The Coxon Fund

him; but afterwards it appeared more probable there had been on my companion’s part no conscious avoidance. Later on I was sure of this, and for the best of reasons — the simple reaso

and beauty and passion, to force and grace and fortune, happy accidents and easy contacts. They might dote on each other’s persons, but how could they know each other’s souls? How could they have the same prejudices, how could they have the same horizon? Such questions, I confess, seemed quenched but not answered when, one day in February, going out to Wimbledon, I found our young lady in the house. A passion that had brought her back across the wintry ocean was as much of a passion as was needed. No impulse equally strong indeed had drawn George Gravener to America; a circumstance on which, however, I refl

er?” I commented. “Wouldn’t it have been pr

ded: “I gather that her having come is exactly a sign that the marriage is a little shaky. If

delaide, but what I said was: “Do you mea

Gravener had been with her when Adelaide called, but had assented graciously enough to the little visit at Wimbledon. The carriage, with Mr. Saltram in it but not mentioned, had been sent off on some errand from which it was to return and pick the ladies up. Gravener had left them together, and at the end of an hour, on the Saturday afternoon, the party of three had driven out to Wimb

appointed because you j

st evening. We had two or three peopl

a moment. Then I pursued: “What particular importan

as for rebuke of my levity. “Why the im

tended not to hear. I had seen her, before the very fact, abstract herself nobly; and I knew that more than once, to keep it from the servants, managing, dissimulating cleverly, she had helped her husband to carry him bodily to his room. Just recently he had been so wise and so deep and so high that I had begun to get nervous — to wonder if by chance there were something behind it, if he were kept straight for instance by the knowledge that the hated Pudneys would have more to tell us if they chose. He was lying low, but unfortunately it was common wisdom with us in this connexion that the biggest splashes took place in the quietest pools. We should have had a merry life indeed if all the splashes had sprinkled us as refreshingly as the waters we were even then to feel

o whether or no on that historic night he was drunk; and my position is slightly ridiculous, for I’ve never cared to tell them what it really was I was taken up with. What I got out of it is the only morsel of the total experience that is quite my own. The others were shared, but this is incommunicable. I feel that now, I’m bound to say, even in thus roughly evoking the occasion, and it takes something from my pride of clearness. However, I shall perhaps be as clear as is absolutely needful if I remark that our young lady was too much given up to her own intensity of observation to be sensible of mine. It was plainly not the question of her marriage that had brought her back. I greatly enjoye

ibition might be on the part of a girl perceptibly so able to think things out I found it great sport to forecast. It would have been exciting to be approached by her, appealed to by her for advice; but I prayed to heaven I mightn’t find myself in such a predicament. If there was really a present rigour in the situation of which Gravener had sketched for me the elements, she would have to get out of her difficulty by herself. It wasn’t I who had launched her and it wasn’t I who could help her. I didn’t fail to ask myself why, since I couldn’t help her, I should think so much about her. It was in part my suspense that was responsible for this; I waited impatiently to see whether she wouldn’t have told Mrs. Mulville a portion at least of what I had learned from Gravener. But I saw Mrs. Mulville was still reduced to wonder wha