smal stare in which the
thought of her was as abnormally vivid as the colour of the pupil, the
excellent woman put up her funny face and tenderly kissed him on the
cheek.

X

I have spoken of these reminiscences as of a row of coloured beads, and
I confess that as I continue to straighten out my chaplet I am rather
proud of the comparison. The beads are all there, as I said--they slip
along the string in their small, smooth roundness. Geoffrey Daw-ling
accepted like a gentleman the event his evening paper had proclaimed;
in view of which I snatched a moment to murmur him a hint to offer Mrs.
Meldrum his hand. He returned me a heavy head-shake, and I judged that
marriage would henceforth strike him very much as the traffic of the
street may strike some poor incurable at the window of an hospital.
Circumstances arising at this time promptly led to my making an absence
from England, and circumstances already existing offered him a solid
basis for similar action. He had after all the usual resource of a
Briton--he could take to his boats.

He started on a journey round the globe, and I was left with nothing but
my inference as to what might have happened. Later observation however
only confirmed my belief that if at any time during the couple of months
that followed Flora Saunt's brilliant engagement he had made up, as
they say, to the good lady of Folkestone, that good lady would not have
pushed him over the cliff. Strange as she was to behold I knew of cases
in which she had been obliged to administer that shove. I went to New
York to paint a couple of portraits; but I found, once on the spot,
that I had counted without Chicago, where I was invited to blot out this
harsh discrimination by the production of no less than ten. I spent a
year in America and should probably have spent a second had I not been
summoned back to England by alarming news from my mother. Her
strength had failed, and as soon as I reached London I hurried down
to Folkestone, arriving just at the moment to offer a welcome to some
slight symptom of a rally. She had been much worse, but she was now a
little better; and though I found nothing but satisfaction in having
come to her I saw after a few hours that my London studio, where arrears
of work had already met me, would be my place to await whatever might
next occur. Before returning to town however I had every reason to sally
forth in search of Mrs. Meldrum, from whom, in so many months, I h