dy spoken at considerable
length on the subject, "one would think that I could have prevented it.
If Jaffery chooses to go Baresark and Liosha to throw her cap over the
topmasts, why in the world shouldn't they?"

"I suppose I'm conventional," said Barbara. "And from the description
you have given me of the boat, I'm sure the poor child will be utterly
miserable, and she'll ruin her hands and her figure and her skin."

I wished I had drawn a little less lurid picture of the steamship
_Vesta_.

As soon as business or idleness took me to town, I visited St. Quentin's
Mansions, and after consultation with the porter, who, knowing me to be
a friend of Mr. Chayne's, assured me that I need not have burdened
myself with the horrible key, I entered Jaffery's chambers. I found the
small sitting-room in very much the same state of litter as when Jaffery
left it. He enjoyed litter and hated the devastating tidiness of
housemaids. Give a young horse with a long, swishy tail a quarter of an
hour's run in an ordinary bachelor's rooms, and you will have the normal
appearance of Jaffery's home. As I knew he did not want me to dust his
books and pictures (such as they were) or to make order out of a chaos,
of old newspapers, or to put his pipes in the rack or to remove spurs
and physical culture apparatus from the sofa, or to bestow tender care
upon a cannon ball, an antiquated eighteen or twenty-pounder, which
reposed--most useful piece of furniture--in the middle of the
hearth-rug, or to see to the comfortless electric radiator that took the
place of a grate, I let these things be, and concentrated my attention
on his papers which lay loose on desk and table. This was obviously the
tidying up to which he had referred. I swept his correspondence into one
drawer. I gathered together the manuscript of his new novel and swept it
into another. On the top of a pedestal bookcase I discovered the
original manuscript of "The Greater Glory," neatly bound in brown paper
and threaded through with red tape. This I dropped into the third drawer
of the desk, which already contained a mass of papers. I went into his
bedroom, where I found more letters lying about. I collected them and
looked around. There seemed to be little left for me to do. I noticed
two photographs on his dressing-table--one of his mother, whom I
remembered, and, one of Doria--these I laid face downwards so that the
light should not fade them. I noticed also a battered portmant