I could n't at first detach him from his contemplation of the square garden. He said he liked it; it was "so jolly bosky." "And, oh, Simpson, the peace, the blessed peace of it!" He had his fountain-pen and writing-pad in bed with him, but he had n't written a line. He said he was too happy.

I inquired about his appendicitis. He shook his head gravely, and said that an operation was not considered necessary at present; but that he would have to stay in the nursing home for five or six weeks to make sure.

"Five or six weeks, Simpson; longer, perhaps. In fact, I don't know when I shall be out."

I told him he 'd be bored to death and that he could n't stand it. But he said no; he was happier in that nursing home than he had been for years. They did n't treat him a bit like a celebrity, and all he wanted was to lie there and have his hair brushed.

He lay there three weeks, and I suppose he had his chair brushed, for it lay flatter, which gave him a look of extraordinary well-being and peace. And at the end of three weeks he came to me in my studio by night. Grevill Burton and Furnival were there, and he simply threw himself on our mercy. He said he was still supposed to be in the nursing home. Yes, I was right. He had n't been able to stand it. It was all very well at first. He 'd liked having his hair brushed, -the little nurse who brushed it was distinctly pretty, -but he 'd got tired of it in a week. He 'd squared the sister and the nurses and the doctor-squared 'em all round, and if anybody inquired for him at the home, they'd hear that Mr. Watt Gunn's condition was about the same, and that he was not allowed to see anybody. If Furny liked to put a paragraph in that rag of his about his condition being the same, he might.

Thus, with a delicious, childlike joy in his own ingenuity, he spun the first threads of the tangle that afterward immeshed him.

He went down into the country to write a book. Nobody but Burton and I (we could n't trust Furny) knew where he was. Officially, he was in the nursing Mrs. Folyat-Raikes called there every day, and brought back the bulletin,

and published it all round. He'd reckoned on that.

Well, he kept it up for weeks, months. Burton and I went down to see him in September. We found him chuckling over the success of his plot. He admitted it had been a bit expensive. His three weeks in the home, at fifteen guineas a week, had come to forty-five pounds. With doctors and one thing and another the game had cost him over seventy. But it was, he said, money well invested. It would mean hundreds and thousands of pounds in his pocket a hundred pounds, he'd calculated, for every week he was supposed to be still there. He 'd finished his book, and if he could keep it up only a few months longer, he thought he could easily do another. He was so fit, he said, he could do 'em on his head.

It struck me there was something ominous in his elation. For the thing presently began to leak out. I swear it was n't through me or Burton or even Furny; but, you see, the entire staff of the nursing home was in the secret, and the nurses may have talked to patients; you don't have Watt Gunn in a nursing home for nothing. Anyhow, I was rung up one day by Mrs. Folyat-Raikes. I heard her uncanny telephone voice saying, "Do you know what has become of Mr. Watt Gunn?" I answered as coolly as I could that I did n't.

And then the voice squeaked in my ear, "I hear he 's broken down completely and gone away, leaving no address."

I called a taxi then and there, and went round to Cadogan Gardens. I found the poor lady wilder and more haggard than You may imagine what it meant to

ever.

her.

She dropped her voice to tell me that her information was authentic. Mr. Watt Gunn was not in the nursing home. He never had been in a nursing home at all. She had not written to him because she understood that letters were not allowed in the institution.

That was where Watt Gunn's ingenuity had landed him. The story was all over London in three days. She was bound to spread it to account for his non-appearance at her parties. You could n't stop it. It had got into the papers. And though Watt Gunn's publisher, in view of his forthcoming novel, published emphatic

contradictions, nobody believed them. And when the book, his masterpiece, came out, the effect on his royalties was lamentable. In America it simply ruined him.

He tried desperately to recover, to live it down. He had some scheme of going on a lecturing tour in the States; but his agents made inquiries, and advised him not to. A lecturing tour in the States, they said, at the present juncture would prove a miserable fiasco, even if he could effect a landing. He, the darling of the American public, whose triumph on "the other side" had been a gorgeous fairy-tale,

It was sharper because of the peace that he had known. I can't tell you all Mrs. Folyat-Raikes's ruses, and Watt Gunn's revolts and flights, his dastardly and pitiable shifts. He had, I believe, a matrimonial project which he abandoned as too drastic, besides being probably ineffectual. And then he did a really clever thing. It served him for a whole season.

I ought to tell you that Mrs. FolyatRaikes was the most straight-laced hostess of her generation. Nobody was admitted to her house who had once figured in a scandal. And Watt Gunn had never fig

His American publisher, terrified by these rumors, came over himself for the sole purpose of seeing what was the matter with Watt Gunn, and despite all that Burton, Furnival, and I could tell him, he was not altogether reassured. He went about too much. Besides, by this time Watt Gunn had got so nervy over it all that his behavior lent itself to suspicion.

Then the poor little chap persuaded himself that his only chance was to be seen again at Mrs. Folyat-Raikes's. For the next three months he was seen there and everywhere. Furny published a funny account of the whole thing, and Watt Gunn was ultimately reinstated. And the struggle and the agony began all over again.

n't, he used to say, be bored. Really, he had preserved the virtues and traditions of his class, besides being constitutionally timid in seductive presences. Then suddenly and conspicuously, in the beginning of the season, he figured. He appearedyou may remember it-as co-respondent in a rather bad divorce case. There were three other co-respondents, but they had been kept out of it in the interests of Watt Gunn. I don't know how he had worked it; anyhow, the little chap appeared, wearing his borrowed purple with an air of reckless magnificence in sin. I can see him now, solemn and flushed with the weight and importance of it, stalking slowly up the staircase of the Old Marlborough Club, trailing that gorgeous

iniquity. He had the look of a man who has completely vindicated himself.

He spoke of it in the smoke-room,we were dining with him, and he said it had been an awful bore, but he did n't grudge the time and trouble. He had been a benefactor to two miserable people who wanted to get rid of each other, he had saved three happy homes from a devastating scandal, -the three other co-respondents were married men,-and incidentally he had saved himself.

He had, but not for long. His next book had a furious success on the strength of the divorce suit. He was ten times more celebrated and ten times more valuable. Somebody told Mrs. Folyat-Raikes that it had been a put-up job, and that Watt Gunn had been made use of. She found extenuating circumstances. She said to Furnival and me, "We must save him from those dreadful people." She meant that she must.

And then Watt Gunn turned nasty. He refused every invitation, not taxing his invention in the least, and sometimes employing a secretary. Mrs. Folyat-Raikes was reduced to hunting him in other people's houses and at public dinners. She was to be seen rushing through vast reception-rooms when they were emptying, haggard in her excitement, trailing her Victorian skirts and shawls and laces. Or you found her wedged in the packing crowd, lifting her eternal lorgnon. And she would seize you as you passed and cry: "They tell me Mr. Watt Gunn is here. I'm looking for Mr. Watt Gunn."

He had become dangerous to hunt. He stuck at nothing. Poor hunted thing, he showed his origin by brutal "noes," irritable snarlings, and turnings of his little round back. But he had managed to write and publish "Revolution." He had escaped her clutches for a whole year.

At last she tracked him down at the Abadam's. He was there because I'd brought him. I'd found old Abadam worth cultivating. I had a one-man show on that week, and he 'd bought three of my things the year before. Besides, they 'd engaged some Russian dancers, and we could n't resist that.

Furnival and Grevill Burton came with us, and when we caught sight of Mrs. Folyat-Raikes, we closed round Watt Gunn. He is n't tall, but she was bound

You never saw more frantic terror on any human face. I don't know exactly what he did; but he broke loose from Furnival somehow,-I think he ducked,—and then he bolted. We saw him going clean through people, and making for a door there was on his right.

Furnival and I took Mrs. Folyat-Raikes down to supper by way of covering his retreat. There was only one other thing to do, and that was to sacrifice Grevill Burton-to throw him to her. This, I can see now, was what we ought to have done, -it was the only thing that would have taken her mind off Watt Gunn,but at the time it seemed too hard on Burton.

So Furny and I took her down to supper. We'd got the same plan in our heads, quite a good one. We were to land her well inside the dining-room. Furny was to hold her in play while I foraged for iced coffee and fruit salad and pâté de foie gras. The idea was to keep her feeding long enough to give Watt Gunn a chance.

Well, it did n't come off. In the first place, the room was crammed, and we could n't get her far enough in. Then, after she 'd sent me for iced coffee, she changed her mind and wanted champagne cup, and told Furny to go and get it. Like a fool, he went; and before we could get back to her, if you 'll believe me, she 'd slipped out.

What must have happened next we heard afterward from Watt Gunn.

I ought to tell you that she had this advantage over him, that she knew the house, and he did n't. It 's in Great Cumberland Place, and Abadam had pulled half of it down, and built it up again over