ion," as the saying is. Her last state would be worse than the
first.

Camelford was of delicate physique. As an absent-minded bachelor with
no one to give him his meals, no one to see that his things were aired,
could he have lived till forty? Could he be sure that home life had not
given more to his art than it had taken from it?

Jessica Dearwood, of a nervous, passionate nature, married to a bad
husband, might at forty have posed for one of the Furies. Not until her
life had become restful had her good looks shown themselves. Hers was
the type of beauty that for its development demands tranquillity.

Dick Everett had no delusions concerning himself. That, had he married
Jessica, he could for ten years have remained the faithful husband of a
singularly plain wife he knew to be impossible. But Jessica would
have been no patient Griselda. The extreme probability was that
having married her at twenty for the sake of her beauty at thirty, at
twenty-nine at latest she would have divorced him.

Everett was a man of practical ideas. It was he who took the matter in
hand. The refreshment contractor admitted that curious goblets of German
glass occasionally crept into their stock. One of the waiters, on the
understanding that in no case should he be called upon to pay for them,
admitted having broken more than one wine-glass on that particular
evening: thought it not unlikely he might have attempted to hide the
fragments under a convenient palm. The whole thing evidently was a
dream. So youth decided at the time, and the three marriages took place
within three months of one another.

It was some ten years later that Armitage told me the story that night
in the Club smoking-room. Mrs. Everett had just recovered from a severe
attack of rheumatic fever, contracted the spring before in Paris. Mrs.
Camelford, whom previously I had not met, certainly seemed to me one of
the handsomest women I have ever seen. Mrs. Armitage--I knew her when
she was Alice Blatchley--I found more charming as a woman than she
had been as a girl. What she could have seen in Armitage I never could
understand. Camelford made his mark some ten years later: poor fellow,
he did not live long to enjoy his fame. Dick Everett has still another
six years to work off; but he is well behaved, and there is talk of a
petition.

It is a curious story altogether, I admit. As I said at the beginning, I
do not myself believe it.

End of Project Gutenberg'