off to Monte, and when he'd broken her heart and spoiled her
life and spent her coin, he'd leave her, and go off and be Russian
_attache_ in Japan or somewhere. I know him. Don't let her do it,
Rochy."

"But how am I to help it?" asked the perplexed Jones, who saw the
meaning of the other. It did not matter in reality to him, whether a
woman whom he had only seen once were to "bolt" with a Russian and find
ruination at Monte Carlo, but this world is not entirely a world of
reality, and he felt a surprisingly strong resentment at the idea of
the girl in the Victoria "bolting" with a Russian.

It will be remembered that in Collins' office, the lawyer's talk about
his "wife" had almost decided him to throw down his cards and quit. This
shadowy wife, first mentioned by the bird woman, had, in fact, been the
one vaguely felt insuperable obstacle in the way of his grand
determination to make good where Rochester had failed, to fight
Rochester's battles, to be the Earl of Rochester permanently maybe, or,
failing that, to retire and vanish back to the States with honourable
pickings.

The sight of the real thing had, however, altered the whole position.
Romance had suddenly touched Victor Jones; the gorgeous but sordid veils
through which he had been pushing had split to some mystic wand, and had
become the foliage of fairy land.

"I want to tell you--you are an old ass."

Those words were surely enough to shatter any dream, to turn to pathos
any situation. In Jones' case they had acted as a most potent spell. He
could still hear the voice, wrathful, but with a tinge of mirth in it,
golden, individual, entrancing.

"How are you to help it?" said Spence. "Why, go and make up with her
again, kick old Nichevo. Women like chaps that kick other chaps; they
pretend they don't, but they do. Either do that or take a gun and shoot
her, she'd be better shot than with that fellow."

He lit a cigarette and they passed into the card room, where Spence,
looking at his watch, declared that he must be off to keep an
appointment. They said good-bye in the street, and Jones returned to
Carlton House Terrace.

He had plenty to think about.

The pile of letters waiting to be answered on the table in the smoking
room reminded him that he had forgotten a most pressing necessity--a
typist. He could sign letters all right, with a very good imitation of
Rochester's signature, but a holograph letter in the same hand was
beyond him. Then a b