aroness dropped something with a metallic sound upon the
floor, and uttered a little cry of dismay.

'Oh, my bracelet!' she exclaimed; 'my favourite, my precious bracelet!
It is broken, and I would not have had anything happen to it for the
world!'

Paul ran to lift it from the floor, and assured himself by examination
that it was not broken. The hasp by which it was fastened had come open,
whether as the result of accident or design may not be known. Ladies
have ways of saving a platonic converse from mere dulness, and this
may have been one of them, or may not. But Paul, having shown to
demonstration that the ornament was undamaged, the Baroness held out a
very prettily-rounded, plump, white arm, and Paul, trembling a little at
the slight contact the task involved, proceeded rather clumsily to fix
the bracelet in its place. He looked up, and the lady's eyes were fixed
upon his face with an expression of grave and serene tenderness. His own
eyes were humid, and he looked back at her as an earth-bound soul might
look towards paradise. And on a sudden, before a sound of warning had
been heard by either of them, their two hands were struck violently
apart, and Annette stood between them, her eyes flaming with rage
and the spirit of temporary insanity last imported by the domestic
smugglers.

CHAPTER XX

[Note: The print copy had a missing page here.]

'No man knows the sex. Women are like Tennyson's description of the
law--a wilderness of single instances; but except for those surprising
examples which are detected for us only by the talisman of a great love,
there is a family likeness amongst them. The woman is the tougher-fibred
creature, and there is excellent good reason why she should be so. She
suffers as no man ever suffers, and she could not bear her pangs--she
would go mad under them--if she were half as sensitive to suffering as
the less-tried male; and on the moral side the lady is a pachyderm and
the average workman an un-shelled polype in comparison. I invoke,' he
cried, striding the little grassy platform on which his feet had worn a
pathway between his tent-door and the chattering runnel--'I invoke the
unnumbered squads and battalions and armies of shame which are known,
and always have been known, to every town and city which has ever dared
to call itself civilized since history began. From Lais in her jewelled
litter to Cora in her English landau in the Bois, and on to the
shabbiest small slut