"Poor little soul!" He smiled as he recognized the form his sympathy took. "After all she's right--she has a soul--and even though it brings her suffering and tears, it's worth the price. And yet--I wonder if it would have been kinder to leave her alone--not to encourage that hope of hers to make herself more intellectually worthy of her husband? I didn't make much success of waking _my_ Undine's soul to life! All I got was her hatred--and from the beginning she lied to me!" Luckily at that moment his lamp blew out, viciously; and with a muttered execration of the creatures he called Boo-Boos, he dismounted and relighted the flame, whose vagaries throughout the rest of the long ride kept him so fully occupied that he had neither time nor inclination to meditate on such abstractions as souls. CHAPTER XVIII By the end of September, Owen's book was finished; and on a beautiful autumn morning he and Toni set off in the car on a journey to town, where a publisher, who was also a personal friend, was waiting to receive the manuscript. Mr. Anson was a kindly, energetic man of middle age; and he had secretly long expected Owen to turn novelist; so that he accepted the bulky manuscript with a real curiosity as to its value. He promised to let the author know his decision at an early date; and then invited Owen and his wife to lunch with him at the Carlton, an invitation which Owen accepted at once, rather to Toni's dismay. They were his sole guests; and beneath his kind and courteous manner, Toni lost her shyness and charmed her host by her girlish simplicity and directness. It happened that the conversation turned on the bungalows which lined the banks of the river as it flowed through Willowhurst; and presently Mr. Anson asked a question. "You've got Vyse down there, haven't you? You know the chap I mean--the portrait-painter." "I don't think so." Owen was puzzled. "At least I have not heard of him being there. Have you, Toni?" "Yes--Mr. Anson means Mr. Herrick," said Toni quietly. "He told me the other day he had changed his name." "Ah yes, I remember now--something about some money, I believe. You know him, Mrs. Rose?" "Yes. He fished me out of the river one day when I had fallen in," said Toni smiling. "And he has been to see us several times--but I didn't know he was famous," she finished naively. "Didn't you? Why, he is--or was--one of the foremost men in his own line until there was the trouble with his wife." "Surely you don't mean that jewel affair?" Owen asked meditatively. "Didn't Vyse's wife steal a pearl necklace or something of the sort? I seem to remember something about it--though I did not connect it with this chap." "His wife--who was one of the prettiest Irish girls I ever saw--got a valuable necklace on approval and pawned it for money to pay her debts, yes. Poor fellow, it broke him up completely." "Really?" Owen was interested. "Where is she--the wife--now? Did he leave her, or what happened?"