’It is very absurd for you to speak of unselfishness at the very moment when you are selfishly giving me so much pain,’ she cried, defiant.

He bent his head and covered his face with his hands.

She stood and looked at him, her cheeks flushed and her breast heaving with a great anger.

‘Good-bye, Violetta,’ he said, and turned slowly away.

‘I never heard of anything so dishonourable,’ she cried.

And that was what the world said; the curate was in disgrace with society for the rest of his life.

V

‘Hath not A Jew eyes?’

Mr. Saintou the hairdresser was a Frenchman, therefore his English neighbours regarded him with suspicion.  He was also exceedingly stout, and his stoutness had come upon him at an unbecomingly early age, so that he had long been the object of his neighbours’ merriment.  When to these facts it is added that, although a keen and prosperous business man, he had attained the age of fifty without making any effort to marry, enough will have been said to show why he was disliked.

Why was he not married?  Were English women not good enough for him?  The pretty milliner across the street had been heard to remark in his presence that she should never refuse a man simply because he was a foreigner.  Or if he did not want an English wife, why did he not import one from Paris with his perfumes?  No, there was no reason for his behaviour, and Mr. Saintou was the object of his neighbours’ aversion.

Neighbours are often wrong in their estimates.  In the heart of this shrewd and stout French hairdresser there lay the rare capacity for one supreme and lasting affection.  Mr. Saintou’s love story was in the past, and it had come about in this way.

One day when the hairdresser was still a young man, not long after he had first settled in Albert Street, the door of his shop opened, and a young woman came in.  Her figure was short and broad, and she was lame, walking with a crutch.  Her face and features were large and peculiarly frank in expression; upon her head was a very large hat.  When she spoke, it was with a loud staccato voice; her words fell after one another like hailstones in a storm, there was no breathing space between them.

‘I want Mr. Saintou.’

‘What may I have the pleasure of showing madame?’

’Good gracious, I told you I wanted to be shown Mr. Saintou.  Are you Mr. Saintou?  None of your assistants for me; I want my hair cut.’

The hairdresser laid his hand upon his heart, as though to point out his own identity.  He bowed, and as even at that age he was very stout, the effort of the bow caused his small eyes to shut and open themselves again.  There was nothing staccato about the manner of the hairdresser, he had carefully cultivated that address which he supposed would be most soothing to those who submitted themselves to his operations.