nst her chair, heaving,
clutching at the arms for support.

He summoned Dorchester, but when he approached the Duchess feebly
motioned him away.

"I've--done--with you--never again," she murmured.

She seemed then most desperately old. Her dress was in disorder, her
face wizened with deep lines beneath her eyes and hollows in her cheeks.

Christopher waited while Dorchester helped her mistress into the farther
room. For some time there was silence. The room was stifling, and,
impatiently, he pulled back the heavy red curtains.

He sat, waiting, eyeing the stupid dragons, every now and again glancing
at his watch.

Even now the room seemed to vibrate with her voice, and he could imagine
that the French novel, fallen from her lap on to the carpet, winked at
him as much as to say:

"Oh, we're up to her tempers, aren't we? We know what they're worth.
_We_ don't care!"

At last Dorchester appeared.

"Her Grace is in bed and will see you, sir," she said.

Her face was grave and without expression.

After another glance at his watch he passed into the bedroom.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TIGER

"For every Manne there lurketh
hys Wilde Beast."

SARDUS AQUINAS (1512).

I

Brun, meeting Christopher one day, had asked him to tea in his flat, and
then, remembering his interest in the Beaminster history, invited him to
bring Breton with him.

"I haven't seen him for years. I'd like to see him again."

Christopher had accepted this invitation, and now on a sultry afternoon
in June found himself sitting in Brun's rooms. Brun's sitting-room had a
glazed and mathematical appearance as though, from cushions to ceiling,
it had been purchased at a handsome price from a handsome warehouse. It
was not comfortable, it was very hot.... The narrow street squeezed
between Portland Square and Great Portland Street lay on its back, the
little windows of its mean houses gasping like mouths for air, the hard
sun pouring pitilessly down.

No weather nor atmosphere ever affected Brun. His clothes as well as his
body had that definite appearance of something outside change or
disorder. He might have been, one would allow, something else at earlier
stages before this final result had been achieved (as a painting is
presented to the observer before its completion), but surely now nothing
would ever be done to him again. Surveying him, he appeared less a man
with a history, origins, destinies about hi