rowing his cigar violently into the fire. For a
minute or two he stood glaring at the embers. When he turned on her it
was savagely.

"May I ask your motive in springing this on me, Marquise?"

"Mon Dieu, Col-on-el, I thought you'd like to know what a friend you
have."

"Damn his friendship. That's not the reason. You've something up your
sleeve."

She looked up at him innocently. "Have I? Then I must leave it to you to
tell me what it is. But when you do," she added, smiling, "I hope you'll
take another tone. In France men are gallant with women--"

"And in England women are straight with men. What they have to say they
say. They don't lay snares, or lie in ambush."

She laughed. "Quant a cela, Col-on-el, il y en a pour tous les gouts,
meme en Angleterre."

"I'll bid you good-by, madame."

He bowed stiffly, and went out into the hail. She continued to smoke
daintily, pensively, while she listened to him noisily pulling on his
overcoat and taking his stick from the stand. As he passed the library
door he stopped on the threshold.

"By Gad, she's _mine_!" he said, fiercely.

She got up and went to him, taking him by the lapel of the coat. There
was something like pity in her eyes as she said: "My poor fellow, nobody
has raised that question. What's more, nobody _will_ raise it--unless
you do yourself."

XXIII

Ashley's craving was for space and air. He felt choked, strangled. There
was a high wind blowing, carrying a sleety rain. It was a physical
comfort to turn into the teeth of it.

He took a road straggling out of the town toward the remoter suburbs,
and so into the country. He marched on, his eyes unseeing, his mouth set
grimly--goaded by a kind of frenzy to run away from that which he knew
he could not leave behind. It was like fleeing from something
omnipresent. Though he should turn his back on it never so sternly and
travel never so fast, it would be with him. It had already entered into
his life as a constituent element; he could no more get rid of it than
of his breath or his blood.

And yet the thing itself eluded him. In the very attempt to apprehend it
by sight or name, he found it mysteriously beyond his grasp. It was like
an enemy in the air, deadly but out of reach. It had struck him, though
he could not as yet tell where. He could only stride onward through the
wind and rain, as a man who has been shot can ride on till he falls.

So he tramped for an hour or more, finding him