The Hermit and the Wild Woman, and Other Stories

the moment, lent it a festive readiness of welcome that might well, in a disenchanted eye, have turned to paint and facility. So frank an appeal for participation-so outs

ering in the foreground against mauve mountains which suggested a sublime stage-setting forgotten in a hurried shifting of scenes-

work, had told himself that external conditions did not matter to a man in his state, and that cold and ugliness were a good tonic for relaxed sensibilities. When an urgent case summoned him abroad to confer with a client in Paris, he broke reluctantl

t at its doors. He had not been abroad for seven years-and what changes the renewed contact produced! If the central depths were untouched, hardly a pin-point of surface remained the same. And this was the very plac

osing TABLEAU, when all the lights are turned on at once. This impression was presently heightened by the way in which a consciously conspicuous group of people advanced to the middle front, and stood before Selden with the air of the chief performers gathered together by the exigencies of the final effect. Their appearance confirmed the impression that the show had been staged regardless of expense, and emphasi

re toward Mrs. Jack Stepney and Mrs. Wellington Bry, she added plainti

at there were several places where one might miss something by not lunching, or forfeit something by lu

r reason for being there: the Americans who don't know any one always rush for the best food

ing her social alternatives in public. She could not acquire the air of doing th

a business face and leisure clot

she can get her meal paid for. If you offered to blo

that little place at the Condamine. Lord Hubert says it's

ile, and the air of having spent his best years in piloting the wealthy

in? It just shows," he continued, "what these European mar

with Dacey: there's a little hole in Paris, off the Quai Voltaire-but in

sbands were apt to do; but his wife, to his surprise and discomfiture, had develope

he TERRASSE: it's as dull as one of mother's dinners. And Lord Hubert has promised to tell us wh

all I want to know is wh

can at least FIND OUT, my dear fellow"; and Mrs. Bry having declared that she couldn't walk another step, the party hailed two or th

oked the intense blue curve of the harbour, set between the verdure of twin promontories: to the right, the cliff of Monaco, topped by the mediaeval silhouette of its church and castle, to the left the terraces and pinnacles of the gambling-house

ney exclaimed; and Lord Hubert, dropping his singl

spend a month in Sicily

e's only one up-to-date hotel in the wh

t must have been horribly bored." Mrs. Fisher added in an

t, in his mild deliberate voice; and Mrs. Bry added ingenuously:

ubert agreed, with the professional promptness of the man accustomed to draw his profit fr

her so handsome. Lady Skiddaw took her everywhere in Cannes, and the Crown Princess of Macedonia had her to stop for a week at Cimiez. People say that was o

how the news of her nearness was really affecting him. He had a personal detachment enabling him, even in moments of emotional high-pressure, to get a fairly clear view of his feelings, and he was sincerely surprised by the disturbance which the sight of the Sabrina had produced in him. He had reason to think that his three months of engrossing professional work, following on the sharp s

social movements at Monte Carlo, where the whole place, and the long gilded hours of the day, seem to offer an infinity of ways of being idle. Lord Hubert Dacey had finally gone off in quest of the Duchess of Beltshire, charged by Mrs. Bry with t

iery shafts of cactus-blossoms shooting meteor-like from the rock. The soft shade of their niche, and the adjacent glitter of the air, were conducive to an easy lounging mood, and to the smoking of many cigarettes; and Selden, yielding to these influences, suffered Mrs. Fisher to unfold to him the history of her recent experiences. She had come abroad with the Welly Brys at the moment when fashion flees the inclemency of the New York spr

lly queer. The Brys are neither. HE would get on well enough if she'd let him alone; they like his slang and his brag and his blunders. But Louisa spoils it all by trying to repress him and put herself forward. If she'd be natural herself-fat and vulgar and bouncing-it would be all right; but as soon as she meets anybody smart she t

t Aix ten years ago. It seems she was tremendously admired there. An Italian Prince, rich and the real thing, wanted to marry her; but just at the critical moment a good-looking step-son turned up, and Lily was silly enough to flirt with him while her marriage-settlements with the step-father were being drawn up. Some people said the young man did it on purpose. You can fancy the scandal: there was an awful row between the men, and people began to

d it's the difficulty of deciding that makes her such an interesting study." She glanced tentatively at Selden's motionless profile, and resumed with a slight sigh: "Well, all I can say is, I wish she'd give ME some of her discarded opportunit

success here and at Cannes, and I shouldn't be surprised if there were a break any day. Lily's only safeguard is that Bertha needs her badly-oh, very badly. The Silverton affair is in the acute stage: it's necessary that George's attention should be pretty continuously distracted. And I'm bound to say Lily DOES distract it: I believe he'd marry her tomorrow i

ce at his watch; adding, in reply to Mrs. Fisher's surprised comment-"Why, I thought of cours

bs the Brys now," he heard i

d outside to transport them to the cab at the door. It took but a brief plunge down the steep white road to the station to land him safely in the afternoon express for Ni

urn on his steps without an appearance of inconsistency from which his pride recoiled. In his inmost heart he was not sorry to put himself beyond the probability of meeting Miss Bart. Completely as he had detached himself from her, he could not yet regard her merely as a social instance; and viewed in a more personal ways she was not likely to be a reassuring object of study. Chance encounters, or even the repeated mention of her name, would send his thoughts back into grooves from which he ha

creasing throng on the platform warned him that he could not hope to preserve his privacy; the

velop Selden in ejaculations of surprise and welcome, before the whistle of departure sounded. The party, it appeared, were hastening to Nice in response to a sudden summons to dine with the Duchess of Beltshi

the Brys' conservatory; but a subtle change had passed over the quality of her beauty. Then it had had a transparency through which the fluctuations of the spirit were sometimes tragically visible; now its impenetrable surface suggested a process of cr

w he would really get well-would eject the last drop of poison from his blood. Already he felt himself calmer in her presence than he had learned to be in the thought of her. Her assumptions and elisions, her short-cuts and long DETOURS, the skill with which she contrived to meet him at a point from which no inconvenient glimpses of the past were visible,

ct" to every one: subservient to Bertha's anxious predominance, good-naturedly watchful of Dorset's moods, brightly companionable to Silverton and Dacey, the latter of whom met her on an evident footing of old admiration, while young Silverton, portentously self-absorbed, seemed conscious of her only as of something vaguely obstructive. And suddenly, as Selden noted the fine sha

t the whole course of the universe, overshadow everything in reach-chronic dyspepsia ought to be among the "statutory causes"; a woman's life might be ruined by a man's inability to digest fresh bread. Grotesque? Yes-and tragic-like most absurdities. There's nothing grimmer than the tragedy that wears a comic mask.... Where was he? Oh-the reason they chucked Sicily and rushed back? Well-partly, no doubt, Miss Bart's desire to get back to bridge and smartness. Dead as a stone to art and poetry-the light never WAS on sea or land for her! And of course she

wded stands commanded the glittering darkness of the waters. The night was soft and persuasive. Overhead hung a summer sky furrowed with the rush of rockets; and from the east a late moon, pushing up beyond the lofty bend of the coast, sent across the bay a shaft of brightness which paled to ashes in the red glitter of the illu

e street was under their immediate view, and seemed to Selden, on the whole, of more interest than the show itself. After a while, however, he wearied of his perch and, dropping alone to the pavement, pushed his way to the first corner and turned into the moonlit silence of a side street. Long garden-walls overhung by trees made a dar

ere, amid the blaze of crowded baccarat tables, he caught sight of Lord Hubert Dacey, seated with his habitual worn smile behind a rapidly dwindling heap of gold. The heap being in due course wiped out, Lord Hubert rose with a shrug, and joining Selde

they couldn't stop quiet: the Duchess never can. She and Miss Bart went off in quest of what they call adventures-gad, it ain't their fault if they don't have some queer ones!" He added tentatively, after pausing to grope for a cigarette: "Miss Bart's an old friend of yours, I believe? So she told me.-Ah, t

ent to judge for themselves; but in this case-I'm an old friend too, you know ... and there seemed no one else to speak to. The whole situation's a little mixed, as I see it-but the