He raised his arms, then dropped them with a kind of whimsical
desperation. "How can I be well, or look well? My pride has suffered
as well as my health. I'm ill, ashamed, and sorry. What'll we do,
Pauline, if I can't keep sober?"

He had often said this to her, but never with such depth of sorrowful
meaning as now.

"What shall we do, lady dear?" he repeated in a helpless, fretful
murmur. "What shall we do?"

Her figure stiffened, she was again the tragic muse, the woman of the
world with experience and authority behind her, and, woman-like, as he
weakened, she grew stronger.

"You are not likely to," she cried with a fine encouraging gesture.
"It is possible, I admit, but not probable. For you, Edmund, as well
as for me, it is new places, new images, for the snows of this forlorn,
this desolate, cold Canada; the boulevards of Paris, for the hermit's
cell in the black funereal forest.--There goes your friend Martin now,
_voila_! _B'jour_, Martin."

"_B'jour_, mademoiselle!"

"Those apartments you spoke of in London, in German Street. Tell
me--is that some colony where musicians, perhaps, gather, or the
long-haired art students I have heard so much about?"

Crabbe stared.

"Students! Colony! Jermyn Street? Oh--I see--_German_ Street--I see,
I understand."

He laughed, but not quite freely--spontaneously. Indeed, so much did
he feel some unaccustomed stress, he did not stop to set her right.
What did her ignorance of a certain London locality matter? what did
anything matter just now but the one leading uppermost thought--let
nothing prevent our leaving this place together and leaving it soon, no
failure of mine, no caprice of hers, no interference of another? New
resolution showed in his features; he dropped her hand which he had
been holding and turned back towards Poussette's.

"You are right, as usual," he said soberly. "There's no need for me to
go with you. I'll turn home-along as they used to say in Devonshire,
and try to do a little writing while I can, for after to-morrow I fear
it will not be easy. So good-bye to you, lady dear, good-bye for an
hour or two, good-bye!"

A little chilled by standing, in spite of that soft wind, Pauline ran
lightly along towards Lac Calvaire, conscious always of her fine
appearance and humming operatic snatches as she ran, bent upon an
errand, which if not precisely one of mercy was yet one prompted by
good-will and a belated sisterliness. The glo