aissance had vanished. For occupation I
read the Neo-Platonists, Thaumaturgy, Demonology and the like, which
I had always found a fascinating although futile study. I regretted my
bowing acquaintance with modern science, which forbade my setting up
a laboratory with alembics and magic crystals wherewith to conduct
experiments for the finding of the Elixir Vitae and the Philosopher's
Stone.

I seldom read the newspapers. I had an idea, like an eminent personage
of the period, that a sort of war was going on, but it failed to
interest me greatly. I shrank from the noise of it.

"Monsieur," said Antoinette, "will get ill if he does not go out into
the sunshine."

"Monsieur," said I, "regards the sunshine as an impertinent intrusion
into a soul that loves the twilight."

If I had made the same remark to an Englishwoman, she would have pitied
me for a poor, half-witted gentleman. But Antoinette has her nation's
instinctive appreciation of soul-states, and her sympathy was none the
less comprehending when she shook her head mournfully and said that it
was bad for the stomach.

"My good Antoinette," I remarked, harking back in my mind to a
speculation of other days, "if you go on worrying me in this manner
about my stomach, I will build a tower forty feet high in the back
garden, and live on top, and have my meals sent up by a lift, and never
come down again."

"Monsieur might as well be in Paradise," said Antoinette.

"Ah," said I. And I thought of the bottle of prussic acid with mingled
sentiments.

All through these many months I had Judith dwelling, a pale ghost,
in the back of my mind. We had parted so finally that correspondence
between us had seemed impertinent. But although I had not written to
her, no small part of the infinite sadness that had fallen upon my life
was the shadow of her destiny. Sweet, wine-loving Judith! How many times
did I picture her sitting pinched and wistful in the little tin
mission church at Hoxton! Had I, Marcus Ordeyne, condemned her to that
penitentiary? Who can hold the balance of morals so truly as to decide?

At last I received a letter from her on the anniversary of our parting.
She had found salvation in a strange thing which she called duty. "I am
fulfilling an appointed task," she wrote, "and the measure of my success
is the measure of my happiness. I am bringing consolation to a wayward
and tormented spirit. A year has swept aside the petty feminine
vanities, the opera-g