the old times enacted
themselves before him. 'Love,' says blackguard Iago, 'is a lust of
the blood and a permission of the will.' Well, one-and-twenty made his
dreams even out of such poor material. The westward train boomed past,
invisible from first to last in the smoke-cloud.

CHAPTER XI

Miss Belmont, nine-and-twenty, fresh and fair, ignorant-clever (after
the known feminine fashion), _rusee_ to the finger-tips, with a dragon
reputation for virtue and a resolute will to keep it, was dangerous to
the peace of mind of masculine twenty-one. She made Paul her bondslave.
She intoxicated him with a touch, and sobered him with a face of sudden
marble. She played the matron and the sister with him, and drove him mad
between whiles.

Here is one scene out of hundreds, all acted to the Solitary's mind as
if the past were back again.

Summer was dying. The woods were yet lusty but growing sombre. Level
beams of parting sunlight flashing through the trees like white-hot
wire. A Sunday picnic for the company, magnificently provided by Darco,
had brought Paul and Miss Belmont together. The lady had led the way
into this solitude with so much tact and skill that Paul took pride
in his own generalship. They sat on a rustic bench together, and
immediately before them was an opening in the trees. At a very little
distance the ground fell suddenly away, and in the valley wound a
shining river with fold on fold of wooded lands beyond.

Paul was quivering to be nearer to her, but he had no courage to move.
He looked at her, and her eyes seemed to be dreaming on the distant
hills. He stole a timid hand towards her very slowly. She turned towards
him with a soft smile, took the hand in her own, and held it, nestling
her shoulders into the rustic woodwork and sending her dreamy gaze back
to the hills again. Once or twice, as if unconsciously, she lifted the
hand slightly and laid it down again caressingly.

Paul looked at her adoringly. It was like being in heaven, with a touch
of vertigo.

'Claudia,' said Paul, in a whisper.

'Yes,' she answered. 'Don't speak louder than that. It suits the place
to whisper. What are you thinking about?'

'You,' said Paul 'I think of nothing else.'

'You silly boy,' said Miss Belmont. 'Why should you think about me?'

'I can't help it I wake up to think of you. I think of you all day. I go
to sleep thinking of you. I dream about you in the night-time.'

'Oh, you silly Paul!' Her lips