way gave her to understand that he did not require her to sit on his knee. So she brought up her cousin Véronique, who was also thirsty. Lindley laughed, and paid, and went out. It had been something to do, at any rate; but the atmosphere was a little too terrific. All the while the two anæmic children had sat and glared at him, and conversed with one another in shy whispers.

He wandered out again, followed the streets that led upwards, and got back to the park again. Chance brought him to the door of his hotel. In the smoking-room the oppressed French father smoked a pale cigar, and sipped, at intervals, a sticky liqueur. He observed that the weather seemed likely to improve, and Lindley admitted it. Then he went up to bed. After all, this was not so bad. It would, at any rate, do for a while, and for a while help to obscure in his mind the vision of Sonya in her little fur jacket, standing by the fire in his London flat; and so help him to keep his promise to her.

The next day he secured for himself a little private sitting-room on the same floor as his bedroom, and made attempts to write again. He had seen much which was suggestive, if only it would take shape in his mind and he could see definitely what was suggested. Those two weird and very white-faced girl children were vivid before his eyes, and his imagination started

away on their future history. Then it was the Jewess in the orange sash, her fiddle tucked under her fat chin, and he flew off on the track of her past. But there was nothing substantial, nothing cohesive, nothing that he could go upon. All that was wanted was concentration, and he had sometimes found that prolonged work would induce this. To-morrow, undoubtedly, he would stick to it. To-day he lunched at a restaurant in the Rue d'Anspach, and then drove off to drink in, with other tourists, the horrors of the Musée Wiertz.

After that one day was much like another; always there was some attempt to work with greater or less success. Many things were begun, and nothing was finished. There were fits of a furious determination that, after all, his life should not be ruined, and that he would yet do something. More often there were fits of lethargy, when he was content to sit out on the pavement in front of the restaurant where he had lunched or dined, and sip his mazagran and watch the moment as it passed. A ragged boy begged for his superfluous and ridiculous rectangular piece of sugar. A fat priest rolled by and suggested what a very queer angel he would make. A woman called out the names of newspapers with baffling unintelligibility. As long as something happened which he could see and think about, it sufficed. Anything sufficed so long as he did not think of Sonya and the life

which she must now be leading. But of that he rarely thought, and dared not think. Then perhaps some scene would come into his mind which he wanted to put down on paper—a detached fragment, nothing in itself, but with possibilities about it, and he would go back to work. He received no letters, and he wrote none. He wanted nothing to remind him of what had been.

And then one day, as he listened to the music in the cathedral, he saw that this was all wrong. At the moment when the blow had fallen he had found an escape in working for another. That way of escape was still open. There must be something in England that a man could do who had money, was not very particular, and wanted only to work for others. He must mix himself up with the herd again; he must talk to Walter about improved carburetters, and to Henrietta about new tea-gowns, and to Anna's husband about the political situation, and to Anna herself about anything. As likely as not these good people were all beginning to be very anxious about him. He had taken a selfish line, and selfishness had been its own punishment. Sooner or later he felt that this exiled life would end in madness. And when he no longer knew what he did, or no longer controlled his actions, he might break his word to Sonya, and Sonya might get to know it. He left Brussels at nine that night. He waited for a few hours' rest in

London, and then took the express north to Haxteth. He even remembered to send a premonitory telegram that he was coming and that he was quite well. But he did not look well;

he looked hunted and broken.

CHAPTER X

THE AWAKENING

LINDLEY had been so long alone, with no

greetings but the calculated servility of waiters and porters, that his welcome at Haxteth impressed him. He found himself quite glad to see Henrietta again, and quite surprised that he should be glad. They had little in common. Her babble at the best should have bored him, and at the worst might have maddened him. But then he had during his stay at Haxteth helped her quite a good deal, and one gets to like the people to whom one has shown kindness. Besides, goodwill calls goodwill, and Henrietta's goodwill towards Lindley was evidenced by all the means in her power. There were flowers in his bedroom. Lindley regarded flowers in his bedroom much as he would have regarded toothpowder in his soup; but he knew that with many women flowers in the bedroom are accepted as the last word of delicate attention. It was only a hint from Walter that saved him from overlooking the fact that the unpretentious little dinner had been arranged to suit supposed