at here must come a break, a pause, in the presence of
this radiating gap in the Postmaster-General's glass, and the phenomenon
of this gentle and beautiful lady, the mother of four children, grasping
in her gloved hand, and with a certain amateurishness, a lumpish
poker-end of iron.

We make the pause by ending the chapter here and by resuming the story
at a fresh point--with an account of various curious phases in the
mental development of Mr. Brumley.

CHAPTER THE NINTH

MR. BRUMLEY IS TROUBLED BY DIFFICULT IDEAS

Sec.1

Then as that picture of a post office pane, smashed and with a large
hole knocked clean through it, fades at last upon the reader's
consciousness, let another and a kindred spectacle replace it. It is the
carefully cleaned and cherished window of Mr. Brumley's mind, square and
tidy and as it were "frosted" against an excess of light, and in that
also we have now to record the most jagged all and devastating
fractures.

Little did Mr. Brumley reckon when first he looked up from his laces at
Black Strand, how completely that pretty young woman in the dark furs
was destined to shatter all the assumptions that had served his life.

But you have already had occasion to remark a change in Mr. Brumley's
bearing and attitude that carries him far from the kindly and humorous
conservatism of his earlier work. You have shared Lady Harman's
astonishment at the ardour of his few stolen words in the garden, an
astonishment that not only grew but flowered in the silences of her
captivity, and you know something of the romantic impulses, more at
least than she did, that gave his appearance at the little local railway
station so belated and so disreputable a flavour. In the chilly
ill-flavoured solitude of her prison cell and with a mind quickened by
meagre and distasteful fare, Lady Harman had ample leisure to reflect
upon many things, she had already fully acquainted herself with the
greater proportion of Mr. Brumley's published works, and she found the
utmost difficulty in reconciling the flushed impassioned quality of his
few words of appeal, with the moral assumptions of his published
opinions. On the whole she was inclined to think that her memory had a
little distorted what he had said. In this however she was mistaken; Mr.
Brumley had really been proposing an elopement and he was now entirely
preoccupied with the idea of rescuing, obtaining and possessing Lady
Harman for himself as soon as th