lerks, sitting in the perpetual gloom of heavily barred
windows behind the sombre, ancient counters, beneath lofty ceilings with
heavily molded cornices. I always felt, on going out, as though I
had been in the temple of some very dignified but completely temporal
religion. And it was generally on these occasions that under the great
carriage gateway Lady Ded--I mean Madame Delestang--catching sight of my
raised hat, would beckon me with an amiable imperiousness to the side of
the carriage, and suggest with an air of amused nonchalance, "_Venez donc
faire un tour avec nous_," to which the husband would add an encouraging
"_C'est ca. Allons, montez, jeune homme_." He questioned me some times,
significantly but with perfect tact and delicacy, as to the way I
employed my time, and never failed to express the hope that I wrote
regularly to my "honoured uncle." I made no secret of the way I employed
my time, and I rather fancy that my artless tales of the pilots and so
on entertained Madame Delestang so far as that ineffable woman could
be entertained by the prattle of a youngster very full of his new
experience among strange men and strange sensations. She expressed no
opinions, and talked to me very little; yet her portrait hangs in the
gallery of my intimate memories, fixed there by a short and fleeting
episode. One day, after putting me down at the corner of a street,
she offered me her hand, and detained me, by a slight pressure, for a
moment. While the husband sat motionless and looking straight before
him, she leaned forward in the carriage to say, with just a shade of
warning in her leisurely tone: "_Il faut, cependant, faire attention a
ne pas gater sa vie_." I had never seen her face so close to mine before.
She made my heart beat and caused me to remain thoughtful for a whole
evening. Certainly one must, after all, take care not to spoil one's
life. But she did not know--nobody could know--how impossible that
danger seemed to me.

VII

Can the transports of first love be calmed, checked, turned to a cold
suspicion of the future by a grave quotation from a work on political
economy? I ask--is it conceivable? Is it possible? Would it be right?
With my feet on the very shores of the sea and about to embrace my
blue-eyed dream, what could a good-natured warning as to spoiling one's
life mean to my youthful passion? It was the most unexpected and the
last, too, of the many warnings I had received. It sounded to me v