Meantime, with inexhaustible patience, he continued to try one place
after another, one distraction after another, with small result. It
was a costly prescription, and though Desmond imagined he contributed
his share, the chief of it was paid by his friend. During those first
months he read little, talked little, and rarely expressed a definite
wish. He would go anywhere, do anything in reason, so long as no
mental effort was required of him; but music--to Paul's utter
mystification--he decisively refused to hear. For the time being the
man's whole nature seemed awry, and there were moments when Paul's
heart contracted with dread of the worst.

Christmas found them at Le Trayas, on the Esterelles coast, an
isolated paradise unprofaned by sight or sound of the noisy, restless
life of the French Riviera. Here Theo Desmond had spent whole hours at
a stretch, basking in the temperate December sunshine, under feathery
mimosa bushes, that glorify the foothills,--silent as ever, yet
seemingly content.

Still he wrote no line to the Regiment, that for thirteen years had
stood second only to his God, and very rarely asked for news of it or
his friends. By now their letters betrayed hints and more than hints
of increasing anxiety. The men wrote tentatively; but Frank Olliver,
nothing if not direct, poured forth her loving, unreasoning Irish
heart on closely-written sheets of foreign paper, to Wyndham's
alternate distraction and delight.

"Is there no manner of wild tale you could invent now to rouse the
blessed man?" she wrote about this time. "Sure it's past believing
that his pretty doll of a wife--who went near to ruin him
living--should stand between him and us that love him, worse than ever
now she's dead. The fear of it haunts me like a bogey and makes me go
red hot inside."

The selfsame fear made Paul Wyndham go cold in the small hours; but
he could not bring himself to write of it, even to Frank.

At last, in the second week of the New Year, there came news that
wrought a change in Desmond; news from John Meredith of his father's
broken health and his sister's immediate departure for England. She
would sail in a week, he wrote, and would travel overland.

Paul, reading the letter to his friend, had a sudden inspiration.

"Theo, let's go and meet her at Marseilles!" he said eagerly, "and see
her safe into the express. It would please Meredith--and her too."

For the fraction of a second, an answering eagernes