The Project Gutenberg eBook ofNotwithstanding

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofNotwithstandingThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: NotwithstandingAuthor: Mary CholmondeleyRelease date: October 17, 2011 [eBook #37781]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, Martin Pettit and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTWITHSTANDING ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: NotwithstandingAuthor: Mary CholmondeleyRelease date: October 17, 2011 [eBook #37781]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, Martin Pettit and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

Title: Notwithstanding

Author: Mary Cholmondeley

Release date: October 17, 2011 [eBook #37781]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, Martin Pettit and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTWITHSTANDING ***

Transcriber's Note:A Table of Contents has been added.

NOTWITHSTANDING

AUTHOR OF "RED POTTAGE"

Und wasIst Zufall anders, als der rohe Stein,Der Leben annimmt unter Bildners Hand?

Und was

Ist Zufall anders, als der rohe Stein,

Der Leben annimmt unter Bildners Hand?

LONDON:JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.1913

First Edition October 1913Reprinted October 1913

TOMAY AND JEANNIE

NOTWITHSTANDING

"Le vent qui vient à travers la montagneM'a rendu fou!"Victor Hugo.

"Le vent qui vient à travers la montagne

M'a rendu fou!"

Victor Hugo.

Annette leaned against the low parapet and looked steadfastly at the water, so steadfastly that all the brilliant, newly-washed, tree-besprinkled city of Paris, lying spread before her, cleft by the wide river with its many bridges, was invisible to her. She saw nothing but the Seine, so tranquil yesterday, and to-day chafing beneath its bridges and licking ominously round their great stone supports—because there had been rain the day before.

The Seine was the only angry, sinister element in the suave September sunshine, and perhaps that was why Annette's eyes had been first drawn to it. She also was angry, with the deep, still anger which invades once or twice in a lifetime placid, gentle-tempered people.

Her dark eyes under their long curled lashes looked down over the stone bastion of the Pont Neuf at a yellow eddy just below her.They were beautiful eyes, limpid, deep, with a certain tranquil mystery in them. But there was no mystery in them at this moment. They were fixed, dilated, desperate.

Annette was twenty-one, but she looked much younger, owing to a certain slowness of development, an immaturity of mind and body. She reminded one not of an opening flower, but of a big, loose-limbed colt, ungainly still, but every line promising symmetry and grace to come. She was not quite beautiful yet, but that clearly was also still to come, when life should have had time to erase a certain ruminative stolidity from her fine, still countenance. One felt that in her schoolroom days she must have been often tartly desired not to "moon." She gave the impression of not having wholly emerged from the chrysalis, and her bewildered face, the face of a dreamer, wore a strained expression, as if some cruel hand had mockingly rent asunder the veils behind which her life had been moving and growing so far, and had thrust her, cold and shuddering, with unready wings, into a world for which she was not fully equipped.

And Annette, pale gentle Annette, standing on the threshold of life, unconsciously clutching an umbrella and a little handbag, was actually thinking of throwing herself into the water!

Not here, of course, but lower down, perhaps near St. Germains. No, not St. Germains,—there were too many people there,—but Melun,where the Seine was fringed thick with reeds and rushes, where in the dusk a determined woman might wade out from the bank till the current took her.

The remembrance of a certain expedition to Melun rose suddenly before her. In a kind of anguish she saw again its little red and white houses, sprinkled on the slope of its low hill, and the river below winding between its willows and poplars, amid meadows of buttercups, scattered with great posies of maythorn. She and he had sat together under one of the may trees, and Mariette, poor Mariette, with Antoine at her feet, had sat under another close at hand. And Mariette had sung in her thin, reedy voice the song with its ever-recurring refrain—

"Le vent qui vient à travers la montagneMe rendra fou, oui, me rendra fou."

"Le vent qui vient à travers la montagne

Me rendra fou, oui, me rendra fou."

Annette shuddered and then was still.

It must have been a very deep wound, inflicted with a jagged instrument, which had brought her to this pass, which had lit this stony defiance in her soft eyes. For though it was evident that she had rebelled against life, it was equally evident that she was not of the egotistic temperament of those who rebel or cavil, or are discontented. She looked equable, feminine, the kind of woman who would take life easily, bend to it naturally,

"As the grass grows on the weirs";

who might, indeed, become a tigress in defenceof her young, but then what woman would not?

But it is not only in defence of its babes of flesh and blood that the protective fierceness of woman can be aroused. There are spiritual children, ideals, illusions, romantic beliefs in others, the cold-blooded murder of which arouses the tigress in some women. Perhaps it had been so with Annette. For the instinct to rend and tear was upon her, and it had turned savagely against herself.

Strange how in youth our first crushing defeat in the experiment of living brings with it the temptation of suicide! Did we then imagine, in spite of all we saw going on round us, that life was to be easy forus, painless forus, joyful forus, so that the moment the iron enters our soul we are so affronted that we say, "If this is life, we will have none of it"?

Several passers-by had cast a backward glance at Annette. Presently some one stopped, with a little joyous exclamation. She was obliged to raise her eyes and return his greeting.

She knew him, the eccentric, rich young Englishman who rode his own horses under a French name which no one believed was his own. He often came to her father's cabaret in the Rue du Bac.

"Good morning, mademoiselle."

"Good morning, M. Le Geyt."

He came and leaned on the parapet beside her.

"Are you not riding to-day?"

"Riding to-day! Ride on the Flat! Is it likely? Besides, I had a fall yesterday schooling. My neck is stiff."

He did not add that he had all but broken it. Indeed, it was probable that he had already forgotten the fact.

He looked hard at her with his dancing, irresponsible blue eyes. He had the good looks which he shared with some of his horses, of extreme high breeding. He was even handsome in a way, with a thin, reckless, trivial face, and a slender, wiry figure. He looked as light as a leaf, and as if he were being blown through life by any chance wind, the wind of his own vagaries.

His manner had just the shade of admiring familiarity which to some men seems admissible to the pretty daughter of a disreputable old innkeeper.

He peered down at the river, and then at the houses crowding along its yellow quays, mysterious behind their paint as a Frenchwoman behind her pomade and powder.

Then he looked back at her with mock solemnity.

"I see nothing," he said.

"What did you expect to see?"

"Something that had the honour of engaging your attention completely."

"I was looking at the water."

"Just so. But why?"

She paused a moment, and then said, without any change of voice—

"I was thinking of throwing myself in."

Their eyes met—his, foolhardy, inquisitive, not unkindly; hers, sombre, sinister, darkened.

The recklessness in both of them rushed out and joined hands.

He laughed lightly.

"No, no," he said, "sweet Annette—lovely Annette. The Seine is not for you. So you have quarrelled with Falconhurst already. He has managed very badly. Or did you find out that he was going to be married? I knew it, but I did not say. Never mind. If he is, it doesn't matter. And if he isn't, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters."

"You are right. Nothing matters," said Annette. Her face, always pale, had become livid.

His became suddenly alert, flushed, as hers paled. He sighted a possible adventure. Excitement blazed up in his light eyes.

"One tear," he said, "yes,—you may shed one tear. But the Seine! No. The Seine is made up of all the tears which women have shed for men—men of no account, worthless wretches like Falconhurst and me. You must not add to that great flood. Leave off looking at the water, Annette. It is not safe for you to look at it. Look at me instead. And listen to what I am saying. You are not listening."

"Yes, I am."

"I'm going down to Fontainebleau for a bit. The doctor says I must get out of Paris and keep quiet, or I shan't be able to ride at Auteuil. I don't believe a word he says, croaking old woman! But—hang it all, I'm bound to ride Sam Slick at Auteuil. Kirby can look after the string while I'm at Fontainebleau. I'm going there this afternoon. Come with me. I am not much, but I am better than the Seine. My kisses will not choke the life out of you, as the Seine's will. We will spend a week together, and talk matters over, and sit in the sun, and at the end of it we shall both laugh—howwe shall laugh—when you remember this." And he pointed to the swirling water.

A thought slid through Annette's mind like a snake through grass.

"Hewill hear of it. He is sure to hear of it. That will hurt him worse than if I were drowned."

"I don't care what I do," she said, meeting his eyes without flinching. It was he who for a moment winced when he saw the smouldering flame in them.

He laughed again, the old light, inconsequent laugh which came to him so easily, with which he met good and bad fortune alike.

"When you are as old as I am," he said not unkindly, "you will do as I am doing now, take the good the gods provide you, andtrouble your mind about nothing else. For there's nothing in the world or out of it that is worth troubling about. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing."

"Nothing," echoed Annette hoarsely.

"Et partout le spectre de l'amour,Et nullepart l'amour."

"Et partout le spectre de l'amour,

Et nullepart l'amour."

The train was crawling down to Fontainebleau. Annette sat opposite her companion, looking not at him but at the strange country through which they were going. How well she knew it! How often she had gone down to Fontainebleau. But to-day all the familiar lines were altered. The townlets, up to their eyes in trees, seemed alien, dead. Presently the forest, no longer fretted by the suburbs, came close up on both sides of the rail. What had happened to the oaks that they seemed drawn up in serried lines to watch her pass, like soldiers at a funeral! A cold horror brooded over everything. She looked at her companion and withdrew her eyes. He had said he was better than the Seine. But now she came to meet his eyes fixed on her, was he better? She was not sure. She was not sure of anything, except that life was unendurable and that she did not care what happened to her.

There had been sordid details, and there would be more. He had said it would be better if she had a wedding ring, and he had boughther one. The shopman had smiled offensively as he had found one to fit her. She set her teeth at the remembrance. But she would go through with it. She did not care. There was nothing left in the world to care about. It was Dick Le Geyt who, thoughtless as he was, had shown some little thought for her, had taken her to a restaurant and obliged her to eat, had put her into the train, and then had waylaid and dismissed his valet, who brought his luggage to the station, and who seemed at first determined not to let his master go without him, indeed was hardly to be shaken off, until Dick whispered something to him, when the man shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

Annette looked again at her companion. He had fallen suddenly asleep, his mouth ajar. How old and shrunk and battered he looked, and how strangely pinched! There was something unnatural about his appearance. A horrible suspicion passed through her mind that he had been drinking. She suddenly remembered that she had once heard a rumour of that kind about him, and that he had lost a race by it. She had to waken him when they reached Fontainebleau, and then, after a moment's bewilderment, he resumed all his alertness and feather-headed promptitude.

Presently she was in a bedroom in an old-fashioned inn, and was looking out of the window at a little garden, with tiny pebbledwalks, and a fountain, and four stunted, clipped acacia trees.

The hotel was quite full. She had been asked some question as to whether the room would do, and she had said it would. She had hardly glanced at it. It was the only room to be had. And Dick's luggage was carried up to it. The hotel-people took for granted his baggage was hers as well as his. She remembered that she had none, and smoothed her hair mechanically with her hands, while an admiring little chamber-maid whisked in with hot water.

And presently, in the hot, tawdry salle à manger, there was a meal, and she was sitting at a little table with Dick, and all the food was pretence, like the tiny wooden joints and puddings in her doll's house which she used to try to eat as a child. These were larger, and she tried to eat them, but she could not swallow anything. She wondered how the others could. And the electric light flickered, and once it went out, and Dick laughed. And he ordered champagne for her and made her drink some. And then, though he said he must not touch it, he drank some himself, and became excited, and she was conscious that a spectacled youth with projecting teeth turned to look at them. There was a grey-haired Englishwoman sitting alone at the nearest table. Annette saw her eyes rest on her for a moment with veiled compassion.

All her life afterwards, she remembered that evening as a nightmare. But it was not anightmare at the time. She was only an on-looker: a dazed, callous spectator of something grotesque which did not affect her—a mirthless, sordid farce which for some obscure forgotten reason it was necessary for her to watch. That she was herself the principal actor in the farce, and that the farce had the makings of a tragedy, did not occur to her. She was incapable of action and of thought.

Later in the evening she was in her bedroom again, sitting with her hands in her lap, vacantly staring at the wall with its mustard-coloured roses on a buff ground, when two grinning waiters half carried, half hustled in Dick, gesticulating and talking incoherently. They helped him into bed: the elder one waited a moment, arms a-kimbo, till Dick fell suddenly asleep, and then said cheerfully and reassuringly—

"C'est ça, madame," and withdrew.

Annette got up instinctively to go too, but she remembered that she had nowhere to go, that it was close on midnight, that she was in her own room with which she had expressed herself satisfied, that she and her companion were passing at the hotel as husband and wife. She felt no horror, no sense of the irremediable folly she had committed. She stood a moment, and then drew the curtain and sat down by the window, looking out, as she had sat all the previous night in her little bedroom in her father's cabaret, out of which she had slunk like a thief as soon as it was light. Her spellbound facultieswere absorbed in one mental picture, which was to her the only reality, as the cobra is the only reality to the dove. She forgot where she was. She forgot the heavy breathing of her companion, stirring uneasily in his sleep. She saw only, as she had seen all day, the smoking, hideous ruin of that wonderful castle of dreams which she had built stone by stone during the last year, into the secret chamber of which she had walled up that shy, romantic recluse her heart: that castle of dreams in which she paced on a rainbow mosaic, which she had tapestried with ideals and prayers and aspirations, in the midst of which there was a shrine.

There was nothing left of it now, worse than nothing, only a smoking, evil-smelling hump of débris, with here and there a flapping rag of what had once been stately arras or cloth of gold. It had reeled and crashed down into the slime in a moment's space. The thunder of its fall had deafened her to all other noises; its smoke had blinded her to all other sights. Oh! why had she let herself be dissuaded from her only refuge against this unendurable vision seared in upon her brain? It had been agony. It would be agony again. If Dick had let her alone, she would be at rest now, quite away from it all, her body floating down to the sea in the keeping of the kind, cool river, and her outraged soul escaped—escaped.

But she would do it still. She would creep away a second time at dawn, as soon as thehouse was stirring. There must be a river somewhere—if not a big river, a little one with deep pools. She would find it. And this time she would not let herself be dissuaded. This time she would drown herself, if the water were only knee-deep. And her mind being made up, she gave a little sigh, and leaned her aching forehead against the glass.

The man in the bed stirred, and feebly stammered out the word "Annette" once and again. But Annette did not hear him, and after a time he muttered and moved no more.

And when the dawn came up at last, it found Annette, who had watched for it wide-eyed all night, sunk down asleep, with her head upon the sill.

"Vous êtes bien pâle, ma belle,Comment vous appelez-vous?Je suis l'amante, dit-elle.Cueillez la branche de houx."

"Vous êtes bien pâle, ma belle,

Comment vous appelez-vous?

Je suis l'amante, dit-elle.

Cueillez la branche de houx."

Annette stirred at last when a shaft of sunlight fell upon her head. She sat up stiffly, and stared round the unfamiliar chamber, with the low sun slanting across the floor and creeping up the bottom of the door. Nothing stirred. A chill silence made itself felt. The room seemed to be aware of something, to be beforehand with her. Some nameless instinct made her get up suddenly and go to the bed.

Dick Le Geyt was lying on his back, with his eyes wide open. There was a mute appeal in his sharp-featured face, sharper featured than ever before, and in his thin outstretched hands, with the delicate nervous fingers crooked. He had needed help, and he had not found it. He had perhaps called to her, and she had not listened. She had been deaf to everything except herself. A sword seemed to pierce Annette's brain. It was as if some tight bandage were cleft and violently riven from it. She came shuddering to herself from out of thewaking swoon of the last two days. Hardly knowing what she did, she ran out of the room and into the passage. But it must be very early yet. No one was afoot. What to do next? She must rouse some one, and at once. But whom? She was about to knock at the nearest door, when she heard a hurried movement within, and the door opened.

A grey-haired woman in a dressing-gown looked out, the same whom she had seen the night before at dinner.

"I thought I heard some one call," she said. "Is anything wrong?" Then, as Annette leaned trembling against the wall, "Can I be of any use?"

Annette pointed to her own open door, and the woman went in with her at once.

She hastened instantly to the bed and bent over it. She touched the forehead, the wrist, with rapid, business-like movements. She put her hand upon Dick's heart.

"Is he dead?" asked Annette.

"No," she said, "but he is unconscious, and he is very ill. It is some kind of seizure. When did your husband become like this?"

"I—don't know," said Annette.

The woman turned indignantly upon her.

"You don't know! Yet surely you sat up with him? You look as if you had been up all night."

"I sat up, but I did not look at him," said Annette. "I never thought he was ill."

The elder woman's cheek reddened at the callousness of Annette's words, as at a blow. She was silent for a moment, and then said coldly—

"We have only one thing to think of now, and that is how to save his life, if it can be saved."

And in a moment, as it seemed to Annette, the house was awakened, and a doctor and a Sister of Mercy appeared and were installed at Dick's bedside. After a few hours, consciousness came back intermittently; but Dick, so excitable the day before, took but little heed of what went on around him. When, at the doctor's wish, Annette spoke to him, he looked at her without recognition.

The doctor was puzzled, and asked her many questions as to his condition on the previous day. She remembered that he had had a fall from his horse a day or two before, and had hurt his neck; and the doctor established some mysterious link between the accident and the illness, which he said had been terribly aggravated by drink. Had Monsieur taken much stimulant the night before? Yes, Monsieur had appeared to be intoxicated.

Mrs. Stoddart's steel eyes softened somewhat as she looked at Annette. She and the doctor noticed the extreme exhaustion from which she was suffering, and exchanged glances. Presently Mrs. Stoddart took the girl to her own room, and helped her to undress, and made her lie down on her bed.

"I will bring you your dressing-gown, if you will tell me where it is."

"I don't know," said Annette; and then she recollected, and said, "I haven't any things with me."

"Not even a handkerchief?"

"I think not a handkerchief."

"How long is it since you have slept?"

"I don't know." These words seemed her whole stock-in-trade.

Mrs. Stoddart frowned.

"I can't have you ill on my hands too," she said briskly; "one is enough." And she left the room, and presently came back with a glass with a few drops in it. She made Annette swallow them, and put a warm rug over her, and darkened the room.

And presently Annette's eyes closed, and the anguish of the last two days was lifted from her, as a deft hand lifts a burden. She sighed and leaned her cheek against a pillow which was made of rest; and presently she was wandering in a great peace in a wide meadow beside a little stream whispering among its forget-me-nots. And across the white clover, and the daisies, and the little purple orchids, came the feet of one who loved her. And they walked together beside the stream, the kind, understanding stream, he and she—he and she together. And all was well, all was well.

Many hours later, Mrs. Stoddart and thedoctor came and looked at her, and he thrust out his under lip.

"I can't bear to wake her," she said.

"One little half-hour, then," he said, and went back to the next room.

Mrs. Stoddart sat down by the bed, and presently Annette, as if conscious of her presence, opened her eyes.

"I see now," she said slowly, looking at Mrs. Stoddart with the fixed gravity of a child, "I was wrong."

"How wrong, my dear?"

"Rivers are not meant for that, nor the little streams either. They are not meant to drown oneself in. They are meant to run and run, and for us to walk beside, and pick forget-me-nots."

Mrs. Stoddart's scrutinizing eyes filled with sudden tears. What tragedy was this into which she had thrust herself? She drew back the curtain, and let the afternoon light fall on Annette's face. Her eyelids trembled, and into her peaceful, rapt face distress crept slowly back. Mrs. Stoddart felt as if she had committed a crime. But there was another to think of besides Annette.

"You have slept?"

"Yes. I ought not to have gone to sleep while Dick was ill."

"You needed sleep."

"Is—is he better?"

"He is somewhat better."

"I will go to him."

"He does not need you just now."

"Has the doctor found out what is the matter with him?"

"He thinks he has." Mrs. Stoddart spoke very slowly. "As far as I understand, there is a cerebral lesion, and it is possible that it may not be as serious as he thought at first. It may have been aggravated for the moment by drink, the effects of which are passing off. But there is always the risk—in this case a great risk—that the injury to the brain may increase. In any case, his condition is very grave. His family ought to be communicated with at once."

Annette stared at her in silence.

"Theymustbe summoned," said Mrs. Stoddart.

"But I don't know who they are," said Annette. "I don't even know his real name. He is called Mr. Le Geyt. It is the name he rides under."

Mrs. Stoddart reddened. She had had her doubts.

"A wife should know her husband's name," she said.

"But, you see, I'm not his wife."

There was a moment's silence. Mrs. Stoddart's eyes fell on Annette's wedding ring.

"That is nothing," said Annette. "Dick said I had better have one, and he bought it in a shop before we started. I think I'll take it off. I hate wearing it."

"No, no. Keep it on."

There was another silence.

"But you must know his address."

"No. I know he is often in Paris. But I have only met him at—at a cabaret."

"Could you trust me?" said Mrs. Stoddart humbly.

Annette trembled, and her face became convulsed.

"You are very kind," she said, "very kind,—getting the nurse, and helping, and this nice warm rug, and everything,—but I'm afraid I can't trust anyone any more. I've left off trusting people."

"Et je m'en vaisAu vent mauvaisQui m'emporteDeçà, delà,Pareille à laFeuille morte."Verlaine.

"Et je m'en vais

Au vent mauvais

Qui m'emporte

Deçà, delà,

Pareille à la

Feuille morte."

Verlaine.

It was the second day of Dick's illness. Annette's life had revived somewhat, though the long sleep had not taken the strained look from her eyes. But Mrs. Stoddart's fears for her were momentarily allayed. Tears were what she needed, and tears were evidently a long way off.

And Annette fought for the life of poor Dick as if he were indeed her bridegroom, and Mrs. Stoddart abetted her as if he were her only son. The illness was incalculable, abnormal. There were intervals of lucidity followed by long lapses into unconsciousness. There were hours in which he seemed to know them, but could neither speak nor move. There were times when it appeared as if the faint flame of life had flickered quite out, only to waver feebly up again.

Together the two women had searched every article of Dick's effects, but they could find noclue to his address or identity. Annette remembered that he had had a pocket-book, and seeing him take a note out of it to pay for the tickets. But the pocket-book could not be found, or any money. It was evident that he had been robbed that first evening when he was drinking. Some of his handkerchiefs were marked with four initials, R. L. G. M.

"Richard Le Geyt M. Then he had another name as well," said Mrs. Stoddart. "You can't recall having ever heard it?"

Annette shook her head.

"He is supposed to be an English lord," she said, "and very rich. And he rides his own horses, and makes and loses a great deal of money on the turf. And he is peculiar—very depressed one year, and very wild the next. That is all that people like us who are not his social equals know of him."

"I do not even know whatyourname is," said Mrs. Stoddart tentatively, as she rearranged Dick's clothes in the drawers, and took up a bottle of lotion which had evidently been intended for his strained neck.

"My name is Annette."

"Well, Annette, I think the best thing you can do is to write to your home and say that you are coming back to it immediately."

"I have no home."

Mrs. Stoddart was silent. Any information which Annette vouchsafed about herself always seemed to entail silence.

"I have made up my mind," Annette went on, "to stay with Dick till he is better. He is the only person I care a little bit about."

"No, Annette, you do not care for him. It is remorse for your neglect of him that makes you nurse him with such devotion."

"I do not love him," said Annette. "But then, how could I? I hardly know him. But he meant to be kind to me. He was the only person who was kind. He tried to save me, though not in the right way. Poor Dick, he does not know much. But I must stay and nurse him till he is better. I can't desert him."

"My dear," said Mrs. Stoddart impatiently, "that is all very well, but you cannot remain here without a scandal. It is different for an old woman like myself. And though we have not yet got into touch with his family, we shall directly. If I can't get a clue otherwise, I shall apply to the police. You must think of your own character."

"I do not care about my character," said Annette in the same tone in which she might have said she did not care for black coffee.

"But I do," said Mrs. Stoddart to herself.

"And I have a little money," Annette continued,—"at least, not much money, only a few louis,—but I have these." And she drew out from her neck a row of pearls. They were not large pearls, but they were even and beautifully matched.

"They were mother's," she said. "Theywill be enough for the doctor and the nurse and the hotel bill, won't they?"

Mrs. Stoddart put down the bottle of lotion and took the pearls in her hand, and bent over them, trying to hide her amazement.

"They are very good," she said slowly,—"beautiful colour and shape." Then she raised her eyes, and they fell once more on the bottle.

"But what am I thinking of?" she said sharply. "There is the clue I need staring me in the face. How incredibly stupid I am! There is the Paris chemist's name on it, and the number of the prescription. I can wire to him for the address to which he sent the bottle."

"Dick has a valet at his address," said Annette, "and of course he would know all about his people."

"How do you know he has a valet?"

"He met Dick at the station with the luggage. He was to have come to Fontainebleau with him, but Dick sent him back at the last moment, I suppose because of—me."

"Would you know him again if you saw him?"

"Yes. I watched Dick talking to him for several minutes. He would not go away at first. Perhaps he knew Dick was ill and needed care."

"Most likely. Did he see you?"

"No."

"Are you certain?"

"Quite certain."

"There is then one microscopic mercy to be thankful for. Then no one knows that you are here with Mr. Le Geyt?"

"No one, but I dare say it will be known presently," said Annette apathetically.

"Not if I can prevent it," said Mrs. Stoddart to herself as she put on her pince-nez and went out to telegraph to the chemist.

Annette went back to the bedside, and the Sister withdrew to the window and got out her breviary.

Annette sat down and leaned her tired head against the pillow with something like envy of Dick's unconsciousness. Would a certain hideous picture ever be blotted out from her aching brain? Her only respite from it was when she could minister to Dick. He was her sole link with life, the one fixed point in a shifting quicksand. She came very near to loving him in these days.

Presently he stirred and sighed, and opened his eyes. They wandered to the ceiling, and then fell idly on her without knowing her, as they had done a hundred times. Then recognition slowly dawned in them, clear and grave.

She raised her head, and they looked long at each other.

"Annette," he said in a whisper, "I am sorry."

She tried to speak, but no words came.

"Often, often, when I have been lying here," he said feebly, "I have been sorry, but I couldnever say so. Just when I saw your face clear I always went away again, a long way off. Would you mind holding my hand, so that I may not be blown away again?"

She took it in both of hers and held it.

There was a long silence. A faint colour fluttered in his leaden cheek.

"I never knew such a wind," he said. "It's stronger than anything in the world, and it blows and blows, and I go hopping before it like a leaf. I have to go. I really can't stay."

"You are much better. You will soon be able to get up."

"I don't know where I'm going, but I don't care. I don't want to get up. I'm tired—tired."

"You must not talk any more."

"Yes, I must. I have things to say. You are holding my hand tight, Annette?"

"Yes. Look, I have it safe in mine."

"I ought not to have brought you here. You were in despair, and I took advantage of it. Can you forgive me, Annette?"

"Dear Dick, there is nothing to forgive. I was more to blame than you."

"It was instead of the Seine. That was the excuse I made to myself. But the wind blows it away. It blows everything away—everything, everything.... Don't be angry again like that, Annette. Promise me you won't. You were too angry, and I took a mean advantage of it.... I once took advantage of a man's anger with a horse, but it brought me no luck.I thought I wouldn't do it again, but I did. And I haven't got much out of it this time either. I'm dying, or something like it. I'm going away for good and all. I'm so tired I don't know how I shall ever get there."

"Rest a little, Dick. Don't talk any more now."

"I want to give you a tip before I go. An old trainer put me up to it, and he made me promise not to tell anyone, and I haven't till now. But I want to do you a good turn to make up for the bad one. He said he'd never known it fail, and I haven't either. I've tried it scores of times. When you're angry, Annette, look at a cloud." Dick's blue eyes were fixed with a great earnestness on hers. "Not just for a minute. Choose a good big one, like a lot of cotton wool, and go on looking at it while it moves. And the anger goes away. Sounds rot, doesn't it? But you simply can't stay angry. Seems as if everything were too small and footling to matter. Try it, Annette. Don't look at water any more. That's no use. But a cloud—the bigger the better.... You won't drown yourself now, will you?"

"No."

"Annette rolling down to the sea over and over, knocking against the bridges. I can't bear to think of it. Promise me."

"I promise."

He sighed, and his hand fell out of hers. She laid it down. The great wind of which hespoke had taken him once more, whither he knew not. She leaned her face against the pillow and longed that she too might be swept away whither she knew not.

The doctor came in and looked at them.

"Are his family coming soon?" he asked Mrs. Stoddart afterwards. "And Madame Le Geyt! Can Madame's mother be summoned? There has been some great shock. Her eyes show it. It is not only Monsieur who is on the verge of the precipice."

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