views the passing hour without grudging, the past without regret.

"You look awfully seedy," he said. "Anything up?"

"No," I answered. "Well? 'How have we sped in this contest?' How went
the dinner?"

"I'll tell you," he said, turning round to secure a passing garcon.
"Let's get hold of a drink first. Oh, she's got a jolly place!" he
said, when the garcon, and eventually the drink, had been captured.
"Nice house and all that. She's married, as you said, and of very good
family. Received everywhere, you know."

"Husband at the dinner?" I asked laconically.

"No; husband gone to Tunis on business."

"Expected back to-day, I suppose?"

"No, to-morrow."

"Pity."

"Yes. You should have gone, Vic! She'd have satisfied you! Lovely
figure! I never knew a lovelier!"

I said nothing.

"What did you think of her stopping us like that?" he went on after a
minute.

"I thought it consummate cheek," I said. "I should not have believed it
if it hadn't actually happened before my eyes."

"Yes, it was cheeky; but do you know, she is not very cheeky, really.
An awfully nice woman, and very clever. But aren't these Parisiennes
queer? You can't imagine any woman doing such a thing in England, can
you?"

"Hardly."

"It seems she had seen us once before. It was you she wanted, not me.
Why didn't you go, you duffer? I only came in a bad second!"

I laughed.

"She had read my things and likes them. Do you know, I think it is
rather a good thing I have met her, it will urge me to do more--don't
look at me 'in that tone of voice,' I am sure it will, really, Victor!"

"Are you going to see her again, then?" I asked.

"Yes, oh yes!"

"When the husband next visits Tunis, I suppose?"

"Yes, and before that, even when he's here. She is going to patronise
my talent--see?"

"I see."

"I must write my next thing to her, of course. It's a nuisance being
hampered with this beastly French language!"

And then the conversation went on. We sat there and talked and argued
from the particular to the general, and back again, until the waiters
came and cleared the chairs off the pavement and began to turn out the
lights in the cafe--and it was a conversation after which I slept badly.

After this incident I saw less of Howard, and our lives ran farther and
farther apart. I grew more and more absorbed in the developing
manuscript. He grew more and more taken up in the stream of amusement
he had entered. He wrote very little. A