hours previously, had now
died down to a red glow.

He was a fool, and he knew it. The stronger part of his nature, that
which came of the alien streak in his father, warned him of the danger
of thinking seriously of chance female acquaintances, told him that no
man of the world ever did so; whilst to the Grierson strain in him
anything in the way of an intrigue was an unpardonable offence against
the canons of respectability. Douglas Kelly, the Bohemian, and Walter
Grierson, the city man, would both have called him mad, agreeing on this
point, if on none other; for they would argue that only a madman could
feel that he had any regard for a strange girl, who, by her own showing,
was without the pale. Suddenly he resolved to have no more to do with
Lalage. He would destroy her address, avoid those parts of the town
where he might possibly see her, drop the acquaintance before it went
any further.

He got up suddenly, took the slip of paper Lalage had given him out of
his pocket, and stood staring at words on it. It was well-written, in
the hand of an educated girl; but there was a shakiness in it which
suddenly destroyed all his wise resolutions, making an irresistible
appeal to his chivalry. After all, he himself, if not actually an
outcast, was one of life's failures. He had touched bed-rock, more than
once, and he knew too much of the bitterness of life to judge either man
or woman harshly. It is only those who have never suffered who show no
mercy to others.

What was it that American girl had said to him in Iquique, when she
insisted on lending him one hundred dollars, the time he was absolutely
penniless and too weak from fever to refuse? "The best thanks you can
give me, Jimmy, will be to help another girl if you ever get the
chance." He had returned the money a couple of months later, and he had
neither seen nor heard of her again; but the memory of her words had
remained, and now he seized on them as an excuse for the course he
wanted to follow. And so the slip of paper went back into his
pocket-book, tucked in carefully, though he knew every word that was on
it; and he sat down again, and remained, thinking and wondering, until
the fire had ceased to show even a spark of red, and the chill of the
room sent him shivering to bed, to dream of Lalage.

Jimmy came out of his room at nine o'clock next morning to find Mrs.
Kelly sweeping the dining-room. "The cook has not come back yet," she
remarked cheerfully.