“No, I am very sane. And very tired. I loved you, Aubrey. I shall never love any one else. I am clotted with your passions, Aubrey. I wanted love, but you ravaged me like a wild beast. And what is left of me now, I want to preserve. Oh, I want to! _Please_ understand ... just a little! All last night I wondered what I would do. I saw you coming back, my dear, the hunter coming back to his fireside and his wife and his holiday--oh, yes, I am your holiday, Aubrey!--and then I saw you going away again, leaving me.... Oh, Aubrey, how you have sinned against love! And so I went away, because of the horror of it. And I have come back, because of the horror of your loneliness. I, who am used to loneliness! And I also came back to see if you were--different....” “If,” she whispered, “we were living in a past time, I should go into a nunnery, to get assoiled. But as it is, dear, I shall go for a walk....” “Let me come with you,” he begged humbly. “No, Aubrey. I’d like to walk quite alone. Towards the moon and back.” But the moon was behind a cloud with a satin fringe. He watched her as she walked across the garden and was lost in darkness. He waited for a long time, but he knew she would not return. She has never returned. IV: THE MAN WITH THE BROKEN NOSE I “Ever been to the National Gallery?” asked George Tarlyon. It was an offensive question to ask a grown man, but I answered it. “Ah,” said Tarlyon. “I can’t help thinking,” said Tarlyon, “that you did Madam Tussaud’s the same afternoon....” “If you want to know, it was the Tower, St. Paul’s, and the National Gallery that I did on the same afternoon. My mother took me.” “Of course, I can’t compete with your mother,” said Tarlyon; “but I will take you--now. Waiter--the bill, please.” It was a day in July, and we were sitting over luncheon at the Café Royal. It was very warm for the time of the year. I don’t know if I have mentioned it, but I am something in the City. There was, if you remember, a slump in the City in the summer of 1922. I was in that slump. And so, with one thing and another, I sighed.... “Come on,” said Tarlyon firmly. “One must not neglect art. And two certainly mustn’t.” Poor, silly man! We walked from the Café Royal to Trafalgar Square, which is an untidy walk on a glaring afternoon in July. And then we walked about the Gallery; we looked at paintings with that rapt look which can see All Round and Into a thing; and we stood before “Musidora Bathing Her Feet.” “What a masterpiece,” Tarlyon sighed, “if only she hadn’t got three legs!” I could not at first see Musidora’s third leg, but after he had pointed it out to me I could see nothing else but that ghostly third leg dangling over her knee between the other two.