Miss Belmont, nine-and-twenty, fresh and fair, ignorant-clever (after the known feminine fashion), rusÉe to the finger-tips, with a dragon reputation for virtue and a resolute will to keep it, was dangerous to the peace of mind of masculine twenty-one. She made Paul her bondslave. She intoxicated him with a touch, and sobered him with a face of sudden marble. She played the matron and the sister with him, and drove him mad between whiles.

Here is one scene out of hundreds, all acted to the Solitary’s mind as if the past were back again.

Summer was dying. The woods were yet lusty but growing sombre. Level beams of parting sunlight flashing through the trees like white-hot wire. A Sunday picnic for the company, magnificently provided by Darco, had brought Paul and Miss Belmont together. The lady had led the way into this solitude with so much tact and skill that Paul took pride in his own generalship. They sat on a rustic bench together, and immediately before them was an opening in the trees. At a very little distance the ground fell suddenly away, and in the valley wound a shining river with fold on fold of wooded lands beyond.

Paul was quivering to be nearer to her, but he had no courage to move. He looked at her, and her eyes seemed to be dreaming on the distant hills. He stole a timid hand towards her very slowly. She turned towards him with a soft smile, took the hand in her own, and held it, nestling her shoulders into the rustic woodwork and sending her dreamy gaze back to the hills again. Once or twice, as if unconsciously, she lifted the hand slightly and laid it down again caressingly.

Paul looked at her adoringly. It was like being in heaven, with a touch of vertigo.

‘Claudia,’ said Paul, in a whisper.

‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Don’t speak louder than that. It suits the place to whisper. What are you thinking about?’

‘You,’ said Paul ‘I think of nothing else.’

‘You silly boy,’ said Miss Belmont. ‘Why should you think about me?’

‘I can’t help it I wake up to think of you. I think of you all day. I go to sleep thinking of you. I dream about you in the night-time.’

‘Oh, you silly Paul!’ Her lips smiled, but her eyes dreamed unchangingly on the landscape. ‘Why do you think of me?’

‘Because I love you,’ said Paul.

The hand which held his own seemed to encourage him to draw nearer, and yet the sign, if there were any sign at all, was so faint that he was afraid to obey it She turned her head slowly to look at him. Her round soft chin stirred the lace at her shoulder and was half hidden by it, and she sat placidly dreaming at his ardent eyes just as she had dreamed at the hills.

‘I think you do,’ she said sweetly; ‘but that is all nonsense. You are only a boy, and I am a middle-aged woman.’

‘Middle-aged!’ said Paul, with a fiery two-syllabled laugh of scorn at the idea.

‘A woman is middle-aged at five-and-twenty. Didn’t you know that, Paul? She took his hand within her own, and played with it ‘What a beautiful hand!’ she said. ‘But you don’t take care of it. You treat it carelessly. Now, I spend half an hour on my hands every day. Let me show you the difference,’ and she began to draw off her glove.

‘Let me,’ said Paul, and she surrendered the hand and he peeled the glove from it delicately, and held the white wonder in his own palm. He stooped and kissed it in an idiot rapture. ‘How happy you make me!’ he said, looking up with tears in his eyes. ‘How I love you!’

She stroked his cheek and his hair with the soft ungloved hand, smiling softly at him. He prisoned the hand again, and kissed it again.

‘You are a silly boy,’ she said; ‘a dear, nice, affectionate, silly boy!’ She released her hand and caressed his cheek again. ‘If you were older than you are I shouldn’t allow you to take these liberties, you know.’ Then she bent forward sideways a little, and allowed her hand to stray beyond his shoulder. ‘What makes you fancy that you love an old woman like me, Paul?

‘It’s no fancy,’ he said; ‘it’s life or death with me, Claudia.’

‘Poor boy,’ said Miss Belmont caressingly, and so moved nearer to him and drew his head to her shoulder. ‘Am I kind to you, Paul?’

‘You are an angel,’ said Paul

‘Isn’t it rather cruel to be kind to you, Paul?’

He buried his hot face in the soft drapery of her shoulder, and gave a murmured ‘No; oh, no!’

‘You think you love me, but it’s only a boy’s fancy, Paul It will pass away. I suppose it’s happy whilst it lasts, when I am kind to you. But it can’t last long. I shall be sorry to part, for I like you very much.’

‘We mustn’t part,’ said Paul huskily. ‘Claudia, if you left me I should break my heart.’

‘No, no,’ she answered, drawing him a little nearer. ‘Hearts are not so easily broken.’

‘Easily!’ he said. ‘Do you think it’s easy, Claudia, to live as I do? I’m in heaven now, and I’d give my life to be with you for an hour like this. But when I’m away from you, when I see you in that beast Bannister’s arms, and remember the only time I ever kissed you—oh, why were you so kind then, and why are you so cold and cruel now?’

‘Cold? Cruel?’ She stroked his flushed cheek with her soft fingers. ‘I let you kiss me because I thought what a dear, nice handsome boy you were; but I should never have done it if I had thought that you would be so silly after it. If you were not so very silly I should like to kiss you, because it’s a woman’s way to kiss the people that she’s really fond of. But you are so foolish, Paul dear, that I dare not.’

‘I won’t be foolish,’ said Paul, lifting his head, and looking at her.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘will you give me your word of honour to stay here for five minutes after I am gone if I give you just one kiss, and not to beg me for another, and not to try to get into the same carriage with me going home?’

‘Don’t ask me that,’ he besought her.

‘Ah, Paul,’ she said tenderly, ‘don’t you think for a moment that I am a woman, and that this foolish world would talk about me, even with you, if I gave it only the shadow of a chance? Come; I must go now. Promise.’

‘The kiss,’ said Paul.

‘The promise,’ said Miss Belmont.

‘Yes, I promise. If you asked me to leap over the rocks in front of us I’d do it.’

‘Give me your hands, then. You won’t try to keep me?’

‘No, no, no.’

She kissed him warmly and lingeringly on the lips, and darted suddenly away. Paul rose to his feet and held out his arms towards her.

‘Your promise,’ she said. ‘Your word of honour as a gentleman.’ He dropped his hands. ‘You shall be paid for that,’ she whispered, with a face glowing like his own, and she returned to him and kissed him once more, holding his hands in hers. Then she left him swiftly and ran down the pathway, turning at the bend to waft a last kiss to him, and so was gone.

Paul mooned about in a miserable, aching ecstasy for a quarter of an hour or so, and then, finding by his watch that the supper-hour appointed by Darco was near at hand, he sauntered to the hotel. Miss Belmont was there before him, radiant and serene, and looking as unkissable as Diana. Paul would have approached her, but a mere motion of her fine eyebrows warned him off. He ate little, but he drank a good deal of wine, and was gay and moody by turns as he was driven home. And far into the night in his own room he walked up and down and made verses and raved them in whispers to himself, because Darco slept in the next apartment, and was not at all the man to be wisely awakened by the voice of Love’s young dream. He drew his curtains apart and opened his window on the scented night, and took the moon and stars into his confidence, and the kisses bit softly down into his heart like fire.

Other scenes there were in which the cunning damsel betrayed Paul into the belief that he was an ennobling and lofty influence in her life. She was rigid in her choice of topics for conversation, but she ornamented her speech now and then with an almost masculine embroidery, and once she caught Paul looking at her with a shocked and wounded air.

‘I caught your look,’ she said, as soon as she could speak to him alone. ‘I know what it meant, and, oh! you made me hate myself. There isn’t any real harm in it—I mean, it isn’t wicked—but it isn’t refined or womanly, and I’ll ‘never do it again—never, never, never, for my dear little Paul’s sake. And Paul shall have a kiss for teaching Claudia a lesson. Naughty Claudia!’

And again one day at rehearsal Miss Belmont ordered a brandy-and-soda, and Paul’s face clouded; and Claudia was penitent, and Paul got more kisses for helping naughty Claudia to forget these man-like habits.

The boy’s infatuation chimed in with a growing liking for the stage, and he volunteered to work there with so much ardour that Darco was newly pleased with him, and gave him ample opportunity. So he saw more and more of Claudia, and made some progress in his new craft, and the foolish game of love went on, until it brought about a crisis.

It was three o’clock on Friday afternoon, and Paul was at the theatre, seated in the manager’s room, counting and putting into envelopes the weekly salaries of the company. He had just consigned the two crispest and cleanest of his small stock of five-pound notes and the brightest half-sovereign to an envelope bearing the name of Miss Claudia Belmont, when the lady herself tapped at the door and entered.

‘I wanted to see you alone, Paul dear,’ she said, ‘and so I came over early. I have a piece of news for you. It is very sad news for me, but I am afraid you will not think it so.’

‘If it grieves you it grieves me,’ said Paul; ‘you can’t have a trouble that I don’t share.’

‘I am going away,’ she said, walking to the window and looking out on a shabby back-yard which was full of rotting scenery and old stage-lumber of all sorts.

‘Going away?’ Paul repeated.

He was dazed and numbed, as if he had received a blow.

‘Yes,’ said Claudia. ‘Mr. Darco and I have never hit it off very well together, and now I am going. I have a very good offer for London, and I leave at the end of next week.’

‘But I can put things right with Mr. Darco,’ said Paul; ‘I know I can.’

‘No,’ she said, with a seeming gentle sadness; ‘it’s quite impossible. My position here has grown intolerable, and, besides that, everything is arranged; I have signed for London this afternoon.’

Paul said nothing for the time, for the intelligence crushed him.

‘I was afraid that you would be hurt,’ she added, after a pause. ‘I am glad to see that you can take it more easily than I can.’

‘Claudia!’ said Paul miserably, and sat staring before him with a white face.

‘I did almost hope,’ she said, ‘that you would have cared a little.’

‘Can’t you see?’ he answered—’ oh, can’t you see?’

‘I don’t want play-acting, Paul,’ said Claudia, searching for her handkerchief, ‘After all we have been to each other I expected a little genuine feeling.’

‘Claudia,’ he burst out, ‘you mustn’t go; you mustn’t leave me. I should break my heart without you.’

‘I must go, Paul,’ said Claudia.

‘Then I will go,’ cried Paul; ‘I can’t part from you.’

‘How can you go, silly boy?’ she answered, suffering him to take her hand in his and place his arm about her waist; ‘you have nothing to do in London; you know nobody there. You have excellent prospects here with Darco.’

‘Where you go I go,’ said the young idiot stanchly. ‘I could not live apart from you. You’re the world to me, Claudia.’

He meant it, every word, and in his contradictory heat and flurry and despair he felt as if there were no words at his call which were strong enough to express him.

‘Oh,’ said Claudia, ‘it would be sweet to think you cared so much if I could only believe you.’

‘Believe me? cried Paul. ‘Oh, Claudia!’

And then he choked, and could say no more.

But Claudia, whose self-possession was less disturbed than his, heard a footstep on the staircase, and whispered an eager warning to him just in time. He shot back into his seat, and feigned to be busy with his accounts and his orderly little pile of money. Miss Belmont stooped at the table, and when Mr. Berry entered he found her initialling the pay-sheet. She looked up with a sweet smile, nodded a greeting to him, inspected the contents of the envelope, transferred them to her purse, and moved to the door; then she turned.

‘Oh, Mr. Armstrong, would you mind taking the trouble to run down to my lodgings when you have got through with this? I have something very particular to ask you, if you don’t mind. You know where I’m staying? Thank you so much. Good-afternoon.’

She was gone, and everything was gone. Paul made a mechanical effort to get through his business.

‘I say, young Armstrong,’ cried Mr. Berry, ‘you’re woolgathering; you’ve given me an extra fiver, or has old Darco found out what I’m worth at last?’

‘My mistake,’ said Paul; ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve got a beastly headache; I can’t think or see.’

‘Hair of the dog?’ suggested Mr. Berry. ‘Hi! Chips, old sonnie’—he was bawling down the staircase—’ catch ‘Oh, butter-fingers! There it is, just behind you. Half-a-crown. Just nip across, will you? Two Scotches and a split. Take a pull at your own tap while you’re there, and look slippy. Armstrong, dear boy, you’re looking very chalky. Don’t overdo it, dear boy, whatever you do. In my youth I never did apply hot and rebellious liquors to the blood. I take to ‘em very kindly now, but I never began till thirty. A man’s a seasoned cask at thirty.’

Paul let him talk, and was glad enough not to be further noticed. He sat with his head in his hands and stared at the table, and tried to realize what life would be without Claudia. It looked wholly vacant and intolerable.

‘Here you are,’ said Mr. Berry, releasing the soda-water with a pop, and foaming the contents of the bottle into the glasses.

Paul groaned and drank, and by-and-by felt a little better. He would see Claudia, would decide on some scheme of action, however desperate, which would prevent him from wholly losing sight of her. He would release himself from his engagement with Darco. That made him feel like a hound, for who had been so good to him as Darco? Who had taken him out of hunger and trouble but Darco? He recalled himself characterless, despairing; he contrasted his old lot with the present. The change was all of Darco’s working, and he had grown to love the man, and the man on his side had given proofs enough of liking. It looked like a black ingratitude to leave him. It was what it looked like—neither more nor less. But, then, Claudia, Claudia, Claudia! How could he live without Claudia?

He looked at things all round. He had a fixed position, which was so excellent that he could not hope to mend it for years to come if he left it now. He had a true friend whose friendship he might lose if he left him now. He had perhaps an open avenue to fame, and it would close if he retired from it, and might never open any more. All these things he counted clearly, and reckoned the world well lost for Claudia.

The afternoon work was over, the pay-sheet initialled from top to bottom, the accounts made up and balanced, and the change and papers locked up in Darco’s cash-box. He was free to go to Claudia.

A fly carried him in ten minutes to her door, and she herself admitted him.

‘Come in, Paul,’ she said ‘I have been thinking, and I want to speak to you very, very seriously.’ She led him into her sitting-room. ‘Miss Pounceby is out for the day, so that we shall have time to talk together.’ Miss Pounceby was the ingÉnue, and she and Claudia lived together. ‘Sit down, dear, and let me see if I can’t bring you to reason.’

‘You can’t persuade me to lose you, Claudia,’ said Paul gloomily. ‘It isn’t to be done; it isn’t to be thought about.’

‘Silly boy!’ said Claudia, seating herself beside him, and taking his hand in both of hers, ‘you know I love you like a sister.’

‘I don’t want a sister’s love,’ said Paul. ‘I want you to marry me.’

‘Why, Paul,’ she answered, ‘the world would laugh at me. You are only just one-and-twenty; I am four years older. That is ages, you know, and it is ages on the wrong side.’

‘Why should we care about the world?’ Paul asked. ‘What has the world to do with us so long as we can be happy?’

‘But I don’t love you in that way, Paul,’ said Claudia. She leaned forward and sideways, and looked gravely in his eyes. ‘I love you very much, dear Paul—very, very much indeed—and I shall be grieved to lose you.’

‘I shan’t lose you,’ said Paul. ‘I have made my mind up.’

‘You dear boy!’ she said, and kissed him; but when he would have embraced her she drew back with a warning forefinger upraised. ‘You must not presume upon my kindness, Paul; but I know that I can trust you. I should not have asked you to meet me here if I had not been sure of that.’

‘Claudia,’ cried Paul, rising and pacing about the room, ‘have some pity. I am not a child; I am a man. I can’t bear this. You must be everything or you must be nothing.’

‘Nothing, Paul?’ said Claudia, with grave, accusing eyes and wounded face and voice. ‘Nothing?’

It was exquisite practice, and she was a hundred times a better actress off the boards than on. Paul could appreciate her art at its full value in later years, but just now he found earnestness enough for two, and would have broken his heart outright if he had known how she was playing with him.

‘Nothing or all,’ he said. ‘You treat me like a child, Claudia, but I am a man, if I am only a little over one-and-twenty. I have a man’s heart and a man’s blood in my veins. No. Don’t come near me yet; I want to be my own master.’

‘Oh, Paul, dear!’ said Claudia; ‘you mustn’t talk so I never thought you felt so deeply. How could I? Must it all be over, Paul? Are they all gone, dear—all the happy, peaceful, tranquil hours? Can’t I give my little brother Paul a simple kiss without making such a tempest?’

‘I have had no peaceful, tranquil hours,’ cried Paul. ‘Oh, Claudia! Claudia!’

‘Kiss and be friends, Paul,’ said Claudia, and Paul was lured back to his absurd paradise, and fed on kisses and caresses which were sometimes suffered to reach the edge of ardour, and then skilfully chilled.

If feminine nine-and-twenty thinks it worth while to befool masculine one-and-twenty, and knows her business as well as Claudia knew it, the task is fairly easy. Claudia would not hear of Paul throwing away his prospects for so mad a purpose as to follow her to London. She covered her pretty ears with her ringed fingers when he talked of it, and positively refused to listen. But he must be rewarded for his devotion, too, and Claudia wished with all her heart that she could love Paul as he loved her. But it would be wicked to marry without a proper feeling for a husband, and Paul was her brother, her dear, dear younger brother, and to talk of marriage at their ages was such a folly. Wouldn’t Paul always be her brother? And she laid her soft warm cheek against his and kissed his hand. What more could he ask for, silly boy? Wasn’t that happiness enough for him if he really loved her? If he would be good, and promise never, never, never to be foolish again, and frighten Claudia with his anger—why should he want to frighten his poor Claudia?—they might always love each other, and be, oh, so happy!

The programme thus presented was actually admitted at last to be reasonable—for the time being—and Paul was sent away with the tenderest farewells and a profound belief—for the time being—that Claudia was an angel.

‘Whatever you do, dear,’ she had said at parting, with her sisterly arms about his neck, ‘you must not dream of following me to London. I could not bear to think that you had imperilled your prospects for my sake.’

‘I care for nothing in the world but you,’ said Paul.

He played honest coin against counters.

‘It is sweet to hear you say so,’ said the sisterly Claudia, and she was so touched by his devotion that she allowed him to kiss her almost as wildly as he wished to do.

An hour or two later Paul was in Darco’s presence. He had a hang-dog look and felt ashamed, but he was resolute.

‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he said, ‘but it has become absolutely necessary that I should go to London.’

‘Oh!’ said Darco, ‘is there anythings the madder? Ven do you want to co and for how lonk?’

‘I must go at the end of next week,’ Paul answered, not daring to look at him, ‘and I must go for good.’

‘I am baying you goot vages,’ said Darco. ‘You vill not get as goot vages. Vot is the madder?’

‘It is no question of wages, sir,’ returned Paul ‘I had not thought of looking for another situation even, though I shall have to do so, of course. But it is absolutely essential that I should be in London. I hope you won’t think that I am acting ungratefully. I feel as if I were, but it will be easy for you to fill my place, and I shall always remember how kind and generous you have been to me.’

‘Now, loog you here,’ said Darco; ‘there is somethings the madder. I can see it in your vace. You dell me vod it is, and I will but it straight for you. I can see that somethings is the madder. I am not a fool. I am Cheorge Dargo. Now dell me.’

‘I can’t explain,’ said Paul. ‘I can only tell you that I have to go to London. I must go.’

‘You vait there a liddle bid,’ returned Darco. ‘I am going to think.’ He rolled away, and Paul hoped he might think to little purpose, but in half an hour he was back again. His eyes snapped, but he was as cold as an iceberg. ‘Ven do you vant to co?’ he asked abruptly.

‘As soon as you can spare me,’ Paul answered.

‘I can sbare you now,’ said Darco. ‘You are a pick-headed younk itiot, ant you can co at once. There is your zalary for next week. Goot-efening to you.’

He went out, banging the door behind him, and Paul was left alone feeling strangely mean and foolish. It seemed that Darco had come to an explanation of his movement, and Paul did not care to think that he had found the real reason for it The real reason was a sacred thing whilst it was hidden away in his own breast; but, held out to the inspection of others, it had a gawky, unfledged sort of look. It lost dignity. The dove that cooed in his bosom was a live bird; but once under Darco’s eyes, and it was a moulted rag—a thing dead and despicable.

He had to face Darco again, and he had little taste for the meeting.

‘I haf found oudt vat you are coing to London for,’ said Darco. ‘You are a tarn fool. I haf never seen such a tarn fool in all my tays ant years—nefer: nefer since I gave up peing a tarn fool myself. You can vork; you haf got prains; you haf cot a gareer in front of you; you are one-ant-dwenty. My Cott! you are one-and-dwenty; ant you haf prains, ant intustry, ant jances, and you juck them all into the gudder for liddle Jarlie Prown.’

‘Who is Jarlie Prown?’ asked Paul.

‘Jarlie Prown is Glautia Pelmond,’ said Darco. ‘She has kebt her initials. C stands for Glautia, just as veil as it stands for Jarlie; and P stands both for Prown and Pelmond. She has ruint as many men as she has does and vingers. It is no pusiness of mine. Co your vays, you silly itiot ‘Id is your dime of life to be an itiot, and it is my dime of life to laugh at you.’

‘I have never heard a man breathe a word till now against Miss Belmont’s virtue,’ cried Paul.

‘Firtue?’ cried Darco, with a snorting laugh; ‘what is firtue? Let me dell you this: Your Miss Glautia Pelmond is a volubtuous ice-woman; ant that is the most tangerous of all the taughters of the horse-leedge. Ant zo, my younk donkey, goot-night ant goot-bye. I am Cheorge Dargo, ant I nefer forgive an incratitude.’

This contemptuous parting wounded Paul to the quick, and the strange statements about Claudia maddened him. In one respect, at least, Darco, in his treatment of women, was chivalry incarnate; he would speak no scandal—no, nor listen to it. Paul tossed and tumbled throughout the night—a prey to shame and passion and cold doubt. Darco, who had so well deserved his gratitude, had accused him of the contrary—the one vice of all others which had seemed most repugnant to his nature. Darco was right, and Paul was bitten by shame. Then his mind flew to Claudia, and he thought how tender she had been that afternoon, how confiding, how warm, yet how delicately reticent in conduct Then he flamed and held his arms out in the darkness, and swore to be constant to that lovely creature, that maddening, dazzling, priceless idol, for ever. Then, like a stinging douche to a man in ardent heat of blood, came Darco’s saying. Darco was a true man, and to think of him as a scandalmonger was mere folly. He had quarrelled with Claudia, to be sure, and there was a loophole out of which a hopeful doubt might pass. And yet to think so was an insult, for Darco was the last man in the world to take a revenge so base. But Darco honestly and mistakenly disliked her. That was another matter. He was a headstrong man, impetuous, prone to leap to conclusions—a very walking heap of favourable and unfavourable prejudice. Thus, neither Claudia nor Darco was dethroned. The headlong, stammering, vivid man had made a mistake—the fat, unwieldy, diamond-hearted creature, all crusted with slag and scoria. Paul could have cried to know that Darco dreamed him ungrateful.

‘Who knows him as I do?’ he thought. ‘People laugh at his boasting, and run away from his blundering thunder; but the man has the heart of an angel.’

He thought of all those underground benefactions in which he himself had acted as almoner—the bank-notes to poverty, the Sandeman’s port and the evaporated turtle-soup to sickness. And the pity of it that such a man should so misjudge his Claudia! ‘Voluptuous ice-woman.’ He could fathom the meaning of the phrase, but the wave it would fain have spouted over his Claudia left her angel raiment dry. Neither one nor the other of the far-parted spumings of the wave touched her. Was that ice when her lips were so tenderly laid on his, and their hearts beat close together? Was that voluptuous when she held him to a brother’s part, and soothed his passions into slumber with quiet talk of sweet and sober things? And yet in Darco’s face, to one who knew him as well as Paul did, there had been a mournful look when he had spoken of the most dangerous of all the daughters of the horse-leech. Out with the thought—out with it ‘trample it down! Poor, dear old Darco had been abused. Claudia was spotless as the snow, soft as the dawn, sweet, sweet and sweeter than the honey or the honeycomb. Thus round the clock of the dark hours ran Paul’s thoughts, with never a definite hour to strike.

He packed his portmanteaux before leaving his room next morning, and even in that simple act he found reproaches. He was carrying away from Darco’s service a far different kit to that he had brought into it. The three or four coarse homemade shirts, and the rough and scanty supply of underclothing, were exchanged for linen and silks and woollen stuffs of the finest. There were trees for his boots; there was a dandy dressing-case; there were many things of the mere existence and use of which he had not known two years ago. They were all mementoes of Darco’s generosity. Surely no man had ever found so open-handed an employer. But, for all these reflections, Paul could not surrender Claudia.

He heard the clatter of the breakfast apparatus, and smelt the odours of coffee and the savoury meats the soul of which Darco loved; but he dared not face the man to whom he felt he had behaved so badly.

‘Are you gomink in to pregfast?’ Darco trumpeted.

Paul entered and took his seat, and swallowed a cup of coffee; but he had no heart to eat.

Darco took his prodigious breakfast in cold gloom, and Paul was as sure of his bitter resentment as of his own useless regret for having wounded him. It was a trying hour for both of them.

‘I am going out now,’ said Darco, ‘ant you will pe gone before I am pack again. Shake hants.’ You are going to be very zorry before I see you again.’

Paul took the proffered hand, and was nine-tenths inclined to beg himself back again into Darco’s friendship; but he could not bring himself to speak, and in a second or two Darco was in the street, and the opportunity had gone. But Paul had his marching-orders, at least, and, calling a fly, he saw his luggage set upon it, drove to the railway-station, deposited all his belongings in the cloak-room, and then started to give Claudia his news. Claudia sent out word that he might call again in an hour, and, glancing disconsolately at the window of her sitting-room as he walked away, he saw Miss Pounceby giggling behind the curtains with her head in a bush of curlpapers. He paced the streets until the hour had gone by, and then returned.

‘What brings you here so early?’ Claudia asked.

She looked ravishingly fresh and pretty to Paul’s fancy.

‘I told Darco,’ Paul answered, ‘that I was going to London, and that I wanted to leave at the end of next week. He was hurt and angry, and he said that, if I had made up my mind about it, I had better go at once.’

‘You have behaved very foolishly, Paul,’ said Claudia—’ very foolishly indeed.’

‘I did it for your sake, Claudia.’

‘For my sake?’ said Claudia, raising her eyebrows. ‘Why, my dear child, how am I supposed to profit by it?’ The question took his breath away. ‘I certainly never asked you, or advised you to do anything so very silly. You have very likely ruined your whole career. At least, you have thrown away such a position as you won’t see again for years to come. How many people do you think there are in the world who will give you the salary Darco gave you, or treat you as he treated you? Oh, you needn’t look at me in that way, Paul, as if I were responsible. It is none of my doing, and I wash my hands of it.’

‘But, Claudia,’ cried Paul, ‘I told you what I was going to do.’

‘You certainly told me some nonsense of the kind,’ she answered, ‘and I remember the very words I used. I told you that you must not dream of following me to London. I said—I remember my very words distinctly—that I could not bear to think of your imperilling your prospects.’

‘Claudia,’ said Paul, ‘I thought you would be glad.’

‘Why should I be glad to see you making a fool of yourself?’ Claudia asked disdainfully. ‘I thought you had more sense.’

‘I shall find work in London,’ Paul said rather helplessly. ‘I have saved more than fifty pounds.’

Possibly the sisterly lady had thought Paul very much poorer than he was, and had been in fear that he might in some way become a burden to her. The fancy did not touch Paul at the time, but he remembered afterwards how swiftly the acerbity of her manner faded.

‘Well,’ she answered, ‘you are sillier than I thought you were; but it’s of no use crying over spilt milk. You must make the best of things.’

‘I shan’t care for anything,’ said Paul, rallying a little, ‘so long as I’m not parted from you, Claudia.’

‘That’s all very well, Paul dear,’ returned Claudia, ‘but this is a practical world, and the people who live in it have got to be practical too.’ She pinched his cheek as she said this, and laughed at him in quite the old delicious way. ‘What makes you so absurdly romantic, Paul?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Paul, ‘that I’m more romantic than other people. I’m not the only man who ever fell in love, and I’m sure nobody ever had a better excuse than I have.’

‘Upon my word!’ cried the lady, ‘you have a very nice way of saying things. Do you know, Paul, if you go on like this, you’ll begin to be dangerous—in a year or two.’

‘I don’t belong to the dangerous classes,’ Paul answered. ‘I’m much likelier to suffer myself than to make you suffer.’

‘Oh, I’m not talking about me,’ said Claudia. ‘I’m thinking of the other ladies.’

‘There are no other ladies,’ Paul declared. ‘There never will be any other ladies. There is only one lady in the whole world for me.’

‘Now, seriously, Paul, how long do you think this ridiculous infatuation for me is going to last?’

‘For ever!’ cried Paul boldly. ‘For ever and ever. And it isnt an infatuation, Claudia. It’s a perfectly reasonable thing to fall in love with you. Why, you can’t walk down the street without half a dozen men doing it I know how they turn round to look at you.’

‘Oh, you outrageous little flatterer! Wherever did you learn to tell such fascinating fibs?’

‘They’re not fibs, Claudia. You know it as well as I do And I’ll tell you something. You ask me why I love you. I’m a judge of character.’

‘Oh, you dreadful boy! You’re not going to judge my character, I hope!’

‘I did that long ago,’ said Paul, ‘and that is why I fell in love with you. No,’ he broke off, blushing and stammering, ‘that is not why I fell in love; but that is why I never wanted to climb out again.’

‘Well,’ said Claudia gaily, ‘if you didn’t fall in love with my character, I’m sure I don’t know what else there is.’

‘You,’ said Paul rapturously. ‘Your beauty, Claudia. Don’t you ever look in the glass?’

‘How do you think I am to do my hair?’ she asked, laughing. ‘But seriously, now, Paul, you don’t think I’m a beauty? You never told me that before.’

‘Claudia,’ he said, reproaching her, ‘I’ve told you a thousand times.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Claudia, ‘in fun. But now, without nonsense—really? Am I pretty?’

‘No; you’re not pretty, Claudia. Pretty’s commonplace. You are lovely. I think you are the most beautiful woman in the world.’

‘You darling boy! There’s a kiss for that. No, no, no, Paul. Only a very little one. But I’m not so silly as to believe you, Paul.’

‘Claudia,’ said Paul—they had reached by this time to the brotherly and sisterly attitude, and sat on the couch together, with the sisterly arm round Paul’s neck—’ I was bitterly sorry to leave old Darco, and to let him think that I was ungrateful. I know how much he has done for me.’

‘I am sure I am not sorry to leave Darco,’ she said. ‘Grumpy, frumpy, stumpy, dumpy old German! I hate him!’

‘Don’t say that,’ said Paul. ‘There’s as kind a heart under old Darco’s waistcoat as you’ll find in the whole wide world.’

‘Never mind Darco, Paul dear. He’s not a favourite theme of mine.’

‘I wish you hadn’t had to leave him, all the same, because then I shouldn’t have had to leave him. Where shall you live in London, Claudia?’

‘I’m going to stay with a Mrs. Walpole, a widow lady, a friend of mine who takes in a few boarders.’

‘Might I stay there, too?

‘You? Oh, you improper boy! Of course not.’

‘Don’t say that, Claudia. I’ve given up everything only to be near you. That’s all I ask for, Claudia. It’s all I want in the world.’

‘My dear Paul,’ said Claudia, ‘you must not dream of such a thing. It would be most unwise. Why, good gracious, child, you’d compromise me every hour!’

‘Indeed, indeed I wouldn’t,’ Paul declared. ‘I would rather die than do it Oh, Claudia! you don’t know how I love you. You don’t know what it will be to me to be with you. You can’t guess how miserably unhappy I shall be if I am away from you.’

‘Very well, Paul,’ said Claudia rather frigidly; ‘but you must not blame me if you lose my friendship by presuming on it. I have no fear of being able to take care of my own reputation, and I want you to understand that I will do it. And now you may kiss me, and then we will talk business.’ Paul availed himself of the permission with alacrity until Claudia slid gently away. ‘That is enough, and more than enough. I won’t have you making any more declamatory love-scenes, you dreadful boy! No, not another. No; not the least little one in the world. You will keep to that side of the table and I shall sit on this. Now, reach me my writing-desk. I am going to give you a letter of introduction to Walton, my new manager. I shall tell him how clever you are, and that you are ambitious and want to get to London. You’ll get nothing like such a salary as Darco gave you—not more than half at the outside. You’ll live in a poky little garret at the top of a smoky London house, and you’ll pay thirty shillings a week for board and lodging, and the rest will go in washing and ‘bus fares. You’re making a very bad exchange, I can tell you, even if Walton will have anything to say to you.’ ‘I don’t care if I’m to be near you, Claudia.’

‘But you’re not going to enjoy the liberties I allow you here. You must understand that, Paul.’

‘I shall see you,’ said Paul ‘I shall be near you.’

‘Very well. Now, I’ll write the letter. And when it is written you will take the very first train to town and give it into Walton’s hands to-night.’

‘But I am going on with you to Cardiff,’ Paul cried.

‘Indeed,’ said Claudia, ‘you will do nothing of the kind. I am not so absurd as to allow it I am not going to be compromised in that way in my last week with the company.’ Paul stared at her with a face so disconsolate that she laughed; but she put on a tender seriousness a moment later. ‘Do you call that love, Paul? Ah, no! Few men—very few—ever so much as learn the meaning of the word. It is pure selfishness. You don’t think of poor Claudia. You would let her reputation be torn to rags and tatters, but what would that amount to if only you could gratify your own wishes?’

‘I’ll go, Claudia,’ cried Paul. ‘I’ll go to London. Great Heaven ‘what a selfish, unreasonable beast I am ‘Forgive me, Claudia. I did not think.’

‘Now you are my own dear Paul again. But you mustn’t expect me to find all the wisdom.’

She wrote her letter, and Paul watched the white hand skimming over the paper. When it was written she read it out to him. It was really an excellent letter of introduction, business-like and cordial. Paul received it with devout thanksgiving. Then Claudia gave him the address of the boarding-house to which she herself was bound, and looked up his train in the time-table.

‘You must start in half an hour,’ she said. ‘Oh, Paul dear! Paul! I wonder if, in spite of all your protestations, you are so sorry to part as I am.’

‘Claudia!’ said Paul, and ran to the open arms.

He was abjectly in love and abjectly submissive, and Claudia had never been so kind. But when at last she told him ‘You must go,’ he strained her in his arms so wildly that he fairly frightened her. Then, terrified in his own turn, he released her, and covered her hand with tears and kisses of contrition.

‘Go,’ she said pantingly—‘go, at once!’

He looked with remorse at her pale face and questioning eyes, and lurched towards the table on which he had laid his hat.

‘Paul,’ said Claudia, ‘it would have been better for you if you had never met me.’

‘No,’ he answered, looking back at her. ‘I shall never think that, whatever happens.’

‘You will think it often,’ she said. ‘But go now, dear, for pity’s sake.’

He went out into the street with his wet face, and for a minute or more did not know why people stared at him. Then he came to his senses a little, and found himself walking away from the station instead of towards it He retraced his steps, caught his train, and travelled up to London, his pulses beating ‘Claudia’ all the way.