been that afternoon, how confiding,
how warm, yet how delicately reticent in conduct Then he flamed and held
his arms out in the darkness, and swore to be constant to that lovely
creature, that maddening, dazzling, priceless idol, for ever. Then, like
a stinging douche to a man in ardent heat of blood, came Darco's saying.
Darco was a true man, and to think of him as a scandalmonger was mere
folly. He had quarrelled with Claudia, to be sure, and there was a
loophole out of which a hopeful doubt might pass. And yet to think so
was an insult, for Darco was the last man in the world to take a revenge
so base. But Darco honestly and mistakenly disliked her. That was
another matter. He was a headstrong man, impetuous, prone to leap
to conclusions--a very walking heap of favourable and unfavourable
prejudice. Thus, neither Claudia nor Darco was dethroned. The
headlong, stammering, vivid man had made a mistake--the fat, unwieldy,
diamond-hearted creature, all crusted with slag and scoria. Paul could
have cried to know that Darco dreamed him ungrateful.

'Who knows him as I do?' he thought. 'People laugh at his boasting, and
run away from his blundering thunder; but the man has the heart of an
angel.'

He thought of all those underground benefactions in which he himself had
acted as almoner--the bank-notes to poverty, the Sandeman's port and the
evaporated turtle-soup to sickness. And the pity of it that such a man
should so misjudge his Claudia! 'Voluptuous ice-woman.' He could fathom
the meaning of the phrase, but the wave it would fain have spouted over
his Claudia left her angel raiment dry. Neither one nor the other of the
far-parted spumings of the wave touched her. Was that ice when her lips
were so tenderly laid on his, and their hearts beat close together? Was
that voluptuous when she held him to a brother's part, and soothed his
passions into slumber with quiet talk of sweet and sober things? And yet
in Darco's face, to one who knew him as well as Paul did, there had
been a mournful look when he had spoken of the most dangerous of all the
daughters of the horse-leech. Out with the thought--out with it 'trample
it down! Poor, dear old Darco had been abused. Claudia was spotless as
the snow, soft as the dawn, sweet, sweet and sweeter than the honey
or the honeycomb. Thus round the clock of the dark hours ran Paul's
thoughts, with never a definite hour to strike.

He packed his portmanteaux before leaving his room next