those who know women won’t be surprised to hear me say that she was as new to love as he was.  During their retreat in the region of the Maritime Alps, in a small house built of dry stones and embowered with roses, they appear all through to be less like released lovers than as companions who had found out each other’s fitness in a specially intense way.  Upon the whole, I think that there must be some truth in his insistence of there having always been something childlike in their relation.  In the unreserved and instant sharing of all thoughts, all impressions, all sensations, we see the naiveness of a children’s foolhardy adventure.  This unreserved expressed for him the whole truth of the situation.  With her it may have been different.  It might have been assumed; yet nobody is altogether a comedian; and even comedians themselves have got to believe in the part they play.  Of the two she appears much the more assured and confident.  But if in this she was a comedienne then it was but a great achievement of her ineradicable honesty.  Having once renounced her honourable scruples she took good care that he should taste no flavour of misgivings in the cup.  Being older it was she who imparted its character to the situation.  As to the man if he had any superiority of his own it was simply the superiority of him who loves with the greater self-surrender.

This is what appears from the pages I have discreetly suppressed—­ partly out of regard for the pages themselves.  In every, even terrestrial, mystery there is as it were a sacred core.  A sustained commentary on love is not fit for every eye.  A universal experience is exactly the sort of thing which is most difficult to appraise justly in a particular instance.

How this particular instance affected Rose, who was the only companion of the two hermits in their rose-embowered hut of stones, I regret not to be able to report; but I will venture to say that for reasons on which I need not enlarge, the girl could not have been very reassured by what she saw.  It seems to me that her devotion could never be appeased; for the conviction must have been growing on her that, no matter what happened, Madame could never have any friends.  It may be that Dona Rita had given her a glimpse of the unavoidable end, and that the girl’s tarnished eyes masked a certain amount of apprehensive, helpless desolation.

What meantime was becoming of the fortune of Henry Allegre is another curious question.  We have been told that it was too big to be tied up in a sack and thrown into the sea.  That part of it represented by the fabulous collections was still being protected by the police.  But for the rest, it may be assumed that its power and significance were lost to an interested world for something like six months.  What is certain is that the late Henry Allegre’s man of affairs found himself comparatively idle.  The holiday must have done much good to his harassed