t as she did. Dual misunderstanding,
in which the imagination fermented. Hence the hate. Yet each, in hating,
loved the other. Each felt the splinters which, as Browning somewhere
noted, kept fresh and fine. Only a touch and the splinters would have
joined.

Mrs. Austen, for all her horrible shrewdness, could not have prevented
that. But pride, that gives so many of us a fall, was more potent than
she. Margaret, insulted, could but turn away. Lennox, dismissed, could
but let her go.

Any emotion is unbecoming. Pride is merely ridiculous. It resides in the
youthful-minded, however old. In residing in these young people, it
resisted the touch that would have combined them and, through its
opposition, made one of them ill and the other grey. To be proud! How
splendid it seems and how stupid it is. Hell is paved with just such
imbecilities.

It is said of Dante that children peered at him and whispered: "That man
has been in hell."

None of the children that clubmen are, pointed at Lennox, though two of
them whispered. The others did not know, not yet at least. But Verelst
knew and Jones guessed. The guess was due to the romantic profession
that endows a novelist with the wonderful faculty of putting two and two
together.

Hitherto, that is since the engagement was announced and, for that
matter, long previously, Lennox had passed the evening in Park Avenue.
Where else would he have passed it? After the rupture he sat about and
read all the papers. When a man is down and out that is just what he
does do, though not necessarily in the Athenaeum Club.

Jones, noticing it, rapidly divined the reason which Verelst confirmed.

"Yes, her mother told me."

It was in a club window, of an afternoon. Before them was Fifth Avenue
which, in the Aprils of not so long ago, used to be a horse-show of fair
faces, ravishing hats, discreet liveries, folded arms and yards of
yodeling brass.

Verelst, eyeing the usurping motors, added: "It is because of some girl
I believe, or rather I don't believe it."

Jones sat back. Instantly the motors were replaced by the picture of a
girl whose face was noble and reserved. He had seen the face at the
Bazaar. He had seen Lennox talking to it. Afterward Lennox had told him
that the girl was Portuguese. The picture was attractive but
unconvincing. In agreement with Verelst he was about to say so. But
behind him he heard a voice that he knew and he switched and said:

"What a remarkable coun