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—how we 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.

"He will 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, and trouble 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.

CHAPTER II

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 bought her 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 pebbled walks, 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 a nightmare 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