brain.  He had received a note from Dona Rita saying that she had gone into retreat and that she did not mean to send him her address, not being in the humour to be worried with letters on any subject whatever.  “It’s enough for you”—­she wrote—­“to know that I am alive.”  Later, at irregular intervals, he received scraps of paper bearing the stamps of various post offices and containing the simple statement:  “I am still alive,” signed with an enormous, flourished exuberant R. I imagine Rose had to travel some distances by rail to post those messages.  A thick veil of secrecy had been lowered between the world and the lovers; yet even this veil turned out not altogether impenetrable.

He—­it would be convenient to call him Monsieur George to the end—­ shared with Dona Rita her perfect detachment from all mundane affairs; but he had to make two short visits to Marseilles.  The first was prompted by his loyal affection for Dominic.  He wanted to discover what had happened or was happening to Dominic and to find out whether he could do something for that man.  But Dominic was not the sort of person for whom one can do much.  Monsieur George did not even see him.  It looked uncommonly as if Dominic’s heart were broken.  Monsieur George remained concealed for twenty-four hours in the very house in which Madame Leonore had her cafe.  He spent most of that time in conversing with Madame Leonore about Dominic.  She was distressed, but her mind was made up.  That bright-eyed, nonchalant, and passionate woman was making arrangements to dispose of her cafe before departing to join Dominic.  She would not say where.  Having ascertained that his assistance was not required Monsieur George, in his own words, “managed to sneak out of the town without being seen by a single soul that mattered.”

The second occasion was very prosaic and shockingly incongruous with the super-mundane colouring of these days.  He had neither the fortune of Henry Allegre nor a man of affairs of his own.  But some rent had to be paid to somebody for the stone hut and Rose could not go marketing in the tiny hamlet at the foot of the hill without a little money.  There came a time when Monsieur George had to descend from the heights of his love in order, in his own words, “to get a supply of cash.”  As he had disappeared very suddenly and completely for a time from the eyes of mankind it was necessary that he should show himself and sign some papers.  That business was transacted in the office of the banker mentioned in the story.  Monsieur George wished to avoid seeing the man himself but in this he did not succeed.  The interview was short.  The banker naturally asked no questions, made no allusions to persons and events, and didn’t even mention the great Legitimist Principle which presented to him now no interest whatever.  But for the moment all the world was talking of the Carlist enterprise.  It had collapsed utterly, leaving behind, as usual,