wed any pleasant leisure
when they need it, and many of the most dramatic things in real life
happen when we are in such a hurry that we do not half understand
them. So the moment that should have been the happiest of all goes
dashing by when we are hastening to catch a train; so the instant of
triumph after years of labour or weeks of struggling is upon us when
we are perhaps positively obliged to write three important notes
in twenty minutes; and sometimes, too, and mercifully, the pain of
parting is numbed just as the knife strikes the nerve, by the howling
confusion of a railway station that forces us to take care of
ourselves and our belongings; and when the first instant of joy, or
victory, or acute suffering is gone in a flash, memory never quite
brings back all the happiness nor all the pain.

Lady Maud could not have stayed away many minutes longer. She went
back at once, entered by the garden window just as Margaret was
finishing Rosina's song, and remained standing behind her till she
had sung the last note. English people rarely applaud conventional
drawing-room music, but this had been something more, and the Craythew
guests clapped their hands loudly, and even the elderly wife of the
scientific peer emitted distinctly audible sounds of satisfaction.
Lady Maud bent her handsome head and kissed the singer affectionately,
whispering words of heartfelt thanks.

CHAPTER XIX

Through the mistaken efforts of Isidore Bamberger, justice had got
herself into difficulties, and it was as well for her reputation,
which is not good nowadays, that the public never heard what happened
on that night at Craythew, how the three best men who had been
available at headquarters were discomfited in their well-meant attempt
to arrest an innocent man, and how they spent two miserable hours
together locked up in a dark winding staircase. For it chanced, as
it will chance to the end of time, that the doctor was out when the
butler telephoned to him; it happened, too, that he was far from home,
engaged in ushering a young gentleman of prosperous parentage into
this world, an action of which the kindness might be questioned,
considering that the poor little soul presumably came straight from
paradise, with an indifferent chance of ever getting there again. So
the doctor could not come.

The three men were let out in due time, however, and as no trace of a
warrant could be discovered at that hour, Logotheti and Griggs bein