Mrs. Germain, toying with her scent-bottle, was interested. "I never heard
him speak about a Miss Percival," she said. She used a careless tone, but
her flickering eyelids betrayed her.

"You wouldn't, you know," he told her with the same sympathetic
earnestness. "There was too much of a row. He was cut all to pieces. I
thought he'd go under; but he's not that sort. Who called somebody--some
political johnny--the Sea-green Incorruptible? Oh, ask me another! You
might call old Senhouse the Green-tea Irrepressible; for that was his
drink (to keep himself awake all night, writin' poems), and there never
was a cork that would hold him down--not even Sancie Percival. No, no, out
he must come--fizzling."

"I see," said Mrs. Germain, still looking at her fingers in her lap. "I'm
very much interested. You mean that he was very much--that he paid her a
great deal of attention?"

Chevenix stared roundly about him. "Attention! Oh, heavens! Why, three of
his letters to her would fill _The Times_ for a week--and he kept it up
for years! She used to get three a week--budgets! blue-books! For simple
years! Attentions!" He shook his head. "The word's no good. He paid nobody
anything at all when she was in the same county. He used to sit listening
to her thrilling the waves of air. He used to hear her voice in the wind--
and when it changed, he used to fire off his answers!"

Mrs. Germain laughed--whether at Chevenix or his preposterous hero is not
to be known. "You are rather absurd," she said. "Mr. Senhouse never gave
me the idea of that sort of person. Why did they never--?"

Chevenix narrowed his eyes to the merest slats. "_Marry?_" he said, in an