ld out my
hand! At any rate," I went on, "_I_ sha'n't call for help."

He seemed to think again. "I don't know. You'll see."

"If I do I shall see a great deal more than I now suspect." He wanted to
get off to dress, but I still held him. "Isn't she wonderfully lovely?"

"Oh!" he simply exclaimed.

"Isn't she as lovely as she seems?"

But he had already broken away. "What has that to do with it?"

"What has anything, then?"

"She's too beastly unhappy."

"But isn't that just one's advantage?"

"No. It's uncanny." And he escaped.

The question had at all events brought us indoors and so far up our
staircase as to where it branched towards Obert's room. I followed it to
my corridor, with which other occasions had made me acquainted, and I
reached the door on which I expected to find my card of designation.
This door, however, was open, so as to show me, in momentary possession
of the room, a gentleman, unknown to me, who, in unguided quest of his
quarters, appeared to have arrived from the other end of the passage. He
had just seen, as the property of another, my unpacked things, with
which he immediately connected me. He moreover, to my surprise, on my
entering, sounded my name, in response to which I could only at first
remain blank. It was in fact not till I had begun to help him place
himself that, correcting my blankness, I knew him for Guy Brissenden. He
had been put by himself, for some reason, in the bachelor wing and,
exploring at hazard, had mistaken the signs. By the time we found his
servant and his lodging I had reflected on the oddity of my having been
as stupid about the husband as I had been about the wife. He had escaped
my notice since our arrival, but I had, as a much older man, met
him--the hero of his odd union--at some earlier time. Like his wife,
none the less, he had now struck me as a stranger, and it was not till,
in his room, I stood a little face to face with him that I made out the
wonderful reason.

The wonderful reason was that I was _not_ a much older man; Guy
Brissenden, at any rate, was not a much younger. It was he who was
old--it was he who was older--it was he who was oldest. That was so
disconcertingly what he had become. It was in short what he would have
been had he been as old as he looked. He looked almost anything--he
looked quite sixty. I made it out again at dinner, where, from a
distance, but opposite, I had him in sight. Nothing could have been
stranger than the