“Keep it,” said Barker; “they are scarce.”

“No; seriously.  If we must leave them alone, why—­why should we not go down and look at the yacht?”

“Not bad at all.  As you say, we might go round and see how she looks.  Where is she?”

“Nice.”

So the one went down and the other went round, but they went together, and saw the yacht, and ran over to Monte Carlo, and had a good taste of the dear old green-table, now that they could not have it in Baden any longer.  And they enjoyed the trip, and were temperate and well dressed and cynical, after their kind.  But Claudius stayed where he was.

CHAPTER VII.

The daily reading proceeded as usual after Barker’s departure, but neither Margaret nor Claudius mentioned the subject of the voyage.  Margaret was friendly, and sometimes seemed on the point of relapsing into her old manner, but she always checked herself.  What the precise change was it would be hard to say.  Claudius knew it was very easy to feel the difference, but impossible to define it.  As the days passed, he knew also that his life had ceased to be his own; and, with the chivalrous wholeness of purpose that was his nature, he took his soul and laid it at her feet, for better for worse, to do with as she would.  But he knew the hour was not come yet wherein he should speak; and so he served her in silence, content to feel the tree of life growing within him, which should one day overshadow them both with its sheltering branches.  His service was none the less whole and devoted because it had not yet been accepted.

One evening, nearly a week after they had been left to themselves, Claudius was sitting over his solitary dinner in the casino restaurant when a note was brought to him, a large square envelope of rough paper, and he knew the handwriting.  He hesitated to open it, and, glancing round the brilliantly-lighted restaurant, involuntarily wondered if any man at all those tables were that moment in such suspense as he.  He thought it was probably an intimation that she was going away, and that he was wanted no longer.  Then, for the first time in many days, he thought of his money.  “And if she does,” he said half aloud, “shall I not follow?  Shall not gold command everything save her heart, and can I not win that for myself?” And he took courage and quietly opened the note.

“MY DEAR DR. CLAUDIUS—­As the time is approaching, will you not do me a favour?  I want you to make a list of books to read on the voyage—­that is, if I may count on your kindness as an expounder.  If not, please tell me of some good novels.

     “Sincerely yours,”