'No--please--please say nothing more,' she cried with a sound of pain
in her voice.

'But may I come and see you again?'

She withdrew her hand and pressed it against her brow.

'Yes. I--I don't know. Good-night. Please don't say any more.' The
words ended in a choking, tearless sob. She stepped into the car, and
with no further sign to him threw in the clutch and started away.

Huddled in the corner, his pale face glistening in the lamplight of the
street, the Honourable Richard Durwent lay in a drunken sleep.

CHAPTER VIII.

INTERMEZZO.

It was several months later--May 1914, to be precise--when Austin
Selwyn made the determination, common to most men, to remain in for an
evening and catch up in his correspondence.

After the manner of his species, he produced a small army of letters
from various pockets, and spreading them in a heap on his desk,
proceeded to answer the more urgent, and postpone the less important to
a further occasion when conscience would again overcome indolence. For
an hour he wrote trivial politenesses to hostesses who had extended
hospitality or were going to do so; there was a reply to a literary
agent, one to a moving-picture concern, an answer to a critic, and a
note of thanks to an admirer.

Having disposed of these sundry matters, he sat back in his chair and
read a long letter that had been enclosed in an envelope bearing the
postage-stamp of the United States of America. At its finish he
settled himself comfortably, lit a cigar, and, squaring his shoulders,
wrote a reply to the Reverend Edgerton Forbes, Rector of St. Giles'
Episcopal Church, Fifth Avenue, New York:

'LONDON, _May 12, 1914_.

'MY DEAR EDGE,--I've been supplying your friend the Devil with all
sorts of cobblestones recently, but, my dear old boy, if I had written
you every time I intended to, you would have had no time to prepare
those knock-out sermons of yours.

'In your letter you hint at possible heart entanglements for me. Has
it not been said that to a writer all women are "copy"? Even when he
falls in love, your author is so busy studying the symptoms that he
usually fails to inform the lady until she has eloped with some other
clown.

'In fairness, however, I must admit that you were partly correct in
your surmise. I almost fell in love last November with a girl who
invariably angered me when I was with her, but clung to my mind next
day like an unfinished plot. I saw her quite fr