"He's a man-servant of the devil, this pudgy editor," he said striding up and down the lower hall in his rage. "A few days ago I called upon him, and in sweet modesty and limping French explained the proper policy for him to take about this volcano. To-day he devotes a half-column of insufferable humor to my force of character and alarmist views. Oh, the flakiness of the French mind! M. Mondet certainly fascinates me. I shall have to call upon him again." Paula heard the low laugh of the other and the words: "Let's sit down, Mr. Stock. I want to hear all about the editor and the mountain. I was getting to sea somewhere, when the New York papers ran a line about Pelée's activity. It started luring memories, and I berthed at once for Saint Pierre. It was mighty good to see the _Saragossa_ lying familiarly in the roadstead----" Trailing her fingers along the wall to steady herself, Paula made her way back to the door of her room, which she fumblingly unlocked. NINETEENTH CHAPTER QUENTIN CHARTER IS ATTRACTED BY THE TRAVAIL OF _PELÉE_, AND ENCOUNTERS A QUEER FELLOW-VOYAGER Charter did not find Paula Linster in the week of New York that followed his call at the _Zoroaster_, but he found Quentin Charter. The first three or four days were rather intense in a psychological way. The old vibrations of New York invariably contained for him a destructive principle, as Paris held for Dr. Duprez. The furious consumption of nerve-tissue during the first evening after his arrival; a renewal of desires operating subconsciously, and in no small part through the passion of Selma Cross; his last struggle, both subtle and furious, with his own stimulus-craving temperament, and the desolation of the true romance--combined, among other things, worthily to test the growth of his spirit.... The thought that Skylark had fallen into the hands of Selma Cross, and had been given that ugly estimate of him which the actress held before his call, as he expressed it in his letter, "drove straight and swiftly to the very centres of sanity." Over this, was a ghastly, whimpering thing that would not be immured--the effect of which, of all assailants to rising hope, was most scarifying: That Paula Linster had suffered herself to listen to those old horrors, and had permitted him to be called to the bar before Selma Cross. No matter how he handled this, it held a fundamental lesion in the Skylark-fineness.