for the omnibus, which would not leave till four. He must strike
while his will was hot.

He walked rapidly; in less than an hour he had reached the tall gilded
grille of the park. He stopped for an instant, and looked up the
straight avenue of chestnuts, to the western front of the castle, softly
alight in the afternoon sun. He put his hand upon the pendent bell-pull
of twisted iron, to summon the porter. In another second he would have
rung, he would have been admitted.... And just then one of the little
demons that inhabit the circumambient air, called his attention to an
aspect of the situation which he had not thought of.

"Wait a bit," it whispered in his ear. "You were there only yesterday.
It can't fail, therefore, to seem extraordinary, your calling again
to-day. You must be prepared with an excuse, an explanation. But
suppose, when you arrive, suppose that (like the lady in the ballad) she
greets you with 'a glance of cold surprise'--what then, my dear? Why,
then, it's obvious, you can't allege the true explanation--can you?
If she greets you with a glance of cold, surprise, you 'll have your
answer, as it were, before the fact you 'll know that there's no manner
of hope for you; and the time for passionate avowals will automatically
defer itself. But then--? How will you justify your visit? What face can
you put on?"

"H'm," assented Peter, "there's something in that."

"There's a great deal in that," said the demon. "You must have an excuse
up your sleeve, a pretext. A true excuse is a fine thing in its way;
but when you come to a serious emergency, an alternative false excuse is
indispensable."

"H'm," said Peter.

However, if there are demons in the atmosphere, there are gods in the
machine--("Paraschkine even goes so far as to maintain that there are
more gods in the machine than have ever been taken from it.")
While Peter stood still, pondering the demon's really rather cogent
intervention, his eye was caught by something that glittered in the
grass at the roadside.

"The Cardinal's snuff-box," he exclaimed, picking it up.

The Cardinal had dropped his snuff-box. Here was an excuse, and to
spare. Peter rang the bell.

XXIV

And, like the lady in the ballad, sure enough, she greeted his arrival
with a glance of cold surprise.

At all events, eyebrows raised, face unsmiling, it was a glance that
clearly supplemented her spoken "How do you do?" by a tacit (perhaps
self-addressed?) "