never
come back to me. I won't forgive him." He beat his unemployed hand upon
the table before him, and the things which lay there jumped and danced.
"And if he waits until I'm dead and then comes back," said he, "he'll
find he has made a mistake--a great mistake. He'll find a surprise in
store for him, I can tell you that. I won't tell you what I have done,
but it will be a disagreeable surprise for Master Arthur, you may be
sure."

The old gentleman fell to frowning and muttering in his choleric
fashion, but the fierce glitter began to go out of his eyes and his
hands ceased to tremble and clutch at the things before him. The girl
was silent, because again there seemed to her to be nothing that she
could say. She longed very much to plead her brother's cause, but she
was sure that would only excite her grandfather, and he was growing
quieter after his burst of anger. She bent down over him and kissed his
cheek.

"Try to go to sleep," she said. "And don't torture yourself with
thinking about all this. I'm as sure that poor Arthur is not staying
away out of spite as if he were myself. He's foolish and headstrong, but
he's not spiteful, dear. Try to believe that. And now I'm really going.
Good-night." She kissed him again and slipped out of the room. And as
she closed the door she heard her grandfather pull the bell-cord which
hung beside him and summoned the excellent Peters from the room beyond.

* * * * *

V

JASON SETS FORTH UPON THE GREAT ADVENTURE

Miss Benham stood at one of the long drawing-room windows of the house
in the rue de l'Universite, and looked out between the curtains upon the
rather grimy little garden, where a few not very prosperous cypresses
and chestnuts stood guard over the rows of lilac shrubs and the
box-bordered flower-beds and the usual moss-stained fountain. She was
thinking of the events of the past month, the month which had elapsed
since the evening of the De Saulnes' dinner-party. They were not at all
startling events; in a practical sense there were no events at all, only
a quiet sequence of affairs which was about as inevitable as the night
upon the day--the day upon the night again. In a word, this girl, who
had considered herself very strong and very much the mistress of her
feelings, found, for the first time in her life, that her strength was
as nothing at all against the potent charm and magnetism of a man who
had almost none of the