hat
circumstances absolved him from the promise, he did not care that such a
letter as he must write, once he put pen to paper, should go to her
father's deserted house, and thence be tossed about the world in perhaps
a futile pursuit, with the possible fate of being read in a dead-letter
office, and finally returned to him. He would wait awhile. Perhaps, if
the gossip got abroad, it might by some circuitous route arrive even as
far as Lady Betty's ears, and then no doubt she would announce her
whereabouts to him. The pressing problem before him was to decide on his
own plans for the immediate present.

How stale and tired he was! How terribly he had toiled these past
months, sustained by he knew not what mysterious energy. It seemed
almost as if he had exerted a supernatural strength, and the work he had
accomplished might well have claimed double the period. And now,
something had suddenly gone snap. He was finished; a mere hollow shell
of a man.

His mind turned again towards other climes and other skies. It seemed so
long since he had crossed the Channel; so many years indeed that it was
hateful to count them. It reminded him too much of the big slice of his
life, the years of his prime, that had been so miserably sterile.

But his face brightened as his thought played again amid the haunts of
his early manhood. Ah, those were happy times--the work in the schools,
the discussions in the cafe, the pleasant camaraderie, the freedom to
laugh, to feel master of one's own soul. The brilliance and green
avenues of Paris beckoned him; his blood beat pleasurably. And then of
course there was his portrait of Lady Betty in the Salon. What better
shrine for a pilgrimage!

He would linger a little in Paris, then proceed further South. He was
not of the great crowd that refuses to venture in those regions during
the summer. He knew well how to adapt himself to the conditions, and the
lands of the South would be soon in their full glory. His imagination
dwelt on the prospect, and sunshine broke in on his mood. Perhaps, too,
there was the hope, deep in his heart, that he might encounter Lady
Betty somewhere--by some charming train of events! Heigho for the
orange trees, for the old Italian palaces, the Venetian canals, the
coast-line of Salerno! He would make a leisurely progression, working a
little as he went--just a few distinguished sketches, odd impressions of
light and beauty caught on the wing! Late in the year when tim