t that the mare had somehow picked up a nail in the stable, and
was laid up.

'You have been very good to him,' I said. 'I think he was.'

'His reticence was due,' she continued, as if defying contradiction, 'to
a simple dislike to bore one with his personal affairs.'

'Was it?' I assented. My tone acknowledged with all humility that she
was likely to know, and I did not deserve her doubtful glance.

'He could not certainly,' she went on, with firmer decision, 'have been
in the least ashamed of his connection with Kauffer.'

'He comes from a country where social distinctions are less sharp than
they are in this idiotic place,' I observed.

'Oh, if you think it is from any lack of recognition! His sensitiveness
is beyond reason. He has met two or three men in the Military Department
here--he was aware of the nicest shade of their patronage. But he does
not care. To him life is more than a clerkship. He sees all round people
like that. They are only figures in the landscape.'

'Then,' I said, 'he is not at all concerned that nobody in this Capua
of ours knows him, or cares anything about him, or has bought a scrap of
his work, except our two selves.'

'That's a different matter. I have tried to rouse in him the feeling
that it would be as well to be appreciated, even in Simla, and I think
I've succeeded. He said, after those two men had gone away on Sunday,
that he thought a certain reputation in the place where he lived would
help anybody in his work.'

'On Sunday? Do you mean between twelve and two?'

'Yes, he came and made a formal call. There was no reason why he
shouldn't.'

'Now that I think of it,' I rejoined, 'he shot a card on me too, at the
Club. I was a little surprised. We didn't seem somehow to be on those
terms. One doesn't readily associate him with any conventionality.'

'There's no reason why he shouldn't,' said Dora again, and with this
vague comment we spoke of something else, both of us, I think, a little
disquieted and dissatisfied that he had.

'I think,' Dora said as I went away, 'that you had better go up to the
studio and tell him what you have told me. Perhaps it doesn't matter
much, but I can't bear the thought of his not knowing.'

'Come to Kauffer's in the morning and see the pictures,' I urged; but
she turned away, 'Oh, not with you.'

I found my way almost at once to Amy Villa, not only because I had been
told to go there. I wanted, myself, certain satisfactions. Armour was