in order to do so he must bestir himself and make an effort. But in
this effort there was no labor. It was like the spurt of a willing horse,
a fine racing pace of the nature that woke pleasure and admiration in
those who watched it.

Artois felt at once that Delarey had no hostility towards him, but was
ready to admire and rejoice in him as Hermione's greatest friend. He was
met more than half-way. Yet when he was beside Delarey, almost touching
him, the stubborn sensation of furtive dislike within Artois increased,
and he consciously determined not to yield to the charm of this younger
man who was going to interfere in his life. Artois did not speak much
English, but fortunately Delarey talked French fairly well, not with
great fluency like Hermione, but enough to take a modest share in
conversation, which was apparently all the share that he desired. Artois
believed that he was no great talker. His eyes were more eager than was
his tongue, and seemed to betoken a vivacity of spirit which he could
not, perhaps, show forth in words. The conversation at first was mainly
between Hermione and Artois, with an occasional word from
Delarey--generally interrogative--and was confined to generalities. But
this could not continue long. Hermione was an enthusiastic talker and
seldom discussed banalities. From every circle where she found herself
the inane was speedily banished; pale topics--the spectres that haunt the
dull and are cherished by them--were whipped away to limbo, and some
subject full-blooded, alive with either serious or comical possibilities,
was very soon upon the carpet. By chance Artois happened to speak of two
people in Paris, common friends of his and of Hermione's, who had been
very intimate, but who had now quarrelled, and every one said,
irrevocably. The question arose whose fault was it. Artois, who knew the
facts of the case, and whose judgment was usually cool and well-balanced,
said it was the woman's.

"Madame Lagrande," he said, "has a fine nature, but in this instance it
has failed her, it has been warped by jealousy; not the jealousy that
often accompanies passion, for she and Robert Meunier were only great
friends, linked together by similar sympathies, but by a much more subtle
form of that mental disease. You know, Hermione, that both of them are
brilliant critics of literature?"

"Yes, yes."

"They carried on a sort of happy, but keen rivalry in this walk of
letters, each striving to be mo