ushing towards Paul, and leaning over
him with instant solicitude.

Darco's collaborateur was smitten with a sudden shame and repentance.

'A kind of spasm,' he said breathlessly--'a pain just here.'

Darco helped him to his feet.

'You are too emotional, tear poy,'he said; 'you are too easily vorked
upon. I will rink the pell for a prandy-ant-zoda, ant you shall lie town
vor a leettle while.'

It was the thick-set Evariste who brought the syphon bottle and the
small carafe of brandy and the tumblers, and it was she who caught
Paul on her broad Flemish bosom when the drink, which he had accepted
soberly, went the wrong way, and with a wild snort into his tumbler he
fell backwards.

'Le bauvre cheune homme a dombe zupidement malade.'

The poor young man was horribly afraid at first of having irredeemably
hurt Darco's feelings, but that excellent enthusiast had not even the
beginning of an idea that it was possible for anyone to laugh at him
unless he chose of purpose aforethought to be laughable. Thus the
episode passed lightly enough, but Paul was continually in danger of a
reversion to it whenever the distraught heroine appeared upon the scene.

He saw but little of Annette during the weeks of labour to which Darco's
new enterprise enforced him. She slept alone, and was rarely accessible
before the mid-day breakfast or later than the dinner-hour. Laurent
visited her almost daily, and she seemed to submit to his attentions
with a better grace than she had shown at first; but she was still
subject to those rapid and violent alternations of mood which had
already perplexed and alarmed her husband. She had apparently conceived
an aversion to being seen abroad, and it was with the greatest
difficulty that she could be persuaded to take an occasional carriage
drive.

'I shall venture to advise you,' said Laurent to Paul 'You tell me that
your work is almost finished, and that in a day or two you are setting
out for London.'

'Yes,' said Paul.

'You will do well to take Mrs. Armstrong with you,' Laurent said. 'She
is in need of change and distraction. This quiet, dead-alive existence
is not good for her. You must insist upon her shaking herself free of
the habits of seclusion into which she is falling. I should urge you
very strongly to find some good creature of her own sex who would be
a companion to her. She is living too much alone; she has too few
interests.'

'Well, of course,' Paul answered, 'that is ve