ortune over again--singing! Ha! the
woman has threatened it before. It's probably feline play with us.'

His chin took support, he frowned.

'You may have touched her.'

'She won't be touched, and she won't be driven. What 's the secret of
her? I can't guess, I never could. She's a riddle.'

'Riddles with wigs and false teeth have to be taken and shaken for the
ardently sought secret to reveal itself,' said Mr. Fenellan.

His picture, with the skeleton issue of any shaking, smote Mr. Radnor's
eyes, they turned over. 'Oh!--her charms! She had a desperate belief
in her beauty. The woman 's undoubtedly charitable; she's not without a
mind--sort of mind: well, it shows no crack till it's put to use. Heart!
yes, against me she has plenty of it. They say she used to be courted;
she talked of it: "my courtiers, Mr. Victor!" There, heaven forgive me,
I wouldn't mock at her to another.'

'It looks as if she were only inexorably human,' said Mr. Fenellan,
crushing a delicious gulp of the wine, that foamed along the channel to
flavour. 'We read of the tester of a bandit-bed; and it flattened unwary
recumbents to pancakes. An escape from the like of that seems pleadable,
should be: none but the drowsy would fail to jump out and run, or the
insane.'

Mr. Radnor was taken with the illustration of his case. 'For the sake of
my sanity, it was! to preserve my.... but any word makes nonsense of
it. Could--I must ask you--could any sane man--you were abroad in those
days, horrible days! and never met her: I say, could you consent to
be tied--I admit the vow, ceremony, so forth-tied to--I was
barely twenty-one: I put it to you, Fenellan, was it in reason an
engagement--which is, I take it, a mutual plight of faith, in good
faith; that is, with capacity on both sides to keep the engagement:
between the man you know I was in youth and a more than middle-aged
woman crazy up to the edge of the cliff--as Colney says half the world
is, and she positively is when her spite is roused. No, Fenellan, I have
nothing on my conscience with regard to the woman. She had wealth: I
left her not one penny the worse for--but she was not one to reckon it,
I own. She could be generous, was, with her money. If she had struck
this blow--I know she thought of it: or if she would strike it now, I
could not only forgive her, I could beg forgiveness.'

A sight of that extremity fetched prickles to his forehead.

'You've borne your part bravely, my friend.'