cluded. Bah! I forgot you're going. Come back then as soon as
possible and report on your travels. If my wife too would make a little
voyage it would do her great good. It would enlarge her horizon"--and
M. de Mauves made a series of short nervous jerks with his stick in the
air--"it would wake up her imagination. She's too much of one piece,
you know--it would show her how much one may bend without breaking." He
paused a moment and gave two or three vigorous puffs. Then turning
to his companion again with eyebrows expressively raised: "I hope you
admire my candour. I beg you to believe I wouldn't say such things to
one of US!"

Evening was at hand and the lingering light seemed to charge the air
with faintly golden motes. Longmore stood gazing at these luminous
particles; he could almost have fancied them a swarm of humming insects,
the chorus of a refrain: "She has a great deal of esprit--she has
a great deal of esprit." "Yes,--she has a great deal," he said
mechanically, turning to the Count. M. de Mauves glanced at him sharply,
as if to ask what the deuce he was talking about. "She has a great deal
of intelligence," said Longmore quietly, "a great deal of beauty, a
great many virtues."

M. de Mauves busied himself for a moment in lighting another cigar,
and when he had finished, with a return of his confidential smile,
"I suspect you of thinking that I don't do my wife justice." he made
answer. "Take care--take care, young man; that's a dangerous assumption.
In general a man always does his wife justice. More than justice," the
Count laughed--"that we keep for the wives of other men!"

Longmore afterwards remembered in favour of his friend's fine manner
that he had not measured at this moment the dusky abyss over which
it hovered. Hut a deepening subterranean echo, loudest at the last,
lingered on his spiritual ear. For the present his keenest sensation was
a desire to get away and cry aloud that M. de Mauves was no better than
a pompous dunce. He bade him an abrupt good-night, which was to serve
also, he said, as good-bye.

"Decidedly then you go?" It was spoken almost with the note of
irritation.

"Decidedly."

"But of course you'll come and take leave--?" His manner implied that
the omission would be uncivil, but there seemed to Longmore himself
something so ludicrous in his taking a lesson in consideration from M.
de Mauves that he put the appeal by with a laugh. The Count frowned as
if it were a new and