Toward the end of the first week in August Strelsa wrote to Quarren:

"Sometimes I wonder whether you realise how my attitude toward everything is altering. Things which seemed important no longer appear so in the sunlit tranquillity of this lovely place. Whatever it is that seems to be changing me in various ways is doing it so subtly, yet so inexorably, that I scarcely notice any difference in myself until some morning I awake with such a delicious sense of physical well-being and such a mental happiness apropos of nothing at all except the mere awaking into the world again, that, thinking it over, I cannot logically account for it.

"Because, Rix, my worldly affairs seem to be going from bad to worse. I know it perfectly well, yet where is that deadly fear?—where is the dismay, the alternate hours of panic and dull lethargy—the shrinking from a future which only yesterday seemed to threaten me with more than I had strength to endure—menace me with what I had neither the will nor the desire to resist?

"Gone, my friend! And I am either a fool or a philosopher, but whichever I am, I am a happy one.

"I wish to tell you something. Last winter when they fished me out of my morbid seclusion, I thought that the life I then entered upon was the only panacea for the past, the only oblivion, the only guarantee for the future.

"Now I suppose I have gone to the other extreme, because, let me tell you what I've done. Will you laugh? I can't help it if you do; I've bought a house! What do you think of that?

"The owner took back a mortgage, but I don't care. I paid so very little for it, and thirty acres of woods and fields—and it is a darling house!—built in the eighteenth century and not in good repair, but it's mine! mine! mine!—and it may need paint and plumbing and all sorts of things which perhaps make for human happiness and perhaps do not. But I tell you I really don't care.

"And how I did it was this: I took what they offered for my laces and jewels—about a third of their value—but it paid every debt and left me with enough to buy my sweet old house up here.

"But that's not all! I've rented my town house furnished for a term of five years at seven thousand dollars a year! Isn't it wonderful?

"And that is not all, either. I am going into business, Rix! Don't dare laugh. Jim has made an arrangement with an independent New York florist, and I'm going to grow flowers under glass for the Metropolitan market.

"And, if I succeed, I may try fruits outdoors and in. My small brain is humming with schemes, millions of them. Isn't it heavenly?

"Besides, from my second-story windows I shall be able to see Molly's chimneys above the elms. And Molly is going to remain here all winter, because, Rix—and this is a close secret—a little heir or heiress is coming to make this House of Wycherly 'an habitation enforced'—and a happier habitation than it has been since they bought it.

"So you see I shall have neighbours all winter—two neighbours, for Mrs. Ledwith is wretchedly ill and her physicians have advised her to remain here all winter. Poor child—for she is nothing else, Rix—I met her for the first time when I went to call on Mrs. Sprowl. She's so young and so empty-headed, just a shallow, hare-brained, little thing who had no more moral idea of sin than a humming-bird—nor perhaps has she any now except that the world has hurt her and broken her wings and damaged her plumage; and the sunlight in which she sparkled for a summer has faded to a chill gray twilight!—Oh, Rix, it is really pitiful; and somehow I can't seem to remember whether she was guilty or not, because she's so ill, so broken—lying here amid the splendour of her huge house——

"You know Mrs. Sprowl is on her way to Carlsbad. You haven't written me what took place in your last interview with her; and I've asked you, twice. Won't you tell me?

"Langly, thank goodness, never disturbs us. And, Rix, do you know that he has never been to call on Mary Ledwith? He keeps to his own estate and nobody even sees him. Which is all I ask at any rate.

"So Sir Charles called on you and told you about Chrysos? Isn't Sir Charles the most darling man you ever knew? I never knew such a man. There is not one atom of anything small or unworthy in his character. And I tell you very frankly that, thinking about him at times, I am amazed at myself for not falling in love with him.

Strelsa Leeds. Strelsa Leeds.

"Which is proof sufficient that if I couldn't care for him I cannot ever care for any man. Don't you think so?

"Now all this letter has been devoted to matters concerning myself and not one line to you and the exciting success you and Lord Dankmere are making of your new business.

"Oh, Rix, I am not indifferent; all the time I have been writing to you, that has been surging and laughing in my heart—like some delicious aria that charmingly occupies your mind while you go happily about other matters—happy because the ceaseless melody that enchants you makes you so.

"I have read your letter so many times, over and over; and always the same thrill of excitement begins when I come to the part where you begin to suspect that under the daubed surface of that canvas there may be something worth while.

"Is it really and truly a Van Dyck? Is there any chance that it is not? Is it possible that all these years none of Dankmere's people suspected what was hidden under the aged paint and varnish of that tiresome old British landscape?

"And it remained for you to suspect it!—for you to discover it? Oh, Rix, I am proud of you!

"And how perfectly wonderful it is that now you know its history, when it was supposed to have disappeared, where it has remained ever since under its ignoble integument of foolish paint.

"No, I promise not to say one word about it until I have your permission. I understand quite well why you desire to keep the matter from the newspapers for the present. But—won't it make you and Lord Dankmere rich? Tell me—please tell me. I don't want money for myself any more, but I do want it for you. You need it; you can do so much with it, use it so intelligently, so gloriously, make the world better with it,—make it more beautiful, and people happier.

"What a chasm, Rix, between what we were a year ago, and what we care to be—what we are trying to be to-day! Sometimes I think of it, not unhappily, merely wondering.

"Toward what goal were we moving a year ago? What was there to be of such lives?—what at the end? Why, there was, for us, no more significance in living than there is to any overfed animal!—not as much!

"Oh, this glorious country of high clouds and far horizons!—and alas! for the Streets of Ascalon where such as I once was go to and fro—'clad delicately in scarlet and ornaments of gold.'

"'Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the Streets of Ascalon'—that the pavements of the Philistines have bruised my feet, and their Five Cities weary me, and Philistia's high towers are become a burden to my soul. For their gods are too many and too strange for me. So I am decided to remain here—ere 'they that look out of their windows be darkened' and 'the doors be shut in the Streets'—'and all the daughters of music shall be brought low.'

"My poor comrade! Must you remain a prisoner in the Streets of Ascalon? Yet, through your soul I know as free and fresh a breeze is blowing as stirs the curtains at my open window!—You wonderful man to evoke in imagery—to visualise and conceive all that had to be concrete to cure me soul and body of my hurts!

---

"I have been reading Karl Westguard's new novel. Rix, there is no story in it, nothing at all that I can discover except a very earnest warming over of several modern philosophers' views and conclusions concerning social problems.

"I hate to speak unkindly of it; I wanted to like it because I like Karl Westguard. But it isn't fiction and it isn't philosophy, and its treatment of social problems seems to follow methods already obsolete.

"Do you think people will buy it? But I don't suppose Karl cares since he's made up his quarrel with his aunt.

"Poor old lady! Did you ever see anybody so subdued and forlorn? Something has gone wrong with her. She told me that she had had a most dreadful scene with Langly and that she had not been well since.

"I'm afraid that sounds like gossip, but I wanted you to know. Is it gossip for me to tell you so much? I tell you about everything. If it's gossip, make me stop.

---

"And now—when are you coming to see me? I am still at Molly's, you know. My house is being cleaned and sweetened and papered and chintzed and made livable and lovable.

"When?—please.

"Your friend and comrade,
Strelsa."

Quarren telegraphed:

"I'll come the moment I can. Look for me any day this week. Letter follows."

Then he wrote her a long letter, and was still at it when Jessie Vining went to lunch and when Dankmere got onto his little legs and strolled out, also. There was no need to arouse anybody's suspicions by hurrying, so Dankmere waited until he turned the corner before his little legs began to trot. Miss Vining would be at her usual table, anyway—and probably as calmly surprised to see him as she always was. For the repeated accident of their encountering at the same restaurant seemed to furnish an endless source of astonishment to them both. Apparently Jessie Vining could never understand it, and to him it appeared to be a coincidence utterly unfathomable.

Meanwhile Quarren had mailed his letter to Strelsa and had returned to his workshop in the basement where several canvases awaited his attention.

And it was while he was particularly busy that the front door-bell rang and he had to go up and open.

At first he did not recognise the figure standing on the steps in the glare of the sun; then, surprised, he held out his rather grimy hand with that instinct of kindness toward anything that seemed to need it; and the thin pallid hand of Ledwith fell limply into his, contracting nervously the next second.

"Come in," said Quarren, pleasantly. "It's very nice of you to think of me, Ledwith."

The man's hollow eyes avoided his and roamed restlessly about the gallery, looking at picture after picture and scarcely seeing them. Inside his loose summer clothing his thin, nervous frame was shifting continually even while he stood gazing almost vacantly at the walls of the gallery.

For a little while Quarren endeavoured to interest him in the canvases, meaning only charity to a man who had clearly lost his grip on things; then, afraid of bewildering and distressing a mind so nearly extinct, the young fellow remained silent, merely accompanying Ledwith as he moved purposelessly hither and thither or halted capriciously, staring into space and twitching his scarred fingers.

"You're busy, I suppose," he said.

"Yes, I am," said Quarren, frankly. "But that needn't make any difference if you'd care to come to the basement and talk to me while I'm at work."

Ledwith made no reply for a moment, then, abruptly:

"You're always kind to me, Quarren."

"Get over that idea," laughed the younger man. "Strange as it may seem my natural inclination is to like people. Come on downstairs."

In the littered disorder of the basement he found a chair for his visitor, then, without further excuse, went smilingly about his work, explaining it as it progressed:

"Here's an old picture by some Italian gink—impossible to tell by whom it was painted, but not difficult to assign it to a certain date and school.... See what I'm doing, Ledwith?

"That's what we call 'rabbit glue' because it's made out of rabbits' bones—or that's the belief, anyway. It's gilder's glue.

"Now I dissolve this much of it in hot water—then I glue over the face of the picture three layers of tissue-paper, one on top of the other—so!

"Now here is a new chassis or stretcher over which I have stretched a new linen canvas. Yesterday I sponged it as a tailor sponges cloth; and now it's dry and tight.

"Now I'm going to reline this battered old Italian canvas. It's already been relined—perhaps a hundred years ago. So first I take off the old relining canvas—with hot water—this way—cleaning off all the old paste or glue from it with alcohol....

"Now here's a pot of paste in which there is also glue and whitening; and I spread it over the back of this old painting, and then, very gingerly, glue it over the new linen canvas on the stretcher.

"Now I smooth it with this polished wooden block, and then—just watch me do laundry work!"

He picked up a flat-iron which was moderately warm, reversed the relined picture on a marble slab, and began to iron it out with the skill and precaution of an expert laundress doing frills.

Ledwith looked on with a sort of tremulously fixed interest.

"In three days," said Quarren, laying the plastered picture away, "I'll soak off that tissue paper with warm water. I have to keep it on, you see, so that no flakes of paint shall escape from the painting and no air get in to blister the surface."

He picked up another picture and displayed it:

"Here's a picture that I believe to be a study by Greuze. You see I have already relined it and it's fixed on its new canvas and stretcher and is thoroughly dry and ready for cleaning. And this is how I begin."

He took a fine sponge, soaked it in a weak solution of alcohol, and very gingerly washed the blackened and dirty canvas. Then he dried it. Then he gave it a coat of varnish.

"Looks foolish to varnish over a filthy and discoloured picture like this, doesn't it, Ledwith? But I'll tell you why. When that varnish dries hard I shall place my hand on the face of that canvas and begin very cautiously but steadily to rub the varnished surface with my fingers and thumb. And do you know what will happen? The new varnish has partly united with the old yellow and opaque coating of varnish and dust, and it all will turn to a fine gray powder under the friction and will come away leaving the old paint underneath almost as fresh—very often quite as fresh and delicate as when the picture was first painted.

"Sometimes I have to use three or more coats of new varnish before I can remove the old without endangering the delicate glaze underneath. But sooner or later I get it clean.

"Then I dig out any old patches or restorations and fill in with a composition of putty, white lead, and a drier, and smooth this with a cork. Then when it is sunned for an hour a day for three weeks or more—or less, sometimes—I'm ready to grind my pure colours, mix them, set my palette, and do as honest a piece of restoring as a study of that particular master's methods permits. And that, Ledwith, is only a little part of my fascinating profession.

"Sometimes I lift the entire skin of paint from a canvas—picking out the ancient threads from the rotten texture—and transfer it to a new canvas or panel. Sometimes I cross-saw a panel, then chisel to the plaster that lies beneath the painting, and so transfer it to a new and sound support. Sometimes—" he laughed—"but there are a hundred delicate and interesting surgical operations which I attempt—a thousand exciting problems to solve—experiments without end that tempt me, innovations that allure me——"

He laughed again:

"You ought to take up some fad and make a business and even an art out of it!"

"I?" said Ledwith, dully.

"Why not? Man, you're young yet, if—if——"

"Yes, I know, Quarren.... But my mind is too old—very old and very infirm—dying in me of age—the age that comes through those centuries of pain that men sometimes live through in a few months."

Quarren looked at him hopelessly.

"Yet," he said, "if only a man wills it, the world is new again."

"But—if the will fails?"

"I don't know, Ledwith."

"I do." He drew up his cuff a little way, his dead eyes resting on Quarren, then, in silence, he drew the sleeve over the scars.

"Even that can be cured," said the younger man.

"If there is a will to cure it, perhaps."

"Even a desire is enough."

"I have not that desire. Why cure it?"

"Because, Ledwith, you haven't gone your limit yet. There's more of life; and you're cheating yourself out of it."

"Yes, perhaps. But what kind of life?" he asked, staring vaguely out into the sunshine of the backyard. "Life in hell has no attractions for me."

"We make our own hells."

"I didn't make mine. They dug the pit and I fell into it—Hell's own pit, Quarren——"

"You are wrong! You fell into a pit which hurt so much that you supposed it was the pit of hell. And, taking it for granted, you burrowed deeper in blind fury, until it became a real hell. But you dug it. There is no hell that a man does not dig for himself!"

In Ledwith's dull eyes a smouldering spark seemed to flash, go out, then glimmer palely.

"Quarren," he said, "I am not going to live in hell alone. I'm going there, shortly, but not alone."

Something new and sinister in his eyes arrested the other's attention. He considered the man for a few moments, then, coolly:

"I wouldn't, Ledwith."

"Why not?"

"He isn't worth it—even as company in hell."

"Do you think I'm going to let him live on?"

"Do you care to sink to his level?"

"Sink! Can I sink any lower than I am?"

Quarren shrugged:

"Easily, if you commit murder."

"That isn't murder——"

But Quarren cut him short continuing:

"Sink lower, you ask? What have you done, anyway—except to commit this crime against yourself?"—touching him on the wrist. "I'm not aware of any other crime committed by you, Ledwith. You're clean as you stand—except for this damnable insult and injury you offer yourself! Can't you reason? A bullet-stung animal sometimes turns and bites itself. Is that why you are doing it?—to arouse the amusement and contempt of your hunter?"

"Quarren! By God you shall not say that to me——"

"Why not? Have you ever considered what that man must think of you to see you turn and tear at the body he has crippled?"

Ledwith's sunken eyes blazed; he straightened himself, took one menacing step forward; and Quarren laid a light, steady hand on his shoulder.

"Listen to me," he said; "has it never occurred to you that you could deal him no deeper blow than to let him see a man stand up to him, face to face, where a creature lay writhing before, biting into its own vitals?"

He smiled into the fixed eyes of the almost mindless man:

"If you say the word I'll stand by you, Ledwith. If all you want to do is to punish him, murder isn't the way. What does a dead man care? Cut your own throat and the crime might haunt him—and might not. But kill!—Nonsense. It's all over then—except for the murderer."

He slid his hand quietly to Ledwith's arm, patted it.

"To punish him you need a doctor.... It's only a week under the new treatment. You know that, don't you? After that a few months to get back nerve and muscle and common sense."

"And then?" motioned Ledwith with dry lips.

"Then? Oh, anything that you fancy. It's according to a man's personal taste. You can take him by the neck and beat him up in public if you like—or knock him down in the club as often as he gets up. It all depends, Ledwith. Some of us maintain self-respect without violence; some of us seem to require it. It's up to you."

"Yes."

Quarren said carelessly: "If I were you, I think that I'd face the world as soon as I was physically and mentally well enough—the real world I mean, Ledwith—either here or abroad, just as I felt about it.

"A man can get over anything except the stigma of dishonesty. And—personally I think he ought to have another chance even after that. But men's ideas differ. As for you, what you become and show that you are, will go ultimately with the world. Beat him up if you like; but, personally, I never even wished to kick a cur. Some men kick 'em to their satisfaction; it's a matter of taste I tell you. Besides——"

He stopped short; and presently Ledwith looked up.

"Shall I say it?"

"Yes. You are kind to me, always."

"Then—Ledwith, I don't know exactly how matters stand. I can only try to put myself in your present place and imagine what I ought to do, having arrived where you have landed.... And, do you know, if I were you, and if I listened to my better self, I don't think that I'd lay a finger on Langly Sprowl."

"Why?"

"For the sake of the woman who betrayed me—and who is now betrayed in turn by the man who betrayed us both."

Ledwith said through his set teeth: "Do you think I care for her? If I nearly kill him, do you imagine I care what the public will say about her?"

"You are generous enough to care, Ledwith."

"I am not!" he said, hoarsely. "I don't care a damn!"

"Then why do you care whether or not he keeps his word to her and shares with her a coat of social whitewash?"

"I—she is only a little fool—alone to face the world now——"

"You're quite right, Ledwith. She ought to have another chance. First offenders are given it by law.... But even if that chance lay in his marrying her, could you better it by killing him if he won't do it? Or by battering him with a dog-whip?

"It isn't really much of a chance, considering it on a higher level than the social viewpoint. How much real rehabilitation is there for a woman who marries such a man?"

He smiled: "Because," he continued, "my viewpoint has changed. Things that once seemed important to me seem so no longer. To live cleanly and do your best in the real world is an aspiration more attractive to me than social absolution."

Ledwith remained silent for a long while, then muttered something indistinctly.

"Wait a moment," said Quarren, throwing aside his painter's blouse and pulling on his coat. "I'll ring up a taxi in a second!... You mean it, Ledwith?"

The man looked at him vacantly, then nodded.

"You're on!" said Quarren, briskly unhooking the telephone.

While they were waiting Ledwith laid a shaking hand on Quarren's sleeve and clung to it. He was trembling like a leaf when they entered the cab, whimpering when they left it in front of a wide brown-stone building composed of several old-time private residences thrown together.

"Stand by me, Quarren," he whispered brokenly—"you won't go away, will you? You wouldn't leave me to face this all—all alone. You've been kind to me. I—I can do it—I can try to do it just at this moment—if you'll stay close to me—if you'll let me keep hold of you——"

"Sure thing!" said Quarren cheerfully. "I'll stay as long as you like. Don't worry about your clothes; I'll send for plenty of linen and things for us both. You're all right, Ledwith—you've got the nerve. I——"

The door opened to his ring; a pleasant-faced nurse in white ushered them in.

"Dr. Lydon will see you in a moment," she said, singling out Ledwith at a glance.

Later that afternoon Quarren telephoned to Dankmere that he would not return for a day or two, and gave careful instructions which Dankmere promised to observe to the letter.

Then he sent a telegram to Strelsa:

"Unavoidably detained in town. Hope to be up next week. Am crazy to see your house and its new owner.

R. S. Q."

Dankmere at the other end of the telephone hung up the receiver, looked carefully around him to be certain that Jessie Vining was still in the basement where she had gone to straighten up one or two things for Quarren, then, with a perfectly serious face, he began to dance, softly.

The Earl of Dankmere was light-footed and graceful when paying tribute to Terpsichore; walking-stick balanced in both hands, straw hat on the back of his head, he performed in absolute silence to the rhythm of the tune running through his head, backward, forward, sideways, airy as a ballet-maiden, then off he went into the back room with a refined kick or two at the ceiling.

And there, Jessie Vining, entering the front room unexpectedly, discovered the peer executing his art before the mirror, apparently enamoured of his own grace and agility.

When he caught a glimpse of her in the mirror he stopped very suddenly and came back to find her at her desk, laughing.

For a moment he remained red and disconcerted, but the memory of the fact that he and Miss Vining were to occupy the galleries all alone—exclusive of intrusive customers—for a day or more, assuaged a slight chagrin.

"At any rate," he said, "it is just as well that you should know me as I am, Miss Vining—with all my faults and frivolous imperfections, isn't it?"

"Why?" asked Miss Vining.

"Why—what?" repeated the Earl, confused.

"Why should I know all your imperfections?"

He thought hard for a moment, but seemed to discover no valid reason.

"You ask such odd questions," he protested. "Now where the deuce do you suppose Quarren has gone? I'll bet he's cut the traces and gone up to see those people at Witch-Hollow."

"Perhaps," she said, making a few erasures in her type-written folio and rewriting the blank spaces. Then she glanced over the top of the machine at his lordship, who, as it happened, was gazing at her with such peculiar intensity that it took him an appreciable moment to rouse himself and take his eyes elsewhere.

"When do you take your vacation?" he asked, carelessly.

"I am not going to take one."

"Oh, but you ought! You'll go stale, fade, droop—er—and all that, you know!"

"It is very kind of you to feel interested," she said, smiling, "but I don't expect to droop—er—and all that, you know."

He laughed, after a moment, and so did she—a sweet, fearless, little laugh most complimentary to his lordship if he only knew it—a pretty, frank tribute to what had become a friendship—an accord born of confidence on her part, and of several other things on the part of Lord Dankmere.

It had been of slow growth at first—imperceptibly their relations had grown from a footing of distant civility to a companionship almost cordial—but not quite; for she was still shy with him at times, and he with her; and she had her moods of unresponsive reserve, and he was moody, too, at intervals.

"You don't like me to make fun of you, do you?" she asked.

"Don't I laugh as though I like it?"

She knitted her pretty brows: "I don't quite know. You see you're a British peer—which is really a very wonderful thing——"

"Oh, come," he said: "it really is rather a wonderful thing, but you don't believe it."

"Yes, I do. I stand in awe of you. When you come into the room I seem to hear trumpets sounding in the far distance——"

"My boots squeak——"

"Nonsense! I do hear a sort of a fairy fanfare playing 'Hail to the Belted Earl!'"

"I wear braces——"

"How common of you to distort my meaning! I don't care, you may do as you like—dance break-downs and hammer the piano, but to me you will ever remain a British peer—poor but noble——"

"Wait until we hear from that Van Dyck! You can't call me poor then!"

She laughed, then, looking at him earnestly, involuntarily clasped her hands.

"Isn't it perfectly wonderful," she breathed with a happy, satisfied sigh.

"Are you really very happy about it, Miss Vining?"

"I? Why shouldn't I be!" she said indignantly. "I'm so proud that our gallery has such a picture. I'm so proud of Mr. Quarren for discovering it—and—" she laughed—"I'm proud of you for possessing it. You see I am very impartial; I'm proud of the gallery, of everybody connected with it including myself. Shouldn't I be?"

"We are three very perfect people," he said gravely.

"Do you know that we really are? Mr. Quarren is wonderful, and you are—agreeable, and as for me, why when I rise in the morning and look into the glass I say to myself, 'Who is that rather clever-looking girl who smiles at me every morning in such friendly fashion?' And, would you believe it!—she turns out to be Jessie Vining every time!"

She was in a gay mood; she rattled away at her machine, glancing over it mischievously at him from time to time. He, having nothing to do except to look at her, did so as often as he dared.

And so they kept the light conversational shuttle-cock flying through the sunny afternoon until it drew near to tea-time. Jessie said very seriously:

"No Englishman can exist without tea. Tea is as essential to him as it is to British fiction. A microscopic examination of any novel made by a British subject will show traces of tea-leaves and curates although, as the text-books on chemistry have it, otherwise the substance of the work may be colourless, tasteless, odourless, and gaseous to the verge of the fourth dimension——"

"If you don't cease making game of things British and sacred," he threatened, "I'll try to stop you in a way that will astonish you."

"What will you try to do?" she asked, much interested.

He looked her steadily in the eyes:

"I'll try to turn you into a British subject. One can't slam one's own country."

"How could you turn me into such an object, Lord Dankmere?"

"There's only one way."

Innocent for a few moments of his meaning she smilingly and derisively defied him. Then, of a sudden, startled into immobility, the smile froze on her lips.

At the swift change in her expression his own features were slowly and not unbecomingly suffused.

Then, incredulous, and a little nervous, she rose to prepare the tea; and he sprang up to bring the folding table.

The ceremony passed almost in silence; neither he nor she made the effort to return to the lighter, gayer vein. When they spoke at all it was on some matter connected with business; and her voice seemed to him listless, almost tired.

Which was natural enough, for the heat had been trying, and, in spite of the open windows, no breath of coolness stirred the curtains.

So the last minutes of the afternoon passed but the sunshine still reddened the cornices of the houses across the street when she rose to put away the tea-things.

A little later she pinned on her hat and moved toward the front door with a friendly nod to him in silent adieu.

"Will you let me walk home with you?" he said.

"I—think—not, this evening."

"Were you going anywhere?"

She paused, her gloved hand on the knob, and he came up to her, slowly.

"Were you?" he repeated.

"No."

"Then—don't you care to let me walk with you?"

She seemed to be thinking; her head was a trifle lowered.

He said: "Before you go there is something I wanted to tell you"—she made an involuntary movement and the door opened and hung ajar letting in the lively music of a street-organ. Then he leaned over and quietly closed the door.

"I'm afraid," he said, "that I'm taking an unwarrantable liberty by interfering in your affairs without consulting you."

She looked up at him, surprised.

"It happened yesterday about this hour," he said.

"What happened?"

"Do you remember that you went home about three o'clock instead of waiting until this hour as usual?"

"Yes."

"Well, this is what occurred. I left the gallery at this same hour. Ahead of me descending the steps was a young girl who had just delivered a business letter to Mr. Quarren. As she set foot on the pavement a footman attached to an automobile drawn up across the street touched his cap to her and said: 'Beg pardon, Miss Vining, I am Mr. Sprowl's man. Mr. Sprowl would like to see you at the CafÉ Cammargue. The car is waiting.'"

Miss Vining's colour faded; she stared at Dankmere with widening eyes, and he dropped his hands into his coat-pockets and returned her gaze.

"I don't understand you," she said in a low voice.

"Neither did the young girl addressed by the footman. Neither did I. But I was interested. So I said to the footman: 'Bring around your car. I shall have to explain about Miss Vining to Mr. Sprowl.'"

"What!" she said breathlessly.

"That's where I interfered, Miss Vining. And the footman looked doubtful, too, but he signalled the chauffeur.... And so I went to the CafÉ Cammargue——"

He hesitated, looking at her white and distressed face, then continued coolly:

"Sprowl seemed surprised to see me. He was waiting in a private room.... He's looking rather badly these days.... We talked a few minutes——"

Pale, angry, every sense of modesty and reserve outraged, the girl faced him, small head erect:

"You went there to—to discuss me with that man!"

He was silent. She turned suddenly and tried to open the door, but he held it closed.

"I did it because I cared for you enough to do it," he said. "Don't you understand? Don't you suppose I know that kind of man?"

"It—it was not your business—" she faltered, twisting blindly at the door-knob. "Let me go—please——"

"I made it my business.... And that man understood that I was making it my business. And he won't attempt to annoy you again.... Can you forgive me?"

She turned on him excitedly, her eyes flashing with tears, but the impetuous words of protest died on her lips as her eyes encountered his.

"It was because I love you," he said. And, as he spoke, there was about the man a quiet dignity and distinction that silenced her—something of which she may have had vague glimpses at wide intervals in their acquaintances—something which at times she suspected might lie latent in unknown corners of his character. Now it suddenly confronted her; and she recognised it and stood before him without a word to say.

It mended matters a little when he smiled, and the familiar friend reappeared beside her; but she still felt strange and shy; and wondering, half fearfully, she let him lift her gloved hands and stand, holding them, looking into her eyes.

"You know what I am," he said. "I have nothing to say about myself. But I love you very dearly.... I loved before, once, and married. And she died.... After that I didn't behave very well—until I knew you.... It is really in me to be a decent husband—if you can care for me.... And I don't think we're likely to starve——"

"I—it isn't that," she said, flushing scarlet.

"What?"

"What you have ... I could only care for—what you are."

"Can you do that?"

But her calm had vanished, and, head bent and averted, she was attempting to withdraw her hands—and might have freed herself entirely if it had not been for his arm around her.

This new and disconcerting phase of the case brought her so suddenly face to face with him that it frightened her; and he let her go, and followed her back to the empty gallery where she sank down at her desk, resting her arms on the covered type-machine, and buried her quivering face in them.

It was excusable. Such things don't usually happen to typewriters and stenographers although they have happened to barmaids.

When he had been talking eloquently and otherwise for a long time Jessie Vining lifted her pale, tear-stained face from her arms; and his lordship dropped rather gracefully on his knees beside her, and she looked down at him very solemnly and wistfully.

It was shockingly late when they closed the gallery that evening. And their mode of homeward progress was stranger still, for instead of a tram or of the taxi which Lord Dankmere occasionally prevailed upon her to accept, they drifted homeward on a pink cloud through the light-shot streets of Ascalon.