then, more faithful in memory to the dead friends of long ago than any other man or woman I have known, he spoke movingly of "Our Philip," his friend and mine, Philip Marston, the blind poet. Then he took down a book from a little bookshelf, and, turning the pages, asked me to read aloud Marston's Sonnet to his dead love:

It must have been for one of us, my own, To drink this cup and eat this bitter bread.

Had not my tears upon thy face been shed,

Thy tears had dropped on mine: if I alone

Did not walk now, thy spirit would have known

My loneliness; and did my feet not tread

This weary path and steep, thy feet had bled

For mine, and thy mouth had for mine made moan.

And so it comforts me, yea, not in vain To think of thine eternity of sleep; To know thine eyes are tearless though mine weep;

And when this cup's last bitterness I drain,

One thought shall still its primal sweetness keep

Thou hadst the peace, and I the undying pain.

His only comment on the poem was that long and deeply-breathed "Ah!" which meant that he had been profoundly interested, perhaps even profoundly stirred. Often it was his only comment when Swinburne, head erect, eyes ashine, and voice athrill, had in the past stolen into the room-noiseless in his movements, even when excited, to chant to us some new and noble poem, carried like an uncooled bar of glowing iron, direct from the smithy of his brain, and still intoning and vibrating with the deep bass of the hammer on the anvil, still singing the red The London Quarterly Review.

fire-song of the furnace whence it came We sat in silence for a space, and then Watts-Dunton said, "Our Philip was not a great, but at least he was a true poet, as well as a loyal friend and a right good fellow. He is almost forgotten now by the newer school and among the many new voices, but his friendsLouise Chandler Moulton and Will Sharp and others of us, have done what we could to keep his memory green. We loved him as Gabriel and Algernon loved him, our beautiful blind poet-boy."

When soon after I rose reluctantly to go, a change seemed to come over Watts-Dunton. The animation faded out of voice and face, and was replaced by something like anxiety, almost like pain. "Must you go, dear fellow, must you go?" he asked sorrowfully. "There is a bed all ready prepared, for we'd hoped you'd stay the night."

I explained that I was compelled to return to Hastings that evening as I had to start on a journey early next morning. Perhaps I had let him overexert himself too much in conversation. Perhaps he had more to say and was disappointed not to be able to say it, for he seemed suddenly tired and sad. The brilliant talker was gone. "Come again soon, dear fellow. Come again soon," he said as he held my hand in a long clasp. And when I had passed out of his sight and he out of mine, his voice followed me pathetically, almost brokenly, into the night, "Come again. soon, dear boy. Don't let it be long before we meet again."

It was not long before we met again, but it was, alas! when I followed to his long home one who, great as was his fame in the eyes of the world as poet, critic, novelist, and thinker, is, in the hearts of some of us, who grow old, more dearly remembered as the most unselfish, most steadfast, and most loving of friends.

Coulson Kernahan.

CHAPTER VI.

Mr. Darling hopped up the steps of his own house one day as though he had only yesterday left it. As seen from an upper window he looked active and well dressed, and appeared to have even a debonair air.

But at close quarters

he had a pallid unhealthy look, and he announced to Mrs. Darling that he had come back to die. What he really meant, and very naturally wanted, was to be nursed well again, and he probably suspected that his wife would do more for him in that respect than anyone else. Also she would be much cheaper than anyone else. Nursing homes were very expensive, and Mr. Darling was, as usual, without money. How he lived no one quite knew. Probably he had sympathizers—people who forgave him a great deal because of a certain hearty sympathetic manner which he had, and because he was handsome and poor. Even when they did nothing else for him they sent him cards for their large parties, and at these he used to appear, looking handsome and well dressed, and always ready to take ladies in to supper several times. Some people may have suspected that he was not well fed at home, and that he supplemented his private meals at public functions, but his repeated excursions to the dining-room or buffet at a party generally escaped observation in a crush. Every waiter in London knew him, and he had learned, with a sort of self-protective cunning which he possessed, never to apply twice to the same man for refreshments, nor to sit twice at the same little supper tables at which he was so arduous an attendant. If ever a man knew by heart the flavor of cold viands it was Cosmo Darling. There were many days when he fed on nothing else.

Dinners were a rare treat with him.

He

Hardly anyone ever asked him to dinner unless they wanted to make up their numbers, and he had learned, in that way he had of utilizing things to his own advantage, that the superstition about sitting down thirteen to table had often worked well for him. never minded how late he was sent for to fill up a place, and he hardly resented it when once he overheard himself called "Number Fourteen." Women thought him very obliging, and he picked up many little odds and ends by being attentive to them-here a lunch and there a theatre ticket. When he drove home from these entertainments he always asked to be dropped at his club (which was a good one), because he had learned by some painful lessons that the man left last in a taxicab always has to pay for it. And as Cosmo very seldom had half a crown in his pocket he always guarded himself against such eventualities. He never wrote on anything except club paper, of which he took home weekly supplies, and not many people knew where he lived. At one time he had been wont to be very candid and almost interesting about his impecuniosity, and many a meal had been given because of his habit of saying with frankness, "I positively haven't got half a crown to pay for a club lunch." But he found that people grew tired of this oft-told tale, and of late years he had learned to keep all knowledge of his affairs to himself. He found it paid much better than posing as a poor man. He had never dropped out of society, always got some old pals to take him to race meetings and the like, and he not only went to dances but answered his invitations.

To live on charity as exemplified by doles is always precarious, but to live on charity which takes the form of invitations is more precarious still. There

were days when, with no dinner in view, Cosmo had to write some breezy little note saying, "I'll look you up in the morning," or, "I'll stick you for lunch if you don't mind," but he lived in terror of doing this sort of thing too often. So far, he had managed very fairly well. London is a big place, and where one hostess might write saying quite defnitely she would be out at lunch-time, half a dozen others would telephone to say they would be delighted to see him. Summer was the most difficult time in the needy gentleman's life. Hardly anyone asked him to stay at their country houses, and everyone left London. He used to try and stimulate those who remained behind into a spurious jollity which would consist in "getting up things" (in which he might join), and would urge upon them that August was the time when one really got to know people in a friendly way. He was always prompt with useful information as to where it was best to dine or where a comfortable Bohemian little lunch could be got for nothing. On winter afternoons he used to go to several teas and eat hot muffins, and then he would go home to dress, and afterwards proceed to faint little entertainments of any sort, even a crush and a biscuit, where good fires, some conversation, and refreshments were provided.

He was not unhappy, and the only bugbear of his life was old age. When he should become old he had no idea what he would do, and no one knew better than Cosmo that he depended largely upon his good looks for the favors that he received. He would have hated to enter a lower stratum of society than the one to which he was accustomed, and the one to which he was accustomed was by no means undesirable. He had tried Bohemianism, but he decided that it didn't pay; there were too many poor men in it besides himself, and he had tried the frankly second-rate, and had disliked it in7

tensely. He had also tried "the Evangelical set," where, as he remarked, "he had been well fed but bored stiff." The only thing he never dreamed of trying was working for a living. When Mrs. Darling's money was finished, he accepted it as an infliction which had unjustly been sent to him by some power whose ways were generally unscrupulous.

Lately, Mr. Darling had been suffering from bad health, brought on by too many cold suppers or by the indifferent champagne which sometimes accompanied them. He rather disliked the house in Kensington where nothing was ever quite so comfortable as it might have been, but he decided to return thither, and his very pale and unhealthy appearance was the best plea that he could make for his reappearance.

There was a friend-and-family council held that night in Miss Crawley's house. Mr. Darling knew that was inevitable, and smiled when his wife announced apologetically that she must dine out that evening. Cosmo was going to be talked over, and he knew it and did not resent it in the least. He remarked to his wife that he supposed she would not mind his lying down in the spare bedroom as he felt so horribly seedy, and when she questioned him about his luggage he admitted that it was downstairs in the hall.

"I knew you wouldn't turn your back on me, old girl," he said, "so I brought it round in order to save another taxi, but I'll quit this moment if you'd rather."

It was after this that he heard her voice on the telephone asking Julia if she might come to dinner, and he knew quite well what would happen!

It was a Friday evening, but fortunately all four friends were disengaged and came at Miss Crawley's summons. The dinner was conversational, out of deference to Bodnim, but when a return was made to the drawing-room in

the evening, and the card table was discovered spread with Bridge markers and packs of cards and candles and ashtrays, the little party put the very idea of Bridge aside as impossible.

Tom of course was the most frequent and most truculent speaker. Tom said, "Turn him out. Turn him out tonight, and without a moment's hesitation."

"He is ill," pleaded Mrs. Darling, and she quoted miserably," "In sickness and in health'-we must remember that."

"If a man like Cosmo once gets his foot inside a house," went on Tom, "he wedges it there and you can't get the door shut."

"I argued with him as well as I could," poor Mrs. Darling said. "Both the girls were out, and unluckily Tony seemed delighted to see his father. I couldn't go against him when he said, 'Papa, do stay.'

"Confound all children" said Tom hotly; "they are the most interfering, over-estimated creatures that were ever put on God's earth"

"Tom, Tom!" protested Miss Crawley. "I mean it," said Tom decisively. "You don't know what it is to have them, Tom," said poor Mrs. Darling who, after all, had but few other treasures.

"Go on " said Tom wrathfully, "from the place where the precocious and intelligent child said, 'Do stay, Papa.'

"It seemed as if it were meant to be," quoth Mrs. Darling, who in weak moments always saw the hand of Providence in everything which was unavoidable. "I felt as he spoke that Tony showed me the right thing to do."

"And you followed that 'guidance' as any superstitious peasant will follow a dream or a plunger a tip."

By this time she was crying, which added to the general unhappiness of the evening, and everyone was much disturbed and willing to give their views and to beg others to be calm.

Willie Macpherson alone listened in a quiet way to all that was said, and Miss Crawley hesitated to give advice because the economic side of the situation would doubtless have to be considered and would naturally devolve upon her, and she feared that Mrs. Darling might think that it was a matter of money which urged her to advise the removal of the returned husband.

"I wash my hands of the whole thing," said Tom. "If Darling is allowed to enter his wife's house after all that has occurred

"I suppose we ought to forgive," said Mrs. Darling.

"Hang it, Annette," said Mr. Beamish, who was now walking up and down the room in a very distracted manner; "hang it all, I never know whether a woman's goodness is as much to men's advantage as is generally made out. If they are angels to one man, their very virtue and goodness can make it excessively unpleasant for another!"

"I don't mean to make it unpleasant for another," protested Mrs. Darling. She dried her eyes and said with some spirit, “And I think it's very unkind of you, Tom."

"I think it is unkind, too," said Julia, determined to be loyal to her sister.

"Good gracious! are you both against me?" said the much ruffled Mr. Beamish. "I never thought such a thing would happen in this house, Julia, that I should be called unkind by my oldest and dearest friends."

The evening was going to be much worse even than they imagined.

Willie Macpherson, who was expected to side with the poor and afflicted, was asked what he would do, and said unexpectedly, "Send him away, Annette."

Whereupon Julia stiffened a little and thought men were all very unkind to each other. They protested their loyalty to their own sex, but just wait till loyalty was put to the test!

"If there was a spark of real good in Cosmo," he said, much distressed by the pain he had caused, "I should say, 'Let him remain.'"

"I suppose there's good in everyone of us," said Mrs. Darling, who had learned this lesson from various clergymen.

She found that both men were obdurate and very manly and difficult to manage, and there was nothing for it but to postpone discussion until after they had left, so she and Julia Crawley waited up together to talk over the matter calmly, and both agreed that the, arrival of Mr. Darling upon the scene was the very worst thing that could possibly have happened, and they also. said that it would be bad for the girls, although of course a sick man lying upstairs in the spare bedroom would not count for very much, particularly as Jim's and Jack's occupations kept them now much away from home. They said also that Tony might surely run in and out and amuse the invalid without being contaminated.

"If only he would have stayed away! Nothing will make it any more endurable for you," said Miss Crawley sympathetically, "and with Tony's illhealth you have enough on your hands as it is."

"He has really been better since that sick attack," said Tony's mother who, even in the midst of a tragedy, could not resist the pleasure of speaking about him. "He seemed to take to his father directly, Julia."

"Tony is young," said Julia; "one doesn't know what sort of things he may teach him."

The danger for the little boy seemed to make the difficult matter still more difficult and undecided, whereas the whole case had already been definitely settled by Mr. Darling, who had made himself as comfortable as possible in the spare bedroom, and intended to be ill as long as he liked, and to share his

wife's home for an extended period. Such a conclusion was practically preordained by two women who had been brought up to do the right thing upon all occasions, and who when the choice was given to them, always had a leaning towards the course which involved a cheerful ignoring of their own interests. "I hope we are not being weak,” said Miss Crawley at last.

"It can never be weak to do the right thing, I suppose," said her sister.

Thus comforted, they kissed each other and said good night. In a day or two it almost seemed as if Mr. Darling had never left his home, so settled did he seem amongst them.

This was an aspect of the affair which Cosmo himself frequently insisted upon, and a doctor having been called in who said that his health was in a very bad state, a period of sick nursing began at the house in Kensington which proved in time to have many aspects which Mrs. Darling had not anticipated.

In the first place, her daughters did not prove themselves ready sick nurses. They frankly disliked illness, and they had a wholesome contempt for their father, which disturbed him so much that he told his wife that the girls got on his nerves, and begged that they should not be allowed to come to his

room.

On the other hand, visitors from the outside world were frequent with Mr. Darling. A telephone was put by the side of his bed, and on this he spoke all day long to his many acquaintances, giving them an account of his disastrous condition, and begging them to come and see him. He began to have a timetable with dates relating to the hours of visits which he arranged; and the comfortable armchair in his bedroom was never left wholly unoccupied during an afternoon. Flowers filled tables and flower-vases, books and gossip were freely offered to the good-looking big