ate you won't have to look after me, or to feel that I'm
disgracing you with the smart people who have taken you up--

Don't look for us, for you will never, never find us.

Good-bye, John. Do you remember that night in the ghyll, and all the
things we said?

I've spoiled your sketch--I couldn't help it--and I'm not sorry--not
yet, anyway. She has everything in the world, and I had nothing--but
you. Why did you leave the lamps?--just to mock at me?

Good-bye. I have left my wedding-ring on this paper. You'll know I
couldn't do that, if I ever meant to come back!

She rose, and moved a small table in front of the ruined picture.
On it she placed, first, the parcel she had brought with her, which
contained papers and small personal possessions belonging to her
husband; in front of the packet she laid the five letters of Madame de
Pastourelles, her own letter in an envelope addressed to him, and upon
it her ring.

Then she put on her hat and veil, tying the veil closely round her
face, and, with one last look round the room, she crept to the door
and unlocked it. So quietly did she descend the stairs that Mrs.
Gibbs, who was listening sharply, with the kitchen door open, for any
sound of her departure, heard nothing. The outer door opened and shut
without the smallest noise, and the slender, veiled figure was quickly
lost in the darkness and the traffic of the street.

PART III

AFTER TWELVE YEARS

'Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.'

CHAPTER IX

'Quand vous arriverez au troisieme, monsieur, montez, montez toujours!
Vous trouverez un petit escalier tournant, en bois. Ca vous conduira a
l'atelier.'

Thus advised by the wife of the concierge, Fenwick crossed the
courtyard of an old house in the Rue du Bac, looked up a moment at the
sober and distinguished charm of its architecture, at the corniced,
many-paned windows, so solidly framed and plentifully lined in white,
upon the stone walls, and the high roof, with its lucarne windows just
touched with classical decoration; each line and tint contributing
to a seemly, restrained whole, as of something much worn by time, yet
merely enhanced thereby, something deliberately built, moreover, to
stand the years, and abide the judgement of posterity. The house in
Saint-Simon's day had belonged to one of those newly ennobled dukes,
his contemporaries and would-be brethren, whose monstrous claim