Dear Mr. Vernon. This is to thank you very much for all your help and criticism of my work, and to say good-bye. I am called away quite suddenly, so I can't thank you in person, but I shall never forget your kindness. Please remember me to Lady St. Craye. I suppose you will be married quite soon now. And I am sure you will both be very happy.

    Yours very sincerely,

    Elizabeth Desmond.

This was the letter that Vernon read standing in the shadow of the arch by the concierge's window. The concierge had hailed him as he hurried through to climb the wide shallow stairs and to keep his appointment with Betty when she should leave the atelier.

"But yes, Mademoiselle had departed this morning at nine o'clock. To which station? To the Gare St. Lazare. Yes—Mademoiselle had charged her to remit the billet to Monsieur. No, Mademoiselle had not left any address. But perhaps chez Madame Bianchi?"

But chez Madame Bianchi there was no further news. The so amiable Mademoiselle Desmond had paid her account, had embraced Madame, and—Voila! she was gone. One divined that she had been called suddenly to return to the family roof. A sudden illness of Monsieur her father without doubt.

Could some faint jasmine memory have lingered on the staircase? Or was it some subtler echo of Lady St. Craye's personality that clung there? Abruptly, as he passed Betty's door, the suspicion stung him. Had the Jasmine lady had any hand in this sudden departure?

"Pooh—nonsense!" he said. But all the same he paused at the concierge's window.

"I am desolated to have deranged Madame,"—gold coin changed hands.—"A lady came to see Mademoiselle this morning, is it not?"

"No, no lady had visited Mademoiselle to-day: no one at all in effect."

"Nor last night—very late?"

"No, monsieur," the woman answered meaningly; "no visitor came in last night except Monsieur himself and he came, not to see Mademoiselle, that understands itself, but to see Monsieur Beauchèsne an troisième. No—I am quite sure—I never deceive myself. And Mademoiselle has had no letters since three days. Thanks a thousand times, Monsieur. Good morning."

She locked up the gold piece in the little drawer where already lay the hundred franc note that Lady St. Craye had given her at six o'clock that morning.

"And there'll be another fifty from her next month," she chuckled. "The good God be blessed for intrigues! Without intrigues what would become of us poor concierges?"

For Vernon Paris was empty—the spring sunshine positively distasteful. He did what he could; he enquired at the Gare St. Lazare, describing Betty with careful detail that brought smiles to the lips of the employés. He would not call on Miss Voscoe. He made himself wait till the Sketch Club afternoon—made himself wait, indeed, till all the sketches were criticised—till the last cup of tea was swallowed, or left to cool—the last cake munched—the last student's footfall had died away on the stairs, and he and Miss Voscoe were alone among the scattered tea-cups, blackened bread-crumbs and torn paper.

Then he put his question. Miss Voscoe knew nothing. Guessed Miss Desmond knew her own business best.

"But she's so young," said Vernon; "anything might have happened to her."

"I reckon she's safe enough—where she is," said Miss Voscoe with intention.

"But haven't you any idea why she's gone?" he asked, not at all expecting any answer but "Not the least."

But Miss Voscoe said:

"I have a quite first-class idea and so have you."

He could but beg her pardon interrogatively.

"Oh, you know well enough," said she. "She'd got to go. And it was up to her to do it right now, I guess."

Vernon had to ask why.

"Well, you being engaged to another girl, don't you surmise it might kind of come home to her there were healthier spots for you than the end of her apron strings? Maybe she thought the other lady's apron strings 'ud be suffering for a little show?"

"I'm not engaged," said Vernon shortly.

"Then it's time you were," the answer came with equal shortness. "You'll pardon me making this a heart-to-heart talk—and anyway it's no funeral of mine. But she's the loveliest girl and I right down like her. So you take it from me. That F.F.V. Lady with the violets—Oh, don't pretend you don't know who I mean—the one you're always about with when you aren't with Betty. She's your ticket. Betty's not. Your friend's her style. You pass, this hand, and give the girl a chance."

"I really don't understand—"

"I bet you do," she interrupted with conviction. "I've sized you up right enough, Mr. Vernon. You're no fool. If you've discontinued your engagement Betty doesn't know it. Nor she shan't from me. And one of these next days it'll be borne in on your friend that she's the girl of his life—and when he meets her again he'll get her to see it his way. Don't you spoil the day's fishing."

Vernon laughed.

"You have all the imagination of the greatest nation in the world, Miss Voscoe," he said. "Thank you. These straight talks to young men are the salt of life. Good-bye."

"You haven't all the obfuscation of the stupidest nation in the world," she retorted. "If you had had you'd have had a chance to find out what straight talking means—which it's my belief you never have yet. Good-bye. You take my tip. Either you go back to where you were before you sighted Betty, or if the other one's sick of you too, just shuffle the cards, take a fresh deal and start fair. You go home and spend a quiet evening and think it all over."

Vernon went off laughing, and wondering why he didn't hate Miss Voscoe. He did not laugh long. He sat in his studio, musing till it was too late to go out to dine. Then he found some biscuits and sherry—remnants of preparations for the call of a picture dealer—ate and drank, and spent the evening in the way recommended by Miss Voscoe. He lay face downward on the divan, in the dark, and he did "think it all over."

But first there was the long time when he lay quite still—did not think at all, only remembered her hands and her eyes and her hair, and the pretty way her brows lifted when she was surprised or perplexed—and the four sudden sweet dimples that came near the corners of her mouth when she was amused, and the way her mouth drooped when she was tired.

"I want you. I want you. I want you," said the man who had been the Amorist. "I want you, dear!"

When he did begin to think, he moved uneasily in the dark as thought after thought crept out and stung him and slunk away. The verses he had written at Long Barton—ironic verses, written with the tongue in the cheek—came back with the force of iron truth:

        "I love you to my heart's hid core:
        Those other loves? How can one learn
        From marshlights how the great fires burn?
        Ah, no—I never loved before!"

He had smiled at Temple's confidences—when Betty was at hand—to be watched and guarded. Now Betty was away—anywhere. And Temple was deciding whether it was she whom he loved. Suppose he did decide that it was she, and, as Miss Voscoe had said, made her see it? "Damn," said Vernon, "Oh, damn!"

He was beginning to be a connoisseur in the fine flavours of the different brands of jealousy. Anyway there was food for thought.

There was food for little else, in the days that followed. Mr. Vernon's heart, hungry for the first time, had to starve. He went often to Lady St. Craye's. She was so gentle, sweet, yet not too sympathetic—bright, amusing even, but not too vivacious. He approved deeply the delicacy with which she ignored that last wild interview. She was sister, she was friend—and she had the rare merit of seeming to forget that she had been confidante.

It was he who re-opened the subject, after ten days. She had told herself that it was only a question of time. And it was.

"Do you know she's disappeared?" he said abruptly.

"Disappeared?" No one was ever more astonished than Lady St. Craye. Quite natural, the astonishment. Not overdone by so much as a hair's breadth.

So he told her all about it, and she twisted her long topaz chain and listened with exactly the right shade of interest. He told her what Miss Voscoe had said—at least most of it.

"And I worry about Temple," he said; "like any school boy, I worry. If he does decide that he loves her better than you—You said you'd help me. Can't you make sure that he won't love her better?"

"I could, I suppose," she admitted. To herself she said: "Temple's at Grez. She's at Grez. They've been there ten days."

"If only you would," he said. "It's too much to ask, I know. But I can't ask anything that isn't too much! And you're so much more noble and generous than other people—"

"No butter, thanks," she said.

"It's the best butter," he earnestly urged. "I mean that I mean it. Won't you?"

"When I see him again&md............