who never blessed thing or creature before
he saw you go with you!'

After it all Robert sank on the sofa with a groan.

'No more!' he said hoarsely--'no more! Now for air--the sea! To-morrow,
wife, to-morrow! _Cras ingens iterabimus aequor._ Ah me! I leave _my_ new
Salamis behind!'

But on that last evening he insisted on writing letters to Langham and
Newcome.

'I will spare Langham the sight of me' he said, smiling sadly. 'And I
will spare myself the sight of Newcome--I could not bear it, I think!
But I must say good-bye--for I love them both.'

Next day, two hours after the Elsmeres had left for Dover, a cab drove
up to their house in Bedford Square, and Newcome descended from it.
'Gone, sir, two hours ago,' said the housemaid, and the priest turned
away with an involuntary gesture of despair. To his dying day the
passionate heart bore the burden of that 'too late,' believing that even
at the eleventh hour Elsmere would have been granted to his prayers. He
might even have followed them, but that a great retreat for clergy he
was just on the point of conducting made it impossible.

Flaxman went down with them to Dover. Rose, in the midst of all her new
and womanly care for her sister and Robert, was very sweet to him. In
any other circumstances, he told himself, he could easily have broken
down the flimsy barrier between them, but in those last twenty-four
hours he could press no claim of his own.

When the steamer cast loose, the girl, hanging over the side, stood
watching the tall figure on the pier against the gray January sky.
Catherine caught her look and attitude, and could have cried aloud in
her own gnawing pain.

Flaxman got a cheery letter from Edmondson describing their arrival.
Their journey had gone well; even the odious passage from Marseilles had
been tolerable; little Mary had proved a model traveller; the villa was
luxurious, the weather good.

'I have got rooms close by them in the Vice-Consul's cottage,' wrote
Edmondson. 'Imagine, within sixty hours of leaving London in a January
fog, finding yourself tramping over wild marigolds and mignonette, under
a sky and through an air as balmy as those of an English June--when an
English June behaves itself. Elsmere's room overlooks the bay, the great
plain of the Metidja dotted with villages, and the grand range of the
Djurjura, backed by snowy summits one can hardly tell from the clouds.
His spirits are marvellous. He is plunged in the history