unassisted."

"Let us go back to town, then, if you think it is hindering you to stay
here."

"There is no occasion for you to return, Yvonne."

"Yes, but--I don't want to stay, Paul, if you are going. Really, I would
rather not." There was something pathetic, almost fearful, in the
insistency of her manner, and Paul had a glimpse again of that
intangible yet tauntingly familiar phantom in his wife's bearing. A
revelation seemed to be imminent, but it eluded him, and the more
eagerly he sought to grasp it the further did it recede. "You don't
_want_ to leave me behind, do you?" said Yvonne.

"Want to leave you behind!" cried Paul, standing up and crossing to
where she stood by the window. "Yvonne!" He held her close in his arms,
but there was no fire in the violet eyes, only a tired, pathetic
expression.

IV

The pageant proceeded merrily; these were merry days. And because it was
rumoured that men who fought hard also drank hard, the brethren of the
blue ribbon at last perceived their opportunity and seized upon it with
all the vigour and tenacity which belong to those reared upon a cocoa
diet. Denying the divinity of the grape, they concealed their treason
against Bacchus beneath a cloak of national necessity, and denied others
that which they did not want themselves. They remained personally immune
because no one thought of imposing a tax upon temperance-meetings,
hot-water bottles and air-raid shelters. "Avoid a man who neither drinks
nor smokes," was one of Don's adages. "He has other amusements."

Paul continued his pursuit of the elusive thread interwoven in modern
literature, and made several notable discoveries. "Contemplation of the
mountainous toils of Balzac and Dumas fills me with a kind of physical
terror," he said to Don on one occasion. "It is an odd reflection that
they would have achieved immortality just the same if they had contented
themselves respectively with the creation of Madame Marnefle and the
girl with the golden eyes, D'Artagnan and Chicot. The memory of Dumas is
enshrined in his good men, that of Balzac in his bad women. One
represents the active Male principle, the Sun, the other the passive
Feminine, or the Moon. I have decided that Dumas was the immediate
reincarnation of a musketeer, and Balzac of a public prosecutor."

"Pursuing this interesting form of criticism," said Don, "at once so
trenchant and so unobjectionable, to what earlier phase should you
ascribe the wit of G