ore comfortable together because he made us both comfortable, that
we came nearer to understanding each other because he understood us so
admirably. We did not perceive even that he was the occasion of our
improved relations, far less did we realize that he was their cause and
their essence; that it was to him I looked, to him she looked; and that
while he was between there could be no rude direct contact of her eyes
with mine, nor of mine with hers. Onlookers see most of the game, they
say, but here the onlookers were as blind as the players; there was an
air of congratulation at Artenberg; the King and his bride were drawing
closer together. The blindness was complete; Varvilliers himself shared
it. Of his absolute good faith and utter unconsciousness I, who doubt
most things, can not doubt. Had he been Wetter, I should have been alert
for the wry smile and the lift of the brows; but he was his simple self,
a perfect gentleman unspoiled by thought. Such are entirely delightful;
that they work infinite havoc with established relations between other
people seems a small price to pay for the privilege which their
existence confers upon the world. My dear friend Varvilliers, for whom
my heart is always warm, played the mischief with the relations between
Elsa and myself, which we all (very whimsically) supposed him to be
improving.

It was a comparatively small, although an interestingly unusual, thing
that I came to enjoy Elsa's society coupled with Varvilliers', and not
to care much about it taken alone; it was a more serious, though far
more ordinary, turn of affairs that Elsa should come to be happy enough
with me provided that Varvilliers were there to--shall I say to take the
edge off me?--but cared not a jot to meet me in his absence. The latter
circumstance is simply and conventionally explained (and, after all,
these conventional expressions are no more arbitrary than the alphabet,
which is admitted to be a useful means of communicating our ideas) by
saying that Elsa was falling in love with Varvilliers; my own state of
mind would deserve analysis, but for a haunting notion that no states
of mind are worth such trouble. Let us leave it; there it was. It was
impossible to say which of us would miss Varvilliers more. He had become
necessary to both of us. The conclusion drawn by the way of this world
is, of course, at once obvious; it followed pat from the premise. We
must both of us be deprived of him as soon as po