He had been very proud of Gabrielle in the old days, and was proud still in a vain boyish way. He knew that she was a beautiful woman, and could suffer chagrin when he admitted that the measure of her intellect was far beyond his own. A sportsman and little else, all this cant of movements and causes and social creeds stirred him to ebullitions of temper of which he was secretly ashamed. Nothing but the influence of years forbade him to say that both of them had made a great mistake, and that he must end it. He resolved to do so after Maryska's avowal, but his courage was not responsive. He could not bring himself to what must seem in Gabrielle's eyes but a vulgar affront upon her loyalty--and so the days drifted. In the end he made up his mind to leave London for a week or so and trust to new scenes for inspiration. By all accounts John Faber was about to sail from England, and, having altered his plans at the last moment, Maryska had been left with the Silvesters--to her great grief but not to Gabrielle's dissatisfaction. Harry knew little of the circumstances, for his friends at Hampstead were secretive, and latterly had become unaccountably vague in all their plans. That John Faber's departure was a great disappointment to them Harry guessed, though his vanity suffered by the admission. He knew now that things must come to a head between Gabrielle and himself directly he returned to London, and the very fact kept him in Brighton. It would have been good to be alone but for his longing after Maryska. He missed her every minute of the day--there was hardly an hour from dawn to dark when her image did not arise before him and her black eyes look into his own. Brighton had always interested him in the old time, but he found it insupportably dull during this brief and almost penitential vacation. His club, one of the "brainiest" in the country, as he used to boast elsewhere, was filled by earnest men who could discuss nothing but the passing of the frost and the danger which the country had escaped almost miraculously. Standing upon the breezy front, where a warm south wind rattled the windows of the old houses, it seemed impossible to believe that a man might have picked ice from that very shore but a few short weeks ago. Now Brighton was as ever a compound of stones and stucco; of square lawns and of wide windows as methodical; of a tumbling sea, and elderly gentlemen in weird waistcoats to gaze upon it.