longer cared. And, as has been said, even the most altruistic and the most philosophical cannot do much better. ' Quelle perte irréparable!' was Comte's exclamation when he was told that he had to die.
' How premature!' Was not that, too, an indication, however veiled, that it was not premature? She would not have said that his holocaust of the cigarettes was premature if it was so; she would merely have thought to herself, ' Poor fellow!' But the hopelessness of the thought was neutralized by its announcement. Not the most matter-of-fact physicians broke news of fatal illness like that. . . . And again he reminded himself that he must not be sanguine. Anyhow, she had reminded him (like everybody else, no doubt) that his life was not entirely his own. She had told him also (there was nothing secret about it) that she was not going to marry Harold Bilton. But it was she who had told him.
Bilton, meantime, with the speed of his race, had completed his contract for the lease of the Coronation Theatre for the next season, and had finished, on behalf of Lewis S. Palmer, the purchase of the Molesworth property. It was quite characteristic of him that he should postpone for these affairs which were really imminent the piece of private business which had, more than either of them, perhaps more than both, brought him to England. Consequently, it was not till the afternoon of the next day that he called at Judy's and asked to see Mrs. Massington. Sybil had spent the morning at Brighton, and had arrived only some half-hour before he called. But, with the instinct of the autumn perhaps strong in her, she had said she would see him, rejecting Judy's offer to put herself in the way of a tête-à-tête.
He was shown into the room where Judy usually sat, a sitting-room off the drawing-room. It had been furnished with her unerring bizarre taste, and looked like nothing whatever except Judy's room. There was a bearskin on
