ing to lessen it. Before helpless
grief I find myself abashed, afraid, as before a great mystery--which it
is. Only one day last week, passing through a poor quarter of South
London, my cab was delayed almost beside a solitary funeral coach which
followed a hearse. The coffin bore one poor humble little wreath. In the
coach sat a woman, a young woman, alone--and hers was the wreath upon
the coffin, her husband's coffin. He had died after discharge from a
military hospital; so much I learned from the cabman, who had known the
couple. She sat there dry-eyed and staring straight before her. No one
took the slightest notice of the hearse, or of the lonely mourner. Don,
that woman's face still haunts me. Perhaps he had been a blackguard--I
gathered that he had; but he was her man, and she had lost him, and the
world was empty for her. No pompous state funeral could have embodied
such tragedy as that solitary figure following the spectre of her
vanished joy."

Don turned impulsively to the speaker. "You dear old sentimentalist," he
said; "do you really continue to believe in the faith of woman?"

Paul glanced aside at him. "Had I ever doubted it, Yvonne would have
reassured me. Wait until you meet a Yvonne, old man; then _I_ shall ask
_you_ if you really continue to believe in the faith of woman. Here we
are."

IV

A trellis-covered path canopied with roses led up to the door of
Dovelands Cottage. On the left was a low lichened wall, and on the right
a bed of flowers bordering a trimly kept lawn, which faced the rustic
porch. Dovelands Cottage was entirely screened from the view of anyone
passing along Babylon Lane by a high and dense privet hedge, which
carried on its unbroken barrier to the end of the tiny orchard and
kitchen-garden flanking the bungalow building on the left.

As Paul opened the white gate a cattle-bell attached to it jangled
warningly, and out into the porch Mrs. Duveen came to meet them. She was
a tiny woman, having a complexion like a shrivelled pippin, and the
general appearance of a Zingari, for she wore huge ear-rings and
possessed shrewd eyes of Oriental shape and colour. There was a bluish
tinge about her lips, and she had a trick of pressing one labour-gnarled
hand to her breast. She curtsied quaintly.

Paul greeted her with the charming courtesy which he observed towards
everyone.

"Mrs. Duveen, I believe? I am Paul Mario, and this is Captain Courtier,
who has a message to give to you.