When, true to his determination, George Lauriston visited the new
establishment that evening and insisted on seeing the proprietor, an
explanation offered itself which robbed Nouna’s vision of most of the
mystery attaching to it. For a dapper little Frenchman, who tried to
live up to his obviously assumed business title of Ben Hassan by
wearing a scarlet fez and a pair of Turkish slippers, immediately
appeared behind the servant who opened the door, and announcing
himself with a flourishing bow as the proprietor, thrust into
Lauriston’s hand a business card, and begged him to inspect his stock,
adding that perhaps Monsieur would do him the honour to inaugurate his
business and bring him good luck by purchasing some trifle. George
consented. The Oriental bazaar consisted of three rooms fitted up with
trestles on which were placed trays full of trumpery, gilt sequin
necklaces, cheap scarves, and other so-called Eastern wares, such as
may be bought for a very small sum in the smaller shops along the Rue
de Rivoli. George bought a little feather hand-screen, obviously an
“article de Paris,” and returned to his wife quite satisfied that it
was the sight of Monsieur Ben Hassan’s red fez at one of the windows
which had conjured up in her excited imagination the ground-floor in
Mary Street and its younger occupant.
In order to convince his wife of her mistake, George took her next day
to the establishment of Monsieur Ben Hassan, and was pleased to find
that the nervous fear which had haunted her since her supposed vision
faded away in the amusement of turning over the cheap trinkets and
toys around her, as the obsequious proprietor, an active and voluble
little Parisian, who would have been invaluable as a showman at a
country fair, encouraged her to do. George asked him, to satisfy
Nouna, whether he had not had a friend with him on the balcony two
evenings before, a foreign gentleman, in whom, he said, he thought he
recognised an old acquaintance. Ben Hassan said No, he had been
working by himself to prepare his “Bazaar” for opening on the
following day, and he had been alone except for the occasional
assistance of the servant. He admitted also, with a charmingly candid
shrug of the shoulders, that his name of Ben Hassan was assumed, that
in private life he was simply Jules Dubois, and that there was no
gentleman in the business who came from further East than the Faubourg
Saint Antoine.
Nouna, to tell the truth, hardly listened to this explanation. She was
at heart still so much a child as to find, in trying on Tunisian
earrings at a franc and a half a pair, and gold crescent brooches that
could not be warranted to retain their colour a second time of
wearing, as much pleasure as she had felt, a few weeks back, in
decking herself with her wedding diamonds. Noticing this, the artful
Ben Hassan informed the lady that he expected, in the course of a few
days, a consignment of Indian jewellery which would be well worthy of
Madame’s attention, as it was the most marvellously cheap and
beautiful assortment that had ever been seen in France. Nouna’s face
glowed with interest, which was repressed for the moment by her
husband, who said coldly that Madame did not wear imitation jewellery;
a statement which seemed calculated to be received with doubt, as
Madame, now hung from head to foot with gilt chains and spangled
handkerchiefs, was evidently very well satisfied with herself.
However, the tactful Parisian bowed low and apologised, humbly
observing that the wares in question were continually mounted, by
desire of well-known ladies of the Boulevard Saint Germains, with real
gems of the highest value. Nouna divested herself of the trinkets with
manifest regret, and was with difficulty persuaded by her husband to
buy a string of sandalwood beads instead of the barbaric rows of
eye-dazzling brass on which her choice had first fallen. George was
rather shocked; a taste for cheap finery in his wife seemed quite a
new and startling development. As soon as they got on the stairs
outside he said, in a low and puzzled voice:
“You wouldn’t really care to have those gimcrack things, would you,
Nouna?”
She wanted to sit down on the stairs and take the paper off her beads:
stopping in the act, she looked up at him with a laugh, but yet
showing a gleam of serious meaning in her red-brown eyes.
“Why not, if I can’t have real ones?” she said with a note of pathos
in her voice. “If I had rich things I should sell them to give you
money. But these poor ones I can keep and do you no harm.”
And George had a lump in his throat, as he often had now at innocent
speeches like this from his wife, which showed the dawnings of a new
womanly sympathy with him side by side with the old childish love of
finery and glitter.
She showed, by certain impulsive remarks in the course of the next few
days, a deep interest in the “marvellously cheap and beautiful
assortment of Indian jewellery,” of which the sham Arabian had spoken;
and when, towards the end of the week, Monsieur Ben Hassan called one
evening, not, as he assured the young Englishman, with the intention
of persuading him to buy the mock gems which he had been informed
Madame did not wear, but merely to justify in the eyes of Monsieur the
praises which he had lavished on his own wares, Nouna showed so much
eagerness to see them that George had not the heart to deny her the
pleasure. Ben Hassan proceeded, by the light of the lamp which stood
on the table amidst the remnants of the dessert, to unfasten a little
flat box which he carried, to take out a layer of cotton-wool, and to
display, against the velvet lining, rows of flashing white gems which
caused Nouna to cry out with irrepressible admiration and longing.
“I flatter myself,” said the Parisian, laying the box on the table and
retreating a few paces with a bow, as if trusting his wares to speak
for themselves, “that there is not another firm in France which can
produce such a class of jewel for the same price.”
“Yes, yes,” said George hastily, with a shrewd guess that to see these
sparkling ornaments hidden away again in the little box and carried
off without leaving her so much as a single gem to remember them by,
would break Nouna’s heart. “But they are only sham jewels, Monsieur
Ben Hassan, and a lady who has had diamonds of her own could not
condescend to wear these.”
Nouna, who was leaning over the table, fingering the ornaments
delicately, and considering them with the intelligent interest of a
connoisseur, glanced up at her husband with a twinkle of demure humour
in her eyes, and instantly returned to her amusement with
condescension so infinite that it was not to be distinguished from the
most extravagant admiration. The astute Ben Hassan saw the look, and
bowed again with great humility.
“Monsieur, it is true an imitation is but a poor thing when you know
it is an imitation,” he said with shoulders raised and hands
outstretched in modest pleading. “But I appeal to Madame, who is
evidently a judge, if she would have known these stones from real
ones?”
Nouna hesitated, then quietly picked out a pair of diamond solitaire
earrings, and held them out under the lamp in her little pink palm.
“I should not have known these from real ones,” she said doubtfully,
and she looked up with an inquiring glance into the Parisian’s face.
Ben Hassan drew himself up with much satisfaction.
“You hear, Monsieur,” he said proudly, “Madame would not have known
these earrings from real diamonds, and the cost of the pair is only
ten francs!”
“Ten francs!” echoed Nouna with incredulous delight.
And as she turned to her husband with a low murmur, “Oh, George!” the
paymaster saw that he was doomed. Without further show of resistance
he paid the ten francs, and signed to the bowing, smirking Ben Hassan
to pack up his traps and take himself off, which the Parisian did,
departing with a torrent of high-flown thanks for their patronage and
with every appearance of being highly satisfied with the transaction.
So contented did he seem indeed, that so soon as the door closed
behind him, and Nouna rushed into the bedroom to try on her purchase,
George instinctively took stock of all the portable property which had
been within the lively Ben Hassan’s reach, to make sure that his
ostensible occupation had not been a cover for a predatory one. He had
scarcely reassured himself on this point when Nouna rushed in like a
radiant little fire-fly, her new ornaments twinkling in her ears, her
eyes dancing with mysterious excitement, her dress changed from a
simple muslin to a ball-dress of yellow gauzy material in honour of
her brilliant bargain. She flitted up to him almost breathlessly, and
pulled his head down to her level that she might whisper into his ear
a communication which appeared to be of vital importance.
“Do you think,” she suggested solemnly, “that he could have made a
mistake, and that they are _real_?”
George laughed, and said No, he did not think it at all likely,
whereupon she was silent for a little while, and then began again in
the same tone, but with much hesitation.
“You know, George, he told me that day we went to his bazaar that he
had some real diamonds in his stock, and said that, that----”
“Well, that what?” asked her husband, keeping his voice at a gently
subdued pitch, with a intuitive feeling that a confession was coming.
“That if I would call in--some day--by myself--he would show them to
me.”
“By yourself!” cried George, all his blood on fire in a moment.
Nouna seemed at once to become a mere terror-struck heap, and her
husband saw his fatal mistake.
“Did you go? Did you ever go?” he asked in the softest tones he could
produce. But for a few minutes she was too much frightened even to
speak, except for a muttered, “No, no, no,” as she shook and shivered.
When at last by patient gentleness he had mastered her fear, he
extracted from her, little by little, the avowal that she had met Ben
Hassan one day outside the door of the house where he lived as she was
returning home from her marketing, and that he had persuaded her to go
up stairs and see some diamonds he had just received. At the door,
however, Nouna declared that she had been frightened by hearing
another man’s voice inside, and had refused to go in, and that Ben
Hassan had brought out some earrings to show her, and had declared
that if she would like to take a pair he would be satisfied with only
a small payment to start with, and she could pay off the rest in
instalments at her convenience.
“But I was frightened, and would not, and I tossed his hand up with
the diamonds, and they fell on the floor and on the stairs, and I ran
down and left him, and have never seen him since until this evening,”
finished Nouna, hurrying to the end of her confession. “And I know it
was wrong to go up, but I didn’t go in. And now I have done all I
could by telling you everything. And you can take the earrings back if
you like, only don’t be angry with me, because I can’t bear it.”
She burst out crying hysterically, and it was some time before she was
calm enough for her husband to be able to ask her one more question.
Did she know the voice of the man she heard talking inside the bazaar?
At first she professed she did not, but presently she acknowledged,
when asked whether it was like the voice of Rahas, that she thought it
was. Then George was very sweet to her, and said she mustn’t trouble
herself any more about the matter, that she was a very good dear girl
to tell him everything, and that it would have been better still if
she had told him at first; that she must give up the earrings, as it
was evident the man was a treacherous beast who might get them into
trouble. He added that she was tired, and must go to bed, and fall
asleep as fast as she could, and dream of the real jewels she should
have some day if she continued to be the sweet and good little wife
she now was. And so, amidst tears from the wife and consoling kisses,
the little shining ear-studs were taken out, and George having become
by this time a promising lady’s maid, brushed out her curls for her,
and tucked her up in bed, as composedly as if nothing in the world had
happened to disturb the calm course of their daily life.
But no sooner was his wife thus disposed of than George, saying he
must write a letter and take it to the post, went out of the bedroom,
closed the door, and after waiting just long enough, as he thought, to
make Nouna think, if she was listening, that he had written a letter,
he went out and down the stairs. But Nouna had too much native
subtlety herself to be easily tricked. As soon as she heard the outer
door of the flat close, she leapt out of bed, muffled herself up in a
wrapper, and stepped out on to the balcony. She could see that there
were lights in the rooms occupied by the Oriental Bazaar, and that the
shadows of men passed and repassed quickly on the inner side of the
striped blinds. Leaning over the iron railing, she watched in much
excitement for her husband’s appearance in the street below. In a very
few minutes she heard the wicket-gate in the _porte cochére_ open,
saw George cross the street, and enter the house where Ben Hassan was
established. She could have cried out to him from where she stood,
frozen by a great terror lest these men, whom he had gone to punish,
should be too strong for him and should do him harm. But then, would
they dare, would they be able, even if they dared, to hurt him, the
king of men? Little by little the seed sown by patient kindness, by
conscientious effort, was moving in the earth and beginning to show
itself alive. George was not now merely the handsomest, straightest,
gentlest of voice among the men she knew, he was also the one person
who never did wrong, who if he was angry proved in the end to have
what she acknowledged to be a just cause at the bottom of his anger,
whose rather surprising notions of what one ought and ought not to do
were at least simple when one came to know him well; and whose opinion
was now beginning to have so much weight with her that this evening it
had even urged her in the strangest way to break through her habits
and make an uncomfortable confession of her own accord. So she
reasoned, arguing with herself as he crossed the road whether or not
she should try from the height of the fourth floor to attract his
attention. It would not be difficult, she felt. The influence she was
secure in possessing over him would make him stop and look up at a
call of her voice such as would scarcely be heard by the neighbours in
the adjoining flats. Suddenly she drew herself erect, a thrill of
passionate pride vibrating through her heart, and she laughed aloud
and stretched her little hands to the dark sky.
“He does not need my help, for he is one of God’s own sons,” she
whispered, and looking up steadily into the eye of night she waited,
with heart beating violently, but with head erect in valiant
confidence.
He had to get up those long flights of stairs, but he would not be
long, she knew. She counted the steps he would take, picturing him
with grave, earnest face, wearing that look which, when she had done
something of which he disapproved, made her want to slide along
against the wall with her head turned away from him. The _entresol_,
first floor, second floor; surely by this time he must be at the
third. She clenched her fingers till the nails made red marks in her
soft palms, and strained her eyes in keen staring at the striped
blinds. The moving shadows behind them had disappeared. Ben Hassan and
Rahas--if it was he--had gone to the door when the sharp ring came at
the bell. Nouna held her breath. Surely, surely, she heard sounds from
the rooms; yes, yes, a noise of something overturned, and then the
lights were put out. The moment after, one of the windows was burst
open with a crash, and two people, whose figures she could only see
dimly in the darkness, sprang quickly, the one after the other, out on
to the balcony, climbed over on to that of the next house, and
disappeared through one of the windows. Then there was silence for a
time which seemed long to her, and she saw a dim light reappear in the
windows of the Oriental Bazaar. She guessed that it was her husband,
searching; in a few minutes the light moved, and disappeared. She
watched until she saw him reappear in the street below, then she went
back into her room, and crept into bed again. When he came softly into
the room, holding a candle he had lit in the next room, he crept up to
the bedside and shaded the flame to look at her. As he did so, her
face quivered, and he touched her forehead lightly with his fingers.
The muscles of her mouth instinctively relaxed, and by the thrill that
ran through her frame and communicated itself to his he knew that she
was awake.
“You are cold, dearest,” he whispered.
She sprang up, wide awake, full of life and love, with the bright
blood rushing up into her cheeks, and tender, passion-dark eyes.
“No, no, not now, not now,” she cried incoherently, as she threw her
arms about him. “I was cold when I thought you were going to face
those wicked men, all through my foolishness. But now you are safe I
am warm, warm, and listen, George, I am always going to be good and
tell you everything, so that you may never get into danger through me
any more.”
But George was frightened, for her feet were cold as marble, and her
lips hot and parched, and he sat up a long time beside her, afraid
lest her imprudence should have brought on a fever. Next morning she
insisted against his will on getting up. She did not feel well and was
very fanciful, astonishing him by the announcement that she wanted to
go to church. The day being Sunday, the Oriental Bazaar was closed,
and there was nothing for George to do but to gratify her desire. He
wished, as in duty bound, to take her to the English church; but Nouna
was not particular to a creed, and she had set her heart on going to
the Madeleine. So, with some scruples of conscience, he took her to
High Mass; and as she remained perfectly quiet and attentive during
the entire service, he comforted himself with the reflection that, as
what he had been taught to call the “errors of Rome” were matters of
the deepest ignorance and indifference to her, it was hardly an
ethical mistake to let her see religion in an attractive light. When
they came out he asked her rather curiously what she thought of it.
“Oh, I liked it very, very much; I shouldn’t mind going to church
there every day,” she answered with enthusiasm.
“Why,” said George, “the service isn’t much more beautiful than that
at St. ----’s,” and he named an English ritualistic church to which he
had twice taken her in London.
“There is a difference,” she said thoughtfully.
“Well, what is it?”
Nouna considered a moment. “You know those friends of yours that you
took me to see acting in a piece at Saint George’s Hall?”
“Yes; well?”
“And then I saw the same piece acted at the Court Theatre just before
we left London?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the difference is just like that.”
George laughed. “I’ve heard people say something like that before,
Nouna.”
“Isn’t it right, then?”
“I don’t know, dear.”
“George, may I be a Roman Catholic if I like?”
“No, Nouna.”
“Why not?”
“You mustn’t choose a religion in a hurry, any more than you may a
husband. In both cases, one ought to be enough for a lifetime; and if
you once begin to change your mind about either, you never know when
to stop.”
“But I had my choice of a husband, and I didn’t of a religion; I had
to take what was given me.”
“You would never do for a Catholic, Nouna. They have to confess all
their sins, even very little ones that you think nothing of.”
“Well, that’s what you’re always wanting me to do.”
“See then. You shall go to Mass every Sunday and then confess your
sins to me, and you will be the very best of Catholics.”
“But, George, George,” she began, almost in a whisper, holding his arm
tighter, and looking away over the Place de la Concorde, which they
were now crossing, to the trees of the Tuileries, “there are some
things--not sins--that one doesn’t--like--to tell--I don’t know
why--but they make one think of so many things--that all seem new--and
make one feel--like a different person. I suppose a man--never feels
like that, but I’m a woman--quite a woman--now, George.”
They walked on without speaking after that, till they got among the
trees; then both stopped and looked at each other--shy, for that
little whispered suggestion made each appear to the other in a new and
sanctified light. The influence of the solemn and impressive Church
rites was upon them still, and the bright sun was playing upon their
earnest faces through a moving trellis-work of leaves. They had come
to a moment which was to be the sweetest in all their lives but one; a
moment of perfect confidence, perfect happiness, perfect hope. So they
stood quite silently in an ecstasy of contented love, each reading
beautiful meanings in the other’s steadfast eyes, each seeing and
worshipping, in this moment of exalted human feeling, what was best
and most worshipful in the other. They felt so strong, so radiant as
they walked home, she leaning upon him and not talking at all, that
every evil which had been a burden yesterday and would be a burden
to-morrow, became a mere shadow slinking into corners and dwindling
into insignificance before the flood of sunshine in their hearts.
Chloris White, Rahas, Ben Hassan, and the odious Gurton were mere
names to George that day, and even when with the following morning the
drudgery and petty annoyances of workaday life began again, he carried
in his heart such a spring of sweet human happiness that he received
the snubs of his chief as cheerfully as if they had been compliments,
and bore with fortitude the discovery that Monsieur Ben Hassan had
“gone away for a few days on business,” leaving his premises in the
charge of a stolid boy of thirteen or so, who knew nothing definite
about his employer’s movements. George therefore kept the earrings in
his possession and waited for some claim to be made. It came at the
end of a week in the shape of a bill for twelve hundred and fifty
francs, ten of which had been paid on account, for a pair of diamond
ear-studs supplied to Monsieur Lauriston. George sent back the
ear-studs by registered post with a letter threatening Ben Hassan with
the police court. In a few days he got back the ear-studs from the
post-office, as the person Ben Hassan was not to be found at the
address given. George took no further steps until he was summoned
before the Civil Tribunal, where he appeared in the full belief that
he had only to relate the facts of the case to confound Ben Hassan and
lay him open to the charge of perjury. To his great astonishment and
indignation, however, Ben Hassan solemnly swore that he had sold the
diamonds as real stones, and calling upon George to produce them,
challenged any one in the court to assert that it was possible to
suppose they could be bought for ten francs. Could the Englishman’s
wife assert that she did not know them to be real? George had not
dared to bring his wife into court, fearing the effects of the
excitement upon her. He weakened his case by asserting emphatically
that Ben Hassan was in the pay of a man who wished to ruin him: for he
had no proofs to bring forward, and the foreigner’s halting French in
which he made the accusation compared so unfavourably with the torrent
of eloquence with which the artful Parisian refuted it, that, on Ben
Hassan’s refusing to take back the jewels, the magistrate ordered the
Englishman to pay the amount claimed, in monthly instalments of five
hundred francs.
With the stolid resistance to unpleasant facts characteristic of his
nation, George treated this decision with utter contempt, and indeed
believed that Ben Hassan would not dare to push the case further. But
on arriving home one rainy day early in the following month, he found
his apartments occupied by two _huissiers_, who were busily employed
in dragging out into the hall poor Nouna’s trunks and such furniture
as they had bought themselves, which the landlady, anxious to save her
own things, was pointing out to them. Nouna, deathly white and shaking
from head to foot, was crouching on the sofa, drawing her breath
heavily, and watching them with bright and burning eyes. Fear of what
the consequences of this scene might be to her sobered George in his
first fierce outburst of indignation. She had hardly moved when he
came in, only glancing up at him in shame and terror at what she knew
to be the result of her own indiscretion. He went up to the sofa and
reassured her by the kind, firm, protecting pressure of his hand upon
her head, while he asked the men by what authority they were acting.
They showed him their warrant; nothing could be more correct. He asked
them whether they would desist from their work and remain in the hall
outside for half an hour, while he went to a friend to try to raise
the money. The men consented at once, and retired while George,
soothing his agitated wife as well as he could, carried her into the
next room, laid her on the bed, and covering her with a rug, told her
not to worry herself, as it would be all right in half an hour, when
he would be back again with her, and the men would go away satisfied.
With his hand on the door he looked back yearningly. She was quieter
now, but as she leaned on her elbows and watched him with feverish
eyes, it seemed to him that her gaze was wandering and unintelligent,
and that the real matter-of-fact trouble which was sending him on his
unpleasant errand had melted in her excited mind to a dim and horrible
dread.
“George, don’t go, don’t go!” rang in his ears as he went down the
stairs and out of the house.
Poor George felt that he had never in his life had anything quite so
distasteful to do as the task he had before him now of asking a favour
of Mr. Gurton. But there was no help for it, and so he put the best
face he could upon the matter, got to the bank, where his chief was,
he knew, still at this hour to be found, and knocked at the door of
his private room.
“Come in,” called out the well-known husky voice.
Mr. Gurton was reading a letter. His face was flushed and his eyes
were dull, but he had as much command of himself as usual.
“Oh, it’s you, is it? What do you want?” he asked with the extra shade
of surliness which he used towards the people he did not like.
“Yes, sir,” said George. “I am sorry to disturb you after office
hours, but it is upon a matter of so much importance to me that I hope
you will excuse my coming to you.”
“Well, what is it? Be quick.”
The words, the appeal, stuck in the young man’s throat; but out they
must come.
“I am in pressing difficulties, sir; I can’t explain to you how now,
but it was through no fault of mine. Just now when I went home I found
a couple of men seizing my wife’s things. She is in a delicate state
of health, and I am afraid of the shock for her. Will you be so kind
as to advance me twenty pounds of my salary? I will write to my
friends in England to-night, and I shall have the money next week, and
will return it to you at once, if you please. It is a very difficult
thing for me to ask, but I hope you won’t refuse me.”
He hurried out the words, not daring to look at Mr. Gurton, who had
risen from his chair and walked over to the fireplace with a tread
which in its pompous heaviness told George before he looked up that he
had failed. There was a slight pause when he finished speaking, Mr.
Gurton rattling his watch-chain and clearing his throat. George raised
his eyes, and saw that his chief’s bloated face expressed nothing but
complacent satisfaction. Then the devil woke in the lad with such a
hungry fury that he turned hastily to the door, afraid of himself. Mr.
Gurton, unluckily, could not resist a little play with his fish, and
he called him back. George hesitated, and at last turned slowly. Mr.
Gurton paused again to find some particularly offensive form of
expression, for he thought he saw his opportunity, by insulting the
young fellow past endurance, to force him to resign his post, and so
make room for his own reputed nephew. He had been put in possession,
too, of a damaging fact against George, and here was the occasion made
to his hand, to use it.
“I’m sorry for this little misfortune, Lauriston, deuced sorry; not
only because it is quite beyond my powers to assist you, but because,
you see, it’s so particularly bad for a House that’s just starting,
for anything disreputable to be known about its _employés_.”
“Disreputable!” echoed George in a low voice, starting erect. “You
have no right to use such a word without knowing the facts, Mr.
Gurton.”
“Oh, I know all about the facts, and so does everybody,” said Mr.
Gurton with confidential familiarity. “You’ve got an extravagant
little madam for your wife, and somebody of course must pay the
piper.”
George turned again to leave the room. Mr. Gurton, who was a big,
muscular man of six feet two, with two strides reached the door first,
admitted a lad with despatches who was waiting outside, and held the
door close as he continued:
“You must listen, sir, to what I have to say. You were received in
this House simply because we were informed that you were highly
connected, and that your social position would be an advantage to the
firm. What follows? You go nowhere, you know nobody; you are seen in
omnibuses, on penny steamers with a little oddly-dressed girl--”
“Take care; you are speaking of my wife,” said George, in a low
tremulous voice which, with his bowed head, gave an utterly wrong
impression that he was cowed.
Mr. Gurton put his hands in his pockets.
“Well, sir, and if you choose to marry a courtesan’s daughter whom you
picked up in the slums--it is----”
Like a wild beast suddenly loosed George had him by the throat, and
with hands to which his mad anger gave a grip of steel, he swayed the
man’s huge frame once forward and flung him back with all his force.
Gasping, choking, without time to cry out, Mr. Gurton staggered
backwards, his head struck against the corner of an iron safe that
stood behind him, and he fell heavily to the floor. Lauriston left the
frightened errand-boy to pick him up, and rushed out of the room. He
had suddenly remembered that there was one more chance; a fellow-clerk
who was pretty well off lodged in the Rue Saint Honoré. He made his
way in that direction, through the still heavily-falling rain, without
another thought of the man he had just left, except a savage wish that
he had not humiliated himself by applying to the cur.
But Mr. Gurton remained on the floor of his private room, and neither
spoke nor moved.