'I wish I had never known, Tregellan! How could I ever tell her!'
Inside, Tregellan shrugged his shoulders: not impatiently, or angrily, but
in sheer impotence; as one who gave it up.
'I can't help you,' he said, 'you must arrange it with your own
conscience.'
'Ah, it's too difficult!' cried the other: 'I can't find my way.'
The driver cracked his whip, suggestively; Sebastian drew back a little
further from the off wheel.
'Well,' said the other, 'if you find it, write and tell me. I am very
sorry, Sebastian.'
'Good-bye,' he replied. 'Yes! I will write.'
The carriage lumbered off, with a lurch to the right, as it turned the
corner; it rattled down the hill, raising a cloud of white dust. As it
passed the Mitouards' house, a young girl, in a large straw hat, came down
the garden, too late to discover whom it contained. She watched it out of
sight, indifferently, leaning on the little iron gate; then she turned, to
recognize the long stooping figure of Sebastian Murch, who advanced to meet
her.
AN ORCHESTRAL VIOLIN
I
At my dining-place in old Soho--I call it mine because there was a time
when I became somewhat inveterate there, keeping my napkin (changed once a
week) in a ring recognisable by myself and the waiter, my bottle of Beaune
(replenished more frequently), and my accustomed seat--at this restaurant
of mine, with its confusion of tongues, its various, foreign _clientele_,
amid all the coming and going, the nightly change of faces, there were some
which remained the same, persons with whom, though one might never have
spoken, one had nevertheless from the mere continuity of juxtaposition a
certain sense of intimacy.
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