ession as in general effect.

"Ruin--nothing more," he answered me.

"Baden--Homburg, I suppose?"

"No; tomfoolery of every kind. I'm quite broken. That friend of yours
didn't recognise me, did he?"

"Had never seen you before, I'm quite sure."

I took him into a quiet cafe and ordered breakfast. His face and voice
recalled to me all the Daker story; and I felt that I was touching
another link in it. He avoided my eye. He grasped the bottle greedily,
and took a deep draught. The wine warmed him, and loosed "the jesses of
his tongue." He had a long tale to tell about himself! He disburdened
his breast about Clichy; of all the phases of his decline from the
fashionable man in the Bois to the shabby skulker in the _banlieue_, he
had something to say. He had been everybody's victim. The world had been
against him. Friends had proved themselves ungrateful, and foes had
acted meanly. Nobody could imagine half his sufferings. While he dwelt
on himself with all the volubility and wearying detail of a wholly
selfish man, I was eager to catch the least clue to a history that
interested me much more deeply than his; and in which I had good reason
to suspect he had not borne an honourable part. The gossips had
confirmed the fears which Mrs. Daker had created. I had picked up scraps
here and there which I had put together.

"I am obliged to keep very dark, my dear Q.M.," Bertram said at last,
still dwelling on the inconvenience to himself. "Hardly dare to move out
of the quarter. Disgusting bore."

"A debt?" I asked.

"Worse."

"What then, an entanglement; the old story, petticoats?"

"Precisely. To-day I ought to be anywhere but here; the old boy is over,
or will be, in a few hours."

The whole story was breaking upon me; Bertram saw it, and my manner,
become icy to him, was closing the sources upon me. I resolved to get
the mystery cleared up. I resumed my former manner with him, ordered
some Burgundy, and entreated him to proceed.

"You remember," he said, "your story about the girl you met travelling
with her husband on the Boulogne boat--Mrs. Daker." His voice fell as he
pronounced the name. "I deceived you, my dear Q. M., when I affected
unconcern and ignorance."

"I know it, Bertram," was my answer. "But that is unimportant: go on."

"I met Mrs. Daker at her hotel, very soon after she arrived in Paris.
She talked about you; and I happened to say that I knew you. We were
friends at once."

"More than friend