id he, "who would dare to make such a confession."

"But what is the good of lying?" asked Paul, with the eyes of a cherub.

"None that I know of," replied the Colonel. He returned to his chair
and rested his hand on the back. "You play golf, anyhow," said he,
pointing to the brown canvas bag in the corner.

"Oh, yes," said Paul.

"Any good?"

"Fair to middling."

"What's your handicap?" asked the Colonel, an enthusiastic though
inglorious practitioner of the game.

"One," said Paul.

"The deuce it is!" cried the Colonel. "Mine is fifteen. You must give
me a lesson or two when you pull round. We've a capital course here."

"That's very kind of you," said Paul, "but I'm afraid I shall be well
enough for ordinary purposes long before I'm able to handle a golf
club."

"What do you mean?"

"This silly pleurisy. It will hang about for ages!"

"Well?"

"I'll have to go my ways from here long before I can play."

"Any great hurry?"

"I can't go on accepting your wonderful hospitality indefinitely," said
Paul.

"That's nonsense. Stay as long as ever you like."

"If I did that," said Paul, "I would stay on forever."

The Colonel smiled and shook hands with him. In the ordinary way of
social life this was quite an unnecessary thing to do. But he acted
according to the impulses common to a thousand of his type--and a fine
type--in England. Setting aside the mere romantic exterior of a
Macedonian brigand, here was a young man of the period with
astonishingly courteous manners, of--and this was of secondary
consideration--of frank and winning charm, with a free-and-easy
intimacy with Balzac, of fearless truthfulness regarding his
deficiencies, and with a golf handicap of one. The Colonel's hand and
heart went out in instinctive coordination. The Colonel Winwoods of
this country are not gods; they are very humanly fallible; but of such
is the Kingdom of England.

"At any rate," said he, "you mustn't dream of leaving us yet."

He went downstairs and met his sister in the hall.

"Well?" she asked, with just a gleam of quizzicality in her eyes, for
she knew whence he had come.

"One of these days I'll take him out and teach him to shoot," said the
Colonel.

CHAPTER X

THE shooting party came, and Paul, able to leave his room and sit in
the sunshine and crawl about the lawn and come down to dinner, though
early retirement was prescribed, went among the strange men and women
of the aristocratic caste