be seen beside her fire, in the years before he left London. He had,
therefore, been a spectator of Fenwick's gradual transformation at the
hands of a charming woman; he had marked the stages of the process;
and he knew well that it had never excited a shadow of scandal in the
minds of any reasonable being. All the same, the deep store of hidden
sentiment which this queer idealist possessed had been touched by
the position. The young woman isolated and childless, so charming,
so nobly sincere, so full of heart--was she to be always Ariadne,
and forsaken? The man--excitable, nervous, selfish, yet, in truth,
affectionate and dependent--what folly, or what chivalry kept him
unmarried? Ever since the death of M. le Comte de Pastourelles, dreams
concerning these two people had been stirring in the brain of Watson,
and these dreams spoke now in the dark eyes he bent on Fenwick.

Presently, Fenwick began to talk gloomily of the death of his old
Bernard Street landlady, who had become his housekeeper and factotum
in the new Chelsea house and studio, which he had built for himself.

'I don't know what I shall do without her. For eleven years I've never
paid a bill or engaged a servant for myself. She's done everything.
Every morning she used to give me my pocket-money for the day.'

'The remedy, after all, is simple,' said Watson, with a sudden turn of
the head.

Fenwick raised his eyebrows interrogatively.

'I imagine that what Mrs. Gibbs did well, "Mrs. Fenwick" might do even
better--_n'est-ce pas?_'

Fenwick sprang up.

'Mrs.--?' he repeated, vaguely.

He stood a moment bending over Watson--his eyes staring, his mouth
open. Then he controlled himself.

'You talk as though she were round the corner,' he said, turning away
and buttoning his coat afresh. 'But please understand, my dear fellow,
that she is not round the corner, nor likely to be.'

He spoke with a hard emphasis, smiling, and slapping the breast of his
coat.

Watson looked at him and said no more.

Fenwick walked rapidly along the Quai Voltaire, crossed the Pont Neuf,
and found himself inside the enclosure of the Louvre. Twenty minutes
to four. Some impulse, born of the seething thoughts within, took him
to the door of the Musee. He mounted rapidly, and found himself in the
large room devoted to the modern French school.

He went straight to two pictures by Hippolyte Flandrin--'Madame Vinet'
and 'Portrait de Jeune Fille.' When, in the first year o