CHAPTER XIII

On the morrow Wilfrid was gone. No one had seen him go. Emilia, while
she touched the keys of a muted piano softly in the morning quiet of the
house, had heard the front-door close. At that hour one attributes every
noise to the servants. She played on and waited patiently, till the
housemaid expelled her into the dewy air.

The report from his bedchamber, telling the ladies of his absence, added
that he had taken linen for a lengthened journey.

This curious retreat of my hero belongs to the order of things that are
done 'None know why;' a curtain which drops conveniently upon either the
bewilderment of the showman or the infirmities of the puppet.

I must own (though I need not be told what odium frowns on such a
pretension to excess of cleverness) that I do know why. I know why, and,
unfortunately for me, I have to tell what I know. If I do not tell, this
narrative is so constituted that there will be no moral to it.

One who studies man in puppets (in which purpose lies the chief value of
this amusing species), must think that we are degenerating rapidly. The
puppet hero, for instance, is a changed being. We know what he was; but
now he takes shelter in his wits. His organs affect his destiny.
Careless of the fact that the hero's achievement is to conquer nature, he
seems rather to boast of his subservience to her.

Still, up to this day, the fixture of a nose upon the puppet-hero's
frontispiece has not been attempted. Some one does it at last. When the
alternative came: "No nose to the hero, no moral to the tale;" could