for a man of talent, especially in a country like this, where frank and independent action still counts its admirers.  You have done nothing, of late, worthy to be recorded in the CHRONIQUE SCANDALEUSE of Nepenthe.  Twelve years ago, wasn’t it, that little affair of yours?  Time is slipping by, and here you muddle along with your old Perrelli, in a fog of moral stagnation.  It is not fair to the rest of us.  We all contribute our mites to the gaiety of nations.  Bethink yourself.  Bestir yourself.  Man!  Do something to show us you are alive.”

To such speeches Mr. Eames would listen with a smile of amused indignation.  He was incapable of living up to the ideals of a man like Keith whose sympathy with every form of wrong-doing would have rendered him positively unfit for decent society but for his flagrant good nature and good luncheons.  He suffered in silence.

He had good reason for suffering.  That “little affair” of twelve years ago was a ghost which refused to be laid.  Every one on the island knew the story; it was handed down from one batch of visitors to the next.  He knew that whenever his name was mentioned this unique indiscretion of his, this toothsome morsel, would likewise be dished up.  It would never grow stale, though atoned for by twelve years of exemplary conduct.  He felt guilty.  There was a skeleton in his cupboard.  He realized what people were saying.

“Know Eames?  Oh, yes.  That quiet man, who writes.  One can’t swallow half those yarns about him; quite impossible to believe, of course.  She overdoes things, the good woman.  All the same, there’s no smoke without fire.  You know what actually did happen, don’t you?  Well; one really doesn’t quite know what to make of a fellow like that, does one?”

What had happened?

The bibliographer had fallen in love, after the fashion of a pure-minded, gallant gentleman.  It was his first and only experience of this kind—­an all-consuming passion which did much credit to his heart but little to his head.  So deeply were his feelings involved that during those brief months of infatuation he neglected, he despised, he derided his idol Perrelli.  He put on a new character.  While the dust was accumulating on those piles of footnotes, Mr. Eames astonished people by becoming a society man.  It was a transfiguration.  He appeared in fancy ties and spats, fluttered about at boating parties and picnics, dined at restaurants, perpetrated one or two classic jokes about the sirocco.  Nepenthe opened its eyes wide till the truth was made manifest.  After that, everybody said he might have discovered a worthier object for his affection than the “Balloon CAPTIF.”