There were no more than two men besides himself in the room; one of them was reading, and the other slept. The silence was absolute until a page sped in to bawl the name of a member who wasn't there, and sped forth to bawl for him somewhere else. The man who had slept said "damn" very softly, and turned to sleep on the other side. Conrad lay back in the deep chair, and let fancy reign. There were many gaps, but there were moments that made the calendar unreal. He remembered intimately things that she had said to him--oddly enough, more of the things that he had said to her. He stared at his whisky-and-potash, and mentally relived the story. And this is the story he relived:-- CHAPTER IX The boy came to the French windows paint-smeared and tired. He had been to Bonsecours, where the monument of Jeanne D'Arc is now, and tried to make a study of the landscape from the Cemetery. On the boat--they had no dream of electric trams then--the immensity of his failure had filled him with alarm. A tall, slight woman was standing in the salon, with her back to him. She wore a pale coloured travelling coat, and a hat with a wing in it. As his step sounded on the terrace she turned, and he forgot the landscape. He passed awkwardly, and was troubled afterwards by the thought that he should have bowed. He said to his mother: "The most beautiful woman you've ever seen is downstairs; I wonder if she means to stay." "She _is_ staying," answered his mother. "She's Grice Adaile's wife--the man who made that speech in the House the other day. Well, is Bonsecours worth going to?" "Rather!" he said. He was still thinking of the woman's delicate, wistful face. He thought of it while he dressed for dinner. He had thought of nothing latterly but that he would be studying art in Paris soon, had wished for nothing but to escape before his parents could withdraw their consent. All at once he would have regretted to learn that he was leaving suddenly. At table she was opposite him; she sat next to Miss McGuire. He perceived that they were friends and was dismayed, for Miss McGuire considered he had been impertinent to her and no longer spoke to him. He recognised blankly that the beautiful woman would be told he was a cub. If he had done wrong his punishment had overtaken him: Mrs. Adaile vouchsafed no word to him for days. Her disapproval humbled him so much that he used to leave the salon when she was laughing with his mother and the rest. He hoped she would observe he was humiliated, and be stirred with pity; it seemed to him he must awaken her respect by the course he was adopting. Incongruously there was an element of unacknowledged joy in his distress; it was not without its exultation, to think that Mrs. Adaile was being heartless to him--to feel that she was making him suffer.