ave by no means the white and
wasted look which I expected. Is it fame which you have found so potent
a tonic?"

I laughed lightly.

"Don't call it fame," I answered. "Success, if you will. My profession
is so much of a lottery. A whiff of public opinion, a criticism which
hits the popular fancy, and the bubble is floated. I'm not pretending
that I don't appreciate it, but it was a stroke of luck all the same."

She was silent for a few moments. From outside we could hear the
jingling of harness as Mrs. Jerningham's fat bays resented the onslaught
of officious flies. Nearer at hand there was only the lazy humming of
bees to break the stillness of the summer afternoon. Lady Delahaye
sighed.

"You are talking nonsense, and you know it," she said. "I do not want to
flatter you. Any man who has the trick of the pen, and chooses to give
himself wholly and utterly away, can write a powerful story."

"I am afraid that I do not understand you," I protested.

"Yes, you do. You cut open your own heart, and you offered the world a
magnifying glass to study its wounds. You wrote your own story. You told
the tale of your own suffering. Of course it was strong, of course it
rang with all the truth of genius. So you loved that child, Arnold! You,
a man of the world, not a callow schoolboy. You loved her magnificently.
Did she know?"

"She did not know," I answered. "She never will know."

"She may read the book!"

"She may read it, and yet not know," I answered.

"It is true," she murmured. "Unless she loved herself she might not
understand."

Again we were silent for a while. The perfume of the cedars floated upon
the hot breathless air. Lady Delahaye half closed her eyes and leaned
back.

"You read the newspapers, Sir Hermit?"

"Sometimes."

"You have heard the news from Waldenburg?"

"I read of the King's death."

"And of the betrothal of the Princess Isobel?"

"Yes. I have read also of that."

"The cousins will both be the consorts of reigning sovereigns, small
though their kingdoms may be. One reads great things of Adelaide. Her
people call her already 'the well-beloved.'"

A swift rush of thought carried me back to the dark stormy crossing,
when the rain had beaten in our faces, and the wind came booming down
the Channel. Adelaide stood once more by my side. I heard the quiet,
bitter words, the low, passionate cry of her troubled heart. "The
well-beloved" of her people! After all, race tells.

"I spok