High up in one of the houses on the shady side of the Rue Ruhmhorff, Katharine sat on her balcony and thought. Her reflections were of the desultory order begotten of early spring lethargy and early spring sunshine, relating to street cries innumerable and to the mingled scent of violets and asphalt in the air, to the children playing their perpetual game of hop-scotch on the white pavements, and to the artisan opposite who was mixing his salad by the open window with a naÏve disregard for the public gaze. Her pupils were all in the Bois under the able supervision of the excellent Miss Smithson, and there was temporary calm in the three Étages that formed Mrs. Downing's Parisian establishment for the daughters of gentlemen.

"Will he ever have done, I wonder?" speculated Katharine lazily. She was taking quite a languid interest in the progress of the salad, and smiled to herself when the man took off his blue blouse and attacked it afresh in his shirt sleeves. His wife joined him after a while, evidently, to judge from her emphatic gestures, with critical intent. But the man received her volley of suggestions with an expressive shrug of the shoulders, and they finally went off to their mid-day meal.

"What pitiable jargon we talk, all the world over, about the triumph of mind over matter," murmured Katharine, yawning as she spoke. "And all the while matter goes on triumphing over mind on every conceivable occasion! It even gets into the street cries," she added with another yawn, as a flower vender came along the street below and sent up his minor refrain in unvarying repetition. "Des violettes pour embaumer la chambre," he chanted, "du cresson pour la santÉ du corps!"

It was more than a year since she had accepted Mrs. Downing's offer and settled here in Paris; more than a year since Ted had gone abroad and Paul Wilton had bidden her farewell. But she never looked back on those days now, though not so much from design as from lack of incentive; for her life had strayed into another channel, and her days were full of the kind of occupation that leaves no room for the luxury of reminiscence. It never even occurred to her to wonder whether she was happy or not; she seemed to have completely lost her old trick of wanting a reason for everything she thought or felt, and for the time being she had become eminently practical. Even now, in spite of the enervating effect of the first spring weather, her thoughts returned to the business of the moment, and she wondered why the father of her newest pupil, who had made an appointment with her for eleven o'clock, was so late in coming. A ring at the electric bell seemed to answer her thought, and the maid came in almost immediately with a gentleman's card on a tray.

"British caution," was Katharine's criticism, as Julie explained that the English monsieur had not attempted to teach her his name. By the merest chance she glanced at the card before her visitor came in, and was spared the annoyance of betraying the surprise she must otherwise have felt. As it was, she had time to recover from her astonishment, even to remark how different the familiar name and address seemed to her when, for the first time as now, she saw them transcribed on a visiting card,—"Mr. Paul Wilton, Essex Court, Temple."

"I am so glad to see you," she exclaimed, with a look that did not contradict the welcome in her voice. And Julie, who had never seen her mistress look so joyous before, went back to Marie in the kitchen with a highly coloured account of the meeting she had just witnessed, which explained to that frivolous but astute little person how it was that Madame always looked so leniently on her flirtations with the charcutier round the corner.

"I have never caught you idling before," said Paul, referring to the attitude in which he had seen her through the open door before she had turned round with that glad look in her eyes.

"I don't suppose you have," she said. "It isn't so very long since I learnt how to idle. Do you remember how bitterly you used to complain because I never wanted to lounge? I often lounge now; and my greatest joy is to think about nothing at all. Don't you know how restful it is to think about nothing at all?"

"You must have altered a good deal," he observed.

"Do you think I have, then?"

"Ask me that presently," he replied, with an answering smile. "I have got to hear all the news first,—how keeping school agrees with you, and everything there is to tell about yourself. So make haste and begin, please."

"Oh, there is nothing to tell about myself; at least, nothing more than you can learn from the prospectus! Would you like to see one? You can read it and learn what an important person I am, while I go and leave a message for Miss Smithson."

When she came back, he regarded her with a look of amused interest.

"This is a very novel sensation," he remarked.

"I am glad it amuses you," said Katharine; "but I never knew before that the prospectus was funny."

"Oh, no; it isn't that," he explained. "The humour of a prospectus is the kind of grim joke that could only be expected to appeal to a parent. What I meant was the fact of your appearing to me for the first time in the character of hostess."

"I wondered how it was that I did not feel so awed by your presence as usual," she remarked. "Now I know it is because you, even you, are sensible to the chastening atmosphere of the home of the young idea. You had better come round the establishment at once, before the favourable impression begins to wear off."

"Oh, please!" he implored. "You will surely let me off? I haven't a daughter or a niece, or any kind of feminine relation who could be of the least commercial value to you. And I really don't feel equal to facing crowds of unsophisticated girls in short frocks, with pocket editions of their favourite poets in their hands. Girls of that age always expect you to be so well informed, and I haven't run a favourite poet for years."

"When you first met me," she said emphatically, "I was an unsophisticated girl in a short frock, with a whole list of favourite poets. And I distinctly remember one occasion on which I bored you for half an hour with my views on Browning."

"I am not here to deny it," said Paul. "It is only an additional reason for my wishing to stay and talk to you, now that you have ceased to have any views on any subject whatever. Besides, I exhausted the subject of unsophistication in short frocks when I first had the pleasure of meeting you, four years ago. And, interesting as I found it then, I have no particular wish to renew it now."

"All of which is an unpleasant reflection on the enormous age I seem to have acquired in four years," she cried. "They must have been singularly long years to you!"

"With the exception of the last one," said Paul, "they were much the same as any other years to me."

"Now, that's odd," she remarked; "because last year has seemed to go more quickly than any other year in my life. I wonder why it seemed so long to you?"

"It didn't," he replied promptly. "It was the other three that did that, because I spent them in learning wisdom."

"And the last one in forgetting it? How you must have wasted the other three! Ah, there are the girls at last," she added, springing to her feet. "That means dÉjeÛner, and I am as hungry as two wolves. You will stop of course?"

"More developments," he murmured. "You used to scorn such mundane matters as meals, in the days when the poets were food enough for you. But please don't imagine for a moment that I am going to face that Anglo-French crowd out there; I would almost as soon listen to your opinion of Browning."

"Do you mean to say," she complained, "that you expect me to minister to your wants in here? What will Miss Smithson say, what will the dear children say in their weekly letters home? You don't really mean it?"

"On the contrary," he replied, placidly, "I am going to take you out to lunch in the most improper restaurant this improper city can produce. So go and put on that Parisian hat of yours, and be as quick as you like about it. I am rather hungry, too."

"You really seem to forget," she said, "that I am the respectable head of a high-class seminary for—"

"I only wish you would allow me to forget it," he interrupted. "It is just because you have been occupying yourself for a whole year, and with the most lamentable success, in growing elderly and respectable, that I intend to give you this opportunity of being regenerated. May I ask what you are waiting for, now?"

"I am waiting for some of the conventional dogma you used to preach to me in the days when I wanted to be improper," she retorted. "It would really save a great deal of trouble if our respective moral codes could be induced to coincide sometimes, wouldn't it?"

"It would save a great deal of trouble if you were to do as you are told, without talking quite so much about it. It is now half-past—"

"I tell you it is impossible," she protested. "You must have your dÉjeÛner here, with unsophistication twenty-five strong—and Miss Smithson. What is the use of my having acquired a position of importance if I deliberately throw it away again by behaving like an improper schoolgirl?"

"What is the use of a position at all," replied Paul, "if it doesn't enable you to be improper when you choose? Don't you think we might consider the argument at an end? I am quite willing to concede to Miss Smithson, or to any other person in authority, that you have made all the objections necessary to the foolish possessor of a conscience, if you will only go and tell her that you do not intend to be in to lunch."

"I have told her," said Katharine inadvertently, and then laughed frankly at her own admission. "I always spoil all my deceptions by being truthful again too soon," she added plaintively.

"Women always spoil their vices by incompletion," observed Paul. "They have reduced virtue to an art, but there is a crudity about their vice that always gives them away sooner or later. That is why they are so easily found out; it is not because they are worse than men, but because they are better. They repent too soon, and your sins always find you out when you begin to repent."

"That's perfectly true," said Katharine, half jestingly. "You would never have discovered that I was a prig if I had not become partly conscious of it first."

"That," said Paul deliberately, "is a personal application of my remarks which I should never have dreamed of making myself; but, since you are good enough to allow it, I must say that the way you have bungled the only vice you possess is quite singular. If you had been a man no one would have detected your priggishness at all; at its worst it would have been called personality. It is the same with everything. When a woman writes an improper book she funks the crisis, and gets called immoral for her pains; a man goes the whole hog, and we call it art."

"According to that," objected Katharine, "it is impossible to tell whether a man is good or bad. In fact, the better he appears to be the worse he must be in reality; because it only means that he is cleverer at concealing it."

"None of us are either good or bad," replied Paul. "It is all a question of brains. Goodness is only badness done well, and morality is mostly goodness done badly. I should like to know what I have said to make you smile?"

"It isn't what you have said," laughed Katharine; "it is the way you said it. There is something so familiar in the way you are inventing a whole new ethical system on the spur of the moment, and delivering it just as weightily as if you had been evolving it for a lifetime. Do go on; it has such an additional charm after one has had a holiday for more than a year!"

"When you have done being brilliant and realised the unimportance of being conscientious, perhaps you will kindly go and get ready," said Paul severely. And she laughed again at nothing in particular, and raised no further objection to following what was distinctly her inclination.

When they had had dÉjeÛner and were strolling through the Palais Royal, he alluded for the first time to their parting at Ivingdon more than a year ago. She gave a little start and reddened.

"Oh, don't let us talk about that; I am so ashamed of myself whenever I think of it," she said hastily.

"I am sorry," he replied with composure, "because I particularly wish to talk about it just now. You must remember that, until I met Ted in town last week, I had no idea you were not married."

She turned and stared at him suddenly.

"I never thought of that," she said, slowly.

"Of course you didn't. In fact, all your proceedings immediately following that particular day in December seem to have been characterised by the same lack of reflection. You might have known that there was no one who could tell me of your erratic actions. And how was I to guess that you would go flying off to Paris just when everything was made easy for you to stop in England? I was naturally forced to conclude, as I neither saw nor heard from you again, that you had carried out your absurdly heroic purpose of marrying Ted. I must say, Katharine, you have a wonderful faculty for complicating matters."

"Nothing of the sort," she said indignantly. "And your memory is no better than mine, for you seem to forget that it was you who made our parting final. You were so tragic that of course I thought you meant it."

"Before we criticise my own action in the matter," said Paul, "I should rather like to know why you did come and bury yourself here, without telling anybody?"

"Oh, it is easy for you to smile and be sarcastic! I had to come, of course; it was the only thing to be done. Nature had made me a prig, and everything was forcing me to continue to be a prig, and all my attempts at being anything else didn't come off. What chance is there for any one with priggish tendencies in a world like ours? It simply bristles with opportunities for behaving in a superior way, unless you resolutely make up your mind to skim over the surface of it and never to think deeply at all. What was I to do? Ted had gone abroad to escape from my overbearing superiority, and you had left in disgust because marrying for love wasn't good enough for me; and then I had Mrs. Downing's letter, and she persisted in thinking that I was the only person in the world who could manage the mothers of her fashionable pupils. It seemed as though I were destined to remain a superior person to the end of my days, and I wasn't going to fight against my natural tendencies any longer. I determined that if I had got to be a prig at all, I would at least make as good a prig as possible. Now do you understand why I came?"

"Before I attempt to do that, do you mind mentioning where you are going to take me?" said Paul casually. She looked round quickly and found that they had wandered down to the Seine and were close to the landing-stage of the boats that went to St. Cloud; and an importunate proprietor was representing to them in broken English the charms of a trip down the river.

"Oh, let us go!" she cried impulsively. "It would be so beautiful! Miss Smithson will never respect me again, but I don't feel as though I could go back to all those girls just yet. Oh, don't be so musty! It won't be chilly, and you are not a bit too old, and you have just got to come. Oh, don't I remember those moods of yours when everything was too youthful for you! I never knew any one with such a plastic age as yours."

He smiled perfunctorily, and gave in; and they were soon journeying down the Seine. Katharine was in a mood to appreciate everything, and she leaned over the side of the boat and made a running commentary on the beauty of the scene as they glided along between the banks. Paul tried two or three seats in succession, and finally chose one with an air of resignation and felt for his tobacco pouch.

"There is a smell of oil," he said. "And the chestnuts at Bushey are far finer."

"Can't you lower your standard just for this one afternoon?" she suggested mockingly. "It would be so pleasant if you were to allow that Nature, for once, was almost good enough for you. I am so glad it is always good enough for me; it gives one's critical faculty such a rest."

"Or proves the non-existence of one," added Paul.

"It is surprising," she continued in the same tone, "how you always manage to spoil the light side of life by treating it seriously. Do you ever allow yourself a happy, irresponsible moment?"

"Perhaps I haven't seen as much of the light side as you have," he returned, quite unmoved. "And it is always easier to play our tragedy than our comedy; the mise en scÈne is better adapted to begin with. That is why the mediocre writer generally ends his book badly; he gets his effect much more easily than by ending it well."

"What has made you so cynical, I wonder?" she asked lazily.

"Principally, the happiness of the vulgar," returned Paul promptly. "It is not our own unhappiness that makes us cynical, but the badly done happiness of others. Quite an ordinary person may be able to bear misfortune more or less nobly, but it takes a dash of genius to be happy without being aggressive over it."

"I can't imagine your taking the trouble to be aggressive over anything," observed Katharine. "That is probably why you prefer to remain sombre, whether the occasion demands it or not. It is very prosaic to have to acknowledge that a man's most characteristic pose is merely due to his laziness. On the whole, I am rather glad I am quite an ordinary person; I would much sooner be happy, even if it does make me vulgar."

"Happiness is like wine," said Paul, without heeding her. "It demoralises you at the time, and it leaves you flat afterwards. The most difficult thing in life is to know how to take our happiness when it comes."

"It is more difficult," murmured Katharine, "to know how to do without it when it doesn't come."

They landed at St. Cloud, and walked up through the little village and into the park where the ruins of the palace were. They had strayed away from their fellow passengers by this time, and the complete solitude of the place and its atmosphere of decay affected them both in the same way, and they gradually dropped into silence. He was the first to break the pause.

"Don't you think it is time we brought this farce to an end?" he asked with a carelessness of manner that was obviously assumed.

"Who is being farcical?" she returned just as lightly.

"You did that admirably, but it hasn't deceived me," said Paul serenely. "You know as well as I do that it is futile to go on any longer like this. We have tried it for a year, and I for one don't think very much of it. Your experiences have doubtless been happier than mine; but if you mean to tell me that they have taught you to prefer solitude to companionship, then you are as thorough a prig as you came over here to become. And that I don't believe for a moment, for at your worst you were always inconsistent, and inconsistency is the saving grace of the prig."

"I appreciate the honour of your approval," replied Katharine with exaggerated solemnity; "but, for all that, I still think that living with unsophistication in short petticoats is likely to be less tiring, on the whole, than living with some one for whom nothing in heaven or earth has yet been brought to perfection."

She ended with a peal of laughter. Paul strolled on at the same measured pace as before.

"Besides," she added, "I thought we had both done with the matter a year ago. What is the use of dragging it up again?"

"I thought," added Paul, "that we had also done with taking ourselves seriously, a year ago. But you seem to wish the process to be renewed. Very well, then; let us begin at the beginning. The initial difficulty, if I remember rightly, was the fact that we were very much in love with each other."

"I know I wasn't," said Katharine hotly. "I never hated any one so much in my life, and—"

"Which gets over the initial difficulty, does it not? Secondly then, you determined in the most unselfish manner possible that a wife would inevitably cripple what you were kind enough to call my career. I need hardly say how touched I felt by your charming consideration, but I should like to point out—"

"It is perfectly detestable of you to have come all this way on purpose to laugh at me," cried Katharine.

"I should like to point out," repeated Paul, "that I feel quite capable of pursuing my career without any suggestions from my wife at all, and that, engrossing as her presence would undoubtedly prove—"

"It seems to me," interrupted Katharine, "that you don't want a wife at all; you only want an audience."

"I don't think," said Paul, smiling indulgently, "that we need quarrel about terms, need we? Well, as I was saying, my career would probably continue to take care of itself, even if there were two of us to be asked out to dinner, instead of one. And that disposes of the second obstacle, doesn't it? The third and last—"

"Last? There are millions of others!"

"The third and last," resumed Paul, "was, I think, the trifling fact that I had once presumed to call you a prig, in consequence of which you chose to pretend you were afraid of me. Wasn't that so?"

"Afraid of you? What a ridiculous idea!" she exclaimed. "Why, I was never afraid of you in my life!"

"Which disposes of the third and last difficulty," said Paul promptly.

Katharine stamped her foot and walked on in front of him.

"You don't seem to think," she said, "that I might not want to marry you."

"Oh, no," said Paul; "I don't."

She said no more, but continued to walk a little way in front of him so that he could not see her face. She only spoke once again on their way down to the boat.

"How was Ted looking when you saw him?" she asked abruptly. "Perhaps you didn't notice, though?"

"Oh, yes," said Paul, blandly. "I've never seen him looking better; he seemed to have had a splendid time out there. He asked after you, by the way, and seemed rather surprised that I hadn't heard from you."

She made no comment, and they reached the boat in silence.

"You will come back to tea with me?" she said, as they stood waiting for it to start.

"With you,—or with unsophistication?"

"Oh, with me of course! Don't you think you have been funny enough for one afternoon?"

"Our best jokes are always our unconscious ones," murmured Paul. "Seriously, though, I think I won't bother you any more. I shall only be in the way if I stay any longer."

"Now what have I done," she demanded indignantly, "to make you think you are in the way?"

"Oh, of course—nothing. So foolish of me!" said Paul humbly. "I shall be delighted to return with you; there are still so many things we want to say to each other, are there not?"

However, they did not say them on the way home, for Katharine soon became thoughtful again, and he made no further attempt to draw her out but remained studiously at the other end of the boat until they landed; and after that, the noise of the cab in which they drove across Paris was sufficient excuse for refraining from anything like conversation. At the top of the stairs, as they stayed for a moment outside her appartement to recover their breath, she suddenly turned to him with one of her unaccountable smiles.

"Well?" he said.

"You know I didn't mean to be cross, don't you?" she asked him in a hurried undertone.

"You absurd little silly!" was all he said.

They sat for a long time over tea, and neither of them felt inclined to talk. But the silence was not embarrassing. And the early spring day drew to a close and the room grew dark with shadows; and still they sat there, and it did not occur to either of them to make conversation. At last, Katharine stirred in her seat at the end of the sofa and looked towards the dim outline of his figure against the window, and finished her reflections out loud.

"After all," she said thoughtfully, "the great thing is to be sane. Nothing else matters much if one can only be sane about things. There are heaps of reasons why you and I should not marry, if we were to begin hunting them up; but why bother about it? You know and I know that we have simply got to try the experiment, and chance the rest. One must risk something. And it can't be much worse than going on alone like this."

"No," said Paul, "it can't be worse than that."

He came and sat on the sofa, too, and there was silence once more. He put out his hand to find hers, and she gave it him and laughed softly.

"I have an idea," she said irrelevantly. "We must marry Ted to Marion."

"We?" said Paul, smiling. And she laughed again.

"Isn't it ridiculous," she said, "after all our views about marriage and so on,—to end in behaving just like any one else who never had any views at all?"

"Yes," agreed Paul. "We haven't even stuck to our priggishness."

"We?" exclaimed Katharine.

But there is always a limit to a man's confessions, and Paul's was never finished.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

AT THE RELTON ARMS.

Miss Evelyn Sharp is to be congratulated on having, through the mouth of one of her characters, said one of the wisest words yet spoken on what is rather absurdly called "The Marriage Question" (page 132). It is an interesting and well-written story, with some smart characterisation and quite a sufficiency of humour.—Daily Chronicle.

A delightful story. The most genuine piece of humour in a book that is nowhere devoid of it, is that scene in the inn parlour where Digby finds himself engaged to two young women within five minutes; while the two brief colloquies of the landlady and her cronies make one suspect that the author could produce an admirable study of village humour.—AthenÆum.

A distinctly clever book, of a fresh conventionality.—Academy.

WYMPS: FAIRY TALES.

With 8 coloured Illustrations and decorated cover by Mabel Dearmer.

Of the stories it is impossible to speak too highly; they are true fairy literature, and the most exigent taste will be satisfied with them.—Truth (London).

A FLY-LEAF POEM.

(To a little girl with a story-book,—"Wymps,"
by Evelyn Sharp).

The simple brilliancy of the cover alone reveals something of the hidden delights of these charming new stories.—Punch.

Quite the most gorgeously coloured book of the season. In a red, green, and yellow cover that puts to the fade even a French poster, and with most marvellous pictures, excelling even the cover, the volume must take a literally blazing place on a child's book-shelf. "Wymps" has other attractions,—six, original fairy stories. Now, originality is a rare thing in fairy stories, so that altogether we find the book unique.—Literary World (Boston).