fluity of adipose tissue of the possibility of living
through a romance of his own. Turner had consented to countenance, if
not actually to take part in, a nefarious scheme, to rid France and the
present government of one who might easily bring about its downfall, on
certain conditions. Knowing quite well that Loo Barebone could take care
of himself at sea, and was quite capable of effecting an escape if he
desired it, he had put no obstacle in the way of the usual voyage to
the Iceland fisheries. Since those days many governments in France
have invented many new methods of disposing of a political foe. Dormer
Colville was only anticipating events when he took away the character of
the Captain of the "Petite Jeanne."

Turner had himself proposed this alternative method of securing
Barebone's silence. He had even named the sum. He had seized the
excellent opportunity of laying it before Barebone in the quiet intimacy
of the rectory drawing-room with Miriam in the soft lamp-light beside
him, with the scent of the violets at her breast mingling with the warm
smell of the wood fire.

And Barebone had laughed at the offer.

CHAPTER XXX. IN THE FURROW AGAIN

Turner, stumbling along the road to "The Black Sailor," probably
wondered why he had failed. It is to be presumed that he knew that
the ally he had looked to for powerful aid had played him false at the
crucial moment.

His misfortune is common to all men who presume to take anything for
granted from a woman.

Barebone, stumbling along in the dark in another direction, was as angry
with Miriam as she in her turn was angry with Turner. She was, Barebone
reflected, so uncompromising. She saw her course so clearly, so
unmistakably--as birds that fly in the night--and from that course
nothing, it seemed, would move her. It was a question of temperament
and not of principle. For, even half a century ago, high principles were
beginning to go out of fashion in the upper strata of a society which in
these days tolerates anything except cheating at games.

Barebone himself was of a different temperament. He liked to blind
himself to the inevitable end, to temporise with the truth, whereas
Miriam, with a sort of dogged courage essentially English, perceived the
hard truth at once and clung to it, though it hurt. And all the while
Barebone knew at the back of his heart that his life was not his own
to shape. At the end, says an Italian motto, stands Destiny. Barebone