Ailsa Paige

"I don't think he is really very happy, though he is cheerful and—and amusing. I don't see how he can be very light-hearted."

"Why?"

She shook her head:

"I believe he—I know he must be in painfully straightened circumstances."

"I have heard so," nodded Colonel Arran.

"Oh, he certainly is!" she said with decision. "He lost everything in the panic, and he lives in a most wretched neighbourhood, and he hasn't any business except a very little now and then. It made me quite unhappy," she added naively.

"And you find him personally agreeable?"

"Yes, I do. I didn't at first—" She checked herself—"I mean I did at the very first—then I didn't—then I did again, then I—didn't—" The delicate colour stole into her cheeks; she lifted her wineglass, looked into it pensively, set it back on the table. "But I understand him better now, I think."

"What, in him, do you understand better now?"

"I—don't—know."

"Is he a better kind of a man than you thought him at first?"

"Y-es. He has it in him to be better, I mean. . . . Yes, he is a better man than I thought him—once."

"And you like him–"

"Yes, I do. Colonel Arran."

"Admire him?"

She flushed up. "How do you mean?"

"His qualities?"

"Oh. . . . Yes, he has qualities."

"Admirable?"

"He is exceedingly intelligent."

"Intellectual?"

"I don't exactly know. He pretends to make fun of so many things. It is not easy to be perfectly sure what he really believes; because he laughs at almost everybody and everything. But I am quite certain that he really has beliefs."

"Religious?"

She looked grave. "He does not go to church."

"Does he—does he strike you as being—well, say, irresponsible—perhaps I may even say reckless?"

She did not answer; and Colonel Arran did not ask again. He remained silent so long that she presently drifted off into other subjects, and he made no effort to draw her back.

But later, when he took his leave, he said in his heavy way:

"When you see Mr. Berkley, say to him that Colonel Arran remembers him. . . . Say to him that it would be my—pleasure—to renew our very slight acquaintance."

"He will be glad, I know," she said warmly.

"Why do you think so?"

"Why? Because I like you!" she explained with a gay little laugh. "And whoever I like Mr. Berkley must like if he and I are to remain good friends."

The Colonel's smile was wintry; the sudden animation in his face had subsided.

"I should like to know him—if he will," he said absently. And took his leave of Ailsa Paige.

Next afternoon he came again, and lingered, though neither he nor Ailsa spoke of Berkley. And the next afternoon he reappeared, and sat silent, preoccupied, for a long time, in the peculiar hushed attitude of a man who listens. But the door-bell did not ring and the only sound in tile house was from Ailsa's piano, where she sat idling through the sunny afternoon.

The next afternoon he said:

"Does he never call on you?"

"Who?"

"Mr. Berkley."

"I—asked him," she replied, flushing faintly.

"He has not come, then?"

"Not yet. I suppose—business–"

The Colonel said, ponderously careless: "I imagine that he is likely to come in the late afternoon—when he does come."

"I don't know. He is in business."

"It doesn't keep him after three o'clock at his office."

She looked up surprised: "Doesn't it?" And her eyes asked instinctively: "How did you know?" But the Colonel sat silent again, his head lowered and partly averted as though to turn his good ear toward her. Clearly his mind already dwelt on other matters, she was thinking; but she was mistaken.

"When he comes," said Colonel Arran slowly, "will you have the kindness to say to him that Colonel Arran will be glad to renew the acquaintance?"

"Yes. . . . Perhaps he has forgotten the street and number. I might write to him—to remind him?" Colonel Arran made no answer.

She wrote that night:

"DEAR MR. BERKLEY:

"I am in my own house now and am very contented—which does not mean that I did not adore being with Celia Craig and Estcourt and the children.