apprehensions for the future. And
he was amazed and dismayed by the burden which almost unwittingly he
bore night and day. But he felt too that it was rather fine. He felt
that he was in the midst of life.

As he was cranking his car, which he had left unattended at the kerb,
Mrs. Buckingham Smith's magnificent car driven by her magnificent
chauffeur, swept in silence up to the door and sweetly stopped. George's
car was a very little one, and he was his own chauffeur, and had to walk
home from the garage when he had done with it. The contemplation of Buck
Smith's career showed George that there are degrees of success. Buck
Smith received a thousand pounds for a portrait (in the French manner of
painting)--and refused commissions at that. Buck Smith had a kind of
palace in Melbury Road. By the side of Buck Smith. George was a
struggling semi-failure. Mrs. Buck Smith, the lady whom George had first
glimpsed in the foyer of a theatre, was a superb Jewess whom Buck had
enticed from the stage. George did not like her because she was apt, in
ecstasy, to froth at the mouth, and for other reasons; but she was one
of his wife's most intimate friends. Lois, usually taciturn, would
chatter with Adah for hours.

"I thought I'd come and see Lois," said Mrs. Buck, effulgently smiling,
as George handed her out of the car. "How is the dear thing? You just
flying off?"

"You'll do her all the good in the world," George replied. "I can't
stop. I have to leave town to-night, and I'm full up."

"Oh yes! The Opening! How perfectly splendid!" Tiny bubbles showed
between her glorious lips. "What a shame it is poor Lois isn't able to
go!"

"Yes," said George. "But look here! Don't you go and tell her so. That's
quite the wrong tack."

"I see! I see!" said Mrs. Buck, gazing at him as one who was capable of
subtle comprehensions. "By the way," she added, as she turned to mount
the steps, "I ran across Everard Lucas at the Berkeley to-day. Lunching
there. I said I was coming here. He told me to tell you, if I saw you,
that old Mr. Haim or Home or some such name was dead. He said you'd be
interested."

"By Jove!" George ejaculated. "Is he? Haven't seen him for years and
years."

II

He got into his car and drove off at speed. Beneath his off-hand words
to Mrs. Buckingham Smith he was conscious of a quickly growing, tender
sympathy for Marguerite Haim. The hardness in him was dissolved almost
instantaneously. He saw Marguerite, who