usand. A few
days later the remaining six thousand were housed in a cupboard with an
iron door in the wall of his office at the Manor Cartier.

"There, that will keep me in heart and promise," said Jean Jacques as he
turned the key in the lock.

CHAPTER XVIII. JEAN JACQUES HAS AN OFFER

The day after Jean Jacques had got a new lease of life and become his
own banker, he treated himself to one of those interludes of pleasure
from which he had emerged in the past like a hermit from his cave. He
sat on the hill above his lime-kilns, reading the little hand-book of
philosophy which had played so big a part in his life. Whatever else had
disturbed his mind and diverted him from his course, nothing had weaned
him from this obsession. He still interlarded all his conversation with
quotations from brilliant poseurs like Chateaubriand and Rochefoucauld,
and from missionaries of thought like Hume and Hegel.

His real joy, however, was in withdrawing for what might be called
a seance of meditation from the world's business. Some men make
celebration in wine, sport and adventure; but Jean Jacques made it in
flooding his mind with streams of human thought which often tried to run
uphill, which were frequently choked with weeds, but still were like
the pool of Siloam to his vain mind. They bathed that vain mind in the
illusion that it could see into the secret springs of experience.

So, on as bright a day as ever the New World offered, Jean Jacques sat
reciting to himself a spectacular bit of logic from one of his idols,
wedged between a piece of Aristotle quartz and Plato marble. The sound
of it was good in his ears. He mouthed it as greedily and happily
as though he was not sitting on the edge of a volcano instead of the
moss-grown limestone on a hill above his own manor.

"The course of events in the life of a man, whatever their gravity or
levity, are only to be valued and measured by the value and measure of
his own soul. Thus, what in its own intrinsic origin and material
should in all outer reason be a tragedy, does not of itself shake the
foundations or make a fissure in the superstructure. Again--"

Thus his oracle, but Jean Jacques' voice suddenly died down, for, as
he sat there, the face of a woman made a vivid call of recognition. He
slowly awakened from his self-hypnotism, to hear a woman speaking to
him; to see two dark eyes looking at him from under heavy black brows
with bright, intent friendliness.

"