hen, should this marriage make a
difference in their friendship? She said that it would not, but he felt
that it must. He thought of her as a wife, then as a mother. The latter
thought made his egotism shudder. She would be involved in the happy
turmoil of a family existence, while he would remain without in that
loneliness which is the artist's breath of life and martyrdom. Yes, his
egotism shuddered, and he was angry at the weakness. He chastised the
frailties of others, but must be the victim of his own. A feeling of
helplessness came to him, of being governed, lashed, driven. How unworthy
was his sensation of hostility against Delarey, his sensation that
Hermione was wronging him by entering into this alliance, and how
powerless he was to rid himself of either sensation! There was good cause
for his melancholy--his own folly. He must try to conquer it, and, if
that were impossible, to rein it in before the evening.

When he reached the hotel he went into his sitting-room and worked for an
hour and a half, producing a short paragraph, which did not please him.
Then he took a hansom and drove to Peathill Street.

Hermione was already there, sitting at a small table in a corner with her
back to him, opposite to one of the handsomest men he had ever seen. As
Artois came in, he fixed his eyes on this man with a scrutiny that was
passionate, trying to determine at a glance whether he had any right to
the success he had achieved, any fitness for the companionship that was
to be his, companionship of an unusual intellect and a still more unusual
spirit.

He saw a man obviously much younger than Hermione, not tall, athletic in
build but also graceful, with the grace that is shed through a frame by
perfectly developed, not over-developed muscles and accurately trained
limbs, a man of the Mercury rather than of the Hercules type, with thick,
low-growing black hair, vivid, enthusiastic black eyes, set rather wide
apart under curved brows, and very perfectly proportioned, small,
straight features, which were not undecided, yet which suggested the
features of a boy. In the complexion there was a tinge of brown that
denoted health and an out-door life--an out-door life in the south,
Artois thought.

As Artois, standing quite still, unconsciously, in the doorway of the
restaurant, looked at this man, he felt for a moment as if he himself
were a splendid specimen of a cart-horse faced by a splendid specimen of
a race-horse. The