felt as if he were making an anonymous gift to the
+woman he loved.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the ringing of the bell Falconer left his post by the railing and
+came up and joined the little group of his friends just below the Grand
+Stand.  He lit a cigar, threw down the match furiously, smoked
+furiously, and nerved himself for the strain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nodding toward the betting contingent he muttered: "They're sheep.
+They're all betting on the favorite naturally.  Bon Jour wasn't
+mentioned for place even, poor little girl!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The ignored little racer had ambled around the field, her jockey in
+crimson and white, doubled up upon her back after the manner of his
+profession.  Bon Jour was as golden red as a young chestnut; she had
+four white feet that twinkled on the fragrant turf whose odors of
+crushed blades and green blades, of earth and the distant smell of the
+sea went to her pretty head.  She threw it up eagerly as her disputants
+filled the field.  There were nine horses scheduled, but only five
+qualified.  The Rothschild gelding, an English gray, and two others
+named for probable places.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's cool as a rose," murmured Bon Jour's owner, "and just look at
+her form, will you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was charming, and already the American's horse was attracting
+attention.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Molly, with De Presle-Vaulx's aid, rose on her chair, from which her
+excitement threatened at any moment to precipitate her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Maurice&mdash;of course she'll win.  Isn't she a <I>dear</I>?  How much
+shall I make on twenty-five francs?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A frightful amount!  There are twenty to one up on her, Molly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl mentally calculated, exclaimed with pleasure and, with
+sparkling eyes, watched the lining-up of the racers.  Neck to neck they
+stood, a splendid showing of satin and shine from fetlock to forelock,
+equine beauty enough to gladden a sporting man's heart, and all five
+were away before Miss Malines was even sure which one was the great
+Grimace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the first the favorite's nose was to the good.  His shapely body
+followed, and when the horses came in sight again beyond the right-hand
+hedge, he had put four lengths between himself and the others.  The
+winner of the Grand Prix had all the field with him.  But the gray
+gelding who strained at Grimace's flanks had no staying powers,
+although he was backed as strongly for place as was Grimace to win; as
+he fell back Bon Jour began to attract notice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode and De Presle-Vaulx exchanged glances over the absorbed
+figure of Jack Falconer.  "She may yet win place," murmured the younger
+man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As they came up the wide turf sweep that lay like an emerald sea
+crested by the dark waves of the hedges, as the horses rocked like
+ships over the obstacle&mdash;Bon Jour closely followed the favorite.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the moment Miss Malines cried: "Oh, a jockey's off!  Oh, Jack, it's
+Bon Jour!  She's <I>thrown</I> her jockey!  I see the red and white."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Falconer biting his cigar fiercely, laughed in scorn.  "She's
+thrown <I>them</I> all right.  She's left them all <I>behind</I> her&mdash;see!" he
+pointed, "there are only three running."  And, indeed, as they came
+again in sight, one of the horses was seen to be wandering loose about
+the course, and another cantered nonchalantly some hundred yards behind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's not even trying," murmured her enchanted owner.  "She's cool as
+a rose."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The cries which had named the Rothschild gelding from the start were
+now mingled, and Bon Jour, flying around the emerald course, might have
+heard her name for the first on the public lips.  She was running
+gracefully, her head even with the favorite's saddle and the English
+gray was a far-off third.  Bon Jour was pressing to fame.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the last hurdle as they appeared flying in full sight of the Grand
+Stand it was evident the pretty creature had made her better good.  The
+horses leapt simultaneously and came down on all fours, with Grimace to
+the rear, and amongst the frantic acclamation with which the public is
+always ready to greet the surprise of unlooked-for merit, Bon Jour
+passed Grimace by half a metre at the goal.  Jack Falconer was an
+interesting figure on the turf; his horse was worth twenty thousand
+pounds.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Several hours later, Bulstrode, early in the salon, walked up and down
+waiting the arrival of the ladies.  He had paid downstairs a hundred
+francs for the privilege of dining in the window of the restaurant,
+because Mrs. Falconer chanced to remark that one saw the room better
+from that point.  And the head waiter even after this monstrous tip
+said if "<I>ces dames</I>" were late there would be no possibility to keep
+this gilt-edged table for them.  It was the night of the year at
+Trouville: Boldi and his Hungarians played to five hundred people in
+the dining-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode looked at the clock; they had yet ten minutes' grace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Extremely satisfied with himself, with Bon Jour, above all with the
+French Marquis&mdash;he felt a glow of affection for the whole French nation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How we misjudge them!" he mused; "how we accuse them of clinging to
+their families' apron strings, of being bad colonists; call them
+hearthstone huggers, degenerates; and declare that they lack nerve and
+force to rescue themselves from degeneration!  And here without
+hesitation this young man&mdash;&mdash;"  At this moment the salon door opened,
+and one of the ladies he had been expecting came in, the youngest one,
+Miss Molly Malines, in a tulle dress, an enormous white hat, a light
+scarf over her shoulders, and the remains of recent tears on her face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode!" she exclaimed, half putting out her hand and
+drawing it back again, as she bit her lips: "I thought I should find
+Mary here; I wanted to see her first to <I>cry</I> with! but of course it is
+you I <I>should</I> see and not cry with!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She gave a little gasp and put her handkerchief to her eyes to his
+consternation; then to his relief controlled herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maurice has just told me <I>everything</I>," she repeated the word with
+much the same desperation that De Presle-Vaulx had put into a gesture
+which to Bulstrode had signified ruin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's too wonderful! too <I>glorious</I>, Mr. Bulstrode, isn't he?  I loved
+him before, but I <I>adore</I> him now!  He's glorious.  I never heard
+anything so terrible and so silly!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bright tears sprang to brighter eyes, and she dashed them away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+("She's adorable") he was obliged to acknowledge it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, how could you be so cruel; yes, I will say it, so cruel, so hard,
+so brutal?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Brutal</I>?"&mdash;he fairly whispered the word in his surprise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, fancy Maurice in the West, in the dreadful Western life, in that
+climate&mdash;&mdash;!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, it is the Garden of Eden," murmured Bulstrode.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I mean to say with cattle and cowboys."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come," interrupted her father's friend, practically, "you don't know
+what you are talking about, Molly.  You don't talk like an American
+girl.  They've spoiled De Presle-Vaulx, and this will make a man of
+him!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Malines called out in scorn:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>A man of him</I>!  What do you think he is?  He's the finest man I ever
+saw.  You don't know him.  Just because he has a title and his mother
+spoils him, and because he has been a little reckless in debts and
+things, you throw him over as you do all the French race without
+knowing them!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her tears had dried and her cheeks flamed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, Maurice has served three years as a common soldier in the
+Madagascar Army; and <I>that's</I> no cinch!  Cuba's a joke to it.  He's had
+the fever and marched with it.  He's slept all night with no covering
+but the clothes he had worn for weeks.  He's eaten bread and drunk
+dirty water.  He's been a soldier three years.  The way I came to know
+him was at Dinard where he swam out into the sea to save a fisherman
+who couldn't swim, and all the town was out in the storm to welcome
+him!  They carried him up the streets in their arms&mdash;" she waited a
+minute to steady her voice&mdash;"He's been two years exploring in Abyssinia
+with a native caravan&mdash;no white man near him, he's the youngest man
+wearing the Legion d'Honneur in France.  <I>And you want to send him out
+to make a cowboy of him in the American West to turn him into a man</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Bulstrode had never heard such impressive youthful scorn.  Molly
+threw back her pretty head and laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know many cowboys who have been three years a soldier;
+travelled through unexplored countries; written a book that was crowned
+by an academy?  Well, I don't!" she said boldly.  "Of course I like his
+title, of course I am proud of his traditions.  They're fine!  And it
+is no dishonor to love his château and his Paris hôtel, and I'd love
+his mother, too&mdash;if she'd let me.  But I adore Maurice <I>as he is</I>, and
+he's man enough for me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The floor seemed to quiver under poor Bulstrode, who could scarcely see
+distinctly the lovely excited face as he ventured timidly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't know all these things, Molly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was still unpitying.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course not!  Americans never do know.  They only <I>judge</I>.  You
+didn't think Maurice would tell you all his good points!  He doesn't
+think they are anything.  He only sees the fact that he has debts and
+that we are both poor and his family won't give their consent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Bulstrode smiled and said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is naturally forced to see these things, my dear child."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl softened at his tone and said more gently:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, they are terrible facts, of course.  It only means that my heart
+is broken, but it doesn't mean that I will consent to your plan, or to
+his plan, Mr. Bulstrode.  I won't make him break his mother's heart and
+ruin his career for me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The gentleman came up and took her hands: his voice was very gentle:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What, then, will you do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, wait," she said with less spirit.  "Wait until his mother
+consents, or until she dies...."  She began to hang her head.  Her
+eulogy of her lover over, only the dry facts of the present remained.
+She had no more enthusiasm with which to animate her voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here Mrs. Falconer and the Marquis opened the door, and started back as
+the animated picture of beauty being consoled by kindness met their
+view.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, come along in!" cried the girl cheerily.  "I have just been
+ballyragging Mr. Bulstrode!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+De Presle-Vaulx came eagerly forward:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't listen to her, Monsieur!  Molly's tired out after so much
+success."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The startled benefactor looked doubtfully from her to the young man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I?" shrugged De Presle-Vaulx, "I'm already half cowboy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mary Falconer put her arm round Molly's waist, drew her to her, "and
+Molly is more than half Marquise."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Bulstrode," again cried the girl impetuously.  "<I>Please</I> reason
+with him!  He's horribly obstinate.  You have put this dreadful idea in
+his head; now please tell him how <I>ridiculous</I> it is.  If he goes West
+and spoils his career and breaks with his family, I'll never marry him!
+As it is, I will wait for ever!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But my dear child!"  Mary Falconer was determined to have the whole
+thing out before them, "you don't seem to get it into your head that
+you have neither of you a sou, and Maurice can never earn any money in
+France."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Malines, to whom money meant that she drew on her father, the
+extravagant stockbroker whose seat even in the Stock Exchange was
+mortgaged, and who had not ten thousand dollars' capital in the
+world&mdash;lost countenance here at the cruel and vulgar introduction of
+the commodity on which life turns.  She sighed, her lips trembled, and
+she capitulated:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, if that's really true ... as I suppose it is&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode watched her, she had grown pale&mdash;she drew a deep breath, and,
+looking up, not at her lover, but at the elder man, said softly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, I guess I'll have to give him quite up then."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But here De Presle-Vaulx made an exclamation, and before them all took
+Molly in his arms:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he said tenderly, "never, never!  <I>That</I> the last of all!  Mr.
+Bulstrode is right.  I must work for you, and I will.  We'll both go
+West together.  Couldn't you?  Wouldn't you come with me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+... "And your mother?" asked the girl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing&mdash;" De Presle-Vaulx whispered, "nothing, counts but <I>you</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Over their heads Bulstrode met his friend's eye, and in his were&mdash;he
+could not help it&mdash;triumph, keen delight, and in hers there was anger
+at him and tears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At this moment the waiter put his head in at the door and implored
+Monsieur to come down if he wanted the seat in the window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, we're coming!" Mrs. Falconer cried impatiently.  "Molly, there's
+some eau-de-cologne on the table.  Put it on your eyes.  Don't be long
+or we'll lose our place.  The West will keep!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She went out of the door and Bulstrode followed her.  In the hall she
+said tartly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I hope you're satisfied!  I never saw a more perfect inquisitor.
+Why didn't you live at the time of the Spanish persecution?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He ignored her scathing question:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am satisfied," he said happily, "with both of them; they're bricks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lady made no reply as she rustled along by his side to the elevator.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the floors below came the clear, bright sound of the Hungarian
+music in an American cake-walk and the odor of cigars and wines and the
+distinct suggestion of good things to eat came tempting their nostrils.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Bulstrode followed the brilliant woman, a sense of defeat came over
+him and with less conviction he repeated:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I <I>am</I> satisfied, but you, my friend, are not."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," shrugged Mary Falconer desperately, "you know <I>I've</I> no right to
+think, or feel, or criticise!  I never pretend to run people's lives or
+to act the benefactor or to take the place of Fate."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The light danced and sparkled on the jet in her black dress, on the
+jewels on her neck.  Under her black feather-hat her face, brilliant
+and glowing, seemed for once to be defiant to him, her handsome eyes
+were dark with displeasure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The poor fellow could never recall having caused a cloud to ruffle her
+face before in his life.  It was not like her.  Her tenderness for a
+second had gone.  He could not live without that, he knew it, what ever
+else he must forego.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He said, with some sadness, "I suppose you're right: if one can buy
+even <I>a honeymoon</I> for another couple he shouldn't lose the
+opportunity."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked up at him quickly.  They had reached the ground floor&mdash;they
+had left the elevator and they stood side by side in the hall.  The
+lady had a very trifle softened, not very much, still he noticed the
+change and was duly grateful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We must wait here," she said, "for the others to come down.  I can't
+let Molly go in alone, and I don't know where my husband is; I haven't
+seen him all day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode continued spiritlessly: "Molly, if you remember, begged me to
+tell De Presle-Vaulx how 'perfectly ridiculous' my scheme for the Wild
+West is.  I will tell him this&mdash;you will coach me,&mdash;there'll be some
+pleasure in that, at least! and then I'll find out for what sum the
+Marquise de Presle-Vaulx will sell her son.  I'll buy him," he said,
+"for Molly, and of course," he brought it out quite simply, "I shall
+<I>dot</I> the girl."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then the lady stepped back and looked at him.  He felt, before that
+she had merely swept him with her eyes; now she looked at him.  She
+cried his name out&mdash;"Jimmy!"&mdash;that was all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But in the exclamation, in the change of her mobile face, in the lovely
+gesture that her hand made, as if it would have gone to his, Bulstrode
+was forced to feel himself eminently, gloriously repaid, and it is not
+too much to say that he did.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap05"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE FIFTH ADVENTURE
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+V
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IN WHICH HE MAKES NOBODY HAPPY AT ALL
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode stood before the entrance of the Hôtel de Paris bidding his
+friends good-night.  Watching them, at least one of them, enter in
+under the shelter of the glass pavilion, he considered how much more
+lonely he was at that special moment than he could remember having been
+before.  Of course he had bidden Mary Falconer good-night a hundred
+dozen times in the course of his life, but it seemed to come with a
+more sublime significance than ever how he gave her up every time he
+said good-by and how he was himself left alone.  And yet, had Mrs.
+Falconer been asked, she would have said that she never found her
+friend more cold and more constrained.  In his correct evening dress
+with the flower she herself had given him in his buttonhole, his panama
+in his hand, he had been absorbed in her beauty, in the grace of her
+dark dress, bright with scintillating ornaments&mdash;her big feathered hat
+under which her face was more lovely, more alluring than ever; and
+nothing in his eyes told the woman what he thought and felt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She touched his arm, saying:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look, Jimmy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Isn't that the lovely woman we've so often remarked?  See, she's all
+alone, how curious!  She's going over to the Casino to play, I suppose.
+<I>What</I> can have happened to the man who has been with her all this
+time?  Where is the Prince Pollona?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Bulstrode turned his head in the direction indicated, through the
+trees passed along the figure of a slender woman, trailing her thin
+gown over the pebbles and the grass.  She disappeared in the lighted
+doorway of the Casino.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're quite bearish to-night," Mrs. Falconer said reproachfully,
+"quite a bear.  I believe you're angry!  Dear Jimmy, you may, I
+promise, carry out all your philanthropies without my interference; I
+won't even criticise or tease.  I promise you next time you shall go
+sweetly and serenely on your foolish way!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," he got out with effort, "I believe I've suddenly grown awfully
+selfish, for I find I'm so ridiculous as only to want things for
+myself&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+(When he stopped she did not help him but, instead, persisted gently
+with the wicked feminine way she had of urging him, tempting him on.)
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What, then, what do you wish?  Can't you tell me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He laughed almost roughly and said, "No, it's a secret, and I'm one of
+those unusual creatures who can keep a secret."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The woman's face changed.  He saw the shadow that crossed it.  "Come,"
+she sighed, "you must bid me good-night..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And at this moment he had seen Jack Falconer emerge from a still more
+shadowy corner, a cigar between his teeth.  Drawing his wife's arm
+through his, Falconer nodded to the other man and said they had all
+better be going up.  Bulstrode noted bitterly the satisfaction on
+Falconer's bestial, indulgent face and the content that man felt with
+himself this evening, his triumph at the race's termination.  His horse
+had won the stakes and was famous, his wife had been called to-day the
+loveliest woman in Trouville, and not for the first time Bulstrode
+suffered from it, the proprietorship with which Falconer considered his
+wife.  For the smallest part of a second he fancied that the woman drew
+away, half turned away, looked toward him; and in dread that he might,
+if he met her eyes, see some look like appeal, Bulstrode avoided
+meeting her glance.  He saw them pass under the glass roof of the hôtel
+leaving him standing alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The deserted lover waited until they had disappeared; then, turning
+abruptly, vaguely in search of human beings with whom he might exchange
+a word should he feel inclined to talk, dreading the deserted gardens
+ami finding his own rooms the dreariest prospect of all, he went into
+the Casino with the intention of waiting for the Frenchman who he
+thought more than likely would come and join him there.  The Marquis
+failing him, Bulstrode chose a place not far from the table where the
+lovely woman, that Mrs. Falconer and himself had remarked, seated
+herself before the game.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode's sense of desolation and loneliness would not leave him.  If
+his luck had been bad, the excitement of the sport might have brought
+him some sensation; but, on the contrary, he won.  "Only," he said
+humorously, as he gathered up his winnings, "only unlucky in love!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was well on in the night when he thrust his last roll of bank notes
+into his pocket.  He had beaten the bank; he had raked up and stuffed
+away a small fortune.  As he wandered out through the deserted rooms,
+he noted, bent over the table, her head in her hand, the woman who, in
+spite of his sincere absorption in Mary Falconer, had, like a
+temptation, crossed his mind when he first came into the Casino.  No
+one disturbed her, and she had remained in this dejected posture for
+some time.  This one amongst the many women in Trouville, Bulstrode and
+his friends had remarked for several days.  She had first appeared
+alone; made a discreet <I>début</I> on the beach, passed through the Rue de
+Paris and kept away from the more public parts of the town.  Later she
+had been joined by a man well known in the world, the Prince Pollona,
+who was travelling incognito.  The woman's beauty and manner were such
+that her actual standing was a mooted question; it had even been
+remarked that she was the princess herself incognita, but that they all
+knew to be impossible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before the official who waited to see the last players leave the
+<I>salle</I> could speak to her, she rose of her own accord, gathering her
+silken cloak about her, and went quickly from the gambling room.  Once
+on the stairway, however, her footsteps halted and she went slowly down
+as if reluctant to leave the shelter of the brightly lighted
+apartments.  Bulstrode following her, observed her closely; tall, very
+slender, with a fine carriage and a lovely blonde head set on the most
+graceful of necks, older than Molly and younger than Mrs. Falconer, she
+was quite as <I>comme il faut</I>.  All along she had worn a collar and rope
+of pearls which had excited Molly's enthusiasm.  To-night she was
+denuded of her jewels; her neck was bare.  Bulstrode remarked this as
+he walked behind in full view of the soft adorable <I>nuque</I> below the
+curls of the girl's fair hair.  She trailed her dress slowly through
+the garden walks, her white figure in the darkness escaping from him a
+little as the trees made an avenue for her.  But Bulstrode distinctly
+felt that he was expected to follow.  Whether or not he might intrude
+he did not ask, as he came along, surprised however to see her actually
+stop short within a few feet of him.  Under the full light of one of
+the big lamps, she stood motionless, her arms by her side, her chin
+raised.  Now that he was quite near her he found her more lovely than
+he had even imagined.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He went up directly to her and, without asking how she might take his
+interference, said: "You cannot remain here alone, Madame, the gardens
+are deserted.  What can I do for you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he so spoke in his kind voice the woman lifted her head and looked
+full at him; Bulstrode was surprised at her words and more particularly
+at her voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You&mdash;" she breathed, "you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Taking it for granted that for some reason or other it might be him
+more than any other man, Bulstrode went on.  "You seem more or less to
+be in trouble, if I may say so.  Won't you please let me be of some
+service to you&mdash;let me at least see you out of these gloomy gardens?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the woman, whose face had flushed, exclaimed: "Oh, no, no!  Please
+don't bother; please leave me.  I want to be alone."  And, as she
+spoke, she turned and went away from him some few steps.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jimmy Bulstrode never knew what impulse made him spring forward and
+with one sudden gesture dash from her hand what it held.  But the
+little object fell some distance away, hard down in the grass, to be
+found the next morning by the guardians of the place and considered as
+a relic of the fortunes of Casino hazard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Heavens!" exclaimed the gentleman, and he caught in his hand the
+slender wrist from which he had just dashed the weapon.  "My good God!
+You poor child, why, why&mdash;&mdash;" and he could go no further.  The woman's
+face, although moved, was singularly tranquil for the face of a woman
+on the verge of self-destruction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Won't you leave me," she whispered and Bulstrode, gathering himself
+together, said firmly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Leave you?  Not now, certainly, not for anything in the world.  And
+you must let me take you home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a few moments' silence in which she bit her lip and apparently
+controlled a burst of hysterical weeping, the young woman accepted his
+offer and very lightly put her hand on his arm.  "You may, if you
+like," she consented, "take me home, as you call it.  I am staying at
+the Hôtel des Roches Noires."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the Casino gardens through the silent town without exchanging one
+word with her&mdash;for he saw she wished to be silent&mdash;Jimmy took the lady,
+as he called it, home.  Once in the big corridor of the vast hôtel,
+into whose impersonal shelter they entered as the only late comers, he
+stood for a second before bidding her good-night, whilst the porter
+eyed them, scarcely with curiosity, so used was he to late entrances of
+this kind which he imagined he fully understood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good-night&mdash;"  Bulstrode started and at once cut himself short, for he
+did not really intend to say it then&mdash;he had not spoken to her and he
+knew he would never leave her until at least he was sure she would not
+take her life before the next morning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl extended her hand, her beautiful face was gray.  "Will you
+not," she asked, "come up with me to my drawing-room?  I am quite
+alone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode bowed and without hesitation followed her up the stairs to
+the conventional suite of hôtel rooms, where, in the little salon,
+trunks stood about in the evident indications of hasty packing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl threw her gloves, her handkerchief and her soft silken cloak
+on the table.  She then seated herself in a corner of the sofa by an
+open dressing-bag and Bulstrode, at her invitation, took a chair
+opposite.  He scarcely knew how to begin his conversation with her, but
+he determined at once to go toward what he believed to be the most
+crying need.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You lost to-night," he said.  "I saw it.  As it happened, I was lucky.
+I have no need of money, none."  He had drawn from his pocket piles of
+louis; he took out from his wallet a roll of notes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saw, too, as well as the look of passion and admiration, that her
+face was familiar, at least that there was about it something that
+suggested remembrance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This," she said, "is a fortune!"  Her accent was British and her voice
+very soft and sweet.  "It is quite a large fortune, isn't it?  My debts
+here are small.  I have not fifty pounds in the world," she said
+smiling, "I work for my living, too.  I have been extravagant, for I
+had really made a lot of money, but lately I've thrown everything away.
+Yesterday my pearls were sold, and my jewels went last week; the races
+and the Casino did the rest!  This would make me quite rich."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Work for her living!" Bulstrode thought, with a pang as he looked at
+her.  "Heavens, poor dear!"  A thousand questions came to his lips, but
+he asked her none.  He was mastering the feelings her personality, her
+trouble, and the night, aroused.  He also decided to go at once, while
+there was still time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is very droll that this money should have come from <I>you;</I>" she
+repeated "from you," with the insistence on the pronoun that he had
+before remarked as strange.  "Even now you don't know me, do you?
+Don't you know who I am?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," Bulstrode wondered, "and yet I have certainly seen you before,
+but save as I have noticed and admired you here, I don't <I>think</I> I know
+you.  Should I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You <I>have</I> seen me then here?" she caught delighted, "you have
+actually noticed me?  You said 'admire'; did you perhaps find something
+in me to like?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who," he said with sincerity, "could help himself!  Of course I've
+seen you and remarked you with your friend."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here she bit her lip and put up her hand.  "Oh, please," she frowned,
+"Oh, please!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode, surprised at her accents of distress, murmured an excuse and
+said he was much at fault, he should remember.  But here the girl
+smiled.  "Well, it is not exactly a duty to know me; my name is not
+quite unknown.  I play in 'The Shining Lights Company,' 'The Warren
+Company,' I am Felicia Warren&mdash;<I>now</I>, haven't you seen me play!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was sorry, very, very sorry that he had not!  Oh, but he knew her
+name and her success; they were famous.  He wished he could have
+assured her that he had admired her before the footlights ...!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Felicia Warren's eyes strayed down at the table on which the money was
+so alluringly spread.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've been touring in Australia and the Colonies, still I go now and
+then to the Continent, though I am almost always in London."  She
+paused, then regarded him fully with her great blue eyes.  "Don't you
+remember, Mr. Bulstrode, a great many years ago when you took a
+shooting-box in Glousceshire?  Don't you remember...?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Staring at her, trying to place the image which was now taking form, he
+did; he <I>did</I> remember it and she?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was a mill there on the place.  Rugby Doan was the miller, he is
+the miller still."  Didn't Mr. Bulstrode remember that Doan had a
+daughter?  She had been fifteen years old then, she had ambitions, she
+was altogether a ridiculous and silly little thing; didn't he remember?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode was silent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The gentleman, Mr. Bulstrode, took a strong liking to Doan; he gave him
+the money to educate his daughter.  Oh, dear me, such a generous lot of
+money!  Then, as the girl was extraordinarily silly (she had ambitions)
+she went on the stage.  Her father never forgave her; poor father!  She
+had never seen him since.  "Mr. Bulstrode, don't you remember Felicia
+Doan?&mdash;I am the miller's daughter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode extended his hand.  He wanted to say: "My poor child, my poor
+little girl," but Miss Warren's dignity forbade it.  "No wonder your
+face was familiar," he said quietly; "no wonder!  How I wish I might
+have seen you play, but we must do something to make your father look
+at things in a reasonable way.  What can we do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl shook her head.  "Nothing" she said absently, "oh, nothing.
+You know what an English yeoman is! or perhaps you don't!  My greatest
+kindness is to keep away from the Mill on the Rose" ...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Felicia Warren was not thinking of Glousceshire or of her father.
+Still looking down at the money on the table, not even toward her
+newly-found friend, she went on, "It is not half as curious, our
+meeting here, as one might think.  I knew you were here when I came and
+I have watched you every day with&mdash;with your friend."  A slight
+expression of amusement crossed her face as, looking up, she caught his
+puzzled expression.  "Ah, you wonder about it!" she laughed gently.
+Coming a little nearer to him, she went on: "You see, you have been my
+benefactor, haven't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+(Bulstrode wondered in just how far he <I>had</I> been beneficent!)  "It's
+natural I should remember you with gratitude, isn't it?  Thanks to you
+I have made my name."  Her pride was touching.  "You've made it
+possible for me to know the world, to know life and to realize my
+career.  And now," she emphasized, "you've come to save my life and
+afterward give me a little fortune."  Here she again pointed to the
+money.  "My father took your money for years, Mr. Bulstrode, but <I>this,
+this</I> must all go back.  You must take it back soon&mdash;not that it could
+really tempt me, but it hurts me to see it there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode, more wretched than he had yet been in his philanthropic
+failures stared at her helplessly.  This blind beneficence, this gift
+made to the miller in a moment of enthusiasm had produced&mdash;how could he
+otherwise believe&mdash;fatal results?  Here was this delicate creature in
+the fastest place in Europe, deserted by a man who had brought her
+here&mdash;on the verge of suicide.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whilst speaking, Felicia Warren gathered up the gold and notes and she
+was thrusting the money into his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Please, please be reasonable," he pleaded.  "You must let me help you.
+There isn't any question of delicacy in the situation where you find
+yourself to-night.  If ever a man should be a woman's friend, I should
+be that friend to you, and you must let me.  Don't refuse.  Money is
+such a little thing, such a stupid little thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Warren shook her head obstinately.  "Oh, that depends!  I've
+worked so hard that money often seems to me everything.  Indeed, I
+thought so to-night when I had not a sou!  I shall think so to-morrow
+when they seize my trunks for the hôtel bill."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Seize your trunks!" he exclaimed.  "Why&mdash;you don't mean to say&mdash;&mdash;?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The actress blushed crimson.  "Oh, of course you thought otherwise,"
+she said, throwing up her pretty head.  "I pay for my own livelihood,
+Mr. Bulstrode," she told him proudly, "I pay for <I>everything</I> I have
+and wear and eat and do.  Don't feel badly at misunderstanding," she
+comforted him sweetly&mdash;"You have nothing to apologize for.  Why should
+you or anyone think otherwise?  But I don't care in the least what
+people say or think; that is, <I>I only care what one person says</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With some of his gold in her palm and some of his bills in her hands,
+Felicia Warren put both her hands on Bulstrode's arm.  "No," she said
+softly, "<I>I only care what one person thinks</I>.  Can't you see that you
+mustn't give me this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he persisted doggedly, charmed by her beyond his reason and angry
+to find that she would not let him help her in the way he wished, "I do
+<I>not</I> see!  You must let me help you, you shall not be driven to
+desperation."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Driven to desperation!" her expression seemed to say.  Yes, so she had
+been, but not through financial anxieties.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, I had rather starve than take your money.  I could far sooner
+have taken it from poor Pollona; and he left me so dreadfully angry
+this morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a second neither spoke.  He saw the soft mobile face touched to its
+finest.  Felicia's eyes were violet and large, and their expression at
+the moment pierced him with its appeal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you see?" she whispered.  Her voice broke here.  Her hands
+trembled on his arm, some of the gold rattled on the floor and rolled
+under the divan.  She swayed and Bulstrode caught her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"... Ever since you came to the mill," she whispered,
+"ever&mdash;since&mdash;you&mdash;came&mdash;to&mdash;the&mdash;mill."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before Bulstrode had time to realize what she said, or the fact that
+his arm was about her, she had rushed across the room, thrown open the
+window and gone out on the balcony.  Left alone with what her words
+implied, Bulstrode watched her go.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The clock on the mantel pointed to three and through the open window
+came the long, rushing sound of the sea on the beach.  The day was
+breaking and Bulstrode could see the white figure of Felicia Warren
+between the lighted room and the dawn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He told himself that there was no reason why he should look upon her as
+anything but an adventuress&mdash;and a very clever one&mdash;a very dangerous
+one.  But, at all events, there <I>was</I> no doubt that she was Felicia
+Doan.  She refused his money, and she told him that she loved him.  But
+Jimmy Bulstrode, man of the world as he was, did not reason at all
+along those lines.  Whether because he was vain, as most men are, or
+because he was susceptible as he always told himself he was, he
+believed what she said.  More than once during the week at Trouville,
+when she should have been absorbed in Polonna, Bulstrode had caught her
+eyes fastened upon himself and as soon as she had met his own she had
+turned hers away.  He had no difficulty now in recalling the Mill on
+the Rose, or the lovely bit of country where his shooting-box had held
+him captive for nearly the whole hunting season.  Nor had he any
+difficulty in recalling the miller and his pretty daughter.  Felicia
+even then had been a wonder of good looks, and very intelligent and
+mature.  He could even see her as a child more plainly than he could
+recall the woman who had just left him.  She had been a pretty,
+romantic girl and&mdash;she had deeply charmed him.  He had walked with her
+under the willows; he had told her many things; he had gone boating
+with her on the Rose; he had tramped with her along the English lanes.
+Of course he had been wrong.  He had known it at the time&mdash;he had known
+it.  And perhaps one reason why he never reverted willingly to the days
+spent with the girl was because his conscience had not left him free.
+The money given to Doan, Bulstrode had always felt, was a sort of
+recompense for hours of pleasure to which he had no right.  Even at the
+time he had feared that he had disturbed the girl's peace, and because
+he had not wished to disturb his own, he had given up his lease and
+left the place.  Twelve years!  Well, they had altered her enormously,
+and her life had altered her and her experiences, and she was a very
+charming creature.  She was, in a measure, his very own work&mdash;almost
+his creation.  He had helped her to change her station, to alter her
+life.  What had she become?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode's reflections consumed twenty minutes by the clock.  He had
+smoked a cigarette and walked up and down the deserted room, passing
+many times the table where his gold lay scattered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Finally&mdash;he did not dare to trust himself to go out to her&mdash;he called
+her name, Felicia Warren's name, gently, and she came directly in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whilst alone on the balcony she had wept.  Bulstrode could see the
+trace on her cheeks and she was paler even than when he had struck the
+pistol from her hand in the gardens of the Casino.  She came over to
+where he stood and said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's not a ruse, Mr. Bulstrode.  Girls like me always have ideals.  It
+is fame with some, money with others, dress and a social craze for a
+lot of them.  But with me, ever since you came it has been
+YOU&mdash;everything you said to me twelve years ago I have remembered.
+Silly as it seems, I could almost tell the very words.  I have seen a
+lot of men since, too many," she said, "and known them too well.  But I
+have never seen anybody like you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode tried to stop her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But no," she pleaded, "let me go on.  I've dreamed I might grow great,
+and that some day you would see me play and that I should play so well
+that you would go crazy about me!  I have thought this really, and I
+have lived for it, really&mdash;until&mdash;until&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he did not question her or interrupt, she went on:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I said it was an ideal.  Thinking of you and what I'd like to grow for
+you kept me, in spite of everything&mdash;and I fancy you know in my
+profession what that means&mdash;good."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here Felicia Warren met his eyes frankly with the same look of entire
+innocence with which she might have met his eyes under the willows near
+her father's mill.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've been so horribly afraid that when you <I>did</I> come there might be
+heaps of things you would not like that I have been awfully hard on
+myself, awfully!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was lacing and unlacing her slender fingers as she talked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I went to Paris this spring because I saw that you were there, and
+after passing you several times in the Bois and seeing that as far as I
+could judge you were just the same as you had been, I took a new
+courage hoping, waiting, for you, and being the best I knew.  It seems
+awfully queer to hear a woman talk like this to a man," she understood
+it herself&mdash;"but you see I am used to speaking in public and I suppose
+it is easier for me than for most women."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode, more eager than anything else to know what her life had
+really been, surprised and incredulous at everything she said, broke in
+here:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But this&mdash;this man?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Pollona," she replied, "has been there for years, for years.  He
+has loved me ever since I first made my <I>début</I> and he follows me
+everywhere like a dog.  I have never looked at any of them, until this
+week."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a sigh as if she renounced all her dreams, she said: "I grew tired
+of my romantic folly.  I was ill and nervous and could not play any
+more, and that was dreadful.  So, when Pollona came to me in Paris this
+spring, I gave him a sort of promise.  I told him that I was going to
+Trouville for the Grande Semaine, that I would think things over and
+that I would send him word."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She picked up her handkerchief from the table where it lay beside her
+gloves and her cloak and twisted the delicate object in her hands,
+whose whiteness and transparency Bulstrode remarked.  They were clever
+hands, and showed her temperament and showed also singular breeding for
+one born in the state of life from which she had come.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," she said shortly, "as you have seen, I gave in&mdash;I gave in at
+last."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why," Bulstrode asked abruptly, "did he leave you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But instead of answering him, the girl said: "But you don't ask me why
+I sent for him to come?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was silent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here she hid her face and through her fingers he could see the red rise
+all along her cheek.  Her attitude, and more what she implied than what
+she said, and what he thought and feared, made the situation too much
+for him.  With a slight exclamation he put his arm about her and drew
+her to him.  As she rested against him he could feel her relax, hear
+her sigh deeply.  But, as he bent over her, she besought him to let her
+go, to set her free, and he obeyed at once.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There," she said, "don't do that again&mdash;don't!  Pollona left me
+because he was jealous of you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But at this, in sheer unbelief, her hearer exclaimed: "Oh, my dear
+girl!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes," she nodded, "when he found that I did not love him, that I
+could never love him, he forced me to tell him the truth.  Oh, don't be
+afraid," she said, as though she anticipated his anger, "you are in no
+wise connected with it.  He thinks of me as a romantic, foolish girl.
+He has laughed at me, tried to shake my faith, to destroy my ideal, but
+at least he was honest enough to believe me; and that is all I asked of
+him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not for a moment did Bulstrode feel that she was weaving a web for him.
+There was something about her so sincere and simple, she was so fragile
+and fine and fair, there was so much of distinction in all she did and
+said that it put her well nigh, one might say touchingly, apart from
+the class to which she belonged.  Her art and her knocking about,
+instead of coarsening her, had refined her.  She looked like a bit of
+ivory, worn by experience, and struggle, to a fine polish; there was a
+brilliance about her and he understood and felt, he instinctively saw
+and knew, that she was unspoiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It took him some half second to pull himself together.  Then to turn
+her thoughts from him, his from her, if he might, he questioned:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What sort of a man is Prince Pollona?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," she cried warmly, "the best! a kind, good, honorable friend.  He
+deserves something better than the horrors I have put him through, poor
+dear!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He seemed very devoted to you," Bulstrode said, "if one could judge."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not without pride she admitted that he was, and that the Prince had
+always wanted to marry her.  "I might have married him," she repeated,
+"easily a score of times.  But how it appears to interest you&mdash;&mdash;" she
+said jealously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only as he interests you," replied Bulstrode, "and what you tell me is
+a great satisfaction.  To be the Princess Pollona is an honor that many
+women would be glad to have conferred upon them."  Felicia Warren's
+good looks were undeniable, her <I>genre</I> was exquisite, and Bulstrode,
+again with no effort, believed all she said.  Princes had married far
+less royal-looking women, of far more humble antecedents than Felicia
+Warren.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, his rank didn't dazzle me," she murmured absently, "they seem all
+alike, and when they find out that I am not a certain kind they ask me
+to marry them...  But if I could only get back to the Mill on the Rose,
+Mr. Bulstrode!  If I might again see it as I used, if I could see you
+there as I used to see you&mdash;walk by your side; row with you on the
+river; if I could hear the wheel again as I used to hear it, then"&mdash;her
+voice was delicious, a very note of the river of which she spoke.  Oh,
+she must act well, there was no doubt about that; no wonder she had
+been a success: "If I might walk there with you&mdash;titles, even my art
+and all the rest"&mdash;she did not apparently dare to look at him as she
+spoke, but fixed her eyes across the room as if she saw back twelve
+years into &mdash;&mdash;shire ... "if I could <I>only, only</I> go back again with
+you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In spite of himself, carried away by her voice, Bulstrode said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You shall, you shall go back with me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," she gave a little cry and caught his hand,
+steadying herself by the act.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait," he murmured, "wait, let me think it all out."  And, as she had
+done, Bulstrode walked over to the window, to the balcony where the
+fresh air met his face, where the breath from the sea fanned him,
+blended with the scent of the meadow.  Before Bulstrode the first
+reflection of the morning lay like silver on the sea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he finally went back into the room, Felicia Warren had not moved.
+Just as he left her, she sat, deep back into the divan, leaning on her
+hand, with something like the glory of a dream on her face.  Standing
+in front of her, he said slowly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm entirely free.  No one in the world depends upon me.  I have no
+tie, or bond to my life.  I have freedom and money.  So far&mdash;if what
+you say is all true, don't start so, for I believe it, every word&mdash;so
+far, I have spoiled your life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the girl shook her head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no, <I>you haven't</I>," she assured him.  "We make our own lives, I
+expect, and I told you that I could remember everything you ever said
+to me in the past&mdash;you never lied to me, and you were never anything
+but kind and dear.  I've been a fool, a fool!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sitting there in her fragile evening dress, its ruffles torn where they
+had trailed across the pebbles in the street, the disorder of the room
+around her, its evidence of a homeless, wandering life, she seemed like
+a bit of flotsam that, no matter from what ship it had been blown, had
+at last drifted along the shore to his feet.  Unhappy and deserted, she
+reached the very tenderest part of Bulstrode's nature.  Cost him what
+it would, he must save her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But, as though the girl, with an instinctive fineness divined, she rose
+and going over to him very gently, laid her hand on his shoulder:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must go <I>now</I>: that is what I ask you to do.  I have seemed, and
+indeed I have thrown myself upon your mercy; but, in reality, I don't
+do any such thing.  You will soon forget me, as you have been able to
+do all these years.  The table is full of your money.  I am poor, and
+yet I don't take it.  Doesn't <I>that</I> prove a little my good faith?
+Doesn't it?  Only think of me as the most romantic dreamer you ever
+saw, and of nothing more.  Oh, <I>no</I>," she breathed softly, "<I>no</I>, a
+thousand times...!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've answered your question before you've asked it!  No, I couldn't;
+no woman who wants love is content with pity.  I would rather starve
+than take money from you although I have lived on your money for years.
+I would rather be unhappy than take what you could offer me for love.
+You mustn't speak; you mustn't ask me.  The temptation is very great,
+you know, and it <I>might</I> wreck me.  No, Mr. Bulstrode, and the reason
+why I say it is because I've seen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I've seen?'" he repeated her words.  "You've seen, but what do you
+mean&mdash;what have you seen?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm going to tell you why I sent for Prince Pollona, although you
+don't ask me.  I came to Trouville alone.  I saw you; I've watched you
+with your friends."  Bulstrode accepted quietly.  "The two young people
+are engaged to be married and the other two are husband and
+wife&mdash;well...?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A spasm of pain crossed Felicia Warren's face and she put what she had
+to say with singular delicacy for an actress who had risen from the
+people.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know," she said, "I understand, but when I saw you, I knew that
+there was no hope for any other woman who loved you&mdash;and I gave you up
+then.  I sent for Pollona."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The introduction of even so little into the room as the suggestion of
+the woman he loved, startled Bulstrode as nothing else under the
+circumstances could have done.  It struck him like a lash.  He was
+disenchanted, and he more quietly considered the girl whose confession
+and whose beauty had made him nearly disloyal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Felicia Warren, as though she took it in her own hands and, mistress of
+herself, knew how much she could take and what she could deny herself,
+laid her hand on his arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can do nothing at all, just as you have always done&mdash;and I&mdash;I can
+learn to forget.  But I have refused your money to-night," she said
+piteously, "haven't I? and I am penniless; I have refused more too;
+perhaps what no woman who loves could refuse as well.  Don't you think
+that there is something due me?  Answer me this?  Tell me.  You <I>do</I>
+love her, you <I>do</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she leaned against him, the years seemed to fall away and to leave
+her a girl again, nothing more than a child he had known.  He took her
+face between his hands and looked into it as one might look into a
+well.  He saw nothing but his own reflection there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God knows," he said deeply, "I could not willingly pain a living
+creature, and to think that I should have made you suffer, have made a
+woman suffer for years.  Let me do all I can, my dear, let me&mdash;let me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You love her?" she persisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His hands dropped to his side.  "With all my soul," he said, "with all
+my soul!"  He thought she would sink to the floor, but instead she
+caught fast hold of the table on which his money lay.  She leaned on it
+heavily, refusing his aid.  He took one of the girl's cold hands in his.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Listen, listen!  Let me say a word.  How do you think it makes a man
+feel to hear what you have told me to-night? to see you as you are, to
+grow to know you in such a short&mdash;in such a terrible way, and in a few
+hours to grow to know you so well, to find you dear, desirable, and
+then to leave you, as you tell me I must leave you.  I can't do it; I
+have never been so miserable in my life, and if I find I am entirely
+helpless to serve you I can never get over the regret."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Felicia Warren turned a little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have found you near disaster," Bulstrode urged, "I must and will see
+you to the shore.  If you utterly refuse to let me take care of you as
+I can and will, will you then," he hesitated, then brought it
+out&mdash;"Will <I>you marry</I> Prince Pollona?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She drew from him with a cry, and by what he said she seemed to have
+gained sudden strength.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My God!" she breathed, "You ask me <I>that</I>?  Oh, it proves, it proves
+how less than nothing I am..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode saw he could not, must not undeceive her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you wish me to do <I>that</I>," she cried.  "Oh, how dreadfully, how
+cruelly, it breaks my dream!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode said authoritatively, "Listen! listen for one moment."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The eyes of the girl were dark with defiance; she brushed her hair off
+her brow with the back of her hand and stared straight before her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"&mdash;Otherwise," said Bulstrode, "I will remain here; I shall not leave
+these rooms till morning and you will then be forced to marry me, and
+since you think as you do, since I have told you my secret, ruin
+perhaps three lives."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had her at bay, and for a brief second, he thought she would accept
+his menace.  But then in a sudden her anger vanished and her face
+softened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know," she said, "that, loving you as I do, whatever you tell me
+to do, I must.  But let me go on with my career.  Let me work, let me
+work, and be free!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He said decidedly, "No!  You must be protected from yourself; you must
+have some one with you who will take care of you as I cannot do.  You
+must do this for me.  Is Pollona distasteful to you?" he pursued, "do
+you <I>hate</I> him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She made an indifferent shrug of her shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode was watching her face keenly, and after a second said, "No,
+you do not hate him.  You sent for him to come to you here.  He was the
+one to whom you turned, Felicia; turn to him now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she wavered and hesitated, he insisted, coming close to her:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have an ideal, you told me&mdash;well we can't get on without them.
+Your ideal has helped you, hasn't it?  It seems pretty well to have
+stood by you.  I have one too, you must understand that, and I ask you
+to help me to keep it secret now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, what do you mean?" she questioned breathlessly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean," he said gravely, "that I am a very lonely man.  My days are
+absolutely desolate excepting for those things that I can put into
+them.  I have nothing in my life and I am not meant for such a lot.  I
+am not meant for that!  Such an existence has bitter temptations for
+every man, and although I have never seen you before, possibly my fate
+and Pollona's rest to-night with you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Felicia Warren turned her great eyes with a sort of wonder to him.
+They rested on him with a tenderness that he could not long have borne.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must not remain unmarried," he said, "you must not."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without answering him she went slowly over to her little desk.  She
+wrote a few seconds there and came back and handed to him a little slip
+of paper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When the telegraph office opens to-day, will you send this dispatch
+for me?  It will fetch Prince Pollona to me no matter where he may be.
+I have asked him to meet me in Paris and I will take the morning train
+from here myself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned to the table on which his money lay and taking a roll of
+notes said, "I will pay up everything I owe here.  I think I have given
+you every proof, every proof."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode made no advance towards her.  He saw how she struggled with
+her emotion.  He let her get herself in hand.  Finally, with more
+composure, she spoke again:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I play next month in London.  Will you come to see me play?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, many times."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," Felicia Warren murmured, "only once, and after that I shall never
+see you again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He would have protested, but she repeated, "never again," with such
+intensity that he bowed his head and he found that her decision brought
+a pang whose sharpness he wondered would last how long.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had started, with her last words, toward the door and she followed
+him over to it.  There, detaining him by her hand, she asked softly:
+"Does she, too, love you as much as this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode hesitated; then said, "I do not know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not know?" cried the girl, "you don't know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was with the greatest difficulty that Bulstrode could at any time
+bring to his lips even the name of the woman he loved.  At this moment
+the vision of her as he had seen her lately on her husband's arm going
+in under the pavilion of the hôtel crossed his mind with a cruel
+despair and cruel disgust.  A sense of his solitude, of his defrauded
+life, rushed over him as he looked into the eyes of this woman who
+loved him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he said intensely, "I do not know, I do not know.  I have a code
+of honor a million years old, but I live up to it.  She is a wife, I
+have never told her that I love her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl's incredulity and surprise were great.  It showed in the smile
+which, something like happiness, crossed her lips.  She drew a long
+breath; she held his eyes with hers, then she laid both her arms around
+his neck and Bulstrode bent and kissed her.  He held her for one moment
+and his heart, if it beat for another woman, beat hard and fast and its
+pulse ran through her own.  Then Felicia heard the door close and the
+footsteps of the man died away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was seven o'clock when Bulstrode found himself out in the streets.
+The fresh air in a keen, salt wind poured over him.  Down on the beach,
+for a couple of francs he bribed an attendant to open a bath-house for
+him, and a few moments later, shivering a little in the keen air, he
+could have been seen running down to the sea, and in a few moments more
+his strong swift strokes had carried him far out into the waters which
+the summer sun even at this early hour was fast turning into blue.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+When Jimmy came to himself, he found that without either seeing Mrs.
+Falconer again or having even bidden a decent good-bye or godspeed to
+his fiancée, he was back again in Paris.  He had run away.  Well, that
+wasn't any new thing, he was always at it.  Paris, in the month of
+August, gave him a hot, desolate welcome, and it was with difficulty
+that he could find a lawyer who would help him down to bedrock and put
+in motion the business of winding up the affairs of Molly and her
+Marquis.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+De Presle-Vaulx came to town and found his champion there and brought
+him many messages from the ladies as well as a letter which Bulstrode
+put in his pocket to read down in the country at the château of
+Vaulxgoron in the seclusion of his own room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode played the part of the "American Uncle" to perfection.  He
+let the old Marquis beat him at backgammon; he wandered all over the
+property with the Marquise.  He bought the young man for Molly Malines
+and closed up his beneficent affairs in a very decent manner indeed,
+but on the night when Mrs. Falconer and Miss Malines should have
+arrived at the château, Bulstrode ran away again.  From then on he
+became a wandering Jew.  He ran up to Norway, fished a little, then
+took a motor and some people, who did not know any one whom he had ever
+known, and drove them through Italy.  He continued to travel a little
+longer, working his way northward until finally&mdash;so he put it&mdash;dusty as
+"Dusty Dog Dingo," tired as "Tired Dog Dingo," Bulstrode found himself
+in London, drew a deep breath and capitulated.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap06"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE SIXTH ADVENTURE
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+VI
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IN WHICH HE DISCARDS A KNAVE AND SAVES A QUEEN
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The morning he left for Westboro' Castle, Bulstrode remembers as being
+the most beautiful of days; it came to him like a golden gift of
+unrivalled loveliness as it broke and showered sunlight over England.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The very crannies of the island," he smiled at his own conceit, "must
+filter out this gold to the sea."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+England lay like a viking's cup full to the brim of sunlight;
+especially entrancing because unusual in the British calendar, and
+enchanting to the American gentleman because it absolutely accorded
+with his own mood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was middle November, and yet there was not&mdash;so it seemed as one
+looked at yellow and copper luxuriance&mdash;a leaf lost from the suave
+harmony of the trees.  Farms, tiled and thatched, basked in summery
+warmth, forest, hedge and copse, full-foliaged and abundant, shone out
+in copper and bronze, and the air's stillness, the patient
+tranquillity, enfolding the land, made it seem expectantly to wait for
+some sudden wind that should ultimately cast devastation through the
+forests.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On leaving his ship at Plymouth the day before, Bulstrode found amongst
+other letters in his mail the Duke of Westboro's invitation for a
+week's shooting in the west of England: "There were sure to be heaps of
+people Jimmy would know"&mdash;and Bulstrode eagerly read the subjoined list
+of names until he saw in a flash the name of the One Woman in the
+World.  He at once telegraphed his acceptance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The following afternoon he threw his evening papers and overcoat into a
+first-class carriage whilst the guard placed his valise and
+dressing-case in the rack.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As there had been several minutes to starting time, he had not
+immediately taken his seat, but had stood smoking by the side of his
+carriage.  He might, and did, doubtless, pass with others of the well
+set-up, well-looking men travelling on that day, for an Englishman, but
+closer observation showed his attire to be distinguished by that
+personal note which marks the cosmopolitan whose taste has been more or
+less tempted by certain fantasies of other countries.  Bulstrode's
+clothes were brown, his gloves, cravat, and boots all in the same color
+scheme&mdash;one mentions a man's dress only on rare occasions, as on this
+certain day one has been led to mention the weather.  That a man is
+perfectly turned out should, like the weather, be taken for granted.
+Bulstrode on this day, travelling as he was towards a goal, towards the
+one person he wanted above all to see, had spent some unusual thought
+on his toilet.  At all events, on passing a florist's in Piccadilly,
+after giving his order for flowers to be boxed and expressed to
+Westboro', he had selected a tiny reddish-brown chrysanthemum which now
+covered the button-hole of his coat's lapel; it created a distinctive
+scheme of color.  In point of fact it caught the eye of the lady who,
+hurrying from the waiting-room towards the Westboro' express, caught
+sight of the American and started.  It appeared as if she would speak
+to him, half advanced, thought better of it, and said to the guard, who
+was about to fasten a placard on the window of a carriage:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Please&mdash;-just a second&mdash;won't you, guard?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The bell rang, and Bulstrode found himself helping the lady into his
+own compartment.  The guard shut the door, which closed with the
+customary soft thick sound of a lock setting, and pasted over the
+window the exclusive and forbidding paper&mdash;RESERVED.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then it was in his corner by the window, once chimney pots and suburbs
+left behind, that the traveller to Westboro' watched the landscape with
+the pale, transparent smoke from the little farms floating like veils
+across the golden atmosphere; the slow winding streams between
+low-bushed, rosy shores, and red-tinged thickets; the flocks of rooks
+across fields long harvested: the flocks of sheep on the gently
+swelling downs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"England, England," he murmured, as if it were a refrain in whose
+melody he found much charm, as if his traditions of insular forebears
+might in some way be recalled in the word, as if it spoke more than a
+chance traveller's appreciation for the melodious countryside.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had letters, read them, and put his correspondence aside, then
+comfortably settling himself in his corner, began to construct for
+himself a picture of Westboro', whose lines and architecture he knew
+from photographs, although he had never been there.  It was agreeable
+to him as he mused to fancy himself for the first time with Mrs.
+Falconer in England, in the country they preferred to all the others in
+the Old World.  They were in sympathy with English life and manners,
+and here, if (oh, of course, a world of "ifs")&mdash;here no doubt they
+would both choose to live when abroad, were there any choice for them
+of mutual life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Westboro' is Elizabethan and of vast proportions.  The house would
+naturally be very full&mdash;how much of the time would they discover for
+themselves?  There would decidedly be occasions.  Mary Falconer did not
+hunt, and although Jimmy Bulstrode could recall having postulated that
+"there are only two real occupations for a real man&mdash;to kill and to
+love," he also knew what precedence he himself gave, and how little the
+sportsmen of Westboro' would have cause to fear his concurrence if by
+lucky chance in more or less of solitude he should find his lady there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was months since he had seen Mrs. Falconer&mdash;months.  It had been a
+long exile.  Each time that he started out to run away, it was just
+that&mdash;running away&mdash;it was with a curious wonder whether or not on his
+return he should not find a change.  Time and absence&mdash;above all, time,
+worked extraordinary infidelities in other people.  Why should they two
+believe themselves immune?  The long months might have altered <I>her</I>.
+The mischief was yet to be seen.  But when in the list of noble names
+he had in his hand, his eyes fell upon the single prefix&mdash;<I>Mrs.</I>&mdash;and
+found it followed by <I>The Name</I>, if he had not sincerely known before,
+his pulse at sight of the written words told Jimmy that he had not, at
+all events, changed!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thinking at this point to light a cigarette, he became at the second
+mindful of the other passenger in his carriage and that they were
+alone.  As he looked across towards the lady who had unwound her dark
+veil, he observed that she was herself smoking, holding the cigarette
+in her hand as with head turned from him she scanned the landscape
+through the window of the compartment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saw with a little start of pleasure what a delight she gave to the
+eye, tastefully dressed as she too was, in leaf brown from head to
+foot, with the slightest indication of forest green at buttons and hem
+of her dress.  Her hat, with its drooping feathers, fell rather low
+over her wonderful hair, bronze in its reflections.  Indeed, the lady
+blended well with the November landscape, and as she apparently was not
+conscious of her companion, he enjoyed the harmonious note she made to
+the full.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What scope," he mused, "what scope they all have&mdash;and how prettily
+they most of them know it!  So just to sit and be a thing of beauty;
+with head half-drooping, and eyelash meditative, one hand ungloved, and
+such a perfectly lovely hand...!  (It held the half-smoked cigarette,
+but his taste was not offended.)  He thought her a whim too debonnaire
+for a Parisian of the best world, and of <I>that</I> she most distinctly
+was&mdash;Austrian more than likely.  Every woman has her history&mdash;only when
+she is part of several has she a past.  What had this woman so to
+meditate upon?  She turned and he met her eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have naturally waited for me to speak first," she said with a
+gracious gesture of her bare hand.  "And <I>I</I> was waiting till you
+should have finished your letters!  I, too, have wanted to think."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her familiar address, perfectly courteous and made in a pleasant voice,
+with a very slight accent, was a surprise to her companion, who
+mechanically lifted his hat as he bowed to her across the narrow
+distance between their seats.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The guard," she smiled, "came very near putting the placard on the
+other window!  But I think we are now quite sure to be alone!"  She
+pointed to the seat opposite.  "Sit there," she more commanded than
+permitted, "we can talk better and I can watch your kind face, which
+always looks as if you understood&mdash;and I shall be able to please you
+better&mdash;perhaps to make you not unkind to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He obeyed, taking the place indicated without hesitation, and as he sat
+facing her, he saw her to be one of the most beautiful women he had
+ever seen.  There was at once something dazzling about her&mdash;and at the
+same time familiar...  He had surely met her, and not long ago.  Where?
+And how stupid of him to have forgotten!  Or had he only seen her
+photograph and remarked her as a celebrity whose type of looks had
+pleased him?  But no, she knew him: that was clear.  He met her
+friendly eyes, where liking was evident as well as the suggestion of
+something akin to an appeal.  Bulstrode was greatly intrigued.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unkind?" he repeated vaguely.  "But why should you think that?  Please
+me?"&mdash;and his graciousness did not fall short of her own&mdash;"But why
+should you...?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, true," she interrupted him, "quite true.  There is no reason
+why&mdash;" and she made a rather petulant gesture&mdash;"yet every woman wants
+to please, and none of us relishes being judged.  Never mind, however,
+don't think of me as a <I>person</I>&mdash;just let me talk to you frankly, be
+myself for once with someone if I can."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jimmy Bulstrode gathered himself together and sat back in his corner.
+She was very lovely at it, this being herself.  Gallantry would not let
+him bluntly tell her that she had made a mistake.  A second more would
+clear the matter and would be quite soon enough, for him at least, to
+find that they were total strangers.  Unless, indeed, he had met her
+and forgotten it.  They had possibly held some conversation together in
+a London drawing-room.  But how could he have been such a boor as to
+forget her?  She was neither a crook nor a mad woman&mdash;she might be an
+adventuress; if so, she was an unusual one.  He glanced at her luggage
+as if it might help him&mdash;a dark-covered dressing-case, bundle of furs,
+and rugs&mdash;new, everything new.  Her left hand was bare of rings, she
+clasped it with her gloved fellow and said warmly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't believe it possible that you came, actually came, and that we
+have so smoothly met!  I can't believe nothing has hitched or missed,
+or that everything is so cleverly planned and arranged for me, and
+least of all I can believe that it should be <I>you</I> who are so sublimely
+doing this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah&mdash;"  But here Bulstrode tardily started up.  <I>He</I> doing it all?  At
+least if he was, then he must, if nothing else&mdash;know!  He smiled at her
+with a pleasant sense of being in the secret and with indulgent
+amusement at her mistake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think&mdash;you made a mistake," he began it with commonplaceness, but
+his gesture softened the words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the lady made a little annoyed "tchk" with her tongue against her
+teeth, and threw up her head with an impatient toss, an intensely
+foreign way of dismissing his interpolation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't, in pity's sake, talk like this," she exclaimed.  "<I>Mistake</I>?
+Who under the blue heavens <I>doesn't</I> make them&mdash;Certa!  Haven't you,
+yourself, in spite of your moral, spotless life, haven't even <I>you</I>
+made them?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How," flushed the naïve gentleman, on the sudden betrayed into a
+mental frankness of self-approval near to conceit, "how does <I>she</I> know
+me so well?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who is there," his companion gave him the question in a challenging
+tone "to tell each other and every one of us what is or will be a
+mistake in his life?  Where were everyone's eyes when I married?&mdash;Why
+didn't someone tell me then that my marriage was a hideous mistake?  As
+for the rest of it..." she turned away for a second towards the window,
+and Bulstrode saw how the hot blood had mounted and her eyes had
+changed when after a moment she came back to him again.  She put out
+towards him a beseeching hand: "<I>You</I> above all men, who are faithful
+to an ideal, must not give me old platitudes!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode's head reeled.  He felt like a man who after a narcotic finds
+his brain suddenly alight and real things grow strange.  He wanted to
+rub his eyes.  She appeared singularly to appreciate his daze.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is as strange to me as it is to you, to find myself here with a man
+to whom I have never spoken before&mdash;to be under his protection, and to
+talk with him like this; and yet I have seen you so often, I have
+watched you in the distance, and long since I singled you out as the
+one man in whom I could fancy confiding&mdash;the one man to whom I could
+give a sacred trust."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With these words the incognita drew herself up, and her manner, with
+amazing swiftness, changed from a childlike confidence to a dignity not
+without a certain rigidness, and as Bulstrode remarked this, he also
+noticed that she was very young, and he was conscious in her of a
+something he had never quite met in a woman before&mdash;an extreme dignity,
+an ultra poise, an assurance.&mdash;Who was she?&mdash;And whom did she take him
+to be?  With every turn of the fast wheels of the express it was
+growing more difficult to explain.  She would more keenly feel the fact
+that he had not cut her frankness short&mdash;he had no right to her
+confidences even though she took their mutual knowledge of each other
+for granted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When," he ventured it delicately&mdash;"did you last see me?"  It was bold,
+but it did perfectly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, an age ago, isn't it?  You were last on the Continent I think in
+August at Trouville, during La Grande Semaine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ah, he reflected, <I>of course</I>!  <I>That</I> was where, amongst so many other
+celebrities and beauties, she had attracted his attention.  But his
+rapid mental calculations of those seven days could reveal to him no
+woman's face but one.  He found himself even in this unique moment
+recalling the time following hard on Molly's formal engagement to her
+Marquis ... and those days were amongst the brightest in his life.  No,
+there had been no foreign element at Trouville for him in the dazzle
+and freedom of that worldly fortnight&mdash;for Jimmy Bulstrode, in all the
+scene she summoned up, there was but one woman.  He came back with a
+start to the other.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then yesterday, as you passed our table at the Carlton, and it seemed
+as if heaven had sent you to us to help us&mdash;at least so we both felt."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Bulstrode doubtfully smiled and, now determined, broke in, or would
+have done so, but she waved him imperiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your mind," she spoke indulgently, "is on the wrong side to-day.  Try
+to think only of the happiness towards which I am going so rapidly, so
+rapidly." Then, as she with her word glanced out of the window, she
+cried: "Oh, what if something should happen to the train&mdash;what if some
+horrible delay&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he shook himself to action.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear lady," he began gravely, "you must hear me.  You have made and
+are making a great mistake.  I am certainly not the man..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I <I>command</I> you, sir," she flashed out at him&mdash;"surely you will not
+disobey me&mdash;you will not make me think as well that I am making a
+mistake in you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, but that," he gasped, and caught her words gratefully, "is just
+the point."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She smiled.  "Please...!  Let me judge!  Only don't condemn me.  Only
+be glad you can so marvellously help a human soul to happiness&mdash;can so
+generously lend yourself for these few hours to aid in my escape."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was escaping!  Well, he had nearly guessed it!  The new luggage
+alone was an indication.  Unless her mania was for taking strangers to
+be intimate friends, she wasn't fleeing a madhouse!  From what did she
+so determinedly run?&mdash;and how in heaven's name was he helping her?  Did
+she think he was going to marry her?  Into what tangle had the man he
+was unwittingly impersonating got himself&mdash;and in default of his
+appearing on the scene in what would his absence involve poor Bulstrode?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took off his hat and put it down on the seat&mdash;thus his fine head was
+fully revealed to the lady's view.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not know you," he said determinedly.  "You do not know me, but
+you seem bent on not acknowledging this fact or permitting me to state
+it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But even this plain statement did him no good, for she said, quite
+agreeing with him:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I had ever spoken with you&mdash;been near you before, I would not be
+here now.  You see it is just your <I>impersonality</I>&mdash;your <I>having</I> no
+connection with anything in my life that makes it possible!  But why,"
+she exclaimed impatiently, "do you spend these few hours with me in
+this meaningless warfare?  You should, it seems, take the honor more
+graciously, and since you are here, have consented to be here, show me
+a little kindness.  Since, after all, willingly or not, you are in
+effect nobly helping me to do what I am doing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And this brought him wonderfully up to the question of what was he
+doing?  What was he supposed to be furthering here?  It was his
+expression, no doubt, that made her ask with curious aptness: "Just how
+much <I>do</I> you know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The poor gentleman threw out his hands desperately.  "You can't think
+how in the dark I am!  How beyond words mystified."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How droll!" she laughed sweetly, "and how amusing and all the more
+beautiful and like you, to be, in spite of yourself, here.  You see we
+have switched off&mdash;just as you said we would do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So they had indeed: they had stopped, and the fact fetched him to his
+feet.  He looked out: it was a fast express, a through train&mdash;the first
+stop should have been Westboro' Abbey.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, we're switched off!" she cried delightedly, "as you know: as you
+arranged so cleverly!&mdash;and the Westboro' people will go on without us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Would they indeed!  Lucky people, but not if he could prevent it.  But
+his attention to the train's procedure had come too late.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He opened the window and looked out.  They stood at the side of a
+switch some three hundred yards above a small squat station, and in the
+far distance Bulstrode could see the end of a disappearing train.  He
+drew in his head and quietly asked his companion:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What has happened to us, do you know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She laughed deliciously.  "Know?  Why, of course, I do.  You're
+delightful!  Of course I have followed every step of the plan&mdash;the
+special for Dover picks us up here in three-quarters of an hour,
+doesn't it?  We make the boat for Calais, and there Gela meets me and
+<I>your</I> mission is done!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The gentleman opposite her listened quietly, and before speaking waited
+a second, staring down at her, his hands in his pockets: there they
+touched a little coin which he always carried: a coin that opened at a
+sacred point to discover to his eyes alone a picture of a woman as
+lovely as this woman, as human, and one whom he had good cause to
+suppose loved another man than her husband.  The woman opposite him was
+escaping from her husband.  <I>That</I> was what she was doing!  He who had
+striven for fifteen years to prevent the like in the life of the one
+woman of all, now appeared to be helping this poor thing to the same
+thing.  He did not believe he was to be waylaid and robbed, or that any
+trick had been played upon him.  The only thing he did <I>not</I> believe
+was that the woman knew him!  Before, however, brushing the delusion
+aside, he asked, his candid eyes upon her: "And my mission being so
+done, what then becomes of you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The shrug of her shoulders was neither an indication of indifference
+nor a pretty desperation! it rather was a relinquishing of herself
+wholly to Fate&mdash;an abandon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What becomes of a happy woman who goes with the man she loves?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Her Fate," said her companion, "has no single history.  She is most
+often disillusioned, many times tragic, and always disgraceful."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, hush," she said angrily, "you presume too far.  If you only
+intended to lecture me&mdash;to condemn me&mdash;why did you come?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At this sincerely humorous challenge Bulstrode smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did not, to be quite accurate, come," he said, "and I assure you I
+am here against my will.  You refuse to listen to me; you turn my
+efforts to put things straight against me&mdash;and now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The handsome creature gave him a flash from angry eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your Excellency is scarcely polite.  But I understand.  Even my rank
+doesn't protect me: and although your old friendship for Gela did
+overcome your scruples, and our letters did touch you&mdash;still we should
+have remembered that you are, above all else, the King's friend."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode fell a step back.  Before he could take in the curious honors
+that were being thrust upon him, the lady went hotly on:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know how indulgent of me the King has been: how he adores me
+still, how blind he is, and you pity him and have no mercy for me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here, for she, too, had left her seat, she went over to the compartment
+window and turning her back full on Bulstrode, stood looking out, and
+she thus gave him time and he took it, not to consider his part of the
+affair, but, as if it had been suddenly revealed to him by her words,
+the woman's part in it.  After all it was scarcely important whom, in
+error, she believed him to be.  In a strange fashion, through some
+trick of resemblance, he was here and in her confidence in another's
+stead&mdash;impersonating some man who, in spite of the reputation for
+goodness and honor accredited him by this lady, would scarcely,
+Bulstrode felt confident, be as scrupulous regarding the adventure as
+he himself was fast becoming.  The woman&mdash;the woman was all that
+mattered.  She was a Queen then?  A Queen!  And he had so naïvely
+ignored her perquisites, been so innocently guilty of
+<I>lèse-majesté</I>&mdash;that she, poor thing, attributed his <I>sans gêne</I> to her
+fallen state!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kings and Queens, poor dears, how human they are!  What royalty could
+she be?  And what King's friend was he so closely supposed to be?  The
+King's friend&mdash;well, so he was&mdash;so he must be in spite of his quick
+pity for the lovely creature&mdash;in spite of chivalry and the trust she
+displayed.  But to be practical: what in half an hour could he hope to
+accomplish&mdash;how could he keep a determined woman from wrecking her life?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His mind flew to Paddington, and his first sight of the lady on the
+platform.  There had been near the hour two trains for Westboro', one
+of them a local which left London some few minutes later than the
+Western express.  <I>That</I> later train, no doubt of it, would fetch the
+real accomplice to the eloping lady.  Bulstrode argued that, should he
+declare himself to the Queen at this point for a total stranger, the
+revelation would plunge her in despair, anger and frighten her, and
+lose him his cause&mdash;There was, in view of the cause, he now felt and
+nerved himself to the deception, nothing to do but to assume his rôle
+in earnest and play it as well as he might.  He had never sat alone in
+a travelling carriage and hobnobbed with a Queen, but he gracefully
+made his try at the proper address: "Your Majesty," he began, and she
+whirled quickly round, pleasure on her face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Gresthaven!" she exclaimed with touching gratitude, extending her
+hand.  "Thanks, mon ami!  I shall not have my title long, and I shall,
+I suppose, miss it with other things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode, with her naming of him, knew at length who he was, and
+recalled his supposed likeness to a certain Lord Almouth
+Gresthaven&mdash;famous explorer, traveller and diplomat, cosmopolitan in
+his tastes and a dabbler in the politics of other and less significant
+countries than his own.  In accepting his new personality, the American
+winced a little as he bowed over the royal little hand and kissed it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your Majesty will miss many things indeed," he said gravely&mdash;"your
+kingdom, your people, and the King&mdash;the King," he repeated, dwelling on
+the word, "who, as you say, loves you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My good friend," the lady made a little <I>moue</I>&mdash;"I know everything you
+would say.  You can't suppose I haven't thought of it all?  To be so
+far on my way must I not have carefully considered every step?  One is,
+after all, a woman&mdash;and I am a woman in love."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One word then," pleaded her unwilling imposter&mdash;"one word.  Have you
+also asked yourself: what chance for happiness a woman can possibly
+hope for with a man who allows her to make the sacrifice you are about
+to make?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If his words were straws before the wind to the woman, his simplicity
+was impressive to her.  "It has seemed to me," Jimmy Bulstrode said,
+"that there is a great distinction between love and passion&mdash;and that
+however great his passion for her, a man should supremely&mdash;<I>supremely
+love</I> the woman he singles out of all the world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Queen of Poltavia looked at the gentleman before her, who stood
+very straight, his head alone bent, his clear fine eyes fixed upon her
+own.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Love!" she repeated softly, "how well you say the word."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A slight flush stole up the American's cheek.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Supreme love," he ventured to continue, "means protection to the
+woman...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here the Queen made an impatient gesture as though she shook away the
+impression his tone made.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear Gresthaven," she exclaimed, "love means above all else
+happiness!  One is happy with one person and miserable with another.
+It's all a lottery and unless our plans miscarry I am going towards the
+greatest happiness in the world.  But come"&mdash;She altered her tone to
+one of practical command&mdash;"Let us address ourselves to our flight.  You
+have your train schedule of course?  The Dover train is due here at
+4:50 and it only waits for the taking on of our carriage."  As she
+looked up at him she saw the trouble in his face, and a solicitude for
+her to which she was unaccustomed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mon cher ami," she said quizzically, "what, may I ask, since your
+scruples are so great, ever led you to accept this mission....?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Frankly," he eagerly answered, and was honest in it, "the hope, the
+desire that I might...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Persuade a woman in love against her heart?" she smiled, and so
+sweetly, so convincingly, and so reasonably, he was for an instant all
+on her side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see my folly, your Majesty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's nothing but <I>force majeure</I>, Gresthaven...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes" ... he admitted reluctantly.  "Let me go out now and see to our
+manoeuvres here."  He was able to open the door which a passing guard
+had unlocked unobserved....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The innocent royalty let him pass, thanking him with a smile, and saw
+him go down the track toward the little squat station, with the guards.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode, whose mind as he walked along was busy with train schedules,
+recalled, nevertheless, the Duke's letter, which he still had in his
+letter case, and he took it from his pocket and re-read it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"... We are to have over the week-end a dash of royalty.  Carmen-Magda,
+the Queen of the petty kingdom of Poltavia."  (This mention of the
+Westboro' guests had quite escaped Bulstrode's mind in his
+contemplation of the last page of the Duke's note....  "We are to have
+a compatriot of your own, a Mrs. Jack Falconer.")  And royalty being
+very relative to the unsnobbish American, he had simply transferred the
+title (with possibly a possessive pronoun before it) to the other lady!
+He smiled as he reflected that the Westboro' express was destined to
+arrive at the Abbey without either the royal guest or Mr. James
+Thatcher Bulstrode.  But more to the point, more instantly absorbing
+was the fact, that within ten minutes the slow train from London to
+Westboro' would arrive at Radleigh Bucks, the little station before
+which he now stood, and from it, undoubtedly, would descend the real
+Lord Gresthaven.  If Jimmy needed encouragement in his self-imposed
+rôle of Master of Fate, if he needed to forget the ardor and the
+determination of the little Queen, if he needed to forget how, in
+youth, he had cordially hated those interfering people who, on
+horseback and in chaises, tore after flying lovers to waylay them at
+Gretna Green&mdash;he found his stimulus in recalling that he was "the
+King's friend."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's after all something of a distinction," he mused, entertained by
+the idea, "a sort of royal <I>noblesse oblige</I>&mdash;and since the poor dear
+herself has so made me out to be, given King the precedence, how could
+I, in the cause of gallantry, have proceeded otherwise!  It's this
+diabolical little brown chrysanthemum," he mentally laid the fault
+there.  "It is evidently a telling mark.  People in books are always
+meeting unknowns who are to wear a red flower in the right lapel of the
+coat".... and he had unintentionally gone over into a romance&mdash;and his
+<I>triste</I> part in it was that of an unsympathetic spoiler of a romance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As after a prolonged parley with the station officials he walked
+leisurely back to his carriage, his wallet grown very thin indeed and
+his honest heart suffering many sincere pangs at the contemplation of
+his conduct altogether, he argued: "She is absurdly young&mdash;she will,
+after a little, go back to her allegiance (he put it so), and I don't
+take much stock in that barbaric Gela anyway, he probably is a
+Hungarian band-master or a handsome ticket-agent, a plebian creature
+whose very remoteness from her own life has fascinated her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode, not quite sure just whom he was supposed to be by the train
+people, found himself bowed and escorted back to the carriage which had
+been turned and manipulated and side-tracked&mdash;reswitched and displaced,
+till even its own locomotive and train of cars would have been at a
+loss to find it.  He had the sense of being a traitor, brute, imposter,
+and Providence all in one&mdash;which combination of qualities was
+sufficient to explain his embarrassment and his nervous manner when he
+at length rejoined the Queen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a slight transformation in the lady whose dressing bag had
+aided, evidently, a brisk toilet.  Under her chin flowered out a snowy
+bow of tulle, and she had swathed herself in the thick veil she had
+worn when first boarding the train.  Indicating her disguise to
+Bulstrode, she said with her pretty accent: "I think it well to be
+thus."  And he agreed that it was well.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His own agitation as the other train rushed in, slowed and halted, was
+scarcely less than hers, indeed perhaps greater, for Carmen-Magda, pale
+and quiet, her handsome brown eyes fixed on the window-pane, gave no
+sign of life, until after a series of jerks, jolts and bumps, they
+slowly but certainly became part of a moving train, once more
+undertaking its journey.  Then Bulstrode, who stood determinedly in the
+window, filled it up on the station side, giving her no chance to look
+out had she wished to do so, nor did he think it needful to tell the
+Queen what he saw: A distinguished-looking man in rough brown clothes,
+and oh, the curious coincidence: a reddish-brown chrysanthemum in his
+buttonhole.  His Striking Resemblance was accompanied by another
+gentleman&mdash;short and stout with military mustaches, and swarthy
+complexion.  The two men were gesticulating wildly together, and as the
+train pulled away from them, Bulstrode turned about and faced the
+little Queen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had again lifted her veil, and he thought her pallor natural; in
+the momentary excitement her large eyes were fastened upon him with a
+touching confidence that nearly made the soft-hearted imposter regret
+the boldest act of his history.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you sure," she asked him softly, "that this is the right train?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The coquetry of her bow of snowy tulle, the debonnaire costume of brown
+and green, her gray hat with its feathers, were pathetic to him&mdash;her
+attire contrasted sadly with her pale face.  She was to him like a
+wilful child.  Not more, he decided for the sixth time, than twenty
+years old.  She was like a paper queen out of a child's fairy book, all
+but her anxious face.  "She regrets," he joyfully caught at the thought
+to arm himself and give himself right.  "Poor little thing, she already
+regrets."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leaning forward, he suggested kindly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can't your Majesty rest a little?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he spoke the hypocrite knew that in less time than it would take to
+settle her they would bump into the station at Westboro' Abbey.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Carmen-Magda made no sign of recalcitrancy or regret that she was
+<I>en route</I> for her plebian Gela.  She leaned over and picked up one of
+the illustrated papers upon the seat and idly turned over the pages,
+reverting finally back to the frontispiece where a colored photograph
+displayed a young woman in hunting dress leaning on the arm of a
+military-looking gentleman with black mustaches and swarthy skin.  She
+held it out to Bulstrode and said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a poor enough picture of me, but excellent, isn't it, of the
+King?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode looked at it attentively with an inscrutable illumination on
+his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, it is good of the King, very good indeed," he exclaimed with much
+animation.  It was strikingly so, he could with truth say it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gresthaven had proved himself to be the friend of the King par
+excellence&mdash;the King seemed to have many friends&mdash;-and the poor little
+woman opposite&mdash;with her fetching bow of tulle and her mad confidence
+in a stranger&mdash;her madder confidence in Lord Almouth Gresthaven&mdash;where
+were <I>her</I> friends?  Jimmy leaned to her, and Mrs. Falconer could have
+told that it was his voice of goodness that spoke, the voice "that
+Jimmy seemed able to call at will from some wonderfully dear part of
+his nature: it was for people in trouble, for people he was determined
+to help in spite of themselves."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your Majesty has done me great honor," Bulstrode said.  "You have said
+I was the King's friend, I should like instead to be <I>your</I> friend.
+Women need friends ... even queens.  Would it be too vast a presumption
+if I should from henceforth feel myself to be...."  He waited and
+dared&mdash;"Carmen-Magda's friend?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His innocent lèse-majesté, coupled with the tone he used, reached the
+woman in her&mdash;-not to speak of his personal charm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Didn't I imply friendship when I chose you for this mission?" she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He winced.  "Of course&mdash;but I mean from now on&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She nodded sweetly.  "<I>Cela va sans dire</I>, Gresthaven."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't call me so," he interrupted, "say <I>friend</I>, to please me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are too amusing.  I will say it for you then in Poltavian.  It's a
+sacred word with us," and she called him friend in her own tongue with
+the prettiest accent and a royal inclination of her head as if she
+knighted him.  It cut him and pleased him at once, and he hurried to
+ask her:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What would you think of Gresthaven if, instead of meeting you, as you
+had arranged he should do&mdash;he should betray you&mdash;should have warned
+your husband and have gone so far <I>as to fetch the King to waylay you
+and stop your flight</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Carmen-Magda only laughed, and dismissed the ridiculous supposition
+with a word of disbelief.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me," Bulstrode urged, "tell me what would you think?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She drew herself up haughtily at his insistence as if his hypothesis
+were real to her at last:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He would be the most despicable traitor in the world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode pursued: "What&mdash;would you think of Gresthaven&mdash;if in order to
+save you, to give you time, time to think, to reflect, to perhaps alter
+your decision&mdash;he had used other means less cruel possibly, but as
+surely betraying your good faith?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here she looked keenly through him&mdash;read him&mdash;then waited a second
+before intensely exclaiming:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gresthaven&mdash;<I>what have you done</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His heart came into his throat and his voice nearly failed him.  He did
+not know Poltavians nor the queenly temper, nor did he know how all
+women take any one given thing, but he knew how women the world over
+admit of no change of caprice saving that variability which arises in
+their own minds.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, dear," he thought, "if for no matter <I>what</I> reason, she had only
+changed her <I>own</I> mind!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In five minutes," he said bravely&mdash;"your Majesty will be at Westboro'
+Abbey station, our carriage has been attached to the other train which
+followed us from London."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a smothered cry the Queen sprang to her feet, rushed to the window
+and stared out where nothing in the golden afternoon beauty revealed to
+her in what part of England she was.  Bulstrode had put his hand out
+before her as if he feared she meditated climbing through the open
+window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," she cried furiously, shrinking back from him, "how have you dared
+... dared?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+... "To save your Majesty?  Well, it <I>was</I> hard!" he acknowledged
+practically.  "Harder than you will ever believe.  I may say that no
+decision was ever more difficult to make.  To be so trusted by you, and
+to feel myself a double-dyed villain wasn't agreeable, but the issue
+was a warrant for any treachery."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Great heavens!" she exclaimed.  "Who made <I>you</I> judge of my actions,
+who gave <I>you</I> leave to decide my fate, what a fool I was to trust
+you&mdash;what a fool!  You have spoiled my life!" she accused him&mdash;"You
+have taken from me everything in the world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If she had been alone he knew she would have wept, and he kept his face
+turned from her for some few seconds.  "I have certainly established a
+precedent for myself," he mused with humor.  "<I>I</I> can never run away
+with a woman now&mdash;never."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Small as were the limits of the little carriage she found means to walk
+it up and down several times, her head thrown back, her eyes flashing.
+She spoke, he supposed, in Poltavian, for he could not follow the
+meaning of her few staccato, angry words, but he did not recognise
+among the incoherences that she called him friend!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the flying scenes grew farm-like and pastoral, and the lines and
+sweep of what he took to be park property, caught his eyes he once more
+ventured to speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am not the cold-blooded traitor I seem, believe me," he tried to
+plead, "and until we definitely passed the station at Redleigh Bucks I
+was miserable to think I had, as it seems, betrayed your Majesty.  But
+when as we came up to the station I saw the King on the platform&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stopped short in front of him: "The King!" she exclaimed
+incredulously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode nodded in a matter-of-fact way as if stray kings on
+mid-country platforms were the common occurrence of his travelling
+experiences.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He had evidently followed you that far, and if the plan formed to
+attach your carriage to the Dover express had been attempted, you would
+have been stopped by your husband himself.  As it is you are simply
+going where you are expected to go&mdash;to Westboro' Castle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This dénouement, putting a summary end to her tragic anger, left her no
+place for ecstatics.  She sat down in front of Bulstrode and repeated,
+dazed:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The <I>King</I>!  The King had followed me!  He had been warned then, but
+by whom?  You above all did not....?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh no!"  He was glad to be honestly able to disclaim at least this
+disloyalty.  "I had nothing to do with it.  The King had come on with
+the man who had played your Majesty false all along, the man who is
+indeed more the King's friend than he is Carmen-Magda's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And sitting there, bewildered and appealing before him, she heard him
+say: "I mean Lord Almouth Gresthaven."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She murmured some words in Poltavian, then besought: "Why, why do you
+play with me?"  The tears started to her eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Gresthaven," Bulstrode hurried now to his confession&mdash;"has
+plainly betrayed you.  Either he failed to meet you as planned, or else
+he came too late and thought better of his connivance against your
+husband&mdash;at all events, both he and the King took the slow train."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But <I>you</I>," she interrupted, staring at him&mdash;"You are not Lord
+Gresthaven?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he said quietly, "no, I am an American, nothing more than a
+friend and guest of the Duke of Westboro'.  I tried over and over again
+to tell you this, but you would not hear me and I finally accepted the
+rôle you gave me with the firm intention of taking you with me to
+Westboro' Castle.  My name is James Thatcher Bulstrode, I am from
+Boston, in the United States."  Bulstrode thus tardily introduced
+himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Jimmy, not pretending ever to have counted greatly on the favor of
+princes, was nevertheless taken aback.  Not that he had any
+preconceived notion of what Carmen-Magda would do&mdash;when she eventually
+knew.  He had been too absorbed in his mission, its entanglements, and
+his climax.  He may have been prepared for some exhibition of scorn,
+but he more than likely looked for a social and commonplace ending to
+their ride, but for what Carmen-Magda did he was entirely unprepared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As if in his declaration of himself and his identity he had taken a
+sponge and quite wiped himself off the slate, the Queen, after
+speechlessly staring at him for a few moments, quietly removed her
+attention from him altogether.  She took from a little bag at her wrist
+a rouge stick with which she carefully touched her lips; from a tiny
+gold box she lightly dusted her cheeks with powder; she adjusted her
+tulle bow and her veil and then sat serenely back waiting until the
+train should arrive at her forced destination.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Although, one might say, unused to the manners of royalty, Jimmy was
+dumbfounded; the beautiful woman in forest-brown clothes picked out
+with hunting green had become as strange to him as in the first moment
+when she attracted his attention some few miles beyond London.  That
+she should be angry at his interference he could admit, but that she
+should not be grateful to be saved from her husband's wrath he did not
+understand.  Was he too plebeian for her to notice?  He, of course, did
+not speak to her again, nor did she break the singular silence, and for
+some reason he did not even care to ask her forgiveness.  Finally, he
+decided that she was thinking solely of Gela, the man at the other end
+of the route who would wait for her in vain, and when this sentimental
+view of the case occurred to him, he would have felt <I>de trop</I> had he
+not seen how completely he was ignored.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They flashed past the last miles of wooded valley and hillside.
+Westboro' was very soft in line and very mellow in the evening light.
+The landscape, through a half-mist, was as brown and green as the dress
+of the beautiful silent woman in the opposite corner of the travelling
+carriage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode, looking at her rather timidly, felt as if he were in a dream.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At Westboro' Abbey the guard unlocked the compartment door and
+Bulstrode, who got out first, helped the Queen of Poltavia to descend.
+As she put foot to the ground she said, half leaning on the arm he
+gave: "I thank you&mdash;very much indeed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He caught the few words eagerly, and was fatuous enough to fancy that
+she meant something more than the common courteous acknowledgment of a
+man's help from a travelling carriage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The station was deserted.  The express having arrived some half hour
+before without them, there had evidently been no preparation made to
+meet this train.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Surrounded by her luggage, her brand new luggage, the Queen waited on
+the side of the station that faced the open country, whilst Bulstrode
+made inquiries about telephoning or getting word to the castle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At this juncture, down the lane, between red thickets and golden
+hedges, a smart dog-cart tooled along driven by a lady.  She waved a
+welcoming hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jimmy," she said as she drove up and leaned out and nodded to him, "I
+knew you'd miss the express, you're so absent-minded about trains; and
+who could be expected to distinguish between a 3.50 and a 3.53?  So, as
+you see, I drove down on the chance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had not greeted her in words.  The long afternoon, the romantic
+extravagant episode, of which he had been unwillingly a part, made this
+woman seem so real.  He felt as if from a burlesque extravaganza he had
+come out into the fresh air; their eyes had met and Mrs. Falconer did
+not miss any other greeting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That lady," he then said, "whom you see standing on the edge of the
+platform surrounded by her luggage, like a shipwrecked being on a
+desert island, is the Queen of Poltavia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Heavens!" exclaimed Mrs. Falconer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," he said indifferently, "we came down from London together."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, the whole castle is in a state about her.  A coach and postillion
+went to fetch her at the express.  Telegrams are flying all over the
+country.  Why did she take a local&mdash;and with you&mdash;Jimmy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps she is absent-minded about trains as well," he smiled, "at all
+events here she certainly is and it will be charming of you to drive
+her up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I don't know her!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," he shrugged, "one doesn't exactly <I>know</I> queens, I don't know her
+either, but that wouldn't prevent my doing her a service.  I am sure
+she'd rather be driven up to a cup of tea and a fire by an American
+than stand here waiting for a postilion and four.  It will be nice of
+you to speak to her," he suggested, and stepped back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gathering up her reins, Mrs. Falconer whisked her horse about and drove
+up to the lady's side.  Bulstrode, from a little distance, watched her
+graceful inclination and heard her lovely voice.  He saw Carmen-Magda
+lift her disguising veil, displaying her dark, foreign face.  Slowly
+going up to the dog-cart's side, together with the groom's help, he
+bestowed the Queen's belongings in the trap.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will walk on slowly up the road," he suggested, "and most possibly
+you will send back for me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I'll drive back myself."  She was quite certain about it.  As he
+helped the Queen into the dog-cart, as she leaned on his supporting
+hand, she said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you, thank you very much indeed."  And he was so vain as to
+fancy that into tone and words Carmen-Magda put more warmth, more of
+meaning, than a woman usually puts into the phrase of recognition of a
+man's helping hand.  He could not, moreover, have sworn that at the end
+of the sentence was not murmured a word in a foreign tongue which might
+in Poltavian mean "friend," but as he did not understand the language
+of the country he could not be sure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he watched the trap up the hedged lanes out of sight, he rubbed his
+eyes as if he were not certain whether or not he had not dozed and
+dreamed in his compartment on the slow train from London....  But at
+any rate he had the delightful heavenly certainty that this was
+Westboro' of an Indian summer afternoon&mdash;and that of the two women who
+had just driven up the lane out of sight, one at least was adorably
+real.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap07"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE SEVENTH ADVENTURE
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+VII
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IN WHICH HE BECOMES THE POSSESSOR OF A CERTAIN PIECE OF PROPERTY
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+As Bulstrode stood in the window of his room at Westboro' Castle, his
+face turned toward the country, it seemed to beckon him.  It called him
+from the park's end where suave and smooth the curving downs met the
+preciser contour of the eastern field; from hedges holding snugly in
+the roadways, the roads themselves running off on pleasant excursions
+to townships whose names are suggestive of romance, whose gentle
+beauties have mellowed with the ages which give them value and leave
+them perfect.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With the sweetness of a bell, with the invitingness of a beckoning
+hand, the English countryside summoned the gentleman to come out to it,
+to explore and penetrate for himself.  He gazed charmed and entranced
+at the expanse of rippling meadow where, enclosed by the curtains of
+soft old trees, the thatch of the eaves lifted their breast to the sun
+and mist, and chimneys black with immemorial fires indicated the farms
+of Westboro', rich, homely and respectable, as they left upon the
+landscape harmonious color and history of thrift.  To the east was the
+dim suggestion of the little town, and some few miles in a hollow lay
+the farmlands known as The Dials, and each second growing more
+distinctly visible in the deepening light rose the towers of Penhaven
+Abbey.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the Duke's urging, Bulstrode had been led to stop on at Westboro'
+Castle after the house party had dissolved at the end of their week's
+sojourn; and there had since been many long tramps across country, with
+the dogs at his heels and by his side the Duke, for the time diverted
+from his semi-melancholy, semi-egotistical cynicism, and transformed
+into an enthusiastic sport.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duke of Westboro' was a <I>désenchanté</I>, more truly speaking a victim
+of other peoples' temperaments.  There were, however, not a few little
+scores in the character of moral delinquencies which at least, so he
+felt, he had been called upon quite fully to discharge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The American man gave himself over to his host, and from the time
+Westboro' put out a bait of "Oh, you're decidedly not turning in at
+this hour, old man?" he flanked the Duke on the opposite side of the
+fireplace in the East Library, there after coffee to wear away half the
+night.  During the following fortnight, Bulstrode found that he had
+tallied up with his friend very closely the scores of the last few
+miserable years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Westboro's friendship with him dated back some ten years.  Bulstrode
+had first known the Englishman at Newport where, then not a young man,
+he had come obviously and frankly in search of an American wife.  The
+search was unusual in that it was not for money, but, as Westboro' put
+it, for type and race.  His mother had been an American.  He had adored
+her, and wanted an American mother for his children.  The woman
+herself&mdash;and how Bulstrode saw it as he followed the deserted husband's
+narrative&mdash;the woman had been a secondary thing.  He recalled easily
+the summary and conventional courtship and the vulgar brilliance of the
+wedding.  He had been one of Westboro's ushers, and his smaller part of
+the affair left him with the distressing idea that he had assisted at a
+sacrifice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It would be euphemistic to say that Westboro' poured out his heart to
+Bulstrode; Englishmen do not have such refreshments.  Little by little,
+rather in short curt phrases, a cynical word whose mocking fellow only
+followed after some moments' silence&mdash;little by little, whilst the
+smoky wreaths of the men's cigars veiled their confidences, the Duke
+slowly told the story of ten years of married life.  In this intimacy
+he disclosed the history of the separation which formed at the moment
+the subject of general public comment.  Jimmy was relieved when the
+moment came that the Duke thought opportune to say:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There, old chap, you have the whole story!  It's this cursed tradition
+of marriage, and you're a lucky fellow to be free.  I have never spoken
+to any one before&mdash;you know it.  I don't need to tell you so, but you
+were in, as it were, at the start, and what do you think of the finish?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode reserved his opinion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Westboro' Castle had been built in the sixteenth century by a lover of
+the Virgin Queen.  The stones were paved with memories.  In the Picture
+Hall the ardent gentleman three hundred years before had for one sole
+hour entertained Elizabeth at a feast.  She left him, obdurate and
+unyielding, and he went crazy and followed the royal coach to the park
+gate, weeping, his hands before his face; and there on the ground, his
+fair curls torn, and the dust from the departing vehicles alone of the
+glory that touched him, his people found him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How they prate of inequality, and of the crime of grafting the
+American rose on these old stalks," Bulstrode mused.  The beauty of
+Frances, Duchess of Westboro', he had himself been one of the first to
+concede; a portrait of her by Lehnbach did not to his eyes do her
+justice.  The fresh purity of her type had not been seized by the
+German.  She would be an ideal Duchess, he had said of her when the
+mission of Westboro' to America had been bruited, and Westboro' had
+thought: "She's a strong, fine woman, and will bear me beautiful
+children."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had borne him two.  Bulstrode, in passing through the house, had
+seen the low gates at the doors of two sunny rooms, the toys spread as
+they had been lain.  His own were the only apartments in that wing of
+the castle, and the silence at the end of the hall was never broken.
+When Westboro' had come to this part of his narrative, he had waited
+quiet so long that his companion had naturally taken the evening to be
+at its end.  The Duke had thrown his cigar away, and lifting from the
+table near him a leather case, opened it and handed over to Bulstrode
+the photograph of two little bare-legged boys in sailor clothes.  They
+stood hand in hand, a pretty pair.  Looking at it, and gently turning
+it over on the other side, Bulstrode read:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Frederick Cecil John Edward, Marquis of Wotherington, three years old.
+Guy Perceval, Lord Feversham, aged two years."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Westboro's voice had a dull sound as he took the case from his friend's
+hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are Westboro's I think, neck and crop.  Scarlet fever&mdash;in three
+days, Bulstrode&mdash;both in three days."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And that had been all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode had left the Duke and gone up-stairs.  On the other side of
+his cheerful rooms the empty nurseries in the ghostly moonlight held
+their doors wide open as if to welcome at the low gates those bright
+heads if they should come.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jimmy, whose sentimentality consisted in his acting immediately when
+anything was to be done, mixed a whiskey and soda from the array of
+drinks that always exists at an Anglo-Saxon's elbow, and after a turn
+or two in his dressing-room brought practically out:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's ridiculous!  Sheer nonsense.  There should be children here.  The
+woman is selfish and puritanical, and the man is no lover&mdash;<I>that's</I>
+what's the matter!  But Westboro' certainly loves her in his big, cold,
+affectionate way."  Jimmy smiled at his own fashion of putting it.  And
+how any woman, with a mind and common-sense, could help loving
+Westboro' Castle and countryside, as well as Cecil, tenth Duke of the
+line, the American visitor failed to see.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the Duke of Westboro' thought of the members of his recent house
+party&mdash;the women of it passed before his mental mirror.  There were
+several images of an American lady whose frocks and hats, whose wit and
+grace, whose dark beauty had made her stay at Westboro' brilliant and
+memorable.  Possibly the remembrance of Mrs. Falconer, one night at
+dinner, was what most persistently lingered in the Duke's mind.  She
+had sat on his left in a gown he remembered as becoming, and her jewels
+had shone like fire on her bosom.  He had particularly remarked them in
+thinking of the idle jewels of his own house, left behind by the flight
+of the Duchess.  Mary Falconer had been more brilliant than her
+ornaments, and Westboro' had thoroughly enjoyed his guest.  He had
+asked this woman especially because she charmed him; without forming
+the reason he had a latent hope that she might do more than charm.  He
+wanted to forget and to be eased from the haunting memory that stung
+and never soothed.  From his first tête-a-tête with Mrs. Falconer he
+had at once seen that there was nothing there for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode had said that Westboro' was not a lover.  Reserved as far as
+all feeling was concerned, he had made no advances to the beautiful
+American, but contented himself with watching her.  She could not be in
+love with her brutish husband who, out of the week spent at Westboro'
+was visible only two days.  Then Bulstrode had come.  Pictures of the
+two talking in the long twilights, riding together, walking on the
+terrace side by side, came vividly to Westboro's recollection.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That," he decided, "is a real flesh-and-blood woman, the kind of woman
+I should have married.  Bulstrode is a lucky devil."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"A chap," Westboro' said to Jimmy in a mild unpretentious mood of
+philosophy, "is, of course, a husband; more naturally than people give
+him credit for, a father; but first of all&mdash;and that's what so few
+women take into consideration&mdash;<I>he is a man</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duke had fallen into the habit of breaking through the silences
+when each man, following his own thoughts, would forget the other.  And
+remarks such as these his companion knew, referred in sense and detail
+to the long talks whose intenser personalities had ceased.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This day Westboro' brought out his little paragraph as, between the
+hedges of a lowland lane, the two rode at a walk after a long hard
+canter from Penhaven, some eight miles behind them on the hill.  On
+either side the top of the thorn was veiled with rime.  Down the
+hedge's thickness from his seat on his horse, Bulstrode could look into
+the dark tangled interstices of the thicket and its delicious browns
+and greens.  Into the thorns here and there dried leaves had fallen,
+and from the hedge as well as from the country, clouded and gray with
+mist, came a sharpened sweetness; a blended smell of fields over which
+early winter had passed; a smell of woods over which the fires cast
+smoky veils.  In the freshness and with the eager exercise, Bulstrode's
+cheeks had reddened.  He sat his horse well, and his enjoyment of life,
+his ease with it, his charming spirit, shone in the face he turned to
+the Duke.  For some miles given over to the sympathetic task of
+managing his horse, he had enjoyed like a boy, and during the ride had
+thought of nothing but the physical delight of the open air and the
+motion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," he returned to his friend's remark, "as far as any point of
+interest goes, we may grant you that we began as men.  I mean to say
+that monkeys aren't useful in one's deductions for emotional
+hypotheses, at any rate.  I'll grant you for our use that we were men
+to begin with."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Damn it all," said his host, "aren't we just as much so to-day, for
+all our civilization?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, we don't primarily knock on the head a woman whose physique has
+pleased us, and carry her off while she's unconscious."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It might in some cases be a good thing if we did," Westboro' growled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode ran his hand along the silky neck of his horse, from whose
+nostrils smoke came in little puffs that met the moisture of the air.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, we're not, you know, so awfully far away from our instincts in
+anything, old man!  There isn't any cast-iron rule about feelings.
+They depend on the individual."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you've never married," Westboro' tried frankly to irritate him,
+"and you can't, you know&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sweet temper of the other accepted the Duke's scorn.  "I'm not
+married, or very theoretical about it, either.  One can only, after
+all, have his own point of view."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We're not, I expect, fair to the women," the Duke generously
+acknowledged.  "We look for so much in them.  We expect them to be so
+much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A wife," Bulstrode completed for him, "a mother, a friend."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Westboro' finished it.  "For them and for other men.  And a
+mistress."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And here Bulstrode took him up for the first time with a note of
+challenge in his voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what, my dear man, did you intend that the Duchess should take you
+for?  No, I mean to say, quite man to man, given that any woman could
+or does contain all the qualities you so temperately ask?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Westboro' smiled at the first curtness he had ever heard in his
+friend's voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you know, we men don't fuss about ourselves."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You married her at eighteen," Bulstrode said.  "You made her a
+Duchess.  You had already lived a life and she was a child beside you
+in experience.  You required motherhood of her, and in return...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," Westboro' turned about in his saddle and faced his earnest
+friend.  "What then, in your opinion, might I have been?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You might have been from the start," Bulstrode said it shortly, "a
+lover.  It's not a bad rôle.  We Anglo-Saxons have no sentimental
+education.  Our puritanism makes us half the time timid at courtship
+and love."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The gentlemen rode a little on with slackened rein.  Westboro's
+eyeglass cord was almost motionless as he stared out between his
+horse's ears down the lane.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps, after all," he fetched it out slowly, "there's something in
+what you say."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whether or not there was any truth in Bulstrode's commonplace remark,
+it lingered in his host's mind all day.  It gave him, for the first
+time, a link to follow&mdash;an idea&mdash;and the Duke, entirely unused to
+analysis, accustomed to act if not on impulse, certainly according to
+his will and pleasure without concession, harked back in a groping,
+touching fashion like an awkward boy looking for a lost treasure,
+upsetting, as he went, old haunts, turning over things for years not
+brought to the light of day.  And it took him all the afternoon and a
+good part of the evening to reach the place where he thought he had
+lost originally his joy.  Unlike the happier boy, he could not seize
+his bliss once recovered, and stow it away; it was only remembrance
+that brought him back, and with a tightening heart as he realized once
+more the form and quality of his lost happiness&mdash;there he must leave it
+and see it fade again into the past.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Jimmy gave his host a chance to follow his absorbed reflections.  He
+effaced himself, and behind a book whose lightness of touch made him
+agreeably forget the heavier hand of current and daily events, he sat
+in his dressing-room reading "The Vicar of Wakefield."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Westboro' came in to him Jimmy looked up and quoted aloud: "When
+lovely woman stoops to folly and finds at length that men betray...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, they console themselves quickly," Westboro' finished.  "Don't
+fancy anything else, my dear fellow, they console themselves."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They may pretend to do so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They succeed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Westboro' took the little book from his friend's hand and shut it
+firmly as if afraid that the rest of the verse might slip out and
+refute him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bulstrode, she consoles herself, she is perfectly happy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How are you then so sure?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I hear of her in Paris."  The Duke's features contracted.  "She's
+contriving to pass her time&mdash;to pass her time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode leaned over towards his friend and, for Westboro' sat
+opposite him, he put his hand on the Duke's knee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must certainly go to her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Westboro' stroked his moustache before he answered:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not if I never see her again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You should decidedly go to her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The other shook his head.  "Not if it meant twice the hell it is now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why not?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I went to her once.  I may say twice," he slowly said, "since we
+separated."  And as he stopped speaking Bulstrode could only imagine
+what the result had been.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think I'm a Westboro' really, for I couldn't follow any
+woman's carriage puling like a schoolboy as my ancestor did.  There's a
+great deal of my mother's blood in me, and it's a different blend."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode's eyes were on the little book between the Duke's
+aristocratic hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She has, I grant you, a lot to forgive; but she quite well knows all
+the blame I acknowledge, quite well.  I don't believe I'm any worse
+than the run of mankind, and whether I am or not, I've made all the
+amends I can and I have nothing more to say."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His eyeglass had dropped; his face looked worn; he showed his age more
+than a happier man would have done at his years His mood of thinking it
+out by himself continued for so long that Bulstrode finally asked:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What, if I may be so near you as to question, do you mean, old chap,
+to do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Westboro' had it all laid out for himself&mdash;his ready answer showed it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You say I'm not a lover," he reminded his friend; "no doubt you're
+right, but I'm an affectionate chap, at any rate, I can't bear this&mdash;"
+He looked about hopelessly.  The words were forced out by the high mark
+of his unhappiness: "&mdash;this infernal solitude.  Even when a good
+comrade like yourself is in it, the house seems to speak to me from the
+empty rooms in this wing."  (Bulstrode knew he was thinking of the
+nurseries with the low latches and little gates.)  "I can't stand it.
+When I get out of England and abroad the place fetches me back again
+like a magnet.  I'm a home-keeping sort of man, and I want my home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His friend gently urged in the silence: "Well?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall wait," the Duke went on with the plan he had been forced to
+make out for himself.  "I shall hold on, keep along a bit, and then&mdash;<I>I
+shall go to the other woman</I>."  And the Duke, as he raised his eyes to
+his companion, fixed his glass firmly and felt that he challenged in
+every way Bulstrode's disapproval.  "The Duchess will get her
+divorce&mdash;it goes without saying&mdash;will get her divorce.  Why she has not
+already done so I can't imagine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Westboro' appeared inclined to leave the subject there, Bulstrode
+pressed him further: "And then?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I fancy I shall marry the other woman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode started.  The complexion of the idea was so foreign to him
+that he could not for a moment let himself think that he understood it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will," he said, "marry one woman whilst you distinctly love
+another?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duke nodded.  "Love," he reflected, "I begin to believe I don't
+know anything about.  It must, of course, suppose some sort of return.
+If, as you say, I love another woman, I'm not made of the stuff that
+can go along doing so without anything on her side."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dressing clock at the bedside on the little stand chimed the hour.
+It was two o'clock.  The Duke of Westboro' rose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must think me a colossal ass, my dear friend, but if it had not
+been for your awfully good companionship and your kindness, I dare say
+that by now I should have already made some sort of fatal blunder."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the door Bulstrode put his hand on his friend's arm, and, as though
+nothing in the conversation apart from the Duchess had any real
+significance, he said simply:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are then, in sum, simply waiting...?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes," agreed the other rather blankly.  And the other man knew
+that he had been told only half the thought in his friend's mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She may get a divorce at any time, you know, quite easily, without my
+taking any further steps."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I see perfectly," Jimmy accepted; and as the door closed after his
+host, he said, almost aloud: "He thinks, then, there is half a chance
+that the Duchess will return."  And wondering very much how far a woman
+is willing to sacrifice herself for a man, granted that she loves him,
+he did not finish his phrase.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The next day Bulstrode, no longer able to resist the beckoning country,
+went out, as it were, to it as if he said "Here I am&mdash;what will you do
+with me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If Glousceshire could, for a while, make him forget the problems he had
+been housed with, brush him up a bit, he thought it would be a good
+thing.  Therefore, when his horse came up to the door he threw himself
+on the animal in a nervous haste to be gone, and setting off in the
+direction of Penhaven, obeyed its summons at last.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Westboro' had run up to London for overnight, and Bulstrode, at the
+Duke's something more than invitation, a sort of appeal, was to stay
+indefinitely on.  It must be confessed that he rather selfishly looked
+forward to the course of an untroubled afternoon, to an evening amongst
+the books whose files had tempted him for days.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the pity of all he had sympathetically been closeted with was great
+in his mind.  Whereas his native delicacy and slow judgment had led him
+to keep silent until now towards his host, it was in no wise because
+Jimmy had not quite made up his mind that he would not spare Westboro'
+at all when the moment, if it ever came, should present itself for him
+to speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he rode along he thought of the Duchess naturally in Paris,
+surrounded by a train of ardent admirers; she had them always,
+everywhere.  She was disillusioned, of course, probably angry, piqued,
+and unfortunately she had been betrayed; and he shrugged with a gentle
+desperation as he made a mental picture of the last scene: the
+inevitable divorce, the wrecking of another household,
+unless&mdash;unless&mdash;one of them loved sufficiently to save the situation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His thoughts came to a standstill as his horse stopped short before a
+gate: his riding had fetched him up before it.  The mare stretched out
+her long neck, set free by a relaxing rein; she sniffed the latch and
+put her head over the wicket, and the rider saw that they had come
+across fields, and were at the entrance of a deserted property.  The
+gate gave access to a forest road where the thick underbrush was
+untidy, and on whose walk the piles of leaves lay as they had fallen.
+He could see no farther in, and thinking to come at the end upon a
+forsaken garden, the precincts of an untenanted country house, he
+leaned down, tried the gate which fairly swung into his hand, and the
+mare passed through.  There was the delicious intimacy about the woods
+which the sense of coming alone and unexpectedly upon the old and
+forsaken gives the traveller.  He is a discoverer of secrets, a
+legitimate spy upon stories which he flatters himself he is the first
+to read.  He becomes intimate with another man's past, and as he must
+necessarily, in all ignorance, tell himself his own tales, indiscretion
+may be said to be a doubtful quantity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A bit back in the bare brown woods he saw the flash of a marble pillar;
+it shone white and clear in the setting of russet and against the boles
+of the trees.  A little farther away gleamed another figure on its base
+of fluted marble, and still farther along, leaf-overlaid and thus
+effaced, he could discern the contour of a sunken garden.  The place
+grew more pretentious as he slowly picked his way, and he was
+unprepared for coming suddenly onto a gravel path from which he thought
+the leaves had been blown away.  Here Bulstrode dismounted, and, with
+the bridle over his arm, walked towards the path's end, pleasantly
+interested, and now, as he thought it should by this do, the house
+struck on him through an archway contrived by the training of old trees
+over a circle of stone.  The house broke on him in the shape of an
+Elizabethan manse; long and old with soft rose-color of brick in
+places, and the color of a faded leaf in others where the dampness had
+soaked in and had, through countless mid-summer suns, been burned out
+again.  Before the windows flashed the red of bright curtains.  The
+house was distinctly, and he thought it seemed happily, occupied.  He
+stopped where he stood by the arch, a little confused and a little
+balked in his romantic treat, and not the less feeling himself an
+intruder.  But before he could turn his horse and unobtrusively lead
+her back the way they had come, the house's occupant, no doubt she who
+gave it the air of being so happily tenanted, had come out with a
+garden hat on her head, a pair of garden shears in her hands, and with
+the precision of intention, turned sharply towards the arched forest
+walk, and in this way squarely upon Bulstrode.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The surprise to him was, without doubt, the greater, for she knew him
+at once, and he for a second did not recognize her.  Her extreme
+English air&mdash;the straw hat tied under her chin and the face it framed,
+so decidedly altered, bewildered him.  His first greeting, mentally,
+before he spoke aloud to her, was masculine.  "Why, her beauty!  What
+in heaven's name had she done with it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>What</I> are you doing here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They both asked it at once, and the lady having lived so long in an
+insular country was adept in its possibilities of great hospitality as
+well as of freezing out an unwelcome visitor.  She froze the poor
+gentleman and then, touched by his utter bewilderment and his innocence
+of wilful intrusion, she smiled more humanly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Won't you, since you <I>are</I> here, Mr. Bulstrode, come in and have a cup
+of tea?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She at once followed their mutual question by saying: "As for being
+here, you will admit that given the part of the country it is, no one
+has a better right!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I'll admit anything you like," he laughed, "if you'll only admit
+us.  You see we are two."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lady came up to him in a more friendly manner; she gave him her
+hand and she really smiled beautifully.  Then she put her hand on the
+nose of the horse, with the touch one has for familiar things.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's a perfect dear, isn't she&mdash;a dear.  So you are riding her then?
+Well, you'll find her easy to tie, she stands well.  There's nothing
+she can spoil, that's the charm of such an old, tumble-down place."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Bulstrode followed after the trailing dress just touching the gravel
+with a rustling sound, he had the feeling of being suddenly,
+willy-nilly, taken and put into the heart of a story book.  He smiled.
+"Well, I've done the first chapter and now I've got to go on in the
+book, I suppose, whether I want to be here or not, to the end."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought I was making a voyage of discovery," he told her as they sat
+in the low room before a fire and before her table and tea cups.  "I
+fancied I was the only person within miles round.  I expect no one has
+a right to be so bold, but I really didn't dream the place was lived
+in, as, of course, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Drink your tea," she bade, "and eat your toast before I make you tell
+me if you have come to see me as a messenger."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And if I have?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was delicious tea, and the American of her had somehow found cream
+for it, which, un-English luxury, the American in him fully
+appreciated.  The liquid in the blue-and-white cups was pale as saffron
+and the toast was a feather.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At five o'clock there's nothing like it in the world," he breathed.
+"I didn't hope for this to-day.  I had recklessly thrown five o'clock
+over, for I'm alone at the castle."  He drank his tea, finished, and
+with a sigh.  Then he said: "I can actually venture to ask you for
+another cup, for I am nobody's messenger or envoy, my dear, nobody's.
+I'm just an indiscreet, humdrum individual who has been too charmingly
+rewarded for an intrusion.  You saw my surprise, didn't you?  And I'm
+not very clever at putting on things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess tacitly accepted, it is to be supposed, for she made him a
+second cup of tea, slowly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't know that I've been thinking about you all day," he said,
+"and I can frankly say that I've been making a very different picture
+of you indeed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She took no notice whatsoever of his personality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are in England, then," she said rather formally.  "I never think
+of my own country people as being here.  I always think of Americans as
+being in the States, men above all, for they fit so badly in the
+English atmosphere, don't they?  It's always incongruous to me to hear
+their "r's" and "a's" rattling about in this soft language.  It's
+horrid of me to speak so.  You, of course, are out of the category.
+But as you stood there, with Banshee's nose over your shoulder you
+fitted quite beautifully in with everything.  I don't believe I should
+mind you, ever, anywhere, and yet I more naturally think of you at
+Newport, don't you see?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her companion cried: "Oh, no, I'm in England, and you can't alter the
+fact, at least if you can, please don't; for Newport on the fifteenth
+of December, and with no such tea or fire&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," she permitted, "you may stay.  I said you fitted&mdash;only&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode interposed: "Don't at least for a few moments entertain any
+'buts' and 'onlys'&mdash;they are nearly as bad as those magical travelling
+trunks that would transport me to the United States.  It is so&mdash;let me
+say&mdash;neutral in this place, I should think I might remain.  I don't
+know why you are here or with whom, nor for how long, or for how deep,
+but it is singularly perfect to have found you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His hostess had left her seat behind the table, and taking a chair by
+the fireside where Bulstrode was sitting, undid the ribbons of her
+garden hat and let the basket-like object fall on the floor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must promise me, first of all, that you will not say you have seen
+me.  Otherwise I shall leave here to-morrow and nobody shall ever again
+know where I am."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+However her command might conflict with what was in his mind, he was
+obliged to give her his word.  He had no right not to do so.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And nothing," she said, "must make you break this promise, Mr.
+Bulstrode.  I know how good you are, and how you do all sorts of
+Quixotic funny things, but in this case please&mdash;please&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mind my own business?" he nodded.  "I will, Duchess, I will."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked at him steadily a moment and seemed satisfied, for she
+relaxed the tensity of her manner, which was the first Americanism she
+had displayed, and in her pretty soft drawl asked him, with less
+perfunctory interest than her words implied: "You are at Westboro'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, since the twenty-fifth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you're staying on?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I seem to be more or less of a fixture&mdash;until the holidays, I expect."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lucky you," she breathed, and at his expression of candid surprise she
+half laughed.  "Oh, I mean as far as the castle goes&mdash;isn't it really
+too delightful?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was able to say honestly: "Quite the most beautiful house I have
+ever seen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I think so too," she nodded.  "It's not so important as many
+others but it's more perfect, more like a home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode sat back in his chair and tried to make her forget him.
+Between the fire and the shadow he wanted to watch her face from which
+he now saw that the beauty he remembered had not faded but had been
+transformed.  She was beautiful in another way: the brilliant, blooming
+girl, fully blown at eighteen, with the dazzling charm of health, no
+longer existed in the Duchess of Westboro'.  She had refined very much
+indeed.  The aggressive bearing of the American princess had been
+replaced by the colder, more serene hauteur of the English Duchess.
+She was evidently a very proud woman, the arch of her brows said so,
+and the line of her lips.  All her lines were sharper and finer.  Her
+color, and he could not, as he studied her, quite regret it; her color
+was quite gone.  Her pallor made her more delicate, and her eyes&mdash;it
+was in them that Bulstrode thought he saw the greatest change of all;
+they were now fixed upon him, there was something melancholy in their
+profound and deeply circled gray.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What rooms will they have given you?" she asked after a moment.
+Then&mdash;"Wait," she commanded, "I know.  The south wing, the Henry IV.
+rooms that look into the gardens.  I always gave those to the men.
+There's something extremely homelike about them, don't you think so?
+And have you ever seen anything like those winter roses in that court?
+Did any bloom this year?  The trellis runs up along the terrace
+balustrade&mdash;or possibly you don't care for flowers?  Of course you
+wouldn't as a girl does."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A <I>girl</I>&mdash;with that face and those eyes?  Why, she must have been
+talking back ten years.  Bulstrode drew a breath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know the roses you mean.  It would be difficult to forget them.
+Your gardener takes such pride in them.  For some reason they are never
+gathered; they fall as they hang.  The gardener, it so happened, told
+me so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was looking at him with an intensity almost painful, but she said
+nothing further, and after a moment more Bulstrode replied to another
+question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As it happens I don't occupy the Henry IV. rooms.  I have mine quite
+on the other side of the castle.  Don't they call them the 'West
+Rooms'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She caught her breath a little, but she was in splendid training with
+all her years of English life behind her.  Her face, nevertheless,
+showed how well she knew those rooms, without the added note in her
+voice as she said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, those West Rooms&mdash;you have those."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And in the quiet that fell as her eyes sought the fire, he quite knew
+how her thoughts travelled down the hall to the open nursery doors with
+their waiting gates.  Whatever were her reasons for being here,
+Bulstrode saw that he had surprised her in a moment of sadness, and
+that his visit in spite of his indiscretion, was not wholly unwelcome.
+But in the sudden way coming upon some one connected with her own life,
+she had been completely taken unawares, and her lapse into something
+like sentiment was short.  Even as he looked at her she hardened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have naturally not asked me anything, Mr. Bulstrode," she said,
+coldly enough now, "and more naturally still I have no explanations to
+give.  By to-morrow I may be gone.  I may live here for the rest of my
+life.  I never leave my garden, I am quite unknown to the people about.
+If any one in Westboro' learns that I am here I shall leave at once.
+You will not come again.  It is discourteous to say so&mdash;to ask it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had risen from his chair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, but it's quite, quite dark.  However will you manage?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We'll pick our way back well enough," he assured her.  "The distance
+to the road is nothing, and from here on it runs straight to the abbey."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess followed him slowly to the door, and there she asked
+abruptly: "Is Westboro' to be down all winter?  I didn't know it.  I
+thought he was out of England or I should not have come here at all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," Bulstrode answered, "he's too restless to be long anywhere.  I
+expect he'll pack up and be off before we know it.  He's away just now
+at any rate, and I'm kicking my heels up there quite alone.  I'm not to
+return&mdash;ever?" he ventured.  "You may so fully trust me that&mdash;" and he
+saw that she hesitated and pursued, "I shall ride up to the little gate
+again, and if it is unlatched...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, don't count on it," she advised him, "don't&mdash;it's against all my
+plans."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Somebody in the shape of a lad had unfastened the mare, and preceded
+Bulstrode on foot with a lantern, by whose flicker, with much delicate
+caution and pretended shyness, Banshee picked her way to the road,
+through the woods which Bulstrode an hour before had fancied led into a
+deserted garden.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"You see," he put it to her delicacy to understand, "it's scarcely, in
+a way, fair to him&mdash;I feel it so at least.  It gives me the sensation
+of knowing more than he does in his own house about that which
+presumably should be Westboro's secret."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean to say,"&mdash;the Duchess pinned him down, "that you'll give me
+away because of one of those peculiar crises of honor that makes a
+person betray a trust in order to salve his conscience?"
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode had come again faithfully, making the pilgrimage to the
+forest road, and he was not surprised that it should have finally
+turned out so that one day the gate yielded to his touch, and he found
+the Duchess if not waiting for him, distinctly there.  During their
+delightful little talks&mdash;and they had been so&mdash;not once had the name of
+Bulstrode's host been mentioned; and if the lady had a curiosity
+concerning her lord and once master, she did not display it to the
+visitor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean to say," Bulstrode replied in answer to her challenge which was
+fiery, "that I really don't want to play false to Westboro', more false
+than I shall in the course of events be forced to be.  Of course, your
+secret&mdash;I need not say so&mdash;is entirely safe.  But the Duke comes back
+in a day or two, and rather than face him with this silence which you
+have imposed upon me I am going back to London before he returns."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sewing she had chosen to finger&mdash;a Duchess, and an American one at
+that, is not expected to do more&mdash;lay at her feet.  By her side was a
+basket of considerable proportions, and it was full to the brim with
+linen: the very fine white stuff overflowed from the basket like snow.
+The Duchess of Westboro's handiwork had already caught the eye of her
+guest.  And now, as her long hands and her long finger, tipped by its
+golden thimble, handled her sewing, Bulstrode watched her interestedly
+and found great loveliness in her bending face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't think any of you knew how to sew," he mused aloud.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Any of us!" she smiled.  "Do you, by that, mean American Duchesses?
+Or do you mean women who have left their husbands?  Or in just what
+class do you think of me, regarding your last remark?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She folded up her work and dropped her thimble in the nest of snow.
+Bulstrode acknowledged that his conclusion, whatever it had been, was
+wrong.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When I married," the Duchess said, "I was the best four-in-hand whip
+for a woman in my set.  I don't think I am a keen needlewoman, really,
+and I know then I didn't recognize a needle by sight.  When my little
+boys were born I sent to Paris for everything they wore, and I can
+remember that I didn't even know for what the little clothes were
+intended, many of them, when they came home in my first son's layette.
+I have learned to sew since I came here to The Dials.  I've been three
+months here, now, and I really must have proved a clever pupil, for I
+assure you that they tell me I have made some pretty things."  As she
+spoke she held up the seam she ran, and Bulstrode, who himself
+confessed to not knowing a needle by sight, was forced to peer over the
+seam and endeavor to find her tiny stitches.  He exclaimed:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Three months!  You must have been terribly dull!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are known," he said, "throughout the countryside&mdash;not that I've
+been making inquiries, but in spite of myself I have heard&mdash;as a
+stranger, presumably a Frenchwoman, a widow who will probably buy The
+Dials."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I shall never buy the place," she assured him, and then abruptly:
+"Had you been free to speak of me, what would you have told Westboro'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He waited a second, then answered her lightly, but with a feeling which
+she did not mistake: "I should have asked him to come and see you run
+up that seam."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He would not have come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Remembering very clearly how determined Westboro's decision had been,
+he did not affirm to the lady his belief that Westboro' would in
+reality have flown to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the door, later, she bade him good-bye and appeared to gather her
+courage together, and, with a lapse into a simplicity so entire that
+she seemed only Frances Denby and to possess no more of title or
+distinction than any lovely woman, she said to him:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Bulstrode, please don't leave the castle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I couldn't sit opposite my friend at dinner, I couldn't meet his
+eyes now, my dear child."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess touched his arm.  "It's sweet of you to call me so.  You
+are really as young as I am, and certainly I feel an age beyond you.
+Please stay."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The pleasure which his visits had been to her had brought something of
+an animation and interest to her cold face.  Dressed in a dark and
+simple gown, her fur stole about her neck, she had this afternoon
+followed him out of the house into the garden and walked slowly along
+by his side towards the gate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of all the people in the world one would choose you, I think, to be
+the friend of..."  She caught herself up.  "I mean to say, can't you
+forget those stupid little ideas of honor and friendship and all that?"
+She put it beautifully.  "I, of course, will give up seeing you," she
+renounced, "but it will be a world of comfort just to feel that you are
+there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he did not at once succumb to her blandishments, she asked point
+blank:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Promise me to stop on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I at least won't go without letting you know of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Without my permission?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I won't say that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I'm sure that you mean it," she nodded happily, "and you're <I>such</I>
+a help."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was so affectionate as she bade him good-bye, that only at the
+little road did he begin to wonder just what help he was.  Was he
+aiding her to detective poor Westboro'?  Was he adding an air of
+protection to some feminine treachery?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no," he decided; "she's incapable of any thing of the sort.  But I
+must clear out;" and he decided that at once, so soon as Westboro'
+should be at home, he would take himself to ground still more neutral
+than The Dials had proved to be.  But Westboro' showed no intention of
+coming immediately home.  Instead, with a droll egoism, as if the fact
+that he had made poor Bulstrode a party to his unhappiness gave him
+thereafter a right to the other's time even in absence, he laid a firm
+hold on Jimmy.  Westboro' finally put pen to paper, and the scrappy
+letter touched the deserted visitor; it proved to have been written at
+a <I>bureau de poste</I> in Paris:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't, for God's sake, go off, old man.  Keep up your end."  (His
+end!)  "Stop on at Westboro'&mdash;Use the place as if it were all put up
+for your amusement.  Just live there so I may feel it's alive.  Let me
+find a human being at home when I turn up.  I'll wire in a day or so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So he is in Paris, then."  Bulstrode had supposed so, and did not
+doubt that the Duke had gone there to find news of his wife, possibly
+as well to see Madame de Bassevigne.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Poor fellow, if he were searching for the Duchess!  Well, Bulstrode
+would keep up his end, he had nothing else for the time being to do but
+to mind other people's business.  He put it so to himself.  Indeed he
+could not but believe it was fortunate for more than one person that
+something could keep him from minding his own.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An undefined discretion kept him from going to the Moated Grange, as to
+himself he styled the retreat the Duchess had made of The Dials.  And,
+in spite of the absolute freedom now given him to prowl about amongst
+the books, in spite of his "evenings out" as he called them, Jimmy
+found the time at Westboro' to drag lamentably.  His own affairs, which
+he so faithlessly denied, came to him in batches of letters whose
+questions could not be solved by return mail.  He became over his own
+thoughts restless, and he sent a telegram to his host: "Better have a
+look at things here yourself.  Can't possibly stop on longer than...."
+And he set a day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If Westboro', poor devil, has to look forward to a life of this
+unaccompanied grandeur," he pitied him.  The lines and files of
+soft-footed, impersonal servants, the perfect stilted attention, the
+silence, and the inhumanness of a man's lonely life, became intolerable
+to Jimmy Bulstrode.  Even though Frances, Duchess of Westboro', had
+truly said that the castle was a delightful home, Bulstrode began to
+wonder what that word comprised or meant: certainly nothing like his
+occupation of another man's house or like any life that is lived alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the end of the week that the American spent at Westboro' he had
+condensed the castle, as he said to himself, as far as possible, to the
+proportions of a Harlem flat, and he lived in it.  In the almost small
+breakfast room whose windows gave on the terrace, and where all the
+December sun that was visible came to find him, he took his meals; each
+of them but dinner, which was determinedly and imperially served by
+five men in one of the dining-rooms, and at which function, as he
+expressed it, he shut his eyes and just ate blindly through.  He lived
+out of doors all day, took his tea in his dressing-room, and read and
+smoked until the august dinner hour called him down to dress and dine
+alone.  For a week he lived "without sight of a human being," so he
+said, for the domestics were only machines.  And, towards the end of
+the week, he would have gone to see any one: an enemy would have been
+too easy, and the only person within range was, of course, the Duchess
+of Westboro'.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Westboro' had made a confidant of Bulstrode, and the woman had not.
+Bulstrode liked it in her.  To be sure, the cases were quite different:
+there was no reason why the man deserted and bruised in his pride and
+in his heart, should not have talked to his old friend.  Westboro'
+accused himself of weakness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've blabbed like a woman," he acknowledged ruefully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess had not spoken nor had she, on the other hand, with the
+fine courage of the true woman, been in any eager haste to discover
+what her husband had said of her, nor had she asked if he had spoken at
+all.  On the other hand, aided by an extreme patience and with still
+greater delicacy, she had waited, understanding that her guest, whose
+mettle and character she knew would not permit him to betray a trust,
+might, however naïvely, disclose what he knew without being conscious
+of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But if Bulstrode gave himself or his host away, the Duchess made no
+sign that she had profited by indiscretions.  The impersonality of
+their conversations was indeed a relief to Bulstrode, and it made it
+possible for him to feel himself less a traitor at the Duke's hearth.
+But she talked very sweetly, too, of her children.  She had the second
+picture to the Duke's of the little boys, a picture like the one
+Bulstrode had seen at the castle, and showed it to him as the father
+had done.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Westboro' has the companion to this," he had not minded telling her as
+they sat together in the small room he had grown to know as well as the
+larger rooms of the castle.  And at the end of a few moments Bulstrode
+quite blurted out: "Why, in Heaven's name do you women make men suffer
+so?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess, who had been working, dropped her bit of muslin and
+looked, with her cherry lips parted and her great serious eyes, for all
+the world like a lady in a gift book.  Her face was eighteenth century
+and child-like.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode nodded.  "Oh, yes, you've got so easily the upper hand, the
+very least of you, you know, over the best of us.  It's such an unfair
+supremacy.  You've got such a clever knowledge of little things, such a
+sense of the scale of the feelings, and you certainly make the very
+most of your power over us all.  Can't you&mdash;" and his eyes, half
+serious and half reproachful, seemed, as he looked at her, to question
+all the womankind he knew&mdash;"Can't you ever love us well enough just
+quite simply to make us happy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess had taken up her sewing again, and her eyes were upon it.
+Bulstrode waited for a little, following her stitches through the
+muslin and the flash of her thimble in the light.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can't you?" he softly repeated.  "Isn't it, after all, a good sort of
+way of spending one's life, this making another happy?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"American women aren't taught so, you know," she said.  "It isn't
+taught us that the end and aim of our existence is to make a man happy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her companion didn't seem at all surprised.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And so you see," she went on, "those of us that do learn that after
+all there may be something in what you say&mdash;those of us that learn,
+only find it out after a lot of hard experiences, and it is sometimes
+too late!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She seemed to think his direct question called for a distinct answer,
+for she admitted: "Oh, yes, of course there are some of us who would
+give a great deal to try.  And you see, moreover," she went on with her
+subject as she turned the corner of her square, "you put it well when
+you said 'love enough.'  You see that's the whole thing, Mr. Bulstrode,
+to love enough.  One can, of course, in that case, do nearly all there
+is to do, can't one?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nearly all," he had smiled, and added: "<I>And a great deal more</I>."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The household gods, whose dignity and harmony had not been disturbed
+during the absence of the master of Westboro', were unable, however, to
+give him very much comfort on his return.  The Duke's motor cut quickly
+up the long drive and severed&mdash;clove, as it were&mdash;a way through the
+frosty air and let him into the park.  The poor man had only a sense of
+wretchedness on coming home&mdash;"coming back," he now put it.  Huddled
+down deep in his fur coat, its collar hunched round his ears, his face
+was as gloomy as that of a man dispossessed of all his goods; doors
+thrown open into the fragrant and agreeably warmed halls fetched him
+further home.  But the knowledge that the house had been lived in
+during his absence was not ungrateful.  He sniffed the odor of a
+familiar brand of cigar, and before he had quite plumbed the melancholy
+of the place to its depths, Jimmy Bulstrode had sunned out of one of
+the inner rooms, and the grasp of the friendly hand and the sound of
+the cheerful voice struck a chord in Westboro' that shook him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've been like a fiend possessed," he said to Jimmy, in the evening
+when they found themselves once more before the fire.  "I've scarcely
+known what I've been doing, or why; but I know one thing, and that is
+that I'm the most wretched man alive."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode nodded.  "You <I>did</I> go to Paris, then!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said the Duke, "and what I've found out there has driven me
+insane."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Although ignorant of the variations of his friend's discovery,
+Bulstrode was pretty certain of one that had not been made.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You may, old chap," he said smoothly, "not have found out all the
+truth, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Westboro' raised his hand.  "Come," he said, "no palliations; you can't
+smooth over the facts.  Frances is not in Paris.  She has not been in
+Paris for several months."  He paused.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In itself not a tragedy," murmured his friend.  "Paris is considered
+at times a place as well <I>not</I> to be in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Bulstrode's remark did not distract his friend from his narrative.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She has not been in Paris since I saw her twelve months ago, and she
+has left no sign or trace of where she has gone.  There is no address,
+no way that I can find her.  Not that a discovery is not of course
+ultimately possible, but what, in the interval, if I should wish to
+write to her?  What if I should need to see her?  What if I should die?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would you, in any of those cases, send for her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know," the Duke admitted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But," Jimmy asked him, "did you go to Paris this time to see the
+Duchess?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Since you ask me frankly," the Duke admitted, "I don't think that I
+did."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At all events," the other said, "you surely did not go to spy on her,
+Westboro'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duke was silent, then answered quietly:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should never ask a question&mdash;not if it meant a certain discovery of
+something that I feared or suspected.  I don't think I should ever seek
+to find out something she didn't want me to know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode, at the blindness of a man regarding his own intentions,
+smiled behind his cigar.  "Well?" he helped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I went over to France," said the Duke&mdash;"and I suppose you'll scarcely
+believe a man who you say is not a lover to be capable of such
+sentimentality&mdash;simply, if possible, to have a sight of my wife, to see
+her go out of the door, or to see her go in, to see her possibly get
+into a carriage; and how did I know that it would not be with another
+man?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How did you find out that she had left?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I asked for her at her hôtel."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The first question, then," Jimmy smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A fair one?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, perfectly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was told that the Duchess had left Paris months before."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And then?" the other man's voice was placid as he spoke for the Duke.
+"Then you went to her bankers, her bakers and candlestick makers; in
+short, you asked all over the place, didn't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duke swore gently.  "Well, what would you have a man do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why I would have him do that," nodded Jimmy, "by all means.  Any man
+would have done so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the half second of interval whilst the Duke was obliged to swallow
+his friend's sarcasm, Bulstrode had time to think: "Here I am, once
+more in the heart of an intrigue.  Its fetters are all about me and I
+am wretchedly bound by honor not to do the simple, natural thing."
+Then he asked boldly: "Well, what do you think about it, Westboro'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Think?" Westboro' repeated, "why, that she has deliberately escaped
+from me, put herself out of any possible reach; she doesn't want a
+reconciliation and she has gone away.  She may have gone away alone and
+she may not, that I don't know, and I don't believe I want to know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you'll find her."  It was with the most delightful security and
+contentment that his friend was able to tell the Duke this.  But the
+cheerful note struck the poor husband the disagreeablest of blows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gad!" he laughed, "what a cold brand of creature a bachelor is!  'Find
+her!' as one might speak of finding an umbrella that you've left by
+mistake at your club.  Of course she can be found.  There are not many
+mysteries that search can't solve in these days.  And Duchesses don't
+drop off the face of the earth.  I could no doubt have found her in
+twenty-four hours, but I didn't try to.  I don't know that I want to
+find her.  It isn't the fact of where she's gone that counts&mdash;that she
+wanted to go&mdash;that she has voluntarily made the separation final and
+complete."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then," persisted the bachelor, "you don't really <I>want</I> to find her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jove!" the Duke turned on him.  "You don't know what it is to love a
+woman!  You've got some imagination&mdash;try to use it, can't you?  Can't
+you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He met the American's handsome eyes.  A flush rose under Bulstrode's
+cheek.  Westboro' put his hand on his friend's shoulder.  "I beg your
+pardon, dear old chap."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, that's all right, old chap," Bulstrode assured cheerfully.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"My dear Duchess, it seems an unconscionable waste of time and life for
+any one to ignore the inevitable!  It's such a prodigal throwing out of
+the window of riches!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode took her hands, both of them, in his as she stood in the
+winter sunshine, the open house door behind her, the terrace and its
+broken stairs of crumbling stone before her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, my dear lady, if I kept a diary of daily events I couldn't write
+down one page of good reasons why you should be living here and
+Westboro' up there, and I a comic go-between, in the secret of both and
+the confidence of one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," she interrupted, "then you're in the confidence...?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of your husband, yes," Bulstrode found himself startled into betrayal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She drew her hands from him and walked on a little in the sunshine, and
+he followed by her side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't mind," she permitted, "you're such a perfect dear.  I
+shouldn't mind at all if I thought that the confidence were a good one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her tone was light and cool, but the gentleman never failed to notice
+when the Duchess spoke of the Duke that there was a tremor under her
+words, a warmth, an agitation, which she vainly tried to control.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Confidences," she said, "are very rarely just, you know, and <I>les
+absents ont toujours tort</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you don't mean...?" Jimmy emphasized.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was a confidence, wasn't it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A real one," she was assured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well then, you'll keep it, of course."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She drew the stole up round her long fair neck; her delicate head came
+out of the soft fur like a flower.  But before she could follow up her
+words Bulstrode said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You, of course, then know how he loves you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He felt more than knew that she trembled, and he saw an instinctive
+gesture which he understood meant that he should be silent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You and I put it quite clearly, Mr. Bulstrode, the other day."  Her
+voice was serene again.  "If only one cares enough&mdash;that's the
+necessary thing for every question."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She half shrugged, made a little motion with her white hands, and this
+answer said for her: "That is indeed the question, and I haven't solved
+it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They stopped at the terraced walk.  The low stones, dark and black,
+were filled in their interstices with fine lines of greenish moss.  On
+the sunny corner the dial's shadow fell across the noon.  The Duchess
+put her hand on the warmed stones.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a heavenly day," she said, "I don't believe that the Riviera is
+warmer.  I never have seen such an English December."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her eyes, which had been fixed on the woods below the garden, now
+turned towards the house and rested on one of the upper windows where
+the sun fell on the little panes.  The Duchess remained looking up a
+few seconds, then she came back to her guest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I started, you know, to tell you something," Bulstrode smiled at her.
+"I once served on a jury in the West, and although the case was a
+miserably sad one in every way, I suppose, I couldn't take it as
+seriously as I should have done, for from the first the whole thing
+seemed so unnecessary, and the crisis could so easily have been
+avoided."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know," she interrupted him, "but you're rather wrong.  Not from the
+first."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He capitulated.  "Well, grant it so if you like, only agree with me
+when I say from my own&mdash;" he put his hand down on the dial's edge.
+"From this lovely noon-time on, every hour you waste is clear loss.
+The Duke loves you as women are rarely loved, and after all," he said
+with something like passion in his agreeable voice "what <I>do</I> you all
+expect?  Love doesn't hang on every tree for a woman to pluck at will,
+and you have the great luck, my dear Duchess, to be loved by your own
+husband.  Why don't you go to him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go to him?" she echoed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He curtly replied: "Why not?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear friend!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, didn't you forbid him to go to you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah," she nodded, "the confidence, it was intimate indeed.  But since
+you have got it, won't you agree that any man, if he loved a woman,
+would disobey her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Westboro' would not."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess said coldly: "Pride is not love."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You didn't mean him, then, to keep his vow?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," she slowly thought out, "I did indeed, with all my heart."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned towards the house again, and as she walked back, said: "I
+don't quite know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Bulstrode asked her: "That is why you are here, to find out?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Partly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her companion's face grew stern.  The Duchess did not see it for her
+eyes had again swept the upper window.  At her side Bulstrode went on:
+"You have taken ten years to discover that you did not love your
+husband.  You have taken one year to begin to wonder, to doubt, to
+suspect, to half think that you do; it's an unstable state of heart,
+Duchess, terribly unstable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The woman stopped short at his side, and now as she lifted up her eyes
+and saw him, was a little startled if not frightened at his expression.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unstable," she repeated, with a world of scorn in her voice.  "How can
+you use that word to me, knowing the facts of the case?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, a man," said Bulstrode rather impatiently, "is a worthless,
+wretched piece of mechanism altogether.  I grant you that&mdash;utterly
+unworthy the love and confidence of any good woman.  He is capable of
+all the vagaries and infidelities possible.  We'll judge him so.  But,"
+he continued, "these wandering, vagrant derelicts have been known to
+tie fast, to find port, to drop anchor.  They have even brought great
+riches and important treasure into harbor, fetched a world of good luck
+home.  There's only one thing in the universe that can keep a man,
+Duchess, only one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?" she encouraged him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A woman's heart," he said deeply, "a woman's true tenderness; and it
+needs all that heart, all its love, all its patience and sacrifice to
+keep that man&mdash;all and forever."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saw her bosom heave; she had thrown her fur off, as if its warmth
+stifled her.  Vivid color had come into her face.  Her pallor for the
+time was destroyed, and as she flashed a rebellious look at him, a look
+of revolt and selfhood, he seemed to see again the American
+girl&mdash;wilful, egotistical, spoiled&mdash;an imperious creature whose
+caprices had been opposed to the Duke's Anglo-Saxon temperament and
+national egoism.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At this moment, the window the Duchess looked towards opened part way:
+it was under the eaves and there must have been a dovecote near, for
+there came the soft sound of cooing like the call of a young bird.
+Possibly the gentle note reached the woman's hearing as well, for her
+face transcendently softened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think," she said with evident effort to speak in a commonplace tone,
+"it would be quite futile to urge Cecil to come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I shan't advise him so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode's quick answer made her look at him in so much surprise that
+he went on to say: "I would not, in justice to him, in justice to the
+great love I have been permitted to see, advise him to come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess, during the months of analysis, suffering and experience,
+had not admitted to herself that should her husband return she would
+receive him, nor had she decided as to quite how obdurate she would be,
+and she was curious at the attitude of this gentle friend.  She naïvely
+asked:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why would you not advise him so?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode said, still continuing his pleasant sententiousness, "The
+woman's heart must be as stable as the man's is uncertain, and the man
+who comes back after such a separation must not find a woman who does
+not know her own mind.  He must, on the contrary, find one who has no
+mind or will or life but his."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he looked at the person to whom he spoke he was somewhat struck by
+the maternal look in her: he had never clearly discovered it before.
+Her breast from which the fur had fallen, as it rose and fell under her
+soft gown, was full, generous, and beautiful; even as he spoke in a
+certain accusation against her, she seemed to have altered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Westboro'," he said a little confused, "must come back to a woman,
+Duchess, to a woman&mdash;to a consoler.  I wish I could express
+myself&mdash;almost to a mother&mdash;as well as to a wife."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The ardent color dyed her face again; her lips moved.  She put out her
+hand towards him, and as he took it he understood that she wished him
+to bid her good-by and to leave her alone.  He heard what she struggled
+to say:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He must not come, he must not come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he accepted sadly for his friend, "No, he must not come."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode had chosen those times for going to The Dials when his host
+was least likely to take note of his absence; but it happened that more
+than once the Duke missed him at just the wrong moment, and more than
+once had been given the direction in which Bulstrode's footsteps had
+turned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One morning, during a talk with his agent, Westboro'&mdash;the map of the
+district before him&mdash;enquired what had ever been done with the property
+known as The Dials, and into whose hands the old place had fallen.  It
+seemed that it had been let for some months to a foreigner, a widow,
+who lived there, and alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Westboro' considered the farms and forests, as they lay mapped out
+before him, at the extreme foot of the castle's parks.  It was a little
+square of some fifty acres by itself; it had never interested him
+before.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How long did the lease run on?  Did the agent know?  He believed for
+another year.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duke gave instructions to have the property looked into, with a
+view to purchase.  And as the man put up his papers, he vouchsafed to
+his employer:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The present tenant is very exclusive; she sees nobody, has never, I
+believe, even been to the Abbey.  An old gardener who has been kept on
+says the servants are all foreign."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duke gave only a tepid interest to the information which would have
+passed entirely from his mind had it not been for his next meeting with
+Jimmy Bulstrode.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As much to shake off the impression his last talk with the Duchess had
+left on his mind, as to prolong his exercise, Jimmy had gone down out
+of the garden and across the place on foot over the rough winter fields
+with their rimy furrows and their barren floors.  As he made his way
+towards the bottom hedge, looking for a stile he knew would be there a
+little farther on, cutting an entrance out through the thorn to the
+road, he met Westboro', like himself, on foot, and with his hand upon
+the stile.  The presence of the Duke where Bulstrode knew he was least
+thought to be, and where he was now sadly sure he was not opportune,
+made Jimmy stop short, troubled, and, not for a moment thinking that
+the fact of his being there <I>himself</I> was singular, he made his way
+determinedly through the stile.  As he greeted his friend, his own
+demeanor was decidedly one which said: "Don't go on in that direction,
+follow rather out of the turnstile with <I>me</I>."  And he led his friend
+rather brusquely down the bank, hitching his arm in Westboro's, forced
+him along with him into the road.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ran down here to look over these meadows," said Westboro.'  "You
+seem yourself, in a way, to be pacing the land off!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I <I>love</I> cross-country walking," said Bulstrode warmly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must," smiled the Duke, "to have cut off into those barren fields.
+Were you lost?"  Westboro' stopped and looked back.  "You must have
+come directly down through The Dials."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>The Dials</I>?" the American helplessly repeated.  "Do you mean the old
+house and garden?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode's manner and speech were rarely curt and evasive, but he
+seemed this time embarrassed and taken unawares.  As the two men sat in
+the motor which waited for the Duke down the road, Westboro' fixed his
+glass in his eye and looked hard for a second at his friend.
+Bulstrode's cheerful face was distinctly disturbed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm thinking something of buying The Dials," Westboro', after a
+moment, said against the wind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Poor Jimmy.  If the house had not sufficiently up till now materialized
+out of his fancy as a possession, it declared itself at once, without
+doubt, as something he must look after.  It was only a little bit of
+England, luckily&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," he exclaimed, "to be frank, old man, I've, too, been thinking I
+should like to buy that property.  You could surely spare me this
+little corner of Glousceshire."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Spare it!" cried Westboro', "my dear chap, fancy how ripping to have
+you a landlord here!  To catch and hold you so!  We'll go over the
+whole place together.  My agent shall put the matter through for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good God, no!" said Bulstrode, "don't let your man have wind of any
+such a deal.  The place would go up like a rocket in price.  If you
+really yourself care to withdraw as much as possible, that's the most
+you can do.  But for God's sake keep off the place, like a good fellow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Behind his long moustaches the Duke covered a smile, but he conciliated
+his agitated friend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll keep off the grass until the turf is all your own, my dear
+Bulstrode."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thanks!" said the other cordially, and sat back with a sigh of relief.
+"There," he reflected peacefully, "my presence is explained&mdash;it's quite
+perfect.  I shall be a landowner in England.  At all events, it's lucky
+the property is sympathetic.  I'm glad I didn't get balled up in this
+affair in, let us say, <I>New Jersey</I>, and find myself forced to purchase
+the Hackensack Meadows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did the old house look deserted?" asked the Duke wickedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, rather!" replied the other gentleman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Really!" wondered Westboro'.  "Why, they tell me that it is let to a
+Donna Incognita&mdash;a foreign lady."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode, whether at his own lie or at the shock of his companion's
+knowledge, blushed, and his friend saw him redden.  And the Duke, in
+whom candor was a charm, stared at his friend, half-opened his mouth,
+and then sat speechless.  The suggestiveness of the whole affair rushed
+over him so rapidly that he had not time to ask himself whether he
+credited his suspicions or not.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good heavens!  <I>Jimmy</I> carrying on a vulgar intrigue in a simple
+country village!"  He looked at the face of the man by his side, but
+Jimmy, leaning forwards, addressed some remark to the chauffeur, and
+showed no intention of meeting the Duke's eyes.  If it were not a
+vulgar intrigue, what could it be?  How difficult it grew to connect
+such a <I>liason</I> with his friend.  But as he thought on, the Duke began
+to ask why, after all, should it be so extraordinary!  Why should he
+suppose Jimmy so unlike the rest of his set?  More scrupulous, more
+sinless than other men&mdash;than himself?  He couldn't answer his own
+question, but he did so think of Bulstrode, and since his late house
+party had believed that Jimmy cared for Mrs. Falconer.  The lady at The
+Dials was certainly not she.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode, in the shadow of this delinquence, surrounded certainly in
+the mind of the Duke by an atmosphere of intrigue, became very human,
+rather consolingly human.  In their mutual intercourse the Duke had
+felt himself living in a clearer atmosphere than he usually breathed.
+Along by Bulstrode's mode of life, points of view and principles, his
+own life had seemed more mistaken than he had ever thought it to be.
+And although Jimmy had never breathed a word of criticism, he had felt
+himself judged by the man's just, though gentle codes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By the time he had reached this point in his reflections the motor had
+stopped at one of the side doors of the castle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is, of course, some perfectly proper explanation&mdash;" the Duke
+decided.  It's a harmless flirtation, if any flirtation at all.
+Perhaps it's a beneficent bit of benevolence; at any rate it's Jimmy's
+own affair, and after all, he's going to <I>buy</I> the property&mdash;perhaps
+he's going to marry.  Why not?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ashamed to have placed his friend, if only momentarily, in an equivocal
+position, he turned about as they got out of the car and put an
+affectionate hand on the American's shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I expect, old man, that you've got some wonderful scheme up your
+sleeve!  You're going to be married and fetch your bride to The Dials."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Poor Bulstrode unfortunately echoed: "<I>Married</I>!" with a world of scorn
+in his tone.  "My poor Westboro,' after what I've lately seen and heard
+here&mdash;forgive me if I say that for the time at least I'm not too
+sharply tempted."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Since," he said as he greeted her, "you appear to be intending to live
+here forever, you'll welcome me when I come back from London.  I'm
+coming back for Christmas, but if I don't run in before you'll
+understand, won't you, that it is because I simply haven't dared.
+Westboro' has already seen me cut across to this place."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess interrupted him.  "Oh, in that case, I shall, of course, be
+obliged to move away."  And to her great surprise Bulstrode quickly
+agreed with her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should think it wise&mdash;not of course in the least knowing why you
+originally came."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked at him rather quizzically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean to say then that you don't really know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh,"&mdash;he was truthful&mdash;"I have rather an idea, and I hope a more or
+less true one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the lady did not confess or in anywise help him.  He went on to say:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your love for the castle couldn't, of course, long continue to keep
+you mewed up here; and you'll be shortly discovered.  As far as your
+own interests are concerned it will be rather better to obtain the
+divorce as soon as possible."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," she interposed, "don't misread me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He nodded sagely.  "On the contrary, I am translating you from sight,
+my dear Duchess.  And you are decidedly in your right regarding the
+Duke."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was so at his mercy that she hardly moved her lips, watching his
+face.  And as Bulstrode lit the cigarette she permitted him, and took
+his seat before the tea things which she had set at his elbow, he went
+on to make out her case for her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has quite spoiled your life.  He has been a brute, and not in the
+least worth your&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the Duchess had dropped her tongs; they fell ringing on the
+hard-wood floor.  She raised a scarlet face to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a <I>piége</I>," she murmured, "an <I>autodafé</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he said quietly, "it's a plain truth.  Westboro' has told me
+everything.  I must think that he has done so.  The man of me naturally
+condones him, and the friend in me is inclined to be lenient.  But the
+justice and right, my dear Duchess, are all on your side."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, justice and right!" she dismissed, "only criminals need such
+words."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode said cooly: "But Westboro' has been a criminal!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If he were," emphasized the Duchess, "didn't I forgive him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course, you did, my dear," her friend agreed warmly, "how
+wonderfully, how beautifully, everyone knows.  And he is all the more,
+therefore, dreadfully to be blamed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She said passionately: "What do you mean, Mr. Bulstrode?  How&mdash;why do
+you speak to me like this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her extraordinary guest drank his tea with singular peace of mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think he is dreadfully to be blamed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But why should you tell it to me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why not?" he returned, his charming eyes on hers with the greatest
+tribute of affection and sympathy&mdash;"I've known you for years, I'm fond
+of you, you've been horribly wronged, and I'm going to see that things
+are made right for you.  I've been very blind.  I have longed for a
+reconciliation, I admit, with this husband who, poor stuff as he is,
+loves you still.  But I see what a sentimental ass I've been, and how
+right you are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She put her hand to her throat as if the soft lace suffocated her; she
+had grown very pale indeed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What," she gasped, "do you know of my plans and my intentions, Mr.
+Bulstrode?  I have not told them to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I've been able to guess them," he replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You've dared to, then?" she flashed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, don't blame me," he returned.  "Seeing you as I have all the
+while, I've been forced to make out something&mdash;to attach some reason to
+your living in this isolation.  You've wanted, not unnaturally and very
+cleverly, I acknowledge, to see what's been going on at Westboro', what
+the Duke's been up to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her voice was suffocated as she said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, stop, please!  Whatever has come to you, Mr. Bulstrode, I don't
+know, or why you dare to speak to me as you do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Seeing her agitation he said smoothly: "My dear child, you're so right
+in everything you've done, and of course I shall stand by you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She made a dismissing gesture.  "Oh, I don't need you, I don't want
+you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He smiled benignly on her.  "But I'm here, and I'm going to see you
+through."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"See me through what?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Through your divorce," he said practically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you're Westboro's friend," she stammered, and he repudiated with
+just a little hesitation in his voice:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, not so much as yours.  But I'm the friend of both of you in this.
+It's the best thing all round."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The gentleman's attitude so baffled her, he was so serious, and yet he
+took it so lightly, apparently, that she was obliged to believe he
+meant what he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You talked to me very differently," she reminded him, and he shrugged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I've been far too emotional and unpractical.  I'm going henceforth
+to look at things from the worldly and conventional stand-point."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She put out her hand beseechingly.  "Oh, leave that for the rest of us.
+It quite spoils you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't pretend to think&mdash;"  He made his gaze small as he looked past
+her in an attitude of reflection.  "Oh, I don't claim that, it's an
+ideal way of looking at things.  But there is not much idealism in the
+modern divorce, is there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess took a turn across the floor, twisting her fair hands
+together, then came round to his side and sat down on a low chair near
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you quite serious?" she asked.  "But I know that you are not.  Let
+me at least think so.  Your words shock me horribly"&mdash;and she looked
+piteously at him.  "I have felt you to be such a gentle person, and
+yours is such an understanding atmosphere."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode had given himself methodically another cup of tea, and helped
+himself now to sugar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, atmosphere!" he repeated scornfully.  "One can't live on air, you
+know.  And I have been of the most colorless kind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you've changed terribly," she accused him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've only come down to solid earth," he explained.  "And the earth's
+after all where we belong, Duchess.  Stand firm, keep to your own part
+of it, and don't cloud-gaze, or somebody with a claim will knock you
+off your little foothold."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, <I>heavens</I>!" exclaimed his companion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The gentleman, who appeared at length quite to have finished his
+material enjoyment of the tea, put his second empty cup down and looked
+at the lady.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You should have married an American husband," he said to her, "a man
+who would have idolized you, not cared whether you developed or not.  A
+duchess isn't far enough up.  An American empress is higher."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lady listening to him, shuddered a little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As it is," he went on regretfully, "you've been forced to develop,
+whether or not you wanted to, to grow finer and freer, to go farther
+on, to become more delightful.  Here you are progressed and civilized,
+after years of education, experience and suffering, and, my poor child,
+here you are all alone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She cried out, "Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," with a little gasp.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no, no," he softly ejaculated, "it is not fair!  You're terribly
+wasted, and you've been, as you too well know, terribly betrayed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But here he felt her hand on his arm with a strong grasp.  She shook
+the arm a little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't go on," she said deeply.  "I tell you not to go on."  After a
+few seconds, in which he heard the fire and the slow bubbling of the
+gently boiling water and the cooing of the doves without, under the
+eaves, the Duchess said: "Listen to me.  I haven't talked at all to
+you, let me say something now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her companion reflected to himself: "Well, at all events, she's not
+going to malign the Duke; that's a foregone conclusion."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess clasped her hands round her knee and raised her face to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you think," she asked, "that there's any egoist as nasty as a
+feminine one?  Men are admitted to be generally selfish, but we
+specialize, and each one of us has the faculty of getting up some new
+and peculiar brand, I begin to believe.  At any rate, when I married, I
+was an egoist, and I've stayed on being one until a very little time
+ago.  I suppose I must in a way have more or less ornamented my
+position, as the papers say.  I did have two children as well, and in
+that way fulfilled my duty as a Westboro'.  But really and truly, I
+have never in the least been a wife, and very little of a mother.  I
+was as silly and vain as could be, and I never for a moment valued my
+husband.  I wasn't indifferent to my children, but I was absorbed by my
+worldly life, and when my little boys were taken ill and died, I was on
+a dahabeah on the Nile, and I don't think that Cecil ever forgave us
+for being so far away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She remained quiet for a long time, looking down at her hands, and when
+she lifted her face Bulstrode saw that she had wept.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That," she went on, "broke the ice round my heart, when I came home to
+those empty rooms."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He said soothingly, "There, there, my child."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, let me go on," she urged him, "let me speak.  I shall probably
+never feel like doing so again.  But at that time when I turned to find
+my husband, I discovered that I had no power over him, and I realized
+that for years I had not possessed his love.  I suppose you'll tell me
+that it is unusual for a woman to see so clearly as this.  Perhaps it
+is.  At any rate, just because I did so clearly, I forgave him when he
+came to me last year, at Cannes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You were wonderful!" he repeated again, "perfectly noble, and, as I
+said before, Westboro' did not deserve you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She did not here, as she had done before, catch him up; on the
+contrary, after a few moments, she asked him point-blank:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What then do you advise us, knowing us both, to do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was distinctly disappointed that she should have put the question to
+him, and gave her time to withdraw it as he asked tentatively: "You
+really feel that you must ask me, Duchess?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me, at all events."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are quite sure that you could not go back to your husband?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a little pause, she lingeringly said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, quite sure.  You must know that he will not be the first to break
+the ice now."  Then she pushed: "You would advise my filing my papers
+for divorce?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Held in this way pitilessly for a direct challenge, he met her eyes
+with his own, asking her gently:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is there nothing that speaks for Westboro' more distinctly than
+anything I can say?  And more appealingly than anything which you in
+all your pride feel?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess assented that there was, with a movement of her lips; she
+put her hands over her face and so sat quietly for a few moments, and
+when she spoke again to her visitor, her words were irrelevant.  When
+some few moments after she bade him good-by, she regretted his absence
+in London and begged him to come and see her as soon as he returned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come," she said, "at least to see whether I am here or whether I have
+pitched my tent and gone away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Bulstrode stood in the doorway she asked him: "I understand there
+are a lot of people at the castle for Christmas, and among them will be
+Mrs. Falconer?  Isn't it so?  Is she really so very lovely?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a different type of loveliness from yours," Bulstrode returned.
+And the Duchess supposed: "A happier type?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, she's rather happy I think, take it all together," Jimmy said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Has she children?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"None."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is she in love with her husband?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And he was so long searching for a reply that the Duchess laughed
+quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poor man," she said, "don't bother.  But then since she's so happy,
+she must be in love with somebody else's husband."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he put her right immediately.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think she in the least is.  And why," he went on, "since
+happiness is so greatly the question of other people's state of mind,
+might we not let it go at the fact that she is herself very much loved?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess looked at her guest rather absently.  She was thinking of
+the happy beauty, the woman of a different type from her own, whose
+presence at Westboro' had been sought by her husband for the second
+time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," she answered rather absently, giving Jimmy her hand, "she
+wouldn't, you know, be happy if the feeling were all on the other side."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+When the Duke had casually asked his guest's plans for Christmas week,
+Bulstrode had come near to offending his host by declaring that he
+could not possibly be one of a second house party.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you, then," Westboro' had asked, "<I>hate</I> the holidays?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The genial Bulstrode had assured him to the contrary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nor do I," continued the Duke, "even though I'm a miserable man on the
+verge of a divorce.  I expect there's too long a line of jolly
+Christmases back of the Westboro's for me to mope through the season.
+But I don't want to have Christmas coming to an empty house, my dear
+fellow"&mdash;He put it pathetically, "there's no one in this gloomy place
+but yourself and myself.  We must have a Christmas party.  The tenants
+will, of course, be noisy and cheerful, but I'm going to ask a lot of
+people down and make the list out now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Bulstrode had, however, firmly insisted that he could not really
+stop on&mdash;that he must go away.  "There are," he wound up his arguments,
+"a thousand reasons why I should go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Westboro' had comprehendingly suggested that they might together
+bring "every reason" down to the country.  "And," continued his Grace,
+"we'll narrow things into the most intimate circle possible.  For I
+shall ask the Ravensworths of Surrey and their children, there are
+eight of them, ripping little things; they used to play with my boys.
+We'll turn them loose and have a tree, old man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jimmy watched his face with a keen pity, for there had not been one ray
+of light in it as he planned for his celebration.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you arrange to come back for Christmas Eve.  There <I>must</I> be some
+one in charge&mdash;I mean to say, some one so that if the whole thing is
+too much for me, why I'll bolt and you'll have to stand by."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was, as he spoke, writing the names on a sheet of paper.  Bulstrode
+felt the plan to be rather <I>triste</I> and lifeless, and he knew that he
+could not and would not keep the Duchess' secret much longer, let its
+revelation cost him what it would.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Westboro'," he said, "I shall have to be getting off to-morrow.  You
+know I would stand by you if I could possibly see my way clear."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know perfectly well," the Duke acknowledged, "what a rotten bore
+I've been, and how sick of me you must be."  He wrote on: "I shall ask
+Mrs. Falconer (her husband is in the States); she is quite alone in
+town at Lady Sorgham's."  As he quoted this last name the Duke folded
+his list up.  He nodded affectionately at Jimmy.  "You'll arrange
+perhaps to come down with Mrs. Falconer on the Friday train?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Bulstrode capitulating weakly, murmured, "Oh, we'll fetch the toys
+and things for the tree," he offered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ripping!" his Grace nodded.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Jimmy, on his way at last to London, stopped once more at The Dials,
+and was hurrying across the forest when the Duchess herself appeared to
+him at the big dial.  She wore her furs, muff, and big enveloping
+stole, her hat with fur on it, and a veil.  She was not in house or
+garden trim.  The urban air of her toilet was a surprise to Bulstrode,
+and he took in her readiness for something he had not expected,
+something great, something decisive.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's good of you to come when you must be full of delightful ways of
+passing your time, Mr. Bulstrode," she said, "and I wanted so much to
+see you again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Again?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," she replied nodding, "again and many times.  But I mean I
+wanted to see you <I>here</I>."  Bulstrode did not want her to tell him a
+piece of final news.  He did not care to learn of an arbitrary
+departure, and he said, laughing: "Then you don't like my property?
+Any repairs you...?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I adore The Dials," she said gravely, "and I can't think why they
+ever let you buy it, or what you'll do with it after I'm gone."  She
+smiled.  ".... or with whom."  Before he could speak she added: "Where
+is my husband to-day?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I left him wandering about the house like a lost spirit," Bulstrode
+replied.  "Looking," he went on, "all about for something or other.  I
+expect he himself didn't quite know what.  For something to cheer up
+the empty rooms."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, don't," she murmured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he seemed pleased with the picture he drew.  "I doubt if Westboro'
+stops in the house alone; he's probably gone out shooting."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But he has a house full of people....?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No one has come, or is coming, after all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't mean to say that they've all refused!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," Jimmy said, "every man of them, and all the women as well."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess put out her hand quickly, and said touchingly: "Oh, but you
+don't for a moment think&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That it's because of the scandal, dear lady?" he smiled.  "Well, that
+would be a new phase.  No, I think on the other hand they would revel,
+and the only reason in the world that they have not come down is that
+they were really asked too late.  Christmas week, you know&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And, of course, then, Mrs. Falconer," the Duchess's face brightened.
+"She&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, <I>she</I>!" Bulstrode exclaimed, "she's as right as possible.  She's
+sure to be along in good season."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!" accepted the Duchess, "and with whom does she come?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode waited.  "Well, of course, the poor thing expects to find
+more or less some one to help her bear up her end.  And I can't say how
+she will take the fact of only us two."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess interrupted cheerfully:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, she, of course, will go directly back!  You don't think for a
+second that she would stop on alone like that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Alone?" Bulstrode gave her with a little malice.  "But she'll have
+Westboro' and me so entirely to herself and one can always ask in the
+rector or curate or corral a neighbor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the Duchess shook her head as if she understood.  "Oh, no, not at
+this time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode miscomprehended blithely: "Christmas time?  You see, I know
+the visiting lady pretty well, and I believe she'll feel me to be more
+or less of a standby, and I know her spirit and her human kindness.  I
+am inclined to think that she will feel it's up to her not to run off
+like a hare; to think that Westboro' may, in a way, need her; and that
+when she finds everybody's gone back on the poor man, and there's to be
+no tree after all, why, I'm tempted, by jove, to think&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess helped him: "That she'll make a charity of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, if you like," he laughed.  "Or be a sport," he preferred to put
+it.  "Stay on, stand by.  It will be perfectly ripping of her, you
+know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the Duchess had no sympathy for the other woman.  Her eyes fixed
+themselves on the trees before her, and as a shot rang out in the
+distance she said abruptly: "Why, that might be Cecil, mightn't it?
+Does he shoot birds on your premises?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode wondered very much for what reason she was habited in street
+dress and furs, whether she had planned to leave The Dials or had
+intended going up to see her husband.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Forgive me," he said, "if I seem to be shockingly in a hurry, but I
+must have a look at the time, for as it happens, even in this far-off
+place, I have an engagement."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Impulsively putting out her hand the Duchess exclaimed: "I can't ever,
+ever thank you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, after your divorce&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But she cried out so against his words that he hastened: "You want me
+to think then that you do not believe...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Believe!" she ardently repeated, "Oh, I don't know what I believe or
+think," and he saw that the poor thing spoke the truth.  "It's I who am
+as unstable as the sea, I who am the derelict."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He contradicted her gently: "My dear, you're only trying to solve alone
+a problem which it takes two to answer.  When you see Westboro' you
+will know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She turned on him with the first sparkle of humor he had ever seen her
+display.  "Why don't you marry Mrs. Falconer?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He didn't start; indeed, the idea had such a familiar sound it would
+have been hard to frighten him with it from any corner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought you didn't believe in divorces?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, but you'd make a wonderful husband!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He laughed.  "No one has ever thought so&mdash;<I>la preuve</I>....?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With great frankness in her gesture and a great&mdash;he was quick to see
+it&mdash;a great affection&mdash;she put out her hand to him and said: "Oh, yes,
+you'd make a wonderful companion, and you've been a wonderful friend.
+If anything good comes to me now, I shall in great measure owe it to
+you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He protested: "You owe me nothing, nothing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were tears in her eyes as she said: "But I want to, I like to,
+and I do.  I don't know," she went on, "that I might not have been
+reconciled ultimately to my husband, but I feel quite sure it would
+only have been the basting up of the seam&mdash;it would have ripped away
+again.  Did you ever&mdash;" she challenged him with still a little sparkle
+of humor, "hear of a thing called a change of heart?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, at Methodist meetings."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She said gravely: "That's not what I mean.  But whatever <I>has</I> happened
+it's only been since you told me things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her face was so girlish, her eyes so sweet, her humility so sudden,
+that her companion found himself embarrassed and could hardly find
+words to say good-by to her.  She went on to say, in a tone so low that
+he bent a little over the dial to hear her.  "You told me you could not
+advise my husband to come to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ah, had he!  It was hard to remember that.  <I>Had</I> he said so?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think," she whispered, "you need not keep him away now, if he should
+want to come."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As her friend said nothing, she added in a voice more like a child than
+a great Duchess, "You may trust me.  I <I>want</I> him to come&mdash;  There,
+I've said it.  I <I>hope</I> he'll come.  If he doesn't&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, then, you'll go away," he finished.  "You can't bear it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess shook her head.  "I'll go to him, on the contrary."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You were going?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, when you came."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He cried out: "Oh, I'm off then, I'm off for London, and I shan't be
+back for the Christmas holidays.  You may count on me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess smiled delightfully, and was in a second the elusive woman,
+intangible, and impossible to seize.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no," she said, "please don't exile yourself either to-day or
+to-morrow.  It isn't after all the moment, and I want to prove to you
+that I'm not jealous.  I've decided to wait until that lovely woman has
+gone away."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The waste of his territory, its largesse to no purpose, its vastness
+through which only unbearable silences echoed; accumulated revenues and
+hereditary title, only added to the Duke's melancholy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had planned the Christmas house party too late as it proved, and
+refusals, one after another, came in during the week.  The poor
+gentleman's mood led him to resent each fresh defection on the part of
+his guests as personal wounds inflicted by old friends at a time when
+charity would have been sweet.  And it was with really tragic
+melancholy that he threw the last letter down exclaiming:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And they all with one consent began to make excuse."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He quite waited for a line from Mrs. Falconer, which would tell him
+that she, too, had decided to abandon him: and the thought of what he
+believed to be Jimmy's complications at The Dials caused him half to
+regard the matter with a pity for her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If Jimmy <I>isn't</I> married, he's the most whited of sepulchres!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The satin shine of holly, the glimmer of pearly mistletoe, the odor of
+spruce and pine, and heavier scent of hemlock bewitched the castle
+throughout with their fragrance.  Setting and decoration suggested a
+feast, and the Duke as he passed through the upper halls, and by the
+doors of his children's rooms, saw holly wreaths on the walls and that
+the little gates were twisted with green.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The day was dampish and the Duke, unable to bear the silence of the
+house, with his gun and his dogs and with a lack of resource and
+superfluity of ennui to urge him from the castle, started to tramp off
+his unrest.  The afternoon was young, and the bare, naked sunlight fell
+over the bare nakedness of the land.  The little low clumps of
+neutral-colored underbrush, the reddish-brown thickets between wood and
+field, would hide the birds well, and with his gun across his back, his
+hands in his pockets, his Grace covered many miles before he at length
+stopped to take in the length of the land or to listen for wings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Coveys had flown up and away unseen by him, and their whirring unheard.
+His dogs had run off, and without being abruptly brought to heel,
+skulked back by themselves shamefaced and bewildered by the hunter's
+indifference.  The holly reddened on the hedges, the scarlet berries
+bright among the glowing leaves; high in the poplars the parasite
+mistletoe with crystal balls, hung tiny white globules like fairy
+grapes; holiday in the air, and over the grey winter landscape the
+finest possible powder of snow lay pale under the furtive sun.  As the
+forest edges closed about him and the Duke with still no idea of where
+he was going, continued to tramp, he unconsciously entered the property
+Bulstrode had lately acquired, and which he had begged his friend to
+avoid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was something in the country air, in its pungent sweetness, and
+in the season, that penetrated even Westboro's melancholy, and every
+now and then he lifted his head to breathe in deeply the fragrance of
+hemlock and the cold earthy aroma, the spice of bracken and the balm of
+a fragrant thicket that smelled like a rose.  It was winter, however,
+and although a snow bird piped in it and the sun was out, there was a
+December quality that, in the mood he was in, overcame all the
+festivities of the time.  He heard the bird who was persistent and
+sharp-voiced, and, for the first time thinking of the other game he had
+come out for, he paused.  His dogs were gone, the beggars!  He called
+them to no purpose, whistled and waited.  They were a new brace and
+young.  God knew where they had cut away to.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before him, as he stood, the brown vistas of the winter forest opened
+out here and there into ochre circles and filled at this hour with
+brilliant sunlight, their round openings overflowing; the light
+filtered gently out and was swallowed up by the cold and closer wood.
+Under his feet there was only the faint ghost of the late snowfall on
+the turned-up, curled-up edges of the dry leaves.  There beeches, red
+as copper, and iron-strong oaks struck their roots deep down into the
+mould.  Westboro' did not know where he had wandered to, but here and
+there through the bare trees gleamed the white of a statue on its mossy
+base, and a little farther along, a broken pedestal held its slender
+column up amongst the tree trunks as mossy and veined as they, and
+right in the heart of the bowl, on a brick pedestal was a sundial, a
+round brass disc, cut into with the tooth of time, and all black and
+green.  The sun at this moment shone full on it and its slight shadow
+fell along the noon.  The Duke stooped down and through the glass read
+the inscription:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>Utere dum licet</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm a trespasser," he thought.  "This is Bulstrode's property."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Through an opening just to the right he could see a brown path, and at
+the end of it a gate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What the deuce could Jimmy have so wanted this old place for?  What
+was he hiding here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned back with the intention of taking as sudden leave of the
+place as he had made an entrance.  He saw his dogs in front of him and
+called them.  Before him lay the clean low fall of the meadow with the
+line of high hedge, and directly opposite him he could see the elms of
+his own park.  He had not gone more than a couple of hundred feet away
+before he paused again and turned about to have one last look back at
+the enchanting place.  As he stood thus, in Jimmy's property, he at
+first took it to be a trick of vision, for he stood perfectly rigid,
+peering back at the opening he had left not five minutes before.  He
+leaned forwards, setting his eyeglass and staring at two figures who
+had come into the bowl and stood close by the big dial.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He set his gun on the ground and leaned upon it.  There was a cordial
+meeting; he could hear the voices but he could not distinguish their
+words, and during all the interview, which must have consumed some
+fifteen minutes, the Duke never stirred.  Finally, and curiously enough
+it seemed a short time to him, they took leave of each other, the man
+going out of the forest by a different path, the woman slowly turning
+down the neat walk that led to the brick arch, and to the old house.
+Whether or not the Duke had at this moment the vaguest suspicion of
+her, suspicion of his friend or of his wife that did them wrong, he
+never had time or clearness to reflect or to ask himself.  A dense
+blindness took his senses away from him.  He put his hands out to
+steady himself in vain, and staggered.  His dogs were at his feet, he
+fell over them, struggled to get his balance back and like a stricken
+tree went down.  In his heavy fall on his gun it discharged, filling
+his upper arm and shoulder with a quantity of bird shot.  The
+scattering pain, instead of finishing his faint, roused him with a
+sharp, ugly sting, and the rush of the warm, wet blood.  He half picked
+himself up, and then, aware of the pain tearing his muscles and flesh,
+he fell back like a dog on his haunches.  Through his confusion he
+still contrived to remember a little path, and inch by inch he dragged
+himself towards it.  He pulled along over the leaves and russet paths
+of ground.  His bare hand finally struck the bricks of the little walk
+and he could still know that he was wonderfully in the road.  There was
+a cloud before his swimming eyes and his troubled mind; his face, pale
+as death, was lifted towards the arch; leaving a bloody trail as he
+crawled along the ground, he contrived to reach the gate and fell
+across its threshold.  His head lay on his arm, the string of his
+broken eyeglass wound pathetically about his wrist.  The Duke proved to
+be a modern replica of the poor knight who fell, face downwards, on the
+grass when Elizabeth's carriage passed him by, some four hundred years
+before the present Duke.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+After Bulstrode had left her, the Duchess of Westboro' hurried back to
+the house that was not her home; to the little long drawing-room that
+was not hers.  For the first time since her voluntary exile, since her
+occupation of this asylum, she found it bereft of charm and the cosey,
+dear place as cold to her as if the snows had drifted in and filled a
+deserted nest.  It had nevertheless been a cloister, and she knew it,
+where the best of her had prayed, where the true woman&mdash;and the true
+woman is always something of a saint&mdash;had folded submissive hands,
+where self had gone away and left nothing at all but love.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On this Christmas Eve, The Dials was the loneliest corner of England.
+The scarcely occupied house suggested to the Duchess the thought of a
+stocking hung before a chimney when there were no children who cared
+whether it was filled or not, when there was no reason why St. Nicholas
+should pass.  But it was only the very edge of her thoughts that
+touched anything so fantastic as this picture.  The Duchess was serious
+and lonely.  With a sigh, and winking back tears she threw off her
+furs, laid off her hat, and, after poking up the fire into sparkling
+brightness, she wandered up-stairs to the apartment that she had made
+her bedroom.  Under the low eaves the bed-chamber shone out gay with
+chintz, fresh and sweet as a midwinter bouquet, the frostiness coming
+in around it through the slightly opened window, and there was the
+scent of the firs and the cedar wood that closely hemmed the old place
+in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Heavens!" thought the Duchess, half aloud.  "How dreadfully in love
+Jimmy Bulstrode is, how dreadfully, faithfully in love!"  And then she
+went on to say: "How dreadfully I am myself in love, and no one is
+hurrying to <I>me</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She walked aimlessly about the pretty room, irritated and annoyed at
+the cloister effect.  She found it too remote, too virgin, and no room
+for a wife.  "I promised," she mused, "to wait until Mrs. Falconer has
+gone.  I shall break my promise.  Oh, I can't really wait at all!  If
+things are going to be as bad as this, I want to leave England, I want
+at least to know.  And Jimmy will forgive me, it's such a wonderfully
+good cause ... a woman going to find her husband on Christmas Eve!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess threw open the window to its widest.  Down in the garden on
+the stone wall the big dial lay in the shadow of the afternoon.  She
+could not read its motto, but she knew perfectly what it said&mdash;<I>Utere
+dum licet</I>.  As she leaned out above her garden, under her window the
+snowballs hung their waxen globes in a green tree.  There were a few
+winter roses blooming, and the English garden had the beauty of summer
+in winter time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess heard a sharp sound close to the house.  It was a rifle
+shot, and died instantly on the still air.  Shots were not uncommon in
+this season, but here in The Dials woods they were entirely out of
+character; in fact, they were quite inadmissible.  There was no
+shooting let, and a shot could only mean poaching, or something more
+serious.  The Duchess waited a few moments, but no other sound
+followed.  She nevertheless drew the casement in, and, going down
+stairs threw her stole about her shoulders and opened the house door
+into the garden.  At the sight of her, down by the other end of the
+wall, the gardener lifted up his bent form, and with a little pannier
+of hot-house violets in his hands, hurried towards his lady.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mellon," said she, "have you any violets?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess took the fragrant basket with its delicate burden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A mort, my lady."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pick them all, Mellon, and all the flowers from the green-house too,
+every one of them, and fetch up whatever there is to the cottage."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man was deaf, as well as discreet, and if this sudden command
+to vandalism surprised him, he did not say so.  Holding his hand behind
+his ear, he nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall send them," the Duchess thought, "up to Jimmy Bulstrode.  I
+think he will understand, and I will ask him at the same time to take
+his friend off somewhere in a motor that I may go unobserved to the
+castle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She said a few more words to the old man, asked him a few questions,
+then with the basket on her arm she was about to turn away when she
+remembered the shot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you hear a shot, Mellon?  They should not be shooting about here,
+you know."  But the old man had heard nothing, and, intending to find
+the lodgekeeper who was clipping the trees on the lower terrace and ask
+him to go through the woods for her, the Duchess walked toward the gate
+and in the direction of the brick path.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she came up to it she gave a low cry, lifted her hands to her heart;
+the basket of flowers fell to the earth and scattered their purple
+blooms at her feet.  Then the hands that had gone to her heart
+extended, she held out her arms and went forwards, crying her husband's
+name.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duke of Westboro' had managed to pick himself up.  He was a strong
+man, in the fulness of health and vigor; there was nothing of the
+mollycoddle about the last Duke of the line.  The sound of voices had
+reached his dull ear, his swoon was over, and he had manfully, with a
+few sturdy curses, pulled himself up and now stood, albeit very pale,
+clinging to the gatepost, leaning on it, finding his legs shaking and
+his balance not all he could wish.  Before him was a little brick
+house, with bright curtains in the windows, and between it and himself,
+lovely as a ghost, and no less white, was his wife, and her arms were
+extended towards him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cecil!" she cried.  "Oh, my God!  Cecil, what has happened to you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before Westboro' knew it, the arms to which he had gone in visions were
+about him and the soft shoulder gave him a prop more fragile perhaps
+than the stone against which he leaned, but it was a living support,
+and it felt warm and wonderful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't," he said vaguely, "get near me.  I'm nasty and bloody.  It's
+all right; I'm only a bit scratched, really.  A lot of beastly shot has
+gone off into my shoulder.  Just call some one to help me, will you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cecil," she said, "lean on me, put your arm around my shoulder; you
+can perfectly well get along with only me.  Come, come!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duke saw that he could perfectly get along with another faint&mdash;he
+was near to it, but something besides his wound and his light head kept
+him manfully to his feet.  With his left hand he very firmly pushed the
+Duchess a little away from him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come?" he repeated.  "Come where?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Home," said the Duchess with a catch in her voice&mdash;she was bearing up.
+"Oh, lean on me!  You'll fall, you'll fall!  Mellon!" she cried.  "O
+Mellon!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the Duke put up his hand.  "I'm all right," he said.  "Don't call.
+What house is that?  What home do you mean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mine," said the Duchess, "my house&mdash;that is, I mean to say, Mr.
+Bulstrode's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess saw a slight wave of red rush up her husband's pale cheek.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Damn Bulstrode!" he breathed.  "What the devil does he do here?  I saw
+you together&mdash;I saw you not half an hour since&mdash;that is the whole
+mischief of it&mdash;it was too much for me&mdash;it took away my senses and I
+fell on my gun, and the beastly thing went off.  If I ever get back to
+where Bulstrode is&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cecil!" cried the Duchess.  She again wound her arms around him, and
+it was as well that she was a strong, fine creature and that the
+columns of the gate were back of him, for Westboro' was swaying like a
+child that has just learned to walk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is fainting!" she cried.  "Mellon, Mellon!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man had not heard his mistress but he had seen her, and after
+staring open-mouthed at the couple at the gate, he came scurrying like
+a rabbit, dropping his shears on the wall.  They hit the big dial with
+a ring.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duke heard the steps and tried to start forwards; also tried weakly
+to extricate himself from his wife's embrace.  "I beg your pardon," he
+said, with a coolness that had something of the humorous in its
+formality&mdash;"I beg your pardon, but I am <I>not</I> going to Bulstrode's
+house, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Cecil</I>," pleaded the woman tenderly, "how ridiculous you are!
+Bulstrode's house!  Why, it's mine!  Oh, don't break my heart.  He's
+only bought it, you know, that's all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Break her heart!"  It was a new voice that spoke to the Duke of
+Westboro'.  He had never heard it in all his life.  It was warm and
+struggling for clearness, it was full of tears and quivering, it was
+the voice of love, and unmistakable, certainly, to a lover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What was Bulstrode doing here?" he persisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Going to Mrs. Falconer," breathed the Duchess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duke moved a step forwards: "What are you doing here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Going to you, Cecil&mdash;I have <I>been</I> going to you all day.  I think I
+have been going to you ever since you left me that night on the
+Riviera; at any rate, I was on my way to the castle as you came."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duke halted again on his crawling way.  Mellon, who had really
+reached his side, was doing his best to be of some use and kept himself
+well under the wounded arm, on which the blood had clotted and dried,
+but ceased to flow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lean hard on me, your Grace," pleaded the gardener, and with his word,
+he looked over at his mistress to see if she realized who their noble
+visitor was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With fine disregard for his help or existence, the Duke said crossly:
+"Send this damned gardener away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Cecil, no, no; you can't stand without him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They had reached the garden wall, just at the place where the big dial,
+round and shining, had come a little out of the shadow and the last of
+the afternoon sun touched its edges.  Westboro' lurched towards the
+wall.  "Send this man away," he commanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is deaf, Cecil, as the stones."  But at her husband's face she
+motioned to Mellon: "Stand away a bit.  His Grace wants to rest on the
+wall.  I'll call you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With his wife's arms about him, Westboro' leaned on the garden wall,
+his ashen face lifted to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've only one arm," he said.  He put it around her and he drew her
+down as close to him as he could.  He felt her face warm against his,
+wet against his with tears.  As the Duke, who, Bulstrode said, was no
+lover, kissed his wife, the dial seemed to sing its motto aloud.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You <I>were</I> coming to me?" he breathed.  "Do you forgive me? ... Then,"
+said Westboro', satisfied by what he heard, "I'm cured.  I love you&mdash;I
+love you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The woman could not find her voice, but as she held him she was the
+warmest, sweetest prop that ever a wounded man leaned upon.  After a
+few seconds she helped him to rise, helped him on, and he found his
+balance and his equilibrium to be very wonderful under the
+circumstances, and managed to reach the door-sill.  Mellon and the
+maids were there, and as the Duchess passed in, leading her husband,
+she bade them send for a doctor as fast as they could and to send at
+once for Bulstrode at the castle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Westboro's wound had become a sort of intoxication to him, and he
+assured her, "I'll be all right in an hour.  I need no one but you;
+send them all away, all away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had never commanded her before, he had let her rule him, he had been
+indifferent to her disobedience.  But now she did what he bade her, and
+led him to the drawing-room, suddenly repossessed of all its old charm;
+led him to the lounge, where he sank down.  Here, by his side, she gave
+him stimulants and bathed his head and hands, waiting for the doctor to
+come; and Westboro', like his ancestors who had fought in the King's
+wars, bore up like a man with no resemblance whatsoever to the amorous
+cavalier whose curls had met the dust of the road for love of Queen
+Elizabeth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duchess found him that best of all things&mdash;very much of a man, and
+knew that he was hers.  And he, more wild with love for her than
+suffering physical pain, found her a woman and knew that she loved him
+and that she was his.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The house, so deserted and desolate an hour ago, grew fresh, warm, and
+rosy as over the west meadows the sunset, gilding the wall and The
+Dials, flushed the windows red, and the deserted bird's-nest, lately
+"filled with snow" appeared to have, as the light rained upon it,
+filled itself with roses.  So, an hour later, it seemed to Bulstrode,
+when he came and found it housing the lovers.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap08"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE EIGHTH ADVENTURE
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+VIII
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IN WHICH HE COMES INTO HIS OWN
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+England, the heart of the countryside, freshened by December and
+drifted over by delicate breaths that are scarcely fog, and through
+which like a chrysanthemum seen behind ground glass the sun contrives
+to shine, the English country in December is one thing, London quite
+another.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jimmy wandered across from Paddington to his destination, part of the
+time on foot, part of the time peering from a crawling hansom in
+immediate peril of collision with every other object that like himself
+lost bearings in the nightmarish yellow fog.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He fetched up before No. &mdash;&mdash;, Portman Square, at mid-day, and rang the
+door bell of Lady Sorgham's town-house, and in his eagerness to find
+his friend did not ask himself how the time accorded with calling hours.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was at home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An insignificant footman told him this, and the gentleman reflected
+that it was astounding what the words, heard often in the course of ten
+years, meant to him still.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the sitting-room, before a coal fire, a writing table at her side, a
+pen in her hand, he found Mrs. Falconer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He sincerely struggled with an inability to speak at once, even the
+consoling how-d'-dos that cover for us a multitude of feelings, were
+not at his tongue's end.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The fire had burned away a few feet of fog and lighted lamps and
+candles shone pallidly through an obscurity about whose existence there
+could be no doubt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The inmates of Lady Sorgham's thoroughly English and thoroughly
+comfortable drawing-room were aliens, possessing neither of them a
+hearthstone within range of several thousand miles.  But no sooner had
+they greeted&mdash;Bulstrode triumphantly peering at her through both real
+and mental haze&mdash;shaken hands, and each found a seat before the grate,
+than an enchanting homeliness overspread the place.  Bulstrode felt it
+and smiled with content to think she did as well, and remembered an
+occasion in America when they had both of them missed a train for some
+out-of-the-way place and found themselves side by side in a mid-country
+station to pass there three hours of a broiling afternoon.  The flies
+and mosquitoes buzzed about them, the thermometer registered ninety
+degrees, but happy, cool and unruffled Mary Falconer, smiling up at him
+from her hard bench, had said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jimmy, let's <I>build</I> here!"
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"No one, Jimmy, is old"&mdash;Mrs. Falconer had once said to him on an
+occasion when a word regarding gray hairs had drifted into their
+conversation.  Noticing the smooth reflection of the light along her
+hair, Bulstrode had spoken of its golden quality, and the lady had
+suddenly covered the strand with her hand; she knew that there ran a
+line she did not want him to see.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No one is old, Jimmy, who has even the least little bit of future
+towards which he looks!  It's only those people whose doors are all
+shut, whose window blinds are all drawn to, who, no matter which way
+they look, see no opening into a distance towards which they will want
+to go&mdash;only those people are old!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And as for Bulstrode, if Mrs. Falconer's idea were right, he was a very
+young man still, for at the end of every path others opened and led
+rapidly away.  Scene gave on to scene, dissolved and grew new again.
+Every door gave to rooms whose suites were delightful, indefinite, and
+all followed towards a future whose existence Bulstrode never doubted.
+But there were certainly times, as the days went methodically on, there
+were decidedly many times when it took all his faith and his spirit to
+endure the <I>étape</I> that lay between self and life.  Such a little
+tranquil home as a certain property he had lately acquired was what he
+dreamed of sharing with Mrs. Falconer.  He did not, with any degree of
+anxiety, ask himself whether or not it were dead men's shoes he was
+waiting for, and no clear, formulated thought of tangible events took
+existence in his mind.  But he knew that he waited for his own.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was with some such personal feeling that in something that looked
+like a future he might one day lead the woman he loved home, that he
+had taken any pleasure whatsoever in his involuntary purchase of the
+old property known as The Dials.  The gray house down in Glousceshire
+in its half-forsaken seclusion, the lie of the land round it, its
+shut-offness from the world, its ancient beauty, had been a constant
+suggestion to him of a future dwelling, and the doors, the windows, the
+low-inviting rooms, the shadowy stairways, ingles, gables, terraces,
+the dials and sunken gardens, had appeared to him conceived, planned
+and waiting to be the settings for a life of his own.  He wanted very
+much to tell Mrs. Falconer all about the lovely English country-seat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the room where they now talked, wreaths of fog filled the corners
+like spiders' dusty webs that poised and swung.  The odor that stamps
+England hung in the mist, furthermore permeated with the scent of a
+bouquet at Mrs. Falconer's elbow and which at one moment of his visit
+Jimmy recognized for a lot of roses sent by parcel post from the
+Westboro' greeneries.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you ever sew?" he asked her, and she admitted to a thimble which
+persistently, with a suggestion of reproach, turned up every now and
+then amongst her belongings; now falling out from a jewel box, then
+stowed away in a handkerchief case, out of place and continually
+reproachful: kept because it had been her mother's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If he did not speak other than in a general way of the rather long
+visit he had been making to the Duke of Westboro' in Glousceshire, he
+did tell his friend all about The Dials and dwelt on the fascination
+that the old place possessed.  The Dials was, in point of fact, very
+agreeably described to Mrs. Falconer, who looked it out on the map of
+Glousceshire, and Bulstrode's purchase (for he had legally gone in for
+it, the whole thing), was made to seem a very jewel of a property.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's as lovely as an old print," she said, "as good as a Turner.
+You're a great artist along your lines, Jimmy.  Don't have it rebuilt
+by some more than designing architect in trouble, or landscape-gardened
+by some inebriated Adam out of charity.  Leave it beautifully alone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I will," he assured her.  "It shall tumble away and crush away in
+peace.  You shall see it all, however," he assured, "for you really
+will come down for Christmas?  You see, poor old fellow, Westboro's
+house is rather empty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," nodded Mrs. Falconer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see, every one else has gone back on him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poor dear," sympathized the lady.  "Of course we'll go down."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No matter to what extent he had thought of her, and it was pretty sure
+to be a wide one, her beauty struck him every time afresh.  There was
+the fine exquisiteness of <I>fin de race</I> in Mary Falconer.  Her father
+had been an Irishman born, and the type of his island's lovely women
+was repeated in his daughter's blue eyes, the set of her head and her
+arms; her taper and small-boned little wrists, her cool hands with the
+slender fingers told of muscle and moulding and completed the
+well-finished, well turned-out creature whose race it had taken
+generations to perfect.  These distinctions her clever father
+bequeathed her as well as her laugh and her wit, her blue eyes and her
+curling hair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode stayed on in the dingy delightful room, until at an order of
+his hostess, luncheon was served them on a small table, and over the
+good things of an amazingly well-understood buffet and a bottle of
+wine, they were left alone.  Bulstrode stayed on until the fog in the
+corners darkened to the blackest of ugly webs and choked the fire and
+clutched the candles' slender throats as if to suffocate the flame.
+Tea was served and put away and the period known as <I>entre chien et
+loup</I> at length stole up Portman Square alongside the fog and found
+Bulstrode still staying on....
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Later, much later, when the lamps in the street and the square found
+themselves, with no visible transition, lighting night-time as they had
+lighted day&mdash;when the hansoms began to swing the early diners along to
+their destinations, a hansom drew up before No. &mdash;&mdash;, Portman Square.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was at the hour soft-footed London had ceased to roll its rubber
+tires down the little street, and only an occasional cab slipped by
+unheard.  But a small hand cart on which a piano organ was installed
+wheeled by No. &mdash;&mdash;, Portman Square, and stopped directly under the
+Sorghams' window and a man began to sing:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"I'll sing thee songs of Araby<BR>
+And tales of old Cashmere."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The creature was singing for his living, for his supper doubtless,
+certainly for his breakfast, but he chanced to possess a remarkable
+gift and he evidently loved his trade.  The silence&mdash;wherein all London
+appeared to listen, the quiet wherein the magically suspended room had
+swung and swung until even Bulstrode's clear mind and good sense began
+fatally to blur and swing with the pendulant room&mdash;was broken into by
+the song.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And as Bulstrode moved and turned away his eyes from the woman's lovely
+face, she sighed and covered her own eyes with her hands.  The small
+coffee table had been taken away.  Mrs. Falconer was in a low chair
+leaning forwards, her hands lying loosely in her lap.  The distance
+between the two his hand could have bridged in one gesture.  The voice
+of the street singer was superb, liquid and sweet.  He sang his ballad
+well.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"I'll sing thee songs of Araby<BR>
+And tales of old Cashmere."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Falconer's guest rose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'll come down for Christmas," he said, "and I'll meet you as we
+have arranged, to-morrow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jimmy," she protested, "it's only ten o'clock."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must, however, go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nonsense.  Where will you pass the next hour and a half?  There's not
+a cat in town."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nevertheless, I promised a man to meet him at the...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Jimmy</I>!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had reached the door, making his way with a dogged determination
+and, like a man who has touched terra firma after months on a dancing
+brig, still not feeling quite sure of the land or its tricks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How you hurry from me," she said softly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I'm hurrying off," he explained brightly, "because I want to get
+hold of that chap out there and take him to supper, and to find out why
+he isn't on the operatic stage.  He's got a jolly voice.  Good night,
+good night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was gone from her with scant courtesy and a brusquerie she knew
+well, adored and hated!  During these last years she had done her cruel
+best, her wicked best, to soften and change and break it down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The curtains, as she drew them back, showed that the fog had for the
+most part lifted, and she was just in time to see the piano and the two
+musicians disappear in the mist which still tenaciously held the end of
+the street in shadow&mdash;a gentleman in long evening cloak and high hat
+hurried after the street people.  The woman's face was tender as she
+watched the distinguished figure melt into the fog, and at her last
+glimpse of her friend she blew a kiss against the pane.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode did not go back that night to Westboro'.  He wired out that
+Mrs. Falconer and himself would be down for dinner the following day
+and he also wired for a motor to meet him some few miles from Penhaven
+Abbey, as the motor did the next day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he speeded towards Penhaven Bulstrode leaned towards the man who
+drove him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stop first at the inn, will you, Bowles?  I'll order tea there, and
+then drive on to the station at the Hants.  It's the three o'clock from
+London we're to meet, you know, and we've just the time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Abbey and its clustering village hung on the hill side some fifteen
+lovely miles away to the south of them.  And Bulstrode, who was at
+length obediently answering the call of it, and in response to the
+fancied bell of the entire country side, religiously hastening to
+whatever might reward him, settled himself back in his corner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saw the mist fly by him as his carriage cut out its way rapidly
+through Glousceshire.  The air was not too cold in spite of the
+dampness, for the vapor rose high, and above and below it the
+atmosphere was clear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Falconer herself had chosen Penhaven as a place possible to drive
+over to as far as Bulstrode was concerned, and far enough away to stop
+over in, for tea.  Bulstrode carried in his pocket the note of it, she
+had written out for him.  It bore the arrivals of trains, the address
+of the inn; she had herself written this, recurring to a pretty fallacy
+she liked to indulge in that Jimmy forgot trains, missed them, and
+forgot rendezvous, and that he never really knew.  Well, at all events,
+he was not likely to miss meeting this one.  He had thought about
+nothing else since he left her in London and prepared for her as he was
+always preparing for her as one makes ready for the dearest guest at a
+feast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The fact that not only had she divinely consented to the Penhaven
+scheme, but that she had herself arranged the whole thing, made the
+romance of the idea first appeal to herself and then readily to
+Bulstrode; the fact that she had been the creator of the little
+excursion that gave them to each other for several hours before what
+the castle had to offer them of surprise or dulness&mdash;did not in any
+measure rob the occasion of the charm of the <I>imprévue</I> for the lady
+herself.  Nor did she in the least feel that it was any the less his
+because it was so essentially her own plan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It proved either too cold or too late to see the cathedral, to see
+anything more than the close which, side by side, they had wandered
+through together a few moments before tea.  Penhaven's distinguished
+gloom was not disturbed, and in their subterranean vaults lying all
+along their stones, the dukes and the abbés and the duchesses remained
+unlit in their stern crypts by the verger's candle on this Christmas
+Eve.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the little vulgar inn (in a stuffy sitting-room a fire had
+spluttered for some quarter of an hour before the train arrived), Mrs.
+Falconer had made Jimmy his tea in a vulgar little bowl-like teapot,
+and as her hands touched the pottery's blue glaze served very well for
+a halo.  As she buttered him slices of toast herself, and spread them
+with gooseberry jam and herself ate and drank and laughed and
+chattered, she had been, with the tea things about her and her sleeves
+turned back as she cut and buttered and spread, she had been with the
+roundness of her wrists and the suave grace of her capable hands, most
+adorably a woman, most adorably dear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her furs and coat laid aside, the hat at his asking laid aside in
+order, although he did not tell her so, that the air of home might be
+more complete for them.  <I>Vis-à-vis</I> they had eaten together and
+laughed together and talked together till it grew later and later, and
+the motor waited without in the yard amongst the ravens and the ducks
+who peered from the straw of their winter quarters at the big awkward
+machine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jimmy" ... she had started when the crumbs and dishes had been cleared
+away, and for some seconds did not follow up his name with any other
+word.  It was always Bulstrode who took wonderful care of the time.  It
+was he who gave her her hat, its pins, her coat, her furs, her gloves,
+one by one, her muff last, his eyes on her, as each article slowly went
+to place, until her big white veil wound and wound and pinned and
+fastened and hid her.  "Jimmy," she whispered, as he ruthlessly and
+definitely opened the door and the cold rushed in, "let's build <I>here</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Still it was she who took all the blame of their tardy departure from
+the homely hospitality of the inn; she assured him that she could make
+a wonderful toilet and in an incredibly short time, and that for once
+she wouldn't be late for dinner at the castle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not," Bulstrode assured her, "that it in the least matters, but the
+Duke, as likely as not, would choose to dine alone; he was a man of
+moods."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In which case," she had stopped with her foot on the auto step,
+"Penhaven isn't a bad place for tea, and why wouldn't dinner at this
+perfect inn...."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Bulstrode met her words with a shake of his head and a shrug of his
+shoulders, and helped her firmly into the motor and sat again by her
+side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't tell you," he said, "what will be going on at the castle.  I
+haven't been back since I left it two days ago, and almost anything can
+have happened in that time.  The Duchess of Westboro' herself, in the
+interval, may have gone back to her husband."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Heavens!" Mrs. Falconer exclaimed, "in which case how horribly <I>de
+trop</I> we shall be."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Bulstrode consoled her with the thought that if they were <I>de trop</I>
+they would at least be <I>de trop ensemble</I>.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Amongst the handful of letters waiting for her in her dressing-room at
+the castle there had been a despatch from America.  Even this, and a
+hasty look at her mail had not succeeded in holding her attention or
+even carrying it beyond the house.  Her husband had expected to land in
+Liverpool at the end of the coming week; he was to take her home with
+him.  And until he arrived she was breathing, as she always did in his
+absence, deeply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There had been no one to greet them as Bulstrode and herself came into
+the castle, and she had hurried to her rooms to begin without loss of
+time her boasted rapid toilet.  The dress, whose harmony had impressed
+her host, the Duke, on a former visit at the castle, had been laid out
+for her; its sumptuous color overspread the bed.  But the lady chose
+instead a white gown whose art of holding to her, and holding her, in
+its simple lines and splendid sheen, made its beauty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was much of the true woman in this entirely lovely creature, as
+she stood before her glass and saw herself, the best example of the
+really beautiful American.  Her naturalness gave her a freedom, a
+frankness, a grace, a certain imperial set of the head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode had once said to the Duchess of Westboro' that a woman should
+above all "console."  Mary Falconer would have known what he meant.
+That sex she gloriously represented!  The sweetness and dearness of
+her.  Well, there were few women no doubt like her.  Jimmy hoped so for
+the sake of the race, for the sake of the hearts of other men.  She was
+the ideal fireside of home, and when, as she had twice done, she bade
+him, as that time she had said, "Build here," he knew what she meant
+and felt, and that she herself was exquisitely home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leaning over her dressing-table she scrutinized not her face, whose
+ardent beauty seemed to bloom upon the glass, but her hair as it fell
+and rippled and flowed round her brows.  Along the edge of one of the
+lustrous waves was a touch as if her powder puff had brushed her hair.
+Mrs. Falconer put up her hand, smoothed the line, then let it lie as it
+grew.  It so declared itself to be the first unmistakable white.  A
+gardener's basket full of roses and camelias, gardenias and carnations
+had been sent up for her; but under the diamond at her breast she chose
+rather to fasten in a spray of mistletoe with its pale, grape-like
+berries.  A long green scarf fell over her arm and against the
+whiteness of her dress like a branch of spring verdure, and permitted
+by the fashion of the day, there shook and trembled in her ears long,
+pear-shaped pearls which, like her thimble, had been her mother's.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she left the security of her room and fire for the corridors and the
+publicity of the lower rooms, for the first time in her life she had a
+sudden feeling of <I>pruderie</I> at the bare beauty of her neck and arms.
+She felt as if she were coming unclad into the street, and drew her
+scarf across her breast.  But she found herself to be quite alone in
+the drawing-room, and before she had time to be bewildered at her long
+desertion, a letter was handed her with a few murmured words by a
+footman.  It perhaps served her right, she reflected, for so blandly
+coming into a house during a state of domestic upheaval, that she
+should turn out to be not alone the only guest, but without host or
+friend!  The letter told her, as gently as it could without the
+satisfaction of any explanation, that both Bulstrode and the Duke of
+Westboro' were unavoidably absent.  She turned the letter over with
+keen disappointment.  Her dress, her beauty which the drive from
+Penhaven and the afternoon's happiness had heightened to a point that
+she might be pardoned for seeing, was then all for nothing!  On what
+extravagant bent could the two men have gone?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Both of them," she soliloquized with a shrug, "off on a hunt, I dare
+say, after a fool of a woman who doesn't know enough to stop at home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before she could further lash at her absent hostess, she found herself
+a few seconds later taking the scarcely palpable arm of the rector,
+whom the Duke, in a moment of abstraction, had asked to the
+Christmas-tree and whom he had subsequently forgotten to put off.  The
+rector alone, of all the expected, turned up, his smile vacuous and his
+appetite in order.  At the table laid for four, and great enough for
+forty, the clergyman and the lady faced each other.  Mrs. Falconer
+smiled kindly, for as her friend had told the Duchess on the same
+afternoon, she was kind; and if she resented the apology for a man her
+slender <I>vis-à-vis</I> presented, she did not show her scorn; she smiled
+kindly at him.  His cloth and habit, and cut even, wore the air of
+disapproval.  Her jewels, the bare splendor of her neck and arms,
+seemed out of place, and yet she could not but be perfectly sure that
+even the dull eyes of her <I>vis-à-vis</I> not alone reflected, but
+confirmed, how lovely she was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The reverend gentleman was new to Glouceshire, but it turned out that
+he already knew its hearsays and its <I>on dits</I> and he knew when she
+asked him, something of the country and The Dials.  It may have been
+that the bright aspect of the lady, her light mockery&mdash;for as she would
+she could not help falling into them even with this half-human
+creature&mdash;wickedly drew him on, gave the man license as he thought, to
+descend to scandal; at all events, after dinner, over a cigar smoked in
+her presence, the empty glass of Benedictine at his elbow, in his
+cheeks a muddy red diffused from his wine, the gentleman leaned
+forward, and tried to adapt his speech and topic to the worldly vein
+which he imagined was the habitual tenor of a fashionable woman's life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Even this lovely shire," he drawled its beauty&mdash;"cannot, so it would
+seem, be free from scandal.  And where a minister would naturally look
+for help, wretchedly enough for the most part he only finds examples
+and warnings."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The rector lifted his eyes to the fine old ceiling as if in its shields
+and blazons he was impressed by the blots of recent sins.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His hand touched the little liqueur glass.  He picked it up and in a
+second of abstraction tried to drain its oily emptiness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me ring," said Mrs. Falconer, "and send for some more Benedictine,
+or better still, for some <I>fine</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he refused, and sedately put her right.  "No more of anything, I
+think, unless it might be a bottle of soda.  You spoke of lovely
+Glousceshire and then spoke of The Dials.  Do you know the place?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Only, she told him, by hearsay.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He solemnly supposed so; so he himself chiefly knew it, as indeed all
+the country side was growing to know it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The eyes of the lady to whom the rector was retailing his little gossip
+were intently on him.  But Mrs. Falconer in reality was not looking at
+him, neither did she at once find ready words to refute, to cast down,
+to blot out, his hideous suggestion that filled the room with it sooty
+blot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Falconer, who had good-humoredly been amused by his intense
+Britishness thus far, his pale lack of individuality, his perfect type,
+now looked sharply at her companion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The rector had been more than right, Mrs. Falconer was used to the
+indifferent, rather brutal handling by society of human lives.
+Possibly as she adored people, no one of her set was more interested in
+the comedies and dramas of her <I>contemporains</I>.  But there are ways and
+channels: what runs clear in one runs muddy in another.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The rector, in his own way, told her that for several weeks a very
+beautiful lady had been living at The Dials.  She had, it appeared,
+never been out of the garden gate, and the servants were foreign, all
+save a deaf old gardener.  But the beautiful lady who sought such
+peculiar seclusion, had a very constant visitor.  Of course the rector
+was not able or sufficiently daring to affirm; with a cleverness worthy
+a better story he left his hearer to guess, imagine, who the visitor
+might be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you think," Mrs. Falconer breathed, after a very short lapse
+into silence, "that we might let such ghosts alone on Christmas Eve?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She rose and stood before him in her soft, luminous dress; her eyes
+were intent on him, but in reality she was not looking at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had grown so detestable that she could bear his presence no longer;
+she found herself, however, wanting to learn all his knowledge to its
+finest detail.  She found that she despised herself for any interest
+she might take.  She got rid of him at length, how, she never knew.
+But she saw him leave her presence with relief.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+When the miserable man, as she called him, had taken his leave, the
+deserted guest looked about her rather defiantly, as if the objects
+with which the room was filled were hostile.  Then, with a half-audible
+exclamation she sank down in a chair, her elbow on the left arm of it,
+and her chin in her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Well, the imputation, the character of what she had just heard vulgarly
+said and to which, for a bewildered second, she had perhaps vulgarly
+listened&mdash;was highly dreadful, highly disordering to her fashion of
+thinking and believing about Jimmy Bulstrode!  Oh, for a moment she had
+half believed what that creature said, and her eyes had winked fast at
+the game before them!  In the swiftness of the revolutions it had
+seemed for a sole flash real; but now that the noise had stopped and
+the carousel as well, she saw how <I>wooden</I> the horses were and that
+they were as dead as doornails!  If she had been disturbed, she came
+loyally back now, with a glow and a rush of tenderness as she instantly
+re-instated what could never lose caste.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oh, The Dials!  She couldn't conceive what Jimmy had in reality,
+rashly, delightfully done there; what he had planted or installed, if
+he had planted or installed anything.  But whatever the truth was, it
+was sure to be essentially right, as far as ethics went&mdash;she knew that
+at least.  But Jimmy's delicacy and his heart were all too fine for the
+crude wisdom of the world or for her common-sense, which would have
+told him no doubt, had he cared to ask, that he was rash and wild.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was prepared to hear that he had made some Magdalen a home in this
+prudish country place.  At this possibility Jimmy's kindness and
+charity stood out graciously in strong contrast to the prudish judgment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were several long mirrors set in the panels of the room like
+lakes between green shores of old brocade, and they reflected her as
+she leaned forwards in her chair and looked about her, taking in the
+brightness of the perfect little room.  It had been cut off from the
+wider, grander spaces for more intimate passages in the social course
+of events, but there was nothing newly planned in its colors and
+tapestries, its hangings and furnishings; the effect was sombre rather,
+the objects had the air of use, of having participated in past
+existences, and like faithful servants, they seemed to wait to serve
+perfectly new events.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The especial brightness of the room came from the gay festooning that
+had found its way throughout the castle.  The mirrors were dark with
+the velvet rounds of hemlock from which the miserable face of scandal,
+the sardonic face of divorce, under the conditions of the present
+domestic situation might well grin satyr-like from the Christmas
+wreaths.  No doubt there were lots of ghosts about, ready to stride, to
+flutter, or to walk; the American woman put their histories and their
+legends impatiently by.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The facile way in which the Duchess of Westboro' had slipped out from
+the chafing of domestic harness, the egotistical <I>geste</I> with which she
+had so widely thrown over her responsibilities, fetched Mrs. Falconer
+up to her own life, from whose problems indeed her husband's absence
+alone set her free.  Her affairs had lately rapidly progressed, flying,
+whirling.  The circles the event of her marriage had originally
+created, touched at last the farthest limit; there was nothing left for
+them now but to scatter.  The vortex had rapidly narrowed down, was
+narrowing down, and nothing remained but a sole object in the bed of
+the clear water; and as Mary Falconer looked at it she knew that the
+thing was a stone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We spend," she had once said to Bulstrode, "half our lives forging
+chains, and the other half trying to make ourselves free."  Hadn't she
+wrenched with all her might to be rid of hers? materially she still
+wore her bonds and moved with a ball.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she had driven away from Charing Cross Station, a month ago, after
+seeing her husband aboard the Dover and Calais special, she had
+breathed&mdash;breathed&mdash;breathed&mdash;stretched her arms and hands out to
+London, felt on her eye and brow a dew that meant the very dawning of
+liberty broke for her, and that she was for the time at least blessed
+by it, and free.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Sorghams' London house had opened its refuge wide for her, and she
+had gone into it like a child, to sleep and rest, and there she had
+grown up again, to begin to think and to plan, project and puzzle as
+those who grow up must do.  She had never thought to such practical
+purpose as she did in these days, and never come so nearly reaching an
+end.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Just before dressing for dinner on this night, at the sensation the
+touch of her husband's telegram gave her, she realized how near to a
+not unusual decision she was, and when she put the envelope by with the
+rest of her mail, the part of her mind which she would not let herself
+look into was in confusion and doubt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+More effectively than Falconer's coming could have done, his few
+telegraphed words brought him to his wife's consideration.  And the
+fantastic story of The Dials helped her, ridiculous as it was,
+burlesque as it was, to think; in the very humor of it, a shock, and
+helped her more reasonably to consider what otherwise her feelings
+would have turned to tragedy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jimmy's ecstasies about the place recurred to her with renewed
+cordiality.  He had spent an hour at least describing it, and when he
+had finished with "A woman must be there, it is made for a woman," Mary
+Falconer had only seen herself in the frame that the old place
+presented.  She exclaimed aloud: "Oh, no, no," and continued to affirm
+to herself that it was too fantastically absurd&mdash;"Jimmy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's only some delightful bit of charity, and he's too afraid of my
+wretched conservatism and my ironies to have told me frankly about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Having in a very unfeminine way opened a crack for reason, its honest
+face peered through, and Mary Falconer glanced at it with a sigh and a
+half-amused recognition, as if she had not been face to face with
+anything so cool and eminent for a long time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Jimmy had hinted to her of a secret, in London; there was something he
+said he wished to tell her about, would tell her in full later,
+something that involved much happiness to others, and could it have
+been this?  Could it have been that he was really secretly married?
+That at last the step of which he had constantly spoken, for which
+indeed there had been times when together they had half-heartedly
+planned for it, could it be that the one safeguard for them both had
+actually been formed by him, and alone?  But only a second would she
+permit this conception of The Dials to obtain hold.  "Ridiculous!" she
+repeated, "ridiculous!  Not that I believe a word or any innuendo of
+the shocking old wizard, but it only shows, it only shows the
+helplessness of a woman who is not bound to a man, and how entirely the
+man is free!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nothing a man does counts well for him with a woman but those things he
+does in accordance with her estimate of what his attitude towards her
+should be!  And Bulstrode's high-minded control, the reserve&mdash;which
+since her marriage had been maintained, only counted now against him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Wasn't she, in it all, rather counting without her host?  Their bond
+was so tacit, so silent, so unworded.  Indeed, he had made no bond, had
+asked her for no pledge.  She was tied hand and foot, but he was free.
+And over that freedom what vague right had she?  What dominion could
+she have?  Isn't it, after all, in the life of a clever, delightful
+man, something not strictly a burden, the soul-absorbing entire
+devotion of a woman not too old and more or less not generally
+disliked?  What did it&mdash;heavens, but she was analyzing&mdash;what did it
+cost him?  Hadn't he always gone from her at a moment's warning, and
+stopped away for months and months?  Imperious as by nature she was,
+she had always been wise enough to reserve a summons from her that, she
+had every reason to believe, would fetch him from any distance to her
+side.  She never tested him, she scarcely ever wrote to him; she had
+been at the Sorghams', and alone for a month, and save for one
+perfectly delightful day he had not once turned up to keep her company.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the woman's thoughts encompassed the subject they brought it up to
+this: that as far as things went, at all events, there was no blame: no
+matter how society had coupled their names, she had at least the
+conscience of her acts clear.  Jimmy was to be thanked for it from
+beginning to end; as far as the conscience of her thoughts went, well,
+those were her own affair.  Oh, she could recall skirmishes and narrow
+impasses!  Her tactics had more than once been those only permitted by
+the codes of battle, and of another passion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her chair, which she had left, she passed and repassed as she walked up
+and down, trailing her soft dress across the floor.  She stood before
+the fire, her foot held out to the fervent flame.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her face softened as there came out clearly to her the real picture of
+Jimmy that always kept itself somewhere between her eyes and her brain.
+Ah, there were men of talent and fashion, who did not hesitate to make
+merry, who were more or less good, more or less anti-pathetic, and for
+whom society never had a word of reproach&mdash;but Jimmy! distinguished and
+charming, with every taste and means to gratify them, with&mdash;so to put
+it&mdash;the woman of his heart at his very doors&mdash;how did he live?  Why,
+for everybody in the world but for himself.  And through it all, in
+spite of the fact that he appeared blindly to shut his eyes against
+their mutual love, he lived for her.  Oh, he was the best, the best!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She listened as she stood there for the hum of the motor which might
+tell her he was coming back.  She wanted to ask him to tell her the
+truth about The Dials.  She wanted, above all else, to see him again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She remembered them, one by one, the happy occasions they had caught
+and made the most of, and each after the other they became lovely
+harbors where like ships her thoughts lay at anchor.  Penhaven was
+certainly one of the best.  She congratulated herself that she had
+conceived that day, and without any blame she acknowledged it to
+herself, that if Jimmy had only wished it they would have been there
+together now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had taken her chair again and sat back deeply in the great
+fauteuil.  The brocade made a dark-hued background against which her
+head, frankly thrown back, defined its charming lines.  Her bare arms
+folded across her breast, her foot swinging gently to and fro, she
+continued to muse and dream, and as she thought of Bulstrode, to love
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Some one came in and piled up the fire and slipped out, but no message
+was brought her to tell her what had become of her host and her friend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The long sympathetic silence beginning at the fireside flowed through
+the vast rooms and corridors, and out into the night, down the lanes
+and the road until its completeness and tonelessness were broken by the
+memory of the bells of Penhaven, as she and Jimmy had heard them whilst
+they rang the angelus in the close.  And the discordant note of The
+Dials was drowned, confused and lost in her intense listening to the
+Penhaven bells.  Some chord or other, or some fine spring touched as
+she so thought on, brought back to her the fact of the despatch
+upstairs, which if it had any, had an imperative importance.  Falconer
+had sent it from Palm Beach where he had gone to get rid of a
+troublesome grippe.  He did not, in the few lines which told he was
+seedy and had put off his sailing, suggest that she should go back.
+But he would not resent her return, she knew that, he would probably
+treat her decently for at least a fortnight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know a creature," she praised herself, "who would have stayed
+on with Jack, and nothing but Jimmy has helped me to stick it out.  If
+he really loved me would he have let me go on as I have gone on?  I
+don't know.  Unless he loved me could he have helped me at all?  I
+think not."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Round the figure of her friend there began to group, as if for some
+special purpose, the kindnesses and charities she had seen him display.
+One by one she added up his gifts and benefits until the poor and
+outcast and forgotten and despised claimed all of them to be his
+friends; they gathered round him and in place of the categoric
+histories of self-love and indulgence, of passion that had in more or
+less degree characterized the men of her set, these things came till
+the dawn of them and the light of them made his figure shine.  How, she
+thought, could he ever have been what he so wonderfully is, if he had
+lived for himself or been anything but the best?  Upstairs, in her
+room, a few hours before, the mark of silver on her hair had been a
+whip to urge on her rebellion; to tell her to seize and make the most
+of the fleeting time, to warn her of the age which when her beauty and
+her youth were gone, was all that could remain for them both.  But now
+there began to blow across her soul a freshness.  She had indeed been
+drawing long breaths in her husband's absence, but free as they were
+they left her stifled and panting, as if to get the oxygen she had been
+obliged to climb too far.  Now, on the contrary, she was lifted as by
+wings, and whilst they fluttered about her she breathed evenly yet
+fully, and the air on the heights was something better than wine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There is an unspoiled enjoyment in the thing which has never given us
+pain.  It may be a sensual and ecstatic prerogative of passion to make
+the object suffer, but there is a different sense of happiness in that
+which never does harm or hurt or wrong to the thing it loves.  So she
+could think of Bulstrode, without pain, without regret, without
+reproach.  And if the ardor and passion in her became suffused and
+slowly paled, there was a starry brightness, a beauty in her face and
+in her eyes such as Bulstrode, when he came in to find her waiting, had
+never seen before.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+With every mile of the short run from The Dials back to the castle,
+Mrs. Falconer's friend had been preparing himself for his meeting with
+the woman he had left some few hours before.  All his emotions
+culminated in a high, swinging excitement.  The fact that he was going
+back alone to find Mary Falconer there, was the big motif, and as he
+thought of the dark, charming envelope the castle made, holding the
+treasure she was, keeping her there for him, his heart beat so high
+that he knew there was nothing more for him to feel.  The ecstasy he
+had witnessed in the little house his chivalry had purchased, the
+meeting of the husband and wife, come together there after so much
+unhappiness, put it poignantly to him that sterile love is a very
+unsatisfactory thing indeed.  And if the highest quality of gallantry
+is to consider a woman's honor before her love, it at least makes real
+happiness&mdash;so he felt then&mdash;impossible in the world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One false swerve of the motor at the pace they were going, and there
+would not be any more problems to solve.  If he died now he might
+justly say that he had not lived, he had not lived!  Who would give him
+back what he had missed?  The motto on the dials repeated itself to
+him: <I>Utere dum licet</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pushed into the castle on his arrival, hurried to dress, and went
+downstairs.  It seemed to him as he put aside the portières, that these
+curtains were at last all there was between himself and her, that he
+was going home, coming home at last; that ways he had for years seen
+approaching, met at length to-night here.  It was with the very clear
+realization of the culmination of the time that Bulstrode went in to
+find his friend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had stopped to make himself irreproachable, and expected to find her
+waiting and friendly and lovely.  What, had he found her anything else?
+But as rising from her chair, the scarf slipping back from her bare
+shoulders, she put out her hand and greeted him, the dazzling sense
+that breaks on a man's consciousness when he finds himself alone with
+the woman he loves, proved for a second that he had need of all his
+control.  He could not speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jimmy!" she exclaimed, "you're as white as a ghost!  You look as
+though you'd been to a wake; and I don't believe you've had a mouthful
+of dinner."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He remembered that it might be polite to apologize to her for the
+entire desertion of the household.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My poor friend, what in Heaven's name must you think of us all!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of you all?"  (True enough, there had been another!)  She had thought
+volumes, comedies, tragedies, melodramas, but what she thought didn't
+so much matter as did the fact that he had not, whatever festivities he
+had honored, dined.  Shouldn't they have something here together before
+the fire?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I seem," she said, "to have a blighting effect upon my host."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My friend Westboro' is the happiest man in Glousceshire."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Which means that he has found his Duchess?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has found his Duchess."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When her friend entered the room, by the light on his face like the
+brightness of the morning as he caught sight of her, Mary Falconer saw
+that for Jimmy Bulstrode she was still the one woman in the world.  In
+the relief that this knowledge brought her she half attempted to play
+with what had been her suspicions, and to tease him, but this mood
+passed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's a horrid old parson they chose to have me dine with," she said.
+"He told me dreadful scandals but I think now that I see through them
+all.  The Duchess of Westboro' has been living incognita at The Dials,
+hasn't she, and her husband at last found her there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode acknowledged that she had read the drama correctly.  And Mary
+Falconer laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, evidently the Duchess has a strong dramatic sense; she's very
+romantic, isn't she?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And the man absently exclaimed: "Oh, I dare say, I dare say."  Then
+turning to her with unusual vehemence: "Do, for Heaven's sake leave
+them and everybody.  I want to forget them all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He threw up his hand with a sort of supplication.  He had seated
+himself on a tapestried stool close beside the chair she had taken
+again.  Using her Christian name for one of the rare times in his life,
+he pleaded: "Can't we leave all other people, Mary, can't we?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked at him startled and said that their host seemed pretty
+effectually to have left <I>them</I>, rising from her chair with the words,
+and crossing the room to one of the long windows, drew back the curtain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The cold glass against which she pressed her cheek sent a shock through
+her, but she stayed for a second close to the pane as if she would
+implore the newer transport, the stiller transport, of the icy cold to
+transfuse her veins.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The changed temperature had chased away the fog, and the night spread
+its serene beauty over the park, where the moonlight lay along the
+terrace like snow.  Far down the slope rose the outlines of the bare
+trees, and the wide landscape shone and shone until it finally was lost
+in the mists.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode had followed over and stood by Mary Falconer's side, and the
+scene before him seemed full of joy, full of gifts, full of largesse.
+The ornament on the woman's bosom stirred with her breathing, shot a
+million fine sparkles, and below it the spray of mistletoe rose and
+fell, rose and fell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He put his hand out and took the spray and fastened it in his
+buttonhole, saying that the mistletoe was above her head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His voice, one she had never heard, made her unwisely turn to meet his
+eyes, to shake with the emotion of the adventurer trembling on the edge
+of the precipice; just to hang over which, and to shudder, he has
+climbed high.  She put her hand out between them, holding him back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've had a telegram from my husband.  He's very ill.  He's in Palm
+Beach and I'm going over to him next week."
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-360"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-360.jpg" ALT="&quot;I've had a telegram from my husband&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="480" HEIGHT="714">
+<H4 CLASS="h4center" STYLE="width: 480px">
+&quot;I've had a telegram from my husband&quot;
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Falconer's name was sovereign for breaking spells as far as Jimmy was
+concerned, but the wife's phrase this time gave him only a more violent
+revelation of his cruel hope.  She went on:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's not alarming, but with a heart like Jack's, anything might
+happen.  It's only when I'm with him that he keeps up any sort of
+shape."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The fact of his holding in his the hand that she had put out to keep
+him from her, did not serve to aid in a serene continuation of her
+plans, and the silence became a burden which if she did not herself
+lift would crush her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She said hurriedly: "And you will help me to go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then Bulstrode spoke: "No," he said, "Oh, no."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For the briefest space she yielded to what he meant and was at last
+wicked enough and human enough to promise to do.  But she had on this
+solemn evening&mdash;for it had so been&mdash;come too far, gone up too high to
+drag down all the way with him on a single word.  In supremest
+happiness, however, at what he said and how he said it, she gave a
+little soft laugh, and although she was under the mistletoe, she felt
+that she looked down on him, loving him so much more that in adorable
+weakness he had suddenly grown small and dear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Jimmy," she whispered, "how heavenly of you, but you can't go back
+on ten years in one week.  You can't, you know!  You've thrown me like
+a giant so <I>far</I>, I've gone right on up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Still looking at her he shook his head as she repeated: "You'll help
+me, you'll help me!  You can't go back!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I <I>can</I> go back," he said deeply, "<I>on everything and everybody in the
+world</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the frank simple words, and the sense of what they meant, at the
+sound of his new voice, it was as if all the dykes at last were down;
+and strong, bright, but most beautiful, the sea came rushing in.  As
+she saw him coming toward her and knew that in a moment more she would
+be in his arms, and that at his first touch she would let everything
+go, she found one word to say and it proved only to be his name:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But there was in it an appeal.  She could count the times she had wept
+in her life, very nearly, she had often said that a woman weeps only
+when she has nothing else to do, and there had always been so much,
+every minute in her life; and as if in logical affirmation there seemed
+now for her nothing to do but to cry.  The tears which covered her face
+and fell into her palms and against the chair on which she leaned,
+comforted her in a measure and served to loosen the tension of her
+mind.  She had succeeded in miraculously keeping away from him, just
+within touch of her, held back by a hand whose white gentleness was not
+so exquisitely strong but that he loved her too well to break the
+tender barrier.  She never afterward knew what appeals she made or how
+she besought, but it must have been of great force to keep him so
+transfixed and pale.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you <I>have</I> told me over and over again!  Do you think I am deaf or
+blind, or that I have found you dumb?  Such love, Jimmy, such high,
+sweet perfectness!  Why, there isn't a woman in a million who has known
+it or even dreamed what such love could mean.  Why, there hasn't been a
+day or an hour for ten years that you have not spoken it to me in the
+most adorable way, in the most beautiful way; and in every kind thing
+you have done, in every foolish, dear thing, I have been so vain as to
+think that I counted for something in it, that you did it a little for
+me.  Other women have had their lovers, their scandals, their great
+passions.  But I have had you without flaw, without a change, without
+regret.  Hush!" she cried, wiping her tears away, "Hush.  It's quite
+safe to let me go on.  The only fear is that <I>you</I> may speak."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The arm which she had held out to keep him from her had fallen upon his
+shoulder, lay about his neck as he knelt by her chair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's been horrible!" she said, shaking her head, "Horrible&mdash;the days
+and the nights, the days and the nights!  There have been times when I
+could have killed him and killed myself as well.  But then you've come,
+and your presence has helped me, and that's the way I've pulled along;
+because by your silence you told me to pull along, because by the fact
+that you didn't speak I understood that you thought I should be brave,
+and I have been&mdash;thanks to you, and I shall be&mdash;thanks to you!  Oh!"
+she cried passionately, "if you think because I am saying it all out
+that I want to go back, that I don't see what I am running away from,
+and what you mean, you're cruel, you're cruel!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her other hand had found its fellow and they both lay on his shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I only think of you," he breathed, "and of how..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She covered his lips.  "Oh, hush, hush, you have told me, in the only
+way there was to tell.  I'm too stupid to be able to combine a lover
+and a husband.  The day and the hour you spoke I should never have seen
+my husband again.  And that's where it stands; that's how it is, and
+you know it.  You loved me because I was like that, and I love you
+because you are the bravest of the brave.  There you are!" she cried,
+and drew away from him triumphantly, letting her arms fall.  "There we
+both are!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you any vague conception of what this is for me?" Bulstrode asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I dare say," she exclaimed, with a kind of petulance, "that I am
+only thinking of my own bewildering happiness.  There," she exclaimed
+at his face, "I see you have a new weapon: pity.  Oh, don't use that
+against me, and I warn you that everything in the world will crumble if
+you speak."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her hands, which he was holding closely, she drew from him and laid
+them both on his breast and met his eyes full with her own.  Her lips
+were slightly trembling, and she was as white as a winter day.  In the
+moment of silence they passed like this, she seemed to him like some
+great precious pearl, some priceless rose fragrant, lustrous, made for
+him, gathered for him, and yet beyond his right.  She seemed, above
+all, the woman, the mate; her glorious sex, her tenderness, her
+humanness, drew him and dazzled him; and, nevertheless, through his
+daze and over his desire, he heard with his finest her cry:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jimmy, Jimmy, don't speak, don't speak.  Ah, if you really love me..."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He really loved her.  Rising from where he knelt by her chair,
+Bulstrode went over, stood a second by the chimneypiece, and then took
+a few paces up and down the room, came back to her and said the thing
+the real man says to the woman he really loves:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want to make you happy, Mary.  I will do whatever you wish me to do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, then, go!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode looked wearily about as though of its own accord a door might
+unclose or a portière lift.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go where, pray, at this time of night, or morning?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, to The Dials.  Ring for a motor; they will take you in again; or
+go to the rector's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The last of the fire had flared up.  The flame went out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sinking back in her chair, she waited in a tranced stillness, her eyes
+on the ashes of the fire.  She had said her say out, perhaps the man
+knew it, and as she leaned back in the cushions he saw how completely
+it all lay with him at the end.  She thought he came back and waited a
+second at her side; she thought he bent a moment over her, but she did
+not stir until the cold wind from an opening door, till the clicking of
+a latch made her start, and then she turned to see that he had gone.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode came back to the castle Christmas Day at nine o'clock.  But
+the hour had the effect of being much earlier.  The winter morning
+panoplied with festivity began its life slowly, and not all the day's
+brightness through which he had speeded his motor had yet come into the
+house.  Bulstrode, drawn by it, went directly back to the room he had
+left several hours before, as though he expected still to find the
+woman he loved sitting before the extinguished fire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Two parlor maids were whisking their skirts and dusters out of the
+opposite door, a footman at their heels.  Touches of the inevitable
+order which reduces an agreeable disarray to the impersonal had already
+been put to the scene of Jimmy's tenderness, and the curtains drawn
+well away from the long windows let in the morning that entered broadly
+and fell across the hearth and the fresh-lit fire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Clean logs replaced the cold ashes: the match had just finished with
+the kindlings, and Bulstrode went over to welcome the crackling of the
+young blaze.  The absence of his host, the castle once more handed over
+to him for the time, gave him a feeling of proprietorship in the bright
+cordial room, but looking up at the portraits of Westboro's in puffs
+and velvets, Jimmy couldn't find an ancestor!  Their amours and
+indulgences had written brilliant and amusing history; the gentlemen
+had gone mad at ladies' carriage wheels, they had carried off their
+scandals with the highest of hands, and still held their heads well.
+They had carved and raped and loved their way down to the present time,
+and were none the less a proud line of pure British blood.  The
+American bachelor, about whose fine head nothing picturesque or worthy
+of history circled, looked up at the Dukes of Westboro' musingly, and
+there was not a peer or a noble better to look upon or who had been at
+heart a truer lover, although he did not know it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During the lapse of time between leaving this same room and his present
+return, Bulstrode had not tossed on a sleepless bed; he had slept
+soundly, and during his rest the several dials had called out like
+bells, their voice, <I>Utere dum licet</I>; and finally a real bell had
+roused him to the fact that it was day, a new day, and that unless he
+was killed en route to the castle, nothing could keep him from the
+place and from her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had no consolation in the fact that the honor and decency of society
+were by him strengthened and retained, nor did he plan out the sane,
+wise project of not seeing her again.  Nor did he weigh or balance his
+charge or responsibility.  There had been a cessation of vibration of
+any kind, and only one supreme, sovereign reality took possession of
+the world and of himself, and the limitless beauty and the limitless
+delight he had breathed in ever since he left her and knew how she
+loved him.  Nothing in life, he had so felt, could dull or tarnish the
+glory of her face; nothing, no matter what life held for them both,
+could efface the touch she had laid upon him, as her arms were about
+him.  Through the interval his past life appeared to have been, on
+through the new and unlived interval to come, she would be as last
+night she had been, she would look at him as last night she had looked.
+"Heavens!" he meditated, in the faces of the self-indulgent, cynical
+Westboro's, "I am not going to be blasé through six paradises just
+because there happens to be a seventh!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A new fire spun its lilac flames behind his back.  The spicy breath of
+the wreaths of hemlock was deliciously sweet.  Little by little the sun
+had made its eastern way and sparkled at the pane outside, and in the
+radiant clarity the terrace and its charming railing, the urns with the
+little cedars, stood out clearly; and more than all else, the truth
+cried itself to him, that whatever happened, she was still here, still
+in the house with him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had chosen a Christmas gift for her in London, and determined to
+send it up to her now with some roses, and in this way to announce the
+fact that he had come back from The Dials and was ready to use the day
+as she liked.  He felt only how beautiful it would be to see her, that
+it did not for a second occur to him to wonder if she on her part would
+feel a certain embarrassment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In answer to his ring, not a man servant, but the perfect housekeeper
+rustled in, her crisp silks, her cameos, and her "Christmas face," as
+one of the little Westboro' chaps had called her rosy countenance, on
+one of his few Christmas days.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where would Mr. Bulstrode please to have breakfast?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, wherever it best suited, went with the house, with the day.
+Where, indeed, and that was more to the point, would Mrs. Falconer have
+it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mrs. Falconer?  Why, Mr. Bulstrode didn't know then that Mrs. Falconer
+had gone?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She saw by his face that he knew nothing less in the world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Why, directly the despatch had been fetched over from the Abbey
+station.  There had been but twenty minutes between the getting of it
+and her starting away.  A motor had been sent with her and the maid,
+and Mrs. Falconer had fortunately been able to make the train; the only
+one, it so happened, being Christmas Day, that connected with the Dover
+and Calais special.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The matter-of-fact bit of news came to Bulstrode so coldly and so
+ruthlessly that it took some seconds for the bitter thought that she
+had gone because she couldn't trust him, to penetrate.  Then this gave
+place to an effulgent hope that it might be <I>herself</I> she couldn't
+trust!  But the discovery that she had left him no message of any kind,
+and that she was above all irrevocably gone, struck him more cruelly
+than had any blow in his kindly life.  He could not suffer in peace
+before the bland creature in silks and cameos.  Crises and departures,
+battle, murder, and sudden death, he felt the housekeeper would accept
+serenely should any of them chance to occur at Westboro', and above all
+if they were part of the sacred family history.  But Mrs. Falconer and
+he were not Westboro's, and he wanted to be rid of his companion and to
+find himself alone in order to consult time tables, to find out why it
+had been imperative to go to Calais, with what boat for America a
+Christmas-Day train could possibly connect, and to turn it all over in
+his mind.  He at first believed that there had never been any telegram
+and that she had only employed a polite ruse in order to facilitate her
+flight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Why, at all events, couldn't she have left him a line?  She might, he
+ruefully complained, have strained a point and wished him a Merry
+Christmas!  As he walked to and fro in the room now supremely deserted,
+he began slowly to approach a certain hypothesis which as soon as he
+granted, he as violently discarded.  But the thought was imperious:
+something of its kind always haunted him like a bad ghost.  It could
+usually be dismissed, but now it was persistent.  A despatch from
+Falconer had certainly come the night before.  Another might have
+followed on this morning, hard upon it?  To have been sent over from
+the Abbey on a holiday must have been a very grave message indeed; "a
+matter," as the old term went, "of life and death."  The phrase began
+to repeat itself and the conviction to grow, and as he was obliged to
+give it admittance and to face it, and to wonder what the shock would
+be to her, and what the news would be to him, how it would change
+things, and how they would both meet it&mdash;his promenade to and fro in
+the room brought him up before the centre table and he looked down upon
+it at length with a seeing eye.  Why not? why not? he was wondering.
+We are all essentially mortal, and lightning never had struck yet, <I>why
+not in this place</I>?  And since there had been neither shame nor blame,
+why couldn't he face the possibility of a perfectly natural mortality?
+Before him on the table lay Mrs. Falconer's green scarf, and as
+Bulstrode lifted the soft thing he saw that underneath it lay a
+despatch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he knew instantly that Mary Falconer had left both scarf and
+telegram there, and that this was her message to him.  He seemed, as
+the word he had not yet read met him in this form, to have been waiting
+all his life for just this news.  The road, so long in winding home,
+had wound home at length, and now that he believed the crisis was
+really reached, there was something infinitely stilling in its
+solemnity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode could not at once draw the sheet from its envelope.  He lit a
+cigar and sat down before the fire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He knew, as though he saw it all before his eyes, how the despatch had
+found her this early Christmas Day, in her room&mdash;he knew how she had
+read it first and borne it well&mdash;for she was a brave, strong woman&mdash;he
+knew that his absence had been a relief to her.  He knew how she had
+worn her long, dark cloak and thick veil, and had gone out to travel
+home alone.  Oh, he knew her, and as he thought of the picture she had
+made, and how she would begin her sad and dreadful journey, he for the
+first time thought of himself&mdash;of themselves.  He was too human not to
+know that there would be a future and that they would build anew.  In
+the new house there would be no driftwood now; nor would they ever be
+haunted by the sound of a bell in the dark, for with the few brave
+souls who sail across the seas of life they had both of them stood by
+the sinking ship until it put into port.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Shawles came in again presently and told him that she had laid his
+breakfast in the little room facing the gardens.  Then she waited, and
+as Bulstrode looked up at her he forced himself to smile faintly and
+wished her a Merry Christmas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She thanked him, gave him many, and said it was a happy morning for all
+of the Westboro's, and that the castle and the house would see new
+times and better things, and when he had stirred himself to the point
+of putting what he had for her into her hand, he was not sure whether
+he wanted her to go, or not, this time and leave him alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She still hesitated.  It was a custom with them, she told him, with the
+Westboro's, to have hall prayers on holidays.  When the Duke himself
+was there, he always read them; the servants and the children of the
+place had already come in.  In the absence of the family <I>would</I> Mr.
+Bulstrode...?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no, on no account, on no account," he hurried.  "Wasn't there some
+one else?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, to be sure, there was Portman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The guest was sure that Portman would do it quite in the proper way,
+and as for himself, he would have his breakfast in a few moments, he
+thanked her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Mrs. Shawles, who had expected a more favorable answer, left open
+on the table the little Book which she had brought in with her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bulstrode took it up after she was gone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a few seconds he heard from the distance the sound of the children
+singing.  Their voices ceased, to be followed by the subdued murmur of
+reading.  As Bulstrode opened the Book he held, the leaves fell apart
+at the marriage rite.  He hurriedly passed this over, and his eyes were
+arrested by the opening lines of a more solemn service.  He paused to
+read the beautiful, pitiful words, and then, still with the open Book
+in his hands, he drew the telegram out of its cover....
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy
+Bulstrode, by Marie Van Vorst
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy
+Bulstrode, by Marie Van Vorst
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode
+
+Author: Marie Van Vorst
+
+Illustrator: Alonzo Kimball
+
+Release Date: October 13, 2010 [EBook #34065]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JIMMY BULSTRODE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: The amiable shopman pressed various toys on monsieur and
+madame "_pour les enfants_"]
+
+
+
+
+
+The Sentimental
+  Adventures of
+    Jimmy Bulstrode
+
+
+
+BY
+
+MARIE VAN VORST
+
+
+
+With Illustrations by
+
+ALONZO KIMBALL
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK
+
+HURST & COMPANY
+
+PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY
+
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+
+Published March, 1908
+
+
+
+
+TO THE MEMORY
+
+OF
+
+H. E. TESCHEMACHER
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+_THE FIRST ADVENTURE_
+
+In which he buys a Christmas tree
+
+
+_THE SECOND ADVENTURE_
+
+In which he tries to buy a portrait
+
+
+_THE THIRD ADVENTURE_
+
+In which he finds there are some things which one cannot buy
+
+
+_THE FOURTH ADVENTURE_
+
+In which he makes three people happy
+
+
+_THE FIFTH ADVENTURE_
+
+In which he makes nobody happy at all
+
+
+_THE SIXTH ADVENTURE_
+
+In which he discards a knave and saves a queen
+
+
+_THE SEVENTH ADVENTURE_
+
+In which he becomes the possessor of a certain piece of property
+
+
+_THE EIGHTH ADVENTURE_
+
+In which he comes into his own
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+From drawings by ALONZO KIMBALL
+
+
+_The amiable shopman pressed various toys on monsieur and madame "pour
+les enfants"_ . . . . . . Frontispiece
+
+"_I only like him like a kind, kind friend_"
+
+_In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing_
+
+"_I've had a telegram from my husband_"
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRST ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+I
+
+IN WHICH HE BUYS A CHRISTMAS TREE
+
+There was never in the world a better fellow than Jimmy Bulstrode.  If
+he had been poorer his generosities would have ruined him over and over
+again.  He was always being taken in, was the recipient of hundreds of
+begging letters, which he hired another soft-hearted person to read.
+He offended charitable organizations by never passing a beggar's
+outstretched hand without dropping a coin in it.  He was altogether a
+distressingly impracticable rich person, surrounded by people who
+admired him for what he really was and by those who tried to squeeze
+him for what he was worth!
+
+It was a general wonder to people who knew him slightly why Bulstrode
+had never married.  The gentleman himself knew the answer perfectly,
+but it amused him to discuss the question in spite of the pain, as well
+as for the pleasure that it caused him to consider--_the reason why_.
+
+Mary Falconer, the woman he loved, was the wife of a man of whom
+Bulstrode could only think in pitiful contempt.  But, thanks to an
+element of chivalry in the character of the hero of this story the
+years, as time went on, spread back of both the woman and the man in an
+honorable series, of whose history neither one had any reason to be
+ashamed.
+
+Nevertheless, it struck them both as rather humorous, after all, that
+of the three concerned her husband should be the only renegade and,
+notwithstanding, profit by the combined good faith of his wife and the
+man who loved her.
+
+Oh, there was nothing easy in the task that Jimmy set for himself!  And
+it did not facilitate matters that Mary Falconer scarcely ever helped
+him in the least!  She was a beautiful woman, a tender woman, and there
+were times when her friend felt that she cleverly and cruelly taunted
+him with Puritanism and with his simple, old-fashioned ideas and
+crystal clearness of vision, the _culte_ he had regarding marriage and
+the sacred way in which he held bonds and vows.  It was no help at all
+to think she rebelled and jested at his reserve; that she did her best
+to break it--and there were times when it was a brilliant siege.  But
+down in her heart she respected him, and as she saw around her the
+domestic wrecks with which the matrimonial seas are encumbered, and
+knew that her own craft promised to go safely through the storm, Mary
+Falconer more than once had been grateful to the man.
+
+As far as Bulstrode himself was concerned, each year--there had been
+ten of them--he found the situation becoming more difficult and
+dangerous.  Not only did the future appear to him impossible as things
+were, but he began to hate his arid past.  He was sometimes led to ask,
+what, after all, was he getting out of his colossal sacrifice?  The
+only reward he wanted was the woman herself, and, unless her husband
+died, she would never be his.  Bulstrode had not found that he could
+solve the problem, and now and then he let it go from sheer weariness
+of heart.
+
+
+In the face of the window of the drawing-room where Bulstrode sat on
+this afternoon of an especial winter's day the storm cast wreaths of
+snow that clung and froze, or dropped like feathers down against the
+sill.  The gentleman had his predilections even in New York, and in the
+open fireplace the logs crumbled and disintegrated to ashen caves
+wherein the palpitating jewels of the heat were held.  Except for this
+old-fashioned warmth, there was none other in the room, whose white
+wainscoting and pillars, low ceilings and quaint chimney-piece,
+characterized one of those agreeably proportioned houses still to be
+found in lower New York around Washington Square.
+
+Bulstrode had received about half an hour ago a letter whose qualities
+and suggestions were something disturbing to him:
+
+
+"There is such a thing, believe me" (Mary Falconer wrote in the pages
+which Bulstrode opened to read for the twentieth time), "as the _gloom_
+of Christmas, Jimmy.  People won't frankly own to it.  They're afraid
+of seeming sour and crabbed.  But don't you, who are so exquisitely apt
+to feelings--to other people's feelings,--at once confess it?  It
+attacks the spinster in the bustling winter streets as she is elbowed
+by some person, exuberantly a mother, and so arrogantly laden with
+delicious-looking parcels that she is almost a personal Christmas tree
+herself.  I'm confident this 'gloom of Christmas' grips the wretched
+little beings at toy-shop windows as they stand 'choosin'' their
+never-to-be-realized toys.  I'm sure it haunts the vagrant and the
+homeless in a city fairly redolent of holly and dinners, and where the
+array of other people's homes is terrifying.  And, my dear friend, it
+is so horribly subtle that no doubt it attacks others whose only grudge
+is that their hearths are not built for Christmas trees or the hanging
+of stockings.  But these unfortunates are not saying anything aloud,
+therefore we must not pry!
+
+"There's a jolly house-party on at the Van Schoolings'.  We're to go
+down to-morrow to Tuxedo and pass Christmas night, and you are, of
+course, asked and wanted.  Knowing your dread of these family
+feasts--possibly from just such a ghost of the gloom--I was sure you
+would refuse.  But it's a wonderful place for a talk or two, and I
+shall hope you will go--will come, not even follow, but go down with
+me."
+
+
+There was more of the letter--there always is more of women's letters.
+Their minds and pens are so charmingly facile; there is nothing a woman
+can do better than talk, except to write.
+
+Bulstrode smoked slowly, the pages between his fingers, his thoughts
+travelling like wanderers towards a home from which a ban had kept them
+aliens.  His eyes drifted to the beginning of the letter.  He wasn't
+familiar with the homeless vagrant class.  His charities to that part
+of the population consisted in donations to established societies, and
+haphazard giving called forth by a beggar's extended hand.
+
+If anybody may be immune to the melancholy of which his friend Mrs.
+Falconer spoke, it should surely be this gentleman, smoking his cigar
+before the fire.  The unopened letters--there was a pile of them--would
+have offered ample reason why.  No one of the lot but bore some
+testimony to the generous heart which, beneath dinner-jacket and behind
+the screw-faced watch with the picture in the back of it, beat so
+healthy and so well.
+
+But the bestowal of benefits, whilst it may beautify the giver, does
+not always transform itself into the one benefit desired and console
+the bestower!  Bulstrode had a charming home.  He was alone in it.  He
+had his clubs where bachelors like himself, more or less infected with
+Christmas gloom, would be glad to greet him.  He had his friends, many
+of them, and their home circles were complete.  His, by force of
+circumstances, began and ended with himself, and as if triumphant to
+have found so tempting a victim, the gloom came and possessed Bulstrode
+as he sat and mused.
+
+But the decided sadness that stole across his face bore no relation, to
+the season, to whose white mystery and holy beauty there was something
+in his boyish, kindly heart that always responded.
+
+The sadness Mrs. Falconer's letter awakened would not sleep.  What his
+Christmas _might_ be...!  He had only to order his motor, to call for
+her and drive over the ferry; to sit beside her in the train, to drive
+with her again across the wintry roads.  He had but to see her, watch
+her, talk with her, share with her the day and evening, to have his
+Christmas as nearly what a feast should be as dreams could ask.  The
+whole festival was there: joy, good-will--peace?  No.  Not peace for
+him or for her--not that; everything else, but not that.  And he had
+been travelling for five weary months in order to make himself keep for
+her that peace a little longer.
+
+Bulstrode sighed here, lifted the letter where there was more of it to
+his lips--held it out toward the fire as if the red jewels were to set
+themselves around it, thought differently, and putting it back in its
+envelope, thrust it in the pocket of his waistcoat.
+
+"Ruggles," he asked the servant who had come in, "you sent the despatch
+to Tuxedo?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"There'll be later a note to send.  I'll ring.  Well, what is it?"
+
+"There's a person at the door, sir, who insists on seeing you."
+
+The servant's tone--one particularly jarring to the ears of a man who
+had fellowship with more than one class of his kind--made the master
+look sharply up.  Ruggles was a new addition to the household, and
+Bulstrode did not like him.
+
+"A person," Bulstrode repeated, quietly; "what sort of a person?"
+
+"A man, sir."
+
+"Not a gentleman?  No," he nodded gently; "I see you do not think him
+one.  Yet that he is a man is in his favor.  There are some gentlemen
+who aren't men, you know.  Let him in."
+
+In doing so Ruggles seemed to let in the night.  Bulstrode had, in the
+warmth of his fragrant room, forgotten that outside was the wintry
+dark.  Ruggles, in letting the man in, had the air of thrusting him in,
+and shut the door behind the visitor with a click.
+
+The creature himself let in the cold; he seemed made of it.  The snow
+clung to his shoulders; his shoes, tied up with strings, were encrusted
+with it.  His coat, buttoned to his chin, frayed at the cuffs and
+edges, was thin and weather-stained.  He had a pale face, a royal
+growth of beard--this was all Bulstrode had time to remark.  He rose.
+
+"My servant says you want to see me.  Come near the fire, won't you?"
+
+The visitor did not stir.  Bewildered in the warmth of the room, he
+stood far back on the edge of the thick rug.  To all appearances he was
+a bit of driftwood from the streets, one of the usual vagrant class who
+haunt the saloons and park and steer from lockup to night-lodging,
+until they finally steer themselves entirely off the face of history,
+and the potter's field gathers them in.  Nothing but his entrance into
+this conventional room before this well-balanced member of decent
+society was peculiar.
+
+As he still neither moved nor spoke, Bulstrode, approaching him, again
+invited: "Come near the fire, won't you? and when you are warm tell me
+what I can do for you."
+
+"It's the storm," murmured the man, and a half-human look came across
+his face with his words.  "I mean to say, it's this hellish storm
+that's got in my throat and lungs.  I can't speak--it's so warm here.
+It will be better in a second.  No, not near the fire;
+thanks--chilblains."  He looked down at his poor feet.
+
+The voice which the storm had beaten and thrashed to painful hoarseness
+was entirely out of keeping with the man's appearance, and in
+intonation, accent, and language was a shock to the hearer.
+
+"Don't stand back like that--come into the room." Bulstrode wheeled a
+chair briskly about.  "There; sit down and drink this; it's a mild
+blend."
+
+"I'm very wet," said the man.  "I'll drip on the rug."
+
+"Hang the rug!"
+
+The tramp drained the glass given him at one swallow merely; it
+appeared to clear his throat and release his speech.  He gathered his
+rags together.
+
+"I beg pardon for forcing myself on you like this, but I fancy I
+needn't tell you I'm desperate--desperate!"  He held out his hand; it
+shook like a pale ghost's.  "I look it, I'm sure.  I haven't eaten a
+meal or slept in a bed for a fortnight.  I've begged work and charity.
+All day I've been shovelling snow, but I'm too weak to work now."
+
+He was being led to a chair.  He sank in it.  "Before they sent me to
+the Island I decided to try a ruse.  I went into a saloon and opened a
+directory, and I said, 'The first name I put my finger upon I'll take
+as good luck, and I'll go and see the person, man or woman.  I opened
+to James Thatcher Bulstrode, 9 Washington Square."  He half smiled; the
+pale, trembling hand was waving like a pitiful flag, a signal of
+distress to catch the sight of some bark that might lend aid.  "So I
+came here.  When there seemed actually to be some chance of my getting
+in, why, my courage failed me.  I don't expect you to believe my story
+or to believe anything, except that I am desperate--desperate.  It's
+below zero to-night out there--infernally cold."  He took the pin out
+of the collar turned up around his neck and let his coat fall back.
+Under it Bulstrode saw he wore a thin flannel shirt.  The tramp
+repeated to himself, as it were, "It's a bad storm."
+
+He looked up in a dazed fashion at his host as if for acceptance of his
+remark.  In the easy chair, half swathed in rags, pitiful in thinness,
+dripping from shoes and clothes water that the storm had drenched into
+him, he was a sorry object in the atmosphere of the well-ordered
+conventional room.  The heat and whiskey, the famine and exposure, cast
+a film across his eyes and brain.  He indistinctly saw his host pass
+into the next room and shut the door behind him.
+
+"By Jove!" he murmured under his breath in wonder find dumb thanks for
+the shelter.  "By Jove!"  The stimulant filtered agreeably through him;
+more charitable than any element with which he had been lately
+familiar, the fire's heat began to thaw the ice in his bones.  He laid
+his dripping hat on his knees, his thin hands folded themselves over
+it, his eyes closed.  For hours he had shuffled about the streets to
+keep from freezing.  At the charity organization they gave work he was
+too weak to do; he had not eaten a substantial meal in so long that he
+had forgotten the taste of food and had ceased to crave it.  In the
+soft light of lamp and fire he fell into a doze.  Bulstrode, if he had
+stolen softly in to look at his visitor, would have seen a man not over
+thirty years of age, although want and dissipation added ten to his
+appearance.  He would have been quick to take note of the fine,
+delicately cut face under the disfiguring beard, and of the slender,
+emaciated body deformed by its rags.
+
+Possibly he did so noiselessly come in and stand by the unconscious
+creature, but the sleeping vagabond, dreaming fitful, half-painful
+things, was ignorant of the visitor.  Finally across his mind's sharp
+despair came a sense of warmth and comfort, and in its spell he awoke.
+
+A servant, not the one who had thrust him into the drawing-room, but
+another with a friendly face, stood at his side, and in broken English
+asked the guest of Bulstrode to follow him; and gathering his scattered
+senses together and picking up his rags and what was left of himself,
+the creature obeyed a summons which he supposed was to hale him again
+into the winter streets.
+
+
+It was some three hours later that Bulstrode in his dining-room
+entertained his singular guest.
+
+"I have asked you to dine with me," he explained, with a certain
+graciousness, as if he claimed, not gave, a favor, "as I'm all alone
+to-night.  It's Christmas eve, you know--or perhaps you've been more or
+less glad to forget it?"
+
+The young man who took the chair indicated him was unrecognizable as
+the stranger who had staggered into 9 Washington Square three or four
+hours before.  Turned out in spotless linen and a good suit that fitted
+him fairly well, shaven face save for a mustache above his lip, bathed,
+brushed, refreshed by nourishment and sleep and repose, he looked like
+one who has been in the waters, possibly a long, long time; like one
+who has drifted, been bruised, shattered, and beaten, but who has
+nevertheless drifted to shore; and in spite of his borrowed clothes,
+his scarred, haggard face, he looked like a gentleman, and Bulstrode
+from the moment he spoke had recognized him as one.
+
+The food was a feast to the stranger, in spite of nourishment already
+given him by Prosper.  He restrained the ferocious hunger that woke at
+sight and smell of the good things, forced himself not to cry out with
+eagerness, not to tear and grasp the eatables off the plate, not to
+devour like a beast.  Every time he raised his eyes he met those of the
+butler Ruggles, and as quickly the stranger looked away.  The face of
+the servant standing by the sideboard, back of him the white and
+gleaming array of the Bulstrode family silver like piles of snow, was
+for some reason or other not a pleasant face; the stranger did not
+think it so.
+
+Once again seated in the room he had entered in his outcast state, a
+cup of coffee at his hand, a cigar between his lips, the agreeable
+atmosphere of the old room and its charming objects, the kindly look on
+the face of his host, all swam before him.  Looking frankly at
+Bulstrode, he said, not without grace of manner:
+
+"I give it up.  I can't--it's not to be made out or understood..."
+
+"Do you," interrupted the other, "feel equal to talking a little: to
+telling me how it happens that you are wandering, as you seem to be?
+For from the moment you first spoke----"
+
+The young man nodded.  "I'm a gentleman.  It's worse somehow--I don't
+know why, but it is."
+
+Bulstrode thought out for him: "It's like remembering agreeable places
+to which you feel you will never return.  Only," he quickly offered,
+"in your case you must, you know, go back."
+
+"No," said the young man, quietly.
+
+There was so much entire renunciation in what he said that the other
+could not press it.
+
+"Better still, you can then go on?"
+
+The vagrant looked at his companion as if to say: "Since I've known
+you--seen you--I have thought that I might."  But he said nothing more,
+and Bulstrode, reading a diffidence which did not displease him,
+finished:
+
+"You shall go on, and I'll help you."
+
+The stranger bowed his head, and the wine sent the color up until his
+cheeks took the flush of health.  Remaining a little bent over, his
+eyes on his feet clad in Bulstrode's shoes, he said:
+
+"I'm an Englishman.  My family is everything that's decent and all
+_that_, you know, and proud.  We've first-rate traditions.  I'm a
+younger son, and I've always been a thorn in the family's side.  I've
+been a sort of vagabond from the first, but never as bad as they
+thought or believed."
+
+He paused.  His recital was painful to him.  Bulstrode waited, then
+knocking off the ash from his cigar, urged:
+
+"Tell me about it, tell me frankly; it will, you see, be a relief.  We
+can do better that way--if I know."
+
+The stranger looked up at him quickly, then leaning forward in his
+chair, talked as it were to the carpet, and rapidly:
+
+"It's just a year ago.  I'd been going it rather hard and got into
+trouble more or less--lost at cards and the races, and been running up
+a lot of bills.  My father was awfully down on me.  I'd gone home for
+the holidays and had a talk with my father and asked him to pay up for
+me just this once more.  He refused, and we got very angry, both of us,
+and separated in a rage.  The house was full of people--a Christmas
+ball and a tree.  My father had, so it happened, quite a lot of money
+in the house.  I knew where it was--I had seen him count it and put it
+away.  That night for some reason the whole thing sickened me, in the
+mess I was in, and I left and went up to London without even saying
+good-by.  In the course of the week my brother came and found me drunk
+in my rooms.  It seems that the money had been taken from my father's
+safe, and they accused me."
+
+"But," interrupted Bulstrode, eagerly, "it was a simple thing to
+exculpate yourself."
+
+Ignoring his remark, the other continued: "I have never seen my father
+since that night."
+
+No amount of former deception can persuade a man that he is a lame
+judge of character.  The young Englishman's emaciated face, where eyes
+spoiled by dissipation looked out at his companion, was to this
+impulsive reader of humanity a good face.  Bulstrode, however, saw what
+he wanted to see in most people.  Given a chance to study them, or
+rather further to know them intimately, he might indeed have ended by
+finding in some cases a few of the imagined qualities.  Here misery was
+evident, degradation as well, timidity, and hesitation,--but honesty?
+Bulstrode fancied that its characters were not effaced, and he helped
+the recital:
+
+"Since you so left your people?"
+
+"The steady go down!" acknowledged the other.  "I worked my passage to
+the States on a liner--I stoked..."
+
+"Any chap," encouraged the gentleman, "who can do that can pull
+himself, I should say, out of a worse hole."
+
+"There's scarcely a bad habit I haven't had down in the hole with me,"
+confessed the other, "and they've held me there."
+
+They both remained for a few seconds without speaking, and the host's
+eyes wandered to where, over his mantel-shelf, in a great gold frame
+was the portrait of a lady done by Baker.  A quaint young lady in her
+early teens, with bare arms and frilled frock.  She had Bulstrode's
+eyes.  By her side was the black muzzle of a great hound, on whose head
+the little hand rested.  Under the picture, from a silver bowl of
+roses, came a fragrance that filled the room, and, close by stood a
+photograph of another lady, very modern, very mocking, and very lovely.
+
+Bulstrode, delicately drawing inferences from the influences in his
+life, and, if not consciously grateful, reflecting them charmingly,
+broke the silence:
+
+"You must have formed some plan or other in your mind when you came to
+my door?  What, in the event of your being received, did you intend to
+ask me to do?"
+
+The stranger lifted his head and his response was irrelevant: "It seems
+a hundred years since I stood there in that storm and your man pulled
+me in.  I haven't seen a place like this for long, not the inside of
+decent houses.  When I left the ship I managed to get down with a chap
+as far as Florida, where he had an orange-plantation, but the venture
+fell through.  I fancy the rest is as well forgotten.  When I came in
+here to-night I intended to ask you for a Christmas gift of money, and
+I should have gone out and drunk myself to hell."
+
+"You spoke"--Bulstrode fetched him back--"of your father and your
+brother; was there no one else?"
+
+The younger man looked up without reply.
+
+"There has been, then, no more kindly influence in your life--no
+sister--no woman?"
+
+Bulstrode brought out the words; in his judgment they meant so very
+much.  He saw a change cross the other's face.
+
+"I fancy there are not many men who haven't had a woman in their lives
+for good or bad," he said, with a short laugh.
+
+"Well," urged the gentleman, gently, "and for what was this woman?"
+
+As if he repelled the insistence, the young fellow stammered:
+
+"I say, this putting a fellow on the rack----"
+
+But Bulstrode leaned forward in his chair and rested his hand on his
+companion's knee and pleaded:
+
+"Speak out frankly--frankly--I believe I shall understand; it will free
+your heart to speak.  This influence which to a man should be the
+best--the best--what was it to you?"  Bulstrode sat back and waited,
+and the other man seemed quite lost in melancholy meditations for some
+few seconds.  Then Bulstrode put it: "For a young man, no matter how
+wild, to leave his home under the misapprehension you claim:--for him
+to make no effort to reinstate himself: with no attempt at justice: for
+him to become a wanderer--there must be an extraordinary reason, almost
+an improbable one----"
+
+"I don't ask you to hear," said the vagrant, quickly.
+
+"I wish to do so.  It would have been a simple matter to exculpate
+yourself--you had not the funds in your possession, had never had them.
+You took no means to clear yourself?"
+
+"None."
+
+Bulstrode looked hard at the face his care had revealed to him: the
+deep eyes, the neck, chin, the sensitive mouth--there was a certain
+distinction about him in his borrowed clothes.
+
+"Where is the woman now?"
+
+"She married my brother--she is Lady Waring--my name," tardily
+introduced the stranger, "is Cecil Waring."
+
+Bulstrode bowed.  "Tell me something of her, in a word--in a word."
+
+"Well, she is always clever," said the young man, slowly, "always very
+beautiful, and then very poor."
+
+"Yes," nodded Bulstrode.
+
+"She is like the rest of us--one of a fast wild set--a----"
+
+"A gambler?"  Bulstrode helped the description.
+
+"She played," acknowledged the young man, "as the rest do--bridge."
+
+"Were you engaged to her, Waring?"
+
+"Yes," he slowly acknowledged, as if each word hurt him.
+
+"And did she believe you guilty?"
+
+"I think," said the other, with an inscrutable expression, "she could
+not have done so."
+
+"But she let you go under suspicion?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Without a word of good faith, of comfort?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did she know of your embarrassments?"
+
+"Too well."
+
+"You tell me she was poor and--possibly she had embarrassments of her
+own?"
+
+"Possibly."
+
+Bulstrode came over to him.
+
+"Was she at the Christmas ball that night?"
+
+The young man rose as well, his eyes on his questioner's; the color had
+all left his face--he appeared fascinated--then he shook himself and
+unexpectedly laughed.
+
+"No," he said; "oh no."
+
+The older man bowed his head and replied, quite inaptly:
+
+"I understand!"
+
+He took a turn across the room.
+
+The few steps brought him in front of the mantel and the photograph of
+the modern lady in her furs and close hat.  He stood and met the fire
+of her mocking eyes.
+
+"And you _believe_ him, Jimmy!" he could hear her say in her delicious
+voice.
+
+"Yes," he mentally told her, "I believe him."
+
+"You think that to save a woman's name and honor he has become an
+outcast on the face of the earth ... Jimmy!"
+
+He still gently replied to her:
+
+"Men who love, you know, have but one code--the woman and honor."
+
+Still mocking, but gentle as would have been the touch of the roses in
+the bowl near the photograph, her voice told him,
+
+"Then he's worth saving, Jimmy."
+
+Worth saving ... he agreed, and turned to his guest.  In doing so he
+saw that Ruggles had come into the drawing-room to remove the
+coffee-tray.
+
+"Beg pardon, sir, but you mentioned there would be a letter to send
+shortly?"
+
+"By Jove! so I did!" exclaimed Bulstrode.  "I beg your pardon; will you
+excuse me while I write a line at the desk?"  The line was an order to
+the florist.
+
+For some reason the eyes of the Englishman had not quitted the butler's
+face, and Ruggles, with cold insolence, had stared at him in turn.
+Waring, albeit in another man's clothes, fed and seated before a
+friendly hearth, and once again within the pale of his own class, had
+regained something of his natural air and feeling of superiority.  He
+resented the servant's insolence, and his face was angrily flushed as
+Bulstrode gave his orders, and the man left the room.
+
+"I must go away," he said, rather brusquely.  "I can never thank you
+for what you have done.  I feel as if I had been in a dream."
+
+"Sit down."  His companion ignored his words.  "Sit down."
+
+"It's late."
+
+"For what, my friend?"
+
+"I must find some place to sleep."
+
+"You have found it," gently smiled Bulstrode.  "Your room is prepared
+for you here."  Then he interrupted: "No thanks--no thanks.  If what
+you tell me is all I think it is, I'm proud to share my roof with you,
+Waring."
+
+"Don't think well of me--don't!" blurted out the other.  "You don't
+know what a ruined vagabond I am.  When you send me out to-morrow I
+shall begin again; but let me tell you that although I've herded with
+tramps and thieves, been in the hospital and lock-up, and worked in the
+hell of a furnace in a ship's hold, nothing hurt me any more, not after
+I left England--not after those days when I waited in Liverpool for a
+word--for a sign--not after that, all you see the marks of now--nothing
+hurts now but the memory.  I'm immune."
+
+"You will feel differently--you will humanize."
+
+"Never!" exclaimed the tramp.
+
+"To-night," said Bulstrode, simply.
+
+Waring looked at him curiously.
+
+"What a wonderful man!" he half murmured.  "I was led to you by fate:
+you have forced me to lay my soul bare to you--and now..."
+
+"Let's look things in the face together," suggested the gentleman,
+practically.  "I have a ranch out West.  A good piece of property.
+It's in the hands of a clever Englishman and promises well.  How would
+you like to go out there and start anew?  He'll give you a welcome, and
+he's a first-rate business man.  Will you go?"
+
+Waring had with his old habit thrust his hands in his pockets.  He
+stood well on his feet.  Bulstrode remarked it.  He looked meditatively
+down between the soles of his shoes.
+
+"You mean to say you give me a chance--to--to----"
+
+"Begin anew, Waring."
+
+"I drink a great deal," said the young man.
+
+"You will swear off."
+
+"I've gambled away all the money I ever had."
+
+"You will be taking care of mine, and it will be a point of honor."
+
+"I'm under a cloud----
+
+"Not in my eyes," said Bulstrode, stoutly.
+
+"--which I can never clear."
+
+Bulstrode made a dismissing gesture.
+
+"I should want the chap out there to know the truth."
+
+"The truth," caught his hearer, and the other as quickly interrupted:
+
+"To know under what circumstances I left my people."
+
+"No, that is unnecessary," said Bulstrode, firmly.  "Nobody has any
+right to your past.  I don't know his.  That's the beauty of the
+plains--the freshness of them.  It's a new start--a clean page."
+
+Still the guest hesitated.
+
+"I don't believe it's worth while.  You see, I've batted about now so
+much alone, with nobody near me but the lowest sort; I've given in so
+long, with no care to do better, that I haven't any confidence in
+myself.  I don't want you to see me fail, sir,--I don't want to go back
+on you."
+
+Bulstrode had heard very understandingly part of the man's word, part
+of his excuse for his weakness.
+
+"That's it," he said, musingly.  "Butting about alone.  It's
+that--loneliness--that's responsible for so many things."
+
+Looking up brightly as his friend whose derelict dangerous vessel, so
+near to port and repair, was heading for the wide seas again, Bulstrode
+wondered: "If such a thing could be that some friend, not too
+uncongenial, could be found to go with you and stand as it were by
+you--some friend who knew--who comprehended----"
+
+Waring laughed.  "I haven't such a one."
+
+"Yes," said the older gentleman, "you have, and he will stand by you.
+I'll go West with you myself to-morrow--on Christmas day.  I need a
+change.  I want to get away for a little time."
+
+Waring drew back a step, for Bulstrode had risen.  Cold Anglo-Saxon as
+he was, the unprecedented miracle this gentleman presented made him
+seem almost lunatic.  He stared blankly.
+
+"It's simpler than it looks."  Bulstrode attempted conventionally to
+shear it of a little of its eccentricity.  "There's every reason why I
+should look after my property out there.  I've never seen it at all."
+
+"I'm not worth such a goodness," Waring faltered, earnestly,--"not
+worth it."
+
+"You will be."
+
+"Don't hope it."
+
+"I believe it," smiled the gentleman; "and at all events I'll stand by
+you till you are--if you'll say the word."
+
+Waring, whose lips were trembling, repeated vaguely, "The _word_?"
+
+"Well," replied Bulstrode, "you might say those--they're as good
+any--will you stand by _me_----?"
+
+Making the first hearty spontaneous gesture he had shown, the young man
+seized the other's outstretched hand.  "Yes," he breathed; "by Heaven!
+I will!"
+
+
+It was past midnight when Bulstrode, pushing open the curtains of his
+bedroom, looked out on the frozen world of Washington Square, where of
+tree and arch not an outline was visible under the disguising snow; and
+above, in the sky swept clear of clouds by the strongest of winds, rode
+the round full disk of the Christmas moon.
+
+The adoption of a vagrant, the quixotic decision he had taken to leave
+New York on Christmas day, the plain facts of the outrageous folly his
+impulsiveness led him to contemplate, had relegated his more worldly
+plans to the background.  Laying aside his waistcoat, he took out the
+letter in whose contents he had been absorbed when Cecil Waring crossed
+the threshold of his drawing-room.
+
+Well ... as he re-read at leisure her delightful plan for Christmas
+day, he sighed that he could not do for them both better than to go two
+thousand miles away!  "Waring thinks himself a vagrant--and so, poor
+chap, he has been; but there are vagrants of another kind."  Jimmy
+reflected he felt himself to be one of these others, and was led to
+speculate if there were many outcasts like himself, and what
+ultimately, if their courage was sufficient to keep them banished to
+the end, would be the reward?
+
+"Since," he reflected, "there's only one thing I desire--and it's the
+one thing forbidden--I fail sometimes to quite puzzle it out!"
+
+He had finished his preparations for the night and was about to turn
+out the light, when, with his hand on the electric button, he paused,
+for he distinctly heard from downstairs what sounded like a call--a cry.
+
+Taking his revolver from the top drawer, he went into the hall, to feel
+a draft of icy air blow up the staircase, to see over the balusters the
+open door of the dining-room and light within it, and to hear more
+clearly the sounds that had come to him through closed doors declare
+themselves to be scuffling--struggling--the half-cry of a muffled
+voice--a fall, then Bulstrode started.
+
+"I'm coming," he declared, and ran down the stairs like a boy.
+
+On the dining-room floor, close to the window wide open to the icy
+night, lay a man's form, and over him bent another man cruelly, with
+all the animus of a bird of prey.
+
+The under man was Ruggles, Bulstrode's butler, his eyes starting from
+their sockets, his mouth open, his color livid; he couldn't have called
+out, for the other man had seized his necktie, twisted it tight as a
+tourniquet around the man's gullet, and so kneeling with one knee on
+his chest, Waring held the big man under.
+
+"I say," panted the young man, "can you lend a hand, sir?  I've got
+him, but I'm not strong enough to keep him."
+
+Bulstrode thought his servant's eyes rolled appealingly at him.  He
+cocked his revolver, holding it quietly, and asked coolly:
+
+"What's the matter with him that he needs to be kept?"
+
+"Would you sit on his chest, Mr. Bulstrode?"
+
+"No," said that gentleman.  "I'll cover him so.  What's the truth?"
+
+"I heard a queer noise," panted the Englishman, "and came out to see
+what it was, and this fellow was just getting through the window.
+There was another chap outside, but he got away.  I caught this one
+from the back, otherwise I could never have thrown him."
+
+"You're throttling him."
+
+"He deserves it."
+
+"Let him up."
+
+"Mr. Bulstrode...!"
+
+"Yes," said that gentleman, decidedly, "let him up."
+
+But Ruggles, released from the hand whose knuckles had ground
+themselves into his windpipe, could not at once rise.  The breath was
+out of him, for he had been heavily struck in the stomach by a blow
+from the fist of a man whose training in sport had delightfully
+returned at need.
+
+Ruggles began to breathe like a porpoise, to grunt and pant and roll
+over.  He staggered to his feet, and with a string of imprecations
+raised his fist at Waring, but as Bulstrode's revolver was entirely
+ready to answer at command, he did not venture to leave the spot where
+he stood.
+
+"Now," said his master, "when you get your tongue your story will be
+just the same as Mr. Waring's.  You found him getting away with the
+silver.  The probabilities are all with you, Ruggles.  The police will
+be here in just about five minutes.  Ten to one the guilty man is known
+to the officers.  Now there's an overcoat and hat on the hat-rack in
+the hall.  I give both of you time to get away.  There's the front door
+and the window--which, by the way, you would better shut, Waring, as
+it's a cold morning."
+
+Neither man moved.  Without removing his eyes from the butler or
+uncovering him, Bulstrode, by means of the messenger-call to the right
+of the window, summoned the police.  The metallic click of the button
+sounded loud in the room.
+
+Ruggles shook his great hand high in air.
+
+"I'd--I'd----"
+
+"Never mind _that_," interrupted the householder.  "The man who's
+_going_ had better take his chance.  There's one minute lost."
+
+During the next half-second the modern philanthropist breathed in
+suspense.  It was so on the cards that he might be obliged to apologize
+to his antipathetic butler and find himself sentimentally sold by
+Waring!
+
+But Ruggles it was who with a parting oath stepped to the
+door--accelerating his pace as the daze began to pass a little from his
+brain, and snatched the hat and coat, unlocked the front door, opened
+it, looked quickly up and down the white streets, and then without a
+word cut down the steps and across Washington Square, slowly at first,
+and then on a run.
+
+Bulstrode turned to his visitor.
+
+"Come," he said, "let's go up to bed."
+
+"But," stammered the young man, "you're never going to let him go like
+that?"
+
+"Yes, I am," confessed the unpractical gentleman.  "I couldn't send a
+man to jail on Christmas day."
+
+"But the police----?"
+
+"I shall tell them out of my window that it was a false alarm."
+
+Bulstrode shut and locked his door, and turning to Waring, laughed
+delightedly.
+
+"I must tell you that when he let you in last night Ruggles did not
+think you were a gentleman.  He must have found out this morning that
+you were very much of a man.  It's astonishing where you got your
+strength, though.  He'd make two of you, and you're not fit in any way."
+
+He looked ghastly enough as Bulstrode spoke, and the gentleman put his
+arm under the Englishman's.  "I'll ring for the servants and have some
+coffee made and fetched to your room.  Lean on me."  He helped the
+vagabond upstairs.
+
+The New Yorker, whose sentimental follies were certainly a menace to
+public safety and a premium to begging and vagabondage and crime, slept
+well and late, and was awakened finally by the keen, bright ringing of
+the telephone at his side.  As he took up the receiver his whole face
+illumined.
+
+"Merry Christmas, Jimmy!"
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"What _wonderful_ roses!  Thanks a thousand times!"
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"But of course I knew!  No other man in New York is sentimental enough
+to have a woman awakened at eight o'clock by a bunch of flowers!"
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"Forgive you!"  (It was clear that she did.)
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"Jimmy, what a day for Tuxedo, and what a shame I can't go!"
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"You weren't going!  You mean to say that you had refused?"
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"I don't understand--it's the connection--West?"
+
+"Why, ranches look after themselves.  They always do.  They go right
+on.  You don't _mean_ it, on Christmas day!"
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"I shouldn't care for your reasons.  They're sure to be
+ridiculous--unpractical--unnecessary--don't tell them to me."
+
+There was a pause, and then the voice, which had undergone a slight
+change said:
+
+"Jack's ill again ... that's why I couldn't go to Tuxedo.  I shall pass
+the day here in town.  I called up to tell you this--and to
+suggest--but since you're going West..."
+
+Falconer's illnesses!  How well Bulstrode knew them, and how well he
+could see her alone in the familiar little drawing-room by a hearth not
+built for a Christmas tree!  He had promised Waring, "I'll stand by
+you."  It was a kind of vow--a real vow, and the poor tramp had lived
+up to his.
+
+"Jimmy."  There was a note he had never heard before; if a tone can be
+a tear, it was one.
+
+He interrupted her.
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"How dear of you!"
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"But I haven't any Christmas tree!"
+
+   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+
+"You'll fetch one?  How _dear_ of you!  We'll trim it--with your
+roses--make it bloom.  Come early and help me dress the tree."
+
+
+Two hours later he opened the door into his breakfast-room with the
+guiltiness of a truant boy.  He wore culprit shame written all over his
+face, and the young man who stood waiting for him in the window might
+almost have read his friend's dejection in his embarrassed face.
+
+But Waring came eagerly forward, answered the season's greetings, and
+said quickly:
+
+"Are you still in the same mind about the West, Mr. Bulstrode?"
+
+(Poor Bulstrode!)
+
+"I mean to say, sir, if you still feel like giving me this chance, I've
+a favor to ask.  Would you let me go _alone_?"
+
+Bulstrode gasped.
+
+"Since last night a lot has happened to me, not only since you've
+befriended me, but since I tussled with that fellow here.  I'd like a
+chance to see what I can do alone.  If you, as you so generously plan,
+go with me, I shall feel watched--protected.  It will weaken me more
+than anything else.  I suppose I shall go all to pieces, but I'd like
+to try my strength.  If I could suddenly master that chap with my fists
+after months of dissipation----"
+
+Bulstrode finished for him:
+
+"You can master the rest."
+
+"Don't give me any extra money," pleaded the tramp, as if he foresaw
+his friend's impulse.  "Pay my ticket out West, if you will, and write
+to the man who is there, and I'll start in."
+
+Bulstrode beamed on him.
+
+"You're a man," he assured him--"a man."
+
+"I may become one."
+
+"You're a fine fellow."
+
+"You'll trust me, then?"
+
+"Implicitly."
+
+"Then let me start to-day.  I'm reckless--let me get away.  I may get
+off at the first station and pawn my clothes and drink and drink to a
+lower hell than before--but let me try alone."
+
+"You shall go alone--and go to-day."
+
+Prosper came in with the coffee; he, too, was beaming, and the servants
+below-stairs were all agog.  Waring was a hero.
+
+"Prosper," said his master, in French, "will you, after you have served
+breakfast, go out to the market quarters and see if you can discover
+for me a medium-sized, very well-proportioned little Christmas tree?
+Fetch it home with you."
+
+Waring smiled faintly.
+
+Bulstrode smiled too, and more comprehendingly, and Prosper smiled and
+said:
+
+"Mais certainement, monsieur."
+
+
+
+
+THE SECOND ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+II
+
+IN WHICH HE TRIES TO BUY A PORTRAIT
+
+Bulstrode was extremely fond of travel, and every now and then treated
+himself to a season in London or Paris, and in the May following his
+adventure with Waring he saw, from his apartments in the Hotel Ritz,
+from Boulevard, Bois, and the Champs Elysees, as much of the
+maddeningly delicious Parisian springtime "as was good for him at his
+age," so he said!  It gave the feeling that he was a mere boy, and with
+buoyant sensations astir in him, life had begun over again.
+
+Any morning between eleven and twelve Bulstrode might have been seen in
+the Bois de Boulogne briskly walking along the Avenue des Acacias, his
+well-filled chest thrown out, his step light and assured; cane in hand,
+a boutonniere tinging the lapel of his coat; immaculate and fresh as a
+rose, he exhaled good-humor, kindliness, and well-being.
+
+From their traps and motors charming women bowed and smiled, the _fine
+fleur_ and the _beau monde_ greeted him cordially.
+
+"Regardez moi ce bon Bulstrode qui se promene," if it were a Frenchman,
+or, "There's dear old Jimmy Bulstrode!" if he were recognized by a
+compatriot.
+
+Bulstrode was rather slight of build, yet with an evident strength of
+body that indicated a familiarity with exercise, a healthful habit of
+sport and activity.  His eyes, clear-sighted and strong, looked through
+the medium of no glass happily and naively on the world.  Many years
+before his hair had begun to turn gray, and had not nearly finished the
+process; it grew thickly, and was quite dark about his ears and on his
+brow.  Having gained experience and kept his youth, he was as rare and
+delightful as fine wine--as inspiring as spring.  It was his heart
+(Mrs. Falconer said) that made him so, his good, gentle, generous
+heart!--and she should know.  His fastidiousness in point of dress, and
+his good taste kept him close to elegance of attire.
+
+"You turn yourself out, Jimmy, on every occasion," she had said, "as if
+you were on the point of meeting the woman you loved."  And Bulstrode
+had replied that such consistent hopefulness should certainly be
+ultimately rewarded.
+
+He gave the impression of a man who in his youth starts out to take a
+long and pleasant journey and finds the route easy, the taverns
+agreeable, and the scenes all the guide-book promised.  Midway--(he had
+turned the page of forty)--midway, pausing to look back, Bulstrode saw
+the experiences of his travels in their sunny valleys, full of goodly
+memories, and the future, to his sweet hopefulness, promised to be a
+pleasant journey to the end.
+
+During the time that he spent in Paris every pet charity in the
+American colony took advantage of the philanthropic Mr. Bulstrode's
+passing through the city, and came to him to be set upon its feet, and
+every pretty woman with an interest, hobby, or scheme came as well to
+this generous millionaire, told him about her fad and went away with a
+donation.
+
+One ravishing May morning Bulstrode, taking his usual constitutional in
+the Bois, paused at the end of the Avenue des Acacias to find it
+deserted and attractively quiet; he sat down on a little bench the more
+reposefully to enjoy the day and time.
+
+There are, fortunately, certain things which, unlike money, can be
+shared only with certain people; and Bulstrode felt that the pleasure
+of this spring day, the charm of the opposite wood-glades into which he
+meditatively looked, the tranquil as well as the buoyant joy of life,
+were among those personal things so delightful when shared--and which,
+if too long enjoyed alone, bring (let it be scarcely whispered on this
+bewildering May morning) something like sadness!
+
+Before his happier mood changed his attention was attracted by a woman
+who came rapidly toward the avenue from a little alley at the side.  He
+looked up quickly at the feminine creature who so aptly appeared upon
+his musings.  She was young; her form in its simple dress assured him
+this.  He could not see her face, for it was covered by her hands.
+Abruptly taking the opposite direction, she went over to a farther
+seat, where she sat down, and when the young girl put her arms on the
+back of the seat, her head upon her arms, and in the remoteness this
+part of the avenue offered, cried without restraint, the kind-hearted
+Bulstrode felt that it was too cruel to be true.
+
+But soft-hearted though he was, the gentleman was a worldling as well,
+and that the outburst was a ruse more than suggested itself to him as
+he went over to the lovely Niobe whose abundant fair hair sunned from
+under her simple straw hat and from beneath whose frayed skirt showed a
+worn little shoe.
+
+He spoke in French.
+
+"Pardon, madame, but you seem in great distress."
+
+The poor thing started violently, and as soon as she displayed her
+pretty tearful face the American recognized in her a compatriot.  She
+waved him emphatically away.
+
+"Oh, please don't notice me--don't speak to me--I didn't see that
+anybody was there."
+
+"I am an American, too: can't I do anything for you--won't you let me?"
+
+And he saw at once that she wanted to be left alone.  She averted her
+head determinedly.
+
+"No, no, please don't notice me.  Please go away!"
+
+He had nothing to do but to obey her, and as he reluctantly did so a
+smart pony-cart driven by a lady alone came briskly along and drew up,
+for the occupant had recognized him.
+
+"Get in!" she rather commanded.  "My dear Jimmy, how _nice_ to find you
+here, and how nice to drive you at least as far as the entrance!"
+
+As the rebuffed philanthropist accepted he cast a ruthful glance at the
+solitary figure on the bench.
+
+"Do you see that poor girl over there?  She's an American, and in real
+trouble."
+
+"My _dear_ Jimmy!"  His companion's tone left him in no doubt as to her
+scepticism.
+
+"Oh, I know, I know," he interrupted, "but she's not a fraud.  She's
+the real thing."
+
+They were already gayly whirling away from the sad little figure.
+
+"Did you make her cry?"
+
+"I?  Certainly not."
+
+"Then let the man who did wipe her tears away!"
+
+But Bulstrode had seen the face of the girl, and he was haunted by it
+all day until the Bois and its bright atmosphere became only the
+setting for an unhappy woman, young and lovely, whom it had been
+impossible for him to help.
+
+Somebody had said that Bulstrode should have his portrait done with his
+hands in his pockets, and Mrs. Falconer had replied, "Or rather with
+_other_ people's hands in his pockets!"
+
+The next afternoon he found himself part of a group of people who, out
+of charity and curiosity, patronized the Western Artists' Exhibition in
+the Rue Monsieur.
+
+Having made a ridiculously generous donation to the support of this
+league at the request of a certain lovely lady, Bulstrode followed his
+generosity by a personal effort, and with not much opposition on his
+part permitted himself to be taken to the exhibition.
+
+He was not, in the ultra sense of the word, a _connaisseur_, but he
+thought he knew a horror when he saw it!  So he said, and on this
+afternoon his eyes ached and his offended taste cried out before he had
+patiently travelled half-way down the line of canvases.
+
+"My dear lady," he confided _sotto voce_ to his friend, "I feel more
+inclined to establish a fund for sending all these young women back to
+the _prairies_, if that's where they come from, than to aid in this
+slaughter of public time and taste.  _Why_ don't they stay at home--and
+marry?"
+
+"That's a vulgar and limited point of view to take," his friend
+reproached him.  "Don't you acknowledge that a woman has many careers
+instead of one?  _You_ seem to be thoroughly enjoying your liberty!
+What if I should ask you why _you_ don't stay at home, and marry?"
+
+Bulstrode looked at his guide comprehensively and smiled gently.  His
+response was irrelevant.  "Look at this picture!  It's too dreadful for
+words."
+
+"Hush, you're not a judge.  Here and there there is evidence of great
+talent."
+
+They had drawn up before a portrait, and poor Bulstrode caught his
+breath with a groan:
+
+"It's too awful!  It's crime to encourage it."
+
+Mrs. Falconer tried to lead him on.
+
+"Well, this _is_ an unfortunate place to stop," she confessed.  "That
+portrait represents more tragedy than you can see."
+
+"It couldn't," murmured Bulstrode.
+
+"The poor girl who did it has struggled on here for two years, living
+sometimes on a franc a day.  Just fancy!  She has been trying to get
+orders so that she can stay on and study.  Poor thing!  The people who
+are interested say that she's been near to desperation.  She is awfully
+proud, and won't take any assistance but orders.  You can imagine
+_they're_ not besieging her!  She has come to her last cent, I believe,
+and has to go home to Idaho."
+
+"Let her go, my dear friend."  Bulstrode was earnest.  "It's the best
+thing she could possibly do!"
+
+His companion put her hand on his arm.
+
+"Please be quiet," she implored.  "There she is, standing over by the
+door.  That rather pretty girl with the disorderly blonde hair."
+
+Bulstrode looked up--saw her--looked again, and exclaimed:
+
+"Is _that_ the girl?  Do you know her?  Present me, will you?"
+
+"Nonsense."  She detained him.  "How you go from hot to cold!  _Why_
+should you want to meet her, pray?"
+
+"Oh," he evaded, "it's a curious study.  I want to talk to her about
+art, and if you don't present me I shall speak to her without an
+introduction."
+
+Not many moments later Bulstrode was cornered in a dingy little room,
+where tea that tasted like the infusion of a haystack was being served.
+He had skilfully disassociated Miss Laura Desprey from her Bohemian
+companions and placed her on a little divan, before which, with a
+teacup in his hand, he stood.
+
+She wore the same dress, the same hat--and he did not doubt the same
+shoes which characterized her miserable toilet when he had surprised
+her childlike display of grief on a bench in the Bois.  He had done
+quite right in speaking to her, and he thanked his stars that she did
+not in the least remember him.
+
+He thought with kind humor: "No wonder she cries if she paints like
+that!"
+
+But it was not in a spirit of criticism that he bent his friendly eyes
+on the Bohemian.  He had the pleasure of seeing her plainly this time,
+for the window back of her admitted a generous square of light against
+which her blonde head framed itself, and her untidy hair was like a
+dusty mesh of gold.  She regarded the amiable gentleman out of eyes
+child-like and purely blue.  Under her round chin the edges of a black
+bow tied loosely stood out like the wings of a butterfly.  Her dress
+was careless and poor, but she was grace in it and youth--"and what,"
+thought Bulstrode, "has one a right to expect more of any woman?"  He
+remembered her boots and shuddered.  He remembered the one franc a day
+and began his campaign.
+
+"I want so much to meet the painter of that portrait over there," he
+began.
+
+Her face lightened.
+
+"Oh, did you like it?"
+
+"I think it's wonderful, perfectly wonderful!"
+
+A slow red crept up the thin contour of her cheek.  She leaned forward!
+
+"Do you really mean that?"
+
+He said most seriously:
+
+"Yes, I can frankly say I haven't seen a portrait in a long time which
+impressed me so much."
+
+His praise was not in Latin Quarter vernacular, and coming from a
+Philistine, had only a certain value to the artist.  But to a lonely
+stranded girl the words were balm.  Bulstrode, in his immaculate dress,
+his conventional manner, was as foreign a person to the Bohemian
+student as if he had been an inhabitant of another planet.  Her speech
+was brusque and quick, with a generous burr in her "rs" when she
+replied.
+
+"I've studied at Julian's two years now.  This was my Salon picture,
+but it didn't get in."
+
+"If one can judge by those that _did_"--Bulstrode's tact was
+delightful--"you should feel honorably refused.  I suppose you are at
+work on another portrait?"
+
+The face which his interest had brightened clouded.
+
+"No, I'm going home--to Idaho--I'm not painting any more."
+
+All the tragedy to a whole-souled Latin Quarter art student that this
+implied was not revealed to Bulstrode, but, as it was, his sensitive
+kindness felt so much already that it ached.  He hastened toward his
+goal with eagerness:
+
+"I'm so awfully sorry!  Because, do you know, I was going to ask you if
+you couldn't possibly paint my portrait?"  It came from him on the spur
+of the moment.  His frank eyes met hers and might have quailed at his
+hypocrisy, but the expression of joy on her face, eclipsing everything
+else, dazzled him.
+
+She cried out impulsively:
+
+"Oh--goodness!" so loud that one or two tea-drinkers turned about.
+After a second, having gained control and half as though she expected
+some motive she did not understand:
+
+"But you never _heard_ of me before to-day!  I don't believe you
+_really_ liked that portrait over there so very much."
+
+With a candor that impressed her he assured her: "I give you my word of
+honor I've never felt quite so about any portrait before."
+
+Here Miss Desprey had a cup of tea handed her by a vague-eyed girl who
+stumbled over Bulstrode in her ministrations, much to her confusion.
+
+Laura Desprey drank her tea with avidity, put the cup down on the table
+near, and leaning over to her patron, exclaimed:
+
+"I just _can't_ believe I've got an order!"
+
+Bulstrode affirmed smiling: "You have, and if you could arrange to stay
+over for it--if it would," he delicately put, "be worth your while----"
+
+She said quietly:
+
+"Yes, it would be worth my while."
+
+A _distrait_ look passed over her face for a second, and Bulstrode saw
+he was forgotten in, as he supposed, a painter's vision of an order and
+its contingent technicalities.
+
+"I can begin at once."  He lost no time.  "I'm quite free."
+
+"But--I have no studio."
+
+"There must be studios to rent."
+
+Yes.  She knew of one; she could secure it for a month.  It would take
+that time--she was a slow worker.
+
+"But we haven't discussed the price."  Before so much poverty and
+struggle--not that it was new to him, but clothed like this in beauty
+it was rare and appealed to him--he was embarrassed by his riches.
+"Now the price.  I want," he meditated, "a full-length portrait, with a
+great deal of background, just as handsome and expensive looking as you
+can paint it."
+
+He exquisitely sacrificed himself and winced at his own words, and saw
+her color with amusement and a little scorn, but he went on bravely:
+
+"Now for a man like me, Miss Desprey--I am sure you will know what I
+mean--a man who has never been painted before--this picture will have
+to cost me a lot of money.  You see otherwise my friends would not
+appreciate it."
+
+In the vulgarian he was making himself out to be his friends would not
+have recognized the unpretentious Bulstrode.
+
+"Get the place, Miss Desprey, and let me come as soon as you can.  All
+this change of plans will give you extra expenses--I understand about
+that!  Every time I change my rooms it costs me a fortune.  Now if you
+will let me send you over a check for half payment on the picture, for,
+let us say"--he made it as large as he dared and a quarter of what he
+wanted.  They were alone in the tea-room, the motley gathering had
+weeded itself out.  Miss Desprey turned pale.
+
+"No," she gasped; "I couldn't take anything like half so much for the
+whole thing."
+
+Bulstrode said coldly:
+
+"I'm afraid I must insist, Miss Desprey; I couldn't order less than a
+fifteen-hundred dollar portrait.  It's the sum I have planned to pay
+when I'm painted."
+
+"But a celebrated painter would paint it for that."
+
+Bulstrode smiled fatuously.
+
+"Can't a man pay for his fads?  I want to be painted by the person who
+did that portrait over there, Miss Desprey."
+
+
+In a tiny studio--the dingy chrysalis of a Bohemian art
+student--Bulstrode posed for his portrait.
+
+Each morning saw him set forth from the Ritz alert and debonaire in his
+fastidious toilet---saw him cross the Place Vendome, the bridge, and
+lose his worldly figure in the lax nonchalant crowd of the Quarter
+Latin.  At the end of an alley as narrow and picturesque as a lane in a
+colored print he knocked at a green door, and was admitted to the
+studio by his protegee.  In another second he had assumed his
+prescribed position according to the pose, and Miss Desprey before her
+easel began the _seance_.
+
+On these May days the glass roof admitted delightful gradations of
+glory to the commonplace _atelier_.  A few cheap casts, a few yards of
+mustard-toned burlaps, some Botticelli and Manet photographs, a mangy
+divan, and a couple of chairs were the furnishings.  It had been
+impossible for Bulstrode to pass indifferently the venders of flowers
+in the festive, brilliant streets, and great bunches of _girofle_,
+hyacinths, and narcissi overflowed the earthenware pitchers and vases
+with which the studio was plentifully supplied.  The soft, sharp
+fragrance rose above the shut-in odor of the _atelier_, and, while Miss
+Desprey worked, her patron looked at her across waves of spring perfume.
+
+Her painting-dress, a garment of _beige_ linen, half belted in at the
+waist and entirely covering her, made her to Bulstrode, from the crown
+of her fair hair to the tip of her old tan shoes, seem all of one
+color.  He had taken tremendous interest in his pose, in the progress
+of the work.  He would have looked at the portrait every few moments,
+but Miss Desprey refused him even a glimpse.  He was to wait until all
+manner of strange things took place on the canvas, till "schemes and
+composition" were determined, "proper values" arrived at, and he
+listened to her glib school terms with respect and a sanguine hope that
+with the aid of such potent technicalities and his interest she might
+be able to achieve this time something short of atrocious.
+
+He posed faithfully for Miss Desprey, and smiled at her with friendly
+eyes whenever he caught anything more personal than the squinting
+glance with which she professionally regarded him, putting him far away
+or fetching him near, according to her art's requirements.  They talked
+in his rest, and he took pleasure in telling her how he enjoyed his
+morning walks from his hotel, how the outdoor life delighted him, and
+how all the suburban gardens seemed to have been brought to Paris to
+glow and blossom in the venders' carts or in little baskets on the
+backs of women and boys, and how thoroughly well worth living he
+thought life in Paris was.
+
+"There is," he finished, "nothing in the world which compares to the
+Paris spring-time, I believe, but I have never been West.  What is
+spring like in Idaho?"
+
+Miss Desprey laughed, touched her ruffled hair with painty fingers,
+blushed, and mused.
+
+"Oh, it's all right, I guess.  There's a trolley-line in Centreville,
+an electric plant and the oil works--no trees, no flowers, and the
+people all look alike.  So you see"--she had a dazzling way of shaking
+her head, when her fine white teeth, her sunny dishevelled hair, her
+bright cheeks and eyes seemed all to flash and chime together--"so you
+see, spring in Centreville and _Paris_ isn't the same thing at all!
+Things are beautiful everywhere," she assured him slowly as she
+painted, "if you're happy--and I was very unhappy in Centreville, so I
+thought I'd come away and try to have a career."  She poured out a long
+stream of _garance_ from the tube on to her palette.  Bulstrode
+watched, fascinated.
+
+"And here in Paris, are you--have you been happy here?"
+
+"Oh, dear no!" she laughed; "perfectly miserable.  And it used to seem
+as though it was cruel of the city to be so gay and happy when I
+couldn't join in--"  Bulstrode, remembering the one franc a day and the
+very questionable inspiration her poor art could impart, understood;
+his face was full of feeling--"until," she went slowly on, "lately."
+She stepped behind the canvas and was lost to sight.  "I've been
+awfully happy in Paris for the first time.  I do like beautiful
+things--but I like beautiful people better--and you're
+beautiful--beautiful."
+
+She finished with a blush and a smile.
+
+Bulstrode grew to think nothing at all about his portrait further than
+fervently to hope it would not shock him beyond power to disguise.  But
+Miss Desprey was frightfully in earnest, and worked until her eyes
+glowed with excitement and her cheeks burned.  Strong and vigorous and
+(Bulstrode over and over again said) "young, so young!" she never
+evinced any signs of fatigue, but stood when his limbs trembled under
+him and looked up radiant when he was ready to cry "_Grace!_"  In her
+enthusiasm she would have given him two sittings a day, but this his
+worldly relations would not permit.  As she painted, painted, her head
+on one side sometimes, sometimes thrown back, her eyes half closed, he
+studied her with pleasure and delight.
+
+"What a pity she paints so dreadfully ill!  What a pity she paints at
+all!  What difference, after all, does it make _what_ she does?  She's
+so pretty and feminine!"  She was a clinging, sweet creature, and the
+walk and the flower debauch he permitted himself, the long quiet hours
+of companionship with this lovely girl in the _atelier_, illumined,
+accentuated, and intensified Bulstrode's already fatuous appreciation
+of the spring in Paris.
+
+During Bulstrode's artistic mornings there distilled itself into the
+studio a magic to which he was not insensitive.  Whether or not it came
+with the flowers or with the delicate filtering of the sun through the
+studio light, who can say, but as he stood in his assumed position of
+_nonchalance_ he was more and more charmed by his painter.  The spell
+he naturally felt should, and for long indeed did, emanate from the
+slender figure, lost at times behind her canvas, and at times
+completely in his view.
+
+For years Bulstrode had been the victim of hope, or rather in this case
+of intent, _to love again_--to love anew!  Neither of these statements
+is the correct way of putting it.  He tried with good faith to prove
+himself to be what was so generally claimed for him by his
+friends--susceptible; alas, he knew better!
+
+As he meditatively studied the blonde young girl he spun for himself to
+its end the idea of picking her up, carrying her off, marrying her,
+shutting Idaho away definitely, and opening to her all that his wealth
+and position could of life and the world.  He grew tender at the
+thought of her poor struggle, her insufficient art, her ambition.  It
+fascinated him to think of playing the good fairy, of touching her
+gray, hard life to color and beauty, and as the beauty and the holy
+intimacy of home occurred to him, and marriage, his thoughts wandered
+as pilgrims whose feet stray back in the worn ways and find their own
+old footprints there, ... and after a few moments Miss Desprey was like
+to be farther away from his meditations than Centreville is from Paris,
+and the personality of the dream-woman was another.  Once Miss
+Desprey's voice startled him out of such a reverie by bidding him,
+"_Please_ take the pose, Mr. Bulstrode!"  As he laughed and apologized
+he caught her eyes fixed on him with, as he thought, a curious
+expression of affection and sympathy--indeed, tears sprang to them.
+She reddened and went furiously back to work.  She was more personal
+that day than she had yet been.  She seemed, after having surprised his
+absent-mindedness, to feel that she had a right to him--quite ordered
+him about, and was almost petulant in her exactions of his positions.
+
+Her work evidently advanced to her satisfaction.
+
+As she stood elated before her easel, her hair in sunny disorder, her
+eyes like stars, Bulstrode was conscious there was a change in her--she
+was excited and tremulous.  In her frayed dress, sagging at the edges,
+her paint-smeared apron, her slender thumb through the hole in the
+palette, she came over to him at the close of the sitting, started to
+speak, faltered, and said:
+
+"You don't know what it means to me--all you have done.  And I can't
+ever tell you."
+
+"Oh, don't," he pleaded, "pray don't speak of it!"
+
+Miss Desprey, half radiant and half troubled, turned away as if she
+were afraid of his eyes.
+
+"No, I won't try to tell you.  I couldn't, I don't dare," she
+whispered, and impulsively caught his hand and kissed it.
+
+When he had left the studio finally it was with a bewildering sense of
+having kissed her hand--no, both of her hands! but one held her palette
+and he _couldn't_ have kissed that one without having got paint on his
+nose--perhaps he had!  He was not at peace.
+
+
+That same night a telegram brought him news to the effect that Miss
+Desprey was ill and would not expect him to pose the following day; and
+relieved that it was not required of him to resume immediately the
+over-charged relations, he went back to his old habit, rudely broken
+into by his artistic escapade, and walked far into the Bois.
+
+He thought with alarming persistency of Miss Desprey.  He was
+chivalrous with women, old-fashioned and clean-minded and
+straight-lived.  In the greatest, in the only passion of his life, he
+had been a Chevalier Bayard, and he could look back upon no incidents
+in which he had played the part which men of the world pride themselves
+on playing well.  Women were mysterious and wonderful to him.  Because
+of one he approached them all with a feeling not far from worship; and
+he had no intention of doing a dishonorable thing.  Puzzled,
+self-accusing--although he did not quite know of what he was guilty--he
+sat down as he had done several weeks before on the bench in the Avenue
+des Acacias.  With extraordinary promptness, as if arranged by a
+scene-setter, a girl's figure came quickly out of a side alley.  She
+was young--her figure betrayed it.  She went quickly over to a seat and
+sat down.  She was weeping and covered her face with her hands.
+Bulstrode, this time without hesitation, went directly over to her:
+
+"My dear Miss Desprey----"
+
+She sprang up and displayed a face disfigured with weeping.
+
+"_You_!" she exclaimed with something like terror.  "Oh, Mr. Bulstrode!"
+
+Her words shuddered in sobs.
+
+"Don't stay here!  Why did you come?  Please go--please."
+
+Bulstrode sat down beside her and took her hands.
+
+"I'm not going away--not until I know what your trouble is.  You were
+in distress when I first saw you here and you wouldn't let me help you
+then.  Now you can't refuse me.  What is it?"
+
+He found she was clinging to his hands as she found voice enough to say:
+
+"No, I can't tell you.  I couldn't ever tell you.  It's not the same
+trouble, it's a new one and worse.  I guess it's the worst thing in the
+world."
+
+Bulstrode was pitiless:
+
+"One that has come lately to you?"
+
+"Oh, yes!"
+
+She was weeping more quietly now.
+
+"Please leave me: please go, Mr. Bulstrode."
+
+"A trouble with which I have had anything to do?"
+
+She waited a long time, then faintly breathed:
+
+"Yes."
+
+The hand he firmly held was gloveless and cold--before he could say
+anything further she drew it away from him and cried:
+
+"Oh, I ought never to have let you guess!  You were so good and kind,
+you meant to help me so, but it's been the worst help of all, only you
+couldn't know that," she pleaded for him.  "Please forgive me if I seem
+ungrateful, but if I had known that I was going to suffer like this I
+would have wished never to see you in the world."
+
+Bulstrode was trying to speak, but she wouldn't let him:
+
+"I never can see you again.  Never!  You mustn't come any more."
+
+But here she half caught her breath and sobbed with what seemed naive
+and adorable daring:
+
+"Unless you can help me through, Mr. Bulstrode--it is your fault, after
+all."
+
+If this were a virtual throwing of herself into his arms, they were all
+but open to her and the generous heart was all but ready "to see her
+through."  Bulstrode was about to do, and say, the one rash and
+irrevocable perfect thing when at this minute fate again at the ring of
+the curtain opportuned.  The tap, tapping, of a pony's feet was heard
+and a gay little cart came brightly along.  Bulstrode saw it.  He
+sprang to his feet.  It was close upon them.
+
+"You will let me come to-morrow?" he asked eagerly,
+
+"Oh, yes," she whispered; "yes, I shall count on you.  I beg you will
+come."
+
+
+"Jimmy," said the lady severely as he accepted her invitation to get
+into the cart, "this is the second wicked rendezvous I have
+interrupted.  I didn't know you were anything like this, and I've seen
+that girl before, but I can't remember where."
+
+"Don't try," said Bulstrode.
+
+"And she was crying.  Of course you made her cry."
+
+"Well," said Bulstrode desperately, "if I did, it's the first woman
+that has ever cried for me."
+
+
+As the reason why Bulstrode had never married was again in Paris, he
+went up in the late afternoon to see her.
+
+The train of visitors who showed their appreciation of her by thronging
+her doors had been turned away, but Bulstrode was admitted.  The man
+told him, "Mrs. Falconer will see you, sir," by which he had the
+agreeably flattered feeling that she would see nobody else.
+
+When he was opposite her the room at once dwindled, contracted, as
+invariably did every place in which they found themselves together,
+into one small circle containing himself and one woman.  Mrs. Falconer
+said at once to Bulstrode:
+
+"Jimmy, you're in trouble--in one of your quandaries.  What useless
+good have you been doing, and who has been sharper than a serpent's
+tooth to you?"
+
+Bulstrode's late companionship with youth had imparted to him a boyish
+look.  His friend narrowly observed him, and her charming face clouded
+with one of those almost imperceptible _nuances_ that the faces of
+those women wear who feel everything and by habit reveal nothing.
+
+"I'm not a victim."  Bulstrode's tone was regretful.  "One might say,
+on the contrary, this time that I was possibly overpaid."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I haven't," he explained and regretted, "seen you for a long time."
+
+"I've been automobiling in Touraine."  Mrs. Falconer gave him no
+opportunity to be delinquent.
+
+"And I," he confessed, "have been posing for my portrait.  Don't," he
+pleaded, "laugh at me--it isn't for a miniature or a locket; it's
+life-size, horribly life-size.  I've had to stand, off and on with the
+rests, three hours a day, and I've done so _every day for three weeks_."
+
+Mrs. Falconer regarded him with indulgent amusement.
+
+"It's your fault--you took me to see those awful school-girl paintings
+and pointed out that poor young creature to me."  And he was
+interrupted by her exclamation:
+
+"Oh, how _dear_ of you, Jimmy! how sweet and kind and ridiculous!  It
+won't be fit to be seen."
+
+"Oh, never mind that," he waved; "no one need see it.  I haven't--she
+won't let me."
+
+He had accepted a cup of tea from the lady's hand; he drank it off and
+sat down, holding the empty cup as if he held his fate.
+
+"Tell me," she urged, "all about it.  It was just like you--any other
+man would have found means to show charity, but you have shown
+unselfish goodness, and that's the rarest thing in the world.  Fancy
+posing every day!  How ghastly and how wonderful of you!"
+
+"No," he said slowly, "it wasn't any of these things.  I wanted to do
+it.  It amused me at first, you see.  But now I am a little
+annoyed--rather bothered to tell the truth--He met her eyes with almost
+an appeal in his.  Mrs. Falconer was in kindness bound to help him.
+
+"Bothered?  How, pray?  With what part of it?  You're not chivalrous
+about it, are you?  You're not by the way of feeling that you have
+compromised her by posing?"
+
+"Oh, no, no," he hurried; "but I do feel, and I am frank to
+acknowledge, that it was a mistake.  Because--do you know--that for
+some absurd reason I am afraid she has become fond of me."  He blushed
+like a boy.  Mrs. Falconer said coldly:
+
+"Yes?  Well, what of it?"
+
+"This--"  Bulstrode's voice was quiet and determined--"if I am right I
+shall marry her."
+
+Mrs. Falconer had the advantage over most women of completely
+understanding the man with whom she dealt.  She knew that to attempt to
+turn from its just and generous source any intent of Mr. Bulstrode
+would have been as futile as to attempt to turn a river from its parent
+fountain.
+
+"You're quixotic, I know, but you're not demented, and you won't
+certainly marry this nobody--whose fancies or love-affairs have not the
+least importance.  You won't ever see her again unless you are in love
+with her yourself."
+
+Bulstrode interrupted her hastily:
+
+"Oh, yes, I shall."
+
+He got up and walked over to the window that looked down on Mrs.
+Falconer's trim little garden.  A couple of iron chairs and a table
+stood under the trees.  Early roses had begun to bloom in the beds
+whose outlines were thick and dark with heart's-ease.  Beyond the iron
+rail of the high wall the distant rumble of Paris came to his ears.
+Mrs. Falconer's voice behind him said:
+
+"She's a very pretty girl, and young enough to be your daughter."
+
+"No," he said quietly, "not by many years."
+
+As he turned about and came back to the lady the room seemed to have
+grown darker and she to sit in the shadow.  She leaned toward him,
+laughing:
+
+"So you have come to announce at last the famous marriage of yours we
+have so often planned together."
+
+Bulstrode stood looking down on her.
+
+"I feel myself responsible," he said gravely.  "She was going home, and
+by a mistaken impulse I came in and changed her plans.  She is
+perfectly alone and perfectly poor, and I am not going to add to her
+perplexities.  I have no one in the world to care what I do.  I have no
+ties and no duties."
+
+"No," said Mrs. Falconer; "you are wonderfully free."
+
+He said vehemently:
+
+"I am all of a sudden wonderfully miserable."
+
+He had been in the habit for years of suddenly leaving her without any
+warning, and now he put out his hand and bade her good-by, and before
+she could detain him had made one of many brusque exits from her
+presence.
+
+
+On the following day--a Sunday, as from his delightful apartments in
+the Ritz he set forth for the studio, Bulstrode bade good-by to his
+bachelor existence.  He knew when he should next see the Place Vendome
+it would be with the eyes of an engaged man.  His life hereafter was to
+be shared by a "total stranger."  So he pathetically put it, and his
+sentimental yearning to share everything with a lovely woman had died a
+sudden death.
+
+"There's no one in the world to care a rap what I do--really," he
+reflected, "and in this case I have run up against it--that's the long
+and the short of the matter--and I shall see it through."
+
+As he set out for Miss Desprey's along his favorite track he remarked
+that the gala, festive character of Paris had entirely disappeared.
+The season had gone back on him by several months, and the melancholy
+of autumn and dreary winter cast a gloom over his boyish spirits.  A
+very slight rain was falling.  Bulstrode began to feel a twinge of
+rheumatism in his arm and as he irritably opened his umbrella his
+spirits dropped beneath it and his brisk, springy walk sagged to
+something resembling the gait of a middle-aged gentleman.  But he urged
+himself into a better mood, however, at the sight of a flower-shop
+whose delicate wares huddled appealingly close to the window.  He went
+in and purchased an enormous bunch of--he hesitated--there were certain
+flowers he _could_ not, would _not_ send!  The selection his
+sentimental reserve imposed therefore consisted of sweet-peas,
+_girofles_, and a big cluster of white roses, all very girlish and
+virginal.  His bridal offering in his hand, he took a cab and drove to
+the other side of the river with lead at his good heart and, he almost
+fancied, a lump in his throat.  He paid the coachman, whose careless
+spirits he envied, and slowly walked down the picturesque alley of
+Impasse du Maine.
+
+"There isn't a man I know--not a man in the Somerset Club--who would be
+as big a fool as this!"
+
+He had more than a mind to leave the flowers on the doorstep and run.
+Bulstrode would have done so now that he was face to face with his
+quixotic folly, but his cab had been heard as well as his steps on the
+walk, and the door was opened by Miss Desprey herself.  The girl's
+colorless face, her eyes spoiled with tears, and a pretty, sad dignity,
+which became her well, struck her friend with the sincerity and depth
+of her grief, and as the good gentleman shook hands with her he
+realized that less than ever in the world could he add a featherweight
+of grief to the burden of this helpless creature.
+
+"My dearest child!"  He lifted her hand to his lips.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode, I'm so glad you've come, I was so afraid you
+wouldn't--after yesterday!"
+
+His arms were still full of white paper, roses, and sweet-peas.
+
+"Oh, don't give them to me, Mr. Bulstrode!  Oh, why, did you bring
+them?  Oh, dear, what will you think of me?"  She had possessed herself
+of the flowers and with agitation and distress hastily thrust them, as
+if she wanted to hide them, behind the draperies of the couch.
+Bulstrode murmured something of whose import he was scarcely conscious.
+As she came tearfully back to him she let him take her hands.  He felt
+that she clung to him.  "It would have spoiled my life if you hadn't
+come.  I would have just gone and jumped in the Seine.  I may yet.  Oh,
+you don't understand!  It's been hard to be poor--I've been often
+hungry--but this last thing was too much.  When you found me yesterday
+I didn't want to live any more."
+
+Bulstrode's kind clasp warmed the cold little hands.  As tenderly as he
+could he looked at her agitated prettiness.
+
+"Don't talk like that"--he tried for her first name and found it.
+"Laura, you will let me make it all right, my dear?  You will let me,
+won't you?  You shall never know another care if I can prevent it."
+
+She interrupted with hasty gratitude:
+
+"Nobody else can make it all right but you."
+
+He tried softly:
+
+"Did I, then, make it so very wrong?"
+
+She murmured, too overcome to trust herself to say much:
+
+"Yes!"
+
+She was standing close to him, and lifted her appealing face to his.
+Her excitement communicated itself to him; he bent toward her about to
+kiss her, when the door of the studio sharply opened, and before
+Bulstrode could do more than swiftly draw back and leave Miss Desprey
+free an exceedingly tall and able-bodied man entered without ceremony.
+
+The girl gave a cry, ran from Bulstrode, and, so to speak, threw
+herself against the arms of the stranger, for there were none open to
+receive her.
+
+"Oh, here's Mr. Bulstrode, Dan!  I knew he'd come; and he'll tell
+you--won't you, Mr. Bulstrode?  Tell him, please, that I don't care
+anything at all about you and you don't care anything about me....
+That you don't want to marry me or anything.  Oh, please make him
+believe it!"
+
+The poor gentleman's senses and brain whirling together made him giddy.
+He felt as though he had just been whisked up from the edge of a
+precipice over which he ridiculously dangled.  Dan, who represented the
+rescuer, was not prepossessing.  He was the complete and unspoiled type
+of Western youth; the girl herself was an imperfect and exquisite
+hybrid.
+
+"I don't know that this gentleman can explain to me"--the young fellow
+threw his boyish head back--"or that I care to hear him."
+
+She gave a cry, sharp and wounded.  The sound touched the now normal,
+thoroughly grateful patron, who had come out of his ordeal with as much
+kindly sensibility as he went in.
+
+"Of course, my dear young lady"--he perfectly understood the
+situation--"I will tell your friend the facts of our acquaintance.
+That's what you want me to do, isn't it?"
+
+She was weeping and hanging on to the unyielding arm of her cross
+lover, who glared at the intruding Bulstrode with a youthful jealousy
+at which the older man smiled while he envied it.  He pursued
+impressively:
+
+"Miss Desprey has been painting my portrait for the past few weeks.  I
+gave her the order at the Art League; other than painter and sitter we
+have no possible interest in each other--Mr.----"
+
+"Gregs," snapped the stranger, "Daniel Gregs!"
+
+The slender creature, whose eyes never left the stolid, uncompromising
+face, repeated eagerly:
+
+"_No possible interest_--Dan--none!  He doesn't care anything about me
+at all!  You heard what he said, didn't you?  I only like him like a
+kind, kind friend."
+
+[Illustration: "I only like him like a kind, kind friend"]
+
+Her voice, soft as a flower, caressed and pleaded with the passionate
+tenderness of a woman who feels that an inadvertent word may keep for
+her or lose for her the man she adores.
+
+"My dear man," exclaimed Bulstrode in great irritation, "you ought to
+be ashamed to let her cry like that!  Can't you _understand_--don't you
+see?"
+
+"No," shortly caught up the other, "I don't!  I've come here from South
+Africa, where I'm prospecting some mines for a company at Centreville,
+and I heard she was poor and unhappy, and I hurried up my things so I
+could come to Paris and marry her and take her with me, and here I find
+her painting every day alone with a rich man, her place all fixed up
+with flowers, and a thousand dollars in the bank"--his cheek
+reddened--"I don't like it!  And that's all there is to it!" he
+finished shortly.
+
+"No, my friend," said the other severely, "there's a great deal more.
+If, from what you say, and the way you speak, you wish me to understand
+you have a real interest in Miss Desprey, you can follow me when I say
+that I came here and found her a lonely, forsaken girl, obliged to
+return to Idaho when she didn't want to go, without any money or any
+friends.  May I ask you why, if there was any one in the world who
+cared for her, she should be left so deserted?"
+
+The girl here turned her face from her lover to her champion.
+
+"Don't please blame Dan for that.  He was so poor, too.  He didn't have
+anything when he went to South Africa; it was just a chance if he would
+succeed.  And he was working for me, so that he could get married."
+
+Gregs interrupted:
+
+"I don't owe this gentleman any explanation!"
+
+"No," accepted the other gently, "perhaps not, but you mustn't, on the
+other hand, refuse to hear mine.  Be reasonable.  Why _shouldn't_ Miss
+Desprey have an order for a portrait?"
+
+Gregs, over the golden head against his arm, looked at Bulstrode:
+
+"_She_ can't paint!"  His tone was gentler.  "Laura can't paint, and
+you know it!"
+
+"Dan!" she whispered; "how cruel you are to me!"
+
+And here the desperate Bulstrode broke in:
+
+"He is, indeed, Miss Desprey, cruel and unjust, and I frankly ask leave
+to tell him so.  You don't deserve the girl, Mr. Gregs, if she's yours,
+as she seems to be."
+
+But the girl clung closer, as if she still feared Bulstrode might try
+to rescue her.
+
+"That's all right," frowned the miner.  "I am no better and no worse
+than any man about his girl, and I'm going to know _just where I
+stand_!"
+
+The gentleman's reply was caustic.  "I should be inclined to say you'd
+find it hard to be in a better place."
+
+Laura Desprey had wound her arms around Mr. Gregs.  Bulstrode held out
+his hand.  She couldn't take it, nor could her lover.  With arrogant
+obstinacy he had folded his arms across his chest.
+
+"Come, can't we be friends?" urged the amiable gentleman.  "I seem to
+have made trouble when I only wanted to be friendly.  Let me set it
+right before I go.  I am lunching in Versailles, and I have to take the
+noon train from the Gare Montparnasse."
+
+But Daniel Gregs did not unbend to the affable proposition.  Miss
+Desprey said:
+
+"When you saw me yesterday in the park, Mr. Bulstrode, Dan had just
+come back the day before.  I was putting the flowers you sent me in
+fresh water when he came in on me all of a sudden.  Oh, it was so
+splendid at first!  I was _so_ happy--until he asked all about you, and
+then he grew so angry and said unless you could explain to him a lot of
+things he would go away and never see me again, and when you found me I
+was crying because I thought he had left me forever.  I hadn't seen him
+for two years, and if you hadn't helped me to stay on here I should
+have had to go to Idaho, and I wouldn't have seen him at all.  You
+ought to _thank_ him, Dan."
+
+Bulstrode interrupted:
+
+"Indeed, Mr. Gregs, you should, you know!--you should thank me; come,
+be generous."
+
+Dan relaxed his grim humor a little.
+
+"When I get through with this South African business I'm going back to
+Centreville, and if I ever get her out of this Paris _she'll_ never see
+it again!"
+
+"Dan," she breathed, "I don't want to.  Centreville is good enough for
+me."
+
+(Centreville!  The horrible environment he was to have snatched her
+from.  Bulstrode smiled softly.)
+
+"But this money," pursued the dogged lover, returning to his grudge.
+"You've got to take it back, Mr. Bulstrode.  No picture on earth is
+worth a thousand dollars, and certainly not Laura's."
+
+"Oh, Dan!" she exclaimed.
+
+But her friend said firmly: "The portrait is mine.  Come, don't be
+foolish.  If Miss Desprey is willing to marry you and go out to Idaho,
+take the money and buy her some pretty clothes and things."
+
+Here the girl herself interrupted excitedly:
+
+"No, no!  We couldn't take it.  I don't want any new clothes.  If Dan
+doesn't care how shabby I am, I don't.  I don't want anything in the
+world but just to go with Dan."
+
+At this sweet tenderness Dan's face entirely changed, his arms
+unfolded; he put them around her.
+
+"That's all right, little girl."  His tone thrilled through Bulstrode
+more than the woman's tears had done.  He understood why she wanted to
+go to him, and how she could be drawn.  He had at times in his life
+lost money, and sometimes heavily, and he had never felt poor before.
+In the same words, but in a vastly different tone, Dan Gregs held out
+his hand to Bulstrode.
+
+"That's all right, sir.  When a fellow travels thousands and thousands
+of miles to get his girl and hasn't much more than his car fare and he
+runs up against another fellow who has got the rocks and all and who he
+thinks is sweet on his girl, it makes him crazy--just crazy!"
+
+"I see"--Bulstrode sympathetically understood--"and I don't at all
+wonder."
+
+They were all three shaking hands together and Bulstrode said:
+
+"Would you believe it, I haven't seen my portrait, Miss Desprey."
+
+Dan Gregs grinned.
+
+"Don't," he said, "don't look at it.  It's what made all the trouble.
+When I saw it yesterday and Laura told me it had drawn a thousand
+dollars--why I said 'there isn't a man living who would give you fifty
+cents for it.'  That made her mad at first.  Then she told me you
+thought she was a great portrait-painter, and I knew you must be sweet
+on her.  I'm fond of her all right, but I decided that you were bound
+to have her and didn't care how you dealt your cards, and I thought I'd
+clear out."
+
+His face fell and threatened to cloud over, but it cleared again as
+with the remembrance of his doubts came the actual sense of the woman
+whose face was hidden on his breast, and he lightly touched the dusty
+golden hair.
+
+When in a few seconds Bulstrode took leave of them, Miss Desprey, in
+her dingy painting-dress, seemed completely swallowed up in the embrace
+of the big Dan Gregs.  From where he stood by the door Bulstrode could
+see the white corner of his _fiancailles_ bouquet sticking out from the
+draperies of the couch.  The paper was open and in the heat of the warm
+little _atelier_ the fresh odor of the pungent flowers came strongly on
+the air.
+
+Bulstrode as he said good-by seemed to say it--and to look at the
+lovers--through a haze of perfume--a perfume that, like the most
+precious things in the world, pervades and affects, suggests and
+impresses, while its existence is unseen, unknown to the world.
+
+
+Once in his train, he had been able to catch it at the Invalides after
+all, Jimmy drew a long breath and settled back into himself, for, he
+had been, poor dear, during the past three weeks, in another man's
+shoes and profiting by another man's identity.  It was perfectly
+heavenly to feel that he had been liberated by the merciful providence
+which takes care to provide the right lover for the right place.  He
+couldn't be too grateful for the miracle which saved him from a
+sacrifice alongside of which Abraham's would have been a jest indeed.
+
+The June morning was warm and through the open car window, as the train
+went comfortably along, the perfume of the country came into him where
+he sat.  Opposite, a pair of lovers frankly and naturally showed their
+annoyance at the third person's intrusion, and Bulstrode,
+sympathetically turned himself about and became absorbed in Suburban
+Paris.  His heart beat high at the fact of his deliverance.  His
+gratitude was sincere--moreover, his thoughts were of an agreeable
+trend, and he was able to forget everybody else within twelve miles.
+Secure in his impersonality and in the indifference of his broad
+unseeing back, the lovers kissed and held hands.
+
+Bulstrode wandered slowly up from the Versailles station to the Hotel
+des Reservoirs, crossed the broad square of the Palace Court, found the
+pink and yellow facade more mellow and perfect than ever, and toward
+twelve-thirty strolled into the yard of the old hostelry.  Breakfast
+had been set for twelve-thirty, but his host was not there.
+
+"Ah--mais, bon jour, Monsieur Bulstrode!"  The proprietor knew and
+appreciated this client greatly.
+
+Monsieur Falconer, it seemed, had been called suddenly to Paris....
+Yes--well--there were, now and then, in the course of life, bits of
+news that could be borne with fortitude.  "And Madame has also been
+called to Paris?"
+
+"Mais non!"  Madame had a few minutes since gone out in the Park, the
+proprietor thought she would not be very far away.
+
+Bulstrode thanked him, and crossed over to the hedge and the gateway
+and through it to the Palace Gardens.  On all sides the paths stretched
+broad and inviting toward the various alleys, and upon the terrace to
+his left there shone a thousand flowers in June abundance.  The
+gentleman chose the first path that opened, and went carelessly down
+it, and in a few moments the pretty ring of an embowered circle spread
+before him, but, although there was an inviting marble bench under a
+big tree at one side, and several eighteenth century marbles on their
+pedestals, illuminated by the bland eighteenth century smile, there was
+not a living woman in sight to make him, the visitor, welcome!  He went
+a little further along and found another felicitous, harmonious circle,
+where a small fountain threw its jets on the June air.  At the sound of
+the water Bulstrode remembered that the Grands Eaux were to play on
+this afternoon at Versailles.
+
+"Ah, _that_ is why they especially wanted me to come out to-day," he
+decided.
+
+On the other side of the fountain, the vivid white of her summer dress
+making a flash like moonlight on the obscurity of the woods, a lady was
+standing looking across at Mr. Bulstrode.
+
+"Hush!" she said; "come over softly, Jimmy; there is a timid third
+party here."
+
+On a branch at her side, where an oriole sat, his head thrown back, his
+throat swelling, there was a little stir and flutter of leaves, for
+although the lady had put her finger to her lips, her voice broke the
+spell, and a bit of yellow flashed through the trees.
+
+"I don't believe _he_ will ever forgive you!" she cried; "you spoiled
+his solo, but I'll forgive you.  What brought you out to Versailles
+to-day?"
+
+"The fountains," Bulstrode told her; "I have never seen them play.
+Then, too--there are certain places to which, when I am asked to
+luncheon, I always go."
+
+"That's quite true," she accepted; "you _were_ invited!--but, to be
+perfectly frank, I did not expect you, so your coming on this occasion
+has only the pleasure of a surprise.  As a rule, I hate them.  My
+husband informed me that he would telephone you to meet him in Paris,
+but I think he must have forgotten you, Jimmy."
+
+She was taking him in from his fresh panama to his boots, and she
+apparently found an air of festivity about him.
+
+"Was it," she asked, "in honor of the fountains' playing that you have
+made yourself so beautiful?"
+
+Bulstrode took the boutonniere out of his coat lapel and handed it to
+her.  "Can't you pin it in somewhere?"  Mrs. Falconer laughed and
+thrust the carnation into her bodice.
+
+"I dressed to-day, more or less," Mr. Bulstrode confessed, "in order to
+attend--well, what shall I call it--a betrothal?  That's a good
+old-fashioned word."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed the lady, "a _fiancailles_?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The two had wandered slowly along, out of the Bosquet towards the
+canals.
+
+"They make a great deal of these functions in France," Mrs. Falconer
+said.
+
+Her companion agreed.  "They made a great deal, rather more than usual,
+out of this one."  And his tone was so suggestive that his companion
+looked up at him quickly.
+
+"Who _are_ your mysterious lovers?" she asked, "are they French?  Do I
+know them?"
+
+"They are not in the least mysterious," Bulstrode assured her.  "I
+never saw anything less complex and more simple.  They are Americans."
+
+She seemed now to understand that she was to hear of "one of Jimmy's
+adventures," as she called his dashes in other people's affairs.
+
+"I hope, Jimmy, in this case, that you have pulled the affair off to
+your credit, and that if you have made a match the creatures will be
+grateful to you for once!  And, by the way," she bethought; "whatever
+has happened to the pretty girl whom you were quixotic enough to think
+you had to marry?"
+
+"The last time I saw her she appeared to be in the best of
+circumstances," Bulstrode answered cheerfully.  "In point of fact--it
+was, singularly enough, to _her_ engagement party that I went to-day!"
+
+And Mrs. Falconer now showed real interest and feeling.  "No! how
+delightful.  So she is really off your hands, Jimmy.  Well, that is too
+good to be true.  There's one at least whom you don't have to marry,
+Jimmy!"
+
+"Oh, they grow beautifully less," he agreed.
+
+Mrs. Falconer smiled softly.
+
+"They are narrowing down every year," Jimmy went on; "when I am about
+sixty the number will be reduced, I dare say, to the proper quantity."
+
+"What a goose you are," she said jestingly.  "What a tease and a bother
+you are, Jimmy Bulstrode; _I'll_ find you a proper wife!"
+
+He accepted warmly.  "Do, do!  I leave myself quite in your hands."
+
+His companion extended him her hand as she spoke, and after lifting it
+to his lips, Bulstrode drew it through his arm.  It was clothed in a
+glove of pale coffee-color suede.  It was a soft, dear hand, and rested
+as if it were at home on Bulstrode's gray sleeve.  Side by side the two
+friends walked slowly out toward the broader avenues leading to the
+canals.  The sky was faintly blue, touched with the edges of some
+drifting cloud, like dashes of foam.  The trees about them lifted dark
+velvet masses and the air was sweet with the scent of the woods and
+flowers.
+
+"Isn't this the most beautiful garden in the world?" murmured Mrs.
+Falconer.  "Isn't it _too_ beautiful!"
+
+"Very," he incorrectly and vaguely answered.  And the lady went on to
+say how brilliant she found the place with the suggestions and memories
+of the past royal times, whilst Bulstrode said nothing at all, because
+he did not want to tell her that Versailles and the charming alleys,
+and France, and the great big world, from limit to limit, was full of
+no ghosts to him, but of just one woman.
+
+
+
+
+THE THIRD ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+III
+
+IN WHICH HE FINDS THERE ARE SOME THINGS WHICH ONE CANNOT BUY
+
+After not a great deal of hesitation, toward the middle of a warm June,
+Bulstrode permitted himself to become the proprietor of a palace: not
+an inhabitant of the ordinary dwelling modelled after some old-world
+wonder, wherein American millionaires choose to spend their leisure in
+their own country--but of a real traditional palace, in whose charming
+rooms no object was younger than Bulstrode's great-grandfather, and
+where the enchanting women of the Fragonards and Nattiers almost made
+him, as he mused upon them, lose sight for a moment of a living lady.
+
+On the very first day he went over the Hotel Montensier from _grenier_
+to _caves_, Jimmy Bulstrode gave in, and accepted the Duc de
+Montensier's proposition to "fetch his traps for a few months to the
+hotel and turn Parisian."  He was in the heart of Paris, yet all around
+him, shut in by high walls, was a garden, to which the terraces of the
+house gave in flights of marble steps.  When his friend suggested that
+Bulstrode turn Parisian, Jimmy laughed.  "Do you think," he had asked,
+"that a chap born in Providence, educated in Harvard, and, if
+cosmopolitan, thoroughly American from start to finish, could, _mon
+cher_, turn Parisian?"  And the Duc had assured him that he did not
+think Bulstrode had a "Latin eyelash," and that he needn't be at all
+afraid to try his luck at what a French house would do for him!  "Why,
+your coat alone--the cut of it--" Montensier had laughed, "speaks of
+Poole with a Boston compromise!
+
+The Duc had been in the United States--moreover, the Frenchman had
+plans of his own and he wanted very much to go to Newport and leave his
+house in the care of Jimmy Bulstrode.  Whether the Puritan in him led
+Bulstrode to excuse to himself his enjoyment of so much luxury, at any
+rate he apologized, saying that nobody could expect a man with a love
+of the beautiful, and who had more or less a desire to shut himself up
+and to shut himself away for a time, to refuse.
+
+The Falconers were off somewhere _en auto_.  He had thought they had
+gone through Spain.  It was pretty hot to do such a thing, however, and
+he did not really know.  He wanted very much to be able not to let
+himself follow them, and he knew that there was little chance of his
+reaching such stoicism unless he began by not finding out where they
+were going!  So he shut himself up with the books which the library
+offered and gave many charming little dinners and parties on his
+terraces in the bland summer nights, and tried with all his might and
+main to forget the flight of a certain motor over the fair white roads
+and, above all, to nerve himself up to refuse an invitation for the
+middle of July.
+
+Directly opposite the white facade of the Montensiers' hotel was a
+hostelry for beggars, for domestics without places; for poor
+professors; for actors with no stages but the last; for laborers with
+no labor; in short, for the riff-raff of the population, for those who
+no longer hold the dignity of profession or pay rent for a term.
+Sometimes Bulstrode would look out at the tenement, whose windows in
+this season were wide open; and the general aspect indicated that
+dislocated fortunes flourished.  In one window, pirouetting or dancing
+in it, calling out of it, leaning perilously over the sill of it, was a
+child--as far as Bulstrode could decide, a creature of about six years
+of age.  She was too small to see much of, but all he saw was activity,
+gesticulation, and perpetual motion.  When the day was hot she fanned
+herself with a bit of paper.  She called far out to the wine-merchant's
+wife, who sat with her family before the shop while her pretty children
+played in the gutter.
+
+
+In Paris, when the weather climbs to eighty, Parisians count themselves
+in the tropics and the people, who lived apparently out of doors
+altogether, wore a melted, disheartened air.  But the De Montensier
+garden, full of roses and heliotrope, watered and refreshed by the
+fountains' delightful falling, was a retreat not to be surpassed by
+many suburbs.  Bulstrode gave little dinners on the terrace; little
+suppers after the theatre, when rooms and garden were lighted with
+fairy lanterns, and his chef outdid his traditions to please his
+American master.
+
+One day as the American sat smoking on the terrace with nothing more
+disturbing than the drip of the fountain and the remote murmur of Paris
+to break his reverie, Prosper, his confidential man, made a tentative
+appearance.
+
+"Would m'sieu, _who is so good_, see a young lady?"
+
+His master smiled as he rose, instinctively at the words "jeune
+demoiselle," throwing away his cigar.
+
+"Pardon, m'sieu, I thought it might amuse m'sieu--" and Prosper stepped
+back.
+
+Bulstrode had been intently thinking of the caravansary opposite him,
+and he now saw that part of the _hotel meuble_ had come across the
+street; he recognized it immediately for the smallest part.  Before him
+stood the ridiculous and pathetic figure of a dirty little girl in
+rags, tatters, and furbelows, her legs clad in red silk stockings
+evidently intended for fuller, shapelier limbs; her feet slipped about
+in pattens.  She had on a woman's bodice, a long flounced skirt pinned
+up to keep her from tripping.  Her head was adorned by a torn straw
+hat, also contrived and created for the coquetry of maturity.
+
+"Monsieur is so good," she began in a flute-like voice.  "I have come
+to thank monsieur with all my heart."
+
+Bulstrode looked toward Prosper for enlightenment, but that individual
+had cleverly disappeared.
+
+"To thank me, my child?  But for what?"
+
+"Why, for the eggs and butter and sugar that monsieur was so good as to
+send me.  I have made the cake.  It is beautiful!  Monsieur le
+cuisinier of this house baked it for me.  It is perhaps a little
+flat--but that was because I got tired stirring.  See--it says--"  She
+had, so he now saw, a book under her arm; letting fall a fold of her
+cumbersome dress with both hands and opening a filthy cook-book, she
+laid it on the table, bending over it.  "It says stir briskly half an
+hour."  (Her "rs" rolled in her throat like tiny cannons in a rosy
+hollow.)  "Quelle idee!  It was _too_ stupid!  Half an hour!  I just
+mixed it round once or twice and then--voila! it has white on the top
+and shall have a candle."
+
+"So you've made a cake?" he said kindly.  "I'm sure it's a good one."
+
+She nodded brightly.  "It is for that I came to thank monsieur and to
+ask if he would accept a piece of it."
+
+Poor Bulstrode, with dreadful suspicion, looked to see part of the
+horror immediately offered for his degustation.  "I don't, my dear,
+understand.  Why should you thank _me_--what had I to do with it?"
+
+Her gesture was delightful.  "But for monsieur it would not exist; for
+butter, eggs, and flour.  Monsieur Prosper, when he gave them, said it
+was of the kindness of '_Monsieur Balstro_.'"
+
+(Oh, Prosper!  "I have corrupted _him_," his master thought.  "He is as
+bad as I am!")
+
+"Well, I'm very glad indeed," and he said it heartily.  "But what did
+you especially want to make it for--with the one candle?  That means
+one year old.  Who's birthday may it then be?"
+
+"It is the birthday of maman."  She shut the book, and as she did so
+raised her great black eyes, which dirt and neglect could not spoil.
+There was in her appearance so little suggestion of maternal care that
+Bulstrode nearly incredulously asked, "Your mother?  And what, then,
+does your mother do?"
+
+"She's a fish," informed the child tranquilly.  And Bulstrode, although
+startled, could believe it.  It too perfectly accounted for the
+cold-blooded indifference to this offspring.  Not even a mermaid could
+have been guilty of so little care for her child.  Still, he repeated:
+
+"A fish?"
+
+"Oui, a devil-fish in the aquarium at Bostock's.  Oh, que c'est beau!"
+she clasped her little hands.  "Maman wears a costume of red--quite a
+small, thin dress," she described eagerly.  "And it is all spangles,
+like fire when she dives into the water.  I have been; the waiter at
+the cafe downstairs took me.  I screamed.  I thought maman was drowned.
+But no--she comes up always!"  The child threw her head back and lifted
+her eyes in ecstasy.  "C'est magnifique!"
+
+"What is your mother's name?"
+
+"Mademoiselle Lascaze."
+
+"And yours?"
+
+"Simone."
+
+"What do you do all day, Simone?"
+
+"I wash and cook and sew and play--I have much to do--oh, much."  She
+assumed an important air.  "The bad air of the room makes maman ill, so
+she's out--'to breathe,' she says--and she locks me safely in.  I play
+Bostock and dive like maman.  And sometimes"--she lowered her voice,
+and looking back to see if they were alone--confided, "I cry."
+
+"Ah!" sympathized Bulstrode.
+
+"But, yes," she insisted, "when maman forgets to come home, and the
+night is so black; then the seamstress next door knocks on the wall,
+and I knock back for company."
+
+"I see," he understood gently, "for company."
+
+He rang for Prosper.  "You will conduct mademoiselle home, Prosper, and
+give her everything she needs for her kitchen always."
+
+"Yes, monsieur; I knew that monsieur would----"
+
+At sight of Prosper the mite gathered up her voluminous skirts and bade
+her new friend a cordial good-by.
+
+From the corrupted Prosper Bulstrode extracted what he wished to know
+concerning the child.
+
+"It is of a scandalousness, monsieur!  Four nights of the seven the
+poor little object is alone.  The mother appears to have money enough,
+she pays her rent regularly, and there is therefore nothing to do.  She
+sometimes even fetches her companions home with her, and Simone, when
+she is not making sport for them, is tied to a chair to keep her from
+falling off in her sleep."
+
+Bulstrode expressed himself strongly, violently for him, went to see a
+lawyer and a charitable French countess and found out that so long as
+the mother did not actually ill-treat the child she could not be
+replaced by any other guardian.
+
+"Mon cher ami," said the spirituelle lady, "leave the fish to her
+deviltry, and her child in her care.  We are _fin de race_, if you
+like, and in direct opposition to your American progressive schemes,
+but we have a tradition that the family is sacred, and that, however
+bad it may be, a child is better off in its home than elsewhere.  You
+will find it difficult to replace a mother by a _machine_ or an
+_institution_, believe me."
+
+And Bulstrode at the words felt a new sense of failure in
+philanthropies, and his benevolence seemed pure dilletantism.  What was
+he likely to accomplish in the case of this child?  Nothing more than
+the momentary pleasure a few toys and a few hours of play could secure.
+"And yet," as he mused he philosophically put it to himself, "isn't it,
+after all, about the sum total any of us get out of destiny?"
+
+In New York he would have quite known how to proceed in order to help
+the child, but in the face of French law and strong family prejudice he
+came up against a stone wall.
+
+"I'm no sort of a real benefactor," he remorsefully acceded, "and I
+don't believe I'm fit to be trusted alone with the poor."
+
+Nevertheless he did not relinquish his idea entirely, and confided
+Simone to Prosper's sympathetic care and that of an emotional
+maid-servant, with the result that a cleaning woman penetrated by hook
+or crook into the room of "the fish" and treated it to more _aqua pura_
+than the piscatory individual had cognizance of outside of the aquarium.
+
+The gentleman in this particular charity was surprised to find how
+simple it sometimes is to do good.  In this case no one had come to him
+with a petition or a demand; on the contrary, a note of undeserved
+thanks had, with the strange little creature, been presented to him.
+It was so pleasantly easy to help a child!  There were no _arrieres
+pensees_--not that they would have troubled him, but there were none;
+there were no wire-pullings, no time infringements, no suggestion or
+criticism, no--he believed--expectations.  Everything he could do was
+so annoyingly little!  The charwoman cleaned, Simone had a complete
+wardrobe, the larder was full, and there remained nothing but toys to
+buy.  The little thing was so womanly and capable--he had seen it and
+marvelled in their interviews at her age and accomplishments--her hands
+were so apt and almost creative, that toys seemed inadequate.  She took
+her benefits charmingly; rushed over at the least provocation to pour
+out her gratitude, and Bulstrode, who hated thanks, liked these.
+Childhood, if it had been for sale on the Boulevard, even that he would
+have bought Simone if he could!  As it was, he found himself pausing
+before a series of shops other than chemisiers--florists, and
+jewellers'--shops where diminutive objects were displayed--and one
+afternoon had been standing ridiculously long in front of a certain
+window on the Rue de Rivoli when he was accosted by an agreeable and
+familiar voice.
+
+"Jimmy!  It isn't possible! don't tell me it has come so cruelly
+_soon_?"
+
+The gentleman gave a violent, but an entirely happy start.  Well, there
+were rewards then for people who didn't follow speeding motors through
+France!  She was back and in Paris.
+
+"What--has come so soon?" he asked.
+
+Mrs. Falconer, on her way from a hat shop in her automobile, stopped by
+his side.
+
+"Why, your second childhood, my dear man.  Do you know what shop you
+are standing before?"
+
+Bulstrode seemed to be perfectly aware of his dotage and to delight in
+it.  Behind the big window pane there was a bright and very juvenile
+display.
+
+Ships sailed there; dolls hung gaudily and smilingly aloft; giant
+parti-colored balls rounded out their harlequin sides; tiny dishes for
+pygmy festivals were piled with delicious carrots and artichokes on
+little white, blue-rimmed platters.
+
+"Have you a moment to spare?" Bulstrode asked her.
+
+"I have bought all my hats," she replied; "after that a woman's time
+hangs heavy on her hands."
+
+"Ah!" he was as radiant as she had the genius for making him.  "Come,
+then, in with me and help me choose a _doll_."
+
+It was not the first purchase during the course of a long friendship
+which Bulstrode had made with this charming woman by his side, but for
+some reason he enjoyed it more than former errands.  The bachelor and
+the childless woman were hard to please and their choice consumed an
+unconscionable time.  As they lingered, the amiable shopman pressed
+various toys on monsieur and madame "_pour les enfants_," and the lady,
+finally depositing her friend with his parcels at the door of his
+hotel, realized as she drove away that she knew nothing of the child
+for whom the purchases had been made.  On her way up the Champs Elysees
+she smiled softly.  "It's what you _share_," she mused, "what you give
+of _yourself--with_ yourself--_that's_ charity!  Jimmy gives himself.
+I wonder who his new love is?"
+
+Bulstrode, in order to share what should be his "new love's" ecstasy at
+first sight of the miraculous toy, sent for Simone.  The Rue de Rivoli
+doll, on a small chair designed for diminutive ladies of the eighteenth
+century or for the king's dwarfs, held out stiff but cordial arms and
+was naturally, to a child, the first and sole object of the
+drawing-room.
+
+"_Monsieur!_"
+
+"For you, Simone."
+
+"_Monsieur!_"
+
+She said nothing else as she clasped her hands, and the color rushed
+into her face, but she felt the doll, touched reverently its feet,
+hair, dress, incontinently forgot Bulstrode, and quite suddenly,
+passionately, caught the image of life to her heart.  Just over its
+blonde head, for it was nearly as large as herself, she met the
+gentleman's eyes.
+
+"It's my child!  I've prayed for it always, always!  I've never had a
+doll, a _bebe_, m'sieu."
+
+The tea-table with cakes and chocolate called them all too soon and, as
+Prosper served, the fountains sang, the heat stole through the garden
+and called up agreeable odors of sod and roses, the late afternoon sky
+spread its expanse over the terrace of the hotel, where, perfectly
+happy both of them, animated by as gentle and harmless pleasure as any
+two in Paris that day, the child of the people and an American
+gentleman chatted over their tea.
+
+Bulstrode, being an original, erratic, and reckless giver of alms,
+quite by this time knew that, more than often, for him to give was, if
+not to regret, to have at least misgivings whether in the hands of some
+colder, less poetic person his money would not have accomplished more
+good.  In the case of Simone he had, as usual, happily gone on with
+abandon, relegating any remorse to a future which he hoped would never
+arrive.
+
+
+But the middle of July did come and with it came poor Jimmy's exquisite
+temptation.  A telephone helped it dreadfully.  There was something so
+wonderful in the fact that in a couple of hours he could, if he would,
+let himself reach the side of the lovely voice which called to him over
+the wires.  And being nothing but a human man, he threw all his good
+resolves to the wind, and went down and stayed three days at
+Fontainebleau.
+
+Out under the sky, where the elastic earth sprang softly beneath her
+feet and the embowered forests were sifted through with gold, Mary
+Falconer finally asked him, "And your doll, Jimmy?  Have you broken her
+yet?"  Bulstrode felt a guilty twinge, for he had not once thought of
+the little girl, nor did Mrs. Falconer's mention of her bring the
+subject near enough for Bulstrode to tell her the pretty story.  He had
+other things to say, and many things not to say, and this, as it always
+did when he was with his lady, kept him very absorbed and occupied.  On
+this occasion he forgot all about little Simone.
+
+The night of his return Paris was _en fete_ and in no sense impatient
+to reach his lonely house--for it seemed to him this night the
+loneliest house in the world--he walked without haste up town along the
+quays.
+
+It was hard to forget that not fifty miles away he had left the cool
+forests, their tempting roads, their alluring alleys.  He had forgotten
+that it was the annual celebration and that at this late hour the
+_fete_ would be in full swing, and as he strolled meditating along the
+Seine the spirit of the gay populace--good-humor, reckless pleasure,
+and the _joie de vivre_--poured itself out around him like cordial,
+like a generous gift from an over-charged horn of cheer.  In his gray
+clothes, modish panama, a little white rose plucked by a dear hand from
+the trellis at Fontainebleau still in his buttonhole, Bulstrode
+scarcely remarked the crowds or heard the music as he passed outdoor
+dancing stands and was jostled by a dancing throng.
+
+His own street, as he approached it, welcomed him with a strong odor of
+onions and fried potatoes; it had apparently turned itself out of doors
+and all of the houses seemed to have emptied themselves into the narrow
+alley.  A hurdy-gurdy playing before the _hotel meuble_ tinkled and
+jangled in the centre of a crowd of merry-makers, and the metallic
+melody and wild ascending octaves were the first sounds Bulstrode
+consciously heard since he left Fontainebleau.
+
+In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing like a mad child,
+hair, arms, and feet flying; her voice, thin and piercing, every now
+and then above the rattle of the hand-organ, cried out the lines of a
+popular song whose meaning on her lips was particularly horrifying.
+The wine-shop family encircled her, encoring her vociferously.  As she
+paused for breath the light from over the shop-door shone on her
+excited little face.
+
+[Illustration: In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing]
+
+"I tired!  Mon Dieu, que non!  I could dance till morning.  Play again,
+monsieur l'organiste.  Play again."
+
+Bulstrode, on the crowd's edge, watched her, and for once in his
+philanthropic history made no attempt to rescue.  As Prosper let his
+master in he said:
+
+"It's a shame, isn't it, monsieur?  The people over there have let her
+run quite crazy.  The poor little thing!  Heaven knows where the mother
+is!"
+
+Of which celestial knowledge Bulstrode had his doubts.  It was close to
+twelve, and dismissing Prosper for the night, he took his cigar out on
+the terrace and to what solitude his garden might extend.  Before long
+the noise of the music subsided, the people, tired out with hours of
+festivity, dispersed, and the alley settled into quiet.  From the
+distance now and then came the soft, dull explosion of fireworks, the
+rumble and roar of Paris was a little accelerated; otherwise the
+silence about Bulstrode's garden grew and deepened as the night
+advanced.
+
+It was rare for him to allow himself to be the object of his own
+personal consideration, or that indeed he at all thought of himself,
+and when he did the man he had long ignored had his revenge and made
+him pay up old scores.
+
+On the late afternoon of this very day he was to have walked for miles
+through the Fontainebleau woods with Mrs. Falconer, and instead he had
+fled.  Pleading a sudden summons to Paris, he left Fontainebleau.
+
+It was well past four o'clock when he at last threw his cigar away and
+rose.  He had been musing all night in his chair.
+
+A sudden gust of noise blew down the quiet little street, the sound of
+loud singing and the shrill staccato of a woman's laugh.  By the time
+the revellers had passed his house and the hubbub had died away,
+Bulstrode, with an idea at length of going up to his room, walked
+across the salon and prepared to extinguish the electricity, but the
+sound of some one tapping without caught his ear, and going over to the
+window that gave on the street, he looked out.  From end to end the
+alley was deserted except for the figure of a woman.  As he saw in the
+ruddy light of early morning she huddled against the threshold of the
+_hotel meuble_--knocking persistently at the door.  The tattered gauze
+of her dress, whose bold _decolletee_ left her neck and shoulders bare,
+a garland of roses on the bandeaux of her black hair, she epitomized
+the carnival just come to its end--its exhaustion, its excess, spent at
+length, surfeited, knocking for entrance at last to rest.  Bulstrode,
+as he remarked the sinuous figure that swayed as the woman stood,
+exclaimed to himself with illumination: "Why, she's the _fish_, of
+course!  Simone's mother!  And this is the state in which she goes to
+the miserable child!"
+
+As, knocking at intervals, the object leaned there a few moments
+longer, evidently scarcely able to stand, his pity wakened and he
+slowly left the window, shut in its blinds, and crossed his
+ante-chamber, where the artificial light of electricity was met by the
+full sunshine of the breaking day streaming in through the open window
+of his terrace.  Not entirely sure of his motive or to what excess of
+folly it might lead him, he nevertheless opened wide his front door,
+only to see that the woman on the opposite street had gone.  She had
+been let in.  With a glance of relief up and down the street where the
+_confetti_ in disks of lilac and yellow and red lay in dirty piles or
+swam on the flushing gutters that sparkled in the light, Bulstrode shot
+to his door on the Parisian world and after a _nuit blanche_ went
+upstairs to his rooms.
+
+
+And there had intensely come to him during the period of his dressing
+the next morning after a tardy wakening the idea of taking the child,
+of--he was certain it could be done--buying the mother off.  He would,
+in short, if he could, legally adopt the Parisian _gamine_ for his own.
+It would give him a distinct interest, and life was empty for want of
+one; this, in a manner, however short of perfect, would supply the need
+of a loving living creature in his environment and would--his thrill at
+the idea proved to him how lonely he had been--give him companionship
+and a responsibility of a tender, personal sort.  He could make a home
+at last for a child.  Men are more paternal than they are credited with
+being, and Bulstrode directly foresaw delightful _causeries_ in the
+future with--(he knew many women)--_with one woman_ whose pretty taste,
+whose wit and humor, should counsel him in his new role.  Mrs. Falconer
+would dress Simone--her hand should be wonderfully in it all.
+Bulstrode had let his fancy linger over the scheme.  Certainly, during
+the hour in which he spun his fanciful plan, there was not one bar to
+its execution.  Nor did there come to him any hint of its intrinsic
+sterility, or the idea that it was possibly an excuse for the
+interweaving of another interest more closely with his life--no idea
+that he was simply strengthening an old bond, or by means of this
+little tug pushing a mighty vessel nearer port.
+
+He almost happily mused until a nursery grew out of thin air, a child's
+little garments lay on a chair, and festivities, whose charm is of the
+most mysterious, illuminated his reverie.  Bulstrode, even without the
+shudder of the climatician, contemplated the rigors of his own country,
+for a rosy room grew out of his dream, fire-lit and fragrant with fir
+and holly, and in the centre shone The Tree, whose shiny globes and
+marvels were reflected till they danced in a child's eyes.
+
+There had been an hour earlier the quick, brusque dash of a French
+thunder-storm, and the cooled air came refreshingly from the garden as
+Bulstrode stood out on the terrace before going into the noonday
+breakfast.  Prosper, fetching his master's coffee at nine o'clock, had
+been informed that they were leaving Paris that day and received
+instructions as to the setting in order of the hotel before returning
+it to its proprietor.  Where his wanderings were to take him Bulstrode
+had not as yet made up his mind.  It, after all, mattered so very
+little what a bachelor did with his leisure!  It was the height of the
+season along the seacoast and a dozen places brilliantly beckoned;
+there were tri-weekly boats to the country, where he should most
+properly be.
+
+"There is," he with recurrent leeway to his inclinations reflected,
+"always plenty of time to decide what one does not want to do!"
+
+As he glanced at the little breakfast spread temptingly there for him
+on the terrace he was arrested by the sound of French voices in quick,
+agitated discussion, and looked up to see the unceremonious entrance of
+quite a little band of people who had in point of fact penetrated his
+seclusion.  In a second of time a group was before him and he
+remembered afterward that certain figures in a twinkling assumed
+familiar shapes: the wine-shop keeper, his wife, one or two other
+patrons of the hotel; but in the centre--he was sure of her!--pale and
+staring, stood little Simone, her big doll clasped in her arms.
+
+Before the gentleman could ask their errand Madame Branchard, eager to
+tell it, pushed forward.  Bulstrode afterward, when he thought of the
+scene, could always distinctly see her important red face, sleek, oily
+hair, and in spite of summer heat the crocheted shawl over her cotton
+gown.
+
+"We decided at once to address to monsieur, who is so good"--(he was
+growing accustomed to the formula) "to monsieur who has been so like a
+father to the poor little thing.  Not but that we are ready ourselves
+to do all we can for her--she is so sweet, so intelligent!"
+
+"The sweet, intelligent child" appeared, as Bulstrode's pitying gaze,
+never leaving her, saw, to have shrunk overnight.  In their midst she
+stood of a ridiculous smallness, her big doll nearly hiding her and
+over its blonde head Simone's eyes peered pathetically into, as it
+were, a vague and terrifying world.  Bulstrode asked shortly in the
+face of the theatrical prelude:
+
+"What is this all about?  What have you come to tell me?"
+
+"Ah, monsieur!"  Madame Branchard's voice, particularly suited to
+retailing the tragedies of the streets, quavered.  "There has been a
+_malheur_--it is too horrible--the mother!"
+
+"Stop!"  Bulstrode put out his hand.  "Simone!"
+
+The little thing dragged herself to him with a new timidity, as though
+she believed him in league with the world against her.
+
+"Come," he encouraged, "come out here on the terrace, where you have so
+often played with your doll, and don't be frightened, _mon enfant_;
+everything will be all right."
+
+When he had so settled her in the smallest of chairs he went back to
+the other bit of Paris street-life which had seethed in to him.
+
+Madame Branchard, whom his manner had reduced to, for her, marvellous
+quiet and ease, approached impressively and lowered her voice as deeply
+as it would fall.
+
+"Mademoiselle Lascaze, whom monsieur knows has been my tenant for
+months past, is dead--dead, monsieur!"
+
+Bulstrode echoed, "Dead?" and his first thought was: "It was not she,
+then, whom I saw striving for entrance this morning.  Ah, poor
+creature!  Drowned?"
+
+"Monsieur then knows?"
+
+Knows--how should he know?  He had thought of the aquarium and her
+often repeated feat.
+
+"Monsieur is right, she is drowned; but it is not the aquarium--it is
+the Seine.  It appears," the wine-merchant's wife went on, "that last
+night she made _la fete_ in the streets.  We over here lock up, well,
+at a decent hour, as monsieur will understand.  Those who are in stay,
+those who are out--well, monsieur will understand----"
+
+Yes, he understood.  Would she go on?
+
+"Mademoiselle Lascaze had evidently lost her key of entry--so it
+appears.  We have this story from her comrades, a bad lot, like
+herself.  She tried to get in about five o'clock--they left her
+knocking at the door.  She must then have wandered the streets for an
+hour, for it was six when they met her again by chance quite by the
+Pont des Arts.  They all had something to drink and started across the
+river, when the poor thing offered to give an exhibition of her circus
+feat and, before anyone could stop her, had dived off the bridge into
+the Seine."
+
+He had, then, seen her knocking there in the dawn, and if he had
+hastened a little--not held conventionally back----
+
+"It is all _en regle_," assured Madame Branchard.  "As my husband will
+tell monsieur, he has been to the morgue to identify her."
+
+The wine-merchant now at his cue, nodded impressively.  "Mais oui, I
+assure monsieur she was quite natural--and she was une belle femme tout
+le meme----"
+
+His wife glanced at him scornfully.  "She was a bad mother, and all the
+house will tell you so.  Many times, monsieur, I have gone in with my
+pass-key and taken the poor little thing downstairs in my arms to give
+her all the supper she would have had, and many a time, on cold nights,
+when there was not a stick of fire in their room, and the woman
+abroad--many a time I have had her sleep in our bed with us--my husband
+will tell monsieur."
+
+The wine-merchant nodded assent.  "She speaks the truth, monsieur."
+
+Bulstrode found presence of mind to wonder.  "I suppose Mademoiselle
+Lascaze left debts?"
+
+The husband and wife exchanged glances.
+
+"_En verite_, monsieur," confessed Madame Branchard, "she has left a
+few, but they are small and not significant; a hundred francs will
+cover them.  It is not for our pockets we are come to monsieur."
+
+Here the sentimentality having been disposed of by the woman, the
+husband broke in:
+
+"It is like this, Monsieur Balstro" (Bulstrode saw how intimately the
+_hotel meuble_ knew him): "In a few moments even the authorities will
+be here to take charge of the woman's effects and Simone will become
+the property of the State.  She has no relatives, as Monsieur will
+understand.  Thinking, therefore, that monsieur, _who is so good_,
+might for some reason care to take an interest in the child's
+future----"
+
+Branchard coughed and paused.  Having given Mr. Bulstrode ample time to
+speak, to show some signs of life and of his usual quick benevolence,
+and being greeted with nothing other than quiet, meditative silence,
+the merchant shrugged and comprehensively relinquished suppositions and
+hopes in one large gesture.
+
+"In which case" (evidently that of taking for granted that Bulstrode
+was less good than they had supposed), "in that case we shall put in a
+plea ourselves for Simone and adopt her."
+
+Madame's voice, now in full and customary volume, expressed frankly
+_her_ goodness.  "We have five children and our means are modest,
+but"--and she put it sublimely--"_one is not a mother for nothing_."
+
+Her tirade, however, was quite lost on Bulstrode, who was occupied with
+his own projects of benevolence.  Turning to this contingent of the
+_hotel meuble_ a back scarcely more imperturbable than his face had
+been, he went out of the room to the terrace, where Simone sat just as
+he had left her.  She was, on her low chair, so tiny that in order more
+nearly than ever before to approach her little point of view, to come
+into her little sphere, Bulstrode knelt down on one knee.
+
+"Don't look so frightened, my child.  Nothing will harm you--I assure
+you of that; don't you"--he called her loyally to answer--"don't you
+believe me, Simone?"
+
+The little thing drew in a struggling breath and whispered: "Oui,
+m'sieu."
+
+"Good!"  He was smiling at her and had taken her ice-cold, dirty,
+little hands.  "You are fond of me, Simone--you like a little M'sieu
+Balstro'?"
+
+"Oh," she caught at her frightened voice and more clearly whispered,
+"oh, oui, m'sieu!"
+
+"Bien encore!"
+
+He wanted tactfully to break the ice which shock and terror had formed
+around the poor little heart, and yet not to prolong the moment.
+
+"_Voyons_," he said to her lightly, as if he were only to bid her come
+and play in his garden, and not ask her to decide her destiny.
+"_Voyons_, how would you like to come and live with me? to have toys
+and pretty clothes and good things to eat--to be"--the bachelor put it
+bravely--"to be _my_ little girl.  How, Simone, would you like it?"
+
+If further startled she was humanized by his warmth, which was melting
+her; her breast heaved, her lips trembled, and she asked: "Et
+puis--maman?"
+
+Here Madame Branchard, in whom all feelings were subordinate to
+curiosity and motherhood, had approached until she stood directly
+behind the two on the terrace.  Tears had sprung to her eyes and she
+sniffled and wiped them frankly away with her hand.
+
+Bulstrode, singularly relieved by her appearance, turned and asked her,
+"What does she then know?"
+
+"Nothing, m'sieur, nothing at all."
+
+Simone got up on her feet and her big doll fell with a crash on the
+marble of the terrace and broke in a dozen pieces, but the catastrophe
+did not touch her.
+
+"And maman?" she repeated.  "Where is she?  She did not come home last
+night?"
+
+Bulstrode had descended to one knee in order to approach her, but
+Madame Branchard got down on both knees and tenderly put her arms
+around the child.
+
+"Look, ma petite--your mother has gone away forever to a beautiful
+country, and she has left you here to be a good girl and do whatever
+this kind gentleman says.  Will you go to be his little girl?  He will
+give you everything in the world."  She closed with this magnificent
+promise, whose breadth and wealth no child-mind could grasp.  In order
+to give her more complete liberty in which to make her decision the
+wine-merchant's wife, after kissing her, set her free.
+
+Simone made no audible reflection of wonder at her seeming desertion,
+no exhibition of distress, no melodramatic outburst of grief or
+surprise.  She stood silent, absorbed, desolate, and ashamed, twisting
+in and out between her frail little fingers the fringe of Madame
+Branchard's black shawl.
+
+"Or," brightly continued the good woman, "you can come home with me and
+play with Marie and Jeannette and have what we have.  You can be my
+little girl, as you will--it is for you to decide--chez moi, or with
+this bon monsieur."
+
+Was it fair of them--thus to lay on her six years the burden of her own
+destiny?
+
+Simone raised her head; her cheeks had reddened a little at Madame
+Branchard's last words.  She was unable to grasp the benefits that
+Bulstrode's magnificence offered, but she knew Marie and Jeannette--she
+knew the hands of Madame Branchard could tuck one in at night, and how
+warm and soft was the bosom on which she had already wept her little
+griefs.  There were many beautiful things in the world, but Simone just
+then only wanted one.  Madame Branchard was not _her_ mother--but she
+was still _a_ mother!  Simone whispered so low that only the woman
+heard:
+
+"I will go with you."
+
+
+Prosper having embarked on a sea of indiscretion, went through the day
+consistently.  With a love of the melodramatic in his Latin temperament
+he had admitted the _hotel meuble sans ceremonie_: and late that
+afternoon he gave entrance to another group of quite a different order,
+and without formality ushered the lady and her friends to the terrace,
+where the solitary inhabitant of another man's house was taking a
+farewell beverage before leaving Paris.
+
+"We have caught you in time, Jimmy!" Mrs. Falconer made a virtue of it.
+"If you are absconding with the Montensier treasures, then let me show
+Molly and the Marquis at least what has been left behind."
+
+His bags and boxes in the hall, his automobile at the door, and
+Bulstrode himself in travelling trim, it looked very much like a
+flight, indeed.  Miss Molly and the Marquis, it transpired, were able
+to explore for themselves and to find in the gallery and salons
+pictures and objects of interest to excuse a prolonged absence.
+
+"They're engaged," Mrs. Falconer explained to her host.  "Isn't it
+ridiculous?  As you know, she hasn't a cent in the world, and his
+family are not in the secret, but Molly and De Presle-Vaulx _are_, and
+_I_ am, and I brought them off in pity for a spin to Paris."
+
+The apparition of the lady, whose mocking beauty had a fresh charm
+every time he saw her--her worldly wisdom and her keen
+reasonableness--made, as he stood talking with her, his past debauch in
+philanthropies seem especially grotesque.  With a long breath of joy at
+the sight of her Bulstrode also realized how wonderfully separated from
+her the introduction of another life into his environment would have
+made him.
+
+"Your garden is a waste," the lady criticised, "dusty and dull.  I
+don't wonder you're getting away.  Fontainebleau, too, was only a
+_faute de mieux_, and I have left it.  One should get really far away
+at this season.  It's the time when only the persons who are actually
+bred in its stones can stay in Paris--certainly the birds of passage
+may now, if ever, fly."
+
+"We are going to Trouville," she said; "we are all going to motor
+through Normandy.  Won't you come--won't you come?"  He shook his head.
+
+Mrs. Falconer looked across the terrace to where a little chair had
+been overturned, and on the floor by its side lay a broken doll.
+
+"Jimmy!" she laughed in triumph at the sight.  "You _have_ broken your
+doll!"
+
+Bulstrode said: "Yes, beyond repair, and I don't want another."  Then
+in a few words, briefly, a little impatient, and still smarting under
+the child's defection, he gave her the story.
+
+Listening, absorbed, her charming eyes on him or at one moment turned
+suspiciously away, the lady heard him to the end, and at the end said
+softly:
+
+"Jimmy, my poor Jimmy!  What have you nearly done!  What _would_ people
+have thought?  Not that it matters in the least--it's what people _do_
+that counts--but oh, I tremble for your next folly!"
+
+"It might"--he spoke with something like bitterness--"be less harmless
+and leave me less alone."
+
+She had finished a glass of iced tea, put her goblet down on the tray
+and rose, coming over to where Bulstrode stood; she lightly laid her
+hand on his arm.
+
+"You are, then, so very lonely?  So lonely that you would be capable of
+doing this foolish thing?  Oh, you would have found, as I have found,
+that it is those things which come into our lives, not those which we
+by force _take_, which mean all we want them to mean!  This wasn't
+_your child_!"  Mrs. Falconer's face softened as he had never seen it.
+"Nor yet is she the child of some woman you love.  Believe me, it would
+have made you far lonelier if it so happened--if you should ever come
+to love--if you ever had loved----"
+
+Bulstrode interrupted her abruptly:
+
+"Yes, in that case I should no doubt be glad that Simone had gone back
+on me."  He waited silent for a second, and then continued gently, "I
+_am_ glad, very glad indeed!"
+
+
+
+
+THE FOURTH ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+IV
+
+IN WHICH HE MAKES THREE PEOPLE HAPPY
+
+There were times when Bulstrode decided that he never could see the
+woman he loved any more: there were times when he felt he must follow
+her to the ends of the world, just in order to assure himself that she
+was alive and serene.  Such is the gentleman's character and point of
+view, that she must always be serene, no matter what his own troubled
+emotions might be.
+
+He had the extraordinary idea that he could not himself be happy or
+make a woman happy over the dishonor of another man.  It was
+old-fashioned and unworldly of Bulstrode: still, that was the way he
+was constituted.
+
+It was on one of the imperious occasions when he felt as if he must
+follow her to the ends of the earth, that he steered his craft toward a
+little town on the edge of the Norman coast, to a very fashionable bit
+of France--Trouville.  As soon as he understood that Mrs. Falconer was
+to be in Normandy for the race week, he packed his things and ran down
+and put up at the Hotel de Paris.  On this occasion the gentleman
+followed so fast that he overleaped his goal, and arrived at the
+watering-place before the others appeared.  Bulstrode took his own
+rooms, and in response to a telegram, engaged the Falconers'
+apartments.  He liked the way the little salon gave on the heavenly
+blue sea, and with a nice fancy to make it something more home-like for
+his friend to begin with, he filled it with flowers ... ran what
+lengths he dared in putting a few rare vases and several pieces of old
+Italian damask here and there.
+
+"Falconer," he consoled himself, "will be too taken up with his horses
+to notice the _inside_ of anything but a stable!  And I shall tell the
+others that the hotel proprietor is a collector: most of these Norman
+innkeepers are collectors."  And, as his idea grew, he went to greater
+lengths, with the curiosity shops on either side the Rue de Paris to
+tempt him.  The result was that when Mrs. Falconer came, she found the
+hotel room wonderfully mellow and harmonious, and as a woman who revels
+in beauty she responded to its charm.  She was delighted, her eyes
+sparkled, her cheeks glowed.  And Jimmy Bulstrode had a moment of high
+happiness as she looked at him and touched with her pretty hands the
+flowers he had himself arranged.  It was a delightful moment, a moment
+that was much to him.
+
+The Falconers arrived with the usual lot of servants and motors and,
+moreover, with a racing outfit, for Falconer had decided to enter his
+English filly, Bonjour, for the events of August.  There was also with
+them a Miss Molly Malines and a young sprig of nobility, the Marquis de
+Presle-Vaulx, to whom Bulstrode was a trifle paternal.
+
+"He can't, at least, be after Molly's _millions_," he reflected; "he
+can't, at any rate, be a _fortune_ hunter, for the girl's face is the
+only fortune she has!"
+
+On a bright and beautiful morning, the first of all the days for many
+weeks--for Bulstrode reckoned his calendar in broken bits, beginning a
+New Year each time he saw his lady again--a bright and beautiful
+morning he walked out at the fashionable hour of noon and turned into
+the Rue de Paris.
+
+The eyes of many women followed Bulstrode.
+
+Being an early riser, he had already taken a brisk walk over the
+cliffs, had swum out beyond the buoys, and now in his flannels, his
+panama, a gay rose in the lapel of his coat, amongst the many
+debonnaire and pleasing people who filled the little fishing town, his
+was a distinguished figure.  He trusted very much to instinct to
+discover his friend, and after a few moments found her at the extreme
+end of the street which the papers of Paris tell you is "the most
+worldly and fashionable in any part of the Continent, during race week
+at Trouville."  Mary Falconer was of course dressed in the very height
+of the mode.  She looked up and saw Bulstrode before he saw her, but
+she could wait until he made his leisurely way down to her side.  She
+waited for him a great deal.  He did not know how much, but then her
+point of view and her feelings have never come into the history.  It
+amused her to make him her many clever little bits of speech, for he
+was so appreciative of everything she said, and looking up at him now
+as he approached she said: "These people never seem to have anything to
+do, do they?  Leisure is like money: to enjoy thoroughly either money
+or leisure one should only have a little of each.  Now for us
+good-for-nothings who have no occupation it doesn't make much
+difference what we do or where we do it!"
+
+The lady's camp-stool had been set down at the end of the street.
+Those who are not promenading opened little _chaises pliantes_ and
+watched from their little seats.  Mrs. Falconer sat facing the ocean,
+or what was visible of it between the bathing tents.  Pagodas gay with
+children's shovels and bright pails, striped bonbons and the sea of
+muslins, ribbons and feathers and sunshades of the midsummer crowd.
+All the capitals of Europe had poured themselves into Trouville, and
+the resort overflowed with beauty and fashion.
+
+'"It's perfectly bewitching," Bulstrode said to her, "perfectly
+bewitching, and it makes one feel as though there were nothing but
+pleasure in the world."
+
+She wore a white dress and her hat was bright with flowers.  She opened
+her rose-lined parasol over her head.
+
+"Jimmy," she said abruptly, and brought his eyes to hers like a flash,
+for he had been looking over the scene, "do you know I begin to see
+where the innkeeper found his rare treasures; _there are a great many
+other things_ that suggest them in this little street!"
+
+Bulstrode replied, "You don't want him to take them away, do you?"
+
+She shook her head.  "No," she said slowly, "they have been a great
+pleasure, but I don't want to _buy_ them from him, either."
+
+"I don't _think_ he'd sell them," Bulstrode was certain of it, "they're
+extremely precious in his eyes."
+
+"I'm a good judge of works of art, however," she said after a moment,
+"that is to say, I know a good thing when I see it.  There was a little
+picture in one of the shops back of me that I would have given a lot to
+own."
+
+Her friend exclaimed: "Are you going to buy it!  That is to say, will
+Falconer buy it for you?"
+
+"My dear soul--with his horse running to-morrow!  At any rate, the
+bijou is already bought above my head.  I went in yesterday to see what
+was the least they would take for it, and found the Prince Pollona, the
+Englishman who buys for the Wallace Collection, and somebody who, they
+tell me, was the Rockefeller of St. Petersburg.  Well, my little
+picture was what they all wanted, and you can imagine that _I_ retired
+from the running...!  But I tell you this," she said, "only to show you
+how very good my taste is, and so that you may rely on my selections."
+
+Bulstrode smiled in a way that said he thought he might rely on her,
+but still he asked rather quizzically, "Well, what are you going to
+recommend to me _now_?"
+
+The lady at the moment, not having anything in mind, looked suddenly
+up, gave him whimsically:
+
+"Molly and her Marquis."
+
+The two young people with Jack Falconer were coming slowly along the
+Rue de Paris toward them.  The grace of the girl, her freshness under
+her wide hat where flowers and ribbons danced and blended; the radiant
+pleasure she exhaled, the swing of her dress, her youth, expressed so
+happily the joy of life, recommended themselves easily in a flash....
+
+"Oh, _Molly_--she's perfect!"
+
+"And the Marquis?"
+
+"He is perfectly in _love_," ... Bulstrode allowed him so much.
+
+"My dear friend, remember I know my _objets d'art_."
+
+"Oh, as an _objet d'art_...!"
+
+Bulstrode took the young man in: his white immaculateness, his
+boutonniere, his panama--(not less than forty dollars a straw, as Jimmy
+knew) his monocle.
+
+"As an _objet d'art_," he further conceded to her, "he's perfect, too!"
+
+"As an _homme de race_," said the American lady eagerly, with the true
+Republican appreciation of blood and title, "as an _homme du monde_, as
+a..."
+
+"Title?" he finished for her.  "Oh, the Presle-Vaulx are all right!
+I'll grant him a perfect title, sound as a bell, first Crusade--_Leonce
+de Presle-Vaulx main droite, or sur azur--Pour toi seule_.  It's a good
+old tradition--a good old name."
+
+She scented his lack of sympathy.  "Oh, I'll stand for him, Jimmy.  I
+know the _pate_, as they say.  I know the ring and the tone; and you
+must, at my valuation, take him."
+
+"Molly, dear lady, has done the taking."  Bulstrode lifted his hat as
+the trio came up.  "And what, after all, can we--the rest of us do?"
+
+"The rest of them" watched the young couple with mingled emotions: Mary
+Falconer with all the romance in her, and in spite of unusual cool
+reasonableness she had a feminine share--Jimmy with the sympathy of a
+kindly nature, a certain sting of jealousy at the decidedly perfect
+completeness of young love, and with a singularly wide-awake practical
+common sense for an impulsive gentleman whose pleasure in life is to
+pour into people's hands the things they most long for and cannot
+without him ever hope to enjoy!
+
+
+Bulstrode, although owning his share of horse-flesh and a proper number
+of automobiles and keeping, for the best part of the time, a yacht out
+of commission, was a sport only in a certain sense of the word.  The
+people who liked him best and who were themselves able to judge, said
+he was a "dead game sport," but Jimmy smiled at this and knew that the
+human element interested him in life above all, and that he only cared
+for amusements as they helped others to enjoy.  He was backing
+Falconer's horse, although he felt certain the winnings would go to the
+Rothschild's gelding.  On the afternoon, however, when De Presle-Vaulx
+came up to him in the Casino and said: "On what are you going to put
+your money, Monsieur?" Bulstrode looked at him thoughtfully.  He had
+stood by the young man the night before at baccarat and seen him lose
+enough to keep a little family of Trouville fisherfolk for a year.
+
+"Are you going to play the races, Marquis?"
+
+"But naturally!" ...
+
+De Presle-Vaulx had an attractive frankness, and his smile
+was--Bulstrode understood what a girl would think about it!
+
+"... But of course!  One doesn't come to Trouville in _la grande
+semaine_ not to play!"
+
+He put his hand cordially on Bulstrode's arm.
+
+"Entre nous," he said, "I don't believe Falconer's horse has a chance
+against Rothschild's Grimace.  And you?"
+
+"Oh, I shall back Jack Falconer's mare," the older man replied.
+
+The Marquis played with his moustache.  "She doesn't stand a show."
+
+Bulstrode was walking slowly down the grand staircase by his
+companion's side.  "And you will back Grimace?"  He ignored the young
+man's prognostication.
+
+De Presle-Vaulx said ingenuously: "_I_?  Oh, seriously, I'm not
+betting.  I lost at baccarat last night, and I haven't a sou for the
+race."
+
+He looked boyish and regretful.  The American put his hand in his
+pocket and took out his portefeuille.
+
+"Let me," he suggested pleasantly, "be your banker."
+
+The light dry rustle of French bank-notes came agreeably from between
+his fingers.
+
+The young man hesitated, then put out his hand.
+
+"A thousand thanks, Monsieur, you are too good--I _will_ back Grimace,
+and after the race----"
+
+Jimmy handed him the notes to choose from.
+
+At the stair foot stood Molly and Mrs. Falconer.
+
+"We went this afternoon to see Jack's horse," Miss Malines said to the
+Marquis.  Whatever she said, no matter how general, she said to
+him--others might gather what they could.  "Bon Jour's a beauty--a
+dear, and as fit as possible.  Oh, she's in great form!  Jack's crazy
+about her, and so is the jockey.  I know Bon Jour will win!  I'm going
+to put twenty-five francs on her to-morrow."
+
+Mary Falconer smiled radiantly.  "And you, Jimmy," she took for
+granted, "are of course betting on the favorite?"
+
+"If you mean Grimace--" his tone was indifferent--"no, I shall back
+your husband's horse."
+
+"_Jimmy_!"  Her tone changed, and her expression as well.
+
+De Presle-Vaulx saw it, and he knew what women's voices can mean.  He
+was a Frenchman, and he understood what a slow, delicious flush, a
+darkening of the eyes, a sharp note in the voice can signify of
+feeling--as well as of gratitude, surprise and a little scorn.  There
+was all this in Mary Falconer's exclamation and her face.
+
+"And Maurice!" Molly said, "of course, you're doing the same?"
+
+The Marquis met his fiancee's clear eyes, her girlish enthusiasm and
+her confidence.  He bit his lip, shrugged, hesitated, looked at
+Bulstrode, at Molly, and laughed.  The presence of the others and the
+custom of his country made it only a pretty courtesy--he lifted Molly's
+hand to his lips.
+
+"Of course--_chere Mademoiselle_, I am backing Bon Jour with all my
+heart, _cela va sans dire_!"
+
+Miss Malines regarded her friend with a pretty grimace and a smile.
+
+As they walked along together all four, Bulstrode said to himself:
+
+"He's a sport, a true sport--that's five thousand francs to the bad.
+He was game, however, he's a good sport and, better yet, he's a true
+lover!"
+
+Whether or not Mary Falconer really had an exalted idea of the merits
+of Bon Jour, or whether she thoroughly understood the situation, how
+was her friend to know?
+
+Falconer adored the horse, and the lady showed in the matter, as in
+everything else, a fine loyalty to her husband, which was undoubtedly
+one of the reasons why--but this is going too deeply into the domain of
+Bulstrode's feelings, which, since he keeps them honorably sealed, it
+is unworthy to surprise even in the interest of psychology.
+
+Bulstrode saw that his friend was pleased: her color, her mounting
+spirits at dinner, showed it.  She spoke with interest of the races,
+and with confidence greater than she had hitherto evinced in the
+fortunes of her husband's racer--indeed she talked horse to Molly's
+edification, her husband's delight, and Bulstrode's admiration.  All
+this--the sense that the party was, so to speak, with him--put Jack
+Falconer in the best of spirits, and the unruffled course of the
+dinner, and, above all, the humor of the elder of the two ladies, quite
+repaid Jimmy Bulstrode for the sure loss of his stakes.
+
+"Does she really think that I have faith in the horse?" he
+wondered---meeting her charming eyes over the glass of champagne she
+was drinking.  They did not answer in text his question, but their glow
+and the light of content in them answered for him other questions which
+were perhaps of greater interest.
+
+She was not unhappy.  All his life, since his acquaintance with her, it
+had been his aim, in so far as he could aid it, that she should not be
+unhappy.  His idea of affection was that in all cases it should bring
+to the object--joy.  In his own life these things which brought him, no
+matter how pleasant they might be, the after taste of regret and misery
+he strove with all his manliness to tear out: "and surely," he so
+argued, "if my presence in her life cause her for one moment anything
+but peace, it would be better that we had never looked into each
+other's eyes."
+
+There was nothing especially buoyant, in the attitude of the young
+Marquis!  His inclination to feminine will had cost him--he was so
+familiar with the turf and the next day's programme to feel sure--five
+thousand francs, which he had not the means to pay.
+
+
+Later in the evening, very much later, indeed well on to one o'clock,
+Bulstrode, wandering through the baccarat rooms--for no other purpose,
+it would be said from his indifferent air, than to study types--saw
+Maurice de Presle-Vaulx just leaving the Casino.
+
+Bulstrode's air was as friendly and as naive as though he had not a
+pretty clear idea of just how the tide of events was fluctuating toward
+misfortune in the case of this young nobleman.
+
+"What do you say," he suggested, "to getting something to drink or eat?
+What do you say to a piece of _perdreau_ and some champagne?"
+
+The Frenchman followed the older man, who in contrast to his pallor
+looked the picture of health and spirits.  Bulstrode cheerily led him
+to a small table in the corner of the restaurant, where they sat
+opposite one another, and for a little time applied themselves in
+silence to the light supper served them.
+
+The Marquis drank more than he ate, and Bulstrode dutifully finished
+the game and toast, quite glad, in truth, to break the fast of a long
+evening which he had spent in the close rooms: for no other reason than
+unseen, to befriend--and unasked, to chaperone Molly's lover.  Finally,
+when he felt that the right moment to say something had come, he smiled
+at the young man, and said frankly:
+
+"Voyons, mon ami, don't you feel that you can talk to me a little more
+freely than you could possibly to even so kind and charming a friend as
+Mrs. Falconer?  We are not of the same race, perhaps, but then under
+certain circumstances such distinctions are not important.  How do
+you"--he handled the words as though in presenting them to the young
+man he was afraid they might prick him--"How do _you_ now stand?--I
+mean to say, the luck has been rather against you, I'm afraid."
+
+Bulstrode would never be so near forty again, and De Presle-Vaulx was a
+spoiled child--at all events, all that could be spoiled in him had been
+taken care of by his mother, and in his own way he had spoiled a large
+part of what remained.  He looked up smartly, for he had been following
+the pattern of the table-cloth.  If the frankness of the other
+threatened to offend him, as he met the kind eyes of the American he
+found nothing there that could do otherwise than please him.  He
+shrugged with his national habit, then threw out his hands without
+making any verbal reply, but his smile and his gesture comprehended so
+much that Bulstrode intelligently exclaimed:
+
+"Oh, but you don't mean to _say_----?"
+
+"I have not, monsieur, much to lose," the scion of an old house replied
+simply.  "We have the reputation of being poor; but to-night and last
+night have quite 'wiped me out,' as you say in America.  Je suis ruine."
+
+Bulstrode lit his cigar.  De Presle-Vaulx took from his pocket one of
+his own cigarettes and puffed at it gently.  Bulstrode smoked silently,
+and thought of the young man without looking at him.  He liked him, and
+did not understand him at all: not at all!  He supposed, that with his
+different traditions, his Puritanism, his New World point of view, he
+could _never_ understand him, but he would enjoy trying to do so, for
+aside from the quality of spoiled boy, there was something of the man
+in De Presle-Vaulx to which the New Englander extremely responded.
+
+His next remark was impersonal:
+
+"Bon Jour, then, you think is not likely----?"
+
+"_Mon cher Monsieur_! ... She is not even mentioned for place!  Even in
+the event of her winning," De Presle-Vaulx was gloomy, "I should be
+able to discharge my debt to you and nothing more."  Again he looked up
+quickly.  "I shall, of course, be quite able to discharge _that_; I
+only mean to say that _en somme_, I am _roule completement roule_."
+
+"What, then, are you going to do?"
+
+De Presle-Vaulx looked at the end of his cigarette as though he took
+counsel from it, and said measuredly:
+
+"There is, in my position, but one thing possible for a man to do."
+
+"You mean to say, marry, make a rich marriage?"
+
+The Marquis flashed at him:
+
+"A month ago, yes! that would have been the one way out of my
+embarrassment: but I am no longer in the market.  It is the other
+alternative."
+
+Bulstrode in no case caring to hear put in words a tragically
+disagreeable means of solving the problems of debt and love, and having
+less faith in this extravagant, explosive alternative than in the
+_marriage de convenance_, did not urge the Frenchman further.  He
+simply brought out--his quiet eyes fixed on the other:
+
+"And the little girl?--Molly--Miss Malines?----"
+
+He gave him three chances to think of the pretty child, and for the
+first De Presle-Vaulx's expression changed.  He had with a nonchalance
+submitted to the discussion of his fortune and his fate, but now he
+distinctly showed dignity.
+
+"Don't, I beg of you, _speak_ of Mademoiselle Malines!" and then he
+said more gently, "mille pardons, mon cher ami!"
+
+Bulstrode smoked his Garcia meditatively.  He had not attempted the
+solving of other people's questions, had not played the good fairy for
+a long time.  He had the hazy feeling--such as he often experienced
+just before stepping into the mysterious excitement of doing some good
+deed, of undergoing the effects of a narcotic which put to sleep reason
+and practical common-sense, and left alive only a desire to befriend.
+In this case, determined not again to be the victim of sentimentality,
+determined for once to unite common sense and common humanity, he
+forcibly dissipated the haze and said:
+
+"Your family!  I have, as you know, understood from Mrs. Falconer, the
+facts of the case.  You must not be formal with me."  He smiled
+delightfully.  "I am an American; you know we have all sorts of
+barbarous privileges.  We rush in quite where the older races fear to
+tread ... and Molly Malines' father is an old friend of mine."
+
+(Mr. Bulstrode did not say what kind of an old friend!  or even allow
+himself to remember the I.O.U.s and loans that his bankers had made to
+the visionary, good-humored, sanguine, unfortunate stockbroker.)
+
+"Your family--how do they take the idea of your marriage to a poor
+American?"
+
+De Presle-Vaulx pushed his coffee cup aside, leaned his arms on the
+table, bent over, and said with more confidence:
+
+"Oh, they are entirely opposed to it.  That's one reason, to be quite
+frank with you, why I have been so reckless."
+
+He added: "My mother has refused her consent, and I can never hope to
+alter my father's attitude.  I have their letters to-day as well as
+telegrams from Presle-Vaulxoron--they bid me 'come home immediately,'
+and so far as my people are concerned, their refusal puts an end to the
+affair!"
+
+There was a mixture of amusement and reproach in Bulstrode's tone--"and
+you have found nothing better to do than to throw away at baccarat what
+money you had, and have found no other solution for the future than
+to...?" he eyed the young man keenly, and a proper severity came into
+his expression.  "Nonsense," he said, and repeated the word with more
+indulgence: "nonsense, _mon ami_!"
+
+His reproof was borne:
+
+"We are an old race, M. Bulstrode----"
+
+Bulstrode had heard this allocution before.  It gave lee-way to so
+much; permitted so much; excused so much!
+
+"... I don't need to tell you our traditions, or recall our customs.
+You of course know them.  If I marry without my parents' consent I
+shall probably, during my mother's lifetime, never see her again, and I
+am her only son.  It means that I sever all relations with my people."
+
+Bulstrode knocked the ash off his cigar and said thoughtfully:
+
+"It's too bad!  A choice, if there _is_ one, is always too bad.  There
+should in real things _be_ no choice.  As soon as such a contingent
+arises, it proves that neither thing is really worth while!  When a man
+loves a woman there can be no choice.  My dear friend, when a
+_man_"--he paused--"loves--there is nothing in the world _but the
+woman_."
+
+The Marquis looked at the fine face of the elder man.  Years had, with
+their gentle history, and kindly records, touched Jimmy Bulstrode
+lightly.  Every experience made him better to look at; "like a good
+picture," Mrs. Falconer had said, "painted by a master, and only
+growing more splendid."  Nothing of the worldliness of the roue marked
+his expression.  His memories were clear and honorable, and the
+Frenchman experienced a sensation of surprise and also one of
+enlightenment as he looked at him and responded to his expression.  He
+had never seen any one quite like this man of the world, could not
+think of his prototype in France.
+
+He repeated:
+
+"Nothing but the woman in the world--?  Honor--" Bulstrode quickly
+added, "and the woman--they are synonymous."
+
+In watching his companion he wondered in how much of a tangle the
+Frenchman's mind was, and just how deep his feet were sunk in the
+meshes of conventionality and tradition, and decided: "Oh, is it too
+much to believe that he could----!"
+
+As if in answer to his thoughts, De Presle-Vaulx spoke in the simplest
+manner possible:
+
+"J'aime Molly."
+
+Quite surprised at the simplicity, Bulstrode beamed on him and waited.
+
+Then the other added:
+
+"But I can't ask any woman to share poverty and debts, and I have no
+way of making a living; I'm not bred for it."
+
+"You are not an invalid?"
+
+"On the contrary."
+
+"You can work."
+
+De Presle-Vaulx smiled: "I am afraid not!  No De Presle-Vaulx has done
+a stroke of work in three hundred years."
+
+"It's time, then"--Bulstrode was tart--"that you broke the record.  Why
+don't you?"  He said as though suddenly illumined--"make me your
+banker, draw on me for whatever sum you will, and since you have faith
+in her and are so well supported by the public opinion--bet on Grimace.
+I believe, with you, that he is sure to win.  You would recoup much of
+your loss here."
+
+De Presle-Vaulx pushed back his chair and exclaimed: "Monsieur!"
+
+"Oh," shrugged Bulstrode, "a woman's caprice, my dear fellow!  A
+foolish little whim of a girl!  You can't be expected to mix sport and
+flirtation to the tune of two or three thousand dollars."
+
+He smiled deceptively.
+
+The young man laughed bitterly:
+
+"So that is something of what you think of me? for I see you are not
+serious!  It's a folly, of course, a sentimental folly," he met
+Bulstrode's eyes that silently accused him of a like--"but only a man
+in love knows what sentimental follies are worth!  There is"--the young
+man was suddenly serious, "a sort of prodigality in love only
+understood by certain temperaments, certain races: it may be
+degenerate: I suppose it is, and to push it quite to the last phase,
+is, of course, cowardly, certainly very weak, and men like you,
+Monsieur, will deem it so."
+
+"You mean--?" and now Bulstrode's tone urged him to make himself clear.
+
+"I mean," said De Presle-Vaulx firmly, "rather than renounce this woman
+I adore I will without doubt--(given the tangle in which the whole
+matter is!...") and he could not for the life of him put his intention
+into words.  He smiled nevertheless unmistakably.  Bulstrode leaned
+across the table and put his hand on the other's arm.
+
+"Then you don't love her well enough not to break her heart?  Or well
+enough to live a commonplace life for her?"
+
+"I don't know how to do it."
+
+"Well," said Bulstrode, "I have run upon quite a good many hard
+moments, perhaps some, in their way, as difficult as this, and I have
+never thought of getting out of the muddle.  Perhaps it _is_ a
+question, as you say, of temperament and race.  I am inclined also to
+think, stubbornly, that it is a question of the quality of the love
+that one has for the woman.  You won't think it impertinent of me, my
+dear friend,"--and his tone was such that no one could have thought it
+impertinent--"you won't, I am sure, take it amiss if we talk this over
+to-morrow, and if I try to show you something that means _life_,
+instead of what you plan."
+
+
+"You know you as good as stood for De Presle-Vaulx."
+
+Bulstrode held Mrs. Falconer's parasol, her fan, as well as a gold bag
+purse full of louis, a handkerchief and his own cane and field-glass.
+For the lady, standing on a chair the better to see the race-track, was
+applauding with enthusiasm the result of the first handicap.  She had
+placed a bet on a horse called Plum-Branch "from a feeling of
+sentiment," as she said, because she had, that day, quite by chance,
+selected a hat with a decorative plum-branch amongst other garnitures.
+
+"I am _standing_, certainly, Jimmy," she replied to his remark, "and to
+the peril of my high heels!-- _There_, I've won! and won't you, like an
+angel, go and cash my bets?--give me the purse, you might have your
+hand picked!  You can put my winnings in your pocket; they're not so
+enormous."
+
+During his absence she watched the scene around her with animation.
+The spotless day, if one might so call it, when the sky and the turf
+and the whole world looked as though washed clean, and nature, seen in
+the warm sunlight, seemed to palpitate and flutter in the wind that
+gently stirred ends of ribbon or tips of plumes, and set the fragrance
+of the country air astir.  Back of the lady the tribune was like a
+floral display: here and there a corner red as roses, there a mass of
+lily-white dresses enlivened by pink and blue parasols, and the green
+_pesage_ stretched between the spectators and the race-track in bands
+of emerald, whilst across it promenaded or stood in groups those
+interested in the races.  Mrs. Falconer acknowledged a friend here and
+there, glanced affectionately over to where Molly and the Marquis,
+seated near, fixed their attention on the race-course, where the
+winner, flying his blue ribbon, cantered triumphantly around the track.
+
+One of a little group Falconer, the worse for many cocktails, stood by
+the railing, talking familiarly with his jockey, whilst Bon Jour,
+blanketed to the eyes, was being led up and down the outside track
+alongside of her rival, Rothschild's Grimace.
+
+Bulstrode returning, gave his friend a handful of gold, which she put
+into her purse, and he repeated: "You remember that you stood, as it
+were, for De Presle-Vaulx?"
+
+"I do," she said, "if you think the race-course is the place to take me
+to account for anything so serious, I do remember, and I do stand.
+What is the trouble that he needs me?"
+
+"He needs," Bulstrode was serious, "a good many things, it seems to me,
+in order to get firmly on the plane where he should be!"
+
+"And that is----?"
+
+"On his feet, my dear friend."
+
+"Well, he is head over heels in love," she nodded, "but when he finally
+lands I think you will find Maurice perfectly perpendicular."
+
+"He won't," returned the other, "at all events, land in the bosom of
+his family."
+
+"No?"--she looked away from the race-course and laughed--"you mean to
+say, Jimmy, has he heard, then?"
+
+"I mean to say that _they_ are quite clear in their minds about his
+marriage!  They seem to have all the firmness that the young man lacks.
+Tell me," he asked his friend, "just what do you know about the matter?
+What happened that you so strongly took up his cause with Molly?  You
+have not told me yet."
+
+She relinquished the interests of the moment to those of the
+sentimental question.
+
+"It seems," she said, lowering her tone, "that they have been secretly
+engaged for a year.  Nothing that an American girl can do would
+surprise me, but you can imagine that I was overwhelmed at his part in
+the matter.  When Molly joined me in Fontainebleau, De Presle-Vaulx
+promptly followed, and I naturally obliged her to tell me everything.
+I was dismayed at the lack of _tenue_ he had shown.  I had a plain talk
+with him.  He said that he had first met Molly at some dance or other
+in the American colony, I don't know where; that he understood that
+American girls disposed of their own lives; that he loved her and
+wanted to marry her, and that he was only waiting to gain the consent
+of his family before writing to her father.  He seemed delighted to
+talk with me and perfectly conventional in his feelings.  He further
+told me that his parents until now knew nothing, that he had not been
+able to tear himself away from Molly long enough to go down to the
+country where they were and see them.  I forced him to write at once;
+exacted myself that until he received their answer there should be
+nothing between Molly and him but the merest distant acquaintance.  I
+did not know that he had heard from the Marquise or his father.  You
+seemed to have suddenly entirely gained his confidence and taken my
+place."  She looked over at the young couple.  "Poor Molly!" she
+exclaimed.  "He has not, I should say, told her: she looks so happy and
+so serene!  It's of course only a question of _dot_, otherwise there
+could be no possible objection.  She is perfectly beautiful, the
+sweetest creature in the world; and she is a born Marquise!"
+
+Bulstrode interrupted her impatiently:
+
+"It would be more to the purpose if he were a born bread-winner and she
+were a dairy-maid!"
+
+"Jimmy, how vulgar you are!"
+
+"Very--" he was wonderfully sarcastic for him--"money is a very vulgar
+thing, my dear friend; it's as vulgar as air and bread and butter.  It
+is like all other clean, decent vulgarity, it can be abused, but it's
+necessary to life."
+
+Mrs. Falconer opened her eyes wide on this new Bulstrode.
+
+"Why, what has happened to you?"
+
+He made a comprehensive gesture: "Oh, I am always supporting a family!"
+he said with an amusing attempt at irritability.  "I am always
+supporting a family that is not mine, that does not sit at my
+hearthstone or at my table.  I am always marrying other people to some
+one else, and dressing other people's children!"
+
+He finished with a laugh: "There, No. 5 is up!  Aren't you interested
+in this race?"
+
+Mrs. Falconer and Bulstrode had walked a little from where the young
+couple chattered indifferent to everything but each other.
+
+"No; I am only interested in what you are saying.  What have you
+planned to do or thought out for them, Jimmy?  What do your rebellious
+phrases imply?  _Are_ you really going to make a home for----?"
+
+Bulstrode said stubbornly.  "No!  I am going to show him how to make
+one for himself."
+
+He stopped short where he stood: he had resumed the care of her
+parasol, her fan, and purse.
+
+Her face, as she took in his exposition of his plan for the
+regeneration of a decayed nobility, was inscrutable.  Instead of
+exclaiming, she stopped to speak a moment to some people who passed,
+shook hands with the owner of the favorite, and when they were once
+again alone said to her friend:
+
+"Isn't it too delightful! the whole scene?  I mean to say, how
+perfectly they do it all.  How thoroughly gay it is, how debonnair,
+graceful, and _bien compris_.  Look at the wonderful color of the
+_pesage_, and the life of the whole thing!  These Latin most thoroughly
+understand the art of living.  You scarcely ever see a care-worn face
+in France.  Look at Jack now!  Did you ever see such anxiety as he
+represents?  If Bon Jour is beaten I don't know _what_ will become of
+him.  What shall I do with him?"
+
+Bulstrode's interest on this subject was tepid.
+
+"Oh, he'll be all right!" he said indifferently.  "Take him to the
+Dublin Horse Fair."
+
+And then as though she had not capriciously left the other topic, Mrs.
+Falconer asked:
+
+"Just what _is_ your plan for Molly and her Marquis?  May I not know?"
+
+And Bulstrode who had never in any way thought out a plan or scheduled
+a scheme for the wise distribution of the good he intended to do,
+educated now, so he fondly hoped, by his failures, wiser, he was proud
+to believe, by several sharp lessons--with no little confidence and
+something of pride, said to his companion:
+
+"I have a ranch out West, you know; a little property I took for a bad
+debt once.  It has turned out to be a great and good piece of luck.
+That time I was fortunate--" (his tone, was congratulatory and Mrs.
+Falconer smiled prettily).  "I now need a second overseer again--a man
+of brains, good temper, and physical endurance, who can keep accounts.
+Experience isn't at all necessary.  There's my Englishman there, my
+Christmas tramp, you recall; he'll show De Presle-Vaulx his duties.
+It's a good enough berth for any determined chap who has his way to
+make and an ideal to work for.  I purpose to send this Frenchman out on
+a salary and to see what stuff he's made of.  After a year or two, with
+good sense and push, he will be in a position to ask any girl to be his
+wife.  I'll raise his salary, and if Molly is the girl I take her for,
+she will help him there."
+
+"And his family, Jimmy?"
+
+"Damn his family!" risked the aroused Bulstrode.
+
+Mrs. Falconer laughed.
+
+"Really!  It is casual of you! but you don't know them and can't!  But
+they can quite spoil the whole thing as far as Molly is concerned.  His
+tradition and race, his home and all it means to him--why you can't
+roughly run against all the old conventions like that, my dear man!"
+
+"Well," said the ruthless gentleman, "then he can go and feed on their
+charity, can take to his flesh-pots and give up the girl.  She is far
+too good for any foreign fortune-hunter anyway.  You spoil a man, all
+of you.  You'd prefer a disreputable roue to a cowboy with money in his
+pocket and a heart."
+
+"Would it then prove to you De Presle-Vaulx's heart if he threw over
+his family and went West?"
+
+"Yes," said the other quickly.  "It would prove he loves the girl."
+
+"You forget his mother."
+
+Bulstrode fumed.
+
+"I have not the honor to forget her; I don't know the Marquise de
+Presle-Vaulx."
+
+"I do," interrupted his friend.  "She is a charming, gentle old dear;
+narrow, if you call it so, clear-headed and delightful.  She adores her
+only son, and thinks quite properly that his name, his estates,
+beautiful if mortgaged, are a fair exchange for an American _dot_.
+Maurice de Presle-Vaulx, after all, does not go poverty-stricken to the
+woman he marries.  There are not so many ways to live after one is
+twenty-five, and to uproot this scion of an old race, to exact such a
+sacrifice----"
+
+"It would make a man of him."
+
+"He is one already.  There are all kinds, I need not tell you so."
+
+"He is head over heels in debt."
+
+Mrs. Falconer laughed again.
+
+"We make him out an acrobat between us."
+
+"He gambles on borrowed money."
+
+"You mean that you have forced him to borrow from you?  He will pay
+what he owes, I am sure of him."
+
+Bulstrode wheeled and scrutinized her, and said with the natural
+asperity of a man who is bored by a woman's too generous championship
+of another man:
+
+"You stand for him warmly."
+
+Mrs. Falconer, reading him, said quickly:
+
+"Oh, I know him thoroughly!  He has the faults of his race, but as an
+individual he is the right sort."
+
+With their pretty habit, her cheeks had grown red in the course of the
+discussion.
+
+"Please give me my parasol; it's awfully hot here."
+
+He opened it for her and she held its rosy lining against the sun.
+
+Mr. Falconer, who from the rail had been observing, through the haze
+formed by countless cocktails, the figure of his wife in her white
+dress, as well as the figure of her faithful squire, here came
+swaggering up to them both.  He was never jealous, but Mr. Bulstrode's
+uniform courtesy and attention to the woman neglected by her husband
+often piqued him to attention.  As he drew near, Mrs. Falconer asked
+quickly:
+
+"And the Marquis, Jimmy?  What do you suppose he will say to your Wild
+West scheme?"
+
+Bulstrode smiled.
+
+"Oh, you women understand us even when we are stupid mysteries to
+ourselves!  Tell me, how will he take this?"
+
+"He will refuse."  The lady was quick in her decision.  "He cannot in
+consistence do otherwise.  He will consider your plan provincial and
+Yankee, and he will consider, what you ignore, that it will kill his
+mother.  If he cannot marry Molly with the family consent in proper
+French fashion he will naturally give her up.  But first of all, my
+dear Jimmy, he will put _you_ in your place!"
+
+Bulstrode cast a fatherly glance to where the young people sat talking
+together: the Marquis in gray clothes of the latest London make, a
+white rose in his button-hole, and monocle in his eye, a figure more
+unlike the traditional cowboy one could scarcely conceive.
+
+"Your taste is good, ma chere amie," his voice was delighted.  "Your
+instinct as a connoisseur is faultless; but you are not quite sure of
+your _objet d'art_ this time."  He nodded kindly at the Parisian--"He's
+all right! he's a true sport, a lover and a man.  De Presle-Vaulx knows
+my Wild West scheme and has accepted."
+
+
+Molly had put twenty-five francs on Bon Jour and expected to win it.
+The money Bulstrode played would have bought a very handsome present
+for his lady, and he felt as if he were making an anonymous gift to the
+woman he loved.
+
+At the ringing of the bell Falconer left his post by the railing and
+came up and joined the little group of his friends just below the Grand
+Stand.  He lit a cigar, threw down the match furiously, smoked
+furiously, and nerved himself for the strain.
+
+Nodding toward the betting contingent he muttered: "They're sheep.
+They're all betting on the favorite naturally.  Bon Jour wasn't
+mentioned for place even, poor little girl!"
+
+The ignored little racer had ambled around the field, her jockey in
+crimson and white, doubled up upon her back after the manner of his
+profession.  Bon Jour was as golden red as a young chestnut; she had
+four white feet that twinkled on the fragrant turf whose odors of
+crushed blades and green blades, of earth and the distant smell of the
+sea went to her pretty head.  She threw it up eagerly as her disputants
+filled the field.  There were nine horses scheduled, but only five
+qualified.  The Rothschild gelding, an English gray, and two others
+named for probable places.
+
+"She's cool as a rose," murmured Bon Jour's owner, "and just look at
+her form, will you!"
+
+It was charming, and already the American's horse was attracting
+attention.
+
+Molly, with De Presle-Vaulx's aid, rose on her chair, from which her
+excitement threatened at any moment to precipitate her.
+
+"Oh, Maurice--of course she'll win.  Isn't she a _dear_?  How much
+shall I make on twenty-five francs?"
+
+Bulstrode smiled.
+
+"A frightful amount!  There are twenty to one up on her, Molly."
+
+The girl mentally calculated, exclaimed with pleasure and, with
+sparkling eyes, watched the lining-up of the racers.  Neck to neck they
+stood, a splendid showing of satin and shine from fetlock to forelock,
+equine beauty enough to gladden a sporting man's heart, and all five
+were away before Miss Malines was even sure which one was the great
+Grimace.
+
+From the first the favorite's nose was to the good.  His shapely body
+followed, and when the horses came in sight again beyond the right-hand
+hedge, he had put four lengths between himself and the others.  The
+winner of the Grand Prix had all the field with him.  But the gray
+gelding who strained at Grimace's flanks had no staying powers,
+although he was backed as strongly for place as was Grimace to win; as
+he fell back Bon Jour began to attract notice.
+
+Bulstrode and De Presle-Vaulx exchanged glances over the absorbed
+figure of Jack Falconer.  "She may yet win place," murmured the younger
+man.
+
+As they came up the wide turf sweep that lay like an emerald sea
+crested by the dark waves of the hedges, as the horses rocked like
+ships over the obstacle--Bon Jour closely followed the favorite.
+
+At the moment Miss Malines cried: "Oh, a jockey's off!  Oh, Jack, it's
+Bon Jour!  She's _thrown_ her jockey!  I see the red and white."
+
+But Falconer biting his cigar fiercely, laughed in scorn.  "She's
+thrown _them_ all right.  She's left them all _behind_ her--see!" he
+pointed, "there are only three running."  And, indeed, as they came
+again in sight, one of the horses was seen to be wandering loose about
+the course, and another cantered nonchalantly some hundred yards behind.
+
+"She's not even trying," murmured her enchanted owner.  "She's cool as
+a rose."
+
+The cries which had named the Rothschild gelding from the start were
+now mingled, and Bon Jour, flying around the emerald course, might have
+heard her name for the first on the public lips.  She was running
+gracefully, her head even with the favorite's saddle and the English
+gray was a far-off third.  Bon Jour was pressing to fame.
+
+At the last hurdle as they appeared flying in full sight of the Grand
+Stand it was evident the pretty creature had made her better good.  The
+horses leapt simultaneously and came down on all fours, with Grimace to
+the rear, and amongst the frantic acclamation with which the public is
+always ready to greet the surprise of unlooked-for merit, Bon Jour
+passed Grimace by half a metre at the goal.  Jack Falconer was an
+interesting figure on the turf; his horse was worth twenty thousand
+pounds.
+
+
+Several hours later, Bulstrode, early in the salon, walked up and down
+waiting the arrival of the ladies.  He had paid downstairs a hundred
+francs for the privilege of dining in the window of the restaurant,
+because Mrs. Falconer chanced to remark that one saw the room better
+from that point.  And the head waiter even after this monstrous tip
+said if "_ces dames_" were late there would be no possibility to keep
+this gilt-edged table for them.  It was the night of the year at
+Trouville: Boldi and his Hungarians played to five hundred people in
+the dining-room.
+
+Bulstrode looked at the clock; they had yet ten minutes' grace.
+
+Extremely satisfied with himself, with Bon Jour, above all with the
+French Marquis--he felt a glow of affection for the whole French nation.
+
+"How we misjudge them!" he mused; "how we accuse them of clinging to
+their families' apron strings, of being bad colonists; call them
+hearthstone huggers, degenerates; and declare that they lack nerve and
+force to rescue themselves from degeneration!  And here without
+hesitation this young man----"  At this moment the salon door opened,
+and one of the ladies he had been expecting came in, the youngest one,
+Miss Molly Malines, in a tulle dress, an enormous white hat, a light
+scarf over her shoulders, and the remains of recent tears on her face.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode!" she exclaimed, half putting out her hand and
+drawing it back again, as she bit her lips: "I thought I should find
+Mary here; I wanted to see her first to _cry_ with! but of course it is
+you I _should_ see and not cry with!"
+
+She gave a little gasp and put her handkerchief to her eyes to his
+consternation; then to his relief controlled herself.
+
+"Maurice has just told me _everything_," she repeated the word with
+much the same desperation that De Presle-Vaulx had put into a gesture
+which to Bulstrode had signified ruin.
+
+"He's too wonderful! too _glorious_, Mr. Bulstrode, isn't he?  I loved
+him before, but I _adore_ him now!  He's glorious.  I never heard
+anything so terrible and so silly!"
+
+Bright tears sprang to brighter eyes, and she dashed them away.
+
+("She's adorable") he was obliged to acknowledge it.
+
+"Why, how could you be so cruel; yes, I will say it, so cruel, so hard,
+so brutal?"
+
+"_Brutal_?"--he fairly whispered the word in his surprise.
+
+"Why, fancy Maurice in the West, in the dreadful Western life, in that
+climate----!"
+
+"Why, it is the Garden of Eden," murmured Bulstrode.
+
+"Oh, I mean to say with cattle and cowboys."
+
+"Come," interrupted her father's friend, practically, "you don't know
+what you are talking about, Molly.  You don't talk like an American
+girl.  They've spoiled De Presle-Vaulx, and this will make a man of
+him!"
+
+Miss Malines called out in scorn:
+
+"_A man of him_!  What do you think he is?  He's the finest man I ever
+saw.  You don't know him.  Just because he has a title and his mother
+spoils him, and because he has been a little reckless in debts and
+things, you throw him over as you do all the French race without
+knowing them!"
+
+Her tears had dried and her cheeks flamed.
+
+"Why, Maurice has served three years as a common soldier in the
+Madagascar Army; and _that's_ no cinch!  Cuba's a joke to it.  He's had
+the fever and marched with it.  He's slept all night with no covering
+but the clothes he had worn for weeks.  He's eaten bread and drunk
+dirty water.  He's been a soldier three years.  The way I came to know
+him was at Dinard where he swam out into the sea to save a fisherman
+who couldn't swim, and all the town was out in the storm to welcome
+him!  They carried him up the streets in their arms--" she waited a
+minute to steady her voice--"He's been two years exploring in Abyssinia
+with a native caravan--no white man near him, he's the youngest man
+wearing the Legion d'Honneur in France.  _And you want to send him out
+to make a cowboy of him in the American West to turn him into a man_!"
+
+Mr. Bulstrode had never heard such impressive youthful scorn.  Molly
+threw back her pretty head and laughed.
+
+"Do you know many cowboys who have been three years a soldier;
+travelled through unexplored countries; written a book that was crowned
+by an academy?  Well, I don't!" she said boldly.  "Of course I like his
+title, of course I am proud of his traditions.  They're fine!  And it
+is no dishonor to love his chateau and his Paris hotel, and I'd love
+his mother, too--if she'd let me.  But I adore Maurice _as he is_, and
+he's man enough for me!"
+
+The floor seemed to quiver under poor Bulstrode, who could scarcely see
+distinctly the lovely excited face as he ventured timidly:
+
+"I didn't know all these things, Molly."
+
+She was still unpitying.
+
+"Of course not!  Americans never do know.  They only _judge_.  You
+didn't think Maurice would tell you all his good points!  He doesn't
+think they are anything.  He only sees the fact that he has debts and
+that we are both poor and his family won't give their consent."
+
+Mr. Bulstrode smiled and said:
+
+"He is naturally forced to see these things, my dear child."
+
+The girl softened at his tone and said more gently:
+
+"Well, they are terrible facts, of course.  It only means that my heart
+is broken, but it doesn't mean that I will consent to your plan, or to
+his plan, Mr. Bulstrode.  I won't make him break his mother's heart and
+ruin his career for me."
+
+The gentleman came up and took her hands: his voice was very gentle:
+
+"What, then, will you do?"
+
+"Oh, wait," she said with less spirit.  "Wait until his mother
+consents, or until she dies...."  She began to hang her head.  Her
+eulogy of her lover over, only the dry facts of the present remained.
+She had no more enthusiasm with which to animate her voice.
+
+Here Mrs. Falconer and the Marquis opened the door, and started back as
+the animated picture of beauty being consoled by kindness met their
+view.
+
+"Oh, come along in!" cried the girl cheerily.  "I have just been
+ballyragging Mr. Bulstrode!"
+
+De Presle-Vaulx came eagerly forward:
+
+"Don't listen to her, Monsieur!  Molly's tired out after so much
+success."
+
+The startled benefactor looked doubtfully from her to the young man.
+
+"And you?"
+
+"Oh, I?" shrugged De Presle-Vaulx, "I'm already half cowboy!"
+
+Mary Falconer put her arm round Molly's waist, drew her to her, "and
+Molly is more than half Marquise."
+
+"Mr. Bulstrode," again cried the girl impetuously.  "_Please_ reason
+with him!  He's horribly obstinate.  You have put this dreadful idea in
+his head; now please tell him how _ridiculous_ it is.  If he goes West
+and spoils his career and breaks with his family, I'll never marry him!
+As it is, I will wait for ever!"
+
+"But my dear child!"  Mary Falconer was determined to have the whole
+thing out before them, "you don't seem to get it into your head that
+you have neither of you a sou, and Maurice can never earn any money in
+France."
+
+Miss Malines, to whom money meant that she drew on her father, the
+extravagant stockbroker whose seat even in the Stock Exchange was
+mortgaged, and who had not ten thousand dollars' capital in the
+world--lost countenance here at the cruel and vulgar introduction of
+the commodity on which life turns.  She sighed, her lips trembled, and
+she capitulated:
+
+"Oh, if that's really true ... as I suppose it is----"
+
+Bulstrode watched her, she had grown pale--she drew a deep breath, and,
+looking up, not at her lover, but at the elder man, said softly:
+
+"Why, I guess I'll have to give him quite up then."
+
+But here De Presle-Vaulx made an exclamation, and before them all took
+Molly in his arms:
+
+"No," he said tenderly, "never, never!  _That_ the last of all!  Mr.
+Bulstrode is right.  I must work for you, and I will.  We'll both go
+West together.  Couldn't you?  Wouldn't you come with me?"
+
+... "And your mother?" asked the girl.
+
+"Nothing--" De Presle-Vaulx whispered, "nothing, counts but _you_."
+
+Over their heads Bulstrode met his friend's eye, and in his were--he
+could not help it--triumph, keen delight, and in hers there was anger
+at him and tears.
+
+At this moment the waiter put his head in at the door and implored
+Monsieur to come down if he wanted the seat in the window.
+
+"Oh, we're coming!" Mrs. Falconer cried impatiently.  "Molly, there's
+some eau-de-cologne on the table.  Put it on your eyes.  Don't be long
+or we'll lose our place.  The West will keep!"
+
+She went out of the door and Bulstrode followed her.  In the hall she
+said tartly:
+
+"Well, I hope you're satisfied!  I never saw a more perfect inquisitor.
+Why didn't you live at the time of the Spanish persecution?"
+
+He ignored her scathing question:
+
+"I am satisfied," he said happily, "with both of them; they're bricks."
+
+The lady made no reply as she rustled along by his side to the elevator.
+
+From the floors below came the clear, bright sound of the Hungarian
+music in an American cake-walk and the odor of cigars and wines and the
+distinct suggestion of good things to eat came tempting their nostrils.
+
+As Bulstrode followed the brilliant woman, a sense of defeat came over
+him and with less conviction he repeated:
+
+"I _am_ satisfied, but you, my friend, are not."
+
+"Oh," shrugged Mary Falconer desperately, "you know _I've_ no right to
+think, or feel, or criticise!  I never pretend to run people's lives or
+to act the benefactor or to take the place of Fate."
+
+The light danced and sparkled on the jet in her black dress, on the
+jewels on her neck.  Under her black feather-hat her face, brilliant
+and glowing, seemed for once to be defiant to him, her handsome eyes
+were dark with displeasure.
+
+The poor fellow could never recall having caused a cloud to ruffle her
+face before in his life.  It was not like her.  Her tenderness for a
+second had gone.  He could not live without that, he knew it, what ever
+else he must forego.
+
+He said, with some sadness, "I suppose you're right: if one can buy
+even _a honeymoon_ for another couple he shouldn't lose the
+opportunity."
+
+She looked up at him quickly.  They had reached the ground floor--they
+had left the elevator and they stood side by side in the hall.  The
+lady had a very trifle softened, not very much, still he noticed the
+change and was duly grateful.
+
+"We must wait here," she said, "for the others to come down.  I can't
+let Molly go in alone, and I don't know where my husband is; I haven't
+seen him all day."
+
+Bulstrode continued spiritlessly: "Molly, if you remember, begged me to
+tell De Presle-Vaulx how 'perfectly ridiculous' my scheme for the Wild
+West is.  I will tell him this--you will coach me,--there'll be some
+pleasure in that, at least! and then I'll find out for what sum the
+Marquise de Presle-Vaulx will sell her son.  I'll buy him," he said,
+"for Molly, and of course," he brought it out quite simply, "I shall
+_dot_ the girl."
+
+And then the lady stepped back and looked at him.  He felt, before that
+she had merely swept him with her eyes; now she looked at him.  She
+cried his name out--"Jimmy!"--that was all.
+
+But in the exclamation, in the change of her mobile face, in the lovely
+gesture that her hand made, as if it would have gone to his, Bulstrode
+was forced to feel himself eminently, gloriously repaid, and it is not
+too much to say that he did.
+
+
+
+
+THE FIFTH ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+V
+
+IN WHICH HE MAKES NOBODY HAPPY AT ALL
+
+Bulstrode stood before the entrance of the Hotel de Paris bidding his
+friends good-night.  Watching them, at least one of them, enter in
+under the shelter of the glass pavilion, he considered how much more
+lonely he was at that special moment than he could remember having been
+before.  Of course he had bidden Mary Falconer good-night a hundred
+dozen times in the course of his life, but it seemed to come with a
+more sublime significance than ever how he gave her up every time he
+said good-by and how he was himself left alone.  And yet, had Mrs.
+Falconer been asked, she would have said that she never found her
+friend more cold and more constrained.  In his correct evening dress
+with the flower she herself had given him in his buttonhole, his panama
+in his hand, he had been absorbed in her beauty, in the grace of her
+dark dress, bright with scintillating ornaments--her big feathered hat
+under which her face was more lovely, more alluring than ever; and
+nothing in his eyes told the woman what he thought and felt.
+
+She touched his arm, saying:
+
+"Look, Jimmy."
+
+"Isn't that the lovely woman we've so often remarked?  See, she's all
+alone, how curious!  She's going over to the Casino to play, I suppose.
+_What_ can have happened to the man who has been with her all this
+time?  Where is the Prince Pollona?"
+
+As Bulstrode turned his head in the direction indicated, through the
+trees passed along the figure of a slender woman, trailing her thin
+gown over the pebbles and the grass.  She disappeared in the lighted
+doorway of the Casino.
+
+"You're quite bearish to-night," Mrs. Falconer said reproachfully,
+"quite a bear.  I believe you're angry!  Dear Jimmy, you may, I
+promise, carry out all your philanthropies without my interference; I
+won't even criticise or tease.  I promise you next time you shall go
+sweetly and serenely on your foolish way!"
+
+"Oh," he got out with effort, "I believe I've suddenly grown awfully
+selfish, for I find I'm so ridiculous as only to want things for
+myself----"
+
+(When he stopped she did not help him but, instead, persisted gently
+with the wicked feminine way she had of urging him, tempting him on.)
+
+"What, then, what do you wish?  Can't you tell me?"
+
+He laughed almost roughly and said, "No, it's a secret, and I'm one of
+those unusual creatures who can keep a secret."
+
+The woman's face changed.  He saw the shadow that crossed it.  "Come,"
+she sighed, "you must bid me good-night..."
+
+And at this moment he had seen Jack Falconer emerge from a still more
+shadowy corner, a cigar between his teeth.  Drawing his wife's arm
+through his, Falconer nodded to the other man and said they had all
+better be going up.  Bulstrode noted bitterly the satisfaction on
+Falconer's bestial, indulgent face and the content that man felt with
+himself this evening, his triumph at the race's termination.  His horse
+had won the stakes and was famous, his wife had been called to-day the
+loveliest woman in Trouville, and not for the first time Bulstrode
+suffered from it, the proprietorship with which Falconer considered his
+wife.  For the smallest part of a second he fancied that the woman drew
+away, half turned away, looked toward him; and in dread that he might,
+if he met her eyes, see some look like appeal, Bulstrode avoided
+meeting her glance.  He saw them pass under the glass roof of the hotel
+leaving him standing alone.
+
+The deserted lover waited until they had disappeared; then, turning
+abruptly, vaguely in search of human beings with whom he might exchange
+a word should he feel inclined to talk, dreading the deserted gardens
+ami finding his own rooms the dreariest prospect of all, he went into
+the Casino with the intention of waiting for the Frenchman who he
+thought more than likely would come and join him there.  The Marquis
+failing him, Bulstrode chose a place not far from the table where the
+lovely woman, that Mrs. Falconer and himself had remarked, seated
+herself before the game.
+
+Bulstrode's sense of desolation and loneliness would not leave him.  If
+his luck had been bad, the excitement of the sport might have brought
+him some sensation; but, on the contrary, he won.  "Only," he said
+humorously, as he gathered up his winnings, "only unlucky in love!"
+
+It was well on in the night when he thrust his last roll of bank notes
+into his pocket.  He had beaten the bank; he had raked up and stuffed
+away a small fortune.  As he wandered out through the deserted rooms,
+he noted, bent over the table, her head in her hand, the woman who, in
+spite of his sincere absorption in Mary Falconer, had, like a
+temptation, crossed his mind when he first came into the Casino.  No
+one disturbed her, and she had remained in this dejected posture for
+some time.  This one amongst the many women in Trouville, Bulstrode and
+his friends had remarked for several days.  She had first appeared
+alone; made a discreet _debut_ on the beach, passed through the Rue de
+Paris and kept away from the more public parts of the town.  Later she
+had been joined by a man well known in the world, the Prince Pollona,
+who was travelling incognito.  The woman's beauty and manner were such
+that her actual standing was a mooted question; it had even been
+remarked that she was the princess herself incognita, but that they all
+knew to be impossible.
+
+Before the official who waited to see the last players leave the
+_salle_ could speak to her, she rose of her own accord, gathering her
+silken cloak about her, and went quickly from the gambling room.  Once
+on the stairway, however, her footsteps halted and she went slowly down
+as if reluctant to leave the shelter of the brightly lighted
+apartments.  Bulstrode following her, observed her closely; tall, very
+slender, with a fine carriage and a lovely blonde head set on the most
+graceful of necks, older than Molly and younger than Mrs. Falconer, she
+was quite as _comme il faut_.  All along she had worn a collar and rope
+of pearls which had excited Molly's enthusiasm.  To-night she was
+denuded of her jewels; her neck was bare.  Bulstrode remarked this as
+he walked behind in full view of the soft adorable _nuque_ below the
+curls of the girl's fair hair.  She trailed her dress slowly through
+the garden walks, her white figure in the darkness escaping from him a
+little as the trees made an avenue for her.  But Bulstrode distinctly
+felt that he was expected to follow.  Whether or not he might intrude
+he did not ask, as he came along, surprised however to see her actually
+stop short within a few feet of him.  Under the full light of one of
+the big lamps, she stood motionless, her arms by her side, her chin
+raised.  Now that he was quite near her he found her more lovely than
+he had even imagined.
+
+He went up directly to her and, without asking how she might take his
+interference, said: "You cannot remain here alone, Madame, the gardens
+are deserted.  What can I do for you?"
+
+As he so spoke in his kind voice the woman lifted her head and looked
+full at him; Bulstrode was surprised at her words and more particularly
+at her voice.
+
+"You--" she breathed, "you?"
+
+Taking it for granted that for some reason or other it might be him
+more than any other man, Bulstrode went on.  "You seem more or less to
+be in trouble, if I may say so.  Won't you please let me be of some
+service to you--let me at least see you out of these gloomy gardens?"
+
+But the woman, whose face had flushed, exclaimed: "Oh, no, no!  Please
+don't bother; please leave me.  I want to be alone."  And, as she
+spoke, she turned and went away from him some few steps.
+
+Jimmy Bulstrode never knew what impulse made him spring forward and
+with one sudden gesture dash from her hand what it held.  But the
+little object fell some distance away, hard down in the grass, to be
+found the next morning by the guardians of the place and considered as
+a relic of the fortunes of Casino hazard.
+
+"Heavens!" exclaimed the gentleman, and he caught in his hand the
+slender wrist from which he had just dashed the weapon.  "My good God!
+You poor child, why, why----" and he could go no further.  The woman's
+face, although moved, was singularly tranquil for the face of a woman
+on the verge of self-destruction.
+
+"Won't you leave me," she whispered and Bulstrode, gathering himself
+together, said firmly:
+
+"Leave you?  Not now, certainly, not for anything in the world.  And
+you must let me take you home."
+
+After a few moments' silence in which she bit her lip and apparently
+controlled a burst of hysterical weeping, the young woman accepted his
+offer and very lightly put her hand on his arm.  "You may, if you
+like," she consented, "take me home, as you call it.  I am staying at
+the Hotel des Roches Noires."
+
+From the Casino gardens through the silent town without exchanging one
+word with her--for he saw she wished to be silent--Jimmy took the lady,
+as he called it, home.  Once in the big corridor of the vast hotel,
+into whose impersonal shelter they entered as the only late comers, he
+stood for a second before bidding her good-night, whilst the porter
+eyed them, scarcely with curiosity, so used was he to late entrances of
+this kind which he imagined he fully understood.
+
+"Good-night--"  Bulstrode started and at once cut himself short, for he
+did not really intend to say it then--he had not spoken to her and he
+knew he would never leave her until at least he was sure she would not
+take her life before the next morning.
+
+The girl extended her hand, her beautiful face was gray.  "Will you
+not," she asked, "come up with me to my drawing-room?  I am quite
+alone."
+
+Bulstrode bowed and without hesitation followed her up the stairs to
+the conventional suite of hotel rooms, where, in the little salon,
+trunks stood about in the evident indications of hasty packing.
+
+The girl threw her gloves, her handkerchief and her soft silken cloak
+on the table.  She then seated herself in a corner of the sofa by an
+open dressing-bag and Bulstrode, at her invitation, took a chair
+opposite.  He scarcely knew how to begin his conversation with her, but
+he determined at once to go toward what he believed to be the most
+crying need.
+
+"You lost to-night," he said.  "I saw it.  As it happened, I was lucky.
+I have no need of money, none."  He had drawn from his pocket piles of
+louis; he took out from his wallet a roll of notes.
+
+He saw, too, as well as the look of passion and admiration, that her
+face was familiar, at least that there was about it something that
+suggested remembrance.
+
+"This," she said, "is a fortune!"  Her accent was British and her voice
+very soft and sweet.  "It is quite a large fortune, isn't it?  My debts
+here are small.  I have not fifty pounds in the world," she said
+smiling, "I work for my living, too.  I have been extravagant, for I
+had really made a lot of money, but lately I've thrown everything away.
+Yesterday my pearls were sold, and my jewels went last week; the races
+and the Casino did the rest!  This would make me quite rich."
+
+"Work for her living!" Bulstrode thought, with a pang as he looked at
+her.  "Heavens, poor dear!"  A thousand questions came to his lips, but
+he asked her none.  He was mastering the feelings her personality, her
+trouble, and the night, aroused.  He also decided to go at once, while
+there was still time.
+
+"It is very droll that this money should have come from _you;_" she
+repeated "from you," with the insistence on the pronoun that he had
+before remarked as strange.  "Even now you don't know me, do you?
+Don't you know who I am?"
+
+"No," Bulstrode wondered, "and yet I have certainly seen you before,
+but save as I have noticed and admired you here, I don't _think_ I know
+you.  Should I?"
+
+"You _have_ seen me then here?" she caught delighted, "you have
+actually noticed me?  You said 'admire'; did you perhaps find something
+in me to like?"
+
+"Who," he said with sincerity, "could help himself!  Of course I've
+seen you and remarked you with your friend."
+
+Here she bit her lip and put up her hand.  "Oh, please," she frowned,
+"Oh, please!"
+
+Bulstrode, surprised at her accents of distress, murmured an excuse and
+said he was much at fault, he should remember.  But here the girl
+smiled.  "Well, it is not exactly a duty to know me; my name is not
+quite unknown.  I play in 'The Shining Lights Company,' 'The Warren
+Company,' I am Felicia Warren--_now_, haven't you seen me play!"
+
+He was sorry, very, very sorry that he had not!  Oh, but he knew her
+name and her success; they were famous.  He wished he could have
+assured her that he had admired her before the footlights ...!
+
+Felicia Warren's eyes strayed down at the table on which the money was
+so alluringly spread.
+
+"I've been touring in Australia and the Colonies, still I go now and
+then to the Continent, though I am almost always in London."  She
+paused, then regarded him fully with her great blue eyes.  "Don't you
+remember, Mr. Bulstrode, a great many years ago when you took a
+shooting-box in Glousceshire?  Don't you remember...?"
+
+Staring at her, trying to place the image which was now taking form, he
+did; he _did_ remember it and she?
+
+"There was a mill there on the place.  Rugby Doan was the miller, he is
+the miller still."  Didn't Mr. Bulstrode remember that Doan had a
+daughter?  She had been fifteen years old then, she had ambitions, she
+was altogether a ridiculous and silly little thing; didn't he remember?
+
+Bulstrode was silent.
+
+The gentleman, Mr. Bulstrode, took a strong liking to Doan; he gave him
+the money to educate his daughter.  Oh, dear me, such a generous lot of
+money!  Then, as the girl was extraordinarily silly (she had ambitions)
+she went on the stage.  Her father never forgave her; poor father!  She
+had never seen him since.  "Mr. Bulstrode, don't you remember Felicia
+Doan?--I am the miller's daughter."
+
+Bulstrode extended his hand.  He wanted to say: "My poor child, my poor
+little girl," but Miss Warren's dignity forbade it.  "No wonder your
+face was familiar," he said quietly; "no wonder!  How I wish I might
+have seen you play, but we must do something to make your father look
+at things in a reasonable way.  What can we do?"
+
+The girl shook her head.  "Nothing" she said absently, "oh, nothing.
+You know what an English yeoman is! or perhaps you don't!  My greatest
+kindness is to keep away from the Mill on the Rose" ...
+
+But Felicia Warren was not thinking of Glousceshire or of her father.
+Still looking down at the money on the table, not even toward her
+newly-found friend, she went on, "It is not half as curious, our
+meeting here, as one might think.  I knew you were here when I came and
+I have watched you every day with--with your friend."  A slight
+expression of amusement crossed her face as, looking up, she caught his
+puzzled expression.  "Ah, you wonder about it!" she laughed gently.
+Coming a little nearer to him, she went on: "You see, you have been my
+benefactor, haven't you?"
+
+(Bulstrode wondered in just how far he _had_ been beneficent!)  "It's
+natural I should remember you with gratitude, isn't it?  Thanks to you
+I have made my name."  Her pride was touching.  "You've made it
+possible for me to know the world, to know life and to realize my
+career.  And now," she emphasized, "you've come to save my life and
+afterward give me a little fortune."  Here she again pointed to the
+money.  "My father took your money for years, Mr. Bulstrode, but _this,
+this_ must all go back.  You must take it back soon--not that it could
+really tempt me, but it hurts me to see it there."
+
+Bulstrode, more wretched than he had yet been in his philanthropic
+failures stared at her helplessly.  This blind beneficence, this gift
+made to the miller in a moment of enthusiasm had produced--how could he
+otherwise believe--fatal results?  Here was this delicate creature in
+the fastest place in Europe, deserted by a man who had brought her
+here--on the verge of suicide.
+
+Whilst speaking, Felicia Warren gathered up the gold and notes and she
+was thrusting the money into his hand.
+
+"Please, please be reasonable," he pleaded.  "You must let me help you.
+There isn't any question of delicacy in the situation where you find
+yourself to-night.  If ever a man should be a woman's friend, I should
+be that friend to you, and you must let me.  Don't refuse.  Money is
+such a little thing, such a stupid little thing."
+
+Miss Warren shook her head obstinately.  "Oh, that depends!  I've
+worked so hard that money often seems to me everything.  Indeed, I
+thought so to-night when I had not a sou!  I shall think so to-morrow
+when they seize my trunks for the hotel bill."
+
+"Seize your trunks!" he exclaimed.  "Why--you don't mean to say----?"
+
+The actress blushed crimson.  "Oh, of course you thought otherwise,"
+she said, throwing up her pretty head.  "I pay for my own livelihood,
+Mr. Bulstrode," she told him proudly, "I pay for _everything_ I have
+and wear and eat and do.  Don't feel badly at misunderstanding," she
+comforted him sweetly--"You have nothing to apologize for.  Why should
+you or anyone think otherwise?  But I don't care in the least what
+people say or think; that is, _I only care what one person says_."
+
+With some of his gold in her palm and some of his bills in her hands,
+Felicia Warren put both her hands on Bulstrode's arm.  "No," she said
+softly, "_I only care what one person thinks_.  Can't you see that you
+mustn't give me this?"
+
+"No," he persisted doggedly, charmed by her beyond his reason and angry
+to find that she would not let him help her in the way he wished, "I do
+_not_ see!  You must let me help you, you shall not be driven to
+desperation."
+
+"Driven to desperation!" her expression seemed to say.  Yes, so she had
+been, but not through financial anxieties.
+
+"Why, I had rather starve than take your money.  I could far sooner
+have taken it from poor Pollona; and he left me so dreadfully angry
+this morning."
+
+For a second neither spoke.  He saw the soft mobile face touched to its
+finest.  Felicia's eyes were violet and large, and their expression at
+the moment pierced him with its appeal.
+
+"Don't you see?" she whispered.  Her voice broke here.  Her hands
+trembled on his arm, some of the gold rattled on the floor and rolled
+under the divan.  She swayed and Bulstrode caught her.
+
+"... Ever since you came to the mill," she whispered,
+"ever--since--you--came--to--the--mill."
+
+Before Bulstrode had time to realize what she said, or the fact that
+his arm was about her, she had rushed across the room, thrown open the
+window and gone out on the balcony.  Left alone with what her words
+implied, Bulstrode watched her go.
+
+The clock on the mantel pointed to three and through the open window
+came the long, rushing sound of the sea on the beach.  The day was
+breaking and Bulstrode could see the white figure of Felicia Warren
+between the lighted room and the dawn.
+
+He told himself that there was no reason why he should look upon her as
+anything but an adventuress--and a very clever one--a very dangerous
+one.  But, at all events, there _was_ no doubt that she was Felicia
+Doan.  She refused his money, and she told him that she loved him.  But
+Jimmy Bulstrode, man of the world as he was, did not reason at all
+along those lines.  Whether because he was vain, as most men are, or
+because he was susceptible as he always told himself he was, he
+believed what she said.  More than once during the week at Trouville,
+when she should have been absorbed in Polonna, Bulstrode had caught her
+eyes fastened upon himself and as soon as she had met his own she had
+turned hers away.  He had no difficulty now in recalling the Mill on
+the Rose, or the lovely bit of country where his shooting-box had held
+him captive for nearly the whole hunting season.  Nor had he any
+difficulty in recalling the miller and his pretty daughter.  Felicia
+even then had been a wonder of good looks, and very intelligent and
+mature.  He could even see her as a child more plainly than he could
+recall the woman who had just left him.  She had been a pretty,
+romantic girl and--she had deeply charmed him.  He had walked with her
+under the willows; he had told her many things; he had gone boating
+with her on the Rose; he had tramped with her along the English lanes.
+Of course he had been wrong.  He had known it at the time--he had known
+it.  And perhaps one reason why he never reverted willingly to the days
+spent with the girl was because his conscience had not left him free.
+The money given to Doan, Bulstrode had always felt, was a sort of
+recompense for hours of pleasure to which he had no right.  Even at the
+time he had feared that he had disturbed the girl's peace, and because
+he had not wished to disturb his own, he had given up his lease and
+left the place.  Twelve years!  Well, they had altered her enormously,
+and her life had altered her and her experiences, and she was a very
+charming creature.  She was, in a measure, his very own work--almost
+his creation.  He had helped her to change her station, to alter her
+life.  What had she become?
+
+Bulstrode's reflections consumed twenty minutes by the clock.  He had
+smoked a cigarette and walked up and down the deserted room, passing
+many times the table where his gold lay scattered.
+
+Finally--he did not dare to trust himself to go out to her--he called
+her name, Felicia Warren's name, gently, and she came directly in.
+
+Whilst alone on the balcony she had wept.  Bulstrode could see the
+trace on her cheeks and she was paler even than when he had struck the
+pistol from her hand in the gardens of the Casino.  She came over to
+where he stood and said:
+
+"It's not a ruse, Mr. Bulstrode.  Girls like me always have ideals.  It
+is fame with some, money with others, dress and a social craze for a
+lot of them.  But with me, ever since you came it has been
+YOU--everything you said to me twelve years ago I have remembered.
+Silly as it seems, I could almost tell the very words.  I have seen a
+lot of men since, too many," she said, "and known them too well.  But I
+have never seen anybody like you."
+
+Bulstrode tried to stop her.
+
+"But no," she pleaded, "let me go on.  I've dreamed I might grow great,
+and that some day you would see me play and that I should play so well
+that you would go crazy about me!  I have thought this really, and I
+have lived for it, really--until--until----"
+
+As he did not question her or interrupt, she went on:
+
+"I said it was an ideal.  Thinking of you and what I'd like to grow for
+you kept me, in spite of everything--and I fancy you know in my
+profession what that means--good."
+
+Here Felicia Warren met his eyes frankly with the same look of entire
+innocence with which she might have met his eyes under the willows near
+her father's mill.
+
+"I've been so horribly afraid that when you _did_ come there might be
+heaps of things you would not like that I have been awfully hard on
+myself, awfully!"
+
+She was lacing and unlacing her slender fingers as she talked.
+
+"I went to Paris this spring because I saw that you were there, and
+after passing you several times in the Bois and seeing that as far as I
+could judge you were just the same as you had been, I took a new
+courage hoping, waiting, for you, and being the best I knew.  It seems
+awfully queer to hear a woman talk like this to a man," she understood
+it herself--"but you see I am used to speaking in public and I suppose
+it is easier for me than for most women."
+
+Bulstrode, more eager than anything else to know what her life had
+really been, surprised and incredulous at everything she said, broke in
+here:
+
+"But this--this man?"
+
+"Oh, Pollona," she replied, "has been there for years, for years.  He
+has loved me ever since I first made my _debut_ and he follows me
+everywhere like a dog.  I have never looked at any of them, until this
+week."
+
+With a sigh as if she renounced all her dreams, she said: "I grew tired
+of my romantic folly.  I was ill and nervous and could not play any
+more, and that was dreadful.  So, when Pollona came to me in Paris this
+spring, I gave him a sort of promise.  I told him that I was going to
+Trouville for the Grande Semaine, that I would think things over and
+that I would send him word."
+
+She picked up her handkerchief from the table where it lay beside her
+gloves and her cloak and twisted the delicate object in her hands,
+whose whiteness and transparency Bulstrode remarked.  They were clever
+hands, and showed her temperament and showed also singular breeding for
+one born in the state of life from which she had come.
+
+"Well," she said shortly, "as you have seen, I gave in--I gave in at
+last."
+
+"Why," Bulstrode asked abruptly, "did he leave you?"
+
+But instead of answering him, the girl said: "But you don't ask me why
+I sent for him to come?"
+
+He was silent.
+
+Here she hid her face and through her fingers he could see the red rise
+all along her cheek.  Her attitude, and more what she implied than what
+she said, and what he thought and feared, made the situation too much
+for him.  With a slight exclamation he put his arm about her and drew
+her to him.  As she rested against him he could feel her relax, hear
+her sigh deeply.  But, as he bent over her, she besought him to let her
+go, to set her free, and he obeyed at once.
+
+"There," she said, "don't do that again--don't!  Pollona left me
+because he was jealous of you."
+
+But at this, in sheer unbelief, her hearer exclaimed: "Oh, my dear
+girl!"
+
+"Oh, yes," she nodded, "when he found that I did not love him, that I
+could never love him, he forced me to tell him the truth.  Oh, don't be
+afraid," she said, as though she anticipated his anger, "you are in no
+wise connected with it.  He thinks of me as a romantic, foolish girl.
+He has laughed at me, tried to shake my faith, to destroy my ideal, but
+at least he was honest enough to believe me; and that is all I asked of
+him."
+
+Not for a moment did Bulstrode feel that she was weaving a web for him.
+There was something about her so sincere and simple, she was so fragile
+and fine and fair, there was so much of distinction in all she did and
+said that it put her well nigh, one might say touchingly, apart from
+the class to which she belonged.  Her art and her knocking about,
+instead of coarsening her, had refined her.  She looked like a bit of
+ivory, worn by experience, and struggle, to a fine polish; there was a
+brilliance about her and he understood and felt, he instinctively saw
+and knew, that she was unspoiled.
+
+It took him some half second to pull himself together.  Then to turn
+her thoughts from him, his from her, if he might, he questioned:
+
+"What sort of a man is Prince Pollona?"
+
+"Oh," she cried warmly, "the best! a kind, good, honorable friend.  He
+deserves something better than the horrors I have put him through, poor
+dear!"
+
+"He seemed very devoted to you," Bulstrode said, "if one could judge."
+
+Not without pride she admitted that he was, and that the Prince had
+always wanted to marry her.  "I might have married him," she repeated,
+"easily a score of times.  But how it appears to interest you----" she
+said jealously.
+
+"Only as he interests you," replied Bulstrode, "and what you tell me is
+a great satisfaction.  To be the Princess Pollona is an honor that many
+women would be glad to have conferred upon them."  Felicia Warren's
+good looks were undeniable, her _genre_ was exquisite, and Bulstrode,
+again with no effort, believed all she said.  Princes had married far
+less royal-looking women, of far more humble antecedents than Felicia
+Warren.
+
+"Oh, his rank didn't dazzle me," she murmured absently, "they seem all
+alike, and when they find out that I am not a certain kind they ask me
+to marry them...  But if I could only get back to the Mill on the Rose,
+Mr. Bulstrode!  If I might again see it as I used, if I could see you
+there as I used to see you--walk by your side; row with you on the
+river; if I could hear the wheel again as I used to hear it, then"--her
+voice was delicious, a very note of the river of which she spoke.  Oh,
+she must act well, there was no doubt about that; no wonder she had
+been a success: "If I might walk there with you--titles, even my art
+and all the rest"--she did not apparently dare to look at him as she
+spoke, but fixed her eyes across the room as if she saw back twelve
+years into ----shire ... "if I could _only, only_ go back again with
+you!"
+
+In spite of himself, carried away by her voice, Bulstrode said:
+
+"You shall, you shall go back with me!"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," she gave a little cry and caught his hand,
+steadying herself by the act.
+
+"Wait," he murmured, "wait, let me think it all out."  And, as she had
+done, Bulstrode walked over to the window, to the balcony where the
+fresh air met his face, where the breath from the sea fanned him,
+blended with the scent of the meadow.  Before Bulstrode the first
+reflection of the morning lay like silver on the sea.
+
+When he finally went back into the room, Felicia Warren had not moved.
+Just as he left her, she sat, deep back into the divan, leaning on her
+hand, with something like the glory of a dream on her face.  Standing
+in front of her, he said slowly:
+
+"I'm entirely free.  No one in the world depends upon me.  I have no
+tie, or bond to my life.  I have freedom and money.  So far--if what
+you say is all true, don't start so, for I believe it, every word--so
+far, I have spoiled your life."
+
+But the girl shook her head.
+
+"Oh, no, _you haven't_," she assured him.  "We make our own lives, I
+expect, and I told you that I could remember everything you ever said
+to me in the past--you never lied to me, and you were never anything
+but kind and dear.  I've been a fool, a fool!"
+
+Sitting there in her fragile evening dress, its ruffles torn where they
+had trailed across the pebbles in the street, the disorder of the room
+around her, its evidence of a homeless, wandering life, she seemed like
+a bit of flotsam that, no matter from what ship it had been blown, had
+at last drifted along the shore to his feet.  Unhappy and deserted, she
+reached the very tenderest part of Bulstrode's nature.  Cost him what
+it would, he must save her.
+
+But, as though the girl, with an instinctive fineness divined, she rose
+and going over to him very gently, laid her hand on his shoulder:
+
+"You must go _now_: that is what I ask you to do.  I have seemed, and
+indeed I have thrown myself upon your mercy; but, in reality, I don't
+do any such thing.  You will soon forget me, as you have been able to
+do all these years.  The table is full of your money.  I am poor, and
+yet I don't take it.  Doesn't _that_ prove a little my good faith?
+Doesn't it?  Only think of me as the most romantic dreamer you ever
+saw, and of nothing more.  Oh, _no_," she breathed softly, "_no_, a
+thousand times...!
+
+"I've answered your question before you've asked it!  No, I couldn't;
+no woman who wants love is content with pity.  I would rather starve
+than take money from you although I have lived on your money for years.
+I would rather be unhappy than take what you could offer me for love.
+You mustn't speak; you mustn't ask me.  The temptation is very great,
+you know, and it _might_ wreck me.  No, Mr. Bulstrode, and the reason
+why I say it is because I've seen."
+
+"'I've seen?'" he repeated her words.  "You've seen, but what do you
+mean--what have you seen?"
+
+"I'm going to tell you why I sent for Prince Pollona, although you
+don't ask me.  I came to Trouville alone.  I saw you; I've watched you
+with your friends."  Bulstrode accepted quietly.  "The two young people
+are engaged to be married and the other two are husband and
+wife--well...?"
+
+A spasm of pain crossed Felicia Warren's face and she put what she had
+to say with singular delicacy for an actress who had risen from the
+people.
+
+"I know," she said, "I understand, but when I saw you, I knew that
+there was no hope for any other woman who loved you--and I gave you up
+then.  I sent for Pollona."
+
+The introduction of even so little into the room as the suggestion of
+the woman he loved, startled Bulstrode as nothing else under the
+circumstances could have done.  It struck him like a lash.  He was
+disenchanted, and he more quietly considered the girl whose confession
+and whose beauty had made him nearly disloyal.
+
+Felicia Warren, as though she took it in her own hands and, mistress of
+herself, knew how much she could take and what she could deny herself,
+laid her hand on his arm.
+
+"You can do nothing at all, just as you have always done--and I--I can
+learn to forget.  But I have refused your money to-night," she said
+piteously, "haven't I? and I am penniless; I have refused more too;
+perhaps what no woman who loves could refuse as well.  Don't you think
+that there is something due me?  Answer me this?  Tell me.  You _do_
+love her, you _do_?"
+
+As she leaned against him, the years seemed to fall away and to leave
+her a girl again, nothing more than a child he had known.  He took her
+face between his hands and looked into it as one might look into a
+well.  He saw nothing but his own reflection there.
+
+"God knows," he said deeply, "I could not willingly pain a living
+creature, and to think that I should have made you suffer, have made a
+woman suffer for years.  Let me do all I can, my dear, let me--let me!"
+
+"You love her?" she persisted.
+
+His hands dropped to his side.  "With all my soul," he said, "with all
+my soul!"  He thought she would sink to the floor, but instead she
+caught fast hold of the table on which his money lay.  She leaned on it
+heavily, refusing his aid.  He took one of the girl's cold hands in his.
+
+"Listen, listen!  Let me say a word.  How do you think it makes a man
+feel to hear what you have told me to-night? to see you as you are, to
+grow to know you in such a short--in such a terrible way, and in a few
+hours to grow to know you so well, to find you dear, desirable, and
+then to leave you, as you tell me I must leave you.  I can't do it; I
+have never been so miserable in my life, and if I find I am entirely
+helpless to serve you I can never get over the regret."
+
+Felicia Warren turned a little.
+
+"I have found you near disaster," Bulstrode urged, "I must and will see
+you to the shore.  If you utterly refuse to let me take care of you as
+I can and will, will you then," he hesitated, then brought it
+out--"Will _you marry_ Prince Pollona?"
+
+She drew from him with a cry, and by what he said she seemed to have
+gained sudden strength.
+
+"My God!" she breathed, "You ask me _that_?  Oh, it proves, it proves
+how less than nothing I am..."
+
+Bulstrode saw he could not, must not undeceive her.
+
+"If you wish me to do _that_," she cried.  "Oh, how dreadfully, how
+cruelly, it breaks my dream!"
+
+Bulstrode said authoritatively, "Listen! listen for one moment."
+
+The eyes of the girl were dark with defiance; she brushed her hair off
+her brow with the back of her hand and stared straight before her.
+
+"--Otherwise," said Bulstrode, "I will remain here; I shall not leave
+these rooms till morning and you will then be forced to marry me, and
+since you think as you do, since I have told you my secret, ruin
+perhaps three lives."
+
+He had her at bay, and for a brief second, he thought she would accept
+his menace.  But then in a sudden her anger vanished and her face
+softened.
+
+"You know," she said, "that, loving you as I do, whatever you tell me
+to do, I must.  But let me go on with my career.  Let me work, let me
+work, and be free!"
+
+He said decidedly, "No!  You must be protected from yourself; you must
+have some one with you who will take care of you as I cannot do.  You
+must do this for me.  Is Pollona distasteful to you?" he pursued, "do
+you _hate_ him?"
+
+She made an indifferent shrug of her shoulders.
+
+Bulstrode was watching her face keenly, and after a second said, "No,
+you do not hate him.  You sent for him to come to you here.  He was the
+one to whom you turned, Felicia; turn to him now."
+
+As she wavered and hesitated, he insisted, coming close to her:
+
+"You have an ideal, you told me--well we can't get on without them.
+Your ideal has helped you, hasn't it?  It seems pretty well to have
+stood by you.  I have one too, you must understand that, and I ask you
+to help me to keep it secret now."
+
+"Why, what do you mean?" she questioned breathlessly.
+
+"I mean," he said gravely, "that I am a very lonely man.  My days are
+absolutely desolate excepting for those things that I can put into
+them.  I have nothing in my life and I am not meant for such a lot.  I
+am not meant for that!  Such an existence has bitter temptations for
+every man, and although I have never seen you before, possibly my fate
+and Pollona's rest to-night with you."
+
+Felicia Warren turned her great eyes with a sort of wonder to him.
+They rested on him with a tenderness that he could not long have borne.
+
+"You must not remain unmarried," he said, "you must not."
+
+Without answering him she went slowly over to her little desk.  She
+wrote a few seconds there and came back and handed to him a little slip
+of paper.
+
+"When the telegraph office opens to-day, will you send this dispatch
+for me?  It will fetch Prince Pollona to me no matter where he may be.
+I have asked him to meet me in Paris and I will take the morning train
+from here myself."
+
+She turned to the table on which his money lay and taking a roll of
+notes said, "I will pay up everything I owe here.  I think I have given
+you every proof, every proof."
+
+Bulstrode made no advance towards her.  He saw how she struggled with
+her emotion.  He let her get herself in hand.  Finally, with more
+composure, she spoke again:
+
+"I play next month in London.  Will you come to see me play?"
+
+"Oh, many times."
+
+"No," Felicia Warren murmured, "only once, and after that I shall never
+see you again."
+
+He would have protested, but she repeated, "never again," with such
+intensity that he bowed his head and he found that her decision brought
+a pang whose sharpness he wondered would last how long.
+
+He had started, with her last words, toward the door and she followed
+him over to it.  There, detaining him by her hand, she asked softly:
+"Does she, too, love you as much as this?"
+
+Bulstrode hesitated; then said, "I do not know."
+
+"Not know?" cried the girl, "you don't know?"
+
+It was with the greatest difficulty that Bulstrode could at any time
+bring to his lips even the name of the woman he loved.  At this moment
+the vision of her as he had seen her lately on her husband's arm going
+in under the pavilion of the hotel crossed his mind with a cruel
+despair and cruel disgust.  A sense of his solitude, of his defrauded
+life, rushed over him as he looked into the eyes of this woman who
+loved him.
+
+"No," he said intensely, "I do not know, I do not know.  I have a code
+of honor a million years old, but I live up to it.  She is a wife, I
+have never told her that I love her."
+
+The girl's incredulity and surprise were great.  It showed in the smile
+which, something like happiness, crossed her lips.  She drew a long
+breath; she held his eyes with hers, then she laid both her arms around
+his neck and Bulstrode bent and kissed her.  He held her for one moment
+and his heart, if it beat for another woman, beat hard and fast and its
+pulse ran through her own.  Then Felicia heard the door close and the
+footsteps of the man died away.
+
+It was seven o'clock when Bulstrode found himself out in the streets.
+The fresh air in a keen, salt wind poured over him.  Down on the beach,
+for a couple of francs he bribed an attendant to open a bath-house for
+him, and a few moments later, shivering a little in the keen air, he
+could have been seen running down to the sea, and in a few moments more
+his strong swift strokes had carried him far out into the waters which
+the summer sun even at this early hour was fast turning into blue.
+
+
+When Jimmy came to himself, he found that without either seeing Mrs.
+Falconer again or having even bidden a decent good-bye or godspeed to
+his fiancee, he was back again in Paris.  He had run away.  Well, that
+wasn't any new thing, he was always at it.  Paris, in the month of
+August, gave him a hot, desolate welcome, and it was with difficulty
+that he could find a lawyer who would help him down to bedrock and put
+in motion the business of winding up the affairs of Molly and her
+Marquis.
+
+De Presle-Vaulx came to town and found his champion there and brought
+him many messages from the ladies as well as a letter which Bulstrode
+put in his pocket to read down in the country at the chateau of
+Vaulxgoron in the seclusion of his own room.
+
+Bulstrode played the part of the "American Uncle" to perfection.  He
+let the old Marquis beat him at backgammon; he wandered all over the
+property with the Marquise.  He bought the young man for Molly Malines
+and closed up his beneficent affairs in a very decent manner indeed,
+but on the night when Mrs. Falconer and Miss Malines should have
+arrived at the chateau, Bulstrode ran away again.  From then on he
+became a wandering Jew.  He ran up to Norway, fished a little, then
+took a motor and some people, who did not know any one whom he had ever
+known, and drove them through Italy.  He continued to travel a little
+longer, working his way northward until finally--so he put it--dusty as
+"Dusty Dog Dingo," tired as "Tired Dog Dingo," Bulstrode found himself
+in London, drew a deep breath and capitulated.
+
+
+
+
+THE SIXTH ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+VI
+
+IN WHICH HE DISCARDS A KNAVE AND SAVES A QUEEN
+
+The morning he left for Westboro' Castle, Bulstrode remembers as being
+the most beautiful of days; it came to him like a golden gift of
+unrivalled loveliness as it broke and showered sunlight over England.
+
+"The very crannies of the island," he smiled at his own conceit, "must
+filter out this gold to the sea."
+
+England lay like a viking's cup full to the brim of sunlight;
+especially entrancing because unusual in the British calendar, and
+enchanting to the American gentleman because it absolutely accorded
+with his own mood.
+
+It was middle November, and yet there was not--so it seemed as one
+looked at yellow and copper luxuriance--a leaf lost from the suave
+harmony of the trees.  Farms, tiled and thatched, basked in summery
+warmth, forest, hedge and copse, full-foliaged and abundant, shone out
+in copper and bronze, and the air's stillness, the patient
+tranquillity, enfolding the land, made it seem expectantly to wait for
+some sudden wind that should ultimately cast devastation through the
+forests.
+
+On leaving his ship at Plymouth the day before, Bulstrode found amongst
+other letters in his mail the Duke of Westboro's invitation for a
+week's shooting in the west of England: "There were sure to be heaps of
+people Jimmy would know"--and Bulstrode eagerly read the subjoined list
+of names until he saw in a flash the name of the One Woman in the
+World.  He at once telegraphed his acceptance.
+
+The following afternoon he threw his evening papers and overcoat into a
+first-class carriage whilst the guard placed his valise and
+dressing-case in the rack.
+
+As there had been several minutes to starting time, he had not
+immediately taken his seat, but had stood smoking by the side of his
+carriage.  He might, and did, doubtless, pass with others of the well
+set-up, well-looking men travelling on that day, for an Englishman, but
+closer observation showed his attire to be distinguished by that
+personal note which marks the cosmopolitan whose taste has been more or
+less tempted by certain fantasies of other countries.  Bulstrode's
+clothes were brown, his gloves, cravat, and boots all in the same color
+scheme--one mentions a man's dress only on rare occasions, as on this
+certain day one has been led to mention the weather.  That a man is
+perfectly turned out should, like the weather, be taken for granted.
+Bulstrode on this day, travelling as he was towards a goal, towards the
+one person he wanted above all to see, had spent some unusual thought
+on his toilet.  At all events, on passing a florist's in Piccadilly,
+after giving his order for flowers to be boxed and expressed to
+Westboro', he had selected a tiny reddish-brown chrysanthemum which now
+covered the button-hole of his coat's lapel; it created a distinctive
+scheme of color.  In point of fact it caught the eye of the lady who,
+hurrying from the waiting-room towards the Westboro' express, caught
+sight of the American and started.  It appeared as if she would speak
+to him, half advanced, thought better of it, and said to the guard, who
+was about to fasten a placard on the window of a carriage:
+
+"Please---just a second--won't you, guard?"
+
+The bell rang, and Bulstrode found himself helping the lady into his
+own compartment.  The guard shut the door, which closed with the
+customary soft thick sound of a lock setting, and pasted over the
+window the exclusive and forbidding paper--RESERVED.
+
+Then it was in his corner by the window, once chimney pots and suburbs
+left behind, that the traveller to Westboro' watched the landscape with
+the pale, transparent smoke from the little farms floating like veils
+across the golden atmosphere; the slow winding streams between
+low-bushed, rosy shores, and red-tinged thickets; the flocks of rooks
+across fields long harvested: the flocks of sheep on the gently
+swelling downs.
+
+"England, England," he murmured, as if it were a refrain in whose
+melody he found much charm, as if his traditions of insular forebears
+might in some way be recalled in the word, as if it spoke more than a
+chance traveller's appreciation for the melodious countryside.
+
+He had letters, read them, and put his correspondence aside, then
+comfortably settling himself in his corner, began to construct for
+himself a picture of Westboro', whose lines and architecture he knew
+from photographs, although he had never been there.  It was agreeable
+to him as he mused to fancy himself for the first time with Mrs.
+Falconer in England, in the country they preferred to all the others in
+the Old World.  They were in sympathy with English life and manners,
+and here, if (oh, of course, a world of "ifs")--here no doubt they
+would both choose to live when abroad, were there any choice for them
+of mutual life.
+
+Westboro' is Elizabethan and of vast proportions.  The house would
+naturally be very full--how much of the time would they discover for
+themselves?  There would decidedly be occasions.  Mary Falconer did not
+hunt, and although Jimmy Bulstrode could recall having postulated that
+"there are only two real occupations for a real man--to kill and to
+love," he also knew what precedence he himself gave, and how little the
+sportsmen of Westboro' would have cause to fear his concurrence if by
+lucky chance in more or less of solitude he should find his lady there.
+
+It was months since he had seen Mrs. Falconer--months.  It had been a
+long exile.  Each time that he started out to run away, it was just
+that--running away--it was with a curious wonder whether or not on his
+return he should not find a change.  Time and absence--above all, time,
+worked extraordinary infidelities in other people.  Why should they two
+believe themselves immune?  The long months might have altered _her_.
+The mischief was yet to be seen.  But when in the list of noble names
+he had in his hand, his eyes fell upon the single prefix--_Mrs._--and
+found it followed by _The Name_, if he had not sincerely known before,
+his pulse at sight of the written words told Jimmy that he had not, at
+all events, changed!
+
+Thinking at this point to light a cigarette, he became at the second
+mindful of the other passenger in his carriage and that they were
+alone.  As he looked across towards the lady who had unwound her dark
+veil, he observed that she was herself smoking, holding the cigarette
+in her hand as with head turned from him she scanned the landscape
+through the window of the compartment.
+
+He saw with a little start of pleasure what a delight she gave to the
+eye, tastefully dressed as she too was, in leaf brown from head to
+foot, with the slightest indication of forest green at buttons and hem
+of her dress.  Her hat, with its drooping feathers, fell rather low
+over her wonderful hair, bronze in its reflections.  Indeed, the lady
+blended well with the November landscape, and as she apparently was not
+conscious of her companion, he enjoyed the harmonious note she made to
+the full.
+
+"What scope," he mused, "what scope they all have--and how prettily
+they most of them know it!  So just to sit and be a thing of beauty;
+with head half-drooping, and eyelash meditative, one hand ungloved, and
+such a perfectly lovely hand...!  (It held the half-smoked cigarette,
+but his taste was not offended.)  He thought her a whim too debonnaire
+for a Parisian of the best world, and of _that_ she most distinctly
+was--Austrian more than likely.  Every woman has her history--only when
+she is part of several has she a past.  What had this woman so to
+meditate upon?  She turned and he met her eyes.
+
+"You have naturally waited for me to speak first," she said with a
+gracious gesture of her bare hand.  "And _I_ was waiting till you
+should have finished your letters!  I, too, have wanted to think."
+
+Her familiar address, perfectly courteous and made in a pleasant voice,
+with a very slight accent, was a surprise to her companion, who
+mechanically lifted his hat as he bowed to her across the narrow
+distance between their seats.
+
+"The guard," she smiled, "came very near putting the placard on the
+other window!  But I think we are now quite sure to be alone!"  She
+pointed to the seat opposite.  "Sit there," she more commanded than
+permitted, "we can talk better and I can watch your kind face, which
+always looks as if you understood--and I shall be able to please you
+better--perhaps to make you not unkind to me."
+
+He obeyed, taking the place indicated without hesitation, and as he sat
+facing her, he saw her to be one of the most beautiful women he had
+ever seen.  There was at once something dazzling about her--and at the
+same time familiar...  He had surely met her, and not long ago.  Where?
+And how stupid of him to have forgotten!  Or had he only seen her
+photograph and remarked her as a celebrity whose type of looks had
+pleased him?  But no, she knew him: that was clear.  He met her
+friendly eyes, where liking was evident as well as the suggestion of
+something akin to an appeal.  Bulstrode was greatly intrigued.
+
+"Unkind?" he repeated vaguely.  "But why should you think that?  Please
+me?"--and his graciousness did not fall short of her own--"But why
+should you...?"
+
+"Oh, true," she interrupted him, "quite true.  There is no reason
+why--" and she made a rather petulant gesture--"yet every woman wants
+to please, and none of us relishes being judged.  Never mind, however,
+don't think of me as a _person_--just let me talk to you frankly, be
+myself for once with someone if I can."
+
+Jimmy Bulstrode gathered himself together and sat back in his corner.
+She was very lovely at it, this being herself.  Gallantry would not let
+him bluntly tell her that she had made a mistake.  A second more would
+clear the matter and would be quite soon enough, for him at least, to
+find that they were total strangers.  Unless, indeed, he had met her
+and forgotten it.  They had possibly held some conversation together in
+a London drawing-room.  But how could he have been such a boor as to
+forget her?  She was neither a crook nor a mad woman--she might be an
+adventuress; if so, she was an unusual one.  He glanced at her luggage
+as if it might help him--a dark-covered dressing-case, bundle of furs,
+and rugs--new, everything new.  Her left hand was bare of rings, she
+clasped it with her gloved fellow and said warmly:
+
+"I can't believe it possible that you came, actually came, and that we
+have so smoothly met!  I can't believe nothing has hitched or missed,
+or that everything is so cleverly planned and arranged for me, and
+least of all I can believe that it should be _you_ who are so sublimely
+doing this."
+
+"Ah--"  But here Bulstrode tardily started up.  _He_ doing it all?  At
+least if he was, then he must, if nothing else--know!  He smiled at her
+with a pleasant sense of being in the secret and with indulgent
+amusement at her mistake.
+
+"I think--you made a mistake," he began it with commonplaceness, but
+his gesture softened the words.
+
+But the lady made a little annoyed "tchk" with her tongue against her
+teeth, and threw up her head with an impatient toss, an intensely
+foreign way of dismissing his interpolation.
+
+"Don't, in pity's sake, talk like this," she exclaimed.  "_Mistake_?
+Who under the blue heavens _doesn't_ make them--Certa!  Haven't you,
+yourself, in spite of your moral, spotless life, haven't even _you_
+made them?"
+
+"How," flushed the naive gentleman, on the sudden betrayed into a
+mental frankness of self-approval near to conceit, "how does _she_ know
+me so well?"
+
+"Who is there," his companion gave him the question in a challenging
+tone "to tell each other and every one of us what is or will be a
+mistake in his life?  Where were everyone's eyes when I married?--Why
+didn't someone tell me then that my marriage was a hideous mistake?  As
+for the rest of it..." she turned away for a second towards the window,
+and Bulstrode saw how the hot blood had mounted and her eyes had
+changed when after a moment she came back to him again.  She put out
+towards him a beseeching hand: "_You_ above all men, who are faithful
+to an ideal, must not give me old platitudes!"
+
+Bulstrode's head reeled.  He felt like a man who after a narcotic finds
+his brain suddenly alight and real things grow strange.  He wanted to
+rub his eyes.  She appeared singularly to appreciate his daze.
+
+"It is as strange to me as it is to you, to find myself here with a man
+to whom I have never spoken before--to be under his protection, and to
+talk with him like this; and yet I have seen you so often, I have
+watched you in the distance, and long since I singled you out as the
+one man in whom I could fancy confiding--the one man to whom I could
+give a sacred trust."
+
+With these words the incognita drew herself up, and her manner, with
+amazing swiftness, changed from a childlike confidence to a dignity not
+without a certain rigidness, and as Bulstrode remarked this, he also
+noticed that she was very young, and he was conscious in her of a
+something he had never quite met in a woman before--an extreme dignity,
+an ultra poise, an assurance.--Who was she?--And whom did she take him
+to be?  With every turn of the fast wheels of the express it was
+growing more difficult to explain.  She would more keenly feel the fact
+that he had not cut her frankness short--he had no right to her
+confidences even though she took their mutual knowledge of each other
+for granted.
+
+"When," he ventured it delicately--"did you last see me?"  It was bold,
+but it did perfectly.
+
+"Oh, an age ago, isn't it?  You were last on the Continent I think in
+August at Trouville, during La Grande Semaine."
+
+Ah, he reflected, _of course_!  _That_ was where, amongst so many other
+celebrities and beauties, she had attracted his attention.  But his
+rapid mental calculations of those seven days could reveal to him no
+woman's face but one.  He found himself even in this unique moment
+recalling the time following hard on Molly's formal engagement to her
+Marquis ... and those days were amongst the brightest in his life.  No,
+there had been no foreign element at Trouville for him in the dazzle
+and freedom of that worldly fortnight--for Jimmy Bulstrode, in all the
+scene she summoned up, there was but one woman.  He came back with a
+start to the other.
+
+"Then yesterday, as you passed our table at the Carlton, and it seemed
+as if heaven had sent you to us to help us--at least so we both felt."
+
+And Bulstrode doubtfully smiled and, now determined, broke in, or would
+have done so, but she waved him imperiously.
+
+"Your mind," she spoke indulgently, "is on the wrong side to-day.  Try
+to think only of the happiness towards which I am going so rapidly, so
+rapidly." Then, as she with her word glanced out of the window, she
+cried: "Oh, what if something should happen to the train--what if some
+horrible delay----"
+
+And he shook himself to action.
+
+"My dear lady," he began gravely, "you must hear me.  You have made and
+are making a great mistake.  I am certainly not the man..."
+
+"I _command_ you, sir," she flashed out at him--"surely you will not
+disobey me--you will not make me think as well that I am making a
+mistake in you."
+
+"Ah, but that," he gasped, and caught her words gratefully, "is just
+the point."
+
+She smiled.  "Please...!  Let me judge!  Only don't condemn me.  Only
+be glad you can so marvellously help a human soul to happiness--can so
+generously lend yourself for these few hours to aid in my escape."
+
+She was escaping!  Well, he had nearly guessed it!  The new luggage
+alone was an indication.  Unless her mania was for taking strangers to
+be intimate friends, she wasn't fleeing a madhouse!  From what did she
+so determinedly run?--and how in heaven's name was he helping her?  Did
+she think he was going to marry her?  Into what tangle had the man he
+was unwittingly impersonating got himself--and in default of his
+appearing on the scene in what would his absence involve poor Bulstrode?
+
+He took off his hat and put it down on the seat--thus his fine head was
+fully revealed to the lady's view.
+
+"I do not know you," he said determinedly.  "You do not know me, but
+you seem bent on not acknowledging this fact or permitting me to state
+it."
+
+But even this plain statement did him no good, for she said, quite
+agreeing with him:
+
+"If I had ever spoken with you--been near you before, I would not be
+here now.  You see it is just your _impersonality_--your _having_ no
+connection with anything in my life that makes it possible!  But why,"
+she exclaimed impatiently, "do you spend these few hours with me in
+this meaningless warfare?  You should, it seems, take the honor more
+graciously, and since you are here, have consented to be here, show me
+a little kindness.  Since, after all, willingly or not, you are in
+effect nobly helping me to do what I am doing."
+
+And this brought him wonderfully up to the question of what was he
+doing?  What was he supposed to be furthering here?  It was his
+expression, no doubt, that made her ask with curious aptness: "Just how
+much _do_ you know?"
+
+The poor gentleman threw out his hands desperately.  "You can't think
+how in the dark I am!  How beyond words mystified."
+
+"How droll!" she laughed sweetly, "and how amusing and all the more
+beautiful and like you, to be, in spite of yourself, here.  You see we
+have switched off--just as you said we would do."
+
+So they had indeed: they had stopped, and the fact fetched him to his
+feet.  He looked out: it was a fast express, a through train--the first
+stop should have been Westboro' Abbey.
+
+"Yes, we're switched off!" she cried delightedly, "as you know: as you
+arranged so cleverly!--and the Westboro' people will go on without us."
+
+Would they indeed!  Lucky people, but not if he could prevent it.  But
+his attention to the train's procedure had come too late.
+
+He opened the window and looked out.  They stood at the side of a
+switch some three hundred yards above a small squat station, and in the
+far distance Bulstrode could see the end of a disappearing train.  He
+drew in his head and quietly asked his companion:
+
+"What has happened to us, do you know?"
+
+She laughed deliciously.  "Know?  Why, of course, I do.  You're
+delightful!  Of course I have followed every step of the plan--the
+special for Dover picks us up here in three-quarters of an hour,
+doesn't it?  We make the boat for Calais, and there Gela meets me and
+_your_ mission is done!"
+
+The gentleman opposite her listened quietly, and before speaking waited
+a second, staring down at her, his hands in his pockets: there they
+touched a little coin which he always carried: a coin that opened at a
+sacred point to discover to his eyes alone a picture of a woman as
+lovely as this woman, as human, and one whom he had good cause to
+suppose loved another man than her husband.  The woman opposite him was
+escaping from her husband.  _That_ was what she was doing!  He who had
+striven for fifteen years to prevent the like in the life of the one
+woman of all, now appeared to be helping this poor thing to the same
+thing.  He did not believe he was to be waylaid and robbed, or that any
+trick had been played upon him.  The only thing he did _not_ believe
+was that the woman knew him!  Before, however, brushing the delusion
+aside, he asked, his candid eyes upon her: "And my mission being so
+done, what then becomes of you?"
+
+The shrug of her shoulders was neither an indication of indifference
+nor a pretty desperation! it rather was a relinquishing of herself
+wholly to Fate--an abandon.
+
+"What becomes of a happy woman who goes with the man she loves?"
+
+"Her Fate," said her companion, "has no single history.  She is most
+often disillusioned, many times tragic, and always disgraceful."
+
+"Ah, hush," she said angrily, "you presume too far.  If you only
+intended to lecture me--to condemn me--why did you come?"
+
+At this sincerely humorous challenge Bulstrode smiled.
+
+"I did not, to be quite accurate, come," he said, "and I assure you I
+am here against my will.  You refuse to listen to me; you turn my
+efforts to put things straight against me--and now."
+
+The handsome creature gave him a flash from angry eyes.
+
+"Your Excellency is scarcely polite.  But I understand.  Even my rank
+doesn't protect me: and although your old friendship for Gela did
+overcome your scruples, and our letters did touch you--still we should
+have remembered that you are, above all else, the King's friend."
+
+Bulstrode fell a step back.  Before he could take in the curious honors
+that were being thrust upon him, the lady went hotly on:
+
+"You know how indulgent of me the King has been: how he adores me
+still, how blind he is, and you pity him and have no mercy for me."
+
+Here, for she, too, had left her seat, she went over to the compartment
+window and turning her back full on Bulstrode, stood looking out, and
+she thus gave him time and he took it, not to consider his part of the
+affair, but, as if it had been suddenly revealed to him by her words,
+the woman's part in it.  After all it was scarcely important whom, in
+error, she believed him to be.  In a strange fashion, through some
+trick of resemblance, he was here and in her confidence in another's
+stead--impersonating some man who, in spite of the reputation for
+goodness and honor accredited him by this lady, would scarcely,
+Bulstrode felt confident, be as scrupulous regarding the adventure as
+he himself was fast becoming.  The woman--the woman was all that
+mattered.  She was a Queen then?  A Queen!  And he had so naively
+ignored her perquisites, been so innocently guilty of
+_lese-majeste_--that she, poor thing, attributed his _sans gene_ to her
+fallen state!
+
+Kings and Queens, poor dears, how human they are!  What royalty could
+she be?  And what King's friend was he so closely supposed to be?  The
+King's friend--well, so he was--so he must be in spite of his quick
+pity for the lovely creature--in spite of chivalry and the trust she
+displayed.  But to be practical: what in half an hour could he hope to
+accomplish--how could he keep a determined woman from wrecking her life?
+
+His mind flew to Paddington, and his first sight of the lady on the
+platform.  There had been near the hour two trains for Westboro', one
+of them a local which left London some few minutes later than the
+Western express.  _That_ later train, no doubt of it, would fetch the
+real accomplice to the eloping lady.  Bulstrode argued that, should he
+declare himself to the Queen at this point for a total stranger, the
+revelation would plunge her in despair, anger and frighten her, and
+lose him his cause--There was, in view of the cause, he now felt and
+nerved himself to the deception, nothing to do but to assume his role
+in earnest and play it as well as he might.  He had never sat alone in
+a travelling carriage and hobnobbed with a Queen, but he gracefully
+made his try at the proper address: "Your Majesty," he began, and she
+whirled quickly round, pleasure on her face.
+
+"Oh, Gresthaven!" she exclaimed with touching gratitude, extending her
+hand.  "Thanks, mon ami!  I shall not have my title long, and I shall,
+I suppose, miss it with other things."
+
+Bulstrode, with her naming of him, knew at length who he was, and
+recalled his supposed likeness to a certain Lord Almouth
+Gresthaven--famous explorer, traveller and diplomat, cosmopolitan in
+his tastes and a dabbler in the politics of other and less significant
+countries than his own.  In accepting his new personality, the American
+winced a little as he bowed over the royal little hand and kissed it.
+
+"Your Majesty will miss many things indeed," he said gravely--"your
+kingdom, your people, and the King--the King," he repeated, dwelling on
+the word, "who, as you say, loves you."
+
+"My good friend," the lady made a little _moue_--"I know everything you
+would say.  You can't suppose I haven't thought of it all?  To be so
+far on my way must I not have carefully considered every step?  One is,
+after all, a woman--and I am a woman in love."
+
+"One word then," pleaded her unwilling imposter--"one word.  Have you
+also asked yourself: what chance for happiness a woman can possibly
+hope for with a man who allows her to make the sacrifice you are about
+to make?"
+
+If his words were straws before the wind to the woman, his simplicity
+was impressive to her.  "It has seemed to me," Jimmy Bulstrode said,
+"that there is a great distinction between love and passion--and that
+however great his passion for her, a man should supremely--_supremely
+love_ the woman he singles out of all the world."
+
+The Queen of Poltavia looked at the gentleman before her, who stood
+very straight, his head alone bent, his clear fine eyes fixed upon her
+own.
+
+"Love!" she repeated softly, "how well you say the word."
+
+A slight flush stole up the American's cheek.
+
+"Supreme love," he ventured to continue, "means protection to the
+woman...."
+
+Here the Queen made an impatient gesture as though she shook away the
+impression his tone made.
+
+"My dear Gresthaven," she exclaimed, "love means above all else
+happiness!  One is happy with one person and miserable with another.
+It's all a lottery and unless our plans miscarry I am going towards the
+greatest happiness in the world.  But come"--She altered her tone to
+one of practical command--"Let us address ourselves to our flight.  You
+have your train schedule of course?  The Dover train is due here at
+4:50 and it only waits for the taking on of our carriage."  As she
+looked up at him she saw the trouble in his face, and a solicitude for
+her to which she was unaccustomed.
+
+"Mon cher ami," she said quizzically, "what, may I ask, since your
+scruples are so great, ever led you to accept this mission....?"
+
+"Frankly," he eagerly answered, and was honest in it, "the hope, the
+desire that I might...."
+
+"Persuade a woman in love against her heart?" she smiled, and so
+sweetly, so convincingly, and so reasonably, he was for an instant all
+on her side.
+
+"I see my folly, your Majesty."
+
+"There's nothing but _force majeure_, Gresthaven...."
+
+"Yes" ... he admitted reluctantly.  "Let me go out now and see to our
+manoeuvres here."  He was able to open the door which a passing guard
+had unlocked unobserved....
+
+The innocent royalty let him pass, thanking him with a smile, and saw
+him go down the track toward the little squat station, with the guards.
+
+
+Bulstrode, whose mind as he walked along was busy with train schedules,
+recalled, nevertheless, the Duke's letter, which he still had in his
+letter case, and he took it from his pocket and re-read it.
+
+"... We are to have over the week-end a dash of royalty.  Carmen-Magda,
+the Queen of the petty kingdom of Poltavia."  (This mention of the
+Westboro' guests had quite escaped Bulstrode's mind in his
+contemplation of the last page of the Duke's note....  "We are to have
+a compatriot of your own, a Mrs. Jack Falconer.")  And royalty being
+very relative to the unsnobbish American, he had simply transferred the
+title (with possibly a possessive pronoun before it) to the other lady!
+He smiled as he reflected that the Westboro' express was destined to
+arrive at the Abbey without either the royal guest or Mr. James
+Thatcher Bulstrode.  But more to the point, more instantly absorbing
+was the fact, that within ten minutes the slow train from London to
+Westboro' would arrive at Radleigh Bucks, the little station before
+which he now stood, and from it, undoubtedly, would descend the real
+Lord Gresthaven.  If Jimmy needed encouragement in his self-imposed
+role of Master of Fate, if he needed to forget the ardor and the
+determination of the little Queen, if he needed to forget how, in
+youth, he had cordially hated those interfering people who, on
+horseback and in chaises, tore after flying lovers to waylay them at
+Gretna Green--he found his stimulus in recalling that he was "the
+King's friend."
+
+"It's after all something of a distinction," he mused, entertained by
+the idea, "a sort of royal _noblesse oblige_--and since the poor dear
+herself has so made me out to be, given King the precedence, how could
+I, in the cause of gallantry, have proceeded otherwise!  It's this
+diabolical little brown chrysanthemum," he mentally laid the fault
+there.  "It is evidently a telling mark.  People in books are always
+meeting unknowns who are to wear a red flower in the right lapel of the
+coat".... and he had unintentionally gone over into a romance--and his
+_triste_ part in it was that of an unsympathetic spoiler of a romance.
+
+As after a prolonged parley with the station officials he walked
+leisurely back to his carriage, his wallet grown very thin indeed and
+his honest heart suffering many sincere pangs at the contemplation of
+his conduct altogether, he argued: "She is absurdly young--she will,
+after a little, go back to her allegiance (he put it so), and I don't
+take much stock in that barbaric Gela anyway, he probably is a
+Hungarian band-master or a handsome ticket-agent, a plebian creature
+whose very remoteness from her own life has fascinated her."
+
+Bulstrode, not quite sure just whom he was supposed to be by the train
+people, found himself bowed and escorted back to the carriage which had
+been turned and manipulated and side-tracked--reswitched and displaced,
+till even its own locomotive and train of cars would have been at a
+loss to find it.  He had the sense of being a traitor, brute, imposter,
+and Providence all in one--which combination of qualities was
+sufficient to explain his embarrassment and his nervous manner when he
+at length rejoined the Queen.
+
+There was a slight transformation in the lady whose dressing bag had
+aided, evidently, a brisk toilet.  Under her chin flowered out a snowy
+bow of tulle, and she had swathed herself in the thick veil she had
+worn when first boarding the train.  Indicating her disguise to
+Bulstrode, she said with her pretty accent: "I think it well to be
+thus."  And he agreed that it was well.
+
+His own agitation as the other train rushed in, slowed and halted, was
+scarcely less than hers, indeed perhaps greater, for Carmen-Magda, pale
+and quiet, her handsome brown eyes fixed on the window-pane, gave no
+sign of life, until after a series of jerks, jolts and bumps, they
+slowly but certainly became part of a moving train, once more
+undertaking its journey.  Then Bulstrode, who stood determinedly in the
+window, filled it up on the station side, giving her no chance to look
+out had she wished to do so, nor did he think it needful to tell the
+Queen what he saw: A distinguished-looking man in rough brown clothes,
+and oh, the curious coincidence: a reddish-brown chrysanthemum in his
+buttonhole.  His Striking Resemblance was accompanied by another
+gentleman--short and stout with military mustaches, and swarthy
+complexion.  The two men were gesticulating wildly together, and as the
+train pulled away from them, Bulstrode turned about and faced the
+little Queen.
+
+She had again lifted her veil, and he thought her pallor natural; in
+the momentary excitement her large eyes were fastened upon him with a
+touching confidence that nearly made the soft-hearted imposter regret
+the boldest act of his history.
+
+"Are you sure," she asked him softly, "that this is the right train?"
+
+The coquetry of her bow of snowy tulle, the debonnaire costume of brown
+and green, her gray hat with its feathers, were pathetic to him--her
+attire contrasted sadly with her pale face.  She was to him like a
+wilful child.  Not more, he decided for the sixth time, than twenty
+years old.  She was like a paper queen out of a child's fairy book, all
+but her anxious face.  "She regrets," he joyfully caught at the thought
+to arm himself and give himself right.  "Poor little thing, she already
+regrets."
+
+Leaning forward, he suggested kindly:
+
+"Can't your Majesty rest a little?"
+
+As he spoke the hypocrite knew that in less time than it would take to
+settle her they would bump into the station at Westboro' Abbey.
+
+But Carmen-Magda made no sign of recalcitrancy or regret that she was
+_en route_ for her plebian Gela.  She leaned over and picked up one of
+the illustrated papers upon the seat and idly turned over the pages,
+reverting finally back to the frontispiece where a colored photograph
+displayed a young woman in hunting dress leaning on the arm of a
+military-looking gentleman with black mustaches and swarthy skin.  She
+held it out to Bulstrode and said:
+
+"It's a poor enough picture of me, but excellent, isn't it, of the
+King?"
+
+Bulstrode looked at it attentively with an inscrutable illumination on
+his face.
+
+"Yes, it is good of the King, very good indeed," he exclaimed with much
+animation.  It was strikingly so, he could with truth say it.
+
+Gresthaven had proved himself to be the friend of the King par
+excellence--the King seemed to have many friends---and the poor little
+woman opposite--with her fetching bow of tulle and her mad confidence
+in a stranger--her madder confidence in Lord Almouth Gresthaven--where
+were _her_ friends?  Jimmy leaned to her, and Mrs. Falconer could have
+told that it was his voice of goodness that spoke, the voice "that
+Jimmy seemed able to call at will from some wonderfully dear part of
+his nature: it was for people in trouble, for people he was determined
+to help in spite of themselves."
+
+"Your Majesty has done me great honor," Bulstrode said.  "You have said
+I was the King's friend, I should like instead to be _your_ friend.
+Women need friends ... even queens.  Would it be too vast a presumption
+if I should from henceforth feel myself to be...."  He waited and
+dared--"Carmen-Magda's friend?"
+
+His innocent lese-majeste, coupled with the tone he used, reached the
+woman in her---not to speak of his personal charm.
+
+"Didn't I imply friendship when I chose you for this mission?" she said.
+
+He winced.  "Of course--but I mean from now on----"
+
+She nodded sweetly.  "_Cela va sans dire_, Gresthaven."
+
+"Don't call me so," he interrupted, "say _friend_, to please me."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"You are too amusing.  I will say it for you then in Poltavian.  It's a
+sacred word with us," and she called him friend in her own tongue with
+the prettiest accent and a royal inclination of her head as if she
+knighted him.  It cut him and pleased him at once, and he hurried to
+ask her:
+
+"What would you think of Gresthaven if, instead of meeting you, as you
+had arranged he should do--he should betray you--should have warned
+your husband and have gone so far _as to fetch the King to waylay you
+and stop your flight_!"
+
+But Carmen-Magda only laughed, and dismissed the ridiculous supposition
+with a word of disbelief.
+
+"Tell me," Bulstrode urged, "tell me what would you think?"
+
+She drew herself up haughtily at his insistence as if his hypothesis
+were real to her at last:
+
+"He would be the most despicable traitor in the world."
+
+Bulstrode pursued: "What--would you think of Gresthaven--if in order to
+save you, to give you time, time to think, to reflect, to perhaps alter
+your decision--he had used other means less cruel possibly, but as
+surely betraying your good faith?"
+
+Here she looked keenly through him--read him--then waited a second
+before intensely exclaiming:
+
+"Gresthaven--_what have you done_?"
+
+His heart came into his throat and his voice nearly failed him.  He did
+not know Poltavians nor the queenly temper, nor did he know how all
+women take any one given thing, but he knew how women the world over
+admit of no change of caprice saving that variability which arises in
+their own minds.
+
+"Oh, dear," he thought, "if for no matter _what_ reason, she had only
+changed her _own_ mind!"
+
+"In five minutes," he said bravely--"your Majesty will be at Westboro'
+Abbey station, our carriage has been attached to the other train which
+followed us from London."
+
+With a smothered cry the Queen sprang to her feet, rushed to the window
+and stared out where nothing in the golden afternoon beauty revealed to
+her in what part of England she was.  Bulstrode had put his hand out
+before her as if he feared she meditated climbing through the open
+window.
+
+"Oh," she cried furiously, shrinking back from him, "how have you dared
+... dared?"
+
+... "To save your Majesty?  Well, it _was_ hard!" he acknowledged
+practically.  "Harder than you will ever believe.  I may say that no
+decision was ever more difficult to make.  To be so trusted by you, and
+to feel myself a double-dyed villain wasn't agreeable, but the issue
+was a warrant for any treachery."
+
+"Great heavens!" she exclaimed.  "Who made _you_ judge of my actions,
+who gave _you_ leave to decide my fate, what a fool I was to trust
+you--what a fool!  You have spoiled my life!" she accused him--"You
+have taken from me everything in the world."
+
+If she had been alone he knew she would have wept, and he kept his face
+turned from her for some few seconds.  "I have certainly established a
+precedent for myself," he mused with humor.  "_I_ can never run away
+with a woman now--never."
+
+Small as were the limits of the little carriage she found means to walk
+it up and down several times, her head thrown back, her eyes flashing.
+She spoke, he supposed, in Poltavian, for he could not follow the
+meaning of her few staccato, angry words, but he did not recognise
+among the incoherences that she called him friend!
+
+As the flying scenes grew farm-like and pastoral, and the lines and
+sweep of what he took to be park property, caught his eyes he once more
+ventured to speak.
+
+"I am not the cold-blooded traitor I seem, believe me," he tried to
+plead, "and until we definitely passed the station at Redleigh Bucks I
+was miserable to think I had, as it seems, betrayed your Majesty.  But
+when as we came up to the station I saw the King on the platform----"
+
+She stopped short in front of him: "The King!" she exclaimed
+incredulously.
+
+Bulstrode nodded in a matter-of-fact way as if stray kings on
+mid-country platforms were the common occurrence of his travelling
+experiences.
+
+"He had evidently followed you that far, and if the plan formed to
+attach your carriage to the Dover express had been attempted, you would
+have been stopped by your husband himself.  As it is you are simply
+going where you are expected to go--to Westboro' Castle."
+
+This denouement, putting a summary end to her tragic anger, left her no
+place for ecstatics.  She sat down in front of Bulstrode and repeated,
+dazed:--
+
+"The _King_!  The King had followed me!  He had been warned then, but
+by whom?  You above all did not....?"
+
+"Oh no!"  He was glad to be honestly able to disclaim at least this
+disloyalty.  "I had nothing to do with it.  The King had come on with
+the man who had played your Majesty false all along, the man who is
+indeed more the King's friend than he is Carmen-Magda's."
+
+And sitting there, bewildered and appealing before him, she heard him
+say: "I mean Lord Almouth Gresthaven."
+
+She murmured some words in Poltavian, then besought: "Why, why do you
+play with me?"  The tears started to her eyes.
+
+"Lord Gresthaven," Bulstrode hurried now to his confession--"has
+plainly betrayed you.  Either he failed to meet you as planned, or else
+he came too late and thought better of his connivance against your
+husband--at all events, both he and the King took the slow train."
+
+"But _you_," she interrupted, staring at him--"You are not Lord
+Gresthaven?"
+
+"No," he said quietly, "no, I am an American, nothing more than a
+friend and guest of the Duke of Westboro'.  I tried over and over again
+to tell you this, but you would not hear me and I finally accepted the
+role you gave me with the firm intention of taking you with me to
+Westboro' Castle.  My name is James Thatcher Bulstrode, I am from
+Boston, in the United States."  Bulstrode thus tardily introduced
+himself.
+
+And Jimmy, not pretending ever to have counted greatly on the favor of
+princes, was nevertheless taken aback.  Not that he had any
+preconceived notion of what Carmen-Magda would do--when she eventually
+knew.  He had been too absorbed in his mission, its entanglements, and
+his climax.  He may have been prepared for some exhibition of scorn,
+but he more than likely looked for a social and commonplace ending to
+their ride, but for what Carmen-Magda did he was entirely unprepared.
+
+As if in his declaration of himself and his identity he had taken a
+sponge and quite wiped himself off the slate, the Queen, after
+speechlessly staring at him for a few moments, quietly removed her
+attention from him altogether.  She took from a little bag at her wrist
+a rouge stick with which she carefully touched her lips; from a tiny
+gold box she lightly dusted her cheeks with powder; she adjusted her
+tulle bow and her veil and then sat serenely back waiting until the
+train should arrive at her forced destination.
+
+Although, one might say, unused to the manners of royalty, Jimmy was
+dumbfounded; the beautiful woman in forest-brown clothes picked out
+with hunting green had become as strange to him as in the first moment
+when she attracted his attention some few miles beyond London.  That
+she should be angry at his interference he could admit, but that she
+should not be grateful to be saved from her husband's wrath he did not
+understand.  Was he too plebeian for her to notice?  He, of course, did
+not speak to her again, nor did she break the singular silence, and for
+some reason he did not even care to ask her forgiveness.  Finally, he
+decided that she was thinking solely of Gela, the man at the other end
+of the route who would wait for her in vain, and when this sentimental
+view of the case occurred to him, he would have felt _de trop_ had he
+not seen how completely he was ignored.
+
+They flashed past the last miles of wooded valley and hillside.
+Westboro' was very soft in line and very mellow in the evening light.
+The landscape, through a half-mist, was as brown and green as the dress
+of the beautiful silent woman in the opposite corner of the travelling
+carriage.
+
+Bulstrode, looking at her rather timidly, felt as if he were in a dream.
+
+At Westboro' Abbey the guard unlocked the compartment door and
+Bulstrode, who got out first, helped the Queen of Poltavia to descend.
+As she put foot to the ground she said, half leaning on the arm he
+gave: "I thank you--very much indeed."
+
+He caught the few words eagerly, and was fatuous enough to fancy that
+she meant something more than the common courteous acknowledgment of a
+man's help from a travelling carriage.
+
+The station was deserted.  The express having arrived some half hour
+before without them, there had evidently been no preparation made to
+meet this train.
+
+Surrounded by her luggage, her brand new luggage, the Queen waited on
+the side of the station that faced the open country, whilst Bulstrode
+made inquiries about telephoning or getting word to the castle.
+
+At this juncture, down the lane, between red thickets and golden
+hedges, a smart dog-cart tooled along driven by a lady.  She waved a
+welcoming hand.
+
+"Jimmy," she said as she drove up and leaned out and nodded to him, "I
+knew you'd miss the express, you're so absent-minded about trains; and
+who could be expected to distinguish between a 3.50 and a 3.53?  So, as
+you see, I drove down on the chance."
+
+He had not greeted her in words.  The long afternoon, the romantic
+extravagant episode, of which he had been unwillingly a part, made this
+woman seem so real.  He felt as if from a burlesque extravaganza he had
+come out into the fresh air; their eyes had met and Mrs. Falconer did
+not miss any other greeting.
+
+"That lady," he then said, "whom you see standing on the edge of the
+platform surrounded by her luggage, like a shipwrecked being on a
+desert island, is the Queen of Poltavia."
+
+"Heavens!" exclaimed Mrs. Falconer.
+
+"Yes," he said indifferently, "we came down from London together."
+
+"Why, the whole castle is in a state about her.  A coach and postillion
+went to fetch her at the express.  Telegrams are flying all over the
+country.  Why did she take a local--and with you--Jimmy?"
+
+"Perhaps she is absent-minded about trains as well," he smiled, "at all
+events here she certainly is and it will be charming of you to drive
+her up."
+
+"But I don't know her!"
+
+"Oh," he shrugged, "one doesn't exactly _know_ queens, I don't know her
+either, but that wouldn't prevent my doing her a service.  I am sure
+she'd rather be driven up to a cup of tea and a fire by an American
+than stand here waiting for a postilion and four.  It will be nice of
+you to speak to her," he suggested, and stepped back.
+
+Gathering up her reins, Mrs. Falconer whisked her horse about and drove
+up to the lady's side.  Bulstrode, from a little distance, watched her
+graceful inclination and heard her lovely voice.  He saw Carmen-Magda
+lift her disguising veil, displaying her dark, foreign face.  Slowly
+going up to the dog-cart's side, together with the groom's help, he
+bestowed the Queen's belongings in the trap.
+
+"I will walk on slowly up the road," he suggested, "and most possibly
+you will send back for me."
+
+"Oh, I'll drive back myself."  She was quite certain about it.  As he
+helped the Queen into the dog-cart, as she leaned on his supporting
+hand, she said:
+
+"Thank you, thank you very much indeed."  And he was so vain as to
+fancy that into tone and words Carmen-Magda put more warmth, more of
+meaning, than a woman usually puts into the phrase of recognition of a
+man's helping hand.  He could not, moreover, have sworn that at the end
+of the sentence was not murmured a word in a foreign tongue which might
+in Poltavian mean "friend," but as he did not understand the language
+of the country he could not be sure.
+
+As he watched the trap up the hedged lanes out of sight, he rubbed his
+eyes as if he were not certain whether or not he had not dozed and
+dreamed in his compartment on the slow train from London....  But at
+any rate he had the delightful heavenly certainty that this was
+Westboro' of an Indian summer afternoon--and that of the two women who
+had just driven up the lane out of sight, one at least was adorably
+real.
+
+
+
+
+THE SEVENTH ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+VII
+
+IN WHICH HE BECOMES THE POSSESSOR OF A CERTAIN PIECE OF PROPERTY
+
+As Bulstrode stood in the window of his room at Westboro' Castle, his
+face turned toward the country, it seemed to beckon him.  It called him
+from the park's end where suave and smooth the curving downs met the
+preciser contour of the eastern field; from hedges holding snugly in
+the roadways, the roads themselves running off on pleasant excursions
+to townships whose names are suggestive of romance, whose gentle
+beauties have mellowed with the ages which give them value and leave
+them perfect.
+
+With the sweetness of a bell, with the invitingness of a beckoning
+hand, the English countryside summoned the gentleman to come out to it,
+to explore and penetrate for himself.  He gazed charmed and entranced
+at the expanse of rippling meadow where, enclosed by the curtains of
+soft old trees, the thatch of the eaves lifted their breast to the sun
+and mist, and chimneys black with immemorial fires indicated the farms
+of Westboro', rich, homely and respectable, as they left upon the
+landscape harmonious color and history of thrift.  To the east was the
+dim suggestion of the little town, and some few miles in a hollow lay
+the farmlands known as The Dials, and each second growing more
+distinctly visible in the deepening light rose the towers of Penhaven
+Abbey.
+
+At the Duke's urging, Bulstrode had been led to stop on at Westboro'
+Castle after the house party had dissolved at the end of their week's
+sojourn; and there had since been many long tramps across country, with
+the dogs at his heels and by his side the Duke, for the time diverted
+from his semi-melancholy, semi-egotistical cynicism, and transformed
+into an enthusiastic sport.
+
+The Duke of Westboro' was a _desenchante_, more truly speaking a victim
+of other peoples' temperaments.  There were, however, not a few little
+scores in the character of moral delinquencies which at least, so he
+felt, he had been called upon quite fully to discharge.
+
+The American man gave himself over to his host, and from the time
+Westboro' put out a bait of "Oh, you're decidedly not turning in at
+this hour, old man?" he flanked the Duke on the opposite side of the
+fireplace in the East Library, there after coffee to wear away half the
+night.  During the following fortnight, Bulstrode found that he had
+tallied up with his friend very closely the scores of the last few
+miserable years.
+
+Westboro's friendship with him dated back some ten years.  Bulstrode
+had first known the Englishman at Newport where, then not a young man,
+he had come obviously and frankly in search of an American wife.  The
+search was unusual in that it was not for money, but, as Westboro' put
+it, for type and race.  His mother had been an American.  He had adored
+her, and wanted an American mother for his children.  The woman
+herself--and how Bulstrode saw it as he followed the deserted husband's
+narrative--the woman had been a secondary thing.  He recalled easily
+the summary and conventional courtship and the vulgar brilliance of the
+wedding.  He had been one of Westboro's ushers, and his smaller part of
+the affair left him with the distressing idea that he had assisted at a
+sacrifice.
+
+It would be euphemistic to say that Westboro' poured out his heart to
+Bulstrode; Englishmen do not have such refreshments.  Little by little,
+rather in short curt phrases, a cynical word whose mocking fellow only
+followed after some moments' silence--little by little, whilst the
+smoky wreaths of the men's cigars veiled their confidences, the Duke
+slowly told the story of ten years of married life.  In this intimacy
+he disclosed the history of the separation which formed at the moment
+the subject of general public comment.  Jimmy was relieved when the
+moment came that the Duke thought opportune to say:
+
+"There, old chap, you have the whole story!  It's this cursed tradition
+of marriage, and you're a lucky fellow to be free.  I have never spoken
+to any one before--you know it.  I don't need to tell you so, but you
+were in, as it were, at the start, and what do you think of the finish?"
+
+Bulstrode reserved his opinion.
+
+Westboro' Castle had been built in the sixteenth century by a lover of
+the Virgin Queen.  The stones were paved with memories.  In the Picture
+Hall the ardent gentleman three hundred years before had for one sole
+hour entertained Elizabeth at a feast.  She left him, obdurate and
+unyielding, and he went crazy and followed the royal coach to the park
+gate, weeping, his hands before his face; and there on the ground, his
+fair curls torn, and the dust from the departing vehicles alone of the
+glory that touched him, his people found him.
+
+"How they prate of inequality, and of the crime of grafting the
+American rose on these old stalks," Bulstrode mused.  The beauty of
+Frances, Duchess of Westboro', he had himself been one of the first to
+concede; a portrait of her by Lehnbach did not to his eyes do her
+justice.  The fresh purity of her type had not been seized by the
+German.  She would be an ideal Duchess, he had said of her when the
+mission of Westboro' to America had been bruited, and Westboro' had
+thought: "She's a strong, fine woman, and will bear me beautiful
+children."
+
+She had borne him two.  Bulstrode, in passing through the house, had
+seen the low gates at the doors of two sunny rooms, the toys spread as
+they had been lain.  His own were the only apartments in that wing of
+the castle, and the silence at the end of the hall was never broken.
+When Westboro' had come to this part of his narrative, he had waited
+quiet so long that his companion had naturally taken the evening to be
+at its end.  The Duke had thrown his cigar away, and lifting from the
+table near him a leather case, opened it and handed over to Bulstrode
+the photograph of two little bare-legged boys in sailor clothes.  They
+stood hand in hand, a pretty pair.  Looking at it, and gently turning
+it over on the other side, Bulstrode read:
+
+"Frederick Cecil John Edward, Marquis of Wotherington, three years old.
+Guy Perceval, Lord Feversham, aged two years."
+
+Westboro's voice had a dull sound as he took the case from his friend's
+hand.
+
+"They are Westboro's I think, neck and crop.  Scarlet fever--in three
+days, Bulstrode--both in three days."
+
+And that had been all.
+
+Bulstrode had left the Duke and gone up-stairs.  On the other side of
+his cheerful rooms the empty nurseries in the ghostly moonlight held
+their doors wide open as if to welcome at the low gates those bright
+heads if they should come.
+
+Jimmy, whose sentimentality consisted in his acting immediately when
+anything was to be done, mixed a whiskey and soda from the array of
+drinks that always exists at an Anglo-Saxon's elbow, and after a turn
+or two in his dressing-room brought practically out:
+
+"It's ridiculous!  Sheer nonsense.  There should be children here.  The
+woman is selfish and puritanical, and the man is no lover--_that's_
+what's the matter!  But Westboro' certainly loves her in his big, cold,
+affectionate way."  Jimmy smiled at his own fashion of putting it.  And
+how any woman, with a mind and common-sense, could help loving
+Westboro' Castle and countryside, as well as Cecil, tenth Duke of the
+line, the American visitor failed to see.
+
+As the Duke of Westboro' thought of the members of his recent house
+party--the women of it passed before his mental mirror.  There were
+several images of an American lady whose frocks and hats, whose wit and
+grace, whose dark beauty had made her stay at Westboro' brilliant and
+memorable.  Possibly the remembrance of Mrs. Falconer, one night at
+dinner, was what most persistently lingered in the Duke's mind.  She
+had sat on his left in a gown he remembered as becoming, and her jewels
+had shone like fire on her bosom.  He had particularly remarked them in
+thinking of the idle jewels of his own house, left behind by the flight
+of the Duchess.  Mary Falconer had been more brilliant than her
+ornaments, and Westboro' had thoroughly enjoyed his guest.  He had
+asked this woman especially because she charmed him; without forming
+the reason he had a latent hope that she might do more than charm.  He
+wanted to forget and to be eased from the haunting memory that stung
+and never soothed.  From his first tete-a-tete with Mrs. Falconer he
+had at once seen that there was nothing there for him.
+
+Bulstrode had said that Westboro' was not a lover.  Reserved as far as
+all feeling was concerned, he had made no advances to the beautiful
+American, but contented himself with watching her.  She could not be in
+love with her brutish husband who, out of the week spent at Westboro'
+was visible only two days.  Then Bulstrode had come.  Pictures of the
+two talking in the long twilights, riding together, walking on the
+terrace side by side, came vividly to Westboro's recollection.
+
+"That," he decided, "is a real flesh-and-blood woman, the kind of woman
+I should have married.  Bulstrode is a lucky devil."
+
+
+"A chap," Westboro' said to Jimmy in a mild unpretentious mood of
+philosophy, "is, of course, a husband; more naturally than people give
+him credit for, a father; but first of all--and that's what so few
+women take into consideration--_he is a man_."
+
+The Duke had fallen into the habit of breaking through the silences
+when each man, following his own thoughts, would forget the other.  And
+remarks such as these his companion knew, referred in sense and detail
+to the long talks whose intenser personalities had ceased.
+
+This day Westboro' brought out his little paragraph as, between the
+hedges of a lowland lane, the two rode at a walk after a long hard
+canter from Penhaven, some eight miles behind them on the hill.  On
+either side the top of the thorn was veiled with rime.  Down the
+hedge's thickness from his seat on his horse, Bulstrode could look into
+the dark tangled interstices of the thicket and its delicious browns
+and greens.  Into the thorns here and there dried leaves had fallen,
+and from the hedge as well as from the country, clouded and gray with
+mist, came a sharpened sweetness; a blended smell of fields over which
+early winter had passed; a smell of woods over which the fires cast
+smoky veils.  In the freshness and with the eager exercise, Bulstrode's
+cheeks had reddened.  He sat his horse well, and his enjoyment of life,
+his ease with it, his charming spirit, shone in the face he turned to
+the Duke.  For some miles given over to the sympathetic task of
+managing his horse, he had enjoyed like a boy, and during the ride had
+thought of nothing but the physical delight of the open air and the
+motion.
+
+"Yes," he returned to his friend's remark, "as far as any point of
+interest goes, we may grant you that we began as men.  I mean to say
+that monkeys aren't useful in one's deductions for emotional
+hypotheses, at any rate.  I'll grant you for our use that we were men
+to begin with."
+
+"Damn it all," said his host, "aren't we just as much so to-day, for
+all our civilization?"
+
+"Well, we don't primarily knock on the head a woman whose physique has
+pleased us, and carry her off while she's unconscious."
+
+"It might in some cases be a good thing if we did," Westboro' growled.
+
+Bulstrode ran his hand along the silky neck of his horse, from whose
+nostrils smoke came in little puffs that met the moisture of the air.
+
+"Oh, we're not, you know, so awfully far away from our instincts in
+anything, old man!  There isn't any cast-iron rule about feelings.
+They depend on the individual."
+
+"Oh, you've never married," Westboro' tried frankly to irritate him,
+"and you can't, you know----"
+
+The sweet temper of the other accepted the Duke's scorn.  "I'm not
+married, or very theoretical about it, either.  One can only, after
+all, have his own point of view."
+
+"We're not, I expect, fair to the women," the Duke generously
+acknowledged.  "We look for so much in them.  We expect them to be so
+much."
+
+"A wife," Bulstrode completed for him, "a mother, a friend."
+
+And Westboro' finished it.  "For them and for other men.  And a
+mistress."
+
+And here Bulstrode took him up for the first time with a note of
+challenge in his voice.
+
+"And what, my dear man, did you intend that the Duchess should take you
+for?  No, I mean to say, quite man to man, given that any woman could
+or does contain all the qualities you so temperately ask?"
+
+Westboro' smiled at the first curtness he had ever heard in his
+friend's voice.
+
+"Oh, you know, we men don't fuss about ourselves."
+
+"You married her at eighteen," Bulstrode said.  "You made her a
+Duchess.  You had already lived a life and she was a child beside you
+in experience.  You required motherhood of her, and in return...."
+
+"Well," Westboro' turned about in his saddle and faced his earnest
+friend.  "What then, in your opinion, might I have been?"
+
+"You might have been from the start," Bulstrode said it shortly, "a
+lover.  It's not a bad role.  We Anglo-Saxons have no sentimental
+education.  Our puritanism makes us half the time timid at courtship
+and love."
+
+The gentlemen rode a little on with slackened rein.  Westboro's
+eyeglass cord was almost motionless as he stared out between his
+horse's ears down the lane.
+
+"Perhaps, after all," he fetched it out slowly, "there's something in
+what you say."
+
+Whether or not there was any truth in Bulstrode's commonplace remark,
+it lingered in his host's mind all day.  It gave him, for the first
+time, a link to follow--an idea--and the Duke, entirely unused to
+analysis, accustomed to act if not on impulse, certainly according to
+his will and pleasure without concession, harked back in a groping,
+touching fashion like an awkward boy looking for a lost treasure,
+upsetting, as he went, old haunts, turning over things for years not
+brought to the light of day.  And it took him all the afternoon and a
+good part of the evening to reach the place where he thought he had
+lost originally his joy.  Unlike the happier boy, he could not seize
+his bliss once recovered, and stow it away; it was only remembrance
+that brought him back, and with a tightening heart as he realized once
+more the form and quality of his lost happiness--there he must leave it
+and see it fade again into the past.
+
+
+Jimmy gave his host a chance to follow his absorbed reflections.  He
+effaced himself, and behind a book whose lightness of touch made him
+agreeably forget the heavier hand of current and daily events, he sat
+in his dressing-room reading "The Vicar of Wakefield."
+
+When Westboro' came in to him Jimmy looked up and quoted aloud: "When
+lovely woman stoops to folly and finds at length that men betray...."
+
+"Oh, they console themselves quickly," Westboro' finished.  "Don't
+fancy anything else, my dear fellow, they console themselves."
+
+"They may pretend to do so."
+
+"They succeed."
+
+Westboro' took the little book from his friend's hand and shut it
+firmly as if afraid that the rest of the verse might slip out and
+refute him.
+
+"Bulstrode, she consoles herself, she is perfectly happy."
+
+"How are you then so sure?"
+
+"Oh, I hear of her in Paris."  The Duke's features contracted.  "She's
+contriving to pass her time--to pass her time."
+
+Bulstrode leaned over towards his friend and, for Westboro' sat
+opposite him, he put his hand on the Duke's knee.
+
+"You must certainly go to her."
+
+Westboro' stroked his moustache before he answered:
+
+"Not if I never see her again."
+
+"You should decidedly go to her."
+
+The other shook his head.  "Not if it meant twice the hell it is now."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I went to her once.  I may say twice," he slowly said, "since we
+separated."  And as he stopped speaking Bulstrode could only imagine
+what the result had been.
+
+"I don't think I'm a Westboro' really, for I couldn't follow any
+woman's carriage puling like a schoolboy as my ancestor did.  There's a
+great deal of my mother's blood in me, and it's a different blend."
+
+Bulstrode's eyes were on the little book between the Duke's
+aristocratic hands.
+
+"She has, I grant you, a lot to forgive; but she quite well knows all
+the blame I acknowledge, quite well.  I don't believe I'm any worse
+than the run of mankind, and whether I am or not, I've made all the
+amends I can and I have nothing more to say."
+
+His eyeglass had dropped; his face looked worn; he showed his age more
+than a happier man would have done at his years His mood of thinking it
+out by himself continued for so long that Bulstrode finally asked:
+
+"What, if I may be so near you as to question, do you mean, old chap,
+to do?"
+
+Westboro' had it all laid out for himself--his ready answer showed it.
+
+"You say I'm not a lover," he reminded his friend; "no doubt you're
+right, but I'm an affectionate chap, at any rate, I can't bear this--"
+He looked about hopelessly.  The words were forced out by the high mark
+of his unhappiness: "--this infernal solitude.  Even when a good
+comrade like yourself is in it, the house seems to speak to me from the
+empty rooms in this wing."  (Bulstrode knew he was thinking of the
+nurseries with the low latches and little gates.)  "I can't stand it.
+When I get out of England and abroad the place fetches me back again
+like a magnet.  I'm a home-keeping sort of man, and I want my home."
+
+His friend gently urged in the silence: "Well?"
+
+"I shall wait," the Duke went on with the plan he had been forced to
+make out for himself.  "I shall hold on, keep along a bit, and then--_I
+shall go to the other woman_."  And the Duke, as he raised his eyes to
+his companion, fixed his glass firmly and felt that he challenged in
+every way Bulstrode's disapproval.  "The Duchess will get her
+divorce--it goes without saying--will get her divorce.  Why she has not
+already done so I can't imagine."
+
+As Westboro' appeared inclined to leave the subject there, Bulstrode
+pressed him further: "And then?"
+
+"I fancy I shall marry the other woman."
+
+Bulstrode started.  The complexion of the idea was so foreign to him
+that he could not for a moment let himself think that he understood it.
+
+"You will," he said, "marry one woman whilst you distinctly love
+another?"
+
+The Duke nodded.  "Love," he reflected, "I begin to believe I don't
+know anything about.  It must, of course, suppose some sort of return.
+If, as you say, I love another woman, I'm not made of the stuff that
+can go along doing so without anything on her side."
+
+The dressing clock at the bedside on the little stand chimed the hour.
+It was two o'clock.  The Duke of Westboro' rose.
+
+"You must think me a colossal ass, my dear friend, but if it had not
+been for your awfully good companionship and your kindness, I dare say
+that by now I should have already made some sort of fatal blunder."
+
+At the door Bulstrode put his hand on his friend's arm, and, as though
+nothing in the conversation apart from the Duchess had any real
+significance, he said simply:
+
+"You are then, in sum, simply waiting...?"
+
+"Oh, yes," agreed the other rather blankly.  And the other man knew
+that he had been told only half the thought in his friend's mind.
+
+"She may get a divorce at any time, you know, quite easily, without my
+taking any further steps."
+
+"Oh, I see perfectly," Jimmy accepted; and as the door closed after his
+host, he said, almost aloud: "He thinks, then, there is half a chance
+that the Duchess will return."  And wondering very much how far a woman
+is willing to sacrifice herself for a man, granted that she loves him,
+he did not finish his phrase.
+
+
+The next day Bulstrode, no longer able to resist the beckoning country,
+went out, as it were, to it as if he said "Here I am--what will you do
+with me?"
+
+If Glousceshire could, for a while, make him forget the problems he had
+been housed with, brush him up a bit, he thought it would be a good
+thing.  Therefore, when his horse came up to the door he threw himself
+on the animal in a nervous haste to be gone, and setting off in the
+direction of Penhaven, obeyed its summons at last.
+
+Westboro' had run up to London for overnight, and Bulstrode, at the
+Duke's something more than invitation, a sort of appeal, was to stay
+indefinitely on.  It must be confessed that he rather selfishly looked
+forward to the course of an untroubled afternoon, to an evening amongst
+the books whose files had tempted him for days.
+
+But the pity of all he had sympathetically been closeted with was great
+in his mind.  Whereas his native delicacy and slow judgment had led him
+to keep silent until now towards his host, it was in no wise because
+Jimmy had not quite made up his mind that he would not spare Westboro'
+at all when the moment, if it ever came, should present itself for him
+to speak.
+
+As he rode along he thought of the Duchess naturally in Paris,
+surrounded by a train of ardent admirers; she had them always,
+everywhere.  She was disillusioned, of course, probably angry, piqued,
+and unfortunately she had been betrayed; and he shrugged with a gentle
+desperation as he made a mental picture of the last scene: the
+inevitable divorce, the wrecking of another household,
+unless--unless--one of them loved sufficiently to save the situation.
+
+His thoughts came to a standstill as his horse stopped short before a
+gate: his riding had fetched him up before it.  The mare stretched out
+her long neck, set free by a relaxing rein; she sniffed the latch and
+put her head over the wicket, and the rider saw that they had come
+across fields, and were at the entrance of a deserted property.  The
+gate gave access to a forest road where the thick underbrush was
+untidy, and on whose walk the piles of leaves lay as they had fallen.
+He could see no farther in, and thinking to come at the end upon a
+forsaken garden, the precincts of an untenanted country house, he
+leaned down, tried the gate which fairly swung into his hand, and the
+mare passed through.  There was the delicious intimacy about the woods
+which the sense of coming alone and unexpectedly upon the old and
+forsaken gives the traveller.  He is a discoverer of secrets, a
+legitimate spy upon stories which he flatters himself he is the first
+to read.  He becomes intimate with another man's past, and as he must
+necessarily, in all ignorance, tell himself his own tales, indiscretion
+may be said to be a doubtful quantity.
+
+A bit back in the bare brown woods he saw the flash of a marble pillar;
+it shone white and clear in the setting of russet and against the boles
+of the trees.  A little farther away gleamed another figure on its base
+of fluted marble, and still farther along, leaf-overlaid and thus
+effaced, he could discern the contour of a sunken garden.  The place
+grew more pretentious as he slowly picked his way, and he was
+unprepared for coming suddenly onto a gravel path from which he thought
+the leaves had been blown away.  Here Bulstrode dismounted, and, with
+the bridle over his arm, walked towards the path's end, pleasantly
+interested, and now, as he thought it should by this do, the house
+struck on him through an archway contrived by the training of old trees
+over a circle of stone.  The house broke on him in the shape of an
+Elizabethan manse; long and old with soft rose-color of brick in
+places, and the color of a faded leaf in others where the dampness had
+soaked in and had, through countless mid-summer suns, been burned out
+again.  Before the windows flashed the red of bright curtains.  The
+house was distinctly, and he thought it seemed happily, occupied.  He
+stopped where he stood by the arch, a little confused and a little
+balked in his romantic treat, and not the less feeling himself an
+intruder.  But before he could turn his horse and unobtrusively lead
+her back the way they had come, the house's occupant, no doubt she who
+gave it the air of being so happily tenanted, had come out with a
+garden hat on her head, a pair of garden shears in her hands, and with
+the precision of intention, turned sharply towards the arched forest
+walk, and in this way squarely upon Bulstrode.
+
+The surprise to him was, without doubt, the greater, for she knew him
+at once, and he for a second did not recognize her.  Her extreme
+English air--the straw hat tied under her chin and the face it framed,
+so decidedly altered, bewildered him.  His first greeting, mentally,
+before he spoke aloud to her, was masculine.  "Why, her beauty!  What
+in heaven's name had she done with it?"
+
+"_What_ are you doing here?"
+
+They both asked it at once, and the lady having lived so long in an
+insular country was adept in its possibilities of great hospitality as
+well as of freezing out an unwelcome visitor.  She froze the poor
+gentleman and then, touched by his utter bewilderment and his innocence
+of wilful intrusion, she smiled more humanly.
+
+"Won't you, since you _are_ here, Mr. Bulstrode, come in and have a cup
+of tea?"
+
+She at once followed their mutual question by saying: "As for being
+here, you will admit that given the part of the country it is, no one
+has a better right!"
+
+"Oh, I'll admit anything you like," he laughed, "if you'll only admit
+us.  You see we are two."
+
+The lady came up to him in a more friendly manner; she gave him her
+hand and she really smiled beautifully.  Then she put her hand on the
+nose of the horse, with the touch one has for familiar things.
+
+"She's a perfect dear, isn't she--a dear.  So you are riding her then?
+Well, you'll find her easy to tie, she stands well.  There's nothing
+she can spoil, that's the charm of such an old, tumble-down place."
+
+As Bulstrode followed after the trailing dress just touching the gravel
+with a rustling sound, he had the feeling of being suddenly,
+willy-nilly, taken and put into the heart of a story book.  He smiled.
+"Well, I've done the first chapter and now I've got to go on in the
+book, I suppose, whether I want to be here or not, to the end."
+
+"I thought I was making a voyage of discovery," he told her as they sat
+in the low room before a fire and before her table and tea cups.  "I
+fancied I was the only person within miles round.  I expect no one has
+a right to be so bold, but I really didn't dream the place was lived
+in, as, of course, you know."
+
+"Drink your tea," she bade, "and eat your toast before I make you tell
+me if you have come to see me as a messenger."
+
+"And if I have?"
+
+It was delicious tea, and the American of her had somehow found cream
+for it, which, un-English luxury, the American in him fully
+appreciated.  The liquid in the blue-and-white cups was pale as saffron
+and the toast was a feather.
+
+"At five o'clock there's nothing like it in the world," he breathed.
+"I didn't hope for this to-day.  I had recklessly thrown five o'clock
+over, for I'm alone at the castle."  He drank his tea, finished, and
+with a sigh.  Then he said: "I can actually venture to ask you for
+another cup, for I am nobody's messenger or envoy, my dear, nobody's.
+I'm just an indiscreet, humdrum individual who has been too charmingly
+rewarded for an intrusion.  You saw my surprise, didn't you?  And I'm
+not very clever at putting on things."
+
+The Duchess tacitly accepted, it is to be supposed, for she made him a
+second cup of tea, slowly.
+
+"You don't know that I've been thinking about you all day," he said,
+"and I can frankly say that I've been making a very different picture
+of you indeed."
+
+She took no notice whatsoever of his personality.
+
+"You are in England, then," she said rather formally.  "I never think
+of my own country people as being here.  I always think of Americans as
+being in the States, men above all, for they fit so badly in the
+English atmosphere, don't they?  It's always incongruous to me to hear
+their "r's" and "a's" rattling about in this soft language.  It's
+horrid of me to speak so.  You, of course, are out of the category.
+But as you stood there, with Banshee's nose over your shoulder you
+fitted quite beautifully in with everything.  I don't believe I should
+mind you, ever, anywhere, and yet I more naturally think of you at
+Newport, don't you see?"
+
+Her companion cried: "Oh, no, I'm in England, and you can't alter the
+fact, at least if you can, please don't; for Newport on the fifteenth
+of December, and with no such tea or fire----"
+
+"Oh," she permitted, "you may stay.  I said you fitted--only----"
+
+Bulstrode interposed: "Don't at least for a few moments entertain any
+'buts' and 'onlys'--they are nearly as bad as those magical travelling
+trunks that would transport me to the United States.  It is so--let me
+say--neutral in this place, I should think I might remain.  I don't
+know why you are here or with whom, nor for how long, or for how deep,
+but it is singularly perfect to have found you."
+
+His hostess had left her seat behind the table, and taking a chair by
+the fireside where Bulstrode was sitting, undid the ribbons of her
+garden hat and let the basket-like object fall on the floor.
+
+"You must promise me, first of all, that you will not say you have seen
+me.  Otherwise I shall leave here to-morrow and nobody shall ever again
+know where I am."
+
+However her command might conflict with what was in his mind, he was
+obliged to give her his word.  He had no right not to do so.
+
+"And nothing," she said, "must make you break this promise, Mr.
+Bulstrode.  I know how good you are, and how you do all sorts of
+Quixotic funny things, but in this case please--please----"
+
+"Mind my own business?" he nodded.  "I will, Duchess, I will."
+
+She looked at him steadily a moment and seemed satisfied, for she
+relaxed the tensity of her manner, which was the first Americanism she
+had displayed, and in her pretty soft drawl asked him, with less
+perfunctory interest than her words implied: "You are at Westboro'?"
+
+"Yes, since the twenty-fifth."
+
+"And you're staying on?"
+
+"I seem to be more or less of a fixture--until the holidays, I expect."
+
+"Lucky you," she breathed, and at his expression of candid surprise she
+half laughed.  "Oh, I mean as far as the castle goes--isn't it really
+too delightful?"
+
+He was able to say honestly: "Quite the most beautiful house I have
+ever seen."
+
+"Yes, I think so too," she nodded.  "It's not so important as many
+others but it's more perfect, more like a home."
+
+Bulstrode sat back in his chair and tried to make her forget him.
+Between the fire and the shadow he wanted to watch her face from which
+he now saw that the beauty he remembered had not faded but had been
+transformed.  She was beautiful in another way: the brilliant, blooming
+girl, fully blown at eighteen, with the dazzling charm of health, no
+longer existed in the Duchess of Westboro'.  She had refined very much
+indeed.  The aggressive bearing of the American princess had been
+replaced by the colder, more serene hauteur of the English Duchess.
+She was evidently a very proud woman, the arch of her brows said so,
+and the line of her lips.  All her lines were sharper and finer.  Her
+color, and he could not, as he studied her, quite regret it; her color
+was quite gone.  Her pallor made her more delicate, and her eyes--it
+was in them that Bulstrode thought he saw the greatest change of all;
+they were now fixed upon him, there was something melancholy in their
+profound and deeply circled gray.
+
+"What rooms will they have given you?" she asked after a moment.
+Then--"Wait," she commanded, "I know.  The south wing, the Henry IV.
+rooms that look into the gardens.  I always gave those to the men.
+There's something extremely homelike about them, don't you think so?
+And have you ever seen anything like those winter roses in that court?
+Did any bloom this year?  The trellis runs up along the terrace
+balustrade--or possibly you don't care for flowers?  Of course you
+wouldn't as a girl does."
+
+A _girl_--with that face and those eyes?  Why, she must have been
+talking back ten years.  Bulstrode drew a breath.
+
+"I know the roses you mean.  It would be difficult to forget them.
+Your gardener takes such pride in them.  For some reason they are never
+gathered; they fall as they hang.  The gardener, it so happened, told
+me so."
+
+She was looking at him with an intensity almost painful, but she said
+nothing further, and after a moment more Bulstrode replied to another
+question.
+
+"As it happens I don't occupy the Henry IV. rooms.  I have mine quite
+on the other side of the castle.  Don't they call them the 'West
+Rooms'?"
+
+She caught her breath a little, but she was in splendid training with
+all her years of English life behind her.  Her face, nevertheless,
+showed how well she knew those rooms, without the added note in her
+voice as she said:
+
+"Oh, those West Rooms--you have those."
+
+And in the quiet that fell as her eyes sought the fire, he quite knew
+how her thoughts travelled down the hall to the open nursery doors with
+their waiting gates.  Whatever were her reasons for being here,
+Bulstrode saw that he had surprised her in a moment of sadness, and
+that his visit in spite of his indiscretion, was not wholly unwelcome.
+But in the sudden way coming upon some one connected with her own life,
+she had been completely taken unawares, and her lapse into something
+like sentiment was short.  Even as he looked at her she hardened.
+
+"You have naturally not asked me anything, Mr. Bulstrode," she said,
+coldly enough now, "and more naturally still I have no explanations to
+give.  By to-morrow I may be gone.  I may live here for the rest of my
+life.  I never leave my garden, I am quite unknown to the people about.
+If any one in Westboro' learns that I am here I shall leave at once.
+You will not come again.  It is discourteous to say so--to ask it."
+
+He had risen from his chair.
+
+"Oh, but it's quite, quite dark.  However will you manage?"
+
+"We'll pick our way back well enough," he assured her.  "The distance
+to the road is nothing, and from here on it runs straight to the abbey."
+
+The Duchess followed him slowly to the door, and there she asked
+abruptly: "Is Westboro' to be down all winter?  I didn't know it.  I
+thought he was out of England or I should not have come here at all."
+
+"Oh," Bulstrode answered, "he's too restless to be long anywhere.  I
+expect he'll pack up and be off before we know it.  He's away just now
+at any rate, and I'm kicking my heels up there quite alone.  I'm not to
+return--ever?" he ventured.  "You may so fully trust me that--" and he
+saw that she hesitated and pursued, "I shall ride up to the little gate
+again, and if it is unlatched...."
+
+"Oh, don't count on it," she advised him, "don't--it's against all my
+plans."
+
+Somebody in the shape of a lad had unfastened the mare, and preceded
+Bulstrode on foot with a lantern, by whose flicker, with much delicate
+caution and pretended shyness, Banshee picked her way to the road,
+through the woods which Bulstrode an hour before had fancied led into a
+deserted garden.
+
+
+"You see," he put it to her delicacy to understand, "it's scarcely, in
+a way, fair to him--I feel it so at least.  It gives me the sensation
+of knowing more than he does in his own house about that which
+presumably should be Westboro's secret."
+
+"You mean to say,"--the Duchess pinned him down, "that you'll give me
+away because of one of those peculiar crises of honor that makes a
+person betray a trust in order to salve his conscience?"
+
+
+Bulstrode had come again faithfully, making the pilgrimage to the
+forest road, and he was not surprised that it should have finally
+turned out so that one day the gate yielded to his touch, and he found
+the Duchess if not waiting for him, distinctly there.  During their
+delightful little talks--and they had been so--not once had the name of
+Bulstrode's host been mentioned; and if the lady had a curiosity
+concerning her lord and once master, she did not display it to the
+visitor.
+
+"I mean to say," Bulstrode replied in answer to her challenge which was
+fiery, "that I really don't want to play false to Westboro', more false
+than I shall in the course of events be forced to be.  Of course, your
+secret--I need not say so--is entirely safe.  But the Duke comes back
+in a day or two, and rather than face him with this silence which you
+have imposed upon me I am going back to London before he returns."
+
+The sewing she had chosen to finger--a Duchess, and an American one at
+that, is not expected to do more--lay at her feet.  By her side was a
+basket of considerable proportions, and it was full to the brim with
+linen: the very fine white stuff overflowed from the basket like snow.
+The Duchess of Westboro's handiwork had already caught the eye of her
+guest.  And now, as her long hands and her long finger, tipped by its
+golden thimble, handled her sewing, Bulstrode watched her interestedly
+and found great loveliness in her bending face.
+
+"I didn't think any of you knew how to sew," he mused aloud.
+
+"Any of us!" she smiled.  "Do you, by that, mean American Duchesses?
+Or do you mean women who have left their husbands?  Or in just what
+class do you think of me, regarding your last remark?"
+
+She folded up her work and dropped her thimble in the nest of snow.
+Bulstrode acknowledged that his conclusion, whatever it had been, was
+wrong.
+
+"When I married," the Duchess said, "I was the best four-in-hand whip
+for a woman in my set.  I don't think I am a keen needlewoman, really,
+and I know then I didn't recognize a needle by sight.  When my little
+boys were born I sent to Paris for everything they wore, and I can
+remember that I didn't even know for what the little clothes were
+intended, many of them, when they came home in my first son's layette.
+I have learned to sew since I came here to The Dials.  I've been three
+months here, now, and I really must have proved a clever pupil, for I
+assure you that they tell me I have made some pretty things."  As she
+spoke she held up the seam she ran, and Bulstrode, who himself
+confessed to not knowing a needle by sight, was forced to peer over the
+seam and endeavor to find her tiny stitches.  He exclaimed:
+
+"Three months!  You must have been terribly dull!"
+
+"No."
+
+"You are known," he said, "throughout the countryside--not that I've
+been making inquiries, but in spite of myself I have heard--as a
+stranger, presumably a Frenchwoman, a widow who will probably buy The
+Dials."
+
+"Oh, I shall never buy the place," she assured him, and then abruptly:
+"Had you been free to speak of me, what would you have told Westboro'?"
+
+He waited a second, then answered her lightly, but with a feeling which
+she did not mistake: "I should have asked him to come and see you run
+up that seam."
+
+"He would not have come."
+
+Remembering very clearly how determined Westboro's decision had been,
+he did not affirm to the lady his belief that Westboro' would in
+reality have flown to her.
+
+At the door, later, she bade him good-bye and appeared to gather her
+courage together, and, with a lapse into a simplicity so entire that
+she seemed only Frances Denby and to possess no more of title or
+distinction than any lovely woman, she said to him:
+
+"Mr. Bulstrode, please don't leave the castle."
+
+"Oh, I couldn't sit opposite my friend at dinner, I couldn't meet his
+eyes now, my dear child."
+
+The Duchess touched his arm.  "It's sweet of you to call me so.  You
+are really as young as I am, and certainly I feel an age beyond you.
+Please stay."
+
+The pleasure which his visits had been to her had brought something of
+an animation and interest to her cold face.  Dressed in a dark and
+simple gown, her fur stole about her neck, she had this afternoon
+followed him out of the house into the garden and walked slowly along
+by his side towards the gate.
+
+"Of all the people in the world one would choose you, I think, to be
+the friend of..."  She caught herself up.  "I mean to say, can't you
+forget those stupid little ideas of honor and friendship and all that?"
+She put it beautifully.  "I, of course, will give up seeing you," she
+renounced, "but it will be a world of comfort just to feel that you are
+there."
+
+As he did not at once succumb to her blandishments, she asked point
+blank:
+
+"Promise me to stop on."
+
+"I at least won't go without letting you know of it."
+
+"Without my permission?"
+
+"I won't say that."
+
+"But I'm sure that you mean it," she nodded happily, "and you're _such_
+a help."
+
+She was so affectionate as she bade him good-bye, that only at the
+little road did he begin to wonder just what help he was.  Was he
+aiding her to detective poor Westboro'?  Was he adding an air of
+protection to some feminine treachery?
+
+"Oh, no," he decided; "she's incapable of any thing of the sort.  But I
+must clear out;" and he decided that at once, so soon as Westboro'
+should be at home, he would take himself to ground still more neutral
+than The Dials had proved to be.  But Westboro' showed no intention of
+coming immediately home.  Instead, with a droll egoism, as if the fact
+that he had made poor Bulstrode a party to his unhappiness gave him
+thereafter a right to the other's time even in absence, he laid a firm
+hold on Jimmy.  Westboro' finally put pen to paper, and the scrappy
+letter touched the deserted visitor; it proved to have been written at
+a _bureau de poste_ in Paris:
+
+"Don't, for God's sake, go off, old man.  Keep up your end."  (His
+end!)  "Stop on at Westboro'--Use the place as if it were all put up
+for your amusement.  Just live there so I may feel it's alive.  Let me
+find a human being at home when I turn up.  I'll wire in a day or so."
+
+"So he is in Paris, then."  Bulstrode had supposed so, and did not
+doubt that the Duke had gone there to find news of his wife, possibly
+as well to see Madame de Bassevigne.
+
+Poor fellow, if he were searching for the Duchess!  Well, Bulstrode
+would keep up his end, he had nothing else for the time being to do but
+to mind other people's business.  He put it so to himself.  Indeed he
+could not but believe it was fortunate for more than one person that
+something could keep him from minding his own.
+
+An undefined discretion kept him from going to the Moated Grange, as to
+himself he styled the retreat the Duchess had made of The Dials.  And,
+in spite of the absolute freedom now given him to prowl about amongst
+the books, in spite of his "evenings out" as he called them, Jimmy
+found the time at Westboro' to drag lamentably.  His own affairs, which
+he so faithlessly denied, came to him in batches of letters whose
+questions could not be solved by return mail.  He became over his own
+thoughts restless, and he sent a telegram to his host: "Better have a
+look at things here yourself.  Can't possibly stop on longer than...."
+And he set a day.
+
+"If Westboro', poor devil, has to look forward to a life of this
+unaccompanied grandeur," he pitied him.  The lines and files of
+soft-footed, impersonal servants, the perfect stilted attention, the
+silence, and the inhumanness of a man's lonely life, became intolerable
+to Jimmy Bulstrode.  Even though Frances, Duchess of Westboro', had
+truly said that the castle was a delightful home, Bulstrode began to
+wonder what that word comprised or meant: certainly nothing like his
+occupation of another man's house or like any life that is lived alone.
+
+At the end of the week that the American spent at Westboro' he had
+condensed the castle, as he said to himself, as far as possible, to the
+proportions of a Harlem flat, and he lived in it.  In the almost small
+breakfast room whose windows gave on the terrace, and where all the
+December sun that was visible came to find him, he took his meals; each
+of them but dinner, which was determinedly and imperially served by
+five men in one of the dining-rooms, and at which function, as he
+expressed it, he shut his eyes and just ate blindly through.  He lived
+out of doors all day, took his tea in his dressing-room, and read and
+smoked until the august dinner hour called him down to dress and dine
+alone.  For a week he lived "without sight of a human being," so he
+said, for the domestics were only machines.  And, towards the end of
+the week, he would have gone to see any one: an enemy would have been
+too easy, and the only person within range was, of course, the Duchess
+of Westboro'.
+
+
+Westboro' had made a confidant of Bulstrode, and the woman had not.
+Bulstrode liked it in her.  To be sure, the cases were quite different:
+there was no reason why the man deserted and bruised in his pride and
+in his heart, should not have talked to his old friend.  Westboro'
+accused himself of weakness.
+
+"I've blabbed like a woman," he acknowledged ruefully.
+
+The Duchess had not spoken nor had she, on the other hand, with the
+fine courage of the true woman, been in any eager haste to discover
+what her husband had said of her, nor had she asked if he had spoken at
+all.  On the other hand, aided by an extreme patience and with still
+greater delicacy, she had waited, understanding that her guest, whose
+mettle and character she knew would not permit him to betray a trust,
+might, however naively, disclose what he knew without being conscious
+of it.
+
+But if Bulstrode gave himself or his host away, the Duchess made no
+sign that she had profited by indiscretions.  The impersonality of
+their conversations was indeed a relief to Bulstrode, and it made it
+possible for him to feel himself less a traitor at the Duke's hearth.
+But she talked very sweetly, too, of her children.  She had the second
+picture to the Duke's of the little boys, a picture like the one
+Bulstrode had seen at the castle, and showed it to him as the father
+had done.
+
+"Westboro' has the companion to this," he had not minded telling her as
+they sat together in the small room he had grown to know as well as the
+larger rooms of the castle.  And at the end of a few moments Bulstrode
+quite blurted out: "Why, in Heaven's name do you women make men suffer
+so?"
+
+The Duchess, who had been working, dropped her bit of muslin and
+looked, with her cherry lips parted and her great serious eyes, for all
+the world like a lady in a gift book.  Her face was eighteenth century
+and child-like.
+
+Bulstrode nodded.  "Oh, yes, you've got so easily the upper hand, the
+very least of you, you know, over the best of us.  It's such an unfair
+supremacy.  You've got such a clever knowledge of little things, such a
+sense of the scale of the feelings, and you certainly make the very
+most of your power over us all.  Can't you--" and his eyes, half
+serious and half reproachful, seemed, as he looked at her, to question
+all the womankind he knew--"Can't you ever love us well enough just
+quite simply to make us happy?"
+
+The Duchess had taken up her sewing again, and her eyes were upon it.
+Bulstrode waited for a little, following her stitches through the
+muslin and the flash of her thimble in the light.
+
+"Can't you?" he softly repeated.  "Isn't it, after all, a good sort of
+way of spending one's life, this making another happy?"
+
+"American women aren't taught so, you know," she said.  "It isn't
+taught us that the end and aim of our existence is to make a man happy."
+
+Her companion didn't seem at all surprised.
+
+"And so you see," she went on, "those of us that do learn that after
+all there may be something in what you say--those of us that learn,
+only find it out after a lot of hard experiences, and it is sometimes
+too late!"
+
+She seemed to think his direct question called for a distinct answer,
+for she admitted: "Oh, yes, of course there are some of us who would
+give a great deal to try.  And you see, moreover," she went on with her
+subject as she turned the corner of her square, "you put it well when
+you said 'love enough.'  You see that's the whole thing, Mr. Bulstrode,
+to love enough.  One can, of course, in that case, do nearly all there
+is to do, can't one?"
+
+"Nearly all," he had smiled, and added: "_And a great deal more_."
+
+
+The household gods, whose dignity and harmony had not been disturbed
+during the absence of the master of Westboro', were unable, however, to
+give him very much comfort on his return.  The Duke's motor cut quickly
+up the long drive and severed--clove, as it were--a way through the
+frosty air and let him into the park.  The poor man had only a sense of
+wretchedness on coming home--"coming back," he now put it.  Huddled
+down deep in his fur coat, its collar hunched round his ears, his face
+was as gloomy as that of a man dispossessed of all his goods; doors
+thrown open into the fragrant and agreeably warmed halls fetched him
+further home.  But the knowledge that the house had been lived in
+during his absence was not ungrateful.  He sniffed the odor of a
+familiar brand of cigar, and before he had quite plumbed the melancholy
+of the place to its depths, Jimmy Bulstrode had sunned out of one of
+the inner rooms, and the grasp of the friendly hand and the sound of
+the cheerful voice struck a chord in Westboro' that shook him.
+
+"I've been like a fiend possessed," he said to Jimmy, in the evening
+when they found themselves once more before the fire.  "I've scarcely
+known what I've been doing, or why; but I know one thing, and that is
+that I'm the most wretched man alive."
+
+Bulstrode nodded.  "You _did_ go to Paris, then!"
+
+"Yes," said the Duke, "and what I've found out there has driven me
+insane."
+
+Although ignorant of the variations of his friend's discovery,
+Bulstrode was pretty certain of one that had not been made.
+
+"You may, old chap," he said smoothly, "not have found out all the
+truth, you know."
+
+Westboro' raised his hand.  "Come," he said, "no palliations; you can't
+smooth over the facts.  Frances is not in Paris.  She has not been in
+Paris for several months."  He paused.
+
+"In itself not a tragedy," murmured his friend.  "Paris is considered
+at times a place as well _not_ to be in."
+
+But Bulstrode's remark did not distract his friend from his narrative.
+
+"She has not been in Paris since I saw her twelve months ago, and she
+has left no sign or trace of where she has gone.  There is no address,
+no way that I can find her.  Not that a discovery is not of course
+ultimately possible, but what, in the interval, if I should wish to
+write to her?  What if I should need to see her?  What if I should die?"
+
+"Would you, in any of those cases, send for her?"
+
+"I don't know," the Duke admitted.
+
+"But," Jimmy asked him, "did you go to Paris this time to see the
+Duchess?"
+
+"Since you ask me frankly," the Duke admitted, "I don't think that I
+did."
+
+"At all events," the other said, "you surely did not go to spy on her,
+Westboro'?"
+
+The Duke was silent, then answered quietly:
+
+"I should never ask a question--not if it meant a certain discovery of
+something that I feared or suspected.  I don't think I should ever seek
+to find out something she didn't want me to know."
+
+Bulstrode, at the blindness of a man regarding his own intentions,
+smiled behind his cigar.  "Well?" he helped.
+
+"I went over to France," said the Duke--"and I suppose you'll scarcely
+believe a man who you say is not a lover to be capable of such
+sentimentality--simply, if possible, to have a sight of my wife, to see
+her go out of the door, or to see her go in, to see her possibly get
+into a carriage; and how did I know that it would not be with another
+man?"
+
+"How did you find out that she had left?"
+
+"I asked for her at her hotel."
+
+"The first question, then," Jimmy smiled.
+
+"A fair one?"
+
+"Oh, perfectly."
+
+"I was told that the Duchess had left Paris months before."
+
+"And then?" the other man's voice was placid as he spoke for the Duke.
+"Then you went to her bankers, her bakers and candlestick makers; in
+short, you asked all over the place, didn't you?"
+
+The Duke swore gently.  "Well, what would you have a man do?"
+
+"Why I would have him do that," nodded Jimmy, "by all means.  Any man
+would have done so."
+
+In the half second of interval whilst the Duke was obliged to swallow
+his friend's sarcasm, Bulstrode had time to think: "Here I am, once
+more in the heart of an intrigue.  Its fetters are all about me and I
+am wretchedly bound by honor not to do the simple, natural thing."
+Then he asked boldly: "Well, what do you think about it, Westboro'?"
+
+"Think?" Westboro' repeated, "why, that she has deliberately escaped
+from me, put herself out of any possible reach; she doesn't want a
+reconciliation and she has gone away.  She may have gone away alone and
+she may not, that I don't know, and I don't believe I want to know."
+
+"Oh, you'll find her."  It was with the most delightful security and
+contentment that his friend was able to tell the Duke this.  But the
+cheerful note struck the poor husband the disagreeablest of blows.
+
+"Gad!" he laughed, "what a cold brand of creature a bachelor is!  'Find
+her!' as one might speak of finding an umbrella that you've left by
+mistake at your club.  Of course she can be found.  There are not many
+mysteries that search can't solve in these days.  And Duchesses don't
+drop off the face of the earth.  I could no doubt have found her in
+twenty-four hours, but I didn't try to.  I don't know that I want to
+find her.  It isn't the fact of where she's gone that counts--that she
+wanted to go--that she has voluntarily made the separation final and
+complete."
+
+"Then," persisted the bachelor, "you don't really _want_ to find her?"
+
+"Jove!" the Duke turned on him.  "You don't know what it is to love a
+woman!  You've got some imagination--try to use it, can't you?  Can't
+you?"
+
+He met the American's handsome eyes.  A flush rose under Bulstrode's
+cheek.  Westboro' put his hand on his friend's shoulder.  "I beg your
+pardon, dear old chap."
+
+"Oh, that's all right, old chap," Bulstrode assured cheerfully.
+
+
+"My dear Duchess, it seems an unconscionable waste of time and life for
+any one to ignore the inevitable!  It's such a prodigal throwing out of
+the window of riches!"
+
+Bulstrode took her hands, both of them, in his as she stood in the
+winter sunshine, the open house door behind her, the terrace and its
+broken stairs of crumbling stone before her.
+
+"Why, my dear lady, if I kept a diary of daily events I couldn't write
+down one page of good reasons why you should be living here and
+Westboro' up there, and I a comic go-between, in the secret of both and
+the confidence of one."
+
+"Oh," she interrupted, "then you're in the confidence...?"
+
+"Of your husband, yes," Bulstrode found himself startled into betrayal.
+
+She drew her hands from him and walked on a little in the sunshine, and
+he followed by her side.
+
+"I don't mind," she permitted, "you're such a perfect dear.  I
+shouldn't mind at all if I thought that the confidence were a good one."
+
+Her tone was light and cool, but the gentleman never failed to notice
+when the Duchess spoke of the Duke that there was a tremor under her
+words, a warmth, an agitation, which she vainly tried to control.
+
+"Confidences," she said, "are very rarely just, you know, and _les
+absents ont toujours tort_."
+
+"Oh, you don't mean...?" Jimmy emphasized.
+
+"It was a confidence, wasn't it?"
+
+"A real one," she was assured.
+
+"Well then, you'll keep it, of course."
+
+She drew the stole up round her long fair neck; her delicate head came
+out of the soft fur like a flower.  But before she could follow up her
+words Bulstrode said:
+
+"You, of course, then know how he loves you."
+
+He felt more than knew that she trembled, and he saw an instinctive
+gesture which he understood meant that he should be silent.
+
+"You and I put it quite clearly, Mr. Bulstrode, the other day."  Her
+voice was serene again.  "If only one cares enough--that's the
+necessary thing for every question."
+
+"Well?"
+
+She half shrugged, made a little motion with her white hands, and this
+answer said for her: "That is indeed the question, and I haven't solved
+it."
+
+They stopped at the terraced walk.  The low stones, dark and black,
+were filled in their interstices with fine lines of greenish moss.  On
+the sunny corner the dial's shadow fell across the noon.  The Duchess
+put her hand on the warmed stones.
+
+"It's a heavenly day," she said, "I don't believe that the Riviera is
+warmer.  I never have seen such an English December."
+
+Her eyes, which had been fixed on the woods below the garden, now
+turned towards the house and rested on one of the upper windows where
+the sun fell on the little panes.  The Duchess remained looking up a
+few seconds, then she came back to her guest.
+
+"I started, you know, to tell you something," Bulstrode smiled at her.
+"I once served on a jury in the West, and although the case was a
+miserably sad one in every way, I suppose, I couldn't take it as
+seriously as I should have done, for from the first the whole thing
+seemed so unnecessary, and the crisis could so easily have been
+avoided."
+
+"I know," she interrupted him, "but you're rather wrong.  Not from the
+first."
+
+He capitulated.  "Well, grant it so if you like, only agree with me
+when I say from my own--" he put his hand down on the dial's edge.
+"From this lovely noon-time on, every hour you waste is clear loss.
+The Duke loves you as women are rarely loved, and after all," he said
+with something like passion in his agreeable voice "what _do_ you all
+expect?  Love doesn't hang on every tree for a woman to pluck at will,
+and you have the great luck, my dear Duchess, to be loved by your own
+husband.  Why don't you go to him?"
+
+"Go to him?" she echoed.
+
+He curtly replied: "Why not?"
+
+"My dear friend!"
+
+"Why, didn't you forbid him to go to you?"
+
+"Ah," she nodded, "the confidence, it was intimate indeed.  But since
+you have got it, won't you agree that any man, if he loved a woman,
+would disobey her?"
+
+"Westboro' would not."
+
+The Duchess said coldly: "Pride is not love."
+
+"You didn't mean him, then, to keep his vow?"
+
+"Yes," she slowly thought out, "I did indeed, with all my heart."
+
+"And now?"
+
+She turned towards the house again, and as she walked back, said: "I
+don't quite know."
+
+And Bulstrode asked her: "That is why you are here, to find out?"
+
+"Partly."
+
+Her companion's face grew stern.  The Duchess did not see it for her
+eyes had again swept the upper window.  At her side Bulstrode went on:
+"You have taken ten years to discover that you did not love your
+husband.  You have taken one year to begin to wonder, to doubt, to
+suspect, to half think that you do; it's an unstable state of heart,
+Duchess, terribly unstable."
+
+The woman stopped short at his side, and now as she lifted up her eyes
+and saw him, was a little startled if not frightened at his expression.
+
+"Unstable," she repeated, with a world of scorn in her voice.  "How can
+you use that word to me, knowing the facts of the case?"
+
+"Oh, a man," said Bulstrode rather impatiently, "is a worthless,
+wretched piece of mechanism altogether.  I grant you that--utterly
+unworthy the love and confidence of any good woman.  He is capable of
+all the vagaries and infidelities possible.  We'll judge him so.  But,"
+he continued, "these wandering, vagrant derelicts have been known to
+tie fast, to find port, to drop anchor.  They have even brought great
+riches and important treasure into harbor, fetched a world of good luck
+home.  There's only one thing in the universe that can keep a man,
+Duchess, only one."
+
+"Well?" she encouraged him.
+
+"A woman's heart," he said deeply, "a woman's true tenderness; and it
+needs all that heart, all its love, all its patience and sacrifice to
+keep that man--all and forever."
+
+He saw her bosom heave; she had thrown her fur off, as if its warmth
+stifled her.  Vivid color had come into her face.  Her pallor for the
+time was destroyed, and as she flashed a rebellious look at him, a look
+of revolt and selfhood, he seemed to see again the American
+girl--wilful, egotistical, spoiled--an imperious creature whose
+caprices had been opposed to the Duke's Anglo-Saxon temperament and
+national egoism.
+
+At this moment, the window the Duchess looked towards opened part way:
+it was under the eaves and there must have been a dovecote near, for
+there came the soft sound of cooing like the call of a young bird.
+Possibly the gentle note reached the woman's hearing as well, for her
+face transcendently softened.
+
+"I think," she said with evident effort to speak in a commonplace tone,
+"it would be quite futile to urge Cecil to come."
+
+"Oh, I shan't advise him so."
+
+Bulstrode's quick answer made her look at him in so much surprise that
+he went on to say: "I would not, in justice to him, in justice to the
+great love I have been permitted to see, advise him to come."
+
+The Duchess, during the months of analysis, suffering and experience,
+had not admitted to herself that should her husband return she would
+receive him, nor had she decided as to quite how obdurate she would be,
+and she was curious at the attitude of this gentle friend.  She naively
+asked:
+
+"Why would you not advise him so?"
+
+Bulstrode said, still continuing his pleasant sententiousness, "The
+woman's heart must be as stable as the man's is uncertain, and the man
+who comes back after such a separation must not find a woman who does
+not know her own mind.  He must, on the contrary, find one who has no
+mind or will or life but his."
+
+As he looked at the person to whom he spoke he was somewhat struck by
+the maternal look in her: he had never clearly discovered it before.
+Her breast from which the fur had fallen, as it rose and fell under her
+soft gown, was full, generous, and beautiful; even as he spoke in a
+certain accusation against her, she seemed to have altered.
+
+"Westboro'," he said a little confused, "must come back to a woman,
+Duchess, to a woman--to a consoler.  I wish I could express
+myself--almost to a mother--as well as to a wife."
+
+The ardent color dyed her face again; her lips moved.  She put out her
+hand towards him, and as he took it he understood that she wished him
+to bid her good-by and to leave her alone.  He heard what she struggled
+to say:
+
+"He must not come, he must not come."
+
+"No," he accepted sadly for his friend, "No, he must not come."
+
+
+Bulstrode had chosen those times for going to The Dials when his host
+was least likely to take note of his absence; but it happened that more
+than once the Duke missed him at just the wrong moment, and more than
+once had been given the direction in which Bulstrode's footsteps had
+turned.
+
+One morning, during a talk with his agent, Westboro'--the map of the
+district before him--enquired what had ever been done with the property
+known as The Dials, and into whose hands the old place had fallen.  It
+seemed that it had been let for some months to a foreigner, a widow,
+who lived there, and alone.
+
+Westboro' considered the farms and forests, as they lay mapped out
+before him, at the extreme foot of the castle's parks.  It was a little
+square of some fifty acres by itself; it had never interested him
+before.
+
+How long did the lease run on?  Did the agent know?  He believed for
+another year.
+
+The Duke gave instructions to have the property looked into, with a
+view to purchase.  And as the man put up his papers, he vouchsafed to
+his employer:
+
+"The present tenant is very exclusive; she sees nobody, has never, I
+believe, even been to the Abbey.  An old gardener who has been kept on
+says the servants are all foreign."
+
+The Duke gave only a tepid interest to the information which would have
+passed entirely from his mind had it not been for his next meeting with
+Jimmy Bulstrode.
+
+As much to shake off the impression his last talk with the Duchess had
+left on his mind, as to prolong his exercise, Jimmy had gone down out
+of the garden and across the place on foot over the rough winter fields
+with their rimy furrows and their barren floors.  As he made his way
+towards the bottom hedge, looking for a stile he knew would be there a
+little farther on, cutting an entrance out through the thorn to the
+road, he met Westboro', like himself, on foot, and with his hand upon
+the stile.  The presence of the Duke where Bulstrode knew he was least
+thought to be, and where he was now sadly sure he was not opportune,
+made Jimmy stop short, troubled, and, not for a moment thinking that
+the fact of his being there _himself_ was singular, he made his way
+determinedly through the stile.  As he greeted his friend, his own
+demeanor was decidedly one which said: "Don't go on in that direction,
+follow rather out of the turnstile with _me_."  And he led his friend
+rather brusquely down the bank, hitching his arm in Westboro's, forced
+him along with him into the road.
+
+"I ran down here to look over these meadows," said Westboro.'  "You
+seem yourself, in a way, to be pacing the land off!"
+
+"Oh, I _love_ cross-country walking," said Bulstrode warmly.
+
+"You must," smiled the Duke, "to have cut off into those barren fields.
+Were you lost?"  Westboro' stopped and looked back.  "You must have
+come directly down through The Dials."
+
+"_The Dials_?" the American helplessly repeated.  "Do you mean the old
+house and garden?"
+
+Bulstrode's manner and speech were rarely curt and evasive, but he
+seemed this time embarrassed and taken unawares.  As the two men sat in
+the motor which waited for the Duke down the road, Westboro' fixed his
+glass in his eye and looked hard for a second at his friend.
+Bulstrode's cheerful face was distinctly disturbed.
+
+"I'm thinking something of buying The Dials," Westboro', after a
+moment, said against the wind.
+
+Poor Jimmy.  If the house had not sufficiently up till now materialized
+out of his fancy as a possession, it declared itself at once, without
+doubt, as something he must look after.  It was only a little bit of
+England, luckily----
+
+"Well," he exclaimed, "to be frank, old man, I've, too, been thinking I
+should like to buy that property.  You could surely spare me this
+little corner of Glousceshire."
+
+"Spare it!" cried Westboro', "my dear chap, fancy how ripping to have
+you a landlord here!  To catch and hold you so!  We'll go over the
+whole place together.  My agent shall put the matter through for you."
+
+"Good God, no!" said Bulstrode, "don't let your man have wind of any
+such a deal.  The place would go up like a rocket in price.  If you
+really yourself care to withdraw as much as possible, that's the most
+you can do.  But for God's sake keep off the place, like a good fellow."
+
+Behind his long moustaches the Duke covered a smile, but he conciliated
+his agitated friend.
+
+"I'll keep off the grass until the turf is all your own, my dear
+Bulstrode."
+
+"Thanks!" said the other cordially, and sat back with a sigh of relief.
+"There," he reflected peacefully, "my presence is explained--it's quite
+perfect.  I shall be a landowner in England.  At all events, it's lucky
+the property is sympathetic.  I'm glad I didn't get balled up in this
+affair in, let us say, _New Jersey_, and find myself forced to purchase
+the Hackensack Meadows.
+
+"Did the old house look deserted?" asked the Duke wickedly.
+
+"Oh, rather!" replied the other gentleman.
+
+"Really!" wondered Westboro'.  "Why, they tell me that it is let to a
+Donna Incognita--a foreign lady."
+
+Bulstrode, whether at his own lie or at the shock of his companion's
+knowledge, blushed, and his friend saw him redden.  And the Duke, in
+whom candor was a charm, stared at his friend, half-opened his mouth,
+and then sat speechless.  The suggestiveness of the whole affair rushed
+over him so rapidly that he had not time to ask himself whether he
+credited his suspicions or not.
+
+"Good heavens!  _Jimmy_ carrying on a vulgar intrigue in a simple
+country village!"  He looked at the face of the man by his side, but
+Jimmy, leaning forwards, addressed some remark to the chauffeur, and
+showed no intention of meeting the Duke's eyes.  If it were not a
+vulgar intrigue, what could it be?  How difficult it grew to connect
+such a _liason_ with his friend.  But as he thought on, the Duke began
+to ask why, after all, should it be so extraordinary!  Why should he
+suppose Jimmy so unlike the rest of his set?  More scrupulous, more
+sinless than other men--than himself?  He couldn't answer his own
+question, but he did so think of Bulstrode, and since his late house
+party had believed that Jimmy cared for Mrs. Falconer.  The lady at The
+Dials was certainly not she.
+
+Bulstrode, in the shadow of this delinquence, surrounded certainly in
+the mind of the Duke by an atmosphere of intrigue, became very human,
+rather consolingly human.  In their mutual intercourse the Duke had
+felt himself living in a clearer atmosphere than he usually breathed.
+Along by Bulstrode's mode of life, points of view and principles, his
+own life had seemed more mistaken than he had ever thought it to be.
+And although Jimmy had never breathed a word of criticism, he had felt
+himself judged by the man's just, though gentle codes.
+
+By the time he had reached this point in his reflections the motor had
+stopped at one of the side doors of the castle.
+
+"There is, of course, some perfectly proper explanation--" the Duke
+decided.  It's a harmless flirtation, if any flirtation at all.
+Perhaps it's a beneficent bit of benevolence; at any rate it's Jimmy's
+own affair, and after all, he's going to _buy_ the property--perhaps
+he's going to marry.  Why not?
+
+Ashamed to have placed his friend, if only momentarily, in an equivocal
+position, he turned about as they got out of the car and put an
+affectionate hand on the American's shoulder.
+
+"Oh, I expect, old man, that you've got some wonderful scheme up your
+sleeve!  You're going to be married and fetch your bride to The Dials."
+
+Poor Bulstrode unfortunately echoed: "_Married_!" with a world of scorn
+in his tone.  "My poor Westboro,' after what I've lately seen and heard
+here--forgive me if I say that for the time at least I'm not too
+sharply tempted."
+
+
+"Since," he said as he greeted her, "you appear to be intending to live
+here forever, you'll welcome me when I come back from London.  I'm
+coming back for Christmas, but if I don't run in before you'll
+understand, won't you, that it is because I simply haven't dared.
+Westboro' has already seen me cut across to this place."
+
+The Duchess interrupted him.  "Oh, in that case, I shall, of course, be
+obliged to move away."  And to her great surprise Bulstrode quickly
+agreed with her.
+
+"I should think it wise--not of course in the least knowing why you
+originally came."
+
+She looked at him rather quizzically.
+
+"You mean to say then that you don't really know?"
+
+"Oh,"--he was truthful--"I have rather an idea, and I hope a more or
+less true one."
+
+But the lady did not confess or in anywise help him.  He went on to say:
+
+"Your love for the castle couldn't, of course, long continue to keep
+you mewed up here; and you'll be shortly discovered.  As far as your
+own interests are concerned it will be rather better to obtain the
+divorce as soon as possible."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," she interposed, "don't misread me."
+
+He nodded sagely.  "On the contrary, I am translating you from sight,
+my dear Duchess.  And you are decidedly in your right regarding the
+Duke."
+
+She was so at his mercy that she hardly moved her lips, watching his
+face.  And as Bulstrode lit the cigarette she permitted him, and took
+his seat before the tea things which she had set at his elbow, he went
+on to make out her case for her.
+
+"He has quite spoiled your life.  He has been a brute, and not in the
+least worth your----"
+
+But the Duchess had dropped her tongs; they fell ringing on the
+hard-wood floor.  She raised a scarlet face to him.
+
+"It's a _piege_," she murmured, "an _autodafe_."
+
+"No," he said quietly, "it's a plain truth.  Westboro' has told me
+everything.  I must think that he has done so.  The man of me naturally
+condones him, and the friend in me is inclined to be lenient.  But the
+justice and right, my dear Duchess, are all on your side."
+
+"Oh, justice and right!" she dismissed, "only criminals need such
+words."
+
+Bulstrode said cooly: "But Westboro' has been a criminal!"
+
+"If he were," emphasized the Duchess, "didn't I forgive him?"
+
+"Of course, you did, my dear," her friend agreed warmly, "how
+wonderfully, how beautifully, everyone knows.  And he is all the more,
+therefore, dreadfully to be blamed."
+
+She said passionately: "What do you mean, Mr. Bulstrode?  How--why do
+you speak to me like this?"
+
+Her extraordinary guest drank his tea with singular peace of mind.
+
+"I think he is dreadfully to be blamed."
+
+"But why should you tell it to me?"
+
+"Why not?" he returned, his charming eyes on hers with the greatest
+tribute of affection and sympathy--"I've known you for years, I'm fond
+of you, you've been horribly wronged, and I'm going to see that things
+are made right for you.  I've been very blind.  I have longed for a
+reconciliation, I admit, with this husband who, poor stuff as he is,
+loves you still.  But I see what a sentimental ass I've been, and how
+right you are."
+
+She put her hand to her throat as if the soft lace suffocated her; she
+had grown very pale indeed.
+
+"What," she gasped, "do you know of my plans and my intentions, Mr.
+Bulstrode?  I have not told them to you."
+
+"But I've been able to guess them," he replied.
+
+"You've dared to, then?" she flashed.
+
+"Oh, don't blame me," he returned.  "Seeing you as I have all the
+while, I've been forced to make out something--to attach some reason to
+your living in this isolation.  You've wanted, not unnaturally and very
+cleverly, I acknowledge, to see what's been going on at Westboro', what
+the Duke's been up to."
+
+Her voice was suffocated as she said:
+
+"Oh, stop, please!  Whatever has come to you, Mr. Bulstrode, I don't
+know, or why you dare to speak to me as you do."
+
+Seeing her agitation he said smoothly: "My dear child, you're so right
+in everything you've done, and of course I shall stand by you."
+
+She made a dismissing gesture.  "Oh, I don't need you, I don't want
+you."
+
+He smiled benignly on her.  "But I'm here, and I'm going to see you
+through."
+
+"See me through what?"
+
+"Through your divorce," he said practically.
+
+"But you're Westboro's friend," she stammered, and he repudiated with
+just a little hesitation in his voice:
+
+"Oh, not so much as yours.  But I'm the friend of both of you in this.
+It's the best thing all round."
+
+The gentleman's attitude so baffled her, he was so serious, and yet he
+took it so lightly, apparently, that she was obliged to believe he
+meant what he said.
+
+"You talked to me very differently," she reminded him, and he shrugged.
+
+"Oh, I've been far too emotional and unpractical.  I'm going henceforth
+to look at things from the worldly and conventional stand-point."
+
+She put out her hand beseechingly.  "Oh, leave that for the rest of us.
+It quite spoils you."
+
+"I don't pretend to think--"  He made his gaze small as he looked past
+her in an attitude of reflection.  "Oh, I don't claim that, it's an
+ideal way of looking at things.  But there is not much idealism in the
+modern divorce, is there?"
+
+The Duchess took a turn across the floor, twisting her fair hands
+together, then came round to his side and sat down on a low chair near
+him.
+
+"Are you quite serious?" she asked.  "But I know that you are not.  Let
+me at least think so.  Your words shock me horribly"--and she looked
+piteously at him.  "I have felt you to be such a gentle person, and
+yours is such an understanding atmosphere."
+
+Bulstrode had given himself methodically another cup of tea, and helped
+himself now to sugar.
+
+"Oh, atmosphere!" he repeated scornfully.  "One can't live on air, you
+know.  And I have been of the most colorless kind."
+
+"Well, you've changed terribly," she accused him.
+
+"I've only come down to solid earth," he explained.  "And the earth's
+after all where we belong, Duchess.  Stand firm, keep to your own part
+of it, and don't cloud-gaze, or somebody with a claim will knock you
+off your little foothold."
+
+"Oh, _heavens_!" exclaimed his companion.
+
+The gentleman, who appeared at length quite to have finished his
+material enjoyment of the tea, put his second empty cup down and looked
+at the lady.
+
+"You should have married an American husband," he said to her, "a man
+who would have idolized you, not cared whether you developed or not.  A
+duchess isn't far enough up.  An American empress is higher."
+
+The lady listening to him, shuddered a little.
+
+"As it is," he went on regretfully, "you've been forced to develop,
+whether or not you wanted to, to grow finer and freer, to go farther
+on, to become more delightful.  Here you are progressed and civilized,
+after years of education, experience and suffering, and, my poor child,
+here you are all alone."
+
+She cried out, "Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," with a little gasp.
+
+"Oh, no, no," he softly ejaculated, "it is not fair!  You're terribly
+wasted, and you've been, as you too well know, terribly betrayed."
+
+But here he felt her hand on his arm with a strong grasp.  She shook
+the arm a little.
+
+"Don't go on," she said deeply.  "I tell you not to go on."  After a
+few seconds, in which he heard the fire and the slow bubbling of the
+gently boiling water and the cooing of the doves without, under the
+eaves, the Duchess said: "Listen to me.  I haven't talked at all to
+you, let me say something now."
+
+Her companion reflected to himself: "Well, at all events, she's not
+going to malign the Duke; that's a foregone conclusion."
+
+The Duchess clasped her hands round her knee and raised her face to him.
+
+"Do you think," she asked, "that there's any egoist as nasty as a
+feminine one?  Men are admitted to be generally selfish, but we
+specialize, and each one of us has the faculty of getting up some new
+and peculiar brand, I begin to believe.  At any rate, when I married, I
+was an egoist, and I've stayed on being one until a very little time
+ago.  I suppose I must in a way have more or less ornamented my
+position, as the papers say.  I did have two children as well, and in
+that way fulfilled my duty as a Westboro'.  But really and truly, I
+have never in the least been a wife, and very little of a mother.  I
+was as silly and vain as could be, and I never for a moment valued my
+husband.  I wasn't indifferent to my children, but I was absorbed by my
+worldly life, and when my little boys were taken ill and died, I was on
+a dahabeah on the Nile, and I don't think that Cecil ever forgave us
+for being so far away."
+
+She remained quiet for a long time, looking down at her hands, and when
+she lifted her face Bulstrode saw that she had wept.
+
+"That," she went on, "broke the ice round my heart, when I came home to
+those empty rooms."
+
+He said soothingly, "There, there, my child."
+
+"Oh, let me go on," she urged him, "let me speak.  I shall probably
+never feel like doing so again.  But at that time when I turned to find
+my husband, I discovered that I had no power over him, and I realized
+that for years I had not possessed his love.  I suppose you'll tell me
+that it is unusual for a woman to see so clearly as this.  Perhaps it
+is.  At any rate, just because I did so clearly, I forgave him when he
+came to me last year, at Cannes."
+
+"You were wonderful!" he repeated again, "perfectly noble, and, as I
+said before, Westboro' did not deserve you."
+
+She did not here, as she had done before, catch him up; on the
+contrary, after a few moments, she asked him point-blank:
+
+"What then do you advise us, knowing us both, to do?"
+
+He was distinctly disappointed that she should have put the question to
+him, and gave her time to withdraw it as he asked tentatively: "You
+really feel that you must ask me, Duchess?"
+
+"Tell me, at all events."
+
+"You are quite sure that you could not go back to your husband?"
+
+After a little pause, she lingeringly said:
+
+"Yes, quite sure.  You must know that he will not be the first to break
+the ice now."  Then she pushed: "You would advise my filing my papers
+for divorce?"
+
+Held in this way pitilessly for a direct challenge, he met her eyes
+with his own, asking her gently:
+
+"Is there nothing that speaks for Westboro' more distinctly than
+anything I can say?  And more appealingly than anything which you in
+all your pride feel?"
+
+The Duchess assented that there was, with a movement of her lips; she
+put her hands over her face and so sat quietly for a few moments, and
+when she spoke again to her visitor, her words were irrelevant.  When
+some few moments after she bade him good-by, she regretted his absence
+in London and begged him to come and see her as soon as he returned.
+
+"Come," she said, "at least to see whether I am here or whether I have
+pitched my tent and gone away."
+
+As Bulstrode stood in the doorway she asked him: "I understand there
+are a lot of people at the castle for Christmas, and among them will be
+Mrs. Falconer?  Isn't it so?  Is she really so very lovely?"
+
+"It's a different type of loveliness from yours," Bulstrode returned.
+And the Duchess supposed: "A happier type?"
+
+"Well, she's rather happy I think, take it all together," Jimmy said.
+
+"Has she children?"
+
+"None."
+
+"Is she in love with her husband?"
+
+And he was so long searching for a reply that the Duchess laughed
+quietly.
+
+"Poor man," she said, "don't bother.  But then since she's so happy,
+she must be in love with somebody else's husband."
+
+But he put her right immediately.
+
+"I don't think she in the least is.  And why," he went on, "since
+happiness is so greatly the question of other people's state of mind,
+might we not let it go at the fact that she is herself very much loved?"
+
+The Duchess looked at her guest rather absently.  She was thinking of
+the happy beauty, the woman of a different type from her own, whose
+presence at Westboro' had been sought by her husband for the second
+time.
+
+"Oh," she answered rather absently, giving Jimmy her hand, "she
+wouldn't, you know, be happy if the feeling were all on the other side."
+
+
+When the Duke had casually asked his guest's plans for Christmas week,
+Bulstrode had come near to offending his host by declaring that he
+could not possibly be one of a second house party.
+
+"Do you, then," Westboro' had asked, "_hate_ the holidays?"
+
+The genial Bulstrode had assured him to the contrary.
+
+"Nor do I," continued the Duke, "even though I'm a miserable man on the
+verge of a divorce.  I expect there's too long a line of jolly
+Christmases back of the Westboro's for me to mope through the season.
+But I don't want to have Christmas coming to an empty house, my dear
+fellow"--He put it pathetically, "there's no one in this gloomy place
+but yourself and myself.  We must have a Christmas party.  The tenants
+will, of course, be noisy and cheerful, but I'm going to ask a lot of
+people down and make the list out now."
+
+And Bulstrode had, however, firmly insisted that he could not really
+stop on--that he must go away.  "There are," he wound up his arguments,
+"a thousand reasons why I should go."
+
+But Westboro' had comprehendingly suggested that they might together
+bring "every reason" down to the country.  "And," continued his Grace,
+"we'll narrow things into the most intimate circle possible.  For I
+shall ask the Ravensworths of Surrey and their children, there are
+eight of them, ripping little things; they used to play with my boys.
+We'll turn them loose and have a tree, old man."
+
+Jimmy watched his face with a keen pity, for there had not been one ray
+of light in it as he planned for his celebration.
+
+"But you arrange to come back for Christmas Eve.  There _must_ be some
+one in charge--I mean to say, some one so that if the whole thing is
+too much for me, why I'll bolt and you'll have to stand by."
+
+He was, as he spoke, writing the names on a sheet of paper.  Bulstrode
+felt the plan to be rather _triste_ and lifeless, and he knew that he
+could not and would not keep the Duchess' secret much longer, let its
+revelation cost him what it would.
+
+"Westboro'," he said, "I shall have to be getting off to-morrow.  You
+know I would stand by you if I could possibly see my way clear."
+
+"I know perfectly well," the Duke acknowledged, "what a rotten bore
+I've been, and how sick of me you must be."  He wrote on: "I shall ask
+Mrs. Falconer (her husband is in the States); she is quite alone in
+town at Lady Sorgham's."  As he quoted this last name the Duke folded
+his list up.  He nodded affectionately at Jimmy.  "You'll arrange
+perhaps to come down with Mrs. Falconer on the Friday train?"
+
+And Bulstrode capitulating weakly, murmured, "Oh, we'll fetch the toys
+and things for the tree," he offered.
+
+"Ripping!" his Grace nodded.
+
+
+Jimmy, on his way at last to London, stopped once more at The Dials,
+and was hurrying across the forest when the Duchess herself appeared to
+him at the big dial.  She wore her furs, muff, and big enveloping
+stole, her hat with fur on it, and a veil.  She was not in house or
+garden trim.  The urban air of her toilet was a surprise to Bulstrode,
+and he took in her readiness for something he had not expected,
+something great, something decisive.
+
+"It's good of you to come when you must be full of delightful ways of
+passing your time, Mr. Bulstrode," she said, "and I wanted so much to
+see you again."
+
+"Again?"
+
+"Of course," she replied nodding, "again and many times.  But I mean I
+wanted to see you _here_."  Bulstrode did not want her to tell him a
+piece of final news.  He did not care to learn of an arbitrary
+departure, and he said, laughing: "Then you don't like my property?
+Any repairs you...?"
+
+"Oh, I adore The Dials," she said gravely, "and I can't think why they
+ever let you buy it, or what you'll do with it after I'm gone."  She
+smiled.  ".... or with whom."  Before he could speak she added: "Where
+is my husband to-day?"
+
+"I left him wandering about the house like a lost spirit," Bulstrode
+replied.  "Looking," he went on, "all about for something or other.  I
+expect he himself didn't quite know what.  For something to cheer up
+the empty rooms."
+
+"Oh, don't," she murmured.
+
+But he seemed pleased with the picture he drew.  "I doubt if Westboro'
+stops in the house alone; he's probably gone out shooting."
+
+"But he has a house full of people....?"
+
+"No one has come, or is coming, after all."
+
+"You don't mean to say that they've all refused!"
+
+"Yes," Jimmy said, "every man of them, and all the women as well."
+
+The Duchess put out her hand quickly, and said touchingly: "Oh, but you
+don't for a moment think----"
+
+"That it's because of the scandal, dear lady?" he smiled.  "Well, that
+would be a new phase.  No, I think on the other hand they would revel,
+and the only reason in the world that they have not come down is that
+they were really asked too late.  Christmas week, you know--
+
+"And, of course, then, Mrs. Falconer," the Duchess's face brightened.
+"She----"
+
+"Oh, _she_!" Bulstrode exclaimed, "she's as right as possible.  She's
+sure to be along in good season."
+
+"Oh!" accepted the Duchess, "and with whom does she come?"
+
+Bulstrode waited.  "Well, of course, the poor thing expects to find
+more or less some one to help her bear up her end.  And I can't say how
+she will take the fact of only us two."
+
+The Duchess interrupted cheerfully:
+
+"Why, she, of course, will go directly back!  You don't think for a
+second that she would stop on alone like that?"
+
+"Alone?" Bulstrode gave her with a little malice.  "But she'll have
+Westboro' and me so entirely to herself and one can always ask in the
+rector or curate or corral a neighbor."
+
+But the Duchess shook her head as if she understood.  "Oh, no, not at
+this time."
+
+Bulstrode miscomprehended blithely: "Christmas time?  You see, I know
+the visiting lady pretty well, and I believe she'll feel me to be more
+or less of a standby, and I know her spirit and her human kindness.  I
+am inclined to think that she will feel it's up to her not to run off
+like a hare; to think that Westboro' may, in a way, need her; and that
+when she finds everybody's gone back on the poor man, and there's to be
+no tree after all, why, I'm tempted, by jove, to think----"
+
+The Duchess helped him: "That she'll make a charity of it."
+
+"Yes, if you like," he laughed.  "Or be a sport," he preferred to put
+it.  "Stay on, stand by.  It will be perfectly ripping of her, you
+know."
+
+But the Duchess had no sympathy for the other woman.  Her eyes fixed
+themselves on the trees before her, and as a shot rang out in the
+distance she said abruptly: "Why, that might be Cecil, mightn't it?
+Does he shoot birds on your premises?"
+
+Bulstrode wondered very much for what reason she was habited in street
+dress and furs, whether she had planned to leave The Dials or had
+intended going up to see her husband.
+
+"Forgive me," he said, "if I seem to be shockingly in a hurry, but I
+must have a look at the time, for as it happens, even in this far-off
+place, I have an engagement."
+
+Impulsively putting out her hand the Duchess exclaimed: "I can't ever,
+ever thank you."
+
+"Oh, after your divorce----"
+
+But she cried out so against his words that he hastened: "You want me
+to think then that you do not believe...."
+
+"Believe!" she ardently repeated, "Oh, I don't know what I believe or
+think," and he saw that the poor thing spoke the truth.  "It's I who am
+as unstable as the sea, I who am the derelict."
+
+He contradicted her gently: "My dear, you're only trying to solve alone
+a problem which it takes two to answer.  When you see Westboro' you
+will know."
+
+She turned on him with the first sparkle of humor he had ever seen her
+display.  "Why don't you marry Mrs. Falconer?"
+
+He didn't start; indeed, the idea had such a familiar sound it would
+have been hard to frighten him with it from any corner.
+
+"I thought you didn't believe in divorces?"
+
+"Oh, but you'd make a wonderful husband!"
+
+He laughed.  "No one has ever thought so--_la preuve_....?"
+
+With great frankness in her gesture and a great--he was quick to see
+it--a great affection--she put out her hand to him and said: "Oh, yes,
+you'd make a wonderful companion, and you've been a wonderful friend.
+If anything good comes to me now, I shall in great measure owe it to
+you."
+
+He protested: "You owe me nothing, nothing."
+
+There were tears in her eyes as she said: "But I want to, I like to,
+and I do.  I don't know," she went on, "that I might not have been
+reconciled ultimately to my husband, but I feel quite sure it would
+only have been the basting up of the seam--it would have ripped away
+again.  Did you ever--" she challenged him with still a little sparkle
+of humor, "hear of a thing called a change of heart?"
+
+"Yes, at Methodist meetings."
+
+She said gravely: "That's not what I mean.  But whatever _has_ happened
+it's only been since you told me things."
+
+Her face was so girlish, her eyes so sweet, her humility so sudden,
+that her companion found himself embarrassed and could hardly find
+words to say good-by to her.  She went on to say, in a tone so low that
+he bent a little over the dial to hear her.  "You told me you could not
+advise my husband to come to me."
+
+Ah, had he!  It was hard to remember that.  _Had_ he said so?
+
+"I think," she whispered, "you need not keep him away now, if he should
+want to come."
+
+As her friend said nothing, she added in a voice more like a child than
+a great Duchess, "You may trust me.  I _want_ him to come--  There,
+I've said it.  I _hope_ he'll come.  If he doesn't--
+
+"Why, then, you'll go away," he finished.  "You can't bear it."
+
+The Duchess shook her head.  "I'll go to him, on the contrary."
+
+"You were going?"
+
+"Yes, when you came."
+
+He cried out: "Oh, I'm off then, I'm off for London, and I shan't be
+back for the Christmas holidays.  You may count on me."
+
+The Duchess smiled delightfully, and was in a second the elusive woman,
+intangible, and impossible to seize.
+
+"No, no," she said, "please don't exile yourself either to-day or
+to-morrow.  It isn't after all the moment, and I want to prove to you
+that I'm not jealous.  I've decided to wait until that lovely woman has
+gone away."
+
+
+The waste of his territory, its largesse to no purpose, its vastness
+through which only unbearable silences echoed; accumulated revenues and
+hereditary title, only added to the Duke's melancholy.
+
+He had planned the Christmas house party too late as it proved, and
+refusals, one after another, came in during the week.  The poor
+gentleman's mood led him to resent each fresh defection on the part of
+his guests as personal wounds inflicted by old friends at a time when
+charity would have been sweet.  And it was with really tragic
+melancholy that he threw the last letter down exclaiming:
+
+"And they all with one consent began to make excuse."
+
+He quite waited for a line from Mrs. Falconer, which would tell him
+that she, too, had decided to abandon him: and the thought of what he
+believed to be Jimmy's complications at The Dials caused him half to
+regard the matter with a pity for her.
+
+"If Jimmy _isn't_ married, he's the most whited of sepulchres!"
+
+The satin shine of holly, the glimmer of pearly mistletoe, the odor of
+spruce and pine, and heavier scent of hemlock bewitched the castle
+throughout with their fragrance.  Setting and decoration suggested a
+feast, and the Duke as he passed through the upper halls, and by the
+doors of his children's rooms, saw holly wreaths on the walls and that
+the little gates were twisted with green.
+
+The day was dampish and the Duke, unable to bear the silence of the
+house, with his gun and his dogs and with a lack of resource and
+superfluity of ennui to urge him from the castle, started to tramp off
+his unrest.  The afternoon was young, and the bare, naked sunlight fell
+over the bare nakedness of the land.  The little low clumps of
+neutral-colored underbrush, the reddish-brown thickets between wood and
+field, would hide the birds well, and with his gun across his back, his
+hands in his pockets, his Grace covered many miles before he at length
+stopped to take in the length of the land or to listen for wings.
+
+Coveys had flown up and away unseen by him, and their whirring unheard.
+His dogs had run off, and without being abruptly brought to heel,
+skulked back by themselves shamefaced and bewildered by the hunter's
+indifference.  The holly reddened on the hedges, the scarlet berries
+bright among the glowing leaves; high in the poplars the parasite
+mistletoe with crystal balls, hung tiny white globules like fairy
+grapes; holiday in the air, and over the grey winter landscape the
+finest possible powder of snow lay pale under the furtive sun.  As the
+forest edges closed about him and the Duke with still no idea of where
+he was going, continued to tramp, he unconsciously entered the property
+Bulstrode had lately acquired, and which he had begged his friend to
+avoid.
+
+There was something in the country air, in its pungent sweetness, and
+in the season, that penetrated even Westboro's melancholy, and every
+now and then he lifted his head to breathe in deeply the fragrance of
+hemlock and the cold earthy aroma, the spice of bracken and the balm of
+a fragrant thicket that smelled like a rose.  It was winter, however,
+and although a snow bird piped in it and the sun was out, there was a
+December quality that, in the mood he was in, overcame all the
+festivities of the time.  He heard the bird who was persistent and
+sharp-voiced, and, for the first time thinking of the other game he had
+come out for, he paused.  His dogs were gone, the beggars!  He called
+them to no purpose, whistled and waited.  They were a new brace and
+young.  God knew where they had cut away to.
+
+Before him, as he stood, the brown vistas of the winter forest opened
+out here and there into ochre circles and filled at this hour with
+brilliant sunlight, their round openings overflowing; the light
+filtered gently out and was swallowed up by the cold and closer wood.
+Under his feet there was only the faint ghost of the late snowfall on
+the turned-up, curled-up edges of the dry leaves.  There beeches, red
+as copper, and iron-strong oaks struck their roots deep down into the
+mould.  Westboro' did not know where he had wandered to, but here and
+there through the bare trees gleamed the white of a statue on its mossy
+base, and a little farther along, a broken pedestal held its slender
+column up amongst the tree trunks as mossy and veined as they, and
+right in the heart of the bowl, on a brick pedestal was a sundial, a
+round brass disc, cut into with the tooth of time, and all black and
+green.  The sun at this moment shone full on it and its slight shadow
+fell along the noon.  The Duke stooped down and through the glass read
+the inscription:
+
+_Utere dum licet_.
+
+"I'm a trespasser," he thought.  "This is Bulstrode's property."
+
+Through an opening just to the right he could see a brown path, and at
+the end of it a gate.
+
+"What the deuce could Jimmy have so wanted this old place for?  What
+was he hiding here?"
+
+He turned back with the intention of taking as sudden leave of the
+place as he had made an entrance.  He saw his dogs in front of him and
+called them.  Before him lay the clean low fall of the meadow with the
+line of high hedge, and directly opposite him he could see the elms of
+his own park.  He had not gone more than a couple of hundred feet away
+before he paused again and turned about to have one last look back at
+the enchanting place.  As he stood thus, in Jimmy's property, he at
+first took it to be a trick of vision, for he stood perfectly rigid,
+peering back at the opening he had left not five minutes before.  He
+leaned forwards, setting his eyeglass and staring at two figures who
+had come into the bowl and stood close by the big dial.
+
+He set his gun on the ground and leaned upon it.  There was a cordial
+meeting; he could hear the voices but he could not distinguish their
+words, and during all the interview, which must have consumed some
+fifteen minutes, the Duke never stirred.  Finally, and curiously enough
+it seemed a short time to him, they took leave of each other, the man
+going out of the forest by a different path, the woman slowly turning
+down the neat walk that led to the brick arch, and to the old house.
+Whether or not the Duke had at this moment the vaguest suspicion of
+her, suspicion of his friend or of his wife that did them wrong, he
+never had time or clearness to reflect or to ask himself.  A dense
+blindness took his senses away from him.  He put his hands out to
+steady himself in vain, and staggered.  His dogs were at his feet, he
+fell over them, struggled to get his balance back and like a stricken
+tree went down.  In his heavy fall on his gun it discharged, filling
+his upper arm and shoulder with a quantity of bird shot.  The
+scattering pain, instead of finishing his faint, roused him with a
+sharp, ugly sting, and the rush of the warm, wet blood.  He half picked
+himself up, and then, aware of the pain tearing his muscles and flesh,
+he fell back like a dog on his haunches.  Through his confusion he
+still contrived to remember a little path, and inch by inch he dragged
+himself towards it.  He pulled along over the leaves and russet paths
+of ground.  His bare hand finally struck the bricks of the little walk
+and he could still know that he was wonderfully in the road.  There was
+a cloud before his swimming eyes and his troubled mind; his face, pale
+as death, was lifted towards the arch; leaving a bloody trail as he
+crawled along the ground, he contrived to reach the gate and fell
+across its threshold.  His head lay on his arm, the string of his
+broken eyeglass wound pathetically about his wrist.  The Duke proved to
+be a modern replica of the poor knight who fell, face downwards, on the
+grass when Elizabeth's carriage passed him by, some four hundred years
+before the present Duke.
+
+
+After Bulstrode had left her, the Duchess of Westboro' hurried back to
+the house that was not her home; to the little long drawing-room that
+was not hers.  For the first time since her voluntary exile, since her
+occupation of this asylum, she found it bereft of charm and the cosey,
+dear place as cold to her as if the snows had drifted in and filled a
+deserted nest.  It had nevertheless been a cloister, and she knew it,
+where the best of her had prayed, where the true woman--and the true
+woman is always something of a saint--had folded submissive hands,
+where self had gone away and left nothing at all but love.
+
+On this Christmas Eve, The Dials was the loneliest corner of England.
+The scarcely occupied house suggested to the Duchess the thought of a
+stocking hung before a chimney when there were no children who cared
+whether it was filled or not, when there was no reason why St. Nicholas
+should pass.  But it was only the very edge of her thoughts that
+touched anything so fantastic as this picture.  The Duchess was serious
+and lonely.  With a sigh, and winking back tears she threw off her
+furs, laid off her hat, and, after poking up the fire into sparkling
+brightness, she wandered up-stairs to the apartment that she had made
+her bedroom.  Under the low eaves the bed-chamber shone out gay with
+chintz, fresh and sweet as a midwinter bouquet, the frostiness coming
+in around it through the slightly opened window, and there was the
+scent of the firs and the cedar wood that closely hemmed the old place
+in.
+
+"Heavens!" thought the Duchess, half aloud.  "How dreadfully in love
+Jimmy Bulstrode is, how dreadfully, faithfully in love!"  And then she
+went on to say: "How dreadfully I am myself in love, and no one is
+hurrying to _me_!"
+
+She walked aimlessly about the pretty room, irritated and annoyed at
+the cloister effect.  She found it too remote, too virgin, and no room
+for a wife.  "I promised," she mused, "to wait until Mrs. Falconer has
+gone.  I shall break my promise.  Oh, I can't really wait at all!  If
+things are going to be as bad as this, I want to leave England, I want
+at least to know.  And Jimmy will forgive me, it's such a wonderfully
+good cause ... a woman going to find her husband on Christmas Eve!"
+
+The Duchess threw open the window to its widest.  Down in the garden on
+the stone wall the big dial lay in the shadow of the afternoon.  She
+could not read its motto, but she knew perfectly what it said--_Utere
+dum licet_.  As she leaned out above her garden, under her window the
+snowballs hung their waxen globes in a green tree.  There were a few
+winter roses blooming, and the English garden had the beauty of summer
+in winter time.
+
+The Duchess heard a sharp sound close to the house.  It was a rifle
+shot, and died instantly on the still air.  Shots were not uncommon in
+this season, but here in The Dials woods they were entirely out of
+character; in fact, they were quite inadmissible.  There was no
+shooting let, and a shot could only mean poaching, or something more
+serious.  The Duchess waited a few moments, but no other sound
+followed.  She nevertheless drew the casement in, and, going down
+stairs threw her stole about her shoulders and opened the house door
+into the garden.  At the sight of her, down by the other end of the
+wall, the gardener lifted up his bent form, and with a little pannier
+of hot-house violets in his hands, hurried towards his lady.
+
+"Mellon," said she, "have you any violets?"
+
+The Duchess took the fragrant basket with its delicate burden.
+
+"A mort, my lady."
+
+"Pick them all, Mellon, and all the flowers from the green-house too,
+every one of them, and fetch up whatever there is to the cottage."
+
+The old man was deaf, as well as discreet, and if this sudden command
+to vandalism surprised him, he did not say so.  Holding his hand behind
+his ear, he nodded.
+
+"I shall send them," the Duchess thought, "up to Jimmy Bulstrode.  I
+think he will understand, and I will ask him at the same time to take
+his friend off somewhere in a motor that I may go unobserved to the
+castle."
+
+She said a few more words to the old man, asked him a few questions,
+then with the basket on her arm she was about to turn away when she
+remembered the shot.
+
+"Did you hear a shot, Mellon?  They should not be shooting about here,
+you know."  But the old man had heard nothing, and, intending to find
+the lodgekeeper who was clipping the trees on the lower terrace and ask
+him to go through the woods for her, the Duchess walked toward the gate
+and in the direction of the brick path.
+
+As she came up to it she gave a low cry, lifted her hands to her heart;
+the basket of flowers fell to the earth and scattered their purple
+blooms at her feet.  Then the hands that had gone to her heart
+extended, she held out her arms and went forwards, crying her husband's
+name.
+
+The Duke of Westboro' had managed to pick himself up.  He was a strong
+man, in the fulness of health and vigor; there was nothing of the
+mollycoddle about the last Duke of the line.  The sound of voices had
+reached his dull ear, his swoon was over, and he had manfully, with a
+few sturdy curses, pulled himself up and now stood, albeit very pale,
+clinging to the gatepost, leaning on it, finding his legs shaking and
+his balance not all he could wish.  Before him was a little brick
+house, with bright curtains in the windows, and between it and himself,
+lovely as a ghost, and no less white, was his wife, and her arms were
+extended towards him.
+
+"Cecil!" she cried.  "Oh, my God!  Cecil, what has happened to you?"
+
+Before Westboro' knew it, the arms to which he had gone in visions were
+about him and the soft shoulder gave him a prop more fragile perhaps
+than the stone against which he leaned, but it was a living support,
+and it felt warm and wonderful.
+
+"Don't," he said vaguely, "get near me.  I'm nasty and bloody.  It's
+all right; I'm only a bit scratched, really.  A lot of beastly shot has
+gone off into my shoulder.  Just call some one to help me, will you?"
+
+"Cecil," she said, "lean on me, put your arm around my shoulder; you
+can perfectly well get along with only me.  Come, come!"
+
+The Duke saw that he could perfectly get along with another faint--he
+was near to it, but something besides his wound and his light head kept
+him manfully to his feet.  With his left hand he very firmly pushed the
+Duchess a little away from him.
+
+"Come?" he repeated.  "Come where?"
+
+"Home," said the Duchess with a catch in her voice--she was bearing up.
+"Oh, lean on me!  You'll fall, you'll fall!  Mellon!" she cried.  "O
+Mellon!"
+
+But the Duke put up his hand.  "I'm all right," he said.  "Don't call.
+What house is that?  What home do you mean?"
+
+"Mine," said the Duchess, "my house--that is, I mean to say, Mr.
+Bulstrode's."
+
+The Duchess saw a slight wave of red rush up her husband's pale cheek.
+
+"Damn Bulstrode!" he breathed.  "What the devil does he do here?  I saw
+you together--I saw you not half an hour since--that is the whole
+mischief of it--it was too much for me--it took away my senses and I
+fell on my gun, and the beastly thing went off.  If I ever get back to
+where Bulstrode is----"
+
+"Cecil!" cried the Duchess.  She again wound her arms around him, and
+it was as well that she was a strong, fine creature and that the
+columns of the gate were back of him, for Westboro' was swaying like a
+child that has just learned to walk.
+
+"He is fainting!" she cried.  "Mellon, Mellon!"
+
+The old man had not heard his mistress but he had seen her, and after
+staring open-mouthed at the couple at the gate, he came scurrying like
+a rabbit, dropping his shears on the wall.  They hit the big dial with
+a ring.
+
+The Duke heard the steps and tried to start forwards; also tried weakly
+to extricate himself from his wife's embrace.  "I beg your pardon," he
+said, with a coolness that had something of the humorous in its
+formality--"I beg your pardon, but I am _not_ going to Bulstrode's
+house, you know."
+
+"_Cecil_," pleaded the woman tenderly, "how ridiculous you are!
+Bulstrode's house!  Why, it's mine!  Oh, don't break my heart.  He's
+only bought it, you know, that's all."
+
+"Break her heart!"  It was a new voice that spoke to the Duke of
+Westboro'.  He had never heard it in all his life.  It was warm and
+struggling for clearness, it was full of tears and quivering, it was
+the voice of love, and unmistakable, certainly, to a lover.
+
+"What was Bulstrode doing here?" he persisted.
+
+"Going to Mrs. Falconer," breathed the Duchess.
+
+The Duke moved a step forwards: "What are you doing here?"
+
+"Going to you, Cecil--I have _been_ going to you all day.  I think I
+have been going to you ever since you left me that night on the
+Riviera; at any rate, I was on my way to the castle as you came."
+
+The Duke halted again on his crawling way.  Mellon, who had really
+reached his side, was doing his best to be of some use and kept himself
+well under the wounded arm, on which the blood had clotted and dried,
+but ceased to flow.
+
+"Lean hard on me, your Grace," pleaded the gardener, and with his word,
+he looked over at his mistress to see if she realized who their noble
+visitor was.
+
+With fine disregard for his help or existence, the Duke said crossly:
+"Send this damned gardener away."
+
+"Oh, Cecil, no, no; you can't stand without him."
+
+They had reached the garden wall, just at the place where the big dial,
+round and shining, had come a little out of the shadow and the last of
+the afternoon sun touched its edges.  Westboro' lurched towards the
+wall.  "Send this man away," he commanded.
+
+"He is deaf, Cecil, as the stones."  But at her husband's face she
+motioned to Mellon: "Stand away a bit.  His Grace wants to rest on the
+wall.  I'll call you."
+
+With his wife's arms about him, Westboro' leaned on the garden wall,
+his ashen face lifted to her.
+
+"I've only one arm," he said.  He put it around her and he drew her
+down as close to him as he could.  He felt her face warm against his,
+wet against his with tears.  As the Duke, who, Bulstrode said, was no
+lover, kissed his wife, the dial seemed to sing its motto aloud.
+
+"You _were_ coming to me?" he breathed.  "Do you forgive me? ... Then,"
+said Westboro', satisfied by what he heard, "I'm cured.  I love you--I
+love you."
+
+The woman could not find her voice, but as she held him she was the
+warmest, sweetest prop that ever a wounded man leaned upon.  After a
+few seconds she helped him to rise, helped him on, and he found his
+balance and his equilibrium to be very wonderful under the
+circumstances, and managed to reach the door-sill.  Mellon and the
+maids were there, and as the Duchess passed in, leading her husband,
+she bade them send for a doctor as fast as they could and to send at
+once for Bulstrode at the castle.
+
+Westboro's wound had become a sort of intoxication to him, and he
+assured her, "I'll be all right in an hour.  I need no one but you;
+send them all away, all away."
+
+He had never commanded her before, he had let her rule him, he had been
+indifferent to her disobedience.  But now she did what he bade her, and
+led him to the drawing-room, suddenly repossessed of all its old charm;
+led him to the lounge, where he sank down.  Here, by his side, she gave
+him stimulants and bathed his head and hands, waiting for the doctor to
+come; and Westboro', like his ancestors who had fought in the King's
+wars, bore up like a man with no resemblance whatsoever to the amorous
+cavalier whose curls had met the dust of the road for love of Queen
+Elizabeth.
+
+The Duchess found him that best of all things--very much of a man, and
+knew that he was hers.  And he, more wild with love for her than
+suffering physical pain, found her a woman and knew that she loved him
+and that she was his.
+
+The house, so deserted and desolate an hour ago, grew fresh, warm, and
+rosy as over the west meadows the sunset, gilding the wall and The
+Dials, flushed the windows red, and the deserted bird's-nest, lately
+"filled with snow" appeared to have, as the light rained upon it,
+filled itself with roses.  So, an hour later, it seemed to Bulstrode,
+when he came and found it housing the lovers.
+
+
+
+
+THE EIGHTH ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+IN WHICH HE COMES INTO HIS OWN
+
+England, the heart of the countryside, freshened by December and
+drifted over by delicate breaths that are scarcely fog, and through
+which like a chrysanthemum seen behind ground glass the sun contrives
+to shine, the English country in December is one thing, London quite
+another.
+
+Jimmy wandered across from Paddington to his destination, part of the
+time on foot, part of the time peering from a crawling hansom in
+immediate peril of collision with every other object that like himself
+lost bearings in the nightmarish yellow fog.
+
+He fetched up before No. ----, Portman Square, at mid-day, and rang the
+door bell of Lady Sorgham's town-house, and in his eagerness to find
+his friend did not ask himself how the time accorded with calling hours.
+
+She was at home.
+
+An insignificant footman told him this, and the gentleman reflected
+that it was astounding what the words, heard often in the course of ten
+years, meant to him still.
+
+In the sitting-room, before a coal fire, a writing table at her side, a
+pen in her hand, he found Mrs. Falconer.
+
+He sincerely struggled with an inability to speak at once, even the
+consoling how-d'-dos that cover for us a multitude of feelings, were
+not at his tongue's end.
+
+The fire had burned away a few feet of fog and lighted lamps and
+candles shone pallidly through an obscurity about whose existence there
+could be no doubt.
+
+The inmates of Lady Sorgham's thoroughly English and thoroughly
+comfortable drawing-room were aliens, possessing neither of them a
+hearthstone within range of several thousand miles.  But no sooner had
+they greeted--Bulstrode triumphantly peering at her through both real
+and mental haze--shaken hands, and each found a seat before the grate,
+than an enchanting homeliness overspread the place.  Bulstrode felt it
+and smiled with content to think she did as well, and remembered an
+occasion in America when they had both of them missed a train for some
+out-of-the-way place and found themselves side by side in a mid-country
+station to pass there three hours of a broiling afternoon.  The flies
+and mosquitoes buzzed about them, the thermometer registered ninety
+degrees, but happy, cool and unruffled Mary Falconer, smiling up at him
+from her hard bench, had said:
+
+"Jimmy, let's _build_ here!"
+
+
+"No one, Jimmy, is old"--Mrs. Falconer had once said to him on an
+occasion when a word regarding gray hairs had drifted into their
+conversation.  Noticing the smooth reflection of the light along her
+hair, Bulstrode had spoken of its golden quality, and the lady had
+suddenly covered the strand with her hand; she knew that there ran a
+line she did not want him to see.
+
+"No one is old, Jimmy, who has even the least little bit of future
+towards which he looks!  It's only those people whose doors are all
+shut, whose window blinds are all drawn to, who, no matter which way
+they look, see no opening into a distance towards which they will want
+to go--only those people are old!"
+
+And as for Bulstrode, if Mrs. Falconer's idea were right, he was a very
+young man still, for at the end of every path others opened and led
+rapidly away.  Scene gave on to scene, dissolved and grew new again.
+Every door gave to rooms whose suites were delightful, indefinite, and
+all followed towards a future whose existence Bulstrode never doubted.
+But there were certainly times, as the days went methodically on, there
+were decidedly many times when it took all his faith and his spirit to
+endure the _etape_ that lay between self and life.  Such a little
+tranquil home as a certain property he had lately acquired was what he
+dreamed of sharing with Mrs. Falconer.  He did not, with any degree of
+anxiety, ask himself whether or not it were dead men's shoes he was
+waiting for, and no clear, formulated thought of tangible events took
+existence in his mind.  But he knew that he waited for his own.
+
+It was with some such personal feeling that in something that looked
+like a future he might one day lead the woman he loved home, that he
+had taken any pleasure whatsoever in his involuntary purchase of the
+old property known as The Dials.  The gray house down in Glousceshire
+in its half-forsaken seclusion, the lie of the land round it, its
+shut-offness from the world, its ancient beauty, had been a constant
+suggestion to him of a future dwelling, and the doors, the windows, the
+low-inviting rooms, the shadowy stairways, ingles, gables, terraces,
+the dials and sunken gardens, had appeared to him conceived, planned
+and waiting to be the settings for a life of his own.  He wanted very
+much to tell Mrs. Falconer all about the lovely English country-seat.
+
+In the room where they now talked, wreaths of fog filled the corners
+like spiders' dusty webs that poised and swung.  The odor that stamps
+England hung in the mist, furthermore permeated with the scent of a
+bouquet at Mrs. Falconer's elbow and which at one moment of his visit
+Jimmy recognized for a lot of roses sent by parcel post from the
+Westboro' greeneries.
+
+"Do you ever sew?" he asked her, and she admitted to a thimble which
+persistently, with a suggestion of reproach, turned up every now and
+then amongst her belongings; now falling out from a jewel box, then
+stowed away in a handkerchief case, out of place and continually
+reproachful: kept because it had been her mother's.
+
+If he did not speak other than in a general way of the rather long
+visit he had been making to the Duke of Westboro' in Glousceshire, he
+did tell his friend all about The Dials and dwelt on the fascination
+that the old place possessed.  The Dials was, in point of fact, very
+agreeably described to Mrs. Falconer, who looked it out on the map of
+Glousceshire, and Bulstrode's purchase (for he had legally gone in for
+it, the whole thing), was made to seem a very jewel of a property.
+
+"It's as lovely as an old print," she said, "as good as a Turner.
+You're a great artist along your lines, Jimmy.  Don't have it rebuilt
+by some more than designing architect in trouble, or landscape-gardened
+by some inebriated Adam out of charity.  Leave it beautifully alone."
+
+"Oh, I will," he assured her.  "It shall tumble away and crush away in
+peace.  You shall see it all, however," he assured, "for you really
+will come down for Christmas?  You see, poor old fellow, Westboro's
+house is rather empty."
+
+"Yes," nodded Mrs. Falconer.
+
+"You see, every one else has gone back on him."
+
+"Poor dear," sympathized the lady.  "Of course we'll go down."
+
+No matter to what extent he had thought of her, and it was pretty sure
+to be a wide one, her beauty struck him every time afresh.  There was
+the fine exquisiteness of _fin de race_ in Mary Falconer.  Her father
+had been an Irishman born, and the type of his island's lovely women
+was repeated in his daughter's blue eyes, the set of her head and her
+arms; her taper and small-boned little wrists, her cool hands with the
+slender fingers told of muscle and moulding and completed the
+well-finished, well turned-out creature whose race it had taken
+generations to perfect.  These distinctions her clever father
+bequeathed her as well as her laugh and her wit, her blue eyes and her
+curling hair.
+
+Bulstrode stayed on in the dingy delightful room, until at an order of
+his hostess, luncheon was served them on a small table, and over the
+good things of an amazingly well-understood buffet and a bottle of
+wine, they were left alone.  Bulstrode stayed on until the fog in the
+corners darkened to the blackest of ugly webs and choked the fire and
+clutched the candles' slender throats as if to suffocate the flame.
+Tea was served and put away and the period known as _entre chien et
+loup_ at length stole up Portman Square alongside the fog and found
+Bulstrode still staying on....
+
+Later, much later, when the lamps in the street and the square found
+themselves, with no visible transition, lighting night-time as they had
+lighted day--when the hansoms began to swing the early diners along to
+their destinations, a hansom drew up before No. ----, Portman Square.
+
+It was at the hour soft-footed London had ceased to roll its rubber
+tires down the little street, and only an occasional cab slipped by
+unheard.  But a small hand cart on which a piano organ was installed
+wheeled by No. ----, Portman Square, and stopped directly under the
+Sorghams' window and a man began to sing:
+
+  "I'll sing thee songs of Araby
+  And tales of old Cashmere."
+
+
+The creature was singing for his living, for his supper doubtless,
+certainly for his breakfast, but he chanced to possess a remarkable
+gift and he evidently loved his trade.  The silence--wherein all London
+appeared to listen, the quiet wherein the magically suspended room had
+swung and swung until even Bulstrode's clear mind and good sense began
+fatally to blur and swing with the pendulant room--was broken into by
+the song.
+
+And as Bulstrode moved and turned away his eyes from the woman's lovely
+face, she sighed and covered her own eyes with her hands.  The small
+coffee table had been taken away.  Mrs. Falconer was in a low chair
+leaning forwards, her hands lying loosely in her lap.  The distance
+between the two his hand could have bridged in one gesture.  The voice
+of the street singer was superb, liquid and sweet.  He sang his ballad
+well.
+
+  "I'll sing thee songs of Araby
+  And tales of old Cashmere."
+
+
+Mrs. Falconer's guest rose.
+
+"You'll come down for Christmas," he said, "and I'll meet you as we
+have arranged, to-morrow."
+
+"Jimmy," she protested, "it's only ten o'clock."
+
+"I must, however, go."
+
+"Nonsense.  Where will you pass the next hour and a half?  There's not
+a cat in town."
+
+"Nevertheless, I promised a man to meet him at the...."
+
+"_Jimmy_!"
+
+He had reached the door, making his way with a dogged determination
+and, like a man who has touched terra firma after months on a dancing
+brig, still not feeling quite sure of the land or its tricks.
+
+"How you hurry from me," she said softly.
+
+"Oh, I'm hurrying off," he explained brightly, "because I want to get
+hold of that chap out there and take him to supper, and to find out why
+he isn't on the operatic stage.  He's got a jolly voice.  Good night,
+good night."
+
+He was gone from her with scant courtesy and a brusquerie she knew
+well, adored and hated!  During these last years she had done her cruel
+best, her wicked best, to soften and change and break it down.
+
+The curtains, as she drew them back, showed that the fog had for the
+most part lifted, and she was just in time to see the piano and the two
+musicians disappear in the mist which still tenaciously held the end of
+the street in shadow--a gentleman in long evening cloak and high hat
+hurried after the street people.  The woman's face was tender as she
+watched the distinguished figure melt into the fog, and at her last
+glimpse of her friend she blew a kiss against the pane.
+
+
+Bulstrode did not go back that night to Westboro'.  He wired out that
+Mrs. Falconer and himself would be down for dinner the following day
+and he also wired for a motor to meet him some few miles from Penhaven
+Abbey, as the motor did the next day.
+
+As he speeded towards Penhaven Bulstrode leaned towards the man who
+drove him.
+
+"Stop first at the inn, will you, Bowles?  I'll order tea there, and
+then drive on to the station at the Hants.  It's the three o'clock from
+London we're to meet, you know, and we've just the time."
+
+The Abbey and its clustering village hung on the hill side some fifteen
+lovely miles away to the south of them.  And Bulstrode, who was at
+length obediently answering the call of it, and in response to the
+fancied bell of the entire country side, religiously hastening to
+whatever might reward him, settled himself back in his corner.
+
+He saw the mist fly by him as his carriage cut out its way rapidly
+through Glousceshire.  The air was not too cold in spite of the
+dampness, for the vapor rose high, and above and below it the
+atmosphere was clear.
+
+Mrs. Falconer herself had chosen Penhaven as a place possible to drive
+over to as far as Bulstrode was concerned, and far enough away to stop
+over in, for tea.  Bulstrode carried in his pocket the note of it, she
+had written out for him.  It bore the arrivals of trains, the address
+of the inn; she had herself written this, recurring to a pretty fallacy
+she liked to indulge in that Jimmy forgot trains, missed them, and
+forgot rendezvous, and that he never really knew.  Well, at all events,
+he was not likely to miss meeting this one.  He had thought about
+nothing else since he left her in London and prepared for her as he was
+always preparing for her as one makes ready for the dearest guest at a
+feast.
+
+The fact that not only had she divinely consented to the Penhaven
+scheme, but that she had herself arranged the whole thing, made the
+romance of the idea first appeal to herself and then readily to
+Bulstrode; the fact that she had been the creator of the little
+excursion that gave them to each other for several hours before what
+the castle had to offer them of surprise or dulness--did not in any
+measure rob the occasion of the charm of the _imprevue_ for the lady
+herself.  Nor did she in the least feel that it was any the less his
+because it was so essentially her own plan.
+
+It proved either too cold or too late to see the cathedral, to see
+anything more than the close which, side by side, they had wandered
+through together a few moments before tea.  Penhaven's distinguished
+gloom was not disturbed, and in their subterranean vaults lying all
+along their stones, the dukes and the abbes and the duchesses remained
+unlit in their stern crypts by the verger's candle on this Christmas
+Eve.
+
+At the little vulgar inn (in a stuffy sitting-room a fire had
+spluttered for some quarter of an hour before the train arrived), Mrs.
+Falconer had made Jimmy his tea in a vulgar little bowl-like teapot,
+and as her hands touched the pottery's blue glaze served very well for
+a halo.  As she buttered him slices of toast herself, and spread them
+with gooseberry jam and herself ate and drank and laughed and
+chattered, she had been, with the tea things about her and her sleeves
+turned back as she cut and buttered and spread, she had been with the
+roundness of her wrists and the suave grace of her capable hands, most
+adorably a woman, most adorably dear.
+
+Her furs and coat laid aside, the hat at his asking laid aside in
+order, although he did not tell her so, that the air of home might be
+more complete for them.  _Vis-a-vis_ they had eaten together and
+laughed together and talked together till it grew later and later, and
+the motor waited without in the yard amongst the ravens and the ducks
+who peered from the straw of their winter quarters at the big awkward
+machine.
+
+"Jimmy" ... she had started when the crumbs and dishes had been cleared
+away, and for some seconds did not follow up his name with any other
+word.  It was always Bulstrode who took wonderful care of the time.  It
+was he who gave her her hat, its pins, her coat, her furs, her gloves,
+one by one, her muff last, his eyes on her, as each article slowly went
+to place, until her big white veil wound and wound and pinned and
+fastened and hid her.  "Jimmy," she whispered, as he ruthlessly and
+definitely opened the door and the cold rushed in, "let's build _here_."
+
+Still it was she who took all the blame of their tardy departure from
+the homely hospitality of the inn; she assured him that she could make
+a wonderful toilet and in an incredibly short time, and that for once
+she wouldn't be late for dinner at the castle.
+
+"Not," Bulstrode assured her, "that it in the least matters, but the
+Duke, as likely as not, would choose to dine alone; he was a man of
+moods."
+
+"In which case," she had stopped with her foot on the auto step,
+"Penhaven isn't a bad place for tea, and why wouldn't dinner at this
+perfect inn...."
+
+But Bulstrode met her words with a shake of his head and a shrug of his
+shoulders, and helped her firmly into the motor and sat again by her
+side.
+
+"I can't tell you," he said, "what will be going on at the castle.  I
+haven't been back since I left it two days ago, and almost anything can
+have happened in that time.  The Duchess of Westboro' herself, in the
+interval, may have gone back to her husband."
+
+"Heavens!" Mrs. Falconer exclaimed, "in which case how horribly _de
+trop_ we shall be."
+
+But Bulstrode consoled her with the thought that if they were _de trop_
+they would at least be _de trop ensemble_.
+
+
+Amongst the handful of letters waiting for her in her dressing-room at
+the castle there had been a despatch from America.  Even this, and a
+hasty look at her mail had not succeeded in holding her attention or
+even carrying it beyond the house.  Her husband had expected to land in
+Liverpool at the end of the coming week; he was to take her home with
+him.  And until he arrived she was breathing, as she always did in his
+absence, deeply.
+
+There had been no one to greet them as Bulstrode and herself came into
+the castle, and she had hurried to her rooms to begin without loss of
+time her boasted rapid toilet.  The dress, whose harmony had impressed
+her host, the Duke, on a former visit at the castle, had been laid out
+for her; its sumptuous color overspread the bed.  But the lady chose
+instead a white gown whose art of holding to her, and holding her, in
+its simple lines and splendid sheen, made its beauty.
+
+There was much of the true woman in this entirely lovely creature, as
+she stood before her glass and saw herself, the best example of the
+really beautiful American.  Her naturalness gave her a freedom, a
+frankness, a grace, a certain imperial set of the head.
+
+Bulstrode had once said to the Duchess of Westboro' that a woman should
+above all "console."  Mary Falconer would have known what he meant.
+That sex she gloriously represented!  The sweetness and dearness of
+her.  Well, there were few women no doubt like her.  Jimmy hoped so for
+the sake of the race, for the sake of the hearts of other men.  She was
+the ideal fireside of home, and when, as she had twice done, she bade
+him, as that time she had said, "Build here," he knew what she meant
+and felt, and that she herself was exquisitely home.
+
+Leaning over her dressing-table she scrutinized not her face, whose
+ardent beauty seemed to bloom upon the glass, but her hair as it fell
+and rippled and flowed round her brows.  Along the edge of one of the
+lustrous waves was a touch as if her powder puff had brushed her hair.
+Mrs. Falconer put up her hand, smoothed the line, then let it lie as it
+grew.  It so declared itself to be the first unmistakable white.  A
+gardener's basket full of roses and camelias, gardenias and carnations
+had been sent up for her; but under the diamond at her breast she chose
+rather to fasten in a spray of mistletoe with its pale, grape-like
+berries.  A long green scarf fell over her arm and against the
+whiteness of her dress like a branch of spring verdure, and permitted
+by the fashion of the day, there shook and trembled in her ears long,
+pear-shaped pearls which, like her thimble, had been her mother's.
+
+As she left the security of her room and fire for the corridors and the
+publicity of the lower rooms, for the first time in her life she had a
+sudden feeling of _pruderie_ at the bare beauty of her neck and arms.
+She felt as if she were coming unclad into the street, and drew her
+scarf across her breast.  But she found herself to be quite alone in
+the drawing-room, and before she had time to be bewildered at her long
+desertion, a letter was handed her with a few murmured words by a
+footman.  It perhaps served her right, she reflected, for so blandly
+coming into a house during a state of domestic upheaval, that she
+should turn out to be not alone the only guest, but without host or
+friend!  The letter told her, as gently as it could without the
+satisfaction of any explanation, that both Bulstrode and the Duke of
+Westboro' were unavoidably absent.  She turned the letter over with
+keen disappointment.  Her dress, her beauty which the drive from
+Penhaven and the afternoon's happiness had heightened to a point that
+she might be pardoned for seeing, was then all for nothing!  On what
+extravagant bent could the two men have gone?
+
+"Both of them," she soliloquized with a shrug, "off on a hunt, I dare
+say, after a fool of a woman who doesn't know enough to stop at home."
+
+Before she could further lash at her absent hostess, she found herself
+a few seconds later taking the scarcely palpable arm of the rector,
+whom the Duke, in a moment of abstraction, had asked to the
+Christmas-tree and whom he had subsequently forgotten to put off.  The
+rector alone, of all the expected, turned up, his smile vacuous and his
+appetite in order.  At the table laid for four, and great enough for
+forty, the clergyman and the lady faced each other.  Mrs. Falconer
+smiled kindly, for as her friend had told the Duchess on the same
+afternoon, she was kind; and if she resented the apology for a man her
+slender _vis-a-vis_ presented, she did not show her scorn; she smiled
+kindly at him.  His cloth and habit, and cut even, wore the air of
+disapproval.  Her jewels, the bare splendor of her neck and arms,
+seemed out of place, and yet she could not but be perfectly sure that
+even the dull eyes of her _vis-a-vis_ not alone reflected, but
+confirmed, how lovely she was.
+
+The reverend gentleman was new to Glouceshire, but it turned out that
+he already knew its hearsays and its _on dits_ and he knew when she
+asked him, something of the country and The Dials.  It may have been
+that the bright aspect of the lady, her light mockery--for as she would
+she could not help falling into them even with this half-human
+creature--wickedly drew him on, gave the man license as he thought, to
+descend to scandal; at all events, after dinner, over a cigar smoked in
+her presence, the empty glass of Benedictine at his elbow, in his
+cheeks a muddy red diffused from his wine, the gentleman leaned
+forward, and tried to adapt his speech and topic to the worldly vein
+which he imagined was the habitual tenor of a fashionable woman's life.
+
+"Even this lovely shire," he drawled its beauty--"cannot, so it would
+seem, be free from scandal.  And where a minister would naturally look
+for help, wretchedly enough for the most part he only finds examples
+and warnings."
+
+The rector lifted his eyes to the fine old ceiling as if in its shields
+and blazons he was impressed by the blots of recent sins.
+
+His hand touched the little liqueur glass.  He picked it up and in a
+second of abstraction tried to drain its oily emptiness.
+
+"Let me ring," said Mrs. Falconer, "and send for some more Benedictine,
+or better still, for some _fine_."
+
+"No," he refused, and sedately put her right.  "No more of anything, I
+think, unless it might be a bottle of soda.  You spoke of lovely
+Glousceshire and then spoke of The Dials.  Do you know the place?"
+
+Only, she told him, by hearsay.
+
+He solemnly supposed so; so he himself chiefly knew it, as indeed all
+the country side was growing to know it.
+
+The eyes of the lady to whom the rector was retailing his little gossip
+were intently on him.  But Mrs. Falconer in reality was not looking at
+him, neither did she at once find ready words to refute, to cast down,
+to blot out, his hideous suggestion that filled the room with it sooty
+blot.
+
+Mrs. Falconer, who had good-humoredly been amused by his intense
+Britishness thus far, his pale lack of individuality, his perfect type,
+now looked sharply at her companion.
+
+The rector had been more than right, Mrs. Falconer was used to the
+indifferent, rather brutal handling by society of human lives.
+Possibly as she adored people, no one of her set was more interested in
+the comedies and dramas of her _contemporains_.  But there are ways and
+channels: what runs clear in one runs muddy in another.
+
+The rector, in his own way, told her that for several weeks a very
+beautiful lady had been living at The Dials.  She had, it appeared,
+never been out of the garden gate, and the servants were foreign, all
+save a deaf old gardener.  But the beautiful lady who sought such
+peculiar seclusion, had a very constant visitor.  Of course the rector
+was not able or sufficiently daring to affirm; with a cleverness worthy
+a better story he left his hearer to guess, imagine, who the visitor
+might be.
+
+"Don't you think," Mrs. Falconer breathed, after a very short lapse
+into silence, "that we might let such ghosts alone on Christmas Eve?"
+
+She rose and stood before him in her soft, luminous dress; her eyes
+were intent on him, but in reality she was not looking at him.
+
+He had grown so detestable that she could bear his presence no longer;
+she found herself, however, wanting to learn all his knowledge to its
+finest detail.  She found that she despised herself for any interest
+she might take.  She got rid of him at length, how, she never knew.
+But she saw him leave her presence with relief.
+
+
+When the miserable man, as she called him, had taken his leave, the
+deserted guest looked about her rather defiantly, as if the objects
+with which the room was filled were hostile.  Then, with a half-audible
+exclamation she sank down in a chair, her elbow on the left arm of it,
+and her chin in her hand.
+
+Well, the imputation, the character of what she had just heard vulgarly
+said and to which, for a bewildered second, she had perhaps vulgarly
+listened--was highly dreadful, highly disordering to her fashion of
+thinking and believing about Jimmy Bulstrode!  Oh, for a moment she had
+half believed what that creature said, and her eyes had winked fast at
+the game before them!  In the swiftness of the revolutions it had
+seemed for a sole flash real; but now that the noise had stopped and
+the carousel as well, she saw how _wooden_ the horses were and that
+they were as dead as doornails!  If she had been disturbed, she came
+loyally back now, with a glow and a rush of tenderness as she instantly
+re-instated what could never lose caste.
+
+Oh, The Dials!  She couldn't conceive what Jimmy had in reality,
+rashly, delightfully done there; what he had planted or installed, if
+he had planted or installed anything.  But whatever the truth was, it
+was sure to be essentially right, as far as ethics went--she knew that
+at least.  But Jimmy's delicacy and his heart were all too fine for the
+crude wisdom of the world or for her common-sense, which would have
+told him no doubt, had he cared to ask, that he was rash and wild.
+
+She was prepared to hear that he had made some Magdalen a home in this
+prudish country place.  At this possibility Jimmy's kindness and
+charity stood out graciously in strong contrast to the prudish judgment.
+
+There were several long mirrors set in the panels of the room like
+lakes between green shores of old brocade, and they reflected her as
+she leaned forwards in her chair and looked about her, taking in the
+brightness of the perfect little room.  It had been cut off from the
+wider, grander spaces for more intimate passages in the social course
+of events, but there was nothing newly planned in its colors and
+tapestries, its hangings and furnishings; the effect was sombre rather,
+the objects had the air of use, of having participated in past
+existences, and like faithful servants, they seemed to wait to serve
+perfectly new events.
+
+The especial brightness of the room came from the gay festooning that
+had found its way throughout the castle.  The mirrors were dark with
+the velvet rounds of hemlock from which the miserable face of scandal,
+the sardonic face of divorce, under the conditions of the present
+domestic situation might well grin satyr-like from the Christmas
+wreaths.  No doubt there were lots of ghosts about, ready to stride, to
+flutter, or to walk; the American woman put their histories and their
+legends impatiently by.
+
+The facile way in which the Duchess of Westboro' had slipped out from
+the chafing of domestic harness, the egotistical _geste_ with which she
+had so widely thrown over her responsibilities, fetched Mrs. Falconer
+up to her own life, from whose problems indeed her husband's absence
+alone set her free.  Her affairs had lately rapidly progressed, flying,
+whirling.  The circles the event of her marriage had originally
+created, touched at last the farthest limit; there was nothing left for
+them now but to scatter.  The vortex had rapidly narrowed down, was
+narrowing down, and nothing remained but a sole object in the bed of
+the clear water; and as Mary Falconer looked at it she knew that the
+thing was a stone.
+
+"We spend," she had once said to Bulstrode, "half our lives forging
+chains, and the other half trying to make ourselves free."  Hadn't she
+wrenched with all her might to be rid of hers? materially she still
+wore her bonds and moved with a ball.
+
+As she had driven away from Charing Cross Station, a month ago, after
+seeing her husband aboard the Dover and Calais special, she had
+breathed--breathed--breathed--stretched her arms and hands out to
+London, felt on her eye and brow a dew that meant the very dawning of
+liberty broke for her, and that she was for the time at least blessed
+by it, and free.
+
+The Sorghams' London house had opened its refuge wide for her, and she
+had gone into it like a child, to sleep and rest, and there she had
+grown up again, to begin to think and to plan, project and puzzle as
+those who grow up must do.  She had never thought to such practical
+purpose as she did in these days, and never come so nearly reaching an
+end.
+
+Just before dressing for dinner on this night, at the sensation the
+touch of her husband's telegram gave her, she realized how near to a
+not unusual decision she was, and when she put the envelope by with the
+rest of her mail, the part of her mind which she would not let herself
+look into was in confusion and doubt.
+
+More effectively than Falconer's coming could have done, his few
+telegraphed words brought him to his wife's consideration.  And the
+fantastic story of The Dials helped her, ridiculous as it was,
+burlesque as it was, to think; in the very humor of it, a shock, and
+helped her more reasonably to consider what otherwise her feelings
+would have turned to tragedy.
+
+Jimmy's ecstasies about the place recurred to her with renewed
+cordiality.  He had spent an hour at least describing it, and when he
+had finished with "A woman must be there, it is made for a woman," Mary
+Falconer had only seen herself in the frame that the old place
+presented.  She exclaimed aloud: "Oh, no, no," and continued to affirm
+to herself that it was too fantastically absurd--"Jimmy!"
+
+"It's only some delightful bit of charity, and he's too afraid of my
+wretched conservatism and my ironies to have told me frankly about it."
+
+Having in a very unfeminine way opened a crack for reason, its honest
+face peered through, and Mary Falconer glanced at it with a sigh and a
+half-amused recognition, as if she had not been face to face with
+anything so cool and eminent for a long time.
+
+Jimmy had hinted to her of a secret, in London; there was something he
+said he wished to tell her about, would tell her in full later,
+something that involved much happiness to others, and could it have
+been this?  Could it have been that he was really secretly married?
+That at last the step of which he had constantly spoken, for which
+indeed there had been times when together they had half-heartedly
+planned for it, could it be that the one safeguard for them both had
+actually been formed by him, and alone?  But only a second would she
+permit this conception of The Dials to obtain hold.  "Ridiculous!" she
+repeated, "ridiculous!  Not that I believe a word or any innuendo of
+the shocking old wizard, but it only shows, it only shows the
+helplessness of a woman who is not bound to a man, and how entirely the
+man is free!"
+
+Nothing a man does counts well for him with a woman but those things he
+does in accordance with her estimate of what his attitude towards her
+should be!  And Bulstrode's high-minded control, the reserve--which
+since her marriage had been maintained, only counted now against him.
+
+Wasn't she, in it all, rather counting without her host?  Their bond
+was so tacit, so silent, so unworded.  Indeed, he had made no bond, had
+asked her for no pledge.  She was tied hand and foot, but he was free.
+And over that freedom what vague right had she?  What dominion could
+she have?  Isn't it, after all, in the life of a clever, delightful
+man, something not strictly a burden, the soul-absorbing entire
+devotion of a woman not too old and more or less not generally
+disliked?  What did it--heavens, but she was analyzing--what did it
+cost him?  Hadn't he always gone from her at a moment's warning, and
+stopped away for months and months?  Imperious as by nature she was,
+she had always been wise enough to reserve a summons from her that, she
+had every reason to believe, would fetch him from any distance to her
+side.  She never tested him, she scarcely ever wrote to him; she had
+been at the Sorghams', and alone for a month, and save for one
+perfectly delightful day he had not once turned up to keep her company.
+
+As the woman's thoughts encompassed the subject they brought it up to
+this: that as far as things went, at all events, there was no blame: no
+matter how society had coupled their names, she had at least the
+conscience of her acts clear.  Jimmy was to be thanked for it from
+beginning to end; as far as the conscience of her thoughts went, well,
+those were her own affair.  Oh, she could recall skirmishes and narrow
+impasses!  Her tactics had more than once been those only permitted by
+the codes of battle, and of another passion.
+
+Her chair, which she had left, she passed and repassed as she walked up
+and down, trailing her soft dress across the floor.  She stood before
+the fire, her foot held out to the fervent flame.
+
+Her face softened as there came out clearly to her the real picture of
+Jimmy that always kept itself somewhere between her eyes and her brain.
+Ah, there were men of talent and fashion, who did not hesitate to make
+merry, who were more or less good, more or less anti-pathetic, and for
+whom society never had a word of reproach--but Jimmy! distinguished and
+charming, with every taste and means to gratify them, with--so to put
+it--the woman of his heart at his very doors--how did he live?  Why,
+for everybody in the world but for himself.  And through it all, in
+spite of the fact that he appeared blindly to shut his eyes against
+their mutual love, he lived for her.  Oh, he was the best, the best!
+
+She listened as she stood there for the hum of the motor which might
+tell her he was coming back.  She wanted to ask him to tell her the
+truth about The Dials.  She wanted, above all else, to see him again.
+
+She remembered them, one by one, the happy occasions they had caught
+and made the most of, and each after the other they became lovely
+harbors where like ships her thoughts lay at anchor.  Penhaven was
+certainly one of the best.  She congratulated herself that she had
+conceived that day, and without any blame she acknowledged it to
+herself, that if Jimmy had only wished it they would have been there
+together now.
+
+She had taken her chair again and sat back deeply in the great
+fauteuil.  The brocade made a dark-hued background against which her
+head, frankly thrown back, defined its charming lines.  Her bare arms
+folded across her breast, her foot swinging gently to and fro, she
+continued to muse and dream, and as she thought of Bulstrode, to love
+him.
+
+Some one came in and piled up the fire and slipped out, but no message
+was brought her to tell her what had become of her host and her friend.
+
+The long sympathetic silence beginning at the fireside flowed through
+the vast rooms and corridors, and out into the night, down the lanes
+and the road until its completeness and tonelessness were broken by the
+memory of the bells of Penhaven, as she and Jimmy had heard them whilst
+they rang the angelus in the close.  And the discordant note of The
+Dials was drowned, confused and lost in her intense listening to the
+Penhaven bells.  Some chord or other, or some fine spring touched as
+she so thought on, brought back to her the fact of the despatch
+upstairs, which if it had any, had an imperative importance.  Falconer
+had sent it from Palm Beach where he had gone to get rid of a
+troublesome grippe.  He did not, in the few lines which told he was
+seedy and had put off his sailing, suggest that she should go back.
+But he would not resent her return, she knew that, he would probably
+treat her decently for at least a fortnight.
+
+"I don't know a creature," she praised herself, "who would have stayed
+on with Jack, and nothing but Jimmy has helped me to stick it out.  If
+he really loved me would he have let me go on as I have gone on?  I
+don't know.  Unless he loved me could he have helped me at all?  I
+think not."
+
+Round the figure of her friend there began to group, as if for some
+special purpose, the kindnesses and charities she had seen him display.
+One by one she added up his gifts and benefits until the poor and
+outcast and forgotten and despised claimed all of them to be his
+friends; they gathered round him and in place of the categoric
+histories of self-love and indulgence, of passion that had in more or
+less degree characterized the men of her set, these things came till
+the dawn of them and the light of them made his figure shine.  How, she
+thought, could he ever have been what he so wonderfully is, if he had
+lived for himself or been anything but the best?  Upstairs, in her
+room, a few hours before, the mark of silver on her hair had been a
+whip to urge on her rebellion; to tell her to seize and make the most
+of the fleeting time, to warn her of the age which when her beauty and
+her youth were gone, was all that could remain for them both.  But now
+there began to blow across her soul a freshness.  She had indeed been
+drawing long breaths in her husband's absence, but free as they were
+they left her stifled and panting, as if to get the oxygen she had been
+obliged to climb too far.  Now, on the contrary, she was lifted as by
+wings, and whilst they fluttered about her she breathed evenly yet
+fully, and the air on the heights was something better than wine.
+
+There is an unspoiled enjoyment in the thing which has never given us
+pain.  It may be a sensual and ecstatic prerogative of passion to make
+the object suffer, but there is a different sense of happiness in that
+which never does harm or hurt or wrong to the thing it loves.  So she
+could think of Bulstrode, without pain, without regret, without
+reproach.  And if the ardor and passion in her became suffused and
+slowly paled, there was a starry brightness, a beauty in her face and
+in her eyes such as Bulstrode, when he came in to find her waiting, had
+never seen before.
+
+
+With every mile of the short run from The Dials back to the castle,
+Mrs. Falconer's friend had been preparing himself for his meeting with
+the woman he had left some few hours before.  All his emotions
+culminated in a high, swinging excitement.  The fact that he was going
+back alone to find Mary Falconer there, was the big motif, and as he
+thought of the dark, charming envelope the castle made, holding the
+treasure she was, keeping her there for him, his heart beat so high
+that he knew there was nothing more for him to feel.  The ecstasy he
+had witnessed in the little house his chivalry had purchased, the
+meeting of the husband and wife, come together there after so much
+unhappiness, put it poignantly to him that sterile love is a very
+unsatisfactory thing indeed.  And if the highest quality of gallantry
+is to consider a woman's honor before her love, it at least makes real
+happiness--so he felt then--impossible in the world.
+
+One false swerve of the motor at the pace they were going, and there
+would not be any more problems to solve.  If he died now he might
+justly say that he had not lived, he had not lived!  Who would give him
+back what he had missed?  The motto on the dials repeated itself to
+him: _Utere dum licet_.
+
+He pushed into the castle on his arrival, hurried to dress, and went
+downstairs.  It seemed to him as he put aside the portieres, that these
+curtains were at last all there was between himself and her, that he
+was going home, coming home at last; that ways he had for years seen
+approaching, met at length to-night here.  It was with the very clear
+realization of the culmination of the time that Bulstrode went in to
+find his friend.
+
+He had stopped to make himself irreproachable, and expected to find her
+waiting and friendly and lovely.  What, had he found her anything else?
+But as rising from her chair, the scarf slipping back from her bare
+shoulders, she put out her hand and greeted him, the dazzling sense
+that breaks on a man's consciousness when he finds himself alone with
+the woman he loves, proved for a second that he had need of all his
+control.  He could not speak.
+
+"Jimmy!" she exclaimed, "you're as white as a ghost!  You look as
+though you'd been to a wake; and I don't believe you've had a mouthful
+of dinner."
+
+He remembered that it might be polite to apologize to her for the
+entire desertion of the household.
+
+"My poor friend, what in Heaven's name must you think of us all!"
+
+"Of you all?"  (True enough, there had been another!)  She had thought
+volumes, comedies, tragedies, melodramas, but what she thought didn't
+so much matter as did the fact that he had not, whatever festivities he
+had honored, dined.  Shouldn't they have something here together before
+the fire?
+
+"I seem," she said, "to have a blighting effect upon my host."
+
+"My friend Westboro' is the happiest man in Glousceshire."
+
+"Which means that he has found his Duchess?"
+
+"He has found his Duchess."
+
+When her friend entered the room, by the light on his face like the
+brightness of the morning as he caught sight of her, Mary Falconer saw
+that for Jimmy Bulstrode she was still the one woman in the world.  In
+the relief that this knowledge brought her she half attempted to play
+with what had been her suspicions, and to tease him, but this mood
+passed.
+
+"That's a horrid old parson they chose to have me dine with," she said.
+"He told me dreadful scandals but I think now that I see through them
+all.  The Duchess of Westboro' has been living incognita at The Dials,
+hasn't she, and her husband at last found her there?"
+
+Bulstrode acknowledged that she had read the drama correctly.  And Mary
+Falconer laughed.
+
+"Yes, evidently the Duchess has a strong dramatic sense; she's very
+romantic, isn't she?"
+
+And the man absently exclaimed: "Oh, I dare say, I dare say."  Then
+turning to her with unusual vehemence: "Do, for Heaven's sake leave
+them and everybody.  I want to forget them all."
+
+He threw up his hand with a sort of supplication.  He had seated
+himself on a tapestried stool close beside the chair she had taken
+again.  Using her Christian name for one of the rare times in his life,
+he pleaded: "Can't we leave all other people, Mary, can't we?"
+
+She looked at him startled and said that their host seemed pretty
+effectually to have left _them_, rising from her chair with the words,
+and crossing the room to one of the long windows, drew back the curtain.
+
+The cold glass against which she pressed her cheek sent a shock through
+her, but she stayed for a second close to the pane as if she would
+implore the newer transport, the stiller transport, of the icy cold to
+transfuse her veins.
+
+The changed temperature had chased away the fog, and the night spread
+its serene beauty over the park, where the moonlight lay along the
+terrace like snow.  Far down the slope rose the outlines of the bare
+trees, and the wide landscape shone and shone until it finally was lost
+in the mists.
+
+Bulstrode had followed over and stood by Mary Falconer's side, and the
+scene before him seemed full of joy, full of gifts, full of largesse.
+The ornament on the woman's bosom stirred with her breathing, shot a
+million fine sparkles, and below it the spray of mistletoe rose and
+fell, rose and fell.
+
+He put his hand out and took the spray and fastened it in his
+buttonhole, saying that the mistletoe was above her head.
+
+His voice, one she had never heard, made her unwisely turn to meet his
+eyes, to shake with the emotion of the adventurer trembling on the edge
+of the precipice; just to hang over which, and to shudder, he has
+climbed high.  She put her hand out between them, holding him back.
+
+"I've had a telegram from my husband.  He's very ill.  He's in Palm
+Beach and I'm going over to him next week."
+
+[Illustration: "I've had a telegram from my husband"]
+
+Falconer's name was sovereign for breaking spells as far as Jimmy was
+concerned, but the wife's phrase this time gave him only a more violent
+revelation of his cruel hope.  She went on:
+
+"It's not alarming, but with a heart like Jack's, anything might
+happen.  It's only when I'm with him that he keeps up any sort of
+shape."
+
+The fact of his holding in his the hand that she had put out to keep
+him from her, did not serve to aid in a serene continuation of her
+plans, and the silence became a burden which if she did not herself
+lift would crush her.
+
+She said hurriedly: "And you will help me to go."
+
+And then Bulstrode spoke: "No," he said, "Oh, no."
+
+For the briefest space she yielded to what he meant and was at last
+wicked enough and human enough to promise to do.  But she had on this
+solemn evening--for it had so been--come too far, gone up too high to
+drag down all the way with him on a single word.  In supremest
+happiness, however, at what he said and how he said it, she gave a
+little soft laugh, and although she was under the mistletoe, she felt
+that she looked down on him, loving him so much more that in adorable
+weakness he had suddenly grown small and dear.
+
+"Oh, Jimmy," she whispered, "how heavenly of you, but you can't go back
+on ten years in one week.  You can't, you know!  You've thrown me like
+a giant so _far_, I've gone right on up."
+
+Still looking at her he shook his head as she repeated: "You'll help
+me, you'll help me!  You can't go back!"
+
+"I _can_ go back," he said deeply, "_on everything and everybody in the
+world_."
+
+At the frank simple words, and the sense of what they meant, at the
+sound of his new voice, it was as if all the dykes at last were down;
+and strong, bright, but most beautiful, the sea came rushing in.  As
+she saw him coming toward her and knew that in a moment more she would
+be in his arms, and that at his first touch she would let everything
+go, she found one word to say and it proved only to be his name:
+
+"Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy!"
+
+But there was in it an appeal.  She could count the times she had wept
+in her life, very nearly, she had often said that a woman weeps only
+when she has nothing else to do, and there had always been so much,
+every minute in her life; and as if in logical affirmation there seemed
+now for her nothing to do but to cry.  The tears which covered her face
+and fell into her palms and against the chair on which she leaned,
+comforted her in a measure and served to loosen the tension of her
+mind.  She had succeeded in miraculously keeping away from him, just
+within touch of her, held back by a hand whose white gentleness was not
+so exquisitely strong but that he loved her too well to break the
+tender barrier.  She never afterward knew what appeals she made or how
+she besought, but it must have been of great force to keep him so
+transfixed and pale.
+
+"Oh, you _have_ told me over and over again!  Do you think I am deaf or
+blind, or that I have found you dumb?  Such love, Jimmy, such high,
+sweet perfectness!  Why, there isn't a woman in a million who has known
+it or even dreamed what such love could mean.  Why, there hasn't been a
+day or an hour for ten years that you have not spoken it to me in the
+most adorable way, in the most beautiful way; and in every kind thing
+you have done, in every foolish, dear thing, I have been so vain as to
+think that I counted for something in it, that you did it a little for
+me.  Other women have had their lovers, their scandals, their great
+passions.  But I have had you without flaw, without a change, without
+regret.  Hush!" she cried, wiping her tears away, "Hush.  It's quite
+safe to let me go on.  The only fear is that _you_ may speak."
+
+The arm which she had held out to keep him from her had fallen upon his
+shoulder, lay about his neck as he knelt by her chair.
+
+"It's been horrible!" she said, shaking her head, "Horrible--the days
+and the nights, the days and the nights!  There have been times when I
+could have killed him and killed myself as well.  But then you've come,
+and your presence has helped me, and that's the way I've pulled along;
+because by your silence you told me to pull along, because by the fact
+that you didn't speak I understood that you thought I should be brave,
+and I have been--thanks to you, and I shall be--thanks to you!  Oh!"
+she cried passionately, "if you think because I am saying it all out
+that I want to go back, that I don't see what I am running away from,
+and what you mean, you're cruel, you're cruel!"
+
+Her other hand had found its fellow and they both lay on his shoulders.
+
+"I only think of you," he breathed, "and of how..."
+
+She covered his lips.  "Oh, hush, hush, you have told me, in the only
+way there was to tell.  I'm too stupid to be able to combine a lover
+and a husband.  The day and the hour you spoke I should never have seen
+my husband again.  And that's where it stands; that's how it is, and
+you know it.  You loved me because I was like that, and I love you
+because you are the bravest of the brave.  There you are!" she cried,
+and drew away from him triumphantly, letting her arms fall.  "There we
+both are!"
+
+"Have you any vague conception of what this is for me?" Bulstrode asked.
+
+"Oh, I dare say," she exclaimed, with a kind of petulance, "that I am
+only thinking of my own bewildering happiness.  There," she exclaimed
+at his face, "I see you have a new weapon: pity.  Oh, don't use that
+against me, and I warn you that everything in the world will crumble if
+you speak."
+
+Her hands, which he was holding closely, she drew from him and laid
+them both on his breast and met his eyes full with her own.  Her lips
+were slightly trembling, and she was as white as a winter day.  In the
+moment of silence they passed like this, she seemed to him like some
+great precious pearl, some priceless rose fragrant, lustrous, made for
+him, gathered for him, and yet beyond his right.  She seemed, above
+all, the woman, the mate; her glorious sex, her tenderness, her
+humanness, drew him and dazzled him; and, nevertheless, through his
+daze and over his desire, he heard with his finest her cry:
+
+"Jimmy, Jimmy, don't speak, don't speak.  Ah, if you really love me..."
+
+He really loved her.  Rising from where he knelt by her chair,
+Bulstrode went over, stood a second by the chimneypiece, and then took
+a few paces up and down the room, came back to her and said the thing
+the real man says to the woman he really loves:
+
+"I want to make you happy, Mary.  I will do whatever you wish me to do."
+
+"Ah, then, go!"
+
+Bulstrode looked wearily about as though of its own accord a door might
+unclose or a portiere lift.
+
+"Go where, pray, at this time of night, or morning?"
+
+"Oh, to The Dials.  Ring for a motor; they will take you in again; or
+go to the rector's."
+
+The last of the fire had flared up.  The flame went out.
+
+Sinking back in her chair, she waited in a tranced stillness, her eyes
+on the ashes of the fire.  She had said her say out, perhaps the man
+knew it, and as she leaned back in the cushions he saw how completely
+it all lay with him at the end.  She thought he came back and waited a
+second at her side; she thought he bent a moment over her, but she did
+not stir until the cold wind from an opening door, till the clicking of
+a latch made her start, and then she turned to see that he had gone.
+
+
+Bulstrode came back to the castle Christmas Day at nine o'clock.  But
+the hour had the effect of being much earlier.  The winter morning
+panoplied with festivity began its life slowly, and not all the day's
+brightness through which he had speeded his motor had yet come into the
+house.  Bulstrode, drawn by it, went directly back to the room he had
+left several hours before, as though he expected still to find the
+woman he loved sitting before the extinguished fire.
+
+Two parlor maids were whisking their skirts and dusters out of the
+opposite door, a footman at their heels.  Touches of the inevitable
+order which reduces an agreeable disarray to the impersonal had already
+been put to the scene of Jimmy's tenderness, and the curtains drawn
+well away from the long windows let in the morning that entered broadly
+and fell across the hearth and the fresh-lit fire.
+
+Clean logs replaced the cold ashes: the match had just finished with
+the kindlings, and Bulstrode went over to welcome the crackling of the
+young blaze.  The absence of his host, the castle once more handed over
+to him for the time, gave him a feeling of proprietorship in the bright
+cordial room, but looking up at the portraits of Westboro's in puffs
+and velvets, Jimmy couldn't find an ancestor!  Their amours and
+indulgences had written brilliant and amusing history; the gentlemen
+had gone mad at ladies' carriage wheels, they had carried off their
+scandals with the highest of hands, and still held their heads well.
+They had carved and raped and loved their way down to the present time,
+and were none the less a proud line of pure British blood.  The
+American bachelor, about whose fine head nothing picturesque or worthy
+of history circled, looked up at the Dukes of Westboro' musingly, and
+there was not a peer or a noble better to look upon or who had been at
+heart a truer lover, although he did not know it.
+
+During the lapse of time between leaving this same room and his present
+return, Bulstrode had not tossed on a sleepless bed; he had slept
+soundly, and during his rest the several dials had called out like
+bells, their voice, _Utere dum licet_; and finally a real bell had
+roused him to the fact that it was day, a new day, and that unless he
+was killed en route to the castle, nothing could keep him from the
+place and from her.
+
+He had no consolation in the fact that the honor and decency of society
+were by him strengthened and retained, nor did he plan out the sane,
+wise project of not seeing her again.  Nor did he weigh or balance his
+charge or responsibility.  There had been a cessation of vibration of
+any kind, and only one supreme, sovereign reality took possession of
+the world and of himself, and the limitless beauty and the limitless
+delight he had breathed in ever since he left her and knew how she
+loved him.  Nothing in life, he had so felt, could dull or tarnish the
+glory of her face; nothing, no matter what life held for them both,
+could efface the touch she had laid upon him, as her arms were about
+him.  Through the interval his past life appeared to have been, on
+through the new and unlived interval to come, she would be as last
+night she had been, she would look at him as last night she had looked.
+"Heavens!" he meditated, in the faces of the self-indulgent, cynical
+Westboro's, "I am not going to be blase through six paradises just
+because there happens to be a seventh!"
+
+A new fire spun its lilac flames behind his back.  The spicy breath of
+the wreaths of hemlock was deliciously sweet.  Little by little the sun
+had made its eastern way and sparkled at the pane outside, and in the
+radiant clarity the terrace and its charming railing, the urns with the
+little cedars, stood out clearly; and more than all else, the truth
+cried itself to him, that whatever happened, she was still here, still
+in the house with him.
+
+He had chosen a Christmas gift for her in London, and determined to
+send it up to her now with some roses, and in this way to announce the
+fact that he had come back from The Dials and was ready to use the day
+as she liked.  He felt only how beautiful it would be to see her, that
+it did not for a second occur to him to wonder if she on her part would
+feel a certain embarrassment.
+
+In answer to his ring, not a man servant, but the perfect housekeeper
+rustled in, her crisp silks, her cameos, and her "Christmas face," as
+one of the little Westboro' chaps had called her rosy countenance, on
+one of his few Christmas days.
+
+"Where would Mr. Bulstrode please to have breakfast?"
+
+"Why, wherever it best suited, went with the house, with the day.
+Where, indeed, and that was more to the point, would Mrs. Falconer have
+it?"
+
+"Mrs. Falconer?  Why, Mr. Bulstrode didn't know then that Mrs. Falconer
+had gone?"
+
+She saw by his face that he knew nothing less in the world.
+
+Why, directly the despatch had been fetched over from the Abbey
+station.  There had been but twenty minutes between the getting of it
+and her starting away.  A motor had been sent with her and the maid,
+and Mrs. Falconer had fortunately been able to make the train; the only
+one, it so happened, being Christmas Day, that connected with the Dover
+and Calais special.
+
+The matter-of-fact bit of news came to Bulstrode so coldly and so
+ruthlessly that it took some seconds for the bitter thought that she
+had gone because she couldn't trust him, to penetrate.  Then this gave
+place to an effulgent hope that it might be _herself_ she couldn't
+trust!  But the discovery that she had left him no message of any kind,
+and that she was above all irrevocably gone, struck him more cruelly
+than had any blow in his kindly life.  He could not suffer in peace
+before the bland creature in silks and cameos.  Crises and departures,
+battle, murder, and sudden death, he felt the housekeeper would accept
+serenely should any of them chance to occur at Westboro', and above all
+if they were part of the sacred family history.  But Mrs. Falconer and
+he were not Westboro's, and he wanted to be rid of his companion and to
+find himself alone in order to consult time tables, to find out why it
+had been imperative to go to Calais, with what boat for America a
+Christmas-Day train could possibly connect, and to turn it all over in
+his mind.  He at first believed that there had never been any telegram
+and that she had only employed a polite ruse in order to facilitate her
+flight.
+
+Why, at all events, couldn't she have left him a line?  She might, he
+ruefully complained, have strained a point and wished him a Merry
+Christmas!  As he walked to and fro in the room now supremely deserted,
+he began slowly to approach a certain hypothesis which as soon as he
+granted, he as violently discarded.  But the thought was imperious:
+something of its kind always haunted him like a bad ghost.  It could
+usually be dismissed, but now it was persistent.  A despatch from
+Falconer had certainly come the night before.  Another might have
+followed on this morning, hard upon it?  To have been sent over from
+the Abbey on a holiday must have been a very grave message indeed; "a
+matter," as the old term went, "of life and death."  The phrase began
+to repeat itself and the conviction to grow, and as he was obliged to
+give it admittance and to face it, and to wonder what the shock would
+be to her, and what the news would be to him, how it would change
+things, and how they would both meet it--his promenade to and fro in
+the room brought him up before the centre table and he looked down upon
+it at length with a seeing eye.  Why not? why not? he was wondering.
+We are all essentially mortal, and lightning never had struck yet, _why
+not in this place_?  And since there had been neither shame nor blame,
+why couldn't he face the possibility of a perfectly natural mortality?
+Before him on the table lay Mrs. Falconer's green scarf, and as
+Bulstrode lifted the soft thing he saw that underneath it lay a
+despatch.
+
+Then he knew instantly that Mary Falconer had left both scarf and
+telegram there, and that this was her message to him.  He seemed, as
+the word he had not yet read met him in this form, to have been waiting
+all his life for just this news.  The road, so long in winding home,
+had wound home at length, and now that he believed the crisis was
+really reached, there was something infinitely stilling in its
+solemnity.
+
+Bulstrode could not at once draw the sheet from its envelope.  He lit a
+cigar and sat down before the fire.
+
+He knew, as though he saw it all before his eyes, how the despatch had
+found her this early Christmas Day, in her room--he knew how she had
+read it first and borne it well--for she was a brave, strong woman--he
+knew that his absence had been a relief to her.  He knew how she had
+worn her long, dark cloak and thick veil, and had gone out to travel
+home alone.  Oh, he knew her, and as he thought of the picture she had
+made, and how she would begin her sad and dreadful journey, he for the
+first time thought of himself--of themselves.  He was too human not to
+know that there would be a future and that they would build anew.  In
+the new house there would be no driftwood now; nor would they ever be
+haunted by the sound of a bell in the dark, for with the few brave
+souls who sail across the seas of life they had both of them stood by
+the sinking ship until it put into port.
+
+Mrs. Shawles came in again presently and told him that she had laid his
+breakfast in the little room facing the gardens.  Then she waited, and
+as Bulstrode looked up at her he forced himself to smile faintly and
+wished her a Merry Christmas.
+
+She thanked him, gave him many, and said it was a happy morning for all
+of the Westboro's, and that the castle and the house would see new
+times and better things, and when he had stirred himself to the point
+of putting what he had for her into her hand, he was not sure whether
+he wanted her to go, or not, this time and leave him alone.
+
+She still hesitated.  It was a custom with them, she told him, with the
+Westboro's, to have hall prayers on holidays.  When the Duke himself
+was there, he always read them; the servants and the children of the
+place had already come in.  In the absence of the family _would_ Mr.
+Bulstrode...?
+
+"Oh, no, on no account, on no account," he hurried.  "Wasn't there some
+one else?"
+
+"Well, to be sure, there was Portman."
+
+The guest was sure that Portman would do it quite in the proper way,
+and as for himself, he would have his breakfast in a few moments, he
+thanked her.
+
+And Mrs. Shawles, who had expected a more favorable answer, left open
+on the table the little Book which she had brought in with her.
+
+Bulstrode took it up after she was gone.
+
+In a few seconds he heard from the distance the sound of the children
+singing.  Their voices ceased, to be followed by the subdued murmur of
+reading.  As Bulstrode opened the Book he held, the leaves fell apart
+at the marriage rite.  He hurriedly passed this over, and his eyes were
+arrested by the opening lines of a more solemn service.  He paused to
+read the beautiful, pitiful words, and then, still with the open Book
+in his hands, he drew the telegram out of its cover....
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy
+Bulstrode, by Marie Van Vorst
+
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