Then came the letter from Tlemcen.  The Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the 3rd Regiment of Chasseurs d’Afrique had received my honoured communication but regretted to say that he, together with all the officers of the regiment, had severed their connection with Captain Vauvenarde, and that they were ignorant of his present address.

This was absurd.  A man does not resign from his regiment and within a year or two disappear like a ghost from the ken of every one of his brother officers.  I read the letter again.  Did the severance of connection mean the casting out of a black sheep from their midst?  I came to the conclusion that it did.  They had washed their hands of Captain Vauvenarde, and desired to hear nothing of him in the future.

So I awoke from my lethargy, and springing up sent not for my shield and spear, but for an “Indicateur des Chemins de Fer.”  I would go to Tlemcen and get to the bottom of it.  I searched the time-table and found two trains, one starting from Algiers at nine-forty at night and getting into Tlemcen at noon next day, and one leaving at six-fifty in the morning and arriving at half-past ten at night.  I groaned aloud.  The dealing unto oneself a happy life and portion did not include abominable train journeys like these.  I was trying to decide whether I should travel all night or all day when the Arab chasseur of the hotel brought me a telegram.  I opened it.  It ran: 

“Starting for Algiers.  Meet me.—­LOLA.”

It was despatched that morning from Victoria Station.  I gazed at it stupidly.  Why in the world was Lola Brandt coming to join me in Algiers?  If she had wanted to do her husband hunting on her own account, why had she put me to the inconvenience of my journey?  Her action could not have been determined by my letter about Anastasius Papadopoulos, as a short calculation proved that it could not have reached her.  I wandered round and round the garden paths vainly seeking for the motive.  Was it escape from Dale?  Had she, womanlike, taken the step which she was so anxious to avoid—­and in order to avoid taking which all this bother had arisen—­and given the boy his dismissal?  If so, why had she not gone to Paris or St. Petersburg or Terra del Fuego?  Why Algiers?  Dale abandoned outright, the necessity for finding her husband had disappeared.  Perhaps she was coming to request me, on that account, to give up the search.  But why travel across seas and continents when a telegram or a letter would have sufficed?  She was coming at any rate; and as she gave no date I presumed that she would travel straight through and arrive in about forty-eight hours.  This reflection caused a gleam of sunshine to traverse my gloom.  I was not physically capable of performing the journey to Tlemcen and back before her arrival.  I could, therefore, dream among the roses of the garden for another couple of days.  And when she came, perhaps she would like to go to Tlemcen herself and try the effect of her woman’s fascinations on the Lieutenant-Colonel and officers of the 3rd Regiment of Chasseurs d’Afrique.