“PENSIOIN SCHALCK, Bad Weisstein, Austrian Tyrol.

“MY DEAR CROCKER—­

“It would be pleasant to see you and talk over your trip, but you see by this address it is for the present impossible.  As always,

“Cordially yours,

“EMMA VERPLANCK.”

When Crocker found Emma’s valley as effectually barred as if a battery guarded the approaches, he gave way to a deep resentment.  Instinctively hating anything like a trick, to be tricked by Emma at this point was intolerable.  His gloom was such that he confided to the malicious Harwood a profound disgust with the irreality of the life Italianate.  The podere should be sold as soon as it could be put in order.  Such pictures as the Italian Government coveted, it should keep, the rest should go to the Museum at Boston.  He himself would grow orange trees in North Cuba where there were things to shoot and, thank heaven, no civilisation.  Harwood came breathlessly to Dennis’s with the tale, gloating openly that there was to be a seventh act if not an eighth.

A long hard day with his bailiff and the peasants restored Crocker’s poise.  He looked for the hundredth time over into Emma’s valley and divined her attitude.  Dreading an interview, she had left the way open to parley.  She virtually pleaded for a delay.  It was a new and, in a way, delightful sensation to be feared.  For the first time in any human relation he exploited a personal advantage and wrote, addressing Bad Weisstein: 

“DEAREST EMMA—­

“You have wanted a delay.  Well, you have it—­probably a week already.  Make the most of it, for two weeks from this date—­I give you time to recover from your journey—­I am coming for tea in the old way.  Meanwhile you can hardly imagine the impatience of

“Yours more than ever,

“MORTON CROCKER.”

Whether Crocker or Emma was more miserable during the fortnight even Dennis could not have told.  But there was in his woe something of the sublime stolidity of the man who is going to stand up to be shot or reprieved, whereas she suffered the uncertainty of the soldier who has been drawn to make up the “firing party” for a comrade.  She feared that she would not have courage enough to despatch him, and then she feared she would.  Meantime the days passed, and she woke up one morning with an odd little shiver reminding her that it was no longer possible to get a note to him by way of Bad Weisstein.  Nor had she the heart to move to a nearer coign of constructive absence.  Of half measures she was, after all, a foe.  Her determination to send Crocker away daily increased, and the implacable St. Michael seemed to command that course.  “You are not for him.  You represent a whole artificial world in which he cannot breathe.  I, the finest incarnation of the most exquisite mannerism of a bygone time, am your spiritual spouse, and you may not lightly renounce me.  You have devoted yourself to graceful