catch. I heard the
words "de Mersch" and "_Anglaise_," and saw the dark man turn his
attention to the little group below. Then I caught my own name
mispronounced and somewhat of a stumbling-block to a high-pitched
contemptuous intonation. The little correspondent, who was on my other
arm, started visibly and moved swiftly behind my back.

"_Messieurs_," he said in an urgent whisper, and drew them to a little
distance. I saw him say something, saw them pivot to look at me, shrug
their shoulders and walk away. I didn't in the least grasp the
significance of the scene--not then.

"What's the matter?" I asked my returning friend; "were they talking
about me?" He answered nervously.

"Oh, it was about your aunt's Salon, you know. They might have been
going to say something awkward ... one never knows."

"They really _do_ talk about it then?" I said. "I've a good mind to
attend one of their exhibitions."

"Why, of course," he said, "you ought. I really think you _ought_."

"I'll go to-morrow," I answered.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I couldn't get to sleep that night, but lay and tossed, lit my candle
and read, and so on, for ever and ever--for an eternity. I was
confoundedly excited; there were a hundred things to be thought about;
clamouring to be thought about; out-clamouring the re-current chimes of
some near clock. I began to read the article by Radet in the _Revue
Rouge_--the one I had bought of the old woman in the kiosque. It upset
me a good deal--that article. It gave away the whole Greenland show so
completely that the ecstatic bosh I had just despatched to the _Hour_
seemed impossible. I suppose the good Radet had his axe to grind--just
as I had had to grind the State Founder's, but Radet's axe didn't show.
I was reading about an inland valley, a broad, shadowy, grey thing;
immensely broad, immensely shadowy, winding away between immense,
half-invisible mountains into the silence of an unknown country. A
little band of men, microscopic figures in that immensity, in those
mists, crept slowly up it. A man among them was speaking; I seemed to
hear his voice, low, monotonous, overpowered by the wan light and the
silence and the vastness.

And how well it was done--how the man could write; how skilfully he made
his points. There was no slosh about it, no sentiment. The touch was
light, in places even gay. He saw so well the romance of that dun band
that had cast remorse behind; that had no return, no future, tha