e will put it in his paper, and the European papers
will copy."

"I haven't much idea the _Argosy_ is read in foreign capitals," Jeff
felt bound to assure her.

"Oh, but we can cable it. The French journals--they used to be very good
to me."

With that her face darkened, not in a softening melancholy, but old
bitterness and defeat. She was not always able to ignore the contrast
between the spring of youth and this meagre eld. Jeffrey saw the
tremendous recognition she assuredly had had, grown through the illusive
fructifying of memory into something overwhelming, and he was glad
starved vanity might once more be fed. She seemed to him a most piteous
spectacle, youth and power in ruins, and age too poor to nourish even a
vine to drape the crumbling walls.

"Patricia Beattie," she continued, "again a _casus belli_. Combat
between two men--" "There won't be any combat," Jeff reminded her. "If I
kick Weedie, he'll take it lying down. That's Weedie."

"I shall stand by," said Madame Beattie. "If you go too far I shall
interfere. So you can go as far as you like."

"I do rather want to know what Weedie's at," said Jeff. "But I sha'n't
kick him. He doesn't deserve it at one time any more than another,
though he has different degrees of making himself offensive."

She was ingenuously disappointed. She even reproached him:

"You said you were going to do it."

"That was in my haste," said Jeffrey. "I can't lick him with a woman
standing by. I should feel like a fool."

Denny was drawing up at the circus-ground.

"Well," said Madame Beattie, "you've disappointed me tremendously.
That's all I can say."

It was dark now, and though the season was more advanced, Jeffrey could
imagine that this was the moment of his arrival that other night, save
that he was not now footsore or dull in the mind. But the same dusk of
crowding forms lay thickly on the field, and there, he knew, was the
stationary car; there were the two figures standing in it, Moore and his
interpreter. He could fill out the picture with a perfect accuracy,
Moore gesticulating and throwing frenzy into his high-pitched voice,
which now came stridently. Madame Beattie breathed out excitement.
Nothing so spiced had ever befallen her in Addington.

"Is he actually speaking?" she asked, in a hoarse whisper. "They say
insects make noises with their hind legs. It's more like that than a
voice. Take me round there, Jeffrey."

He was quite willing. With a good