hrown
in the face of a man who had lost her. And it always went hard, Tom
reflected, with men who stretched vain hands to Helen, only to lose her.
But there was one, he thought, whose outstretched hands might not prove
so vain. Why couldn't she have cared for John Harkless? Deuce take
the girl, did she want to marry an emperor? He looked at Harkless, and
pitied him with an almost tearful compassion. A feverish color dwelt in
the convalescent's cheek; the apathy that had dulled his eyes was there
no longer; instead, they burned with a steady fire. The image returned
his unwavering gaze with inscrutable kindness.

"You heard that Pickle shot himself, didn't you?" Meredith asked. There
was no answer; John did not hear him.

"Do you know that poor Jeny Haines killed himself, last March?" Tom said
sharply.

There was only silence in the room. Meredith got up and rattled some
tongs in the empty fireplace, but the other did not move or notice him
in any way.

Meredith set the tongs down, and went quietly out of the room, leaving
his friend to that mysterious interview.

When he came back, after a remorseful cigarette in the yard, Harkless
was still sitting, motionless, looking up at the photograph above the
mantel-piece.

They drove abroad every day, at first in the victoria, and, as
Harkless's strength began to come back, in a knock-about cart of Tom's,
a light trail of blue smoke floating back wherever the two friends
passed. And though the country editor grew stronger in the pleasant,
open city, Meredith felt that his apathy and listlessness only deepened,
and he suspected that, in Harkless's own room, where the photograph
reigned, the languor departed for the time, making way for a destructive
fire. Judge Briscoe, paying a second visit to Rouen, told Tom, in an
aside, that their friend did not seem to be the same man. He was altered
and aged beyond belief, the old gentleman whispered sadly.

Meredith decided that his guest needed enlivening--something to take him
out of himself; he must be stirred up to rub against people once more.
And therefore, one night he made a little company for him: two or three
apparently betrothed very young couples, for whom it was rather dull,
after they had looked their fill of Harkless (it appeared that every one
was curious to see him); and three or four married young couples, for
whom the entertainment seemed rather diverting in an absent-minded way
(they had the air of remembe