She was a native of the mainland to whose credit it must be said that she did not pretend to be anything but what she was—­an exuberant, gluttonous dame, with volcanic eyes, heavy golden bracelets, the soupcon of a moustache, and arms as thick as other people’s thighs; an altogether impossible person.  Nobody but a man of genuine refinement, scrupulous rectitude, delicate sense of honour and kindly disposition would have risked being seen in the same street with such a horror; nobody but a real gentleman could have fallen in love with her.  Mr. Eames ran after her like a dog.  He made a perfect ass of himself, heedless of what anybody though or said of him.  The men declared he was going mad—­breaking up—­sickening for an attack of G.P.  “Miracles will never cease,” charitably observed the Duchess.  Alone of all his lady acquaintances, Madame Steynlin liked him all the better for this gaucherie.  She was a true woman-friend of all lovers; she knew the human heart and its queer little vagaries.  She received the couple with open arms and entertained them royally, after her manner; gave them a kind of social status.  Under this friendly treatment Mr. Eames grew thinner from day to day; he was visibly losing flesh.  The dame prospered.  Piloted by the love-sick bibliographer she gradually waddled her way—­it was uphill work, for both of them—­into the uppermost strata of local society where, owing to the rarefied atmosphere, her appetite, to say nothing of her person, soon gained notoriety.  She was known, in briefest space of time, as “the cormorant,” as “prime streaky,” as “Jumbo,” as “the phenomenon” and, by those who understood the French language, as the “Ballon CAPTIF.”

The “Ballon CAPTIF.” . . .

How things got about, on Nepenthe!  Somehow or other, this odious nickname reached her lover’s ears.  It embittered his existence to such an extent that, long after the idyll was over, he had serious thoughts of leaving the island and would doubtless have done so, but for his re-kindled enthusiasm for Monsignor Perrelli.  So sensitive did he remain on this point that the mere mention of balloons, or even aeroplanes, would make him wince and feel desirous of leaving the room; he always thought that people introduced the subject with malicious purpose, in order to remind him of this unforgettable peccadillo, the “balloon business,” his one lapse from perfect propriety.  Mr. Keith, who confessed to a vein of coarseness in his nature—­prided himself upon it and, in fact, cultivated insensitiveness as other people cultivate orchids, pronouncing it to be the best method of self-protection in a world infested with fools—­Mr. Keith sometimes could not resist the temptation of raking up the ashes surreptitiously, after an elaborate, misleading preamble.  He loved to watch his friend’s meekly perplexed face on such occasions.