I could beg forgiveness.'

A sight of that extremity fetched prickles to his forehead.

'You've borne your part bravely, my friend.'

'I!' Mr. Radnor shrugged at mention of his personal burdens. 'Praise my
Nataly if you like! Made for one another, if ever two in this world! You
know us both, and do you doubt it? The sin would have been for us two to
meet and--but enough when I say, that I am she, she me, till death and
beyond it: that's my firm faith. Nataly teaches me the religion of life,
and you may learn what that is when you fall in love with a woman.
Eighteen-nineteen-twenty years!'

Tears fell from him, two drops. He blinked, bugled in his throat, eyed
his watch, and smiled: 'The finishing glass! We should have had to put
Colney to bed. Few men stand their wine. You and I are not lamed by it;
we can drink and do business: my first experience in the City was, that
the power to drink--keeping a sound head--conduces to the doing of
business.'

'It's a pleasant way of instructing men to submit to their conqueror.'

'If it doubles the energies, mind.'

'Not if it fiddles inside. I confess to that effect upon me. I've a waltz
going on, like the snake with the tail in his mouth, eternal; and it
won't allow of a thought upon Investments.'

'Consult me to-morrow,' said Mr. Radnor, somewhat pained for having
inconsiderately misled the man he had hitherto helpfully guided. 'You've
looked at the warehouse?'

'That's performed.'

'Make a practice of getting over as much of your business in the early
morning as you well can.'

Mr. Radnor added hints of advice to a frail humanity he was indulgent,
the giant spoke in good fellowship. It would have been to have strained
his meaning, for purposes of sarcasm upon him, if one had taken him to
boast of a personal exemption from our common weakness.

He stopped, and laughed: 'Now I 'm pumping my pulpit-eh? You come with us
to Lakelands. I drive the ladies down to my office, ten A.M.: if it's
fine; train half-past. We take a basket. By the way, I had no letter from
Dartrey last mail.'

'He has buried his wife. It happens to some men.'

Mr. Radnor stood gazing. He asked for the name of the place of the
burial. He heard without seizing it. A simulacrum spectre-spark of
hopefulness shot up in his imagination, glowed and quivered, darkening at
the utterance of the Dutch syllables, leaving a tinge of witless envy.
Dartrey--Fenellan had buried the wife whose behaviour vexed