e but twice alone to the Princess Adelaide," I said. "I learnt
enough of her, however, to be sure that in any position she would do the
thing that was right and gracious."

"And so will Isobel," Lady Delahaye said. "I know the race well. The men
are degenerates, but the women have nerve to rule and courage to hold
their own against the world. Isobel's future may well be the more
brilliant of the two. Can you realize, I wonder, that Isobel of
Waldenburg was once the child who filled your brain with such strange
fancies?"

"I never think," I answered, "of Isobel of Waldenburg."

"You are wise," she answered. "She is as surely separated from us
eternally as though she had made that little journey from which one does
not return. Yet you--you are going to hug your wounds all your life. Is
that wise, my friend?"

I laughed softly.

"You are mistaken," I assured her. "I have no wounds--not even regrets.
I believe that there are few men happier. Look at my home!"

"It is beautiful," she admitted.

"My gardens, my flowers, my cedar-tree and my books," I said. "These are
all a joy to me. What more can a man want? Friends have moods, and they
pass away out of one's life. The friends who smile from my study wall
are patient and always ready. There is one to fit every hour. They do
not change. They are always ready to show me the way into the world
beautiful, to cheer me when I am sad, to laugh with me when I am gay.
You must not waste any sympathy on me, Lady Delahaye. The man who has
learnt to live alone is the man who has learnt the greatest lesson life
has to teach. He is the man for whom the sun shines always, who carries
with him for ever the magic key."

Lady Delahaye disturbed the smoothness of my turf with the point of her
parasol.

"Are there no times," she asked in a low tone, "when these things fail
you? No times when like calls for like, when the human part of you finds
the comfort of ashes a dead thing? You and your books and your flowers!"
she cried scornfully, raising her head and looking at me with heightened
colour. "Bah! You are a man, are you not, like the others? How long will
these content you? How long will you stop your ears and forget that life
has passions and joys which these dead things can never yield to you?"

"Until," I answered, "the magician comes who can make me believe it. And
I am afraid, Lady Delahaye, that he has passed me by."

She rose to her feet.

"I am answered," she said. "I