It was not until the gate was locked behind him that Ordham remembered that in his preoccupation he had forgotten to tell his kutscher to return for him. If any more harrowing climax could have been devised by a vicious fate to crown the unhappiest day of his life than a midnight walk from Schwabing to Barerstrasse—some three miles—his imagination was unable to suggest it. He detested walking at any time, and to-night his throat really was irritated, his head ached a little. Schwabing showed not a point of light; it might have been the Alpine village it so picturesquely resembled. There was a long highway between fields to traverse before reaching the Ludwigstrasse, and even there he might not pick up a cab. The stately shell of Munich and most of her contents were practically dead at ten o’clock.

A sharp wind was blowing from the Alps across the high plateau. Ordham pulled up the collar of his light overcoat and walked more briskly than was his habit. Illness might be convenient as an excuse, but as a fact was little to his taste; although he realized that it was not the worst evil that could befall him at present.

For perhaps the first time in his life something deeper than his temper was agitated. He could always stamp about in a fine rage when annoyed, but he had had little occasion to rail at a perverse fate. Now he found himself face to face with a distinct crisis in his life—the probability of disaster just beyond. He had heard Frau von Wass talk wildly before, but other women talked wildly and nothing came of it. They seemed rather to enjoy their little dramas than otherwise. He regarded them all as interesting books—or plays—which he was graciously permitted to read at first hand. But his own attitude had always been nearly impersonal. When he had closed the book clept “Frau von Wass,” he had, in the insolence and inexperience of his youth, taken for granted that it would accumulate dust in limbo with all of its kind. He had been as much astonished as annoyed at the turn affairs had taken, but not apprehensive until to-day. That Hélène Wass was in desperate earnest he could no longer flatter himself by doubting. He reviewed his own share in the incident; and while he was amazed that such a price should be levied for what had been little more than politeness on his part, still was he far too intelligent not to remind himself that men had paid as high for less, and too just not to admit that it had been in his power to nip the woman’s passion in the bud.

Although he was puzzled as well as frightened at this encounter with the grim visage of life, whose gloomy unsympathetic eyes presaged defeat, he was sullenly angry with himself. If he had loved the woman or even been possessed, no matter how briefly, by one of those overwhelming passions of which he was always reading and hearing, he felt that he would have accepted the consequences without flinching. But as it was, he felt like a foolish mariner who had gone to sea without a compass and found himself justly on the rocks. Unless the unexpected happened, it looked as if he would be swept out of Munich with the rest of the Frau Geheimrath’s wreckage and landed high and dry in Italy.

Suddenly another ugly phase of this crisis in his life leapt to his mind, and he passed through the arch of the Siegesthor with such a stride that the British Minister, returning from a late card party, did not recognize him and went on without offering the hospitality of his coupé.

Normally there was a faint hope that Bridgminster would once more pay his debts, those distressing tradesmen’s bills of which he was reminded daily. His tailor’s was but one, and the aggregate must be close upon a thousand pounds............