T]

"You swear that?" asked Aristide, with lightning quickness.

"I swear it, by God! Where is she?"

Aristide disengaged himself, waved his hand airily towards Perigueux,
and smiled blandly.

"In the salon of the hotel, waiting for you to prostrate yourself on
your knees before her."

Mr. Ducksmith gripped him by the arm.

"Come back with me. If you're lying I'll kill you."

"The luggage?" queried Aristide.

"Confound the luggage!" said Mr. Ducksmith, and dragged him out of the
station.

A cab brought them quickly to the hotel. Mr. Ducksmith bolted like an
obese rabbit into the salon. A few moments afterwards Aristide,
entering, found them locked in each other's arms.

They started alone for England that night, and Aristide returned to the
directorship of the Agence Pujol. But he took upon himself enormous
credit for having worked a miracle.

* * * * *

"One thing I can't understand," said I, after he had told me the story,
"is what put this sham elopement into your crazy head. What did you see
when you looked into Mr. Ducksmith's bedroom?"

"Ah, _mon vieux_, I did not tell you. If I had told you, you would not
have been surprised at what I did. I saw a sight that would have melted
the heart of a stone. I saw Ducksmith wallowing on his bed and sobbing
as if his heart would break. It filled my soul with pity. I said: 'If
that mountain of insensibility can weep and sob in such agony, it is
because he loves--and it is I, Aristide, who have reawakened that
love.'"

"Then," said I, "why on earth didn't you go and fetch Mrs. Ducksmith and
leave them together?"

He started from his chair and threw up both hands.

"_Mon Dieu!_" cried he. "You English! You are a charming people, but you
have no romance. You have no dramatic sense. I will help myself to a
whisky and soda."

VIII

THE ADVENTURE OF THE FICKLE GODDESS

It may be remembered that Aristide Pujol had aged parents, browned and
wrinkled children of the soil, who had passed all their days in the
desolation of Aigues-Mortes, the little fortified, derelict city in the
salt marshes of Provence. Although they regarded him with the same
unimaginative wonder as a pair of alligators might regard an Argus
butterfly, their undoubted but freakish progeny, and although Aristide
soared high above their heads in all phases of thought and emotion, the
mutual ties remained strong and perdurable. Scarcely a year passed
wit