er daughter still remained
in Lyons. The reports were never hopeful. My poor darling was just the
same. There recurred to her ever and anon a remembrance of those three
colours which haunted her--red, green and gold.

The Professor was most kind, Gabrielle's mother wrote me. He did
everything in his power, and still persevered after failure upon
failure.

"I fear poor Gabrielle will never recover," she wrote in one of her
letters. "The Professor is always optimistic, but I can read that in
his heart he has no hope. The next step will, I dread to think, be
hopeless imbecility!"

With that letter in my pocket I went to the office in Westminster each
day with leaden heart. The joys of life had become blotted out. I
cared for nothing, for no one, and my interest in living further had
been suddenly swept away.

Harry Hambledon, as we sat together at breakfast each day, tried in
vain to interest me in various ways. He urged me one evening to go
with him and Norah to the Palais de Danse, across Hammersmith Bridge,
and I was forced to accept. But instead of dancing I sat at a side
table and sipped ice drinks. Dancing had no attraction for me.

Very fortunately we were extremely busy at the office. Four big
contracts had been entered into by the firm for the lighting and
telephones for four new hotels-de-luxe, one at Bude, in Cornwall, one
in Knightsbridge, another at Llandudno, in North Wales, and the fourth
at Cromer. Hence I was compelled to be ever on the move between Wales,
Norfolk, and Cornwall, and perhaps this sudden activity prevented me
from brooding too closely over the hopeless condition of the girl
with whom I was so deeply in love. In these days electrical engineers
have to be pretty active in order to pay their way, and though Francis
and Goldsmith was an old-established firm, they were nothing if not
up-to-date in their methods.

One morning as I sat in a corner of the London-Exeter express on my
way down to Bude, I read in my paper the following:

"Mr. Oswald De Gex, the well-known international financier,
is to be entertained on Thursday next to luncheon by the
Lord Mayor and Corporation at the Mansion House. The Prime
Ministers of Spain and the Netherlands, who are in London on
official business, will be included among the guests. Mr. De
Gex, though he has a house in London, is seldom here. He has
recently been engaged in a great financial scheme to secure
for