to him that it should have done. He read it
sitting in his pyjamas on the bedside, kicking his bare heels against
the valance, and when he had done with it he tossed it on to the
centre table, on which his manuscripts, now too rarely looked at, lay
scattered, and said rather grimly:

'Footlights.'

Then he mused awhile, half desiring to confirm the word, and half
recalling it. He had made many desperate efforts to be loyal in his
thoughts, but he was less disposed to struggle in that direction than
he had been. His mind strayed back to Ralston, and to the bibulous
explorer. Memory went further than either of them, and carried him back
to the days when he had broken his career in two for the sake of Miss
Belmont, old Darco's Middle Jarley Prown.' He had played the flat
traitor to Darco once already for the sake of one woman, and now, as
he began to see, he was once more using him very ill for the sake of
another. He sat kicking his heels against the valance of the bed,
and thinking. May Gold, Norah MacMulty, the dreadful hour of the lost
innocence, Claudia, Annette, Gertrude--what an incredible list of
follies for one man to have committed! He grew intensely bitter and
self-disdainful.

There was no answer for the letter of the heart-wounded Gertrude. He
was not quite sure whether he were a mere insensate brute or no, but
he packed, and took the homeward train without a word of farewell. If
Gertrude's friendship were a real thing, he was a beast unspeakable.
If it were a selfish sentimental sham--why, then--anything. He began to
taste life with a very nausea of weariness.

But when London was reached, and the physical fatigue of travel shaken
off, and the tornado of Darco's energies had engulfed him as of old,
he found himself another man. Darco was terrible at their earliest
interview.

'Led me haf a look at you,' he said, dragging Paul to his study-window.
'What haf you peen doing with yourseluf? I have known an Armstrong for
some years who was rather a glever vellow. Vot? Ant now I gome agross an
Armstrong who is a plithering impecile. Eh?'

'Now, my dear Darco,'Paul answered, 'I dare say that your criticism of
the stuff I sent you is quite just I haven't, indeed, the remotest doubt
about it But I have been out of health and worried, and now I am here
for work. You shall have the best I can give you.'

'I shall speag to you,' said Darco, 'with an egsdreme blain-ness. I haf
not forgotten our first parting. Yo