t. There would be an entity who had passed
through Paragot's experiences; but there would be no more Paragot.

"You must save him, Madame," I cried, "from being made a churchwarden."

Paragot lit a cigarette. I watched the first few puffs, awaiting a
repartee. None came. I felt a qualm of apprehension. Was he already
becoming de-Paragot-ised? I did not realise then what it means to a man
to cast aside the slough of many years' decay, and take his stand clean
before the world. He shivers, is liable to catch cold, like the tramp
whose protective hide of filth is summarily removed in the workhouse
bath. Nor did my dear lady realise this. How could she, bright freed
creature, hungering after the long withheld joyousness of existence, and
overwilling to delude herself into the belief that every shadow was a
ray of sunlight? She had no notion of the man's grotesque struggles to
conceal the shivering sensitiveness of his roughly cleaned soul.

She twitted him merrily.

"You can argue like a tornado with Monsieur Cazalet, but you think I
must be talked to like this country's _jeune fille a marier_. Isn't he
perverse, Mr. Asticot? I think I am quite as entertaining as Caliban."

Well you see, when he talked to Cazalet, he slipped on the slough again
and was comfortable.

He waited for a moment or two as if he were composing a speech, and then
rose and drawing near her, said in a low voice, thinking that as I was
absorbed in my painting I could not hear:--

"This new happiness is too overwhelming for fantastic talk."

"Oh no it isn't," she declared in a whisper. "We have put back time
thirteen years--we wipe out of our minds all that has happened in them,
and start just where we left off. You were fantastic enough then, in all
conscience."

"I had the world at my feet and I kicked it about like a football." He
hunched up his shoulders in a helpless gesture. "Somehow the football
burst and became a helpless piece of leather."

"I haven't the remotest idea what you mean," laughed Joanna.

"Madame," said I, "if you turn your head about like that I shall get you
all out of drawing."

"Oh dear," said Joanna, resuming her pose.

These were enchanted days, I think, for all of us. Even Cazalet felt the
influence and put on a pair of gaudily striped socks over which his
sandals would not fit. Joanna was very tender to him, as to everybody,
but she appeared to draw her skirts around her on passing him by, as if
he were a slu