"This sort of thing is no great success. There must be something wrong with me. I think I'll go to Italy. Rhymes! What, ho! I will be a poet. Let the Campbells come, let the Campbells go. It's a foolish tune." Why so enthusiastic at bowling over one's inoffensive brethren in mortality? That sounded like Jack Mavering, another homeless adventurer and piece of fragmentary pottery, who did not care, either, about the commander of the Army of the Potomac, and might be taking lunch now in that restaurant with the gilt sign, the resort of correspondents and small officers. Italy! The _Citronen blühen_ there, and one was either a monk or an artist, or in love with an almond-eyed shepherdess--was something with a denomination, at least, and an ideal for a perquisite. He would go and tell Helen and Mrs. Mavering. Helen would dislike his not caring, and say so, in fact, with vigor. He might omit it and enlarge on Italy. "I wonder what she'll say? I shouldn't like it if she looked disappointed." Chapter XVIII In which there is Discovered a Compunction The iron-gray horse--the former property of one "Miss Meely," an existence in rumor, suspected of being quick-tempered--turned into an alley that led past the windows of the restaurant with the gilt sign to a livery stable. The restaurant was full of the bustle of hurrying waiters and the hum of conversation. Mavering sat half-way down the line of tables, the remains of his meal before him. He was leaning back, looking peacefully at the ceiling, when Gard came, sat down at the other side of the table, and held out his hand. Mavering took his eyes from the ceiling and said, mildly. "Angel and ministers of grace! I prepared an obituary for you a month ago." He drew a thin, bony hand from his pocket and stretched it across the table. Gard gave his order to the waiter before he commented. "Why did you do that?" "Ah! Why? If I remember the circumstances correctly they were these." Gard listened silently while Mavering told the story with niceties of detail. Finally he said: "I don't see what Map did that for." "Don't you? Then neither do I, but in the highway of interpretation I should say he doesn't like you to be alive--possibly has a grudge." "He must have, but I didn't know it before." And later, when they were in the street that climbed to the capitol, and seemed to come to an end there, finally, in adoration of its sunlit dome, Gard asked: "Do you know where I'm going?" "The question offers unlimited interest. I take it to be rhetorical. I do not." "I'm going to look for Mrs. Mavering and a young lady who is with her. They're nursing in one of the hospitals, or were last winter. Did you know it?" "I did not." "Going with me?" "I'll walk along and make up my mind." After a few moments' silence: "It was hard luck for Mrs. Mavering to marry you." "You speak truth." "You didn't boil down to much." "Blanked little. What's your intricate meaning?" "I was thinking of Map."