when it, so to speak, sat still, absorbed in
its impressions. It was the sport of young and rapid impulses, which it
seemed to obey sluggishly, while, all the time, it moved with immense,
slow strides to incredibly far conclusions. Having reached a conclusion
it was apt to stay there. The very length of its stride made turning
awkward for it.

He had reached a conclusion now, on his third night in Southbourne. He
must do something, he did not yet know what, for the protection of Mrs.
Tailleur.

Her face was an appeal to the chivalry that sat quiet in Lucy's heart,
nursing young dreams of opportunity.

Lucy's chivalry had been formed by three weeks of courtship and three
years of wedded incompatibility. The incompatibility had hardly dawned
on him when his wife died. Three years were too short a space for Lucy's
mind to turn in; and so he always thought of her tenderly as dear little
Amy. She had given him two daughters and paid for the younger with her
life.

Five years of fatherhood finished his training in the school of
chivalry. He had been profoundly moved by little Amy's sacrifice to the
powers of life, and he was further touched by the heartrending spectacle
of Jane. Jane doing all she knew for him; Jane, so engaging in her
innocence, hiding her small, childlike charm under dark airs of assumed
maternity; Jane, whose skirts fluttered wide to all the winds of dream;
Jane with an apron on and two little girls tied to the strings of it;
Jane, adorable in disaster, striving to be discreet and comfortable and
competent.

He had a passionate pity for all creatures troubled and unfortunate. And
Mrs. Tailleur's face called aloud to him for pity. For Lucy Mrs.
Tailleur's face wore, like a veil, the shadow of the incredible past and
of the future; it was reminiscent and prophetic of terrible and tragic
things. Across the great spaces of the public rooms his gaze answered
her call. Then Mrs. Tailleur's face would become dumb. Like all hurt
things, she was manifestly shy of observation and pursuit.

Pursuit and observation, perpetual, implacable, were what she had to
bear. The women had driven her from the drawing-room; the men made the
smoke-room impossible. A cold, wet mist came with the evenings. It lay
over the sea and drenched the lawns of the hotel garden. Mrs. Tailleur
had no refuge but the lounge.

To-night the wine-faced man and his companion had tracked her there.
Mrs. Tailleur had removed herself from the