utiful and elegant young lady who walked into his shop one day
astonished and delighted him with her radiance. She was the kind of
accident that does not often happen to a humble Anarchist bookseller.

When she came again and again, he warmed to her, and recommended books,
and gave her Prince Kropotkin's _Memoirs_ as a present, at least he
gave her the second volume, for he could not find the first.... He
always hotly denied that books were stolen from his open shop, but
admitted that they were sometimes 'borrowed' by his young friends.

The story of Kropotkin's escape from the fortress moved Clara deeply,
and she read it to Verschoyle in her rooms.

'And that man is still alive,' she said, 'here in England, where we go
round and round hunting fame and money.... He was like you,
Verschoyle, in just such a position as you, but he found it intolerable
and went to prison.'

'Ah! but that was in Russia, where it is easy to go to prison. If I
tried and tried they wouldn't send me. I'm too rich. They wouldn't do
it. If I became an Anarchist, they would just laugh because they don't
believe that society can ever be upset.'

'I'm quite sure I didn't go into that shop for nothing. Something is
going to happen to me,' said Clara.

'I think quite enough has happened to you. Don't you? ... What a
restless little creature you are! Here you are with everything at your
feet, the greatest artist, the richest bachelor in London at your
disposal, and you want something to happen to you.'

'I don't want it. I say that I feel it must come.

'You're before your time, my dear. That's what is the matter with you.
Women aren't independent yet. They are still clinging to men. That is
what I cannot stand about them. I should hate to have a woman clinging
to my money. Still more should I hate to have one clinging to myself.'

'But you ought to marry. You would be happier.'

He shook his head and smiled,--

'You have made that impossible, Clara.'

'I?'

'Yes. If I found a girl like you who wanted to marry me I might
consider it.... My aunts are furious.'

'With me?'

'Yes. You have made more of a stir than you can imagine. They tell me
you are more wicked than Cleopatra, and yet you complain that nothing
happens to you.'

She took him to the bookshop and introduced him to the bookseller, a
little gray-bearded man in a tweed suit. Verschoyle liked him and
asked him what he thought a man in his position oug