us for the
first time in his life that the hours hung heavy on his hands. It was
with a blank surprise that he realised that such a misfortune, which he
had always thought vaguely could befall only the idlers and desultory of
this world, should attack himself. Life is always laying these snares
for us, putting in our way suddenly and unexpectedly some form of
unpleasantness by which we may have seen others attacked, but from
which unconsciously we have felt that we ourselves should be preserved
by our own merits,--just as when we are in good health we hear of
sciatica, lumbago, or gout, and accept them without concern as part of
the composition of the universe, until one day one of these
disagreeables attacks ourselves, and stands out quite disproportionately
as something that after all is of more consequence than we thought. It
unfortunately nearly always happens that we have to face the mental
crises of life inadequately prepared. We think we have pictured them
beforehand, and according to that picture we are ready, in imagination,
with a sufficient equipment of fortitude and decision to enable us to
encounter them. In reality we mostly do no better than a traveller who
going to an unknown land and climate, guesses for himself beforehand
what his outfit had better be, and then finds it deplorably inadequate
when he gets there. Rendel, during those days of lonely agony in London
that followed the revelations sprung on the public by the _Arbiter_, had
endeavoured to school himself to face what the future might have in
store for him; but he had thought that while he was abroad, at any rate,
the horror that pursued him now would be in abeyance. He had never been
to German baths, he had never been to a fashionable resort of the kind;
he had no idea what it meant. All that he had vaguely pictured was that
it would be some sort of respite from the thing that dogged him now, the
fear--for there was no doubt that as the days went on it grew into a
fear--of coming suddenly upon some one he knew, who would look him in
the face and then turn away. And now that they were at the term of their
journey, installed in their little foreign pavilion, he had become aware
that at a stone's throw from him was a numerous cosmopolitan society,
among whom was probably a large contingent from London. He did not try
to learn their names; he would jealously keep aloof from them. Rachel
had been advised to stay here for four weeks at least. Four wee