e invalid, looking up at Brantome, murmured:

"Let him put me in the alcove, where it's dark enough for your friends
to forget that I'm here. And don't bother about me."

"What!" Brantome protested. "I'm not even to bring a beautiful lady to
talk to you?"

"It's rather late for talks with beautiful ladies," David Verne replied
in his weak, dull voice. "Besides, it's music that I've chosen to
torment myself with this afternoon. Where is she?" And when Brantome
had nodded toward Lilla. "Ah, she was here once before."

Lilla wore a brown coat frock heavily trimmed with fur; her brown
velvet hat, very wide across the forehead, was brightened by a rosette
of silver ribbon. The black pearls in the lobes of her ears, just
visible below her fluffy brown hair, completed the harmony of her
costume with her person, while bestowing upon her face a maturity in
contrast with the invalid's youthfulness--which all his sufferings and
despairs had not eclipsed.

When she had sat down beside him, he regarded her with a sort of
suppressed aversion.

The attendant, a bullet-headed fellow with Scandinavian cheek-bones,
leaned down, looking flagrantly solicitous, and inquired in unctuous
tones if there was "anything else at present." At this question David
Verne appeared to be overwhelmed with a dreary contempt. He did not
trouble himself to reply; and the attendant went away, walking
cautiously on the sides of his feet, the back of his head somehow
suggesting that he was gritting his teeth.

Lilla surprised herself by saying:

"Why do you have that man?"

"I don't know. He is appallingly stupid." He paused, with an effect
of still more profound exhaustion, then breathed, "He hates me, no
doubt because I resent his stupidity. I resent stupidity," he
repeated, giving her a glance of weak alarm, as if wondering, "Are you
stupid, too?" He seemed reassured by his scrutiny of her. A coldness
began to melt out of his eyes.

Then he looked astonished, rather like a child that is unexpectedly led
up before a Christmas tree.

Now she had analyzed the most touching impression that David Verne
produced--an impression as of a child who has come into the world with
a heart full of blitheness and trust, only to be mistreated. A child,
but an extremely precocious one, with a child's round chin, but with a
brow of genius; with eyes accustomed to visions, but with lips almost
too delicate to belong to a man. Another incongruity w