s. Yet when he went back to his dreams his obsession
vanished, and it was only in the pauses of his vision that it returned.

Here were the dreams again.

He had come to understand quite clearly that a trick had been played
upon him, but he was not constantly unhappy in its contemplation, or
altogether resentful at it Annette improved in health with a startling
rapidity, and he had the doctor's assurance on that head.

'Mrs. Armstrong is as sound as a roach, sir, and will probably outlive
either of us.'

'That is well,' said Paul, and he set himself to bear the burden he had
gathered.

At this time he found the greatest happiness in work, and alike with
Darco, and for his own hand, he laboured unceasingly. Money came
fast--more money than he had ever hoped for. Fame came also, in a
fashion, and many genial societies were open to him. But Annette was not
a person to be defrauded of anything she conceived to be a right, and
he soon found upon how slight a thread domestic content might hang.
Invitations to Mr. Paul Armstrong were plentiful, but of Mrs. Paul
Armstrong his world had no knowledge outside the jolly bachelor
contingent which overflowed house and table upon Sundays. When these
single invitations came Annette invariably retired to her bedroom, and,
having locked herself in there, refused to hold any sort of intercourse
with Paul.

'My dear,' he would say to soothe her, 'I am not going without you; but
I can't force people to invite you, and we must just make the best of
things.'

So he grew to be something of a hermit; and all on a sudden he resolved
to cut himself adrift from England, and to live abroad. Before his
wanderings were over, he was destined to know Europe pretty thoroughly;
but at this time his knowledge of it was limited to Paris, and here and
there a bit of Northern France. He would break new ground. Antwerp would
do as well as any other city for a starting-place, and within a day or
two of the hour at which the fancy first occurred to him he was ready to
start He crossed by the _Baron Osy_, took rooms in a hotel on the Groen
Plate, and lived and worked there for a month or two under the dropping
music of the cathedral chimes. The outfit of a man of letters is the
simplest in the world. With a ream of writing-paper, a pint of ink, and
sixpennyworth of pens, he is professionally provisioned for half a
year. Paul had no need to be in personal touch either with publisher or
stage-manager, and