December Love

ked at them and for an instant was filled with anger against himself. To be immortal-he was old-fashioned enough to believe surreptitiously in his own

rth. That thought, too, might possibly have come out of one of those little glasses, the one on the

at if

ngworth something strong, almost violent, had risen up in Craven to protest. What was that? And why was he suddenly so angry? He was surely not going to make a fool of himself. He felt almost youthfully alarmed and also rather excited. An odd

. As he had acknowledged in the Ristorante Bella Napoli he had seldom or never started on a journey abroad without a secret hope of romance meeting him on the way. And sometimes it had met him. Or so he had believed at the time. But in all these episodes of the past there had been something definitely physical, something almost horribly natural, a prompting of t

Lady Sellingworth there was certainly nothing of the-well, to himself he called it "the medically physical." Something of the body there might possibly b

Club he found on his table

K HOTEL,

reuse brings out his genius in a wonderful way. I wish it would do for me what it does for him. But I have tried it-in small doses-quite in vain. He and I walked home together and talked of everything under the stars. I believe he is going to pai

e my best bronze to have white hair like hers. But somehow I am almost glad she didn't fall to the Cafe Royal. She is right. It is too Georgian

he Cafe Royal last night I

VAN

with herself in the underlined "our" seemed rather like an attempt to assert authority, the authority of youth over him. But no doubt this was very natural. Craven was quite sure that Miss Van Tuyn cared nothing about him. But he was a not disagreeable and quite presentable young man; he had looked into h

ited when women so swiftly t

e she was in London. He knew that whenever they met he would feel her attraction; but he now classed it with those attractions

y from his youth? Where was he going? Perhaps this new sensation of movement was only deceptive; perhaps he was not on the way to an unknown region. For a moment he wished that he could t

attends upon any departure from what, according to the dec

but if he were to prefer a great friendship with Lady Sellingworth to a love affair with her youthf

own to reply non-committally to Miss Van Tuyn's letter. It was onl

ry. He could remember clearly almost every important bronze in that wonderful collection. He realized what "a living bronze" must mean when written of by a woman. Miss Van Tuyn had evidently seen an amazingly handsome man coming out of the Cafe Royal. But why should she tell him about it? Perhaps her motive was the very ordinary one, an attempt to rouse the swift jealousy of the male animal. She was certainly "up" to all the usual feminine tricks. He thoroughly realized he

g to him. He compared his feeling when Braybrooke had suggested Seymour Portman as a husband for Lady Sellingworth with his lack of feeling about Miss Van Tuyn and her bronze, and h

d it al

t the end of it, before signing himself "Yours"-he could do no less with her letter before hi