ht to have cheered, not hooted. I loved her as much as
I ever loved her in my life, that night I left her. I took my boots
off in the passage and crept up in my stockinged feet. I told him I
was merely going to change my coat and put a few things into a bag. He
gripped my hand, and tears were standing in his eyes. It is odd that
suppressed laughter and expressed grief should both display the same
token, is it not? I stole into her room. I dared not kiss her for fear
of waking her; but a stray lock of her hair--you remember how long it
was--fell over the pillow, nearly reaching to the floor. I pressed my
lips against it, where it trailed over the bedstead, till they bled. I
have it still upon my lips, the mingling of the cold iron and the warm,
soft silken hair. He told me, when I came down again, that I had been
gone three-quarters of an hour. And we went out of the house together,
he and I. That is the last time I ever saw her."

I leant across and put my arms around him; I suppose it was un-English;
there are times when one forgets these points. "I did not know! I did
not know," I cried.

He pressed me to him with his feeble arms. "What a cad you must have
thought me, Paul," he said. "But you might have given me credit for
better taste. I was always rather a gourmet than a gourmand where women
were concerned."

"You have never seen him either again?" I asked.

"No," he answered; "I swore to kill him when I learnt the trick he had
played me. He commenced the divorce proceedings against her the very
morning after I had left her. Possibly, had I succeeded in finding
him within the next six months, I should have done so. A few newspaper
proprietors would have been the only people really benefited. Time is
the cheapest Bravo; a little patience is all he charges. All roads lead
to the end, Paul."

But I tell my tale badly, marring effects of sunlight with the memory
of shadows. At the time all promised fair. He was a handsome,
distinguished-looking man. Not every aristocrat, if without disrespect
to one's betters a humble observer may say so, suggests his title; this
man would have suggested his title, had he not possessed it. I suppose
he must have been about fifty at the time; but most men of thirty would
have been glad to exchange with him both figure and complexion. His
behaviour to his _fiancee_ was the essence of good taste, affectionate
devotion, carried to the exact point beyond which, having regard to the
dis