pened on a Wednesday. When Godfrey went to bed
that night uncomfortable memories of Madame Riennes, and of the chaste
embrace which she had forced him to impress upon her expansive
forehead, haunted him for a while, also fears for the future. However,
Sunday was still a long way off, so he went to sleep and dreamed that
he was buying presents at every shop in Lucerne and giving them all to
Madame Riennes.

On Thursday he was quite happy. On Friday he began to suffer from
uneasiness, which on Saturday became very pronounced. It seemed to him
that already waves of influence were creeping towards him like the
fringes of some miasmic mist. Doubtless it was imagination, but he
could feel their first frail tentacles wrapping themselves around his
will, and drawing him towards Lucerne. As the day went on the tentacles
grew stronger, till by evening there might have been a very octopus
behind them. If this were so that night, he wondered what would happen
on the following day, when the octopus began to pull. On one point he
was determined. He would not go; never would he allow Madame Riennes to
put him to sleep again, and what was much worse to make him kiss her.
At any rate that spirit, Eleanor, was beautiful and attractive--but
Madame Riennes! Rather than forgather with her again in this
affectionate manner, much as he dreaded it--or her--he would have
compounded with the ghost called Eleanor.

Now, although like most young people, Godfrey was indolent and evasive
of difficulties, fearful of facing troubles also, he had a bedrock of
character. There were points beyond which he would not go, even for the
sake of peace. But here a trouble came in; he was well aware that
although he would not go--to Madame Riennes to wit--there was something
stronger than himself which would make him go. It was the old story
over again set out by St. Paul once and for ever, that of the two laws
which make a shuttlecock of man so that he must do what he wills not.
Having once given way to Madame Riennes, who was to him a kind of sin
incarnate, he had become her servant, and if she wished to put him to
sleep, or to do anything else with him, well, however much he hated it,
he must obey.

The thought terrified him. What could he do? He had tried prayers,
never before had he prayed so hard in all his life; but they did not
seem to be of the slightest use. No guardian angel, not even Eleanor,
appeared to protect him from Madame Riennes, and meanwh