her Sly beatitude on his face, while Doria, chin on palm,
and her great eyes set on him, drank in all the wonder of this
miraculous being.

I said to Barbara: "She's making a besotted idiot of the man."

Barbara professed rare agreement. But . . . the woman's point of
view. . . .

"I don't worry about him," she said. "It's of her I'm thinking. When she
has turned him into the idiot--"

"She'll adore him all the more," I interrupted.

"But when she finds out the idiot she has made?"

"No woman has ever done that since the world began," said I. "The
unwavering love of woman for her home-made idiot is her sole
consistency."

Barbara with much puckering of brow sought for argument, but found none,
the proposition being incontrovertible. She mused for a while and then,
quickly, a smile replaced the frown.

"I suppose that is why I go on loving you, Hilary dear," she said
sweetly.

I turned upon her, with my hand, as it were, on the floodgates of a
torrent of eloquence; but with her silvery mocking laugh she vanished
from the apartment. She did. The old-fashioned high-falutin' phrase is
the best description I can give of the elusive uncapturable nature of
this wife of mine. It is a pity that she has so little to do with the
story of Jaffery which I am trying to relate, for I should like to make
her the heroine. You see, I know her so well, or imagine I do, which
comes to the same thing, and I should love to present you with a
solution, of this perplexing, exasperating, adorable, high-souled
conundrum that is Barbara Freeth. But she, like myself, is but a
_raisonneur_ in the drama, and so, reluctantly, I must keep her in the
background. _Paullo majora canamus_. Let us come to the horses.

All this, time we had not lost sight of Liosha. As deputies for the
absent trustee we received periodical reports from the admirable Mrs.
Considine, and entertained both ladies for an occasional week-end. On
the whole, her demeanour in the Queen's Gate boarding-house was
satisfactory. At first trouble arose over a young curly haired Swiss
waiter who had won her sympathy in the matter of a broken heart. She had
entered the dining-room when he was laying the table and discovered him
watering the knives and forks with tears. Unaccustomed to see men weep,
she enquired the cause. He dried his eyes with a napkin and told a
woeful tale of a faithless love in Neuchatel, a widow plump and
well-to-do. He had looked forward to marry her at