in-law saw me as combining the disqualifications of a roué and a prig, and really his just, prosaic judgment was so op pressive that in self-respect I was often prompted to break with him. I will say Bernardette showed considerable tact in keeping us at even a relative truce.

Since my return to Tours, I had renewed my friendship with Ernest, that is we frequented each other's house, and on the street we met with the loud exuberance of our past youth, but somehow the old savour of our sympathy, our congeniality, our partnership of mind, was lost.

The fact is, I could not accustom myself to this ladies' doctor, with his syrupy lisp, his soft tread and servile smile. I could not identify this smug personage with the Ernest I once knew, that lanky, witty, cynical, most diabolical of boys. Yes, the real Ernest inordinately full of ambition, of crafty appetites, was well hidden now, padded away in the folds of a reassuring double chin and respectable paunch. He wore his forehead nobly bald-not a rakish tonsure, mind you-no, but temples scorched by the student's lamp, devastated by the high pressure of thought, and it was this dome-like exposure of brow as well as his gold-rimmed spectacles and black gloves that bestowed on Ernest, even while he looked at your tongue or handed you the bill, an air of apostolic sweetness. I hardly know why I write of Dr. Bonnet as though he had been unmasked and proved a ruffian. As a matter of fact, his life is blameless so far as I know; he heads charity lists and passes for a sacerdotal lamb, and yet I always feel, though certainly I have no justification for so feeling, that it is only continual luck keeps our family physician from being the biggest rogue unhung.

One trait of his in particular offended me. He never lost his grip on the main chance, nothing could shake his tense, obstinate cupidity, he made business out of everything, coined money out of his very mistakes, his failures, his most sacred misfortunes. When his daughter ran away from school in Paris and took to studying for the stage while in

cidentally living with some actor-I never knew the rights of the story,-Ernest as the dishonoured father edified Tours. He couldn't mention youth, spring, girlhood, but he took out his pocket-handkerchief and staunched a manly tear. He was very picturesque and got himself several new patients.

It was "Poor dear Dr. Bonnet!" here, and "Poor dear good Dr. Bonnet"! there, while fans flapped and heads wagged. Monsieur le Prefet had his version, Mademoiselle Bonnet's elocution master was the man, Monsieur le Maire

was not reticent of his theory, nor was Monsieur le Commandant-Général of his-a Rabelaisian reading—for it was all one into whatever salon you stepped, gossip clucked, scandal hissed, and the young girls were ordered out into the garden to see if the vegetation had sprung up over night.

Strangely enough, considering Ernest and I were neighbours, yet only once had I seen his disreputable, stage struck child, his crazy cabotine of a daughter. She was snuggled in his arms then, swaddled in baby clothes, mouthing and inarticulate, and I had had no premonition that here, whimpering, clutching at the air, was the beginning of big, bitter things, of a career, of an artist's life, for successful or no, there is nothing so stressful, out of hell, as the experiences of talent.

I had heard Luce was something of a genius and I felt sorry for her. I for one pity and distrust women of phenomenal artistic gifts. The law of compensation decrees talent merely as a sop in the stead of a happy, normal life. In women especially, artistic ability is mostly founded on some taint. In particular it is so of actresses, since histrionic art is often nothing but a facility for tantrums, a sort of divine hysteria.

I was not surprised at the rumours that reached Tours and kept the town humming. Mademoiselle de Lille-Luce had exchanged the homely name Bonnet for the more flowery appellation of de Lille-was in the full swing of notoriety.

We heard of her rich "Angel," we heard of her rebellious heart, of her flights to Montmartre with "l'amant du cœur,' sentimental escapades that left her temporarily stranded, cold-shouldered by the "Angel," momentarily unprotected until the next protector offered to hoist her up a few more rungs of the theatrical ladder.

It was all very noisome, Tours thought, and disinherited Mademoiselle Bonnet. However, in the light of her subsequent success a prize at the Conservatoire-an engagement at the Comédie Française,-the town softened, claimed its own and put up the plea of "temperament."

"What is she like to look at?" I asked of my wife who knew the girl.

"Strange," said she, "especially her eyes."

"How do you mean her eyes are strange-intelligent? dissipated?"

"Yes, all that perhaps, but something else. She has the beautiful eyes cripples sometimes have."

I was not much the wiser, Bernardette could never express herself.

I decided to form my own opinion, see the girl for myself, and the first time I noticed her name placarded outside the Comédie Française, I joined the queue that stretched from the box-office to the corner of the street.

It was a February afternoon, bitterly windy, stinging cold. The House of Molière that temple of tradition, that holy of holies of theatrical art, loomed shabbily feudal, impressively grimy for all the silver magic of the frost.

Wedged into the crowd, I inched along stamping, shuffling, the ice eating into the soles of my feet. Each time I craned forward, I saw de Mussuet's statue, cruelly, coldly white as though the very spirit of winter inflated the poet's cloak.

I concluded I was wasting my time and had better look after the business that had brought me to Paris for the day. I was just about to turn when I realised I stood within arm's

reach of the box-office, a little more edging and elbowing and I was rewarded with a ticket,

The play was a Classic "L'ami des Femmes," I think. I had no programme, but at the first glance I recognised Ernest's daughter. She was the short blonde woman-I had heard she was small. But no, here she came, of coursehow like her father-his eyes, his trick of speech-unless— something wrong here, this was an actress I knew-this was Géniat. At last here she was, the image of her mother. On second thoughts though-I was in a maze.

In the entr'acte I signalled for a programme. I opened it-her it her name was not there. Had I made a mistake? The placard outside the theatre had misled me. I had read the evening bill-Mademoiselle de Lille was not playing in the Matinée.

I left the theatre, business filled in the rest of my day. I took the night train-I was back in Tours and I had not yet seen the girl.

CHAPTER XL

"How fair and how pleasant art thou O love for delights." Song of Solomon.

"Thou hast the dew of thy youth."

Psalms.

SOME months later in spring, in April, I first saw her. I felt in the strangest mood. It was my birthday—I was forty-seven.

This growing old is a gradual business, but the full horror of it comes on you of a sudden-in a flash. I remember I drew back from the page over which I was bent, the pencil trembled in my hand and I looked up as though I heard a voice calling my name.

All about me was the reassuring influence of my study. The sweet familiar room in which so much of my life had ebbed. The flowers on the mantel marked my birthday. My birthday! My face contracted as it does when we grow older, my chin settled on my breast, I sat for a while motionless and I forgot my work.

My work! So this was it-all these little black marks drawn on a page. Literature, it was called, and according to the spirit of the reader it was judged good or bad. What a graceless task this reproducing life with words. Words! my God, as though the throbbing of the heart, the leaping of the pulses, the contraction of the throat through fear, the simplest of our torments, the most primal of our pleasures, could be expressed by means of a vocabulary, by the help of printed paragraphs, of a few black marks on paper. Sure ly literature is the dumbest of all the arts. A trill on a violin can tell more than a three-volume novel.

Impatient, irritated, I pushed away my pad, I flung