politeness to the shallow ultra-modern opinions of a voluble editor
or lawyer in some wayside Russian town, or learned wisdom from a
chance tavern companion, one of the atoms of the busy ant-stream of
men and merchandise that moves untiringly round the shores of the
Black Sea. And far and wide as he might roam he always managed to
turn up at frequent intervals, at ball and supper and theatre, in
the gay Hauptstadt of the Habsburgs, haunting his favourite cafes
and wine-vaults, skimming through his favourite news-sheets,
greeting old acquaintances and friends, from ambassadors down to
cobblers in the social scale. He seldom talked of his travels, but
it might be said that his travels talked of him; there was an air
about him that a German diplomat once summed up in a phrase: "a
man that wolves have sniffed at."

And then two things happened, which he had not mapped out in his
route; a severe illness shook half the life and all the energy out
of him, and a heavy money loss brought him almost to the door of
destitution. With something, perhaps, of the impulse which drives
a stricken animal away from its kind, Tom Keriway left the haunts
where he had known so much happiness, and withdrew into the shelter
of a secluded farmhouse lodging; more than ever he became to Elaine
a hearsay personality. And now the chance meeting with the caravan
had flung her across the threshold of his retreat.

"What a charming little nook you've got hold of," she exclaimed
with instinctive politeness, and then looked searchingly round, and
discovered that she had spoken the truth; it really was charming.
The farmhouse had that intensely English look that one seldom sees
out of Normandy. Over the whole scene of rickyard, garden,
outbuildings, horsepond and orchard, brooded that air which seems