“You should have spoken like this earlier, Miriam.  It would have spared my memory its most wretched burden.”

“How?”

“You know quite well that I valued your affection, and that it had no little importance in my life.  Instead of still having my sister, I had only the memory of her anger and injustice, and of my own cursed temper.”

“I had no influence for good.”

“Perhaps not in the common sense of the words.  I am not going to talk humbug about a woman’s power to make a man angelic; that will do for third-rate novels and plays.  But I shouldn’t have thrown myself away as I have done if you had cared to know what I was doing.”

“Did I not care, Reuben?”

“If so, you thought it was your duty not to show it.  You thought harshness was the only proper treatment for a case such as mine.  I had had too much of that.”

“What did you mean just now by speaking as though you were poor?”

“I have been poor for a long time—­poor compared with what I was.  Most of my money has gone—­on the fool’s way.  I haven’t come here to lament over it.  It’s one of my rules never, if I can help it, to think of the past.  What has been, has been; and what will be, will be.  When I fume and rage like an idiot, that’s only the blood in me getting the better of the brain; an example of the fault that always wrecks me.  Do you think I cannot see myself?  Just now, I couldn’t keep back the insensate words—­insensate because useless—­but I judged myself all the time as distinctly as I do now it’s over.”

“Your money gone, Reuben?” murmured his sister, in consternation.

“You might have foreseen that.  Come and sit down by me, Miriam.  I am tired and wretched.  Where is the sun?  Surely one may have sunshine at Naples!”

He was now idly fretful.  Miriam seated herself at his side, and he took her hand.

“I thought you might perhaps receive me like this at first.  I came only with that hope.  I wish you looked better, Miriam.  How do you employ yourself here?”

“I am much out of doors.  I get stronger.”

“You spoke of old Mallard.  I’m glad he is here, really glad.  You know, Mallard’s a fellow of no slight account; I should think you might even like him.”

“But yourself, Reuben?”

“No, no; let me rest a little.  I’m sick and tired of myself.  Let’s talk of old Mallard.  And what’s become of little Cecily Doran?”

“She is here—­with her aunt.”

“She here too!  By Jove!  Well, of course, I shall have nothing to do with them.  Mallard still acting as her guardian, I suppose.  Rather a joke, that.  I never could get him to speak on the subject.  But I feel glad you know him.  He’s a solid fellow, tremendously conscientious; just the things you would like in a man, no doubt.  Have you seen any of his paintings?”

Miriam shook her head absently, unable to find voice for the topic, which was remote from her thoughts.