the diamonds that are in
her hair and on her bosom, are clasped about her rounded waist and wrists,
gleam like fireflies from the folds of her diaphanous skirts, and sparkle
on her fingers. A provoking, beguiling Impertinence with great stage eyes
encircled by blue rims, a small mouth painted ruby-red, a complexion of
theatrical lilies and roses, and tiny, twinkling feet that beat out a
measure to which Beauvayse's pulses have throbbed madly and now throb no
more.

"It began in the usual way," he goes on, waking from that stage day-dream,
"with suppers and stacks of flowers, and a muff-chain of turquoise and
brilliants, and ended up with----"

"With an electric motor-brougham and a flat in Mayfair. Oh Lord, what
thunderin' donkeys we fellows are!" groans Captain Bingo, rubbing his
head, which has hair of a gingery hue, close-cropped until the scalp
blushes pinkly through it, and rubbing nothing in the way of consolation
into the brain inside it.

"I bought the cottage at Cookham as a surprise for her birthday," goes on
the boy. "She's a year or two older than me----"

"And the rest," blurts out Captain Bingo. But he drowns the end of the
sentence in a giant sneeze. "Must have caught cold last night without
knowin' it. Dashed treacherous climate this," he murmurs behind the refuge
of a pocket-handkerchief. "And so you bought the cottage for Lessie?
Another nibble out of the golden cheese that the old man's nursing up for
you,--what? And in thingumbob retirement by the something-or-other stream
you hit on the notion of splicing the lovely Lessie Lavigne. Poetry, by
the Living Tinker!"

"Do you want to hear how I came to cut my own throat?" snarls the boy,
with white, haggard anger alternating with red misery and shame in his
young, handsome face; "because if you do, leave off playing the funny
clown and listen."

"Never felt less inclined to be funny in my life. 'Pon my word, I assure
you!" asseverates Bingo. "You're simply a bundle of irritable nerves, my
dear chap, and that's the truth."

"You wouldn't wonder if you knew ... Oh, damn it, Wrynche!"--the young
voice breaks in a miserable sob--"I'm so thundering miserable. And all
because there--there was a kid coming, and I did the straight thing by its
mother."

"Whew!" Captain Bingham Wrynche gives vent to a long, piercing, dismal
whistle, which so upsets a gaunt mongrel prowling vainly for garbage in
the gutters of Market Square that he puts up his nose and