"You are rather deaf, I should think," said the Disagreeable Man placidly. "I only remarked that it was a pity you were not eating your dinner. Perhaps the scrutiny of the two hundred and fifty guests in this civilized place is a vexation to you." "I did not know they were scrutinizing," she answered; "and even if they are, what does it matter to me? I am sure I am quite too tired to care." "Why have you come here?" asked the Disagreeable Man suddenly. "Probably for the same reason as yourself," she said; "to get better or well." "You won't get better," he answered cruelly; "I know your type well; you burn yourselves out quickly. And--my God--how I envy you!" "So you have pronounced my doom," she said, looking at him intently. Then she laughed but there was no merriment in the laughter. "Listen," she said, as she bent nearer to him; "because you are hopeless, it does not follow that you should try to make others hopeless too. You have drunk deep of the cup of poison; I can see that. To hand the cup on to others is the part of a coward." She walked past the English table, and the Polish table, and so out of the Kurhaus dining-hall. CHAPTER II. CONTAINS A FEW DETAILS. IN an old second-hand bookshop in London, an old man sat reading Gibbon's History of Rome. He did not put down his book when the postman brought him a letter. He just glanced indifferently at the letter, and impatiently at the postman. Zerviah Holme did not like to be interrupted when he was reading Gibbon; and as he was always reading Gibbon, an interruption was always regarded by him as an insult. About two hours afterwards, he opened the letter, and learnt that his niece, Bernardine, had arrived safely in Petershof, and that she intended to get better and come home strong. He tore up the letter, and instinctively turned to the photograph on the mantelpiece. It was the picture of a face young and yet old, sad and yet with possibilities of merriment, thin and drawn and almost wrinkled, and with piercing eyes which, even in the dull lifelessness of the photograph, seemed to be burning themselves away. Not a pleasing nor a good face; yet intensely pathetic because of its undisguised harassment. Zerviah looked at it for a moment. "She has never been much to either of us," he said to himself. "And yet, when Malvina was alive, I used to think that she was hard on Bernardine. I believe I said so once or twice. But Malvina had her own way of looking at things. Well, that is over now." He then, with characteristic speed, dismissed all thoughts which did not relate to Roman History; and the remembrance of Malvina, his wife, and Bernardine, his niece, took up an accustomed position in the background of his mind.