elza, _l'homme a la carabine_, in Victor Hugo's poem, she is
vastly mistaken. From this hour henceforth I swear she is nothing to me;
I will eat and sleep and laugh as if she had never existed. Polyphemus,
curled up in Carlotta's old place on the sofa, regards me with his
sardonic eye. He is an evil, incredulous, mocking beast, who a few
centuries ago would have been burned with his late mistress.

I am sane and happier now that I have come to my irrevocable
determination.

To-morrow I go to Judith.

CHAPTER XIX

November 10th.

I had to ring twice before Judith's servant opened the flat door.

"Mrs. Mainwaring is engaged just at present, Sir Marcus."

"Ask her if I can come in and wait, as I have something of importance to
say to her."

She left me standing in the passage, a thing that had never before
occurred to me in Judith's establishment, and presently returned with
her answer. Would I mind waiting in the dining-room? I entered. The
table was littered with sheets of her statistical work and odd bits of
silk' and lining. A type-writer stood at one end and a sewing-machine at
the other. On the writing-desk by the window, in the midst of a mass of
letters and account-books, rested a large bowl filled with magnificent
blooms of white and yellow chrysanthemums. A volume of Dante lay
open face downwards on the corner. It did my heart good to see this
untidiness, so characteristic of Judith, so familiar, so intimate. She
had taken her trouble bravely, I reflected. The ordinary daily task had
not been left undone. Through all she had preserved her valiant sanity.
I felt rebuked for my own loss of self-control.

I was about to turn away from the litter of the desk, when my eye caught
sight of an envelope bearing a French stamp and addressed in Pasquale's
unmistakable handwriting. As there seemed to be a letter inside, I did
not take it up to examine it more closely. The glance was enough to
assure me that it came from Pasquale. Why should he be corresponding
with Judith? I walked away puzzled. Was it a justification, a
confession, a plea to her as my friend to obtain my forgiveness?
If there is one thing more irritating than another it is to
light accidentally upon a mystery affecting oneself in a friend's
correspondence. One can no more probe deeply into it than one can steal
the friend's spoons. It seems an indiscretion to have noticed it, an
unpardonable impertinence to subject it to conjecture. I