over to the degrading habit of solitary piano practicing on
half-holidays. He was embarrassed but touched by a devotion which was
quite incomprehensible to him; and he encouraged it furtively. When
Geoffrey left Eton the friends did not see each other again for some
years, though they watched each other's careers from a distance,
mutually appreciative. Their next meeting took place in Lady
Everington's drawing-room, where Barrington had already heard fair
ladies praising the gifts and graces of the young diplomat. He heard
him play the piano; and he also heard the appreciation of discerning
judgment. He heard him talking with arabesque agility. It was
Geoffrey's turn to feel on the wrong side of a vast superiority, and
in his turn he repaid the old debt of admiration; generosity filled
the gulf and the two became firm friends. Reggie's intelligence
flicked the inertia of Geoffrey's mind, quickened his powers of
observation, and developed his sense of interest in the world around
him. Geoffrey's prudence and stolidity had more than once saved the
young man from the brink of sentimental precipices.

For Reggie's unquestionable musical talent found its nourishment
in love affairs dangerously unsophisticated. He refused to consider
marriage with any of the sweet young things, who would gladly
have risked his lukewarm interest for the chance of becoming an
Ambassador's wife. He equally avoided pawning his youth to any of
the maturer married ladies, whose status and character, together with
those of their husbands, license them to practice as certificated
Egerias. His dangerous _penchant_ was for highly spiced adventuresses,
and for pastoral amourettes, wistful and obscure. But he never gave
away his heart; he lent it out at interest. He received it again
intact, with the profit of his musical inspiration. Thus his liaison
with Veronique Gerson produced the publication of _Les demi-jours_, a
series of musical poems which placed him at once in the forefront of
young composers; but it also alarmed the Foreign Office, which was
paternally interested in Reggie's career. This brought about his
banishment to Japan. The _Attente d'hiver_, now famous, is his candid
musical confession that the coma inflicted upon him by Veronique's
unconcern was merely the drowsiness of the waiting earth before the
New Year brought back the old story.

Reggie would never be attracted to native women; and he had not the
dry inquisitiveness of his pr