with him, I can't help feeling
that he might not have got to such a desperate pass, that I might have
cheered him, helped him, saved him. I feel it especially when I think
of Wilford. His eyes attested so much; he would have enjoyed meeting
him so keenly. No doubt he was already fond of the man, had loved him
through his books, like so many others. If I had introduced him? If
we had taken him with us the next morning on our excursion to Cambo?
Included him occasionally in our smokes and parleys?

Wilford left for England without dining again at the Hotel
d'Angleterre. We were busy 'doing' the country, and never chanced to
be at Biarritz at the dinner hour. During that week I scarcely saw Sir
Richard Maistre.

Another little circumstance that rankles especially now would have
been ridiculous except for the way things have ended. It isn't easy to
tell--it was so petty and I am so ashamed. Colonel Escott had been
abusing London, describing it as the least beautiful of the capitals
of Europe, comparing it unfavourably to Paris, Vienna, and St.
Petersburg. I took up the cudgels in its defence, mentioned its
atmosphere, its tone; Paris Vienna, St. Petersburg were lyric, London
was epic; and so forth and so forth. Then, shifting from the aesthetic
to the utilitarian, I argued that of all great towns it was the
healthiest, its death-rate was lowest. Sir Richard Maistre had
followed my dissertation attentively, and with a countenance that
signified approval; and when, with my reference to the death-rate, I
paused, he suddenly burned his ships. He looked me full in the eye,
and said, 'Thirty-seven, I believe?' His heightened colour, a nervous
movement of the lip, betrayed the effort it had cost him; but at last
he had _done it_--screwed his courage to the sticking-place, and
spoken. And I--I can never forget it--I grow hot when I think of
it--but I was possessed by a devil. His eyes hung on my face, awaiting
my response, pleading for a cue. 'Go, on,' they urged. 'I have taken
the first, the difficult step--make the next smoother for me.' And
I--I answered lackadaisically with just a casual glance at him, 'I
don't know the figures,' and absorbed myself in my viands.

Two or three days later his place was filled by a stranger, and
Flaherty told me that he had left for the Riviera.

All this happened last March at Biarritz. I never saw him again till
three weeks ago. It was one of those frightfully hot afternoons in
July; I ha