o'clock, waiting for him. This time the footman met him with a little
note from his mistress. Audrey had never dreamed that Vincent could get
up to town so quickly. She was so sorry she had missed him; especially
as she had had to go to bed with a feverish cold and a splitting
headache. She would be delighted to see him if he could call to-morrow
afternoon, between three and four. And she was always very
affectionately his.

He was bitterly disappointed, but his disappointment was nothing to his
trouble about Audrey's illness. Feverish colds contracted in August
often prove fatal. But he was not utterly cast down. There was still
to-morrow.

He went back to Devon Street slowly, for he felt tired, out of all
proportion to his muscular exertions that day. During the evening, which
he spent in the Havilands' studio, his depression gave way before the
prospect of seeing Audrey to-morrow. He looked at Katherine's pictures,
gave her a great deal of advice, and expressed the utmost astonishment
at the progress she had made. He considered "The Witch of Atlas"
particularly fine.

"It was painted four years ago, and as a matter of fact I haven't made a
bit of progress since. But never mind, you're quite right. It isn't half
bad."

She bent over her picture lovingly, brushed away the dust from the
canvas, and turned it resolutely with its face to the wall. She had not
looked at it since the day of renunciation. Her work led Hardy on to
talk of his, and he grew eloquent about the book, "Sport West of the
Rockies," which, as he had once told Audrey, was "to make posterity sit
up." He had the manuscript downstairs in his bag. Some day he would read
them a chapter or two; it would give them some idea of wild virgin
Nature, of what a sportsman's life really was--the best life, perhaps,
take it all round, to be lived on this earth; it was to be the
Pioneer-book of its subject. Hardy was always at his ease with Ted and
Katherine. Self-restraint was superfluous in their company; they knew
him too well, and liked him in spite of their knowledge. They were used
to his tempestuous bursts of narrative, and would laugh frankly in his
face, while he joined in the laugh with the greatest enjoyment. With him
ornamental story-telling was an amusing game, in which, if you were
clever enough to catch him lying, you had won and he had lost, that was
all.

To-night he lay back in his chair and expanded gloriously. He told tales
of perilous ad