course, she knows that I
am----"

"My best friend," interposed the other impulsively. "So you are. And
I ought to have told you; I was a brute. And I feel like the devil
about it.... Well, it can't be helped. Will you have this cab, or
shall I?"

Rainham drew back with a gesture of abnegation, as the driver reined
the horse back upon its haunches with a clatter.

"I'm going to walk, I think. Only up to Bloomsbury, you know.
Good-night, Dick. I hope you'll be very happy, both of you."

When the cab drove off, Rainham stood still for a minute and watched
it out of sight. Then he started and seemed to pull himself
together.

"I wish I knew!" he said aloud to himself, as he stepped rapidly
towards the East. "Well, we'll be off to Bordighera now, _mon vieux_.
We've lost Dick, I think, and we've lost----"

The soliloquy died away in a sigh and a pathetic shrug.

CHAPTER XV

A day or two later, when Rainham called in the afternoon at the
Kensington studio to announce his approaching flight from England,
he found Mrs. Sylvester and Eve in occupation, and a sitting in
progress. His greeting of Eve was somewhat constrained. He seemed to
stumble over the congratulations, the utterance of which usage and
old acquaintance demanded; and he was more at his ease when the ice
was fairly broken.

"I expected to find you here," he said, addressing Mrs. Sylvester.
"I have been to your house, and they told me you would probably be
at the studio--_the_ studio--so I came on."

"Good boy, good boy!" said Lightmark, with as much approbation in
his voice as the presence of the stick of a paint-brush between his
teeth would allow. "You'll excuse our going on a little longer,
won't you? It'll be too dark in a few minutes."

"You don't look well, Philip," remarked Mrs. Sylvester presently,
with a well-assumed air of solicitude. "You ought to have come to
Lucerne with us, instead of spending all the summer in town."

"Yes; why _didn't_ you, Philip?" cried Eve reproachfully. "It would
have been so nice--oh, I'm so sorry, Dick, I didn't mean to
move--you really ought to have come."

"Well, there was the dock, you see, and business and all that sort
of thing. I can't always neglect business, you know."

Lightmark asserted emphatically that he _didn't_ know, while, on the
other hand, Mrs. Sylvester was understood to remark, with a certain
air of mystery, that she could quite understand what kept Philip in
town.

"Don't you t