being idle) continued to
look at the girl through all the second part of the programme. The shape
of her dark head inclined over the violin was fascinating, and, while
resting between the pieces of that interminable programme she was, in
her white dress and with her brown hands reposing in her lap, the very
image of dreamy innocence. The mature, bad-tempered woman at the
piano might have been her mother, though there was not the slightest
resemblance between them. All I am certain of in their personal relation
to each other is that cruel pinch on the upper part of the arm. That I
am sure I have seen! There could be no mistake. I was in too idle a mood
to imagine such a gratuitous barbarity. It may have been playfulness,
yet the girl jumped up as if she had been stung by a wasp. It may have
been playfulness. Yet I saw plainly poor "dreamy innocence" rub gently
the affected place as she filed off with the other performers down the
middle aisle between the marble tables in the uproar of voices, the
rattling of dominoes through a blue atmosphere of tobacco smoke. I
believe that those people left the town next day.

Or perhaps they had only migrated to the other big cafe, on the other
side of the Place de la Comedie. It is very possible. I did not go
across to find out. It was my perfect idleness that had invested the
girl with a peculiar charm, and I did not want to destroy it by
any superfluous exertion. The receptivity of my indolence made the
impression so permanent that when the moment came for her meeting with
Heyst I felt that she would be heroically equal to every demand of the
risky and uncertain future. I was so convinced of it that I let her go
with Heyst, I won't say without a pang but certainly without misgivings.
And in view of her triumphant end what more could I have done for her
rehabilitation and her happiness?

1920. J. C.

VICTORY: AN ISLAND TALE PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

There is, as every schoolboy knows in this scientific age, a very
close chemical relation between coal and diamonds. It is the reason, I
believe, why some people allude to coal as "black diamonds." Both these
commodities represent wealth; but coal is a much less portable form
of property. There is, from that point of view, a deplorable lack of
concentration in coal. Now, if a coal-mine could be put into one's
waistcoat pocket--but it can't! At the same time, there is a fascination
in coal, the supreme commodity of the age in