often melancholy. His
forehead was noble and markedly intellectual, and his well-shaped,
massive head was covered with thick, short, mouse-colored hair. He wore a
mustache and a magnificent beard. His barber, who was partly responsible
for the latter, always said of it that it was the "most beautiful
fan-shaped beard in Paris," and regarded it with a pride which was
probably shared by its owner. His hands and feet were good,
capable-looking, but not clumsy, and his whole appearance gave an
impression of power, both physical and intellectual, and of indomitable
will combined with subtlety. He was well dressed, fashionably not
artistically, yet he suggested an artist, not necessarily a painter. As
he looked at Hermione the smile which had played about his lips when he
entered the little room died away.

"I've come to hear about it all," he said, in his resonant voice--a voice
which matched his appearance. "Do you know"--and here his accent was
grave, almost reproachful--"that in all your letters to me--I looked them
over before I left Paris--there is no allusion, not one, to this Monsieur
Delarey."

"Why should there be?" she answered.

She sat down, but Artois continued to stand.

"We seldom wrote of persons, I think. We wrote of events, ideas, of work,
of conditions of life; of man, woman, child--yes--but not often of
special men, women, children. I am almost sure--in fact, quite sure, for
I've just been reading them--that in your letters to me there is very
little discussion of our mutual friends, less of friends who weren't
common to us both."

As she spoke she stretched out a long, thin arm, and pulled open the
drawer into which she had put the bundle tied with twine.

"They're all in here."

"You don't lock that drawer?"

"Never."

He looked at her with a sort of severity.

"I lock the door of the room, or, rather, it locks itself. You haven't
noticed it?"

"No."

"It's the same as the outer door of a flat. I have a latch-key to it."

He said nothing, but smiled. All the sudden grimness had gone out of his
face.

Hermione withdrew her hand from the drawer holding the letters.

"Here they are!"

"My complaints, my egoism, my ambitions, my views--Mon Dieu! Hermione,
what a good friend you've been!"

"And some people say you're not modest!"

"I--modest! What is modesty? I know my own value as compared with that of
others, and that knowledge to others must often seem conceit."

She began to u