THE SPIRIT OF THE TIME 
 
By the sam* Author 
 
 SNAKE-BITE 
 MRS. MARDEN 
 
The Spirit of the 
 Time 
 
 By 
 
 ROBERT HICHENS 
 
 CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD 
 London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne 
 
First published 1021 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE TIME 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 IN the autumn of 1919 Derrick Merton, 
 although he prided himself on being a man 
 of will and possessing a sense of humour, felt 
 that he really couldn't " stand things " much 
 longer. Like thousands of other people he 
 was suffering from reaction after the long 
 nightmare of war. Although he had been too 
 old alas, he was over fifty for active ser- 
 vice he had spent a great part of the last 
 five years in doing things which were hardly 
 in his " line," because he had considered it 
 his duty to do them. He had served for four 
 years with the Special Constables, had been a 
 helper in an East End hospital for wounded 
 soldiers, had done a lot of dull clerical work 
 for a public department, and, for a few months, 
 had driven a motor lorry in order that a man 
 might be released for the army Twenty- 
 
2 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 seven air raids had fallen to his lot. He had 
 formerly been accustomed to spend a consider- 
 able part of each year in travelling abroad 
 and had not left England once since the War 
 had broken out. And now he had a bad cold 
 in the head which he could not shake off. 
 Even repeated and almost desperate inhala- 
 tions of Friar's Balsam did him no good, and 
 his sneezes were loud and portentous in the land 
 of his fathers. On the top of all this came the 
 great railway strike and a loud call for volun- 
 teers to do all sorts of extremely unattractive 
 things. It was really too much ! And life 
 seemed almost unbearable to Derrick as he 
 sat sneezing beside a small fire there was very 
 little coal to be had just then in his flat in 
 Cork Street, London, and wondering whether 
 he ought to go off and offer his services as 
 an amateur porter at one of the big stations 
 Waterloo perhaps ! 
 
 He decided to ask a doctor. For he felt 
 really very unwell, quite weak in body and 
 mind. Both seemed to be saying, " We've 
 done and borne enough and more than enough. 
 If you demand anything more of us we shall 
 go on strike, like everyone else." 
 
The Spirit of the Time 3 
 
 The doctor came, and after an examination 
 forbade Derrick to undertake any more work. 
 
 " You're quite at the end of your tether," 
 he said. " Go abroad. Have a long rest. 
 I'll write you out a certificate and you'll 
 have no difficulty about getting a passport. 
 There's functional disturbance of the heart. 
 It's not serious, but you mustn't play with 
 it. Unless you follow my advice you're in for 
 a complete nervous breakdown." 
 
 " Very well ; I'll go," said Derrick. 
 
 " Better take someone with you." 
 
 " No, thank you. To tell the truth I long 
 to get away from everybody, to see only new 
 faces which won't recognize me. I'm aching 
 for a little bit of complete personal freedom." 
 
 " Where will you go ? " 
 
 " I'll go abroad ! ' : exclaimed Derrick, 
 drawing a long breath. " That covers eyery- 
 thing I " 
 
 The doctor smiled and wrote out the 
 certificate. 
 
 Not many days later Derrick was in a 
 crowded train starting from Boulogne for 
 Paris. From Paris he meant to go to Mon- 
 treux. He was almost fiercely fond of the 
 
4 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 sun, but just now the snows attracted him. 
 After all the weariness of war he longed to 
 look on the vast white solitudes, to see the 
 peaks in the blue, to hear the shuffle of the 
 snow dropping from the branches of pine 
 trees, to let his eyes wander along the glories 
 of the autumn woods on the lower slopes of 
 the hills which guard Lake Leman. And he 
 longed, too, to be in a country which had not 
 been in the War. So he resolved to travel to 
 Switzerland. 
 
 Paris was a nightmare, a phantasmagoria 
 of hurrying people who looked morbid or mad, 
 and who seemed unhinged by war and longing 
 for dreadful repayments. Derrick stayed there 
 two nights and hated it. To him it seemed 
 like a city of vultures. 
 
 " If this is what war makes of human 
 beings," he thought, as he sat outside the 
 Caf6 de la Paix observing the frantic crowds, 
 " God help humanity ! " 
 
 The ugliness of the expressions on most 
 of the faces almost terrified him. He drank 
 a cup of chocolate and was charged three 
 francs fifty by the waiter, who looked indig- 
 nant when he received half a franc as a tip 
 
The Spirit of the Time 5 
 
 for bringing the cup. Derrick had given it to 
 him merely to see how it would be received. 
 
 " Vultures ! Vultures ! " he said to him- 
 self, as he left the cafe. " The War has 
 turned men and women into birds of prey." 
 
 In the evening he went to a theatre and 
 saw a farce full of stale indecencies at which 
 a crowd of men and women of various nation- 
 alities laughed convulsively. On the follow- 
 ing day he escaped that was his feeling 
 from Paris. He was now on his way to a 
 country which had been immune from the 
 horrors, though not from many of the annoy- . 
 ances, of war. Already he felt a sense of 
 relief. His mind travelled on, leaving the train 
 behind, on to the mountain peaks, the snow- 
 fields, the glaciers, the climbing forests, the 
 ravines musical with rivers, on to people who 
 had not had the hideous duty of killing laid 
 upon them. He lay back in his seat by the 
 big window watching the landscape come up 
 and vanish, with its villages, its fields, its 
 mysteries of shadow and light, its winding 
 white roads with the little mysterious trav- 
 ellers upon them whom he would never know, 
 and something of the old glory of the pre- 
 
6 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 War life seemed to swim over him and to 
 possess him. Once more he felt the thrill of 
 a voyager's freedom at his heart, the antici- 
 pation of the haphazard, the unexpected, the 
 sense of adventure which turns back the 
 nature towards boyhood. 
 
 To travel again after five years ! To be 
 sitting in a big express on foreign soil, rushing 
 towards a frontier and away from sfcll the duties 
 of the irimediate past ! It was jolly indeed. 
 The schoolboy's adjective fitted it. Derrick 
 fingered his passport almost with an absurd 
 sensuality. Then he took it out and looked 
 at the photograph of himself pasted on it. 
 
 He saw a man who looked about fifty, with 
 a broad forehead, grey hair inclined to be curly, 
 and wide open, rather anxious, brown eyes. 
 The photographer had given him a sort of 
 pinched smirk which distorted slightly a firm, 
 rather humorous mouth, above which was a 
 close-clipped wiry moustache. An energetic 
 chin gave a certain look of power to the face 
 without destroying its sensitiveness. 
 
 " And that is I ! " thought Derrick. " I've 
 aged a lot since the War. My hair looks 
 infernally grey. The photographer has given 
 
The Spirit of the Time 7 
 
 me a disgustingly middle class smile, like a 
 Clapham tea-party, but he's abolished most 
 of my lines. Can there be much ahead for 
 that man, that still unmarried man ? ?: 
 
 Suddenly the thought came upon him that 
 he had passed irrevocably the happy age of 
 adventure which travelling suits so well. 
 Little flutters are easily forgiven to youth, 
 but when one has grey hair, a definite pucker 
 between the eyebrows, and wrinkles not due 
 really to the habit of smiling spraying out 
 beneath the corners of the eyes, one must 
 aim at the undesired dignities which are sup- 
 posed to dress up suitably the man who has 
 passed his prime Derrick felt as if he heard 
 the shutting of doors as he returned the pass- 
 port to its leathern case. During the War, 
 without being aware of it, he had taken a 
 leap from the age of still possible adventure 
 to the age of what ? What was there 
 really left for such a man as he was ? What 
 could the freedom of travel give to him? 
 The licence to drift through hotels, to sit 
 solitary in restaurants gazing at the enjoy- 
 ment of others, of lovers, young husbands and 
 wives, parents and children, to wander by lake 
 
8 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 shores or on mountain-sides, staring at the 
 beauties of nature which in their wonder 
 awaken hungers not to be appeased by them, 
 to greet starry nights alone with no fear of 
 disturbance, but with no hope of affection's 
 caresses. Freedom ! Derrick had kept his, 
 and now he was going to pay for it. 
 
 An abrupt and intense feeling of gloom 
 overspread him. For a moment he almost 
 wished he had not left England. There, at 
 any rate, he was surrounded by friends, by 
 people who had known him so long that they 
 accepted him just as he was without either 
 surprise or criticism. Where he was going he 
 would probably merely be glanced at with the 
 indifference evoked by middle age, or perhaps 
 wondered about, or even coolly pitied as a 
 derelict, grey-haired creature of the drifting 
 type that haunts foreign hotels, and may be 
 seen lounging vaguely in smoking-rooms, or 
 pretending to read a book while sitting over a 
 solitary dinner in the midst of talkative parties. 
 
 Decidedly the War had played the devil 
 with Derrick's nervous system, turning him to 
 a pitiable morbidity. He had still the common 
 sense to know he was morbid, but that know- 
 
The Spirit ot the Time 9 
 
 ledge did not help him much. His gloom 
 persisted and even increased, till he came to 
 the ridiculous conclusion that a middle-aged 
 bachelor has no place in the scheme of things, 
 that nobody wants him, that he exists merely 
 on sufferance and has no right to look for any 
 real happiness. By the time the train glided 
 into the station of Montreux he felt like a 
 pariah, and he got out of his carriage with 
 a sort of dreadful humility which seemed 
 pleading with Switzerland to put up with him 
 in spite of his obvious un worthiness. 
 
 In Montreux he stayed at the Hotel Mo^uey, 
 and had a room with a terrace facing the lake. 
 
 It was grey weather that day. Clouds hung 
 on the mountain-sides, hiding the snows. The 
 autumn woods covered the lower slopes with 
 a clinging beauty of red, russet-brown, brilliant 
 yellow, old gold, pale pink and ash colour. 
 The waters of the lake were still. A few 
 fishermen were out in small boats bending 
 over their lines. 
 
 Derrick unpacked, had a bath, changed his 
 clothes and went down to dejeuner, which he 
 ate in the small restaurant just before the 
 great dining-room. The train had arrived 
 
io The Spirit of the Time 
 
 late. He found himself alone in the restau- 
 rant. When he had finished his meal he went 
 into the reading-room, picked up a local paper 
 and carried it into the smoking-room. No one 
 was there. He lit a cigar, sat down, opened 
 the paper, and began to look at the list of 
 visitors in the many hotels and pensions of 
 Montreux. The porter had told him that 
 Montreux was not very full, but the paper 
 seemed to give the fellow the lie. Derrick 
 read columns of names, whose owners were at 
 this moment established in Montreux. German 
 and Russian princesses, Polish counts, Turkish 
 pashas, beys, Ukrainian barons, Bulgarians, 
 Rumanians, Austrians, Serbians, Montenegrins, 
 Armenians, Georgians, Czecho - Slovaks, 
 Italians, Circassians, announced themselves 
 to the world as staying on the shores of the 
 lake. Never before had Derrick read so many 
 names which he would have found it impos- 
 sible to pronounce correctly. Having nothing 
 to do he read the whole list right through 
 from beginning to end. 
 
 " I must go cut presently and see some 
 of these people ! " he thought. " After five 
 years of England it ought to be amusing." 
 
The Spirit of the Time ir 
 
 He laid the paper down. 
 
 As he did so two ladies came into the 
 long room from the hall. One of them was 
 tall, with jet black hair, black eyes, a curi- 
 ously square face and irregular features. She 
 was decidedly a plain, almost an ugly woman, 
 but had an air of intellect and marked dis- 
 tinction. She was very simply but very well 
 dressed, and wore a three-cornered black hat 
 and white kid gloves. Round her neck hung 
 several ropes of pearls. Her companion, who 
 was much younger, was fair, small, with blue 
 eyes and silky brown hair. The two women 
 did not sit down, but stood together near the 
 end of the room in earnest conversation. 
 Presently the elder woman opened a little bag 
 which hung at her waist, drew from it a case 
 and took out of it a cigarette and a long 
 cigarette holder. With a certain delicate pre- 
 cision, which was evidently characteristic of 
 her, she put the cigarette into the holder and 
 looked round for a match. She pointed to a table 
 at a little distance, and her companion went 
 towards it, but evidently found no matches, 
 for she shrugged her sloping shoulders and made 
 a moue and a gesture of disappointment. 
 
12 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 At this point Derrick got up, walked down 
 the room, made a non-committal sort of 
 bow, and said in French : 
 
 " May I give you a match, madame ? ' 
 
 " You are too good, monsieur," said the 
 elder of the two ladies in French. " Unless 
 I can smoke I am very unhappy." 
 
 Derrick lit a match. She bent forward, 
 with the holder between her lips, and he lit 
 her cigarette. 
 
 As he did this the lady's large black eyes 
 met his for an instant, and it seemed to him 
 that her mind was in close contact with his, 
 that it said to his mind something like this : 
 
 " So ! It is at Montreux that you and I 
 had to meet ! I could not go to England to you, 
 and so you have come to Switzerland to me ! " 
 
 So strong was his sensation that she was 
 silently speaking to him that he actually 
 opened his lips to make some he didn't know 
 what reply. But he was, as it were, inter- 
 rupted by the lady, who said, with a slight 
 smile of half melancholy politeness : 
 
 " Thank you, monsieur, you are too kind." 
 
 A moment later he was back in his place 
 at the other end of the room. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THAT afternoon Derrick put on his hat and 
 coat and went out for a walk. It was ex- 
 ceptionally cold that day, and he distinctly 
 felt the breath of snow in the air. Looking 
 up towards the mountains behind the small 
 town he saw the great hotel at Caux above 
 Territet vaguely defined through the tattered 
 skirts of the clouds. White patches lay around 
 it and just below it. To-morrow he would 
 go up there and walk in the snow. There 
 was a great tent pitched on the place near the 
 lake. Little boys were gathered about it, 
 and an orchestra was playing loudly a march 
 from " Aida." Derrick read the announce- 
 ment of a circus. Perhaps he would visit it 
 that night. It would be something to do. 
 He walked on and passed many smart shops. 
 A good many people were about, walking slowly 
 and well wrapped up, evidently taking their 
 66 constitutionals." He looked at them, try- 
 ing to guess to what nations they belonged. 
 
 B 13 
 
14 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 One enormously fat man, with a great white 
 face, shining dark eyes, and big carefully 
 waxed moustaches, was probably an Armenian. 
 He looked as if he had just been powdered, 
 like a baby, and thoroughly manicured. 
 A wrinkled old woman went by, carefully 
 tinted the colour of magenta. She carried a 
 gold-headed cane, and was accompanied by a 
 griffon. What was she ? Perhaps an Ukrai- 
 nian or a Czecho-Slovak. Some Germans were 
 promenading. They looked quite serene, even 
 comfortable, not at all like people who had 
 just lost a war. No doubt they were thank- 
 ful to be safely out of their own country. 
 Derrick turned and went back, walking now 
 in the direction of Vevey. 
 
 He passed his hotel and went on towards 
 the Montreux Palace Hotel. When he reached 
 the Arcade he saw in front of him the two 
 ladies of the Monney Hotel. The elder one 
 was wrapped up in furs. She had a very dis- 
 tinctive walk. Even the way in which she 
 moved suggested authority and high breeding. 
 What nation did she belong to ? Derrick 
 thought she might be a Hungarian. That 
 she was an aristocrat he was quite certain. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 15 
 
 Her companion, he thought, might be 
 German. 
 
 At the end of the Arcade the two ladies 
 paused. Thin snow was beginning to fall. 
 They turned and met him in the Arcade. As 
 he passed them he took off his hat, and they 
 both bowed slightly. 
 
 The pearls round the neck of the elder 
 woman were hidden by the fur coat she wore. 
 
 Derrick wondered why he had thought of 
 them. 
 
 That evening, just before dinner, he had a 
 talk with the director of the hotel, an intelli- 
 gent and agreeable man who knew Montreux 
 like his pocket. The director gave Derrick a 
 brief history of the social conditions in Mon- 
 treux at the moment. 
 
 " They are quite abnormal, monsieur," he 
 said. " Many of the people here are refugees. 
 We have Russian aristocrats who are utterly 
 ruined living in the best hotels, Turks who 
 have escaped from their decaying country, 
 Germans and Austrians who would as soon 
 be In. hell as in Berlin, which is a playground 
 for bandits, or starving Vienna. (For make 
 no mistake, monsieur, Vienna is literally 
 
16 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 starving.) We have here" he lowered his 
 voice cautiously " spies whose occupation is 
 lucrative no longer, but who still hope to find 
 something shady to do. There are princesses 
 here without a halfpenny You know the con- 
 dition of the exchange and what the German 
 mark and the Austrian krone are worth. As 
 for the Russian rouble ! 9: He threw up his 
 hands. " You may meet in the street any 
 day diplomatists who haven't the money to 
 pay for a new pair of trousers, Muscovites 
 who own large tracts of land in Russia and 
 who now are little better than the beggars 
 at Italian street corners. (In Montreux, of 
 course, there are no beggars.) The Greeks 
 here are all fanatical adherents of ex- King 
 Constantine, and have followed him into exile. 
 Most of them, perhaps all, would give thanks 
 to God if they heard that a knife had found 
 its way by chance into the body of Monsieur 
 Venezelos. Then we have Armenians who 
 probably are only alive at this moment be- 
 cause they are beyond Turkish territory. 
 You may see them eating pastries, twenty, 
 thirty at a time, side by side with the Turks 
 in our tea-rooms. We have, of course thank 
 
The Spirit of the Time 17 
 
 Heaven for it a few war profiteers here. 
 They help to keep the shopkeepers going, 
 gamble at the Casino, and put some money 
 into our poor pockets by drinking champagne 
 in the hotels. But never has Montreux been 
 like this before. If one could only get right 
 under the surface here, mon Dieu, what 
 tragedies would be revealed ! Imagine people 
 of the greatest families living in our hotels 
 which I think I may say are the best in Europe 
 without two halfpennies of their own, bien 
 entendu to rub together and without any 
 hope of having two halfpennies of their own 
 in future time. What a position ! }! 
 
 " Well, but how on earth can they live in 
 hotels ? " 
 
 " Ah, monsieur, how can they ? How do 
 they ? I know the world pretty well, but it 
 is often a puzzle to me how half the world 
 lives. How do these people who are ruined 
 by the War live as they do here ? How do 
 they pay for chocolate and cakes in the tea- 
 shops, for concert tickets at the Casino ? 
 Tenez ! There is a concert to-night, Madame 
 Litvinne, a great artiste. If you go there you 
 will see them, the living mysteries, who live 
 
i8 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 without having the means to live, as one 
 might say. Between the parts of the concert 
 they will risk something which they haven't 
 got, so to speak at the tables. Of course, 
 the limit here is ridiculous, as you know. 
 But even five francs is five francs, n'est ce 
 pas ? " 
 
 " But surely they must have money ? ?: 
 
 " Monsieur, they get it somehow. They 
 sell things. You can buy jewels in Montreux 
 cheap, very cheap. And if you can carry 
 them to London there is a nice profit for you. 
 And they sell other things." He looked very 
 expressive. " Ah, the world ! And some, 
 with very great names, are taken into the 
 hotels very cheap, for next to nothing. They 
 are reclame, you understand, for the hotels. 
 And then- 
 
 But at this point of his discourse a secre- 
 tary hurried up, and the director, with a 
 " Pardon, m'sieu ! Au revoir ! " turned away. 
 
 Derrick moved to go in to dinner. He had 
 decided to live en pension, so he dined in the 
 big room at a fixed hour, a quarter past 
 seven. 
 
 When he had found his table he saw sit- 
 
The Spirit of the Time 19 
 
 ting close to him the two ladies, who were 
 already drinking their soup. They were 
 smartly dressed and wore hats. He wondered 
 whether they were going to the concert that 
 night. They were surely not dressed like that 
 for the circus. He made up his mind to go 
 to the concert. It might be interesting to see 
 the living mysteries. The elder lady, who was 
 opposite to him, wore the pearls. As he 
 glanced at them he thought of the director's 
 
 remark about jewels. Could she be But 
 
 he put the idea from him. He simply could 
 not imagine a woman of her type as a pauper. 
 She looked as if all the good things, the really 
 distinguished things that make life a song in- 
 stead of a street cry, must be hers by right. 
 Some things are so unsuitable that they just 
 cannot happen. Such women cannot be 
 allowed to be poor. 
 
 As he thought this he saw the big black 
 eyes looking at him and again he felt that 
 their owner's mind was somehow in direct 
 communication with his. An agreeable thrill 
 went through him. He was emancipated from 
 his morbidity of the train. 
 
 " After all, perhaps I am not too old," he 
 
20 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 said to himself. " She seems to feel some in- 
 terest in me." 
 
 And he remembered that there are women 
 who like grey hair on the head of a man, 
 and that there are other women in the world 
 besides flappers. For the middle-aged man 
 who is attracted by flappers there is literally 
 no hope on this earth. But Derrick honestly 
 thought flappers bores, and liked women of 
 the world. 
 
 How old was she ? Forty, probably ; per- 
 haps even more. But he was positive she was 
 a very interesting and very clever woman. 
 Even her ugliness it almost amounted to 
 that attracted him. He was sure that she 
 did not mind it, never had minded it. She 
 was too aristocratic to be cast down by a 
 trifle of that kind. No doubt she had read 
 history, memoirs he could see her reading 
 memoirs and remembered the Princess Met- 
 ternich, and many other ugly women who 
 had ruled society with the rods of wit and 
 of will. 
 
 The two ladies finished dinner before Der- 
 rick and left the dining-room. As they went 
 out they bowed to several of the people at 
 
The Spirit of the Time 21 
 
 the other tables, and Derrick noticed that 
 their salutes were returned with a smiling 
 eagerness by the women and with marked 
 deference by the men. 
 
 " 1 must find out who they are," he said 
 to himself. 
 
 After dinner he hoped to see them about, 
 but he was disappointed. He smoked a cigar, 
 put on his coat and hat and started off on 
 foot to the Casino. 
 
 By the tent door the orchestra was blar- 
 ing, and people were pouring in to see the 
 sensational feats of the famous Knie family. 
 For a moment Derrick hesitated. He was 
 fond of a good circus. The sawdust and the 
 horizontal bars appealed to something boyish 
 which still lingered in the depths of his nature. 
 But she would certainly not be there. He 
 walked on and found his way to the Casino. 
 
 The big powdered baby with the mous- 
 taches entered it just in front of him, showing 
 a marvellous coloured waistcoat with dia- 
 mond buttons. In the hall were living mys- 
 teries of all nations. He bought a stall for 
 the concert which was just going to begin. 
 Madame Litvinne had already arrived from 
 
22 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 the Palace Hotel with her accompanist. When 
 he found his seat he saw that the two people 
 he was in search of for really hadn't it come 
 to that ? were sitting exactly in front of 
 him. He could hear them talking fr m his 
 seat. They were speaking in for a moment 
 he feared it was German, the forbidden lan- 
 guage but no, it was something else. Polish, 
 perhaps, or Russian ? Finally he made up his 
 mind it was Russian. For there was some- 
 thing soft and liquid about it, a fluidity, a 
 gliding roundness which he associated with 
 Russian. This pleased him, for Russia, what- 
 ever she was now, had been an ally. And 
 these ladies could certainly not be Bolshev- 
 iks. They did not notice him. They were 
 deep in conversation. The elder lady spoke 
 much more than her younger companion, 
 quickly, with a certain soft violence, as if she 
 were feeling something intensely, but had not 
 forgotten that she was in a public place. 
 Meanwhile the room filled up quickly. 
 
 Baby stood up expansively in the front 
 row, showing the waistcoat and diamonds, 
 bowing and smiling to friends in the audience. 
 He looked like one whose soul was made of 
 
The Spirit of the Time 23 
 
 the very best pastry, and who would eventually 
 soar on sticky wings to a chocolate heaven. 
 Derrick felt sure he was enormously rich and 
 probably generous, for his very definite wiles 
 were gladly responded to by many enigmas 
 in the audience, by strange wrinkled old ladies, 
 by younger women rosy with paint, or dead 
 white, like clowns, with scarlet lips, by dark, 
 doubtful-looking young men, and by people 
 of uncertain age and both sexes, who had the 
 curious cosmopolitan look which marks wan- 
 dering beings who live for ever in big hotels, 
 and whom one can never think of as at home. 
 He was still bowing and smiling and waving 
 his manicured hands when the great Litvinne 
 walked slowly on to the platform, with her 
 calm and ample grace, followed by a clever- 
 looking dark girl who sat down at the piano. 
 
 The two women in front of Derrick stopped 
 talking, and, after a rustle from the audience 
 and a corpulent volte-face by Baby, the con- 
 cert began. 
 
 When the first part was over almost every- 
 body in the room got up. There was to be 
 a long interval in order that people might 
 have time for a " flutter " at the tables. 
 
24 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 Derrick went out at once with the crowd and 
 made his way to the " Boule." He did not 
 mean to play, but to smoke a cigarette and 
 watch. 
 
 Only one table was in use that evening, 
 and people eagerly gathered round it, and 
 began to place small sums on the different 
 numbers while the ball was set in motion. 
 Derrick sat down by the other table and looked 
 across the " Boule " at the players and those 
 who stood behind them. There was not the 
 intent and arid solemnity here which he had 
 always been struck by at Monte Carlo. The 
 maximum at the Casino was only five francs. 
 Nevertheless, as the director of the Monney 
 had said, five francs is five francs. When he 
 had seen two or three people lose their money 
 Derrick began to realize more fully the inner 
 truth of that observation. Some of the players 
 were no doubt among the ruined who made 
 their home at Montreux. Their faces seemed 
 to show it as their small stakes were indiffer- 
 ently swept away by the sulky-looking croupier. 
 
 The fat Armenian if he were an Armenian, 
 as Derrick believed staked and won five 
 times in succession. His large powdered face 
 
The Spirit of the Time 25 
 
 was wreathed with smiles. A brick-red English- 
 man near him cast a look of contempt at his 
 joy and shoved two francs on to " Impair." 
 
 At this moment Derrick was aware of 
 someone standing behind him. He looked 
 quickly round, and saw the fair, silky-haired 
 woman of the Monney. She was alone, and 
 was looking at the ball, which had just been 
 thrown in, with a coldly critical expression on, 
 her face. 
 
 " Sept ! " Derrick presently heard her say, 
 as if to herself. " Sept ! " 
 
 The ball rolled into "cinq," rolled out, 
 seemed to hesitate, like one considering which 
 of two courses to take, and finally came to 
 rest in number seven. 
 
 " So ! " said the voice behind Derrick. 
 
 And the fair woman passed on, mingled 
 with the crowd round the opposite table, and, 
 with a very definite obstinacy, which sug- 
 gested a ruthless nature, forced her way into 
 the front and >>egan to play. 
 
 " She is surely a German ! " thought Der- 
 rick. 
 
 She was young and pretty, but he did not 
 like her face very much. The cheekbones 
 
26 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 were high and almost too pink, he thought ; 
 the large blue eyes were steady and cold as 
 electric light. The expression on her face was 
 acutely dissatisfied. She staked the maxi- 
 mum on seven, and four came up. Then she 
 staked on four and seven came up. She 
 pressed her lips together and staked again on 
 four, and lost. Then she changed to eight, 
 and the ball chose to stop on two. Her face 
 now began to show an almost fierce obstinacy, 
 and she cast a look of hatred at the ball as 
 it was again thrown in. This time she did 
 not play, and eight was the winning number. 
 Thereupon, with a sort of almost fierce reso- 
 lution, she put the maximum on eight, and 
 nine came up. 
 
 Derrick had often watched gamblers play- 
 ing for large sums at Monte Carlo and else- 
 where, but he had never before felt so acutely 
 the exasperation which the vagaries of chance 
 can rouse in the human mind. 
 
 And yet he had not been playing, and he 
 felt he did not know why almost hostile to 
 the woman he had been watching. 
 
 A bell rang. In a moment the tables were 
 deserted. He followed the fair-haired woman 
 
The Spirit of the Time 27 
 
 back to the concert-room. Her companion 
 was just returning to her seat from the other 
 side of the room, and as the two met Derrick 
 heard her say in French : "I found Litvinne. 
 What a charming woman ! " 
 
 The other replied with a torrent of Rus- 
 sian. (By this time Derrick felt sure it was 
 Russian.) She gesticulated as she talked. Her 
 friend listened, looking at her with a sort of 
 stern intentness, the black eyes steady, the long 
 lips pressed together and lifted, drawing up 
 the chin. Then she moved her head several 
 times, giving a strong impression of fatalistic 
 resignation, somehow combined with irony. 
 Finally she interrupted the torrent of speech 
 with an Italian word which Derrick had very 
 often heard cried out in Roman theatres. 
 
 " Basta ! Basta ! " she said. 
 
 And she struck her breast with both hands 
 twice, drawing down her black eyebrows. The 
 other broke off in a long murmur as Litvinne 
 returned to the platform and was welcomed 
 with a discreet applause. 
 
 In the second part of the concert she sang, 
 among many other things, Faur6's well-known 
 " Les Roses d'Ispahan," with its faint and 
 
28 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 creeping nostalgia, its delicate and almost 
 vaporous sentimentality, which suggests a 
 lingering perfume hanging in warm air at the 
 twilight hour. Directly this song was over 
 the black-haired lady slowly turned her head 
 and looked for an instant at Derrick. He realized 
 at once that she had known since the begin- 
 ning of the concert that he was sitting behind 
 her, although she had certainly never looked 
 at him before. He returned her glance steadily, 
 and, while he did so, he felt positive that 
 something of Asia dwelt in her, that Europe 
 and Asia mingled in her as they do in so many 
 Russians. She would surely be at home among 
 the roses of Persia with a volume of Hafiz in 
 her hands. She gave him no sign of recogni- 
 tion. There was something Eastern in the 
 unwinking impersonal stare of her long eyes. 
 Her companion spoke to her, and she moved 
 slowly, but Derrick felt as if her eyes were 
 still fixed upon him, even when he could see 
 them no longer. 
 
 " That woman intends to know me," he 
 said to himself. " Why ? " 
 
 He did not know, but he knew that he 
 wanted to talk to her, to find out something 
 
The Spirit of the Time 29 
 
 about her. She was not, perhaps, wholly 
 sympathetic to him, but she interested him 
 immensely. And she had roused him out of 
 his morbid mood and given him a nice little 
 niche in his own estimation. 
 
 " She's a remarkable woman," he said to 
 himself, with conviction. 
 
 Although he had a sense of humour, he 
 forgot to ask himself whether he would have 
 thought her remarkable if she had shown no 
 interest in him. 
 
CHAPTER HI 
 
 ON the following day it was exceptionally 
 cold for the time of year in Montreux, the 
 snow was dense on the mountain-side as far 
 as Glion, and Derrick decided to carry out 
 his intention of the previous day and to go 
 up into the white world above Caux. The 
 train on the mountain railway started before 
 eleven, but he felt active and impatient to 
 be off, and resolved to walk up, and perhaps 
 come down by train. So he put on a pair 
 of strong boots, took a stick with an iron 
 point, and set off about half -past nine. 
 
 He had slept well ; the brisk pure air 
 invigorated him, and he felt more of the joy 
 of living than he had felt for a long time. 
 As he walked on, leaving the houses below 
 him, and turning now and then, as the road 
 wound upwards, to look out over the lake, 
 blue to-day in the sunshine, and the panorama 
 of mountains that gathered about the entrance 
 
 to the Simplon, he tasted fully his present 
 
 30 
 
The Spirit of the Time 31 
 
 freedom. As a special constable he had had 
 to pace Grosvenor Square for hours at a time, 
 between the Italian and American Embassies. 
 The monotony of it had sometimes driven him 
 almost to desperation. But now he could be 
 glad of that duty left behind in the past. It 
 gave a sharp edge to the zest he felt in his 
 present situation. He was free at last ! And 
 he revelled in his freedom and even in his 
 solitude of the moment. His cheeks glowed. 
 He drew in the air from the snows he was 
 nearing. As he mounted steadily he felt the 
 snow like a friend waiting for him up there 
 on the heights. The clouds drew away. The 
 great hotel at Caux stood out clear beneath 
 the blue. Soon he set his feet in the snow 
 and struck the tip of his stick on a film of ice. 
 
 After passing through Glion he was deep 
 in the radiant winter. Some boys were joy- 
 ously tobogganing down the road. As they 
 passed him swiftly, shooting at the stranger 
 glances of pride, their cries rang out in the 
 still air, and died away in the distance. Soon 
 he was quite alone in the snow-covered woods. 
 The silence of which he had dreamed in 
 London was his* ^possession. It was heavy 
 
32 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 walking now, but he ploughed his way upward 
 with steady energy, meeting no one on the 
 road. Evidently he was the only person in 
 all Montreux who had imagination enough to 
 care for this beautiful world. There were no 
 cake-shops here. That no doubt accounted 
 for humanity's absence. But the remembrance 
 of cake-shops made him suddenly realize that 
 he was getting infernally hungry. The big 
 hotel at Caux was shut. The concierge at the 
 Monney had told him so. Suppose that no res- 
 taurant were open ? He couldn't help smil- 
 ing ironically as he realized that he and the 
 Armenian were, after all, brothers when it 
 came to a question of food. 
 
 He reached Caux at last, and made straight 
 for the little hotel which stands to the left 
 of the road. There was not a soul about, but 
 the door yielded to his touch, and he passed 
 into an empty hall. Beyond was a restaurant, 
 also quite empty. There was no central heat- 
 ing on, and the bare rooms were cold, but he 
 saw white cloths on some tables and hope 
 leaped up in him. He knocked hard with his 
 stick on the wooden floor, and in a moment 
 a woman appeared looking rather surprised. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 33 
 
 In answer to his question she told him that 
 there was no meat in the house but ham. 
 But he could have ham, eggs sur le plat, 
 potatoes, cheese and a bottle of wine if he 
 would wait a little. 
 
 " Have it ready in half an hour, madame ! " 
 he said. " Meanwhile I'll stroll up above the 
 hotel, and see what it looks like for ski-ing. 
 Nobody here ? " 
 
 " No, m'sieu. But one or two may come in. 
 The morning train goes no farther than Glion, 
 but there's a train down from here in the 
 afternoon. And now and then people get out 
 at Glion, walk up here, take the dejeuner and 
 catch the train back. On a day like this we 
 often get someone." 
 
 44 Ah ! In half an hour, then ? " 
 " Bien, m'sieu. It shall be ready." 
 Derrick left her and was soon once more 
 alone in the snow. 
 
 He turned to the left, passed a chalet with 
 a yard in which two rosy-cheeked men were 
 unloading wood, and walked on till he was 
 quite alone, out of sight of all habitations. 
 Before him stretched the vast snowfields glit- 
 tering in the sun ; above him were the moun- 
 
34 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 tain tops. Behind him were the snow-covered 
 trees, standing thickly together, bearing their 
 burdens in breathless silence. He stood still 
 for a long while, and something of the tran- 
 quillity of winter seemed to be in his soul. 
 Far down below him lay Montreux with its 
 strange population ; the war profiteers, the 
 reclame princesses, the pastry-loving Turks and 
 Armenians, the old ladies painted magenta, 
 the enigmatic girls with white, but not snow- 
 white, faces, the ruined diplomatists, the 
 pathetic, yet ridiculous, gamblers. And here 
 were the mountains, the forests, the snows 
 and the silence ; here was nature remote, 
 terrifically remote from man and his follies, 
 holding herself aloof as if with a conscious 
 and superb disdain. To Derrick just then it 
 seemed as if there were something profoundly 
 spiritual in nature, which, if only man could 
 reach out to it, would purify him, purge him 
 for ever of his crimes and his ignorance, show 
 him how he might walk intimately with God, 
 
 But how to reach out to it ? That was 
 the problem. 
 
 Behind Derrick a load of snow slipped from 
 the branch of a fir tree and fell into the forest 
 
The Spirit of the Time 35 
 
 depth with a muffled and very personal sound. 
 He waited a moment more. He knew he 
 would never forget that moment. Five years 
 of war had been necessary to make it just what 
 it was to him, intense, strange, almost cruelly 
 beautiful. The moment took its place in the 
 past. He swung round and strode back to 
 the inn. 
 
 When he got there, and had left his hat 
 and stick he kept on his overcoat in the 
 hall, he saw that the restaurant was no longer 
 empty. At a table by the window a lady in 
 a long fur coat was sitting with her back to 
 him. He could not see her face, but he knew 
 at once who it was. A ring of cigarette 
 smoke rose and evaporated in the air above 
 her table. 
 
 " Unless I can smoke I am very unhappy." 
 
 So this was how they had to make each 
 other's acquaintance, up in the snows ! 
 
 Derrick had made up his mind what to 
 do. He felt for his card-case, found it and 
 drew out a card. The lady had not looked 
 round. He walked up to her table. 
 
 " Madame, forgive me " 
 
 The lady looked up without any surprise. 
 
36 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 " May I venture to give you my name, as 
 we are at the same hotel at Montreux, and 
 have already spoken to each other ? " 
 " Merei, monsieur." 
 
 She took the card and read his name. 
 Then she said in English, but with a very 
 strong foreign accent : 
 
 " I am one of the treacherous Russians 
 whom you English despise, no doubt. I am 
 Princess Aranensky." 
 
 " Many of us pity, rather than condemn, 
 Russia. We know what thousands of Russians 
 have suffered." 
 
 " Russia is a cold hell," she said. " Tor- 
 ture, rape, robbery, murder, in darkness, rain, 
 mist, snow. But I have not seen Russia for 
 eight years or more. As Turgenev did, I live 
 abroad, and so, perhaps, cannot claim to be 
 what is called a good Russian. Ah, here are 
 my eggs ! " 
 
 At this moment the woman of the house 
 came in with the Princess's dejeuner. As 
 she arranged it on the table she said to 
 Derrick : 
 
 " I will bring yours immediately, mon- 
 
 sieur." 
 
The Spirit of the Time 37 
 
 " There is room for it here if you like," 
 said the Princess in a casual way to Derrick. 
 " We are the only two. Why should we not 
 eat together ? We are both of us too old to 
 be conventional. My bottle of wine ? ' 
 
 " I have not forgotten it, madame." 
 
 The woman hurried away. Derrick sat 
 down opposite to the Princess. 
 
 " You walked up all the way from Glion ? " 
 he said. 
 
 " That is nothing. I often do it. In 
 Montreux I feel squeezed. But I have been 
 there all through the War. Imagine that 
 street, the Casino, the tea-shops, the old ladies, 
 the consumptive man who plays the zither, 
 for more than five years ! " 
 
 " Then I suppose that now the frontiers 
 are open " 
 
 " That makes no difference to me. I can- 
 not leave Montreux. I am too poor. Ah, 
 here is your food and our two bottles of 
 wine ! This air makes one hungry, doesn't 
 it?" 
 
 She was eating with delicate energy and 
 obvious enjoyment. Now she poured out a 
 glass of white wine. 
 
38 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 " I like its pale colour," she said. " Wine 
 is the blood of a country. For myself I say 
 ' a bas les Pussyfoots ! ' " 
 
 " What you read our papers ? " 
 
 " Of course. I read everything. What 
 else have I to do ? For the last five years 
 I have been reading, studying, forgetting 
 Montreux and its cake-shops in my sitting- 
 room at the Eden, the Montreux Palace, the 
 Lorius, and now the Monney. Reading is the 
 one pleasure of paupers like me." 
 
 " And smoking ? " 
 
 " And smoking. I come up here to think 
 about what I have read, and to get away from 
 humanity, which at Montreux is une scab- 
 reuse comedie. We are all riff-raff there, not 
 by birth, perhaps that is an accident but 
 because of the way we live and the effect of 
 war upon us. We haven't fought, though 
 some of us have intrigued, we haven't stuck 
 to our countries in their adversity. We have 
 just sat in hotels and hated the War, and 
 worried about the exchange, and got poorer 
 and poorer, and cursed and gone to the tea- 
 shops, and gambled with five-franc pieces. 
 Moral riff-raff that is what we are. And so 
 
The Spirit of the Time 39 
 
 I come up into the snows now and then ! 
 It makes me no better, perhaps. But it 
 pleases me. Being alone with cushions one 
 furnishes a hotel sitting-room with cushions, 
 if one is a woman is loneliness ; being alone 
 with Nature is solitude. The difference is 
 vast. I even forget my empty pockets up 
 here and the deplorable effect that being 
 ruined has upon the immortal soul at any 
 rate, if it is Russian." 
 
 She smiled, and again Derrick noticed the 
 irony of her long lips. 
 
 They talked all through the meal, while 
 they sipped their coffee afterwards, while they 
 smoked cigarettes innumerable. Princess 
 Aranensky asked Derrick no questions, but 
 continued to speak with amazing unreserve 
 about herself, life, men, books. When he 
 talked she listened to him with a still and 
 complete interest. She had no coquetry. She 
 displayed no feminine wiles. There was no 
 hint of sensuality in her manner or atmo- 
 sphere. Yet there was something warm and 
 strong in her personality. The time flew till 
 the woman of the house came in with the 
 two bills, which she gave to Derrick. He was 
 
40 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 about to settle both when the Princess stretched 
 out her hand. 
 
 " That is mine thank you," she said, with 
 quiet decision. And she took it and paid, 
 and gave the woman five francs for herself. 
 Then she looked at her watch. 
 
 " Are you coming down by train ? >: 
 
 11 Yes," said Derrick. 
 
 " Then let us go together. We have half 
 an hour to walk in the snow before the train 
 starts." 
 
 It was colder now. The winter day was 
 declining and clouds were stealing down the 
 mountain-sides. The breath went from their 
 lips like smoke. 
 
 " Another winter in Montreux ! " said the 
 Princess. 
 
 Derrick looked at her long sable coat, 
 thought of the five-franc tip she had just 
 given to the waitress at the hotel, and won- 
 dered how poor she really was. 
 
 " If I were free," she continued, " I should 
 go to Egypt or to India." 
 
 " Have you ever been in Asia ? " he asked. 
 
 " Never. But I often feel Asia within me. 
 Why didn't I go there when I was rich ? 
 
The Spirit of the Time 4 1 
 
 What fools rich people are ! I was. Petro- 
 grad, Moscow, Paris, Vienna, the south of 
 France that sufficed me when I had money. 
 But I only existed then. I did not think. 
 Let us stand here for a moment in the snow. 
 Look at the clouds swallowing up the woods 
 and me and you." 
 
 The mists were indeed floating about them, 
 and the world was fading away, leaving them 
 in a strange isolation. Not a sound was to 
 be heard when their feet ceased from moving. 
 The Princess compressed her lips and half 
 shut her eyes. Neither she nor Derrick moved 
 or spoke for two or three minutes. 
 
 " It is true what Steiner says," she re- 
 marked at last, breaking the silence. " All 
 the world which we see is but a mask. The 
 truth, the real physiognomy, is hidden be- 
 hind it, behind the mountains, and the seas, 
 the desert sands, the sunsets, the moonlight, 
 as we are hidden behind our words, our 
 actions, our laughter and our tears. Even 
 Nature, as we see it, is camouflage. We take 
 for a grey wave of the sea what is really a 
 ship, with perhaps guns trained upon us. 
 Poor little people ! Come, let us go down, or 
 
42 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 we shall miss the train, and then Katya will 
 be frightened for me." 
 
 " The lady I saw last night playing at the 
 Casino ? " Derrick ventured to say. 
 
 " Did you ? Yes, she hoped to win some- 
 thing. We need money so badly. But she 
 lost. She always loses because she needs to 
 win. That is fatal in gamblingto need to 
 win. She is from the Baltic Provinces and 
 has only been here a short time. She has 
 seen dreadful things in Russia, and believes 
 no longer in a God or in any human goodness. 
 In each man and woman, she says, a hyena 
 is hidden, or a wolf. She has seen the wolf 
 come out many times, poor child ! She is 
 hard as ice, but she has some affection for me. 
 Ah, here is the train well warmed, I hope." 
 
 That evening in the hotel Derrick was 
 introduced to the Princess's friend, Baroness 
 Hausen. 
 
 She made upon him a peculiar and dis- 
 agreeable impression, which would, perhaps, 
 have been even more disagreeable had not the 
 Princess that afternoon hinted at her history, 
 explained her to some extent. She was cer- 
 tainly good looking, especially at night, when 
 
The Spirit of the Time 43 
 
 artificial light gave a sort of glow to her fair- 
 ness. She was evidently highly educated and 
 very intelligent, and of course she was polite 
 and, in a detached way, agreeable. But some- 
 how Derrick could hardly have said how 
 a glacial cynicism made itself felt in her, seemed 
 at times to emanate from her. All warm 
 sentiment was evidently dead in her, if indeed it 
 had ever existed there. Princess Aranensky had 
 spoken of her friend's affection, and probably 
 she had some feeling for the Princess, but, 
 if so, there was no faith in it, no restful trust 
 in it, no hope mingled with it. She was quiet 
 but not gentle. It was impossible to imagine 
 that she had ever felt happy, yet she made 
 no parade of misery. As to any demand for 
 sympathy, Derrick would as easily have 
 expected it from an ice-covered rock as from 
 Baroness Hausen. She was like a well-bred 
 cultivated human being whose humanity had 
 dried up at the sources, leaving her without 
 regret for it. Possibly she no longer even 
 remembered that it had ever been. She looked 
 at people as one might look at stones in a 
 quarry. The mere expression in her large 
 blue eyes was sufficient to prevent even the 
 
44 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 most passing allusion to sentiment, heart, or 
 Christian charity, by anyone the least sensi- 
 tive to human influences. Disbelief, irony, 
 gleamed in them like the light on a spear 
 point. 
 
 She spoke without reserve, like the Prin- 
 cess, and evidently expressed her real opinions 
 in casual conversation, disdaining to hide them. 
 If she did not agree with something which 
 was said she stated the fact bluntly. When 
 the War was alluded to she sneered at the 
 suggestion that any of the nations which had 
 been engaged in it had been moved by any 
 feeling except crude egoism and undiluted 
 selfishness. 
 
 " We still live in the jungle," she said, 
 " and we always shall live there. War has 
 simply uncovered our nakedness and shown 
 us as we really are. I wonder why govern- 
 ments take the trouble to lie and pretend any 
 longer. No one is deceived any more by their 
 childish pretences. No one is hoodwinked. 
 So why waste time on humbug ? There is 
 one thing, at any rate, to be said for the 
 Bolsheviks. They have no more humbug 
 about them than a tiger has." 
 
The Spirit of the Time 45 
 
 Princess Aranensky neither attempted to 
 combat her friend's opinions nor seemed con- 
 cerned as to what Derrick thought of them. 
 But she did not say she agreed with them. 
 She only remarked 
 
 "It is lucky you are safe here in Mon- 
 treux among the cake-shops, Katya ! " 
 
 " People are really just the same here in 
 Montreux as they are in Petrograd or, in Riga," 
 said the Baroness, " only they dare not show 
 it. This long street " she stretched out her 
 thin white arm " if we could uncover it, as 
 you may uncover a drain, we should find 
 every evil passion at work. We should find 
 it full of actual or potential thieves, mur- 
 derers, adulterers, torturers, devils of all kinds. 
 They are held in check here by opinion and 
 the law that is all. Abelish the law, give 
 the public opinion which is merely collec- 
 tive hypocrisy a good shake, and then look 
 at Montreux ! Now I am going to bed." 
 
 And she got up, with a sort of frozen tran- 
 quillity, bade Derrick good night and went 
 away. 
 
 " Moral riff-raff ! " said the Princess. " You 
 see what she thinks of us.' 
 
46 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 " But forgive me I don't think Baroness 
 Hausen is quite normal," said Derrick. 
 
 And they fell into a discussion which lasted 
 till midnight, one of those discussions which 
 Derrick delighted in, about human character 
 and human motives, about the " why " at the 
 root of strange actions, the pressure of neces- 
 sity, moral and physical, upon human beings, 
 the subtle tug of floating ideas at receptive 
 and emotional natures, the driving force of 
 the passions, the apparently fatal moulding- 
 power which circumstance has over the plastic 
 soul of woman and man. 
 
 The Princess and he sometimes agreed, 
 sometimes disagreed ; but that didn't seem 
 to matter, for she evidently had a sincere 
 intelligence which was absolutely bold in ex- 
 pression. She was never irritable, never 
 showed nervousness, but smoked and talked 
 with tireless zest. She was certainly no longer 
 a sentimentalist, whatever she had been in 
 the days of her youth, but she showed none 
 of the perverted cynicism of the Baroness 
 Hausen. 
 
 In the course of the conversation Derrick 
 discovered that the Princess had long been a 
 
The Spirit of the Time 47 
 
 widow, and that at one time she had been 
 attached to the Russian Court. She was 
 evidently familiar with many of the well- 
 known men of the time on the Continent, but 
 told Derrick she had never visited England. 
 
 " I have never had any children," she 
 mentioned casually, " and I have never wished 
 to. I should be afraid of handing on miseries." 
 
 He received from her the net impression 
 of a vivid and bold nature which in long con- 
 tact with the world had learnt to expect very 
 little really from life. She told him that she 
 believed in the doctrine of reincarnation. 
 
 " So I have always the sensation of passing 
 like a shadow along a wall," she said. 
 
 " And do other people seem to you 
 shadows ? " he asked her. 
 
 " Many do. They appear to me as 
 grotesques and I can scarcely be civil to them. 
 But there are others who seem to mean a 
 great deal. Perhaps one has met them be- 
 fore and will meet them again, farther along 
 the road." 
 
 Her large black eyes were fixed upon him 
 with a sort of musing abstraction. 
 
 " Perhaps one has to help them or to be 
 
48 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 helped by them," she added. " I am not so 
 cynical as poor Katya. I do believe in dis- 
 interested human kindness. It is rare, but 
 it exists. People have told me that there is 
 much of it among the English." 
 
 " I hope so," said Derrick. 
 
 "Ah, you value and believe in it! How 
 Katya would laugh at you!" 
 
 And then they separated. The Princess 
 went up to bed and Derrick lit yet another 
 cigar. His brain felt waked up, excited, 
 young even. And he had no inclination to 
 sleep. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 TEN days passed by, and Derrick was still 
 in Montreux, and had no intention of leaving 
 it. He felt much better in health. His 
 nervous depression, his bitter sense of the 
 uselessness of life, had vanished. The slight 
 heart trouble to which the doctor in London 
 had alluded, and which had manifested itself 
 to Derrick by unpleasant thumpings at night, 
 and by a curious illusion of his heart being 
 loose and independent upon his pillow instead 
 of in his breast, was abated. He generally 
 slept well. And the gliding, the soft and 
 empty life of this little town of idlers, stretched 
 out in its narrow space between the moun- 
 tains and the waters, soothed him deliciously 
 after his labours of a policeman, a clerk, a 
 hospital attendant and a lorry-driver. Each 
 morning he woke up with the delightful feel- 
 ing that there was nothing to be done in the 
 day, that the hours were entirely his own, 
 that no duties demanded either to be accom- 
 
 49 
 
50 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 plished or to be avoided contemptibly. He 
 had only to be idle among other idlers ; for 
 nobody did anything in Montreux. Even the 
 absolutely penniless did absolutely nothing, 
 except stroll about, look into the shop-win- 
 dows, visit the tea-shops, listen to the music 
 at the Casino or in the pavilion near the 
 Montreux Palace, pay visits to acquaintances 
 in the hotels, and gamble mildly now and 
 then at night. There were a few English, it 
 is true, who were supposed to play golf near 
 Aigle, to get up billiard matches at the English 
 club, and to go in for premature winter sports 
 on the mountains, but they were swamped 
 by the Russians, Poles, Turks, Germans, 
 Italians, Egyptians, Greeks, Rumanians and 
 others, who never dreamed of attempting 
 such strenuous diversions. One saw nothing 
 of them. They were merely a legend in which 
 few people believed. Derrick did not meet 
 them. He had come out to Montreux for a 
 thorough change, and it is not a change for 
 an Englishman to meet other Englishmen. 
 Instead he was peeping in, as if through a 
 crack in a door almost, at a tiny section of 
 the human race, a minute assemblage of the 
 
The Spirit of the Time 51 
 
 nations, waiting after the great war which 
 had shaken the world to its foundations, 
 
 (waiting in hotels, manicure shops, libraries, 
 tea pavilions for what ? What did these 
 strangely various people of different nation- 
 alities expect as they lived in this curious 
 and almost numb pause between war and 
 genuine peace ? What did they hope would 
 come about of good for them, who had aban- 
 doned their homes, lost the greater part of 
 their fortunes, been driven from their careers, 
 had their estates confiscated, or been forced to 
 abandon countries not their own with which 
 they had been identified for years and in 
 which all their interests lay, enemy countries 
 to them now by the fortune of war ? And 
 the utterly ruined financially what was going 
 to happen to them in the future when the 
 world got going again ? 
 
 Derrick often wondered as he looked at 
 the crowd of faces around him at the hours 
 of tea, or music, or gambling, or more nar- 
 rowly at individual faces seen in the street, 
 by the lake shore, casually in a shop, or in 
 the passage of an hotel. And he divined silent 
 and slow tragedies in the pretty town with 
 
52 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 its neat, gay, even luxurious aspect ; he 
 seemed to hear tragedy sometimes in the tone 
 of a voice speaking some strange language, 
 and coming to him, perhaps, out of the twi- 
 light as he went by beneath an arcade ; or 
 the sound of a heavy step on the pavement 
 suggested it to him, as a very well-dressed 
 man passed him, with the careworn, wary 
 look of diplomacy fixed irrevocably on a 
 lined face ; or it was half revealed to him 
 by the pale silhouette of a woman, glimpsed 
 through a drifting of snow. 
 
 Nevertheless, he was happier in Montreux 
 than he had been for a very long time. The War 
 had taught him that it is useless to let one- 
 self perpetually loose from one's moorings in 
 pity for others. In sheer self-defence, like 
 many men and women, he had cultivated if 
 not a certain surface hardness at least a 
 deliberate egoism. This was his well-earned 
 holiday. His health of body and mind needed 
 it. So he let himself go to his egoism, or 
 tried to as much as he could. And he realized 
 Montreux without bleeding at the heart for 
 its woes. His brain was interested by it, 
 even fascinated. And he was not going to 
 
The Spirit of the Time 53 
 
 allow his heart to be touched to any real 
 suffering. 
 
 Besides, in spite of all, the aspect of the 
 place was cosy and cheerful, and then he had 
 companionship. There was no loneliness for 
 him in Montreux, and he had forgotten all 
 about being middle-aged, and congratulated 
 himself every day on not being married. 
 
 For if he had been married he could not 
 have had his friendship with Princess Aran- 
 ensky. It was a purely intellectual friend- 
 ship, of course, but a wife would never have 
 understood that, he told himself. For mar- 
 ried women never believe in the intellect as 
 a link between the sexes. 
 
 Every day he was with the Princess ; 
 sometimes upstairs in her sitting-room 
 although ruined she had a very nice sitting- 
 room looking out on to the lake, and, as she 
 had hinted, furnished with cushions, of ample 
 size and delicious colours sometimes by the 
 shore of the lake, in the gardens, under the 
 arcades, sometimes at the Casino, listening 
 to music or to French plays, or watching 
 the gamblers, among them Baroness Hausen, 
 risking their small sums of money at boule, 
 
54 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 sometimes among the snows high up on the 
 mountains. And whenever he was with her 
 he felt exceptionally alive. Her mind and her 
 temperament stimulated his. She seemed to 
 set all the life that was in him in active 
 motion ; to stir up the dormant energies of 
 his mind, almost to create in him energies. 
 Through her he realized his own intelligence 
 as he had never realized it before, and that 
 fact led him to consider her the cleverest 
 woman he had ever met. For men always 
 think women clever who make them feel 
 clever. 
 
 In some ways she seemed to him quite 
 unlike other women. For instance, she would 
 never allow him to spend a penny on her. 
 If they went to a tea-shop together she in- 
 sisted on paying for her own cup of tea. If 
 they took the train to Glion she paid for her 
 own ticket. If they drove in a cab she paid 
 her share of the fare to the cabman and 
 half the tip. Derrick's remonstrances were 
 in vain. 
 
 " 1 pay my share, or we don't do these 
 little things together," she said. 
 
 Once or twice Derrick ventured to hint 
 
The Spirit of the Time 55 
 
 that he was very well-to-do, that the War 
 had not done much harm to his bank balance. 
 It made no difference. 
 
 " The pauper who pays her way has one 
 asset left," she remarked. 
 
 " What asset ? " 
 
 " Her self-respect." 
 
 " You're right ! " he answered, thinking 
 with a certain irony of various women he 
 knew in London. 
 
 He had noticed that she was very fond 
 of flowers. There were always flowers in her 
 room. So one day he bought her a basket 
 of roses. She accepted it and thanked him 
 with cordiality. But she added : 
 
 " Don't give me any more, please." 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 44 Still the same reason the pauper's one 
 asset." 
 
 44 But every man " 
 
 44 1 know you will yield to my perhaps 
 foolish wish." 
 
 Sometimes the Baroness was with them 
 when they went out, but she never accom- 
 panied them on any excursion. 
 
 44 Katya doesn't care for the snows," the 
 
56 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 Princess said. " She has had enough of them 
 in Russia. If she had any money she would 
 go away from here." 
 
 " Where would she go ? " 
 
 " To Monte Carlo probably." 
 
 " Not to India too ? " said Derrick, remem- 
 bering the Princess's remark about Asia. 
 
 " Katya hasn't my reasons for wishing to 
 go to India." 
 
 Derrick wondered what the Princess's 
 reasons were, but he did not ask her. She 
 was so frank and unreserved that he always 
 felt that she would tell him what she wanted 
 to tell, and that if she were silent about some- 
 thing her silence was intentional. But eventu- 
 ally he came to believe that her desire to go 
 to Asia was connected somehow with her 
 views on religion. He found that she had 
 studied the doctrines of the Buddha and had 
 a wide knowledge of books on theosophy. 
 Once she said to him : 
 
 " Europe is only the playground, or the 
 battleground of ignorant, naughty children. 
 The home of all wisdom is Asia. Why didn't 
 I go there when I was rich, instead of to Monte 
 Carlo, where one can smell the varnish ? " 
 
The Spirit of the Time 57 
 
 The Princess's physique seemed to Derrick 
 as strong as her mind. Although he judged 
 that she must be well over forty, she was 
 an untiring walker, and delighted in walking 
 uphill. 
 
 " When I go upwards," she said, " I always 
 feel as if I were leaving all the mesquineries 
 below me, down in the depths with the little 
 people." 
 
 As they walked in the snows they dis- 
 cussed everything or so it seemed to Der- 
 rick. And sometimes in the heart of the 
 snow-covered woods they stood together 
 silently for a long time. The Princess leaned 
 on her pointed stick, lit a cigarette at Der- 
 rick's match, and they looked at, listened to, 
 the mysterious winter. Now and then a mass 
 of snow slipped from an overburdened tree. 
 And that seemed the winter speaking to 
 them. The sun shone, or the clouds came 
 down, wrapping them in a greater intimacy ; 
 they saw the moon with its crystal beauty, 
 the twilight with its curious effects of subtle 
 primrose or dusky ash colour ; sometimes the 
 far gleam of a smouldering sunset, heavy, it 
 seemed, with a burning weariness ; and then 
 
58 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 they walked on, and returned to Montreux 
 laden with memories. 
 
 The Princess had once said that Nature 
 was camouflage. It might be so. But Der- 
 rick had never felt Nature so deeply as since 
 he had been at Montreux. 
 
 With Baroness Hausen Derrick managed 
 to get on fairly well, but he was always re- 
 pelled by her outlook on life, and sometimes 
 wondered how Princess Aranensky could be 
 at ease with her, could be so little critical 
 of her. What she had seen, and perhaps had 
 endured in Russia Derrick never knew what 
 experiences she had gone through had cer- 
 tainly affected her vitally, and in a terrible 
 way. She was frozen in cynicism. There was 
 at times something coldly ferocious in her 
 manifestation of her condition which made 
 Derrick almost physically distressed, as at the 
 sight of an abruptly uncovered cancerous 
 wound. He wondered sometimes why he 
 could not pity her. Perhaps it was because 
 pity demands outstretched hands, and 
 Baroness Hausen's hands were never out- 
 stretched, except at the tables to gather in 
 winnings. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 59 
 
 She was a persistent gambler but a very 
 unlucky one. Unlike the fat Armenian, who 
 was of course very rich, she seldom brought 
 off a coup. 
 
 "It is a mercy the maximum is only five 
 francs," Princess Aranensky said one day to 
 Derrick. " If it were more we should very 
 soon have to leave this hotel." 
 
 " Why do you let her play ? " he asked. 
 
 " Let Katya do anything ! My dear friend, 
 no one on this earth could prevent her from 
 doing anything she had a fancy to do, if it 
 were possible for her to do it. Those who 
 believe in nothing are always ungovernable. 
 It is belief which breeds fear, and it is fear 
 which breeds in men the instinct to obey." 
 
 " Are you fond of the Baroness ? " he 
 asked, abruptly. 
 
 " I am very sorry for Katya," said the 
 Princess. " And so would you be if you 
 knew all that has happened to her." 
 
 But she never told him what had 
 happened. 
 
 One evening the Princess proposed to 
 Derrick to go up on the following day by the 
 mountain railway from Aigle to Leysin, and to 
 
60 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 lunch at the Grand Hotel " among the con- 
 sumptives." 
 
 "It is an unsmart Davos," she said. 
 " The snows and the ill people who hope to 
 be cured by the snows are there, but there 
 are no bands, no cocottes, no gay young 
 men, no trippers. What do you say ? Will 
 it make you melancholy to spend one day 
 among Doctor Rollier's patients ? 5: 
 
 " Not with you ! " he answered. 
 
 " Will you come, too, Katya ? " 
 
 " No, thank you," said Baroness Hausen. 
 " I have no wish to assist at the punishments 
 of the Immanent Will ! Besides, I am going 
 to Geneva to-morrow." 
 
 She looked significantly at the Princess. 
 
 " Baron Krane has lent me his car for the 
 day." 
 
 The Princess said no more. But Derrick 
 noticed that, as if prompted by her friend's 
 look, she lifted her right hand and gently 
 touched the long strings of pearls she was 
 wearing. 
 
 Derrick had often glanced at those pearls 
 and wondered how much they were worth, 
 not because he judged the beauty of jewels 
 
The Spirit of the Time 61 
 
 by their exact money value, but because he 
 remembered the Princess's poverty. 
 
 He believed that she considered herself a 
 poor woman, because there was something in 
 her whole way of being which carried to him 
 the conviction of her sincerity. Intellectually 
 she was sincere. He felt positive of that. 
 She said what she thought in their discussions, 
 regardless of his opinions. Why should she 
 be less sincere about the facts of her life 
 which she chose to speak about ? On the 
 other hand, it was certainly strange to find 
 a woman who asserted that she was a pauper, 
 ruined, living in a first-rate hotel, with a 
 sitting-room, a maid, dresses and hats which 
 evidently came from Paris, wonderful furs, 
 and jewels which looked, to his inexpert eyes, 
 immensely valuable. Sometimes he could not 
 help remembering his conversation with the 
 director of the Monney ; and the latter's re- 
 mark : " There are princesses here without a 
 halfpenny." He had asked, " But how on 
 earth can they live in hotels ? " And the 
 director had referred to them as " living 
 mysteries, who live without having the means 
 to live," and had gone on to hint at all sorts 
 
6a The Spirit of the Time 
 
 of doubtful expedients for money getting. 
 Derrick could not possibly associate in his 
 mind Princess Aranensky with anything doubt- 
 ful. But perhaps she sold " things." She 
 might have possessed other jewels, other mag- 
 nificent furs than those which he had seen 
 her wearing. She might have got rid of them 
 at a price. But in the future ? 
 
 It was curious, and somehow it was rather 
 melancholy, to know so much about her mind 
 and so little about her life. They were, in 
 a sense, really intimate, and yet in a sort of 
 way that was how he put it to himself 
 she was a stranger to him. 
 
 He realized that his liking for her had be- 
 come very strong, stronger than he had been 
 conscious of till now. The measure of his 
 wish to be truly intimate with her was the 
 measure of it. Under her immense frankness 
 lay that was evident an immense reserve. 
 Well, of course he would never try to break 
 through it. Perhaps if they had belonged to 
 the same nation she would have taken him 
 more readily into her confidence, have relied 
 upon him as she had certainly not relied, 
 
 He was conscious of an obscure irritation. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 63 
 
 On the following day they started off early 
 to go to Leysin. 
 
 They had to wait for some time at the 
 station, and while they were there the Orient 
 Express came in from Paris, many hours late. 
 The great cars labelled "Bucharest," "Bel- 
 grade," " Trieste," were thronged with weary- 
 looking travellers, who stared out at this 
 to them small wayside station with lack- 
 lustre, or rather insolent, eyes. Some sat on 
 tip-up seats in the corridor ; others leaned 
 against the cushioned walls of the small com- 
 partments. A bald-headed man offered him- 
 self up to the gaze of Montreux lying on his 
 back in bed, smoking a huge cigar, and read- 
 ing a French novel. An old gentleman wear- 
 ing a fez peered out through gold-rimmed 
 spectacles. Near him some black-haired, 
 yellow-skinned children pointed at a Swiss 
 soldier, nodded their heads and laughed as 
 they sucked mandarin oranges. After a brief 
 stop the foremost of the two huge engines 
 which drew the train gave a prolonged shriek. 
 "They are going!" said the Princess to 
 Derrick. 
 
 But the train did not move for two or 
 
64 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 three minutes, and then glided away almost 
 mysteriously towards the Near East, without 
 any warning note. 
 
 ' That train gives me nostalgia ! " said the 
 Princess, looking after it. " But come, my 
 friend, here is our train to Aigle." 
 
 Her emphasis on the last word was almost 
 bitter, and perhaps she saw on Derrick's face 
 a look of hurt disappointment, for she added 
 when they were sitting together in the well- 
 warmed carriage : 
 
 " You must forgive me. If you had been 
 in Montreux for more, much more, than five 
 years you would feel as I do when you saw 
 the Orient Express. But now to-day we are 
 going to enjoy ourselves." 
 
 And from that moment she laid herself 
 out to be charming to Derrick. 
 
 At Aigle they changed and got into the 
 mountain train whose destination was Leysin. 
 A few peasants were with them, sturdy crea- 
 tures with ruddy cheeks, large heads and 
 firm, unimaginative eyes ; and there were 
 some others, not peasants, people from dis- 
 tant places with the seal of consumption set 
 upon them, lonely people being carried up 
 
The Spirit of the Time 65 
 
 into the still coldness, the white serenity of 
 the heights, to struggle against death. 
 
 Two of these were in the carriage with 
 the Princess and Derrick, and sat opposite to 
 them. One was an Englishman of about 
 thirty, whose sunken grey eyes had a sort of 
 still, controlled despair in them ; the other 
 was a swarthy middle-aged woman, probably 
 an Italian, horribly thin, horribly feverish, 
 and of a greenish pallor. These two did not 
 know each other, but from time to time glanced 
 at each other furtively, as the train crept 
 steadily up through the white forests and the 
 snow-fields. On a distant slope Derrick saw 
 two dark figures ski-ing. They glided over 
 the whiteness with amazing rapidity and dis- 
 appeared. He imagined them shouting as 
 they went, but no sounds reached his ears. 
 The silence of this world seemed a visible 
 thing. The carriage was very warm. One of 
 the consumptives, the Englishman, opened a 
 window for an instant, and immediately the 
 personality of winter was added to theirs 
 pure, penetrating, aloof and yet full of a thin 
 magic that seemed intentional. The Italian 
 woman cast an agitated glance at the win- 
 
66 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 dow, and the Englishman immediately shut 
 it, and looked down, folding his thin hands 
 together. And even his hands conveyed to 
 Derrick an impression of doom. 
 
 The Princess was silent now. Her tall, 
 upright figure was wrapped in a coat of soft 
 mouse-coloured fur, with a wide collar and 
 cuffs, and she wore a round hat of the same 
 fur and gloves of deerskin. As usual, she 
 carried her pointed stick. On her feet were 
 strong boots with nails in the soles. The cold 
 air had brought colour into her smooth cheeks. 
 Her large black eyes, half shut, were turned 
 to the snows with an expression of steady, 
 but rather indifferent, scrutiny. She knew the 
 snows so well that perhaps they had little 
 more to tell her. 
 
 Higher and higher they went. At last 
 houses appeared, all of them with strange- 
 looking facades divided into open compart- 
 ments. On a snow-covered pathway several 
 people stood to stare at the crawling train. 
 One was a girl, with orange-coloured hair, 
 sticky scarlet lips, eyes that from a distance 
 looked like smudges of ink on a structure of 
 sharpened bone. She leaned on a stick and 
 
The Spirit of the Time 67 
 
 gazed, bending forward a painted consump- 
 tive. 
 
 Where the railway ended they got out. 
 
 " We will lunch at the Grand Hotel," said the 
 Princess, " but let us take a little walk first." 
 
 And they emerged into the wonderful but 
 sad world which nature and a great doctor 
 between them have created far up above 
 Aigle. 
 
 To Derrick even the buildings, the hotels, 
 pensions, huge sanatoria, looked gaunt and 
 stricken, presenting what he thought of as 
 their hollow eye sockets from which the eyes 
 Aad been plucked out to the white glare of 
 the snow. The sense of stillness was profound 
 and almost awful. Far oft the " Diablerets " 
 showed their rugged crests against a strip of 
 cold lemon-coloured sky, above which were 
 massed bellying clouds of purplish grey. A 
 shuffle of invalids' feet was faintly audible 
 on the snow, and somewhere below them 
 the thin voice of a bell sounded with 
 peevish persistence. 
 
 "It is time for their dejeuner," said the 
 Princess, " one of the great events of the day 
 up here." 
 
68 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 Suddenly she lifted her arms. 
 
 " Mon Dieu ! Mon Dieu ! " she said. 
 " There is someone there must be someone 
 whose business it is to punish humanity. 
 Katya will not have it so. She says there is 
 nothing but blind energy. But I say there 
 must be a Personage with a rod." 
 
 " And the reincarnation theory ? " said 
 Derrick. 
 
 " The rod, perhaps, drives us out of one 
 existence into another, like rabbits driven 
 from hole to hole by a man with a ferret. 
 But who knows here in Europe ? " 
 
 She paused. Then she added, with a sort 
 of almost sullen resolution : 
 
 " One must go to Asia to find out, or to 
 get near to, the truth. It is not hidden in 
 Montreux no, nor in Leysin." 
 
 A little later, when they were at lunch in 
 the hotel, amid a crowd of consumptives of 
 many nations, she said : 
 
 "Ah, my friend, you do not know what 
 a curse being poor is to one whose only possi- 
 ble joy in life lies in freedom of action. I 
 was rich until this war came, and stayed at 
 Montreux then for my pleasure, knowing 
 
The Spirit of the Time 69 
 
 always I could go away whenever the whim 
 took me. I had immense estates in Russia, 
 and went there from time to time. Now I 
 have nothing, and I am a prisoner at forty- 
 five ! How long I shall live I don't know 
 many years probably." 
 
 She stopped. Then, after a pause, laying 
 one hand on his wrist, she leaned forward 
 and added : 
 
 46 Believe me, this war has done nothing 
 but harm, not only material harm, but 
 what shall I say ? spiritual harm. No good 
 will come out of it. There is not one person 
 I knew before the War who is not the worse 
 for it." 
 
 " You mean morally worse ? " 
 
 " I do. The whole of Europe has received 
 a jolt in the wrong direction. Don't you 
 feel it ? " 
 
 They fell into another of their long dis- 
 cussions. One by one the consumptives got 
 up from their tables and went listlessly away 
 to their rooms to lie down. Derrick did not 
 notice their disappearance. Princess Aranen- 
 sky had a curious power of taking complete 
 possession of his mind when she chose to. 
 
70 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 In conversation she concentrated. She did 
 not, as many women do, look about the room 
 while she talked, let her mind go to any 
 small happening, attend to the words or move- 
 ments of other people than those or than the 
 one she was with. And she listened with 
 concentration and without restlessness. 
 
 At last a waiter, who probably longed to 
 get away and have a rest, presented the bill. 
 
 They paid it as always with bills be- 
 tween them, and got up. 
 
 " How long have we been ? " said the 
 Princess. 
 
 She looked at her watch. 
 
 46 My friend, I talk too much. I forget 
 myself in talk ! " 
 
 44 And you make me forget everything too," 
 said Derrick. 
 
 44 We shall have time for a little walk 
 before the train goes." 
 
 They went out into the snow-covered 
 grounds of the hotel. But they could not 
 talk there. A notice ordained silence at that 
 hour. 
 
 44 The poor people are all lying down in 
 their verandas," said the Princess. 44 Let us 
 
The Spirit of the Time 71 
 
 go on the mountain-side. They cannot hear 
 us there." 
 
 They passed through the gate and went 
 down the deserted track between the snow-fields. 
 
 It was now intensely cold. The sun had 
 gone, and the almost fierce purity of the air 
 seemed to have grown stronger, more vital, 
 to be asserting itself almost aggressively. 
 
 " If I were one of those ill ones I think I 
 should get to hate this air," said the Princess. 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " It seems to be crying out how pure it 
 is ! It seems to be marking the contrast 
 between nature and man in an almost vulgar 
 way." 
 
 Again they fell into talk, resuming their 
 discussion of the salle-d-manger. Derrick, per- 
 haps partly for argument's sake, refused to 
 agree with the Princess's contention that only 
 moral harm had come out of the War, that 
 people were the worse instead of the better 
 for it. He pointed to the nobilities, the self- 
 sacrifice, the wonderful resignation in sorrow, 
 the marvellous examples of courage, endur- 
 ance and even of tenderness which would 
 never have been manifested but for the War. 
 
72 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 " Yes, yes," she allowed, almost impa- 
 tiently. " But I say the balance is weighed 
 down on the wrong side. The net result of 
 it is that we are not better but worse because 
 of this war, morally worse. There is more 
 immorality, more robbery, more brutality, 
 more hardness, more selfishness everywhere 
 than there was before in all classes. People 
 who do the most impossible things excuse 
 themselves by saying, ' We couldn't help it ' 
 or * we can't help it. We are not quite our- 
 selves. We are suffering from the effects of 
 the War.' Shell-shock is the universal ex- 
 cuse. I should use it myself, I know, if 
 necessary." 
 
 Just then she cast a curious little glance 
 at Derrick out of her long eyes. 
 
 " And perhaps there is really something 
 in it," she added, slowly. " Is Europe normal 
 at this moment ? Is Montreux normal ? 5! 
 She paused. " Am I normal ? " 
 
 Derrick said : 
 
 " I never knew you before the War, but 
 you seem to me to be perfectly normal." 
 
 " Ah, perhaps in my subtler way I am as 
 abnormal as you think poor Katya is." 
 
The Spirit of the Time 73 
 
 " Oh, no, you aren't." 
 
 " See, the twilight is coming already ! Let 
 us turn." 
 
 They began to retrace their steps, and 
 went towards the station. For it was now 
 nearly time for the departure of the train. 
 
 " I feel since the War that nothing matters 
 very much," said the Princess. " And that 
 is a dangerous feeling. It has got hold of 
 nearly everyone and it leads to the loosening 
 of the cement which once held things together. 
 Do you know don't think me a snob I be- 
 lieve one of the most tenacious of all human 
 things is the feeling of aristocracy in one who 
 is born what is called an aristocrat, the feel- 
 ing which forbids certain things, thought little 
 of by many, to the aristocrat. I call it the 
 ' That-I-can't-do ' instinct. You know, of 
 course, what I mean." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well the War has touched even that 
 feeling. Noblesse oblige even that has lost 
 half, or more than half, its meaning since the 
 War. Montreux, little Montreux, my prison 
 cell, has taught me that." 
 
 A sombre, almost a heavy, look had come 
 
74 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 into her face, giving to her rather rough- 
 hewn features something of brutality. 
 
 " There are more farewells than those we 
 say to the dying," she said. " There are 
 more terrible farewells to ancient virtues we 
 thought ingrained. There is nothing nothing 
 which cannot be uprooted. There is nothing 
 which a human being might not do if a suffi- 
 cient reason arose." 
 
 " But you are almost as cynical to-day 
 in what you say as Baroness Hausen. Surely 
 you would never let her influence you ? " 
 
 For a moment the Princess reddened, and 
 an angry look came into her eyes. 
 
 " Katya influence me ! " she said, proudly. 
 
 But in an instant her anger died in a sort 
 of dark melancholy. 
 
 " No, it is not the Katyas who really 
 influence us, my friend," she said. "It is the 
 terrible Zeitgeist ; it is the Spirit of the Time." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THAT night, as often happened, Derrick dined 
 at the same table as the Princess and Baron- 
 ess Hausen. He noticed that neither woman 
 seemed quite as usual. The Princess was cer- 
 tainly abstracted. Her normal concentration, 
 to him one of her greatest attractions, had 
 vanished. She showed a curious absence of 
 mind in conversation, and even talked at 
 random sometimes, as if she scarcely knew 
 what was the subject in hand. Her eyes were 
 perpetually roving about the room vaguely, 
 and Derrick suffered under the unpleasant 
 conviction that for once he was boring 
 her. In despair he devoted himself to the 
 Baroness, who had returned late from 
 Geneva. 
 
 She at least was not absent-minded. Her 
 cruel intelligence was " all there," but her 
 frosty malignancy of outlook struck Derrick 
 more unpleasantly than ever before. It even 
 roused in him a strong feeling of opposition, 
 
 75 
 
76 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 and tempted him to get into an argument 
 with her and to show his teeth. Hitherto he 
 had never strongly resented her peculiar and 
 strangely unsympathetic outlook on life and 
 humanity, though it had always been dis- 
 agreeable to him, but to-night something ex- 
 ceptionally assured, even arrogant, in her 
 cynicism stung him, went home to him per- 
 sonally. She irritated him, got on his nerves, 
 and he found himself asking, " Why should 
 I allow this young woman to pontificate about 
 human nature as if she alone had all the 
 secrets of worldly knowledge ? ' : For some 
 time, however, he resisted his inclination to 
 stand up to her, and let her say what she 
 would without protest, though without any 
 humbug of personal agreement with her views. 
 She was in an exceptionally bad mood to- 
 night. That was obvious. If the Princess 
 was bored, the Baroness was in that concen- 
 trated condition which is bred of a morose 
 temper, held in control but secretly longing 
 for a victim. That she was looking unusually 
 handsome specially annoyed Derrick, he 
 scarcely knew why. As he glanced at her 
 fair, shining beauty, and starry but Polar 
 
The Spirit of the Time 77 
 
 blue eyes, he even resented her youth, a 
 thing he had never done before. 
 
 " She's insufferable in her cynicism," he 
 thought. " I should like to teach her a 
 lesson." 
 
 But how ? It was not his business to do 
 that. If the Princess, a woman, her friend, 
 and much older than she was, suffered her 
 without protest, even seemed quite satisfied 
 with, or at any rate quite indifferent to, her 
 excoriating views of every activity, every 
 demonstration of human beings, what could 
 he seem to do but quietly accept her as she 
 was ? But to-night she got dreadfully upon 
 his nerves. He tingled with dislike of her, 
 and when he looked at her felt that his eyes 
 were almost attacking her. She did not 
 seem to notice this, however, and went 
 on composedly pouring out a stream of 
 scathing comment on the refugees in Switzer- 
 land, while the Princess crumbled her bread, 
 played with the food set before her, 
 sipped her claret, and stared about the 
 room. 
 
 " Do you like anyone ? " at length said Der- 
 rick, unable to bear any more vituperation. 
 
78 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 " Do you believe in anyone ? Do you trust 
 anyone ? " 
 
 The Baroness raised her pale eyebrows. 
 
 " Some people are less unpleasant to me 
 than others, of course," she said. 
 
 " Is that all ? " 
 
 " I don't sentimentalize about anyone." 
 
 " You certainly don't ! " he rejoined, with 
 a laugh. 
 
 " I look upon sentimentality as a proof of 
 ignorance." 
 
 " Ignorance of what ? " 
 
 " Of human nature." 
 
 " If you'll excuse my saying so I think 
 you make a great mistake in generalizing so 
 much as you do about humanity. Men and 
 women are individuals and have widely differ- 
 ing qualities." 
 
 She smiled, with a sort of cold and superior 
 venom which almost maddened him. 
 
 " I allow that, of course. But, as Schopen- 
 hauer points out " 
 
 " I loathe Schopenhauer," Derrick inter- 
 rupted, almost with violence. " I think his 
 attribution of every manifestation of humanity 
 to some low and detestable motive, some base 
 
The Spirit of the Time 79 
 
 self-interest, or some abominable intention to 
 do harm, shows him to have had a warped 
 mind, and to have been totally wanting in 
 true insight. Your Tolstoy with his gospel of 
 love got far nearer to the truth of human 
 beings than Schopenhauer ever did." 
 
 " Our Tolstoy with his gospel of love was 
 a humbug of genius," retorted the Baroness. 
 
 " We don't think so in England." 
 
 " Really ! And yet I have always under- 
 stood that England was in possession of a 
 special means for recognizing and testing 
 humbug in others." 
 
 " And what means is that ? " asked Der- 
 rick, unable to keep a certain defiance out of 
 his tone and manner. 
 
 Baroness Hausen opened her pale lips to 
 reply, but she shut them again without speak- 
 ing. She had received a warning look from 
 the Princess, who just at that moment, it 
 seemed, had begun to pay attention to the 
 conversation. Derrick, who in his acute 
 nervous irritation was exceptionally alert and 
 observant that night, caught that look on 
 the wing and was startled by it ; it was so 
 keen, so subtle, and so swiftly gone. It was 
 
8o The Spirit of the Time 
 
 as if a door flew open and instantly closed 
 again, leaving him with the impression that 
 he had nearly, but not quite, caught sight of 
 some strange and unknown, even unguessed 
 at, personality. Yes, it had been there be- 
 hind the door, but he had not had time to 
 look really at it. Yet something of it he must 
 have seen but what ? A pallor ? A gleam 
 as of fire from unseen eyes ? The suggestion 
 of a razor-sharp silhouette ? For a moment 
 he felt confused and painfully alone, like a 
 man in a deserted house at night. 
 
 " Let me tell you why many of us Rus- 
 sians think Tolstoy was a humbug," said the 
 Princess. 
 
 And from that moment, but as if with an 
 effort, she concentrated. 
 
 After dinner she did a thing which, con- 
 sidering what had happened at the dinner- 
 table, Derrick thought strange. She asked 
 him, in the presence of Baroness Hausen, to 
 escort the Baroness to the Casino. 
 
 " Katya wants to play," she said, " and I 
 promised her to go, but for once I am tired. 
 The sight of those consumptives has tired my 
 heart and I want to sleep. I shall take a 
 
The Spirit of the Time 81 
 
 drug to-night, now, immediately. Will you 
 go with Katya ? " 
 
 Of course, Derrick could only say yes. The 
 Princess bade him good night with a warm 
 hand-grip, and went upstairs with the Baron- 
 ess, who was to put on her furs. Meanwhile, 
 feeling all on edge with intense nervous irri- 
 tation, Derrick got into his overcoat, took his 
 hat and gloves, and waited in the hall near 
 the bureau. 
 
 "It is snowing, m'sieu ! " said the hall 
 porter, looking up from some letters he was 
 sorting. 
 
 " Heavily ? " 
 
 "Yes, m'sieu, heavily." 
 
 A ray of hope lighted up Derrick's dark- 
 ness. No carriage had been ordered. It 
 would probably be difficult to get one at that 
 hour. Possibly when she knew the state of 
 the weather Baroness Hausen would give up 
 the Casino. Derrick fervently hoped so. He 
 moved away from the bureau. He could not 
 keep still that evening. His friend the direc- 
 tor who was in his room on the right facing 
 the corridor which led to the dining-room, 
 saw him, smiled, and came out to have a 
 
82 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 little chat. He had done everything in his 
 power to make Derrick's stay comfortable 
 and Derrick had taken a liking to him. 
 
 " Unusually bad weather, m'sieu," he 
 remarked. " You are going to brave it ? ' : 
 
 " It seems so, unless when Baroness Hausen 
 hears it is snowing she gives up her idea of 
 gambling to-night." 
 
 " Oh, you are going with the Baroness ? " 
 
 He paused. Then he said : 
 
 " A beautiful woman." 
 
 " She is very good looking," said Derrick. 
 
 "It is wonderful after what she has been 
 through," said the director. " But " he 
 nearly closed his eyes " it is better not to 
 think of those things. One doesn't wish to 
 have the nightmare." 
 
 He evidently knew something about the 
 Baroness's experiences among the Bolsheviks. 
 Derrick felt curious, but he only said : 
 
 " It would take a good deal to give one 
 the nightmare after this war." 
 
 " Mais oui ! But there are some 
 things -" 
 
 Again he stopped. 
 
 " Madame the Princess is going ? " 
 
The Spirit of the Time 83 
 
 " Not to-night." 
 
 " She is a very distinguished lady, very 
 distinguished one of the greatest families in 
 Russia. But anyone can see that ! I shall 
 be very sorry if she leaves us." 
 
 " Leaves you ! 5: said Derrick, startled. 
 " But surely Princess Aranensky is not leaving 
 Montreux ? " 
 
 " Leaving Montreux oh, no, m'sieu ! Her 
 Excellency is not leaving Montreux. I only 
 meant that I shall be very sorry if she has to 
 change her hotel." 
 
 At this moment Baroness Hausen, wrapped 
 up in furs, got out of the lift. 
 
 " Do you know that it is snowing very 
 hard, Baroness ? " said Derrick, going up to 
 her. 
 
 "Is it ? Well, never mind, I've got an 
 umbrella." 
 
 And she held up a tightly furled silk 
 umbrella with a handle of jade. 
 
 " Wouldn't it be wise to try and get a 
 carriage ? J! 
 
 " That might take a long time. Are you 
 afraid of a little snow ? " 
 
 Of course not," said Derrick, stiffly. 
 
 c; 
 
84 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 " Then let us go." 
 
 They started off together. 
 
 It was slippery outside and very dark, 
 and Derrick felt obliged to offer the Baroness 
 his arm. She took it at once with an air of 
 firm decision, and they walked slowly on to- 
 gether down the deserted street. Derrick said 
 nothing. That evening he felt so acutely 
 hostile to his companion that he simply could 
 not " make conversation " to her. He was 
 unusually tired, too, after the long day at 
 Ley sin, and was longing for solitude and bed. 
 The touch of the Baroness, the feeling of her 
 body against his, was hateful to him at that 
 moment. It seemed to create an ugly inti- 
 macy between those whose minds and souls 
 were worlds away from each other. Buried 
 deep in his comfortless thoughts he was 
 startled when he heard a voice speaking in 
 the darkness. 
 
 " What was that ? " he said. " I didn't 
 hear." 
 
 " I said that you disliked me very much 
 this evening." 
 
 " My dear Baroness ! >! 
 
 " Oh, yes. Your eyes at dinner were full 
 
The Spirit of the Time 85 
 
 of hatred. They attacked me. I don't mind 
 that. Why should you like me ? Anna is 
 your friend, not I. But when I am at the 
 tables please don't turn your mind upon me 
 with hostility. I have a feeling that if you 
 do it will bring me bad luck. And I must 
 win to-night." 
 
 " I hope to Heaven you will." 
 
 " I must. You probably have no idea 
 what a situation Anna is in." 
 
 " She has never gone into that with me." 
 
 " No, she wouldn't. They talk of obliging 
 her to leave the hotel." 
 
 " Obliging the Princess ! " 
 
 " Yes she can't pay enough any longer. 
 Already she has had to leave I don't know 
 how many places the Lorius, the Eden, the 
 Montreux Palace." 
 
 " How horrible ! " 
 
 " It is very disagreeable. I went to Geneva 
 to-day to try to sell her pearls. Unfortu- 
 nately, I failed. I couldn't get a good enough 
 price for them. Those who come to Switzer- 
 land now to buy the jewels of those who are 
 starving, naturally being human are fero- 
 cious profiteers. I wouldn't throw Anna's 
 
86 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 pearls to such wolves, so I don't see how she 
 can go on paying her bills at the Monney." 
 
 Derrick understood now the Princess's 
 preoccupation during dinner. 
 
 " But if she leaves there what will she 
 do?" 
 
 " I suppose she must find a cheap pen- 
 sion. But that sort of thing won't suit her." 
 
 " Of course not." 
 
 " And even a pension keeper expects to 
 be paid. She has furs and things which she 
 might sell, of course ; but again it would be 
 to wolves wolves who come here from Paris 
 to gnaw the flesh off our Russian bones." 
 
 " How utterly disgusting ! ' : 
 
 " Almost everything that is thoroughly 
 human is utterly disgusting, in spite of your 
 anger with me at dinner. Here we are ! 
 Now please don't stand near me or stare at 
 me when I am playing or I shall lose my 
 money." 
 
 " Do you think I have the evil eye, then ? ' : 
 
 " I know nothing about that. But you 
 dislike me, and, therefore, you might bring 
 me bad luck." 
 
 And she left Derrick and pushed her way 
 
The Spirit of the Time 87 
 
 implacably through the small crowd round the 
 tables. 
 
 As he knew it would be almost impossible 
 to stay in the gamblers' room and to keep 
 his eyes always turned away from the Baron- 
 ess, Derrick went away and strolled about the 
 almost deserted Casino. The weather, no 
 doubt, had kept all but determined gamblers 
 at home. He saw no one whom he knew, and 
 chafed with irritation at having to dance 
 attendance on the Baroness. His mind ran 
 perpetually on his talk with her in the street. 
 It had shocked him. Although the Princess 
 had several times mentioned the fact of her 
 poverty, he knew that he had never realized 
 it thoroughly until now. Having always seen 
 her beautifully dressed and living in luxury, 
 having always known her scrupulously fair 
 about money matters, determined to " pay 
 her way " whenever she and he were together 
 and sharing pleasures, generous, even lavish, 
 in the matter of tips, he had supposed that, 
 though no doubt " hard up " in comparison 
 with her condition before the War, she must 
 be still moderately well off. He knew that 
 very rich people, when reduced to moderate 
 
The Spirit of the Time 
 
 means, often speak as if they were beggars. 
 Why not the Princess Aranensky ? But now 
 that illusion was gone. A woman of her rank 
 who had been turned out of several hotels 
 for that was what it came to if the Baroness's 
 statements were true, and he had no reason 
 to doubt them must be almost penniless. 
 What was going to become of her ? What 
 would she do in the future ? He felt full of 
 pity, of sympathy for her. He longed to 
 help her. The question was how to help her. 
 Derrick was very well off, and by nature 
 a chivalrous and generous man. He would 
 gladly have offered to lend the Princess some 
 money, but he felt quite certain that she 
 would refuse a loan. For how could she ever 
 repay it ? The condition of Russia, where, 
 no doubt, all her fortune had been placed, 
 forbade any hope of better things for a long 
 time, perhaps for many years to come. Such 
 a woman could never hope to earn any money. 
 To lend to her, therefore, would be to give 
 under another name. And he was positive 
 that she would never accept such a gift, she 
 who had always refused even the gift of a 
 cup of tea at his hands. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 89 
 
 With Baroness Hausen it would be dif- 
 ferent, he thought. He could imagine her 
 accepting anything, considering it, perhaps, as 
 partial repayment for what she had gone 
 through at the hands of humanity. But the 
 Princess was not like the Baroness thank 
 God ! He almost hated the one, and he 
 almost 
 
 He sat down on a straight chair. A small 
 orchestra was playing in the distance, and 
 seemed to him to confuse his mind, preventing 
 clear thinking. And then he was tired this 
 evening. The sound of the orchestra reminded 
 him he did not know why of the months 
 just before the outbreak of war, of the de- 
 lirium of pleasure which had preceded the 
 crash. He thought of the craze for the 
 Russian ballet, of the mania women had had 
 for undressing, of the dances borrowed from 
 South American negroes, of the madness in 
 art, of the hysterical lectures on Futurism 
 gravely discussed by humbugs who should 
 have known better. He remembered the 
 remark of a friend who, with him, had 
 been watching w some young people dancing 
 in the ball-room of a famous London 
 
go The Spirit of the Time 
 
 hotel, " When are they going down on all 
 fours ? " 
 
 And what was the difference now ? Europe 
 in the meanwhile had been deluged with 
 blood. The rod had been used unsparingly. 
 But did punishment have any real, any last- 
 ing effect upon the soul of man? Was the 
 Princess right in her pessimism ? Was he 
 wrong in his secret resistance to pessimism ? 
 He compared his circumstances with hers and 
 drew a conclusion from the comparison. But 
 she must not be ruined in nature as Baroness 
 Hausen had been. 
 
 Perhaps he had the power to prevent that, 
 if only he could somehow persuade her to 
 let him exercise it. 
 
 The orchestra stopped. 
 
 He thought of the pearls. 
 
 " You can buy jewels in Montreux cheap, 
 very cheap. And if you can carry them to 
 London there is a nice profit for you ! " Those 
 words of the director of the Monney started 
 up in his mind. He had hardly attended to 
 them at the time, but he had remembered 
 them, and now he repeated them to himself, 
 turning over, while he did so, a certain matter 
 
The Spirit of the Time 91 
 
 in his mind. When, presently, he got up 
 from his chair and strolled towards the room 
 where the orchestra was again playing (this 
 time a selection from " Carmen "), he was 
 aware of two possible means by which he 
 might save the Princess from the ignominy 
 and ruin which threatened her. He might 
 try to persuade her to marry him and to share 
 his fortune ; or he might suggest driving a 
 bargain with her, buying her pearls at a moder- 
 ate price in order to make money by selling 
 them in Paris or London. In the latter event 
 he would have to smuggle them over the 
 frontier. Of course, the idea of making money 
 out of her difficulty was abhorrent to him, but 
 his knowledge of her character made him 
 feel almost sure that she would never consent 
 to sell her jewels to him unless he was able 
 to convince her that by doing so she was 
 putting him in the way of making money for 
 himself, that he came to her as a would-be 
 speculator, not as a would-be benefactor. 
 
 And the other alternative ? 
 
 Derrick was now fifty-three, and had long 
 ago given up all thought of marrying. Like 
 most men he had wished to marry, and had 
 
92 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 once met a woman whom he had felt he could 
 be very happy with. But it was a long time 
 ago. She had been in love with another 
 man and had refused Derrick. Since then he 
 had never wished to link his life permanently 
 with any woman's. Certainly he had often 
 felt lonely ; but gradually he had come to 
 value almost inordinately what he thought of 
 as his " freedom." Prolonged observation of 
 the world had led him to the belief that 
 the proportion of unsatisfactory marriages to 
 satisfactory marriages was as three to one. 
 The secrets of sad marriages are often 
 very well kept, but Derrick was a close 
 observer, and frequently felt what he did 
 not actually know. A fairly long life, much 
 of which had been passed in the society 
 of his fellow-beings, had made him distrust 
 profoundly what is sometimes called " married 
 bliss." As well as this distrust there was 
 another reason against changing his state. 
 He considered himself too old to marry. 
 There was, he thought, something almost 
 ridiculous in offering grey hairs and a body 
 past its prime, to say nothing of a possibly 
 wrinkled mind, to an attractive woman. Cer- 
 
The Spirit of the Time 93 
 
 tainly Princess Aranensky, though energetic, 
 healthy and, apparently, strong, was no longer 
 a young woman. But nevertheless 
 
 It was rather marvellous to Derrick that 
 he should even for a moment be thinking of 
 marriage as possible to him. It was evident 
 that he had grown to care for the Princess 
 far more than he had suspected till now. 
 She had made life interesting to him again, 
 vital, definitely worth something. She had 
 swept away his morbid distrust of himself, 
 had subtly put him on better, even on quite 
 good, terms with himself. 
 
 She must be a singularly courageous woman. 
 He tried mentally to put himself into her 
 situation without imaginatively changing his 
 sex. Could he have shown such a brave face 
 to the world in similar circumstances ? He 
 doubted it. But, of course, he would have 
 set to and worked. She couldn't do that. 
 And yet she held up her head, and had con- 
 cealed from him any suggestion, even the 
 smallest hint, of despair. 
 
 And she still had a sitting-room and filled 
 it with flowers. 
 
 Fatalism, perhaps, had her fast in its grip. 
 
94 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 It was difficult for him, an Englishman, to 
 understand such a nature as hers, thoroughly, 
 even drastically, Russian, perhaps, under its 
 cosmopolitan surface. And yet how splendidly 
 they got on together ! 
 
 He thought of the look she had cast at 
 Baroness Hausen during dinner, and won- 
 dered what exactly it had meant. It had 
 made him feel suddenly shut out, a thoroughly 
 lonely man, pushed away from a friendship 
 he certainly valued very much. But, of course, 
 two women friends, both of them Russians, 
 must have understandings which he couldn't 
 share. He was, perhaps, hypersensitive in 
 matters connected with the Princess. Didn't 
 that prove that his feeling for her was much 
 stronger than he had ever suspected till this 
 evening ? 
 
 He tried to imagine how it would be if 
 he and she were married. But that was a 
 job far too difficult for him in his present 
 condition. He went to the restaurant and 
 asked for a coffee. The snows, he thought, 
 had got into his brain and clouded it as they 
 clouded the branches of the trees in the 
 forests. When he had finished the coffee he 
 
The Spirit of the Time 95 
 
 again walked about, and presently found 
 himself at the entrance to the room where the 
 gamblers were. Despite the prohibition of 
 Baroness Hausen he stood still there and 
 looked into the room, seeking her out. 
 
 She had got hold of a chair and was sit- 
 ting. A cigarette was between her pale lips. 
 She looked stern, concentrated, and almost old 
 in her intentness. Derrick could not tell from 
 her expression whether she had been winning 
 or not. Besides did it really matter ? This 
 was not Monte Carlo. However lucky she 
 was the Baroness could not hope to redeem 
 the fortunes of herself and the Princess 
 linked together it seemed, though he 
 was not sure of that at the tables of 
 Montreux. 
 
 It was a bad face, he thought, consider- 
 ing the Baroness, who was evidently too 
 absorbed by the game to be aware of his 
 presence in the doorway. The beauty of the 
 colouring, the regularity of the features, were 
 spoiled for him by the sheer ugliness of the 
 expression. This proved to him that he was 
 anything rather than a pagan. Moral beauty 
 meant something to him, after all. 
 
96 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 " But most gamblers are ugly while they 
 are gambling ! " he reflected. 
 
 He had noticed that again and again in 
 the rooms at Monte Carlo. 
 
 What would the Princess look like if she 
 were playing ? 
 
 She had never gambled while he had been 
 at Montreux, and had sometimes spoken of 
 Katya's taste for boule with a slight touch 
 of almost pitying sarcasm. 
 
 Could she really like Katya ? And if she 
 were able to was it possible that she could 
 ever be sincerely fond of him ? Would not 
 the one liking rule out the other, proving 
 that her soul and his could never really 
 touch ? 
 
 As he asked himself this question Baron- 
 ess Hausen looked up and met his eyes. In- 
 stantly she got up arid came towards him, 
 pushing her way through the people behind 
 and around her. Her face was even uglier 
 than before as she said : 
 
 " I begged you not to look at me, not to 
 turn your mind on me ! " 
 
 " But, my dear Baroness, I have only 
 just " 
 
The Spirit of the Time 97 
 
 " I have been winning for once. Every- 
 thing went well with me until a moment ago, 
 when I began to lose. I lost three coups 
 running, looked up, and there you were stand- 
 ing and gazing straight at me. It really is 
 too bad, when you promised me " 
 
 " I beg your pardon ! " said Derrick, rigid 
 with vexation. " When you have finished 
 playing you will find me in the hall." 
 
 And he turned abruptly and left her. 
 
 " She treats me exactly as if I were a 
 servant ! ): he thought. " But this shall be 
 the last time. I'll never submit to this sort 
 of thing again." 
 
 For a moment he was inclined to include 
 the Princess as well as Baroness Hausen 
 within the circle of his hostile thoughts. 
 
 " The Princess makes a convenience of 
 me," he said to himself. " She must know 
 I hate the Baroness, and yet she palms her 
 off on me. I might as well be a footman 
 and have done with it." 
 
 He tingled with vexation as he hovered 
 about, waiting the pleasure of that detest- 
 able young woman. He felt sure that she 
 would not come until play was over for the 
 
98 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 night, and so it happened. The Casino was 
 about to be closed when she appeared at last. 
 
 " I'm afraid it has been rather dull for 
 you," she said. " Why didn't you play ? " 
 
 " You gave me a very strong hint to keep 
 out of the room," he said. 
 
 " You must forgive me. Probably you 
 don't need money. I do. And I have such 
 terrible luck. To-night I was making a little 
 for once, and naturally I didn't want the luck 
 to turn. But I fear I was brusque. Now do 
 pardon me, please." 
 
 " I beg you to say no more about it," 
 said Derrick, with a stiff and very ^English 
 manner. 
 
 They set out on the walk home. This 
 time Derrick did not he simply could not 
 offer the Baroness his arm. Nor did he at- 
 tempt to keep up any conversation. They two 
 could never be friends. He knew that. And 
 he was not in the mood for pretences. When 
 they reached the hotel he was thankful. The 
 lights were still on in the room just beyond 
 the hall, but there was nobody there. In the 
 bureau was the night porter reading the 
 Gazette de Lausanne. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 99 
 
 " Good night," Derrick said to the Baroness. 
 
 But instead of going upstairs to her room, 
 as he expected, she said : 
 
 " Let us go in there for a minute. I am 
 not sleepy, and want a last cigarette. And 
 let us have something to drink." 
 
 "What would you like?" 
 
 " Oh, a brandy and soda will do. But 
 you must have one with me." 
 
 " I'm really not " 
 
 " I can't drink alone." 
 
 " Very well." 
 
 He told the hall porter, and followed the 
 Baroness into the room beyond the hail- 
 When the two drinks were brought Derrick 
 lighted his pipe. He felt that he was " in 
 for it," and must try to make the best of 
 things. There was no hope of getting rid of 
 the Baroness yet. She looked abominably 
 wide awake, and evidently was far too men- 
 tally tough to be made uncomfortable by other 
 people's feelings. But though Derrick stayed 
 with her he determined not to make conversa- 
 tion to her, or to help her socially. Not even 
 his sense of politeness was capable of that at 
 this moment. After saying a few casual things 
 
ioo The Spirit of the Time 
 
 about the fortunes of the gamblers that even- 
 ing she turned in her chair, faced him fully, 
 and said : 
 
 " You like Anna very much, don't you ? ' 
 
 " Of course I like the Princess," an- 
 swered Derrick, rigidly. 
 
 " And she likes you better than anyone 
 else here.'* 
 
 " I don't know about that." 
 
 " Well, I know it." 
 
 " If it is so I am very glad," returned 
 Derrick. 
 
 " I want to ask you something that she 
 would never ask for herself. Can you help 
 her ? " 
 
 " In what way ? " 
 
 " If something isn't done by somebody she 
 will be put out on the pavement very soon." 
 
 " I should naturally be very glad to help 
 the Princess, but I hardly think she would 
 wish such a matter to be discussed between us." 
 
 " But she will never speak to you, and if 
 she knew I had spoken she would hate me 
 for it." 
 
 " Then, surely, we had better talk of some- 
 thing else." 
 
The Spirit of the Time 101 
 
 " No. I made up my mind at'0fteT& to\ 
 speak to you, and I am going to." 
 
 Her manner was as implacable as her face, 
 and Derrick realized the absolute uselessness 
 of attempting any opposition to her. There 
 was no appeal against this young woman's 
 determination to do whatever she wanted to 
 do, because she was totally devoid of all 
 natural sensitiveness. 
 
 " She has about as much delicacy in her 
 as a steam-roller has," thought Derrick, in 
 desperation. 
 
 He said nothing, only pulled at his pipe 
 and looked on the ground, lest his companion 
 might think that his eyes were again attack- 
 ing her. 
 
 " There is only one way in which you 
 could help Anna," continued the Baroness 
 Hausen, " and that is by buying her pearls." 
 
 " If the Princess wishes " began Der- 
 rick. 
 
 But she interrupted him. 
 
 " Anna would never ask you to do such 
 a thing. She would rather starve than do 
 that, because I know she considers you as a 
 friend, and she has ideals about friendship, 
 
lot The Spirit of the Time 
 
 epec/fJ].y between women and men, which I 
 don't share. No, I am asking you. If Anna 
 could only sell her pearls for a reasonable 
 sum all would be well. That is why I went 
 to Geneva to-day. I knew there was a man 
 there from Paris a soi-disant gentleman 
 who was buying jewels cheap to sell them 
 dear. I thought I might persuade him to 
 give me a reasonable price, six thousand 
 pounds, for the pearls, which are worth at 
 least double to a dealer. I failed. That is 
 why I am speaking to you. If only you 
 would buy Anna's pearls you would save her 
 from humiliation and make a heavy profit for 
 yourself at the What is the matter ? J> 
 
 Derrick had got up from his seat. 
 
 " Baroness, I'm sorry, but I must decline 
 to discuss the Princess's affairs with you." 
 
 " But " 
 
 " You don't understand me. I am not 
 the sort of man who tries to make a profit 
 out of a woman in distress." 
 
 " I only wished to point out to you that 
 you would not suffer by being kind." 
 
 " Please let us say no more about it." 
 
 " Oh, very well. I only wished to help 
 
The Spirit of the Time 103 
 
 Anna, She is too proud, or too sensitive, to 
 help herself. But I've had all that sort of 
 thing knocked out of me by the War. The 
 Bolsheviks have taught me what doesn't 
 pay. Now, good night. I don't apologize for 
 what I have said. I think I was quite right 
 to say it. As far as I can see, only you can 
 help Anna." 
 
 She crushed out the fire in her cigarette 
 on an ash tray, finished her brandy and 
 soda and went up to bed. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 " How sickening ! " Derrick thought. He was 
 lying awake in his bedroom turning over in 
 his mind the events of the evening. The 
 Baroness's request had irritated him intensely, 
 because now, if he did what he had thought 
 of doing, and offered to buy the Princess's 
 pearls, it would seem as if the Baroness had 
 prompted his action, as if he were obeying a 
 sort of command given by her, or, at any 
 rate, as if he were following up her suggestion. 
 She would never believe that the idea had 
 occurred to him before she had spoken. He 
 told himself that it didn't matter what she 
 believed or disbelieved. Nevertheless, his hos- 
 tility to her made him hate the thought of 
 appearing to have been guided by her in 
 anything he did. 
 
 If only she had not spoken ! 
 
 For one moment it occurred to him that 
 possibly there was an understanding between 
 
 the two women, that possibly the Princess 
 
 104 
 
The Spirit of the Time 105 
 
 had known what the Baroness meant to do 
 that night, had agreed to it, had even, per- 
 haps, suggested it. But he dismissed this 
 idea as unworthy, contemptible, one of those 
 ugly night thoughts which are bred of in- 
 somnia. The two women were certainly 
 friends, but their natures were not akin. One 
 had a distinguished nature, bold, no doubt, 
 but essentially refined ; the other had an 
 abominably coarse strain, trampled on the 
 delicacies, derided them in her soul. He 
 would not be so mad as to confuse the one 
 with the other, the woman he had thought 
 of as a possible life companion with the 
 woman he frankly detested. His sense of 
 values was too accurate for that. 
 
 In the morning, after an uneasy and unre- 
 freshing sleep, he got up, resolved to do some- 
 thing definite in regard to the Princess that 
 day, but undecided what that something 
 would be. 
 
 During the morning he did not see her, 
 but when he came in to dejeuner she was there 
 with the Baroness, and greeted him in her 
 usual cordial manner. Her preoccupation 
 seemed to have gone, and she looked fresh 
 
io6 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 and cheerful. As he stood by her table speak- 
 ing to her he could scarcely believe that she 
 was in such desperate straits for money. Cer- 
 tainly she had marvellous courage, a quality 
 which he admired immensely. 
 
 " Katya was lucky last night," she said ; 
 " she says you brought her luck." 
 
 Derrick exchanged a glance with the Baron- 
 ess. 
 
 " I didn't know I was a mascot," he re- 
 marked, rather dryly. " To tell the truth, the 
 gambling here doesn't amuse me." 
 
 " The stakes are ridiculously low," said 
 the Baroness, " but paupers are thankful for 
 any small mercies. If we were at Monte 
 
 " Thank Heaven we are not ! " interrupted 
 the Princess. " You would gamble away your 
 dresses and hats." 
 
 "And your pearls, perhaps ! ' : said the 
 Baroness. 
 
 Derrick's eyes rested on the pearls which 
 the Princess was wearing, and he reddened 
 slightly. 
 
 " Well, I shall see you after lunch," he 
 said. And he went to his table. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 107 
 
 While he ate he tried to decide what he 
 was going to do. He glanced now and then 
 towards the Princess, and wondered how it 
 would be if they were husband and wife. 
 He would soon get rid of the Baroness ; that 
 was certain. He wondered, too, whether she 
 was living on her friend's money or whether 
 she paid her own way in the hotel. If 
 she had nothing of her own she had had a 
 personal reason for speaking as she had done 
 on the previous night, and in helping the 
 Princess he would be doing her a good turn. 
 He wished she were not so detestable and 
 that he could like her or, at any rate, pity 
 her. But he could not do either. He could 
 only wish her away. 
 
 The two women left the dining-room be- 
 fore he had finished. As the Princess's tall 
 figure disappeared through the doorway he 
 asked himself what he would feel if she were 
 disappearing at the same time out of his life. 
 
 She would leave a great gap if he stayed on 
 in Montreux. The place, he knew, would be 
 almost unbearable to him now without her. 
 But if he too went away ? If he travelled, 
 or if he went back again to his old life in 
 
io8 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 England how would it be then ? Just how 
 much did she mean to him ? He could not 
 decide. Perhaps his uncertainty meant that 
 she was not indispensable to him. Yet he 
 hated to think of never seeing her again. A 
 man of his age probably could not " fall in 
 love " as young people do. But did he love 
 the Princess ? He said to himself that it was 
 ridiculous to be debating about such a thing, 
 that the very fact of his doing so must mean 
 that love was far from him. Nevertheless, he 
 did not feel certain even of that. Indecision 
 possessed him, and when he got up to leave 
 the dining-room he did not know what he 
 was going to do. All he knew was that he 
 was firmly resolved to do something quite 
 definite before another day dawned. He would 
 draw the inspiration which would prompt 
 him to action from the Princess herself. 
 
 The day was sunny and cold, and the 
 lake was calm, and looked almost like silk 
 in the pale gold of the sun-rays. He decided 
 to suggest a walk on the curving path by the 
 waterside which leads towards Vevey. Few 
 people went there in winter, he knew, and in 
 the afternoon there would probably be scarcely 
 
The Spirit of the Time 109 
 
 anyone. He looked for the Princess in the 
 public rooms, but did not find her. She had 
 probably gone up to rest and read after 
 luncheon. He sat down to wait, certain that 
 she would come down before very long. 
 
 Soon after two o'clock she appeared in 
 the hall dressed for walking, her , pointed 
 stick in her hand. He got up and joined her. 
 
 " If you are going for a walk may I come 
 with you ? " 
 
 " Yes, do." 
 
 " Where shall we go ? " 
 
 " Anywhere you like." 
 
 He suggested the lake-side ; she agreed 
 and they started. 
 
 For a little while they walked in silence. 
 Then they began to talk about nature, the 
 various faint colours on the water, the effects 
 of cloud and sunshine on the mountains, the 
 differing beauties which come with the turn- 
 ing of the wheel of Time during the hours 
 of a day. The Princess said that she loved 
 best the frankness and boldness of noon ; 
 Derrick was for twilight. 
 
 " And in people ? " she said. 
 
 " How do you mean, exactly ? " 
 
no The Spirit of the Time 
 
 " Which do you like best in people, the 
 noontide character, bald, direct, forcible, and, 
 perhaps, rather shadowless, or the twilight 
 nature, full of softness and shadows, of 
 scarcely defined nuances and suggestions of 
 the not fully revealed ? " 
 
 He hesitated with his eyes upon her. 
 
 " I scarcely know," he said. " I'm not 
 sure that I have ever thought about character 
 in just that way. And you ? >: 
 
 " I like the noontide character. There is 
 something in it I can grip and hold on to, 
 something I feel safe with. That is why, on 
 the whole, I like men better than women." 
 
 " Would you would you ever marry 
 again ? " 
 
 He said it, almost blurted it out, abruptly 
 before he knew his own intention. The words 
 seemed to have come into his mouth without 
 being impelled by any action of his mind. 
 Without any change of expression the Princess 
 replied : 
 
 " I consider that I have passed the age for 
 marriage. I do not believe in middle-age 
 marriages. There is little romance in them, 
 and my experience tells me that marriage 
 
The Spirit of the Time in 
 
 without romance is like wine that has been 
 made thin by the addition of water. Besides, 
 in any case, I think marriage a very danger- 
 ous experiment. Women, I suppose, have to 
 make it if they get the chance, but if I were 
 a man marriage would be the last thing I 
 should undertake." 
 
 " I dare say you are right," said Derrick. 
 
 " Your condition shows me that you hold 
 my opinion on that matter," she said, with a 
 smile. 
 
 And she went on talking about all sorts 
 of things. 
 
 Presently they came to the end of the 
 path and turned to go back. 
 
 " To the eternal Montreux ! " the Princess 
 remarked. 
 
 " I wish I wish you were free," said 
 Derrick. 
 
 66 My friend so do I ! It is terrible to 
 have one's wings clipped if one has a nature 
 like mine. I don't say I am an eagle, but 
 really here I sometimes feel like one in a 
 cage." 
 
 " Would you could you ever allow me to 
 open the door ? " 
 
ii2 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 " You ! How ? " 
 
 " It would be quite easy." 
 
 " I'm afraid not. I'm afraid it would be 
 impossible." 
 
 " Indeed it wouldn't." 
 
 " But you know my strict principles about 
 money. And only money can open the cage- 
 door. So you see ! ' : 
 
 " The quid pro quo makes everything quite 
 right in such a matter, I think." 
 
 " The quid pro quo ? " 
 
 " Yes. Why don't you sell those beautiful 
 pearls of yours ? Surely freedom is more to 
 you than some strings of pretty things to 
 hang round your neck ? ' 
 
 " Oh, as to that, I have long ceased to care 
 for jewels." 
 
 " Then let me buy yours." 
 
 The Princess looked frankly surprised. 
 
 " You ! But you are not a trafficker in 
 such things," she said. " One has only to 
 look at you to know that that sort of business 
 is quite out of your line. Why, the mere 
 thought of you dealing in jew r els makes me 
 smile." 
 
 And, indeed, she showed her splendid 
 
The Spirit of the Time 113 
 
 strong teeth in a smile which seemed bordering 
 on a fit of undisguised laughter. 
 
 "A lot of people are buying up jewels 
 and other things in Switzerland in order to 
 sell them at a profit elsewhere," said Derrick. 
 " It's a very paying business. Jewels are 
 fetching immense prices in Paris and 
 London." 
 
 " Yes, that is true. No doubt if I were 
 in the Rue de la Paix I could walk into a 
 jeweller's shop and get a big price for my 
 pearls. They would go to the wife of a war 
 profiteer, one of the new guinea-pigs whom 
 I hear of but seldom see though a few 
 come here from time to time." 
 
 " Forgive me but but have you ever 
 tried to sell your pearls ? ' : 
 
 " Yes, more than once. But the gentle- 
 men to whom I applied, knowing I was a 
 lady unaccustomed to such matters and in 
 great difficulties for money, naturally tried to 
 swindle me over the price. The pearls are 
 worth at least twelve thousand pounds. I 
 am willing to sell them for six thousand. But 
 the gentlemen who come to Switzerland on 
 business do not consider that to make a profit 
 
ii4 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 of some thousands on an outlay of six thousand 
 is sufficient payment for their trouble." 
 
 " Princess ! let me give you six thou- 
 sand," said Derrick, reddening. " You will 
 be putting a large profit into my pocket. 
 Isn't that a quid pro quo ? " 
 
 " I am sure you are not in Montreux to 
 make money, my friend." 
 
 " Nevertheless, I have some business in- 
 stinct and, frankly, this affair appeals to it." 
 
 She looked full into his eyes. 
 
 " You would merely do it for my benefit." 
 
 " And pocket a lot of money into the 
 bargain." 
 
 " That by the way. Besides, you would 
 have to smuggle the pearls out of Switzer- 
 land." 
 
 "That wouldn't be difficult. I should 
 wear them. I don't think I am the type of 
 man they would be likely to search at the 
 douane." 
 
 The Princess broke into a laugh. 
 
 " No, indeed ! You would never be sus- 
 pected." 
 
 " Then will you agree ? " 
 
 After a moment of silence she said, in a 
 
The Spirit of the Time 115 
 
 different tone of voice, more earnest, more 
 intimate : 
 
 " I don't like transactions of this sort 
 between friends. And you and I are friends. 
 It is true that I should be let out of my cage 
 and that you but I don't like the idea. 
 There is something repugnant to me in taking 
 money from you even in such a way as you 
 suggest. Oh, this horrible war ! What situa- 
 tions it drives us into ! " 
 
 " We must face them with common sense. 
 My common sense tells me that when we can 
 both profit by a very simple action we should 
 be foolish to be held back from it by too 
 great sensitiveness. And something else 
 certainly not common sense tells me that I 
 was led to come here for the very purpose 
 of opening the door of your cage." 
 
 She turned her big black eyes on him 
 and now they looked deep and mysterious. 
 
 46 It is strange," she said, " that the very 
 first time I saw you I felt as if you had come 
 to Montreux because of me. You never 
 seemed to be really a stranger to me." 
 
 " If there is a purpose in destiny I think 
 the important events in our lives must be 
 
n6 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 planned. Are you a woman who would 
 strive to interfere with the plan made for 
 you ? " 
 
 " Such striving would be useless, of course," 
 she said. 
 
 And then they walked on in silence till they 
 were in front of the garden of the Monney 
 Hotel. There she stopped. 
 
 " I will go in now," she said, " and have 
 a long, quiet think. When I have to make 
 an important decision I lie down on my sofa 
 and give myself into the hands of the Fates. 
 It is almost like giving oneself up to an an- 
 aesthetic something about it which seems 
 physical. It is a resigning of the will to the 
 Guides. I have no idea at present whether 
 I shall accept your suggestion or not. But 
 some time this evening, or at latest to-morrow 
 morning, I shall know. Now, au revoir." 
 
 She gave him her hand, and pressed his 
 warmly, even held it for a moment. In 
 that moment Derrick felt inclined to say, 
 " Why not solve the question by marrying 
 me?" 
 
 But he did not speak. For he realized 
 that the Princess had, in effect, very cleverly 
 
The Spirit of the Time 117 
 
 refused him when they were walking towards 
 Vevey. If he made her refuse him more 
 definitely there would probably be an end to 
 all hope of helping her. 
 
 He watched her tall figure walking away 
 from him and wondered whether he regretted 
 her prejudice against middle-aged marriages 
 or not. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 WHEN the Princess disappeared Derrick went 
 to the post office and telegraphed to his 
 broker in London, telling him to sell out six 
 thousand pounds' worth of stock at once. What- 
 ever the Princess decided and he had no idea 
 what her decision would be he would be 
 ready. After sending the telegram he went for 
 a long walk to Villeneuve and beyond. He 
 came back glowing with health, tingling from 
 the strong winter air and pleasantly tired. It 
 was dark, and on looking at his watch he 
 found that it was just six o'clock. He longed 
 to go up to the Princess's sitting-room and 
 have a good tea in her company. But, of 
 course, she had had tea long ago. Well, he 
 would see her at dinner, and must manage to 
 wait until then. But he was beginning to 
 realize very thoroughly the delight of having 
 a clever and sympathetic woman in his life. 
 When they parted he would certainly miss 
 
 her very much, even painfully, he thought. 
 
 118 
 
The Spirit of the Time 119 
 
 Suddenly it struck him that if she decided 
 to sell her pearls to him their parting would 
 be hastened. For then, no doubt, she would 
 leave Montreux, and he would have to go to 
 Paris or London to get rid of the jewels. 
 
 And where would she go ? He wondered. 
 Often she had told him that she longed to 
 leave Montreux, but she had never said where 
 she wanted to go definitely. Or had she ? 
 Yes, to be sure, she had spoken of Asia as if 
 with absolute longing, had lamented that when 
 she was rich she had been contented with 
 the varnish and the ignorance of Europe. 
 But even six thousand pounds wasn't such 
 a very large sum. Such a woman, accus- 
 tomed to luxury, couldn't travel for ever on 
 a capital which would only produce some 
 three hundred a year. And if she recklessly 
 decided to treat the six thousand as income 
 she would be facing an impossible- future. 
 
 The fact that she had made up her mind 
 not to marry again had proved to him that 
 she was not a greedy woman. Otherwise, 
 with her cleverness and decided physical at- 
 traction, to say nothing of her rather brusque, 
 but very definite, personal charm, she could 
 
120 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 easily shelter herself from poverty under the 
 wing of a wealthy husband under his wing, 
 for instance. (Remembering her allusion to 
 the eagle he could not help smiling.) 
 
 He entered the hotel, meeting its warmth 
 with a strong sensation of cosy pleasure. 
 Immediately the hall porter came towards 
 him. 
 
 " If monsieur has not had tea yet, 
 Madame the Princess begs him to go up 
 and have it in her sitting-room." 
 
 " Thank you. I'll go at once," said Der- 
 rick, with unusual heartiness. 
 
 He left his coat and hat in the hall, and 
 almost bounded up the stairs like a young 
 man. 
 
 44 This Swiss air is wonderful ! " he said to 
 himself. 4t By Jove ! I am hungry I v 
 
 He tapped at the door on the second floor. 
 
 44 Entrez ! " said a firm voice. 
 
 He opened the door. 
 
 A strong smell of flowers greeted him. 
 He saw violets in vases scattered about the 
 small room. There were also carnations and 
 roses. Books lay about almost everywhere, 
 newspapers, magazines he saw among others 
 
The Spirit of the Time 121 
 
 the Revue des Deux Mondes, the Hibbert 
 Journal and the Round Table. A big screen 
 concealed the door into the bedroom. A 
 round table with tea things was near it, and 
 a large sofa, well supplied with big cushions, 
 on which the Princess was lying in a dark 
 blue dress smoking a cigarette. 
 
 " Ah, it is you at last ! You have been 
 for a long walk. I can see the air from the 
 snows, the exercise, in your eyes. And I can 
 see you are hungry, too. So you have not 
 had tea, and all is well." 
 
 " But you " 
 
 " No, I have waited on the chance." 
 
 She pressed the bell, and an elderly woman 
 came in from the bedroom carrying two 
 plates covered with the cakes and pastries 
 for which Montreux is famous. 
 
 " Bring us the tea and some toast, Mar- 
 guerite," said the Princess in French. " All 
 the English like toast." 
 
 " 1 know I know ! " said the maid, with 
 a friendly smile at Derrick, " and to-day we 
 have plenty of butter." 
 
 " Mon Dieu, how jolly ! J1 said Derrick, 
 mixing French and English in his enthusiasm. 
 
122 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 When the maid had gone out of the 
 room he added : 
 
 " You are spoiling me to-day, but I'm 
 bound to say I like it, and I feel as if it were 
 doing me moral good." 
 
 " I think it is happiness which does us 
 moral good. And I know that unhappiness, 
 worries, great and persistent difficulties, the 
 necessity for perpetual struggling, do us moral 
 harm, whatever the dear teachers European 
 of religion may say." 
 
 " Are you going to allow me to make you 
 happier ? " he asked. 
 
 He was standing looking down at her on 
 her sofa. 
 
 " I will tell you all about it when Mar- 
 guerite has ministered to us." 
 
 In two or three minutes Marguerite came 
 with tea, perfectly made toast and a plate 
 covered with pats of delicious pale yellow 
 butter. 
 
 " Now all is well ! " said the Princess. 
 
 And she sat up, arranged the cushions at 
 her back, and began to pour out the tea. 
 
 " Help yourself to everything," she said, 
 as Marguerite left them alone. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 123 
 
 " I will indeed, without ceremony," ex- 
 claimed Derrick. 
 
 " Oh, and here is jam ! " 
 She stretched out her hand to a bureau, 
 and brought out of it a large pot of straw- 
 berry jam. 
 
 " That's the finishing touch ! " said Der- 
 rick. " Do you know you are making me feel 
 very young ? v 
 
 " So much the better ! When I make 
 people feel old I shall retire entirely from all 
 worldly things." 
 
 " And now I am waiting ! " 
 
 " Well," she said, and her face changed, 
 " I gave myself to the Guides." 
 
 " And what did they teU you ? Or didn't 
 they tell you anything ? " 
 
 She was silent for so long a time that 
 Derrick wondered. Her face looked stern and 
 almost harsh in its immobility, and her black 
 eyes gazed into vacancy. She seemed to be 
 thinking profoundly, but there was no evi- 
 dence of any mental struggle, or even of any 
 mental indecision in her appearance. On the 
 contrary, she looked strong and dominating, 
 and perfectly self-possessed. At last she 
 
124 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 spoke, without turning her eyes towards 
 him. 
 
 " The Guides told me I had better accept 
 your offer," she said. 
 
 And there was a sombre and fatalistic 
 sound in her voice, he thought. 
 
 " There is something I have to do, and I 
 cannot do it here. But I dislike very much 
 having this transaction with you." 
 
 " Why ? " he asked. 
 
 " I cannot tell you why. Do not ask 
 me. Do not even wish me to tell you. But 
 remember, whatever happens, that I had a 
 real regard for you." 
 
 " Had ! " he said. " Is it in the past 
 then ? " 
 
 " Do not let us talk about it. The past, 
 the present, the future perhaps they are all 
 one, though we do not feel it so. That may 
 be one of the mysteries." 
 
 Derrick felt for the moment chilled, almost 
 frightened, as if a strange wave of cold went 
 over and through him. 
 
 " I hope our friendship will never be a 
 thing of the past," he said. " It has meant, 
 it means, a great deal to me." 
 
The Spirit of the Time 125 
 
 " You are a good fellow," said the Princess, 
 " a thorough Englishman. Even your defi- 
 ciences, if I may call them so, do you credit. 
 When I think of the cunning and meanness 
 of others I admire them more than I can say. 
 I respect them even. But 
 
 " But what ? What were you going to 
 say ? " 
 
 " Nothing nothing. Here are the pearls." 
 
 She lifted both her hands and carefully, 
 with her delicate precision, she took the 
 strings from her neck. The lustrous jewels 
 gleamed almost like satin in the light as she 
 moved them. 
 
 " Take them ! " she said. " I must let 
 them go to you, though I wish it had been 
 to anyone else." 
 
 And she gave them to Derrick, who received 
 them carefully. 
 
 " Wait a moment ! " she added. 
 
 She got up, went into her bedroom, and 
 came back with a dark blue case in her hands. 
 
 66 Here is their home ! Put them into it." 
 
 Derrick put the pearls into their bed of 
 white velvet and shut up the case. 
 
 " I shall write you out a cheque for six 
 
126 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 thousand pounds to-night," he said diffi- 
 dently. 
 
 A slight redness showed in the Princess's 
 cheeks. 
 
 " This war has been an accursed thing for 
 everybody," she said. " What it has de- 
 stroyed ! What it has destroyed ! But now 
 let us talk of other things ! " 
 
 And suddenly she changed, seemed to force 
 herself back to the woman he knew and fancied 
 he understood, the woman of courage, dis- 
 tinction and fascination, full of mental vitality 
 and interesting frankness. 
 
 That night Derrick wrote out a cheque 
 for six thousand pounds and sent it up to her 
 after she had gone to her rooms. 
 
 In a few minutes he received a note con- 
 taining only these words : 
 
 " My friend, I thank you. 
 Your friend 
 
 "ANNA ARANENSKY." 
 
 He read it twice. Then he locked it away 
 with the pearls. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THREE days passed and Derrick was still in 
 Montreux and had done nothing about the 
 pearls which were locked up in his dressing- 
 case. He did not choose to hand them over 
 to the director to be put in the hotel safe. 
 The director might recognize the case as having 
 belonged to the Princess. So they remained 
 in Derrick's bedroom. Between the Princess 
 and him they had not been mentioned again. 
 The Baroness Hausen had said not a word 
 about them, though, of course, she must know 
 what had happened. Her manner towards 
 Derrick had not changed, had not softened, 
 though no doubt she thought that he had 
 yielded to her suggestion out of compassion, 
 because of the unfortunate situation in which 
 she and the Princess were placed. Any grati- 
 tude seemed far from her. In fact, sometimes 
 when Derrick met her cold blue eyes he found 
 himself wondering whether the Princess could 
 
 have kept the matter secret even from Katya. 
 
 127 
 
128 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 But that was surely impossible. For the dis- 
 appearance of the jewels no longer worn by 
 her friend must have attracted the Baron- 
 ess's attention and led to explanations. 
 
 The Princess also had at first shown no 
 change in her manner. Always cordial, 
 friendly, frank and outspoken, she had con- 
 tinued to be so until the third day came. 
 Then Derrick thought he noticed a distinct 
 alteration in her demeanour. She seemed to 
 him to be unusually restless, but to be trying 
 to control or conceal it. Once or twice, when 
 her eyes met his, he thought he saw in them 
 a fleeting expression of almost hostile in- 
 quiry. And there were moments when he had 
 a strong and mysterious sensation that her 
 mind was trying to work in some strange way 
 upon his, was trying to impose itself upon his 
 mind, to plead with him or to compel him to 
 do something. He had the feeling that the 
 Princess was endeavouring to convey some- 
 thing to him which she did not choose to 
 express in words. At first he did not know 
 what it was, but on the fourth day after the 
 pearls had come into his possession a physical 
 restlessness, drawn, he believed, by h m 
 
The Spirit of the Time 129 
 
 from the Princess, brought him enlighten- 
 ment. 
 
 He began to feel like a traveller who has 
 lingered too long in one place, and who ought 
 to go on his way, whether he really wishes to 
 do so or not. And he felt that this feeling in 
 him and the Princess's changed demeanour 
 were caused by the fact that she wanted him 
 to take the pearls away from the hotel, per- 
 haps even from Montreux, that she was irri- 
 tated with him for not having removed them, 
 that she was trying subtly to convey this 
 irritation to him, and thus to infect him with 
 her own restlessness, without putting it into 
 words. 
 
 He grew at last to be quite certain of this. 
 And yet he did not leave Montreux. For 
 something obstinate rose up and asserted 
 itself in him, something that was part of his 
 English manhood and that declined to bend 
 to a woman. He thought, " Why should I 
 go away until I choose to go for my own 
 pleasure ? I have made the Princess safe for 
 a long time. That is all that need matter to 
 her. As to my profit on the sale of the pearls 
 I can take that when I please, or not take it 
 
130 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 at all. The pearls are mine, and if I decide 
 to keep them that is my affair." 
 
 He did not mean to keep them, but he 
 was in no great hurry to sell them. And he 
 did not want to leave Montreux. 
 
 But as the days went by he was increas- 
 ingly conscious of the Princess's secret rest- 
 lessness, and of the steady effort which her 
 mind was making to convey her restlessness 
 to him. When they were talking together 
 she sometimes dropped the conversation, as 
 a tired hostess does when she wants to get 
 rid of a visitor who has stayed too long in 
 her drawing-room ; she showed an increas- 
 ing weariness of Montreux, an increasing 
 cynicism in her outlook upon its society ; she 
 expressed more than once, and -with a bitter- 
 ness which reminded Derrick of the Baroness 
 Hausen, her contempt for European ideals, 
 European culture and tendencies of thought. 
 He felt sure that her mind was turning to- 
 wards Asia with more definite longing. He 
 had put into her hands the means of escape 
 from the cage ; of course she must wish to 
 use them. 
 
 But Montreux was not a cage to him, 
 
The Spirit of the Time 131 
 
 though he knew he would not stay in it 
 another day if the Princess left it. 
 
 She was free now ; she could go away if 
 she chose. The fact that he remained in 
 Montreux did not bind her to stay on there 
 too. But he was resolved for the present 
 not to go away. He liked his life at the 
 Monney ; he valued his intercourse with the 
 Princess. So he was obstinate and clung to 
 his happiness. The fact that without his aid 
 the Princess would have been obliged to re- 
 main on indefinitely in Montreux salved his 
 conscience. Already he had risked deliber- 
 ately losing his present happiness. He was 
 surely unselfish enough. He need not make 
 further sacrifices on the altar of friendship. 
 
 But his obstinacy in remaining was met, 
 he believed, by an increasing, though unex- 
 pressed, determination on her part that he 
 should go. He felt it underlying all their 
 intercourse, and it angered him and distressed 
 him. He never alluded to it. If he did so 
 he felt that some change would have to be 
 made. But he began to feel that there was 
 a mysterious warfare between them which 
 nevertheless had not broken their friendship. 
 
132 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 He believed that the Princess had a real 
 regard for him, and that she esteemed him 
 highly. He preferred her to all other women. 
 And, nevertheless, they were at war, because 
 he was defying her will, and she did not cease 
 to exercise it in consequence of his defiance. 
 He began to wish very much that she would 
 be quite frank with him, would tell him 
 exactly what she wanted him to do, would 
 give him the reasons that prompted her desire. 
 A man would probably have done that. But 
 women, he supposed, being more mysterious 
 than men, must act more subtly than men 
 do. Possibly in their subtleties lay their 
 attraction for men, and possibly they realized 
 that, and therefore gave the rein to a 
 natural impulse, knowing that wisdom 
 guided them. But, he thought, it was 
 sometimes damned hard on the men. In 
 fact, it was damned hard on him now. He 
 was beginning to suffer in this warfare which 
 was not made natural by any strong, vigor- 
 ous blows, but which was a complex matter 
 of ambushes and traps and scouting expedi- 
 tions in the dark. Their intercourse seemed 
 to him daily more difficult. Camaraderie was 
 
The Spirit of the Time 133 
 
 gradually wearing thin between them. There 
 was no more ease and spontaneity in their 
 conversations. At times he even felt that the 
 Princess was growing hostile to him, though 
 she never hinted at it in words. 
 
 He read hostility, he believed, occasionally 
 in her long, expressive eyes turned on him in a 
 swift, surreptitious glance, in a rigidity of her 
 lips when they ceased from speaking, in the 
 long, cold silence which followed and which 
 he knew not how to break. 
 
 At last, unable to endure any longer the 
 strange and almost spectral frost in which 
 their friendship, once so warm and lively, 
 was becoming enveloped, Derrick resolved to 
 ask the Princess what was the matter, whether 
 he had offended her in any way, whether she 
 wished him to do something which he had 
 not done, or to refrain from doing something 
 which he had persisted in doing. If woman 
 was mysterious it was surely the prerogative 
 of man to be bold and uncompromising. He 
 had not been that, but had lost himself in 
 delicacies, and now found himself struggling 
 in the midst of under-things which he could 
 neither grasp with destructive hands nor even 
 
134 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 understand. It was time to put an end to 
 a situation which he could no longer bear 
 his part in with self-possession. Convinced 
 of this, he acted with a promptitude and 
 energy which surprised himself. He asked 
 the Princess to allow him to come up to her 
 sitting-room one night after dinner, and directly 
 the door was shut behind him, he said : 
 
 " You know why I wished to see you 
 alone this evening." 
 
 " I don't think I do," she said, with less 
 than her usual complete naturalness and self- 
 possession. 
 
 She was standing near the fireplace. He 
 came up to her and stood by her side. 
 
 " You are changing towards me. I want 
 to know why. Have I done anything you 
 dislike ? " 
 
 With a sort of deep and sad irony she 
 answered : 
 
 " You have done a very dangerous, what 
 you English call a very risky, thing. You 
 have benefited me." 
 
 " Do you mean that my buying your pearls 
 has made you dislike me ? " said Derrick, 
 with a cold feeling at his heart. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 135 
 
 " Oh, no, my friend. I am not fallen so 
 low as to be capable of quite such baseness. 
 But but well, you may not understand 
 women's feelings are often so incomprehen- 
 sible to men but I hate now being in the 
 same house with the pearls. Can you com- 
 prehend that ? Why do you keep them ? 
 They are of no use to you. It was under- 
 stood between us that you were to take them 
 to London and sell them " 
 
 " To London ! But we never " 
 
 " I wish you to sell them in London." 
 
 " But why ? " 
 
 " I have information that they are paying 
 much higher prices for jewels there than in 
 Paris at the present time." 
 
 "You want me to go to London at once 
 and get rid of the pearls ? " 
 
 " They are a gene between you and me here 
 in this house. I have six thousand pounds, 
 a little fortune for me, which makes me feel 
 oh, so rich ! And you you have some 
 strings of things useless and ridiculous to you, 
 things which you despise, as all true men 
 despise jewels and wonder at women's passion 
 for them. The inequality between us is too 
 
136 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 great and makes me feel no longer at ease 
 with you. I have the shame of the benefited. 
 It is poor of me, but I cannot help it. Com- 
 rades must stand upon an equal footing. You 
 and I no longer do this. I am on a lower 
 step than you, and as I am not fond, I con- 
 fess it, of looking up, I am in a false posi- 
 tion. The pearls cry out to me from your 
 room, ' You beggar on horseback ! ' 
 
 " But, my dear friend 
 
 " They do, they do ! I hear them day and 
 night. I cannot rest for their voices. That 
 is the truth." 
 
 He had never before seen her show so much 
 emotion, so much excitement. There was 
 something akin to anger in her manner and 
 voice, and for the first time he felt strongly 
 the Russian in her, realized that beneath her 
 good breeding, her distinction and savoir faire, 
 there was something quite different, something 
 almost barbaric, that he knew very little, 
 perhaps nothing, about. 
 
 " Do you understand me ? ' she asked. 
 " Can you enter into my feelings ? ' 
 
 " I think so yes. But if you feel like 
 that I almost wonder that " 
 
The Spirit of the Time 137 
 
 He hesitated. 
 
 " What what is it that you wonder ? " 
 
 " Well, you are free now. You can go 
 wherever you like. You told me you were 
 sick of Montreux. Yet you stay on here when 
 you could go away away both from Mon- 
 treux and the pearls." 
 
 " You wish me to go, and you are to 
 stay ! " 
 
 " I don't wish you to go," he exclaimed- 
 " You know that. If you went I shouldn't 
 remain on here for a day. No, but I wonder, 
 if you feel as you say you do, why you stay 
 
 on." 
 
 " And why do you stay ? ?: 
 
 " You know quite well why." 
 
 She moved away from him and sat down. 
 
 " But London is not very f ar ! " she 
 said. 
 
 " You mean, I might easily go to London 
 and come back ? " 
 
 She said nothing, only sat still looking up 
 at him. 
 
 " Suppose I did go to London and did 
 come back ? ): 
 
 " Yes ? " 
 
138 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 " Should I still find you here on my 
 return ? " 
 
 As he spoke he noticed that her strong 
 face twitched slightly. 
 
 " Why should I what makes you 
 think ? " she said, in a low voice. 
 
 " I don't say I think you would be gone." 
 
 Then " 
 
 " I scarcely know what I think." 
 
 " Why should you suppose I would run 
 away from you ? ' : 
 
 " I don't say that. Indeed, I can't imagine 
 you running away from anything or anyone. 
 It is only the weak who do such a thing as 
 that. And you are not a weak character." 
 
 " Who knows ? " 
 
 " I know." 
 
 " You can sum up a woman, and a woman 
 who is not of your nation ? ' : 
 
 " I know you are not weak," he said, with 
 obstinacy. 
 
 " I am what the War has made me. That 
 is what I am ! " she said, with an extraordinary 
 bitterness. " You do not know what I was, 
 and you never will know." 
 
 " And do I not know what you are ? " 
 
The Spirit of the Time 139 
 
 " No not yet." 
 
 Suddenly Derrick thought of the Baroness 
 Hausen. He did not know why. But he felt 
 as if he saw her before him in the room, fair, 
 good-looking, implacable, devoid, apparently, 
 of all soft human feeling, incapable of belief 
 in anything righteous, carrying her burden 
 of nameless experience, desirous of terrible 
 revenges upon the human brood. 
 
 " When you go away from here is the 
 Baroness going with you ? " he asked abruptly. 
 
 The Princess looked almost startled, and 
 again her face twitched. 
 
 " Why should you ask that ? " 
 
 " I'm going to be infernally rude. You 
 must try to forgive me. But I I detest the 
 Baroness." 
 
 " Katya ! What has she done to you ? " 
 
 66 Nothing, but I detest her, and hate to 
 think of you with her. Will she go with you 
 when you go ? " 
 
 " I don't know what is going to become 
 of Katya." 
 
 " Do you care for her ? " 
 
 " I pity her." 
 
 " Do you care for her ? " 
 
140 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 "It is sometimes very difficult to know 
 just what one feels." 
 
 " Yes ; that's true ! " he said, gazing at her. 
 
 He was remembering just then how he had 
 debated within himself about the Princess, he 
 was remembering that day on the path by 
 the lake, when she had left him wondering 
 whether she had stricken him by her clever 
 evasion, or whether at the core he was still 
 sound. 
 
 " But it's only with some, very few, people 
 one feels like that," he added. " And I sup- 
 pose it always means that a part of them, 
 perhaps a great part, is hidden from you. 
 You don't know of what nature that part is, 
 whether you could be in sympathy with it 
 or not if you knew it." 
 
 " You are stating what you are thinking 
 about me." 
 
 Derrick reddened under her steady gaze. 
 
 " I know this, anyhow," he said, " that the 
 reason why I have not gone away to get rid 
 of the pearls is because 1 can't bring myself 
 to separate from you. All these days I have 
 felt that something in you was trying to push 
 me away. But I was resolved not to go. If 
 
The Spirit of the Time 141 
 
 you choose to go I can do nothing. But I 
 don't intend to leave you while you stay here." 
 " There can be no happiness, no ease, in our 
 friendship, while you still have the pearls," 
 she said. " Get rid of them as soon as possi- 
 ble, but not here. I know how it is in Switzer- 
 land. Take them to London." 
 
 " Paris is nearer." 
 
 " I have told you my reason for wishing 
 it to be London. I can say no more. If you 
 do not choose to make the matter as decent 
 for me as it can be made, if you do not choose 
 to make the best of your bargain for your- 
 self, and so to pour a little balm on my con- 
 science, I cannot make you do it. You are 
 a free man, and I quite realize a man with a 
 will of your own. But, at any rate, if you 
 really have any regard for me, get rid of the 
 pearls. Till you do I sit here in your debt 
 for six thousand pounds." 
 
 " Princess, I will go away and get rid of 
 the pearls, if you won't make it unnecessary." 
 
 " How ? How could I make it " 
 
 " Marry me and take them back as my 
 present to you." 
 
 There was a long silence between, them. 
 
 J 
 
142 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 It must surely be caused by some strong 
 hesitation in her, and, therefore, it made 
 Derrick hope. He knew now that he wished 
 intensely to make this strange woman his ; 
 to pluck the heart out of her mystery, to 
 conquer the obstinacies, the resistances, which 
 he divined in her nature, to give her the 
 peace of ordered and stable circumstances, to 
 travel with her to the lands she desired. That 
 there was a risk in what he wanted to do he 
 realized, but now he was ready to take it. 
 The only thing he felt he could not risk was 
 going away in uncertainty as to whether he 
 would ever see her again. 
 
 " Will you do that ? " he said at last, as 
 she did not speak. 
 
 She sighed heavily before she spoke. Then 
 she answered : 
 
 " I wish I could do it, I wish I could." 
 
 " Then do it ! You are free." 
 
 " If only you had never asked me ! I 
 never meant to allow you to ask me. But 
 now it is done and can never be undone. 
 All this comes too late." 
 
 " What do you mean ? Surely it is never 
 too late for a little happiness ? 5: 
 
The Spirit of the Time 143 
 
 " You and I would not be happy together 
 in that way. I know it. But now I " 
 
 Suddenly she got up with an air of strong 
 resolution, went to a writing table, unlocked 
 a drawer in it, and lifted out a small dispatch 
 box. Then she drew a little gold chain to 
 which a key was attached from inside her 
 dress, quickly opened the box and took out 
 an envelope. 
 
 " Here is your cheque to me. Take it 
 back. I do not wish to cash it." 
 
 " Princess ! " 
 
 " No no ! Now you have asked me and 
 I have refused, I cannot take it from you." 
 
 " I shall not take it back." 
 
 " Really you must." 
 
 " I shall not. If I can't be your husband, 
 at least I can, and will, remain your friend. 
 To-morrow I shall go away and take the 
 pearls with me. I will go to London. I will 
 get the biggest price possible, make my pro- 
 fit as large as I can for your sake. If I come 
 back to you richer than I was before I wrote 
 that cheque by some thousands of pounds I 
 shall have been benefited by you. I shan't 
 be like you. I shan't mind that. To be 
 
144 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 in your debt will be happiness for me. I shall 
 enjoy being on the lower step. And then, 
 perhaps, I shall dare to ask you again. Now, 
 good night ! j: 
 
 He turned quickly and went out of the 
 room. 
 
 On the following day he started for London 
 without obtaining from the Princess any abso- 
 lute promise that she would remain on at 
 Montreux till his return. But in their last 
 interview he told her that he would soon 
 come back, and that he expected to find her 
 still there. 
 
 " You have not done with me yet ! " he 
 said. 
 
 " How do you know that ? " 
 
 " I can't tell you now. But I do know it." 
 
 " I shall not dare to contradict you," she 
 said, with a faint smile. 
 
 At parting she gave him a long pressure 
 of the hand, and followed him with her eyes 
 as he went out of the room. 
 
 He did not see the Baroness Hausen to 
 say good-bye. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 DERRICK arrived safely in Paris with the 
 pearls, and put up at the Hotel Crillon. On 
 his arrival he telegraphed to the Princess as 
 follows : " Am in Paris, may go to London 
 to-morrow night. Best salutations. Au re- 
 voir. Derrick Merton." Then he locked up 
 the pearls in a dispatch box and consigned 
 the 'box to the safe of the hotel. This done, 
 he had a bath, rested for a while, then got 
 into evening dress, and went out to dine at 
 the Ritz. 
 
 It chanced that at the Ritz he came across 
 a man whom he knew very well, a fellow- 
 member of one of his clubs, the Travellers', 
 and a remarkably shrewd man of the world. 
 This friend, whose name was George Cock- 
 ayne, was staying at the hotel and dining 
 alone. He suggested that Derrick should join 
 him and that they should go to a theatre 
 after dinner, and Derrick was very glad to 
 
 agree. For he felt that he wanted company 
 
 MS 
 
146 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 that night to distract his mind, which was 
 inclined to fix itself with obstinate persist- 
 ence upon the recent events at Montreux. 
 
 " Where do you come from, Merton ? " 
 said Cockayne, as they sat down among a 
 crowd of Londoners and Americans. 
 
 Derrick told him. 
 
 " They tell me Switzerland's the most com- 
 fortable country in Europe to be in at the 
 present time," said Cockayne. " First-rate 
 food, moderate prices and very amusing com- 
 pany for those who aren't too particular." 
 
 Derrick confirmed the report as to the 
 comfort, the food and the prices. 
 
 " And what about the company ? They 
 say all the cleverest rascals in Europe are 
 living there like fighting cocks. Did you stay 
 in Geneva, Lucerne or Zurich ? " 
 
 " No, I've only been in Montreux." 
 
 4 What sort of people did you meet there ? 
 Russians ? Egyptians ? Greeks ? Levantine 
 adventurers ? The hotels are full of them, 
 I'm told." 
 
 Derrick gave him a brief sketch of con- 
 ditions at Montreux, so far as he had been 
 able to study them. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 147 
 
 " And what about the women ? 5! con- 
 tinued Cockayne, who was reputed to have a 
 remarkably varied and extensive knowledge of 
 the feminine sex. " A regular jewel market, 
 isn't it ? " 
 
 " What do you mean exactly by a jewel 
 market ? " 
 
 " Well, that there are any amount of 
 women over there whose jewels are displayed 
 for sales on the sly. Fellows are perpetually 
 slipping over from here to Switzerland and 
 coming back with as many pearls and dia- 
 monds on them as the Shah of Persia, but well 
 hidden, of course. The jewellers in the Rue 
 de la Paix are giving damned good prices for 
 jewels from Switzerland. Madame de Reval 
 told me only yesterday " 
 
 And he related a story of a woman, a 
 lover, a deceived husband, jewels and a sale, 
 very Parisian, and very much du jour in its 
 after-the-War actuality. 
 
 " Women's expedients for getting hold of 
 money are cleverer, more tricky, more damned 
 ingenious than ever in these difficult days," 
 said Cockayne. " Since the War the terrific 
 rise in prices has obliged the adventuress to 
 
148 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 sharpen her wits, and find new ways of meet- 
 ing the expenses necessitated by the art she 
 lives for the art of life. I can tell you one 
 or two things " 
 
 And he told them with the sly and cynical 
 relish which was characteristic of him. For, 
 though a very good-natured man, he was fond 
 of pretending to an absolute disbelief in the 
 inherent virtues claimed by some optimists for 
 human nature, and he was extremely fond of 
 good gossip, as almost all persistent frequenters 
 of clubs are. 
 
 " Delicious ! Wasn't it ? " he exclaimed, 
 at the finish of an excellent story of success- 
 ful deceit. " But poor well, I suppose I 
 mustn't mention his name has his eyes open 
 now. He's got rid of his dreams of innocent 
 women. It's wxmderful, though, how guile- 
 less some men who live up to their necks in 
 the world manage to be. Take Kit Vernon, 
 for instance ! You know him, don't you ? ' 
 
 " Yes, slightly." 
 
 " Well " 
 
 And there followed another excellent story 
 of a man hoodwinked and then browbeaten 
 by a woman. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 149 
 
 By this time Cockayne was ordering a 
 second bottle of 1906 champagne, and was 
 just getting into his stride. He had the art 
 of being convivial without ever becoming 
 objectionable, and had one of the toughest 
 heads in London for the carrying of wine. 
 He had been for over a fortnight in Paris, 
 and was able to give Derrick a great deal 
 of the inner social history of the last two or 
 three months. 
 
 " But what about Switzerland ? " he pre- 
 sently inquired again. " Isn't Montreux a 
 small cosmopolis ? Sometimes it's far more 
 amusing to look at the animalcules in a drop 
 of water than in a glass of water. One sees 
 what they're up to more clearly. One isn't 
 confused by too great numbers. Whom did 
 you run across in Montreux ? ' ! 
 
 Derrick gave Cockayne a sketch of the 
 Baroness Hausen, without mentioning her 
 name. Cockayne listened with interest. 
 
 " I wonder what exactly she went through 
 in Russia ? ' : he observed. " It would be 
 interesting to know that. One can guess, of 
 course. And so she is one of the many 
 whom the War has changed into something 
 
i5o The Spirit of the Time 
 
 less, or more, than what I call average 
 human ! v 
 
 " More ! Well, I couldn't agree with that," 
 said Derrick. 
 
 " Well, as you describe her there's some- 
 thing big and strong about her, something 
 absolutely ruthless. That means character, 
 will. You can have bowels of mercy without 
 having an ounce of will." 
 
 " I frankly detested that young woman," 
 said Derrick. 
 
 " But, then, you're rather on the pounce for 
 sympathy, aren't you I mean from women ? " 
 
 " Possibly. At any rate, I hate hard 
 
 women.' 
 
 " The War has made thousands of women 
 as hard as nails. Your baroness was evi- 
 dently one of the most finished specimens of 
 the after-the-War female. Was she there 
 alone ? " 
 
 " No, with with another Russian, a 
 friend." 
 
 " Same type ? " 
 
 " Good heavens no ! " 
 
 " Well, I haven't the honour- 
 
 " No, of course not ! >: 
 
The Spirit of the Time 151 
 
 Derrick had not intended to speak to 
 Cockayne about the Princess Aranensky, but 
 now he changed his mind. He was not going 
 to tell Cockayne her name, but it would be 
 interesting to put the Princess before Cock- 
 ayne, with her lights and her shadows, her 
 frankness and her reticence, to sketch her in 
 outline to him, and to hear what he would 
 say of her. Whatever he said it would cer- 
 tainly not be foolish, and perhaps, by chance, 
 it might throw a light into one or two places 
 which still remained dark before Derrick's 
 scrutiny. He gave himself to the task with 
 an interest which grew as he developed his 
 theme. By talking of the Princess thus to 
 a man who had never seen her he seemed to 
 make closer acquaintance with her. It was 
 almost as if he read an analysis of someone 
 whom till then he had known imperfectly. 
 But he was himself the analyst. 
 
 Cockayne listened attentively. 
 
 " Sounds a curious and very interesting 
 woman," he said, when presently Derrick was 
 silent. " A Russian, you said. Was she from 
 the Baltic Provinces too ? 
 
 " Oh, no." 
 
The Spirit of the Time 
 
 " A Muscovite, perhaps ? 5: 
 
 " She never told me what part of Russia 
 she was born in. But she formerly had large 
 estates in Central Russia I believe." 
 
 " I should guess her to be a Muscovite from 
 what you have told me, probably brought up 
 and trained to the world abroad." 
 
 " What do you mean by trained to the 
 world ? " 
 
 " Well, you have given me the impression 
 that she is a past mistress of the art of the 
 worldly life, just as in talking of the other 
 woman, her friend, you gave me the strong 
 impression of a character tainted by German 
 blood." 
 
 " I felt that too. But in regard to the 
 well, let us call her the Muscovite, she always 
 struck me as marvellously frank and open." 
 
 " My experience is that those apparently 
 frank and open women are much the most 
 dangerous." 
 
 " I could never think of her as a dangerous 
 woman," said Derrick rather stiffly. 
 
 " Has she been hit by the War, do you 
 know ? " 
 
 " I'm afraid she has." 
 
The Spirit of the Time 153 
 
 " A great many of these women in Switzer- 
 land are living on the proceeds of sales. I 
 have heard a lot about them. They sell things 
 piecemeal to people who go over from Paris 
 and elsewhere. There are plenty of funny 
 stories of those sales going about Paris." 
 
 " Paris is always full of potins." 
 
 " And never fuller than now. You see 
 people are buying now who are not professional 
 buyers but very often gentlemen on the make. 
 They hear of these needy souls with no money 
 but very often with valuable possessions, and 
 they think it a good opportunity to try and 
 make a bit for themselves. Sometimes they 
 do make a bit ; but, on the other hand, some- 
 times they get very badly burnt from not know- 
 ing the business. As a rule, it's a great mistake 
 to launch out in anything you haven't been 
 properly trained to. Now, for instance, there 
 was young Pierre de Montanvert " 
 
 Another excellent story followed which 
 lasted till dinner was over. 
 
 " Now where shall we go ? " said Cockayne. 
 
 " Anywhere you like," said Derrick. 
 
 Taking the line of least resistance they de- 
 cided on the Folies Bergere. 
 
154 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 That light-hearted place was crammed, 
 but they got two seats near the stage and 
 smoked their cigars in comfort. Between the 
 parts they walked about in the promenade and 
 the foyer, and watched all the latest absurdities. 
 Derrick tried to be amused, but there was a 
 latent heaviness at his heart. After the small- 
 ness, the intimacy, and not lonely peace of 
 Montreux, Paris seemed almost intolerably 
 crowded and noisy. He looked at the pan- 
 orama of passing or lingering women, he listened 
 to Cockayne's shrewd and cynical comments 
 upon them, he felt the heat of pressed together 
 humanity, he stared into the blaze of the lights, 
 but he thought of the changing lights on the 
 mountains round Montreux, of the white silence 
 of the snows, of the cold pure breath of the 
 world about Leysin, of the sound of a pointed 
 stick striking on ice, and, with a sort of fear, 
 he said to himself, " Am I really in love at my 
 age ? 5: Cockayne's keen comments began to 
 depress him, almost to irritate him, for he felt 
 himself at that moment to be a sentimentalist, 
 and, therefore, inevitably out of touch with 
 a man who prided himself on being guided by 
 what he called common sense. He remem- 
 
The Spirit of the Time 155 
 
 bered Cockayne's remark about the amazing 
 guilelessness of some men who, nevertheless, 
 had lived long in the world. Somehow, when 
 it had been spoken, that remark had seemed 
 to hit him. Yet it had certainly not been in- 
 tended as an allusion to him. No doubt to a 
 man of Cockayne's type anyone who believed 
 thoroughly in a woman so called of the world 
 seemed a guileless man, and probably an 
 object of ridicule. It must surely make life 
 like a very cold room to have such a keen in- 
 sight into the insincerities of one's kind. And 
 yet anything was better than to be a fool. 
 Fortunately, there was a via media, not to 
 mistake trickery for sincerity, but, on the other 
 hand, not to imagine trickery and deceit where 
 they were not present in a nature. 
 
 " I wonder what Cockayne really thought 
 of the Princess as I sketched her out for him," 
 thought Derrick, as they went back to their 
 seats. 
 
 He resolved to ask him at the end of the 
 performance. 
 
 They walked away from the theatre. 
 
 " Come in to the Ritz and smoke a last 
 cigar," said Cockayne. 
 
156 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 Derrick assented. 
 
 When they were in a quiet corner of the 
 hotel, Cockayne said : 
 
 "By the way, where are you bound for 
 now ? " 
 
 Derrick hesitated before answering ; 
 
 lc My plans are rather vague," he said at 
 last. " I shall stay a night or two in Paris. 
 Possibly I may have to run over to London, 
 possibly not. I expect to decide that to- 
 morrow. In any case I don't intend to stay 
 in London, if I go there, for more than two 
 or three days." 
 
 " I shouldn't go there at all if you can help 
 it. The weather is simply infernal, and the 
 journey but you know all about that ; trains 
 packed and late in arriving, the boat a seething 
 mass of seasick humanity. I'm going on to 
 Cap Martin. Why not come with me, if you 
 haven't made any special plans ? " 
 
 " It's awfully good of you. I must think 
 things over. I've got to go back to Switzer- 
 land presently." 
 
 " To have another look at the stony young 
 woman from the Baltic Provinces ? " 
 
 Derrick shook his head with a smile. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 157 
 
 " What did you really make of the other 
 woman whom I told you about ? " he asked. 
 
 " It struck me that she was far the subtler 
 of the two. But it's very difficult to judge 
 anyone, especially a woman, by a description 
 given of her, however good it is. In a woman 
 a look that she doesn't think you will see 
 often gives her away more than half a dozen 
 actions or half a hundred words. What you 
 told me about her opinion of Europe and her 
 desire for Asia interested me. The key to a 
 good deal in her character may be found in 
 that, I should say. She may, perhaps, have 
 some drops of Asiatic blood in her veins, which 
 would make her more at home in Asia, if she 
 ever goes there, than she is in Europe. But 
 taking your description for what it's worth, I 
 should say that she is the type of woman whom 
 no pure-bred Englishman could ever under- 
 stand. I should say, too, that she is in- 
 fernally attractive." 
 
 " She is ! " said Derrick, simply. " I've 
 never been with a woman who was such a 
 good companion." 
 
 " You didn't give me any definite impression 
 of what the Americans would call her physical 
 
i58 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 ' make-up.' And that has a tremendous 
 amount to do with what a woman really 
 
 is." 
 
 " I honestly don't know anything about 
 that side of her. But, remember, she's well 
 over forty." 
 
 " Some of the women in London, and here 
 in Paris, are well over sixty, and yet are by no 
 means extinct volcanoes," rejoined Cockayne, 
 with his sly smile. " The women of our time 
 last in the most extraordinary way. They 
 stay the course long after they have passed 
 the winning post. It is almost stupefying." 
 
 " I don't think she is at all that type," 
 said Derrick. 
 
 " My dear chap, I'm not attacking her ! 
 You asked for my opinion, and I've been giving 
 it to you, and trying to sound you for a little 
 more to go upon. That's all." 
 
 " Of course, I know that." 
 
 " Why not ask both your friends to Cap 
 Martin ? Then I could study them at first 
 hand." 
 
 " I wonder if they would come," said 
 Derrick. " She says she is sick of varnish. 
 And the Riviera is varnished till it glistens." 
 
The Spirit of the Time 159 
 
 " Perhaps the wilds of Asia are more in 
 her line." 
 
 " Who knows ? Besides, there's the money 
 question. She ought to be careful, I expect." 
 
 " It's very difficult to get a Russian of that 
 type to be careful with money. They are 
 gamblers and spendthrifts by nature. They 
 are as incapable of living without luxury as a 
 fish is incapable of living out of water. And 
 they are usually fatalists, which doesn't help 
 matters. Has the lady any jewels ? J: 
 
 Derrick was startled by the question. 
 
 " Why what makes you ask that ? " 
 
 " Merely because perhaps a judicious sale 
 might help her to join us at Cap Martin. Debinot 
 is the best man in Paris for selling diamonds to. 
 For selling pearls I should recommend Voirier 
 and Company. Isidore Voirier is the best 
 judge in Paris of what pearls are worth, and 
 really an unusually honest man as things are 
 at present. If he doubles when selling the 
 price he gave when buying he is quite pleased 
 with himself. The real screws are in London." 
 
 " Do you mean that it is easier to get a fair 
 price for jewels in Paris just now than it is in 
 London ? " 
 
160 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 " Much easier, according to my information. 
 You might tell your Muscovite that." 
 
 As he spoke Cockayne shot a penetrating 
 glance from his grey eyes, which were sur- 
 rounded by wrinkles, at Derrick. And the 
 latter thought rather uneasily : 
 
 " Can he have read my mind ? ' 
 
 They parted with an understanding that 
 they would meet at lunch on the morrow. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THAT night Derrick made up his mind that 
 he would not go to London. He hated the 
 idea of travelling farther away from Mon- 
 treux, and, after what Cockayne had told 
 him, he felt sure he would gain nothing by 
 taking the journey. Before lunch he would 
 take the Princess's pearls to Voirier and 
 Company, ask for Isidore Voirier, and see if 
 he could bring off a satisfactory sale. And 
 if he did bring it off what then ? The 
 thought of Cap Martin came into his mind, 
 of the pine trees, the smell of the sea, the 
 golden sunshine. Were the snows better ? 
 It was good to walk among the pines in the 
 early morning, or near to the twilight hour. 
 He would persuade her to come there, not to 
 be studied by Cockayne, but to be his com- 
 panion. If she came out of the cage, owing 
 to his action in opening the door, surely it 
 was right that he should share her first days 
 
 of freedom. She could hard'y refuse him that. 
 
 161 
 
162 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 Next morning the waiter brought his break- 
 fast up to his room, and he got up and put 
 on his dressing-gown. When he woke he 
 had been immediately conscious of an ugly 
 feeling of acute mental depression. The day 
 was foggy, and he was sure it was very dreary 
 and cold outside. He wished he were in his 
 room at the Monney. But if he sold the pearls 
 that morning he could return to Montreux 
 almost immediately. He sat down by the 
 table and poured out his coffee. His mind 
 still felt very disturbed, like the mind of a 
 man who has to face some disagreeable event 
 in the course of the day. He thought of 
 Cockayne and the previous evening, and realized 
 that the conversation with Cockayne had 
 made an unpleasant impression upon him, 
 which seemed to have grown greater mysteri- 
 ously while he had been asleep. Cockayne, 
 he now knew, had formed an unfavourable 
 opinion of Princess Aranensky from his descrip- 
 tion of her. And yet he had certainly or 
 so he believed displayed her as a fascinating 
 and very delightful woman. But Cockayne, 
 good-natured though he was, made a sort of 
 profession of " seeing through " people. He 
 
The Spirit of the Time 163 
 
 considered it due to himself to pierce through 
 every veil, to carry every defence, and to find 
 reason for his worldly distrust of humanity 
 in every citadel which he inspected. 
 
 But Cockayne certainly had a sharp mind ; 
 Derrick wondered whether he had made an 
 accurate guess at the reason for his, Derrick's, 
 presence in Paris. That was surely impos- 
 sible ; and yet Cockayne had talked a good 
 deal about jewels, and had even mentioned 
 the best man to whom jewels might be dis- 
 posed of in Paris. But that, no doubt, was 
 merely a chance piece of information thrown 
 out in the course of a conversation which had 
 ranged over many subjects. 
 
 Why had Cockayne spoken of those " ap- 
 parently " frank and open women as the most 
 dangerous specimens of their sex ? And his 
 mention of the look which a woman thinks a 
 man will not see ! 
 
 The remark had recalled to Derrick's mind 
 the look which Princess Aranensky had given 
 to Baroness Hausen one night at dinner at 
 the Monney, swift, surreptitious perhaps a 
 warning look. 
 
 Derrick began to wish that he had not come 
 
164 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 across Cockayne in Paris. But that could not 
 be helped now. The worst of it was that 
 something deep in himself seemed to be re- 
 luctantly assenting to certain of Cockayne's 
 remarks about women prompted by the sketch 
 given to him of Princess Aranensky. It must 
 surely be so. Otherwise why should he be 
 so disturbed by them now ? 
 
 When he had finished his breakfast Derrick 
 dressed. Then he sent for a directory, looked 
 up Voirier and Company, and found that they 
 carried on business in a street close to the 
 Rue de la Paix. Then he went downstairs 
 and asked for his dispatch box to be given 
 to him out of the safe. When he had received 
 it he took it upstairs, opened it, and lifted 
 out the pearls. 
 
 The morning was very dark. He turned 
 on the electric light, opened the case and 
 examined the pearls closely. 
 
 He knew practically nothing about jewels, 
 but he thought that these looked very rare, 
 very precious, fit to be worn by a woman like 
 Princess Aranensky. He weighed the strings 
 in his hand slowly and carefully, lifting his 
 hand and letting it sink two or three times. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 165 
 
 How long these pale delicate globes, beautifully 
 graduated in size, had lain on the neck and 
 bosom of the woman who had taken possession 
 of his thoughts ! Perhaps they were family 
 jewels, or perhaps they had been given to her 
 by a man who had loved her by her dead 
 husband, or by some lover. And now she 
 had had to resign them because of the War. 
 
 The War ! 
 
 The electric light gleamed on the pearls, 
 giving to them an exquisite lustre. As he 
 looked at them, Derrick was able to under- 
 stand, at least partially, women's passion for 
 pearls. For they were subtle in their 
 beauty, mysterious in their sheen, reticent in 
 their appeal to the eyes. In their perfection 
 they were not ostentatious. Perhaps among 
 jewels they were really the aristocrats. He 
 wondered how much the Princess had cared 
 for these pearls which he weighed in his hand, 
 how much she had suffered in giving them 
 up. Perhaps she had not suffered at all. She 
 had told him that she had ceased to care for 
 such things. But that might have been 
 merely a courageous lie. 
 
 And so the War had touched even her, 
 
166 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 had affected her life, more, had affected her 
 nature. For she had said so with bitterness. 
 He wondered what she had been before the 
 War, and just how it had changed her ? 
 
 A knock at the door startled him. Hastily 
 he dropped the pearls into their case and shut 
 it. The waiter came in to clear away the 
 breakfast. 
 
 A few minutes later Derrick went down, 
 carrying the dispatch box, hailed a taxi and 
 told the man to drive to Voirier's jewel 
 shop. 
 
 "What can I do for you, sir ? " asked a 
 middle-aged man, very smartly dressed in a 
 perfectly fitting frock-coat and dark trousers, 
 with a large diamond pin gleaming in his black 
 satin cravat. " What can I show you ? >: 
 
 " Nothing, thank you. I wish to see 
 Monsieur Isidore Voirier. Is he in ? ' 
 
 The middle-aged man cast a glance at 
 Derrick's dispatch box, and looked rather 
 dubious. 
 
 " I'm not quite sure, sir. I'm not certain 
 whether he has arrived yet. Perhaps you 
 could tell me what it is you wish to see him 
 about." 
 
The Spirit of the Time 167 
 
 Derrick hesitated a moment, and then 
 said : 
 
 " I believe Monsieur Voirier is an expert 
 judge of jewels, especially of pearls." 
 
 The middle-aged man smiled faintly. 
 
 " Oh, yes, sir. Our Monsieur Isidore is 
 considered quite the best judge of jewels in 
 Paris." 
 
 " I wish to show him some pearls and to 
 ask his advice about them." 
 
 " Ah exactly ! Pray take a seat. I will 
 go and see if Monsieur Isidore has arrived." 
 
 Derrick sat down by a case in which pend- 
 ants were displayed under glass, and held the 
 dispatch box on his knees. Meanwhile the 
 middle-aged man walked slowly away and 
 disappeared through a doorway at the back 
 of the shop. Exactly at the same moment a 
 young man with beady black eyes entered the 
 shop by another door sheeted with plate-glass, 
 and stood in an indifferent attitude, looking 
 vaguely in the direction of Derrick. 
 
 A long silence ensued. Derrick felt oddly 
 uncomfortable, almost nervous. He supposed 
 this was because he was totally unaccustomed 
 to transact business in a jeweller's shop. He 
 
168 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 shifted the box on his knees, looked up, and 
 saw the beady eyes of the young man fixed 
 vaguely, yet, he thought, knowingly, upon it. 
 The young man looked away and coughed 
 faintly. A few more minutes passed. During 
 them Derrick listened to the roar of the traffic 
 of Paris, and stared at the gleaming pendants 
 arranged on grey velvet. 
 
 At last the door at the back of the shop 
 opened, and the middle-aged man reappeared. 
 
 " If you will come this way, sir, Monsieur 
 Isidore will see you." 
 
 Derrick got up and followed him, holding 
 the box tightly. 
 
 The middle-aged man showed him into a 
 small, well-furnished room, in which stood a 
 short man, totally bald, with a white, fat face, 
 waxed black moustaches and large keen brown 
 eyes. 
 
 " The gentleman, Monsieur Isidore," he 
 said, and went out softly. 
 
 Monsieur Isidore bowed, looking hard at 
 Derrick. 
 
 " I understand that you wish to consult 
 me about some jewels, monsieur," he said, in 
 French. " Pray sit down." 
 
The Spirit of the Time 169 
 
 Derrick sat down and put his box on a 
 table beside him. 
 
 " I do. I have just come from Switzer- 
 land." 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 Monsieur Isidore moved his bald head as 
 he uttered this non-committal ejaculation. 
 
 " While there I came into possession of 
 some very valuable pearls." 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 " I believe you buy pearls ? " 
 
 " But certainly ! " 
 
 " I I bought these pearls." 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 " With with a view to selling them." 
 
 " At an advance. Exactly. We are con- 
 tinually getting jewels from Switzerland. And 
 I suppose you wish me to buy your pearls if 
 they are likely to suit my clientele ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Pray allow me to see them." 
 
 Derrick drew out his key, opened the 
 dispatch box and took out the jewel-case. 
 He was about to open it when Monsieur Isidore 
 held out a fat, white hand. 
 
 " Allow me, monsieur ! " 
 
170 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 Very delicately, indeed almost tenderly, he 
 took the case into his hand, carried it to a 
 little table near a window, switched on two 
 electric lamps, and sat down with his fat back 
 turned to Derrick. Then he opened a drawer 
 in the table and took out a lens. This done, 
 he opened the case very gently and exposed 
 the pearls to view, and looked at them for a 
 moment as they lay gleaming softly in the 
 light from the lamps. Finally, he fixed the 
 lens in his right eye, picked up the pearls and 
 closely examined them for two or three minutes, 
 shifting the strings slowly through his cushioned 
 white fingers. 
 
 Derrick sat still and looked at him, and 
 again he did not know why felt nervous, 
 rather as a man often does who is being 
 examined in silence by a celebrated doctor. 
 
 At last Monsieur Isidore laid the pearls 
 down, rather brusquely, took the lens from 
 his eye, turned in his chair, and cast at Derrick 
 a very peculiar glance, which seemed to be 
 compounded of sharp inquiry and of menace. 
 
 " May I ask, monsieur, who sent you to 
 me ? " he said. " How you came to hear of 
 my poor existence ? " 
 
The Spirit of the Time 171 
 
 " I was dining last night with a friend, a 
 Monsieur Cockayne ; he spoke of you." 
 
 " Monsieur Cockayne I do not know 
 him." 
 
 " He didn't say he knew you. He merely 
 told me you were a fine judge of pearls." 
 
 "It is my business." 
 
 He paused. 
 
 " Did this Monsieur Cockayne know you 
 had pearls to sell ? " 
 
 " No. He simply mentioned your name in 
 the course of general conversation." 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 Monsieur Isidore was silent. He folded 
 his fat hands together and looked down at 
 them meditatively, as if he were considering 
 very seriously what line he was going to take. 
 Then, looking up again, he said : 
 
 " Pardon, monsieur, but do you tell me 
 you personally bought these " he negligently 
 flicked the pearls with a forefinger without 
 turning to see exactly where they lay 
 " these ah pearls ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " May I venture to ask how much you paid 
 for them ? " 
 
172 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 " Six thousand pounds." 
 
 " Six thousand pounds ! " He moved his 
 bald head slowly up and down. "Is it 
 possible ? " he concluded. 
 
 " What do you mean by ' is it possible ? ' " 
 said Derrick. 
 
 Monsieur Isidore twisted his nose sideways 
 and slightly sniffed. 
 
 " These pearls are false," he said, sharply 
 observing his visitor. 
 
 The blood rushed to Derrick's forehead. 
 
 " False ! 5: he exclaimed, instinctively get- 
 ting on to his feet. 
 
 " They are imitation pearls, quite good ones 
 of their kind. Unfortunately, Voirier and 
 Company do not deal in artificial jewels, but 
 only in real ones. So I cannot offer to 
 buy these." 
 
 Again he contemptuously flicked the pearls 
 with his finger. 
 
 " I will put them away for you," he said, 
 turning round. 
 
 " Stop a minute, please ! 5: said Derrick. 
 
 " Yes ? " 
 
 Derrick came up to the table and stood 
 looking down on the pearls. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 173 
 
 " I cannot I simply cannot believe that 
 you have not made a mistake," he said. 
 
 " I make a mistake about pearls ! " 
 
 " Oh, I've no doubt you are a great expert, 
 but even an expert " 
 
 " My dear monsieur, if you like go round 
 the corner, go all down the Rue de la Paix, 
 show the pearls to Cartier, to anyone you 
 please. The verdict will be the same as mine. 
 These pearls are false . ' ' 
 
 " But but I can't believe it." 
 
 " Why not ? Since you come to me as 
 an expert, why cannot you believe what I 
 say ? " 
 
 " Because the circumstances in which I 
 bought the pearls prohibit me from believ- 
 ing " 
 
 He stopped. 
 
 " Do you mean to tell me that you paid six 
 thousand pounds for them without having 
 them valued ? " 
 
 " I was told they were worth at least twelve 
 thousand pounds." 
 
 " By whom ? By the seller ? " 
 
 Derrick was silent under the satirical gaze 
 of the keen brown eyes. 
 
174 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 " Monsieur, I am sorry may I say one 
 feels your bona fides of the English gentleman 
 but you have been done. I may tell you 
 that you are not the first. Others have been 
 over to Switzerland lately and have burnt 
 their fingers. May I hazard a guess ? The 
 person who sold you these things was a 
 woman ? ' : 
 
 Derrick said nothing. Monsieur Isidore 
 smiled faintly, lifting his pointed moustaches. 
 
 " Allow me to put up your property," he 
 said. 
 
 And he carelessly, almost contemptuously, 
 shoved, rather than insinuated, the pearls into 
 their case, snapped the cover down, and 
 handed the case to Derrick. 
 
 " Good-bye, monsieur ! " he said, moving 
 towards the door. " I am really very sorry 
 very sorry indeed ! ' : 
 
 He opened the door. Derrick put the case 
 into his dispatch box, and turned to go out of 
 the room. He felt sick, and had difficulty in 
 walking steadily. 
 
 " This way, monsieur ! ' : 
 
 Monsieur Isidore opened the door into the 
 shop. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 175 
 
 The middle-aged man in the frock-coat and 
 the young man with the beady eyes were both 
 there, and both of them looked first at Derrick 
 and then at the box as he came in. 
 
 " Good-bye, monsieur ! " 
 
 Monsieur Isidore spoke. 
 
 " Good-bye," said Derrick. 
 
 And he walked slowly down the shop and 
 out into the traffic of Paris. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 WHEN Derrick was outside in the street and 
 had walked a few steps he stood still and 
 hesitated. He believed what Isidore Voirier 
 had said about the pearls. The man was an 
 expert, was perpetually judging the value of 
 jewels. His manner had been that of one who 
 knew what he was doing and who was almost 
 contemptuously convinced of his own ability. 
 When he had taken the pearls from Derrick 
 he had taken them carefully, almost with a 
 sort of reverence, like one receiving into his 
 hands something very precious. But after he 
 had examined them his manner had changed 
 completely. He had shown the scorn he felt 
 for pretences. When he had put the pearls 
 back into the case he had handled them almost 
 with disgust, as if it offended him to touch 
 them, as if he were in a hurry to get rid of 
 and forget them. He must know ; the pearls 
 must be false. 
 
 And yet Derrick hesitated now, reluctant 
 
 176 
 
The Spirit of the Time 177 
 
 to lose for ever a faith, perhaps an illusion, 
 which he had cherished, which he wished still 
 to cling to. He tried to tell himself that even 
 an Isidore Voirier might make a mistake, that 
 it would be foolish, wrong even, to take the 
 word of one man as final in a matter of such 
 tremendous importance. Experts do make 
 mistakes. The cleverest man is not infallible. 
 And when the honour of a woman, the faith 
 and the happiness of a man, are at stake, it 
 is surely madness not to take a second opinion ? 
 
 A passer-by, hurrying through the murk 
 of the ghastly morning, knocked against Der- 
 rick, and passed on with a perfunctory " Par- 
 don, m'sieu ! " Derrick moved and slowly 
 walked on till he came into the Rue de la 
 Paix. There he stopped again, this time in 
 front of a jeweller's window, in which a very 
 few exquisite ornaments were displayed against 
 a pale background of velvet. 
 
 He was trying to make up his mind to go 
 into this shop and to test his fate once more. 
 
 He stood in front of the window, and pre- 
 tended to be examining the jewels in it while 
 he considered the matter. He still felt phy- 
 sically affected, almost as if his body had 
 
178 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 received a severe blow ; and his mind was not 
 working normally. One of the ornaments 
 in this shop shown to the passers-by was a 
 small necklace of pearls with a diamond clasp 
 and a pendant of diamonds and pearls. Derrick 
 stared at it for a long time, trying to draw a 
 comparison between these pearls and the pearls 
 hidden in his dispatch box. Which looked the 
 finer, the more precious ? He could not tell. 
 But it seemed to him that if his pearls were 
 displayed with cunning they would look quite 
 as beautiful as the jewels he was now gazing 
 at. 
 
 His pearls ! 
 
 Yes, he must have another verdict. He 
 pulled himself together and entered the shop. 
 
 Three well-dressed men were in it, one an 
 old man with a long, very French face, the 
 other two young with suave mouths and 
 observant eyes. The old man at once took 
 Derrick in hand. 
 
 " What do you wish, m'sieu ? 5! 
 
 " Do you buy jewels ? " asked Derrick. 
 
 The two young men looked suddenly intent. 
 
 " Monsieur wishes not to buy, but to sell ? J: 
 said the old man, with obvious surprise. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 179 
 
 " I have some pearls which I wish to get 
 rid of. They are of no use to me. But I have 
 no idea of their value. It may be great or 
 small. I should like to to have your opinion 
 upon the matter. If the jewels are of any 
 great value I should like to dispose of them, if 
 possible." 
 
 " Well, we do buy jewels, of course," said 
 the old man, with a rather dubious, and even 
 slightly suspicious manner. " But " 
 
 " Is there anyone here who is an expert in 
 jewels ? " said Derrick, with sudden despera- 
 tion, and feeling hot all over. " I want a 
 judgment on my pearls." 
 
 He looked at the two young men, who were 
 both gazing at him. 
 
 After a slight pause the old man said : 
 
 " Have you shown them to anyone else ? 5: 
 
 " Yes ; Monsieur Isidore Voirier has seen 
 them." 
 
 " Monsieur Isidore Voirier ! " said the old 
 man, with deep respect, and pursing up his 
 thin lips. 
 
 He glanced round at his two subordinates, 
 then again at Derrick. 
 
 " May I inquire what he thought of them ? " 
 
i8o The Spirit of the Time 
 
 " If you will look at them, or get your 
 expert if you have one to look at them, I 
 will tell you afterwards Monsieur Voirier's 
 opinion." 
 
 " I am, perhaps, a fairly good judge of such 
 things, though I should not certainly put 
 myself on the level of Monsieur Isidore 
 Voirier." 
 
 " Then please look at my pearls and give 
 me your opinion of their value." 
 
 " Very well, monsieur." 
 
 Derrick put his dispatch box on the counter. 
 The two young men drew gently nearer. How 
 he hated them at that moment ! He opened 
 the box awkwardly, lifted out the case, opened 
 it and pulled out the pearls. Then he said 
 brusquely : 
 
 " There they are ! Have a good look at 
 them ! " 
 
 " Monsieur will not mind if I take them 
 away for a moment ? 5: 
 
 " Certainly not. Of course not." 
 
 The old man took the pearls up in his 
 yellowish, long-nailed hands, went away to a 
 table set against the back wall of the shop, 
 turned on an electric light, opened a drawer, 
 
The Spirit of the Time 181 
 
 and probably drew out a lens. (But Derrick 
 could not see exactly what he was doing.) 
 Then he sat down, and there was a pause. 
 Presently he looked round, made an odd noise 
 in his throat, got up, turned out the light, laid 
 something down on the table, and came back 
 with the pearls in his hand. 
 
 Well well ? " said Derrick. 
 
 " I could not tell you the exact value of 
 these, m'sieu," he said. " But they are very 
 good imitation pearls, as no doubt Monsieur 
 Isidore Voirier told you, very good imitations 
 indeed. I cannot remember that I have ever 
 seen better. We do not, of course, buy imi- 
 tation jewels. It is not in our line." 
 
 " No. Thank you very much. I am very 
 much obliged to you." 
 
 " If you want the name of a man who 
 buys things of this sort " 
 
 " No, thank you. No ! " 
 
 The case was shut with a click. Another 
 click, and the dispatch box was shut. 
 
 " Good morning." 
 
 " Good morning, m'sieu ! Allow me ! " 
 
 The shop door was opened, and Derrick was 
 once more on the pavement. 
 
182 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 This time he did not hesitate, but walked 
 away at once in the direction of the Hotel 
 Crillon. 
 
 When he got there it was twelve o'clock, 
 and he remembered that he was due at half- 
 past twelve at the Ritz Hotel, where Cockayne 
 was to lunch with him as his guest in the 
 restaurant. He put the dispatch box on a 
 table. There was no need now to consign it 
 to the safe of the hotel. In fact, there never 
 had been any need for such a precaution. 
 Then he sat down in an arm-chair and tried 
 to sum things up. 
 
 He had been " done," swindled grossly. 
 There was no longer any room for doubt about 
 that. In his own eyes he was now ridiculous, 
 contemptible and tragic. 
 
 " Moral riff-raff ! " Where had he heard 
 that phrase ? He tried dully to remember. 
 Ah, yes she had said it ! Moral riff-raff ! 
 And that was just what she was. Dully he 
 wondered about her. Even now he was not 
 able to think of her as a clever adventuress. 
 When he thought of her, when he remembered 
 things about her, her look, her manner, her 
 ways, her conversation, he felt that she was a 
 
The Spirit of the Time 183 
 
 distinguished woman, a thorough lady, an 
 aristocrat through and through. 
 
 And yet she had deliberately swindled him 
 out of six thousand pounds. 
 
 The fact seemed incredible. 
 
 He remembered his conversation with the 
 director of the Monney Hotel. That con- 
 versation, perhaps, should have warned him, 
 should have put him on the qui vive. 
 
 Then he thought of the Baroness Hausen. 
 What role had she played in all this affair ? 
 It was she who had prompted him in the 
 matter of the jewels. Had she, perhaps, also 
 prompted Princess Aranensky ? Could the 
 Princess have conceived such a plan without 
 an evil genius at her elbow to suggest it to her 
 as a way out of her difficulties ? And yet she 
 still seemed to Derrick to be the dominating 
 spirit in that alliance of two women. 
 
 He looked at his watch. If he were going 
 to the Ritz it was time to be off. He did not 
 feel fit to go anywhere or to be with anyone. 
 And yet loneliness was utterly hateful to him 
 at that moment. For never had he felt more 
 dreadfully alone than he did now. 
 
 After a moment's debate he resolved that 
 
184 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 he would pull himself together and go to the 
 Ritz. 
 
 While he was going there it occurred to 
 him that probably the cheque he had given 
 to the Princess had not been passed through 
 the bank and that by sending a telegram to 
 London he might be able to stop it. The 
 Princess had certainly not been in a hurry to 
 cash it, because when he had definitely pro- 
 posed to her and she had refused him she had 
 taken the cheque from a locked drawer and 
 had offered to give it back to him. So there 
 might still be time. 
 
 He called out to the taxi-cab driver and 
 told him to drive to the nearest post office. 
 
 " Bien, m'sieu," said the man. 
 
 In two or three minutes he drew up beside 
 the kerb. 
 
 " Via, m'sieu ! " 
 
 Derrick got out of the cab and went slowly 
 into the post office. It was very full of people, 
 and he could not immediately get hold of a 
 telegraph-form and a pen or pencil. So he 
 stood and waited. He looked at the muddle 
 of people, at the dingy room, and then at his 
 watch. It was close upon half-past twelve. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 185 
 
 If he did not hurry to the Ritz he would be 
 late. He knew Cockayne well, and, no doubt, 
 Cockayne would not mind waiting for a few 
 minutes. Still, when you are the host it is 
 impolite to keep a guest waiting. Derrick 
 decided to send the telegram later. After 
 luncheon would do. That would only mean a 
 delay of an hour and a half or so. He turned, 
 went out of the post office, got into the cab and 
 drove to the Ritz. 
 
 Cockayne was in the hall, and they went 
 in immediately to lunch. After a little talk 
 Cockayne asked Derrick whether he had decided 
 on his plans for the immediate future, and 
 whether, and if so when, he was going to 
 London. 
 
 " I've decided to follow your advice and 
 give up the journey to England," he said. 
 " My business there isn't very important and 
 can be put off." 
 
 " Good ! Then what about Cap Martin ? 
 Why don't you come there with me ? We'll 
 go to Marseilles, stay a couple of days, lunch 
 and dine at La Reserve and take a dip into the 
 extraordinary life of rascality there. They 
 tell me Marseilles of after the War is a phe- 
 
i86 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 nomenon. Crooks of all the nations of the 
 world gathered together to fleece the travellers 
 who are perpetually held up by strikes and 
 can't get away by sea ; yellow men by the 
 hundred ; Spahis on the loose ; Arab chief- 
 tains decorated up to the eyes having the time 
 of their lives in the redecorated hotels ; South 
 Americans bursting with money who've come 
 over to burn it in exhausted Europe. A man 
 I met here yesterday said to me, ' Whatever 
 you do have a good look at Marseilles. You'd 
 learn more about human nature in a couple 
 of days there than you would in as many 
 months anywhere else.' : 
 
 " I I don't know whether I'm keen on 
 learning anything more about human nature," 
 said Derrick. 
 
 " Had enough of it ? >: asked Cockayne, 
 with a keen glance. 
 
 " It isn't very profitable, is it ? " 
 
 " Depends what you want out of it. If 
 you're out for amusement you'll get it." 
 
 " And if you're out for a little bit of sin- 
 cerity you damned well won't get it ! ' : said 
 Derrick, bitterly. " It's all very well to talk 
 about amusement. But some of us get tired 
 
The Spirit of the Time 187 
 
 of staring perpetually at a satiric comedy ; 
 and that's what life is. Some of us were fools 
 enough to think the War would make a differ- 
 ence " 
 
 " Well, so it has ! " interjected Cockayne. 
 
 " A difference the wrong way ! Yes, that's 
 it ! Human beings are more disgusting than 
 
 ever now." 
 
 " My dear fellow, you want too much." 
 
 " Perhaps I do ! Well, never mind. I'll 
 come with you to Marseilles, Cap Martin, any- 
 where you like. But I'm afraid I shan't be 
 very good company." 
 
 Moved by a sudden and overwhelming 
 impulse Derrick leaned forward over the table, 
 and added in a low voice : 
 
 " I've had a facer, Cockayne, a terrific 
 facer ! " 
 
 " My dear chap, I'm sorry. Can I 
 help ? " 
 
 " No. I was a fool, no doubt. I mixed 
 up friendship, affection, with business." 
 
 " And you've been done ? " 
 
 " Done to a turn ! " 
 
 " I'm awfully sorry." 
 
 " And even now " 
 
i88 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 He pulled up short. 
 
 " Talking won't mend it ! " he said. " I 
 must try to forget it. It's this cursed War 
 which has brought the whole thing about. 
 People prate about moral regeneration coming 
 out of the War. I see only moral degeneration 
 coming out of it nothing else." 
 
 " You must give people time to settle 
 down," said Cockayne, with a sudden unusual 
 earnestness. " We've all had a shake. And 
 after a shake one's not wholly normal. I 
 forgive people a lot just now." 
 
 " Do you ? " 
 
 " So many of them have fallen into holes 
 and don't know how to struggle out of them. 
 There's a heap of help wanted." 
 
 " If people would only let one know the 
 exact truth, instead of always telling lies, it 
 would be more satisfactory helping them." 
 
 " Half the time they're afraid." 
 
 " What of ? " 
 
 " They are afraid to trust to the goodness 
 in others." 
 
 " I thought you had no faith in human 
 nature, that you didn't believe in it." 
 
 " My dear fellow, one believes in a lot more 
 
The Spirit of the Time 189 
 
 than one confesses to. Irony is one's defensive 
 armour. That's all ! " 
 
 When lunch was over, Derrick said : 
 
 " Let us leave Paris to-night if you have 
 nothing special to do here. I feel I shall be 
 better out of it." 
 
 " I can go to-night." 
 ' That's good. And now if you don't mind 
 I'll be off. I've got one or two things to do.*' 
 
 Derrick still thought he meant to go to a 
 post office and send off a telegram to London. 
 He could have sent a telegram from the Ritz, 
 of course, but somehow he didn't care to do 
 that. An acute reserve governed him. At 
 the Ritz he was known. At a public office 
 he wouldn't be known. 
 
 But when he was out of the hotel, although 
 he passed more than one post office he did not 
 send any telegram. Each time he was on the 
 point of entering through the swing doors he 
 was held back by an invincible reluctance. 
 He said to himself, " Suppose she did not know 
 that the pearls were false ! Suppose she acted 
 in good faith ! " That was, he knew, unlikely, 
 even almost impossible. He could not really 
 believe it to be possible. And yet there was 
 
 M 
 
The Spirit of the Time 
 
 just the chance. By some extraordinary com- 
 bination of circumstances she herself might 
 have been deceived about the nature of the 
 pearls. If he sent the telegram, she might be 
 reduced to penury. She might be turned out 
 of the Monney Hotel. When he thought of 
 that he simply couldn't telegraph to the 
 bank. And he went back to the Crillon 
 without doing so. 
 
 In the evening he and Cockayne started 
 for Marseilles. 
 
 They managed to get two places in the 
 sleeping-car, but Derrick could not sleep. He 
 lay awake all night listening to the roar of the 
 train and thinking of the immediate past and 
 of his tragic situation. For he now realized 
 how deeply he had come to care for the 
 Princess, how sincerely he had admired her, 
 and how intensely he had been looking forward 
 to seeing her again. Although she had defi- 
 nitely refused him, Derrick had certainly not 
 lost the hope of persuading her to change her 
 mind. He had, then, come to believe that 
 she genuinely cared for him, valued his com- 
 pany, found him more sympathetic to her than 
 others were. She had hurt him in his pocket, 
 
The Spirit of the Time 191 
 
 but that was as nothing to the injury she had 
 inflicted upon him in his heart. Over and over 
 in his mind he turned all the facts of his short 
 friendship with her, trying to decide whether 
 from the first she had marked him down as a 
 possible prey, or whether she had been driven 
 by circumstances; unwillingly to do what she 
 had done, hating herself for the doing of it, or 
 whether she had been tempted, or somehow 
 driven to do it by the abominable influence of 
 Baroness Hausen, a woman, perhaps, with a 
 German soul housed in her technically Russian 
 body. And in this painful mental debate he 
 tried to be scrupulously fair. (He now felt 
 sure that she could not have been deceived 
 about the pearls.) 
 
 Some very disagreeable facts came up in 
 his memory. For instance, he remembered 
 that the very first time he had met the Princess 
 it had seemed to him as if her mind had said 
 to his mind, " So ! It is at Montreux that you 
 and I had to meet. I could not go to England 
 to you, so you have come to Switzerland to 
 me ! ' : Did that mean that at a first glance 
 she had " spotted " him as a likely victim ? 
 If so, she had probably gone up to Caux on the 
 
192 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 day when they had lunched together there 
 with the deliberate intention of becoming 
 acquainted with him. She might have found 
 out that he had started to walk up there, and 
 have followed- him by train with the object of 
 catching him alone. 
 
 It was an intolerable supposition, and he 
 tried to put it from him. Yet how could he 
 be sure that it was not so ? At the concert on 
 the previous night, when the Princess had 
 turned round after Litvinne's singing of " Les 
 Roses d' Ispahan," he had felt quite definitely 
 that she intended to know him. Why ? He 
 could no longer imagine that it was for the sake 
 of his beaux yeux. 
 
 There were other things, too, which he 
 remembered with a now painful distinctness. 
 
 She had spoken to him of her belief in 
 human kindness and, looking at him fixedly, 
 had said, " People have told me that there is 
 much of it in England." At the time he had 
 felt pleased and warmed by that statement, 
 but now it occurred to him that the thought 
 in her mind at that moment might very well 
 have been, " Here, perhaps, is an English fool 
 ready to my hand." And her apparent dis- 
 
The Spirit of the Time 193 
 
 interestedness, her refusals to allow him ever 
 to pay trifling sums for her all those might 
 have been handfuls of dust thrown in his eyes 
 with the subtle purpose of effectually blinding 
 him, so that he might never suspect her real 
 character, her unyielding and coldly pursued 
 purpose. 
 
 But she might have married him, have 
 sheltered herself from all poverty for the rest 
 of her life ! She had known that he was rich. 
 Why then had she refused him ? An adven- 
 turess would surely have jumped at the chance 
 he had offered her. 
 
 At Leysin she had told him that in her 
 opinion the War had affected the morals of 
 men and women for the worse, and had alluded 
 to the almost universal excuse of " shell- 
 shock " put forth by those who did what they 
 knew to be detestable. 
 
 " I should use it myself, I know, if neces- 
 sary," she had added. " And perhaps there 
 is really something in it." And then she had 
 shot at him one of those subtle looks which 
 even then had obscurely troubled him, and 
 which he had never been able to under- 
 stand. Had she been pardoning herself then 
 
194 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 for what she intended to do to him in the 
 future ? 
 
 " There is nothing which a human being 
 might not do if sufficient occasion arose." 
 
 That was another saying of hers which to 
 Derrick now seemed terribly significant. And 
 he repeated to himself in the night her fatalistic 
 remark when he had questioned her or half 
 hinted a question to her as to Baroness 
 Hausen's influence upon her " It is not the 
 Katyas who really influence us, my friend. 
 It is the terrible Zeitgeist ; it is the Spirit of 
 the Time." 
 
 Then the night when the Princess had 
 asked him to take the Baroness to the Casino ! 
 On that night the Baroness had begged him to 
 help the Princess by buying her pearls. Her 
 mission to Geneva that day had failed. Why ? 
 Probably the Princess had really shrunk from 
 trying to palm the false jewels off upon him, 
 and had made a genuine effort to swindle some 
 other, unknown person. The effort had proved 
 abortive. Perhaps the other man had been 
 too sharp. He would never know about that. 
 But he now felt certain that on that night the 
 Princess had finally decided if possible to make 
 
The Spirit of the Time 195 
 
 him her victim, and had contrived that the 
 Baroness should be alone with him in order 
 that she might prepare the ground. 
 
 In the early morning, summing the whole 
 matter up to himself as well as he was able in 
 his miserable condition of mind, Derrick came 
 to the conclusion that Princess Aranensky had 
 been at her wits' end for money when he first 
 met her, that she had thought of him as a 
 man from whom possibly she might obtain 
 help, that she had really grown to like him as 
 their intercourse had developed, that she had 
 struggled against the pernicious temptation 
 to try and swindle him, that she had attempted 
 to get rid of the pearls at Geneva, and that, 
 having failed in that attempt, she had at last 
 been driven by the pressure of necessity to do 
 what she had done, hating herself for the 
 doing of it. But why she had refused to marry 
 him, and why she had surely deliberately 
 given him the definite impression that she would 
 never accept a gift of money from him he could 
 not understand. Surely it would have been 
 less detestable to the pride of an aristocratic 
 woman to take money from him as a gift than 
 to steal it from him by a deception ! 
 
Spirit of the Time 
 
 But six thousand pounds ! That was a big 
 sum. He would, certainly, never have offered 
 to give her so much. She had known that, of 
 course. So, perhaps, she had decided to play 
 only for high stakes. That was possible. The 
 marriage question he could not resolve 
 unless 
 
 Suddenly it occurred to Derrick that there 
 might be another man in the case. And he 
 burned with jealousy at the thought. Yes, 
 even now, after what had happened, he could 
 be jealous of the Princess. That was sheer 
 madness. Yet he writhed on his narrow bed. 
 Why had she lingered on in Montreux when 
 the door of the cage was open ? Why had she 
 evidently been determined that he should 
 leave the place before she did ? Why had 
 she wished him to travel as far as London to 
 get rid of the pearls, instead of trying to 
 dispose of them in Paris ? 
 
 Paris was nearer to Montreux than London. 
 He wished that he were in a train rushing to 
 Switzerland instead of in the Paris and Marseilles 
 rapide. In Paris he had never contemplated 
 trying to see the Princess again after he had 
 learnt that the pearls were false. But now 
 
The Spirit of the Time 197 
 
 a strong desire leapt up in him to go back 
 and confront her, and have it out with her, 
 force from her the whole truth of the matter. 
 She could not refuse him the truth. He 
 would find means to compel her to tell it to 
 him. 
 
 " What's the time ? Have you got the 
 time ? " said a muffled voice above him. 
 
 Derrick looked at his wrist-watch. 
 
 " Ten minutes past six," he called out. 
 
 " Seven ? " 
 
 "No, six." 
 
 " Thank God time for some more sleep." 
 
 And he heard Cockayne turn over in the 
 berth overhead. 
 
 The train was nearly two hours late in 
 reaching Marseilles. Cockayne had telegraphed 
 from Paris to the Hotel du Louvre et de la Paix 
 asking for rooms to be reserved for them, 
 but when they arrived at the hotel it was 
 crammed, and the manager told them that he 
 could do nothing for them. There was a big 
 ship due to sail for India that day, but she 
 had not arrived in the port yet, and there 
 was reason to suppose that her departure for 
 the East would be delayed, probably for two 
 
198 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 or three days. Meanwhile some scores of 
 travellers were waiting for her in Marseilles. 
 
 " Our last two rooms were taken only last 
 night by a lady and gentleman who are sailing 
 on the Ophir, monsieur. I'm very sorry. I 
 should advise you to try at the Hotel de 
 Noailles. It has recently been redecorated 
 from top to bottom, and is the best hotel in 
 the town, except ours ! " 
 
 They went to the Noailles and got rooms. 
 
 Meanwhile Derrick had made up his mind 
 that instead of going with Cockayne to Cap 
 Martin he would return to Montreux and see 
 the Princess again. He dreaded seeing her. 
 He knew that their meeting could only be a 
 horrible one, but something irresistible drew 
 him back to Switzerland and to her. Perhaps 
 it was something in the heart which he did not 
 comprehend ; or, perhaps, it was something 
 in the brain, the insatiable curiosity of man 
 who is driven by the deep desire to under- 
 stand, to unravel hidden motives, to discover 
 the springs of actions which have affected, 
 which continue to affect, his happiness. Der- 
 rick said nothing of all this to Cockayne. He 
 did not mean to leave Marseilles immediately. 
 
I 
 
 The Spirit of the Time 199 
 
 He would stay with Cockayne till the latter 
 went on to the Riviera. In those two or three 
 days he would have time to consider how he 
 intended to act when he met the Princess ; 
 he would have time also for a little rest, which 
 he felt that he needed badly after the travelling 
 * and the mental turmoil of the preceding days. 
 That day Cockayne and he drove over to 
 the Corniche and lunched at the restaurant of 
 La Reserve which overlooks the sea. Then 
 they took a long walk along the coast and 
 returned to Marseilles on foot. On arriving 
 at their hotel they heard casually that the 
 0-phir had just arrived in the harbour. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 ON the following day Derrick asked Cockayne 
 how long he intended to stay in Marseilles. 
 
 " Well, what do you say ? " his friend 
 asked. " This hotel isn't bad, and I find the 
 place very amusing. I've known Marseilles 
 for more years than I can count, but I've 
 never known it like this. Last night, after 
 dinner, when you'd gone up to bed, I wandered 
 about for over two hours and took a bird's-eye 
 view of the after-the-War conditions here." 
 " I hope you were satisfied ? ' : 
 " My dear chap, I received education. 
 And that's what we are here for." 
 " In Marseilles do you mean ? " 
 " No, in this life. I propose to get a little 
 more education here if you have no objection ? " 
 " Not the least in the world." 
 There was a silence. Then Cockayne said, 
 " Perhaps you are longing for the pine 
 woods of Cap Martin ? " 
 
 " Well no. To tell you the truth I think 
 
 200 
 
The Spirit of the Time 201 
 
 I shall have to make some change in my plans. 
 I believe I shall have to go back from here 
 to Montreux." 
 
 " You are going to fetch your friends ? " 
 
 " My friends ? " 
 
 46 The Russian princess and the baroness 
 from the Baltic Provinces about whom you 
 talked to me." 
 
 "Oh no ! They won't be coming to Cap 
 Martin." 
 
 Cockayne lit a cigarette. 
 
 44 You'll come on there from Montreux ? " 
 he said, carelessly. 
 
 44 1 really don't know. I I don't want 
 to let you down after promising to come. 
 But my plans have all been I mean that 
 well, Cockayne, something happened in Paris 
 which has thrown me out of gear." 
 
 44 Of course. I knew that. I only wish 
 I could do something, help you in some way. 
 But I suppose that's impossible ? " 
 
 44 It's good of you. You're a good friend. 
 But you can't do anything. The thing's done, 
 and unluckily it's irreparable." 
 
 44 Then take a strong pull on yourself. Put 
 it behind you. Forget it." 
 
202 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 " I can't do that yet. Some day, perhaps 
 but not yet." 
 
 " I don't want to be curious, but do you 
 think that going back to Montreux will help 
 you to forget it ? " 
 
 " I don't say that. But I feel I must go." 
 
 " Then there's no more to be said. I shall 
 be awfully sorry to lose your company, but 
 that's a mere detail. I dare say you want to 
 be off at once ? ' 
 
 Derrick hesitated. Then he said : 
 
 " No. I suppose you'll only be here for a 
 couple of days or so ? 5: 
 
 " Something like that." 
 
 " Well, I'll go when you do. I think that's 
 the best arrangement." 
 
 " Right ! And, my dear fellow, remember 
 that there are very few things in life which 
 leave a permanent wound, and that mere 
 scars may look ugly but they don't hurt us, 
 even when the weather changes. We ' get 
 over ' practically everything that doesn't send 
 us into the grave straight away. Nature is 
 very accommodating." 
 
 " Oh, this thing won't break me. I'm not 
 afraid of that. But well, it's no use talking 
 
The Spirit of the Time 203 
 
 about it. To tell the truth, what I really fear 
 is losing all faith in human nature. That 
 dries a man up. I dare say you think me a 
 fearful sentimentalist at my age talking like 
 this. But I expect a great many people are 
 thinking as I am just now. The War's been 
 a bad shock, but some of us have looked forward 
 to a finer humanity coming out of it. If, on 
 the contrary, we find humanity the worse for 
 the War, what on earth have we to live for ? 
 You are studying Marseilles. You find it 
 changed. Is the change for the better ? " 
 
 " Good heavens, no ! 5! 
 
 " And you are amused ? " 
 
 " Interested at any rate." 
 
 64 I'm the type that gets disgusted, I'm 
 afraid." 
 
 " I've a rough philosophy that helps me a 
 lot." 
 
 " What is it ? " 
 
 " Hold on to the best in yourself and let 
 all the rest go hang." 
 
 Derrick stood still for a moment. Then 
 he shook his friend's hand. 
 
 " I'll go out and think that over," he 
 said. 
 
204 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 He went out and took a long walk through 
 the crowded streets of Marseilles. Finally, he 
 went down to the harbour and strolled by the 
 edge of the sea. The day was fine and the sun 
 was out. Numbers of ships big and small 
 were lying at anchor. People were putting off 
 for the Chateau d'If. Fishermen were coming 
 ashore brown and hairy, and smelling of the 
 salty waters. Conjurers were performing in 
 the midst of small circles of the curious. 
 A humpbacked dwarf and a woman in tights 
 were doing acrobatic feats. And everywhere 
 rough men of all nations, the hardy travellers 
 and adventurers of the world, were taking their 
 ease in the sunshine, lounging along the water's 
 edge, pipe in mouth, sitting in groups before 
 the shabby cafes, playing cards, drinking soup 
 or mysterious liquids, swearing, spitting, quar- 
 relling, larking. Among them were many 
 yellow men with melancholy eyes, small-boned 
 limbs and thin faces ; there were Arabs too, 
 Negroes, Kabyles, Sudanese. Half the nations 
 of the earth seemed to be assembled in this 
 port of France. Derrick felt vaguely detached 
 and almost confused as he made his way slowly 
 through the throng. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 205 
 
 " Hold on to the best in yourself and let 
 all the rest go hang ! " 
 
 What else, after all, could one do ? It was 
 absurd to concern oneself about the myriads 
 of men, to bother about them collectively. 
 How, indeed, could one ever be sure whether 
 in the mass they were deteriorating, or pro- 
 gressing, however slowly and almost imper- 
 ceptibly, upon the upward path ? 
 
 Some Lascars went by. Derrick thought of 
 the Ophir, that great ship bound for the Far 
 East for which so many travellers had been 
 waiting. 
 
 He wondered where she was berthed and 
 thought he would like to have a look at her. 
 Why was that ? He wondered for a moment 
 what could have given rise to such a desire 
 in him. And then he remembered the Prin- 
 cess's allusions to Asia. She had wished to 
 go to India and had expressed her wish to him 
 more than once. The Ophir to-morrow, or 
 the next day, very soon at any rate, would 
 slip out on the high road to the land she must 
 often have dreamed about, or perhaps brooded 
 over, in those rooms furnished with cushions 
 in Montreux. 
 
206 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 A sturdy seafaring man, evidently British, 
 came towards Derrick, pipe in mouth, hands 
 in pockets. 
 
 " Good day ! Can you tell me where the 
 Ophir is berthed ? " Derrick said, going up 
 to him. 
 
 " Keep straight on, go to the right, and 
 you'll find her about a hundred yards before 
 you come to the quay the Algiers boats clear 
 from." 
 
 " Thank you. When does she sail ? >: 
 " Noon to-morrow." 
 
 The sailor walked on, rolling slightly 
 in his gait, and Derrick continued on his 
 way. 
 
 He had a good look at the Ophir. She was 
 a great ship and seemed in good trim. The 
 gang-plank was down to the quay. Some 
 sailors and Lascars were moving about on the 
 decks. A man with bare arms was polishing 
 the glasses of portholes with a handful of grimy 
 rags. A young officer paced to and fro on the 
 bridge, looking warily this way and that. But 
 no passengers were visible. Probably they had 
 all gone ashore. And those who had been 
 awaiting the arrival of the Ophir in Marseilles 
 
The Spirit of the Time 207 
 
 had not come aboard yet. Derrick stared at 
 the gang-plank and thought of Princess Ara- 
 nensky. So many things made his thoughts 
 go to her ! He remembered their talk about 
 Asia, and her words, " I often feel Asia within 
 me." They had been in the snow together 
 when she had said that. The day was declining, 
 the mists were coming down and the light was 
 fading about them. It was their first con- 
 versation together, continued after the lunch 
 at the cold little hotel. And she had spoken 
 of Doctor Steiner and of the mask beneath 
 which all realities are concealed from men. 
 She had said that as the real physiognomy of 
 the world is hidden behind the mountains and 
 seas, the desert sands and the sunsets, so men 
 and women are hidden behind their words and 
 their actions. 
 
 But was that true ? Had not the Princess 
 revealed herself, stripped her character bare, 
 and shown it naked to him by her action when 
 she sold him false pearls as real ones ? Or was 
 the real woman still hidden from him, with all 
 the true lights and the shadows ? He had 
 thought her sincere and had cared for her. 
 Now he believed her false and yes he still 
 
 
208 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 cared for her against his judgment, his will. 
 But though he believed her to have been false 
 to him, did he know her whole and complete, 
 just as she was ? He did not. And that was 
 why he would go to Montreux and try to see 
 her again. He would not come upon her as a 
 judge. He would come upon her as a man 
 who knew the worst of her, and who would 
 demand to know the rest. Something told him 
 that he had not yet discovered what was the 
 mainspring of her detestable action. She had 
 needed money. Yes. But that was not the 
 whole explanation of her conduct. He won- 
 dered about her religious views. They were 
 strange. He was sure of that. He wondered 
 about her physical life, remembering a question 
 of Cockayne's. And he gazed vaguely at the 
 great ship. 
 
 A young Englishman came up behind him 
 and said : 
 
 " Are you sailing with us, sir ? 5: 
 
 Derrick started and turned. 
 
 " No ! " he said, looking hard at the 
 man. 
 
 " I thought you might be as you were 
 taking such a long look at the ship." 
 
The Spirit of the Time 209 
 
 " No. Are you one of the crew ? 5I 
 
 " I'm a steward, sir. I've been on leave in 
 the town." 
 
 " Have a cigarette ? " 
 * " Thank you, sir." 
 
 " I rather wish I were coming with you. 
 Is your passenger list full ? " 
 
 " Jam full, sir. The last really good cabin 
 was taken by telegram only a couple of days 
 ago, I heard say. We've got a princess coming 
 aboard." 
 
 " A princess ! " said Derrick. 
 
 " Oh, not a British princess, sir, nothing of 
 that kind. This one's a Russian, I believe. 
 Anyhow, I know I'm going to look after her 
 with the stewardess." 
 
 " Oh a Russian princess ! " said Derrick. 
 
 For a moment he stood quite still. He 
 glanced almost furtively at the man and looked 
 away again. It was, surely, very unlikely 
 very improbable, and yet it was possible, 
 Yes, it was horribly possible ! 
 
 A pulse in his forehead beat violently, and 
 he felt as if a wave of hot blood flooded his 
 brain, submerged it for a moment, drowning 
 his power of thought. 
 
210 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 The steward, a young, quick-witted man, 
 looked at him almost inquisitively. 
 
 " Those Russians, I believe, breed more 
 princesses than we do, as I may say, sir, but 
 they seem to be giving them toko over there 
 the Bolshies, I mean. So I s'pose them as can 
 are clearing out of the country." 
 
 " No doubt. And what is this princess's 
 name ? " 
 
 " That's more than I can tell you, sir. It's 
 down on the list, but I haven't troubled to 
 read it. Only I was told as I was going to 
 attend on her." 
 
 " Ah ! Well, I must be off. Good day ! " 
 
 " Good day, sir." 
 
 Derrick walked away for a few steps, then 
 abruptly turned ; the steward was still there, 
 and had evidently been looking after him. 
 Derrick came back and put his hand in his 
 pocket. 
 
 " Look here ! ' : he said. " I suppose it 
 isn't against rules for you to tell me the name 
 of a passenger on board of your ship ? Go and 
 find out for me the name of the princess who 
 
 is sailing with you to-morrow, and here's " 
 
 He stopped short. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 211 
 
 The young officer on the bridge was observ- 
 ing him. 
 
 " I'll walk straight on along the quay. 
 Come and tell me the name, and I'll give you 
 fifty francs." 
 
 And he walked slowly away down the quay 
 till he was out of sight of the Ophir. Then he 
 stood still and waited. The fellow had not 
 answered, had not said he would come, but it 
 was worth while to wait. If he did not come 
 well, then, Derrick would find some other 
 means of discovering whether the suspicion 
 which had sprung up in his mind was well 
 founded or not. He would go on board the 
 Ophir on some pretext. Anyhow, he would 
 not go back to the Hotel de Noailles until he 
 knew the name of the princess who was sailing 
 on the Ophir to-morrow. 
 
 After waiting for about ten minutes he saw 
 the steward coming towards him, and he drew 
 out his portfolio and took out fifty francs. 
 The steward came up and handed him a small 
 piece of paper. 
 
 " Sorry to keep you so long, sir, but it 
 took a bit of a time to go over the list. I 
 wrote the name down for you on a piece 
 
212 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 of paper, as it's foreign, and I might have 
 forgot it." 
 
 " Very good of you. Thanks very much." 
 Derrick did not look at the name, but put 
 the piece of paper into his pocket and handed 
 the man the fifty francs. 
 
 " Thank you, sir." 
 
 " 1 wish you a good voyage," said Derrick. 
 " Good day ! " 
 
 He was just about to go when an idea 
 occurred to him, and he stopped. 
 
 " By the way, is this lady, the princess, 
 travelling alone ? ' 
 
 " I couldn't say, sir. All I know is she's 
 got a cabin to herself." 
 
 " Oh ! Well, good-bye and good luck." 
 
 This time Derrick walked on and did not 
 stop for any last words. But as soon as he 
 had got away from the quay, and was in a broad 
 dirty street, between the vast and dingy houses 
 with shuttered windows which are character- 
 istic of Marseilles, he paused and drew out the 
 bit of paper which the steward had given him. 
 On it was carefully written in round hand, 
 " PRINCESS ARANENSKY." 
 
 So it was she ! 
 
The Spirit of the Time 213 
 
 He thrust the bit of paper again into his 
 pocket and walked slowly on. The street was 
 thronged with people and traffic coming from 
 and going to the quays, but he scarcely 
 noticed the faces, or heard the voices, the rum- 
 bling of the wheels, the hooting of the horns 
 of the motors. He was absorbed by the know- 
 ledge that this woman, whom he had meant 
 to seek out in Montreux, was here with him 
 in this city, was actually in Marseilles. To- 
 morrow she would be on her way to the Far 
 East, would be travelling away from him, 
 would perhaps be removed from his life for 
 ever. But for the succeeding twenty-four 
 hours she was near him, was possibly even 
 in the same hotel with him. Of course, he had 
 no positive knowledge that she was yet in 
 Marseilles, but he did not doubt it. The 
 Ophir had been expected to arrive before she 
 had come into port, and many travellers were 
 waiting in Marseilles to go away in her. 
 Among those travellers was certainly the 
 Princess. And Baroness Hausen ? Was she 
 there too ? He wondered. And now as he 
 walked he scrutinized the faces of the women 
 who passed by in the open victorias of Mar- 
 
214 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 seilles, in taxi-cabs and cars. At any moment 
 the Princess might pass him. If she did, and 
 it were at all possible, he intended to stop 
 her. If he did see her, did stop her, he did not 
 know how he would act, what he would say to 
 her. But he would act as impulse directed him 
 to act. And if he did not meet her in the 
 crowded streets he would inquire for her at the 
 various hotels. She must be in a hotel. And 
 there were only three or four which she would 
 choose to put up in, his own hotel, the Louvre 
 et de la Paix, the Regina, the Grand Hotel- 
 or perhaps La Reserve. There were a few 
 bedrooms at the Reserve above the restaurant. 
 It was very quiet and very sunny there. She 
 might be there. 
 
 A few more steps brought Derrick in front 
 of the Hotel Regina. And he turned in to 
 inquire if the Princess were there. After 
 looking through the list the director said no ; 
 there was no one of that name in the hotel. 
 
 Derrick went on, passed the Turkish baths, 
 and eventually came into the Cannebiere. 
 
 He looked at his watch. It was close upon 
 half-past twelve. Cockayne would be expect- 
 ing him for dtjeuner. He would inquire later 
 
The Spirit of the Time 215 
 
 on at the other hotels, and if he did not find 
 % the Princess at any of them, he would drive 
 out to the Reserve. 
 
 He found Cockayne in the hall, and they 
 went at once into the restaurant to lunch. 
 
 An orchestra was playing and many people 
 were sitting at the little tables. Derrick 
 looked at everyone there slowly, deliberately, 
 lest he should miss one. 
 
 " You seem interested in the crowd," said 
 Cockayne. " Are you looking for anyone ? " 
 
 " Yes." Derrick said. 
 
 " I didn't know you had friends in Mar- 
 seilles." 
 
 " I find there is someone staying here whom 
 I know, but it may not be in this hotel." 
 
 " Well, shall we lunch c a prix fixe ' or 
 ' a la carte ' ? " 
 
 The Princess was not in the restaurant, 
 and she did not come in during their lunch 
 When it was finished they went to have coffee 
 in the hall. 
 
 Derrick had talked very little during lunch 
 He knew that Cockayne must have noticed 
 his preoccupation. Cockayne was by nature 
 a close^observer, and Derrick's perturbation 
 
216 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 of mind jumped to the eye. Derrick was quite 
 aware of that. But the power of acting seemed 
 to have been withdrawn from him. He no 
 longer cared what his friend thought. Indeed, 
 there were moments when he was strongly 
 tempted without mentioning names to tell 
 Cockayne the whole story, even up to the 
 point of his finding out that the woman who 
 had swindled him must be here in Marseilles, 
 perhaps even in the hotel with them. But he 
 had already described the Princess and Baroness 
 Hausen to Cockayne. The latter would guess 
 at once that the matter of the pearls was 
 connected with the two women he had talked 
 about, the two Russians. And if Cockayne 
 did guess what did that matter ? Did Der- 
 rick owe it to such a woman as Princess 
 Aranensky to be silent about her misdoings ? 
 If he did tell the story to Cockayne why 
 should he conceal her name ? 
 
 " What shall we do this afternoon ? " said 
 Cockayne. 
 
 " Well, I may have to go to the Reserve 
 possibly," Derrick answered. 
 
 His friend looked slightly surprised. 
 
 "But before then," Derrick added, "I 
 
The Spirit of the Time 217 
 
 must just look in at one or two of the principal 
 hotels to inquire for someone." 
 
 " Then probably you'd rather be quite free 
 for the afternoon." 
 
 " Perhaps it would be best. I may have 
 to see someone." 
 
 After a moment he added : 
 
 " I say, Cockayne, you must think me an 
 infernally tiresome fellow, giving myself airs 
 of mystery. But the fact is I've discovered 
 quite by chance this morning that in all pro- 
 bability the person who gave me the ' facer ' 
 I mentioned to you in Paris is here in Mar- 
 seilles." 
 
 " That's an odd coincidence." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And you want to find out where he is ? " 
 
 Derrick looked quickly at Cockayne, recog- 
 nized his tact and looked away. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Then I'll leave you quite free. And we'll 
 meet at dinner-time, shall we ? ?: 
 
 " Perhaps that's best. I fear I'm a bad 
 companion." 
 
 " My dear fellow, you're in trouble ! I 
 don't know, and don't want to know, exactly 
 
2i8 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 what it is. That's not my affair. But wouldn't 
 it be better to be quite drastic ? " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Wouldn't it be better to cut the painter 
 and let the boat go into the darkness ? " 
 
 " The boat ! But do you Of course 
 
 you're speaking in metaphors. What a fool I 
 am to-day ! One thing I can tell you. By 
 to-morrow I'm sure Fate will have cut the 
 painter. But I have something to do before 
 then." 
 
 " Right ! I'll be here at seven and wait for 
 you. Till then I'm non-existent." 
 
 " By seven I'll be here for certain." 
 
 They parted, and Derrick went straight to 
 the bureau, and asked whether a Princess 
 Aranensky was staying in the hotel. 
 
 " No, m'sieu," said the hall-porter. 
 
 " Are you quite certain ? ' : said Derrick, 
 and he repeated the name. 
 
 " If you like I'll inquire, m'sieu, but I don't 
 think the lady is staying here." 
 
 He went away, and came back in three or 
 four minutes. 
 
 " No, m'sieu, the Princess is not staying 
 here. You will find her at the Hotel du Louvre 
 
The Spirit of the Time 219 
 
 ** 
 
 et de la Paix. It seems she telegraphed both 
 here and to the Louvre for rooms from Switzer- 
 land. But she has gone to the Louvre." 
 
 " Thanks. Do you happen to know what 
 day she arrived in Marseilles ? >! 
 
 " I couldn't say for certain, m'sieu. There 
 are so many coming and going. But if you 
 wish I can try to find out." 
 
 " No, no. It doesn't matter, thank you." 
 
 What did it matter what day the Princess 
 had arrived in Marseilles ? She was there. 
 That was what mattered. He had only to 
 cross the street, walk a few yards, and he 
 would reach her hotel. 
 
 He put on his hat and went out. 
 
 It was just after two o'clock, not an ortho- 
 dox hour for calling, but a very likely hour 
 for finding a woman at home. Derrick went 
 straight to the Hotel du Louvre and asked at 
 the bureau for Princess Aranensky. 
 
 " What name, sir ? " said the man at the 
 bureau. 
 
 Derrick hesitated. It had not occurred to 
 him that, of course, he would have to send 
 up his name before being admitted to see any 
 guest in the vast hotel. Yet if he did send up 
 
220 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 his name, surely the Princess would refuse to 
 see him. Or would she refuse ? She could 
 not know why he was in Marseilles or what had 
 happened in Paris. She could not know that 
 he knew about the pearls. And even if she 
 guessed that, or feared it, or was in complete 
 uncertainty about it, she might have the 
 courage to face him. 
 
 He had never actually tested her courage. 
 Nevertheless, he believed in it instinctively. 
 Even now that he knew of what she was 
 capable he could not think of her as a possible 
 coward. 
 
 Anyhow, if he wished to see her he must 
 give his name. 
 
 "Mr. Derrick Merton," he said. "Is the 
 Princess in ? " 
 
 " I couldn't say, sir. If you will give me 
 your card I will send up a boy." 
 
 Derrick pulled out his card-case. In doing 
 this he noticed that his hand shook slightly. 
 He tried to keep it steady as he gave the card 
 to the man in the bureau. 
 
 " If you will sit down, m'sieu, I will have 
 the card sent up at once." 
 
 Derrick found a seat in the hall, and 
 
The Spirit of the Time 221 
 
 picked up a paper. He saw a boy in livery 
 take his card, look at it, and go away with 
 it towards the staircase of the hotel. 
 
 Suddenly he felt that this was one of the 
 most intolerable moments of his life. A 
 strange and ridiculous feeling of guilt took 
 possession of him. He had been grossly in- 
 jured, yet at the thought of perhaps con- 
 fronting in a moment the woman who had 
 inflicted the injury he was possessed by a sense 
 as of shame. He dreaded the thought of 
 meeting the Princess's eyes ; he dreaded the 
 thought of being shut up alone with her. 
 And if he were not alone with her ? 
 
 Probably she had not a sitting-room here 
 in this hotel de passage. In that case they 
 would have to meet, if they met, in public, 
 in this hall perhaps, or in one of the rooms 
 opening out of it. He looked round furtively 
 and saw strangers everywhere, reading, smok- 
 ing, or simply sitting and staring hard at 
 everyone who came into or went out of the 
 hall. Some of them were staring at him. 
 
 The boy was away for a very long time. 
 But the hotel was large, with long corridors 
 and many rooms. And servants, Derrick 
 
222 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 remembered, are seldom allowed the use of 
 the lifts. The boy was bound to be a long 
 time. 
 
 Having nothing to do, and being unable to 
 fix his attention upon the paper he had taken 
 up, Derrick looked at the people coming and 
 going in the hall of the hotel, and wondered 
 now and then vaguely about them ; wondered 
 who and what they were, why they looked 
 anxious or self-satisfied, what were their pro- 
 fes? 'ons, where they lived, where they were 
 goi g, how their lives were passed. All the 
 tin 3 he was doing this he was secretly trying 
 to combat his concealed agitation, to brace 
 himself for the interview which perhaps lay 
 before him. He had made no plan of conduct ; 
 he was unable to make one now ; but he strove 
 to pull himself together, to banish his absurd 
 sense of shame. And at the same time he 
 looked at the travellers and gave an edge of 
 his mind to them. 
 
 But presently, just for one moment, his 
 attention was riveted. 
 
 A man appeared in the hall. He was alone, 
 and came, apparently, from the inner part of 
 the hotel where the lift and the staircase were, 
 
The Spirit of the Time 223 
 
 for Derrick first saw him standing very near 
 the place where the boy had gone off with the 
 card for the Princess. 
 
 * This man was about thirty-eight, or perhaps 
 forty years old, and looked wasted, not with 
 ill-health but with thought. There was some- 
 thing almost terrifically mental about his 
 appearance. Derrick thought of it as a glare 
 of mind. But this glare of mind was strangely 
 mingled with something else, something in- 
 tensely physical and almost barbarous, which 
 might either attract or repel, as the intensity of 
 an animal may either attract or repel. The 
 man was thin, large boned, gaunt and not 
 much under six feet in height, with thick 
 yellow-brown hair and a quite yellow beard 
 and moustache. His face was pale, with a 
 bony structure which was very apparent and 
 marked cheek bones. His lips were large and 
 the teeth large and very white and regular. 
 Upon the bossy forehead there was the stamp 
 of thought. It was the forehead of a deep 
 and persistent thinker, of one who often 
 drowned himself and sank down out of reach 
 in thought. The eyes were yellow brown, 
 exceptionally large, long in shape, and glitter- 
 
224 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 ing with light, with energy, and with deter- 
 mination. 
 
 " A marvellously interesting man ! " Der- 
 rick thought, as he looked at him. " And 
 perhaps a marvellous brute too. A fierce 
 mind in a fierce body ! 5: 
 
 The man lifted a large thin hand, pulled at 
 his yellow beard, then walked down the hall. 
 He had seen an unoccupied writing-table. He 
 went to it and sat down at it with his 
 back towards Derrick. And just then the 
 boy who had taken Derrick's card came 
 back, 
 
 " Madame the Princess has gone out." 
 
 " You are sure ? " said Derrick. 
 
 " She isn't there," said the boy. 
 
 He held out the card. Derrick took it, and 
 went again to the bureau. 
 
 " I'll come back later on and see if I can 
 find the Princess," he said to the man there. 
 " Princess Aranensky." 
 
 " Bien, m'sieu ! " 
 
 " She is leaving to-morrow, I understand." 
 
 " Madame la Princesse sails for India on 
 the Ophir to-morrow." 
 
 " I'll call again this evening." 
 
The Spirit of the Time 225 
 
 " Bien, m'sieu ! " said the man, with 
 supreme indifference. 
 
 Derrick left the hotel. 
 
 All the afternoon he walked about Mar- 
 seilles. He had a cup of tea in the Grand Cafe*, 
 smoked a cigar, and when darkness had fallen 
 went once more to the Hotel du Louvre. 
 
 He did not, of course, know whether the 
 Princess had been in when he had called and 
 had refused to see him, or whether she had 
 really been out. He had no means of ascer- 
 taining that. But as he drew near to the 
 hotel he debated with himself how he had 
 better act this time. He might again send 
 up his card and again be told that the Princess 
 was out. In that case he could say he would 
 wait in the hall till she returned. If she were 
 in reality in her room upstairs that would be 
 useless. What he wanted to do was to ascer- 
 tain for certain whether she was in the hotel 
 or was not in it. He realized for the first 
 time what security there is in a large hotel for 
 one who does not wish to be got at by some- 
 one from outside. The servants have a code 
 of discretion There is no means of forcing 
 'the doors. 
 
226 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 Or is there, if one has only a little self- 
 possession or call it impudence ? 
 
 It struck Derrick that he might get at the 
 Princess in this way ; he might go into the 
 hotel avoiding the bureau, go straight to the 
 lift, give the lift attendant a big tip, and say, 
 " Take me up to the sitting-room of the 
 Princess Aranensky." The Princess might not 
 have engaged a sitting-room. In that case 
 the ruse would fail, for the attendant would 
 certainly not take a stranger up to a lady's 
 bedroom. But if by chance the Princess had 
 a sitting-room it was quite possible that the 
 man would pocket the tip and take Derrick up. 
 
 Derrick resolved to carry out this plan. 
 
 He found the hall of the hotel more crowded 
 than ever. Travellers were arriving. Luggage 
 was being unloaded. The bureau was bom- 
 barded by people asking questions and trying 
 to engage rooms. The moment could not have 
 been more favourable. Derrick made his way 
 to the lift, which was luckily empty. A young 
 man in the hotel livery stood beside it. Der- 
 rick got in. 
 
 " Kindly take me up to the Princess 
 Aranensky's sitting-room," he said. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 227 
 
 The man looked doubtful. 
 
 " Is Madame the Princess expecting mon- 
 sieur ? " he asked. 
 
 Derrick held out ten francs. 
 
 " Yes. The Princess is expecting me." 
 
 The young man, with a faint understanding 
 smile, pocketed the bribe and the lift shot 
 upward. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE lift stopped at the second floor. 
 
 " What is Princess Aranensky's number ? " 
 asked Derrick. 
 
 " The sitting-room is number HB, m'sieu," 
 said the young man. " Go to the right. It 
 is on the left at the end of the corridor." 
 
 He stepped backwards into the lift and shut 
 the ironwork gate. 
 
 Derrick walked slowly down the right-hand 
 corridor till he was in front of the door which 
 hid from him the Princess's sitting-room. 
 There he stopped. 
 
 It was rather dark in the corridor, and for 
 the moment there was no one in it except him- 
 self. In the distance he heard a slight noise 
 of voices talking in the " service " room near 
 the stairs, and from another direction came 
 the faint sound of a bath " running. " He 
 lifted his hand and rapped on the door. There 
 was no answer. And for a moment he felt a 
 
 sensation of intense relief. Perhaps the room 
 
 228 
 
The Spirit of the Time 229 
 
 was untenanted ; perhaps the Princess was 
 out. He heard an electric bell, then the sound 
 of a dress, and saw a housemaid hurrying down 
 the corridor with her back to him. Imme- 
 diately he knocked again at the door. This 
 time a voice answered. 
 
 " Entrez ! " it said. " Entrez ! " 
 It was the Princess's voice. Derrick drew 
 in his breath and opened the door. 
 
 He saw a rather large and banal room com- 
 fortably furnished, and with a door at one end 
 leading into another room. This door was 
 half open. Red curtains were drawn. The 
 electric lights were turned on. A small fire 
 was lit in the grate. About the room there 
 were strewn cushions and books and magazines. 
 There were also several vases full of roses and 
 violets. A large red sofa was drawn up near 
 the fire. Its gaudy colour was partially hidden 
 by a piece of black and gold oriental embroidery 
 worked with dull red and blue flowers. Upon 
 this sofa, with a book in her hand, and her 
 head on a dark-blue cushion, Princess Ara- 
 nensky was lying in a closely fitting black 
 travelling dress. 
 
 When Derrick came in the book fell out of 
 
230 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 her hand and dropped on the floor. For a 
 moment she did not speak, nor did he. Then 
 she pushed herself up on the sofa. A dull 
 flush of red showed for an instant in her rather 
 rough-hewn face and faded away. 
 
 1 You here in Marseilles ! " she said. 
 
 He knew then that she had been out when 
 he had called before and that she had not heard 
 of his visit. 
 
 " But how " she added, and stopped. 
 
 She got up slowly. 
 
 "But how did you know I was here? 
 How did you find my room ? '' 
 
 " The lift-man brought me up and told 
 me your number." 
 
 " Yes ? " 
 
 She waited, but Derrick said nothing more. 
 Then she held out her hand. Mechanically 
 he put his into it. At that moment it occurred 
 to him that she could not know what he had 
 done in Paris about the pearls, and, therefore, 
 could not know that he had discovered her 
 deception. 
 
 " I wish to stay a little while," he said, 
 with acute embarrassment. 
 
 " Of course ! But wait a moment ! " 
 
The Spirit of the Time 231 
 
 She went to the door at the end of the 
 room and passed into a further room, no doubt 
 her bedroom. Meanwhile Derrick stood on the 
 hearth and listened to the noise of the traffic 
 in the Cannebiere. His eyes fell on the book 
 the Princess had dropped, and he bent down 
 and picked it up. It was Steiner's " An Out- 
 line of Theosophy." 
 
 He laid it down carefully on a table beside 
 a vase of roses. 
 
 In about five minutes the Princess came 
 back and shut the door behind her. 
 
 " I thought you had gone to London," she 
 said, coming up to him. 
 
 " And you meant to leave Europe for 
 India without letting me know that you were 
 going ! ' ! 
 
 " India ! You know that " 
 
 " I know that you intend to sail on the 
 Ophir to-morrow." 
 
 " Yes ; that's true." 
 
 "Wouldn't it have been what shall I 
 say kinder to tell me that before I left 
 Montreux ? " he said, with bitterness. 
 
 Now that he was with the Princess, now that 
 he had just touched her and was close to her, 
 
232 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 looking at her, feeling her atmosphere, now 
 that he was standing among the books and 
 cushions and flowers which she carried about 
 with her, or bought wherever she was, a 
 horrible jealousy and almost hatred of her had 
 suddenly come to him. It was terrible to care 
 for a woman who swindled you, then got rid 
 of you, and, finally, with your money, pur- 
 chased the means of escaping out of your life 
 without giving you any hint of her intention. 
 It was humiliating, it was intolerable, still to 
 have any feeling for such a woman. Derrick 
 wanted to look upon the Princess as a low 
 creature, a disgraceful adventuress, a woman 
 only fit to be thrown to the police. But he 
 couldn't. Everything in her and about her 
 forbade that. And it was the struggle between 
 his appreciation of her infamy and his appre- 
 ciation of her intense and painful attraction 
 for him which caused him to feel so bitter. 
 He was rent, and hated himself, and her for 
 having turned him into this tragic enigma of 
 a man, this thing that could feel fiercely but 
 was unable to understand itself. And he was 
 abominably jealous of the woman, the flesh 
 and blood human being, who was slipping 
 
The Spirit of the Time 233 
 
 away from him into the shining mystery of 
 the East, drawn by influences which he knew 
 nothing of, which she meant that he should 
 never know anything of. 
 
 " Yes, perhaps it would," she answered. 
 " I don't know. There are ways of kindness 
 that are easy but cruel in the end. I made up 
 my mind that it was better to go as I intended 
 to go." 
 
 " That is without ever seeing me again ! ' 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 She had not asked him to sit down, but now, 
 perhaps seeing in his eyes the determination 
 of violent feeling, she sat down and, with the 
 air of almost brooding fatalism which he had 
 noticed once or twice at Montreux, said : 
 
 " Since you are here and have found me 
 how I don't know and cannot divine stay for 
 a little while. We have been much together 
 in the snows. It was ordained that we were 
 to be together again here on the edge of my 
 journey. Nothing foretold this to me. But 
 it had to be." 
 
 He sat down. 
 
 " Why did you come here ? " she asked. 
 
 She stretched out her hand. He now saw 
 
234 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 a bag lying on a table near her. She took it, 
 opened it, drew out a case. Things repeated 
 themselves horribly. He remembered the first 
 time he had seen her at Montreux. Now 
 here she lit a cigarette at the match he held. 
 
 " I was on my way to Cap Martin with a 
 friend. I couldn't make up my mind to go 
 to London in winter. I I thought London 
 could very well wait ! " 
 
 As he was vaguely trying to give her a 
 wrong impression he did not look at her while 
 he said this. 
 
 " And you saw me in the street ? " 
 
 He felt that her eyes were fixed on him 
 with intensity. 
 
 " No." 
 
 He told her exactly what had happened, 
 how he had gone to look at the Ophir and the 
 episode of the steward. 
 
 " And what led you to the Ophir ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 " I believe it was what you once said to 
 me about your desire to go to India. If 
 not, it was mere chance ! " 
 
 " It certainly was not mere chance. Then 
 you were not going back to Montreux ? " 
 
The Spirit of the Time 235 
 
 " Yes, I should have gone. I came here to 
 go to Cap Martin, but while I was here I 
 decided to go back to Montreux. Of course, 
 that was before I knew you were here." 
 
 She was silent, and sat quite still. 
 
 " Is Baroness Hausen with you ? " he 
 asked 
 
 " Katya no." 
 
 " You are going to India alone ? " 
 
 " Marguerite will accompany me. You re- 
 member she always made tea for us." 
 
 " Marguerite yes, I remember." 
 
 She had spoken as if it were a very long 
 time ago. And now he felt that indeed it was 
 long ago the short period of their intimate 
 friendship. A sickness of the heart came upon 
 him, a sort of nausea of the affections. 
 
 " Is Baroness Hausen still in Montreux ? " 
 he asked dully. 
 
 " I left her there." 
 
 Again a silence fell between them. Derrick 
 was trying to force himself into frankness. 
 He had come there to tell the Princess that he 
 had discovered her fraud. And now he was 
 talking vaguely about India, and asking useless 
 questions about Baroness Hausen. 
 
236 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 At this moment the bedroom door opened 
 and Marguerite appeared carrying a tray with 
 tea things. She greeted Derrick with a smile, 
 and was evidently not at all surprised to see 
 him. 
 
 " Put the tea here, Marguerite ! " said the 
 Princess, indicating a table close to where 
 she was sitting. 
 
 " Please don't have it for me," said Derrick. 
 " I take it myself at this hour." 
 " Oh, then but really I don't want it." 
 He felt at that moment that if he had tea 
 once again with this extraordinary woman he 
 might falter in his resolution to " have it out " 
 with her about the pearls Although he knew 
 that his money would pay for these rooms, 
 this meal, the cabin on the Ophir, all the 
 expenses of the journey and perhaps the long 
 residence in India, the preposterous idea was 
 in his mind that he could not break bread 
 with this woman and then attack her, that to 
 do that would be disgraceful on his part. He 
 knew she was moral riff-raff her own ex- 
 pression but somehow he could not feel that 
 she was. He even presently began to wonder 
 vaguely again whether it were possible that 
 
The Spirit of the Time 237 
 
 she herself had been deceived about the pearls, 
 whether she could possibly have supposed that 
 they were genuine. For now that he was with 
 her once more it seemed incredible that she 
 could be a subtle swindler. There was no 
 atmosphere of an adventuress about her. She 
 now seemed quite at her ease. There was 
 nothing abashed in her face or manner, nothing 
 furtive or sly in her demeanour. 
 
 Could she have not known ? If only that 
 were so ! But how could it possibly be ? 
 
 Marguerite went away and returned with 
 the teapot and toast. Then she smiled again 
 at Derrick and disappeared, shutting the door 
 behind her. 
 
 " Now won't you have some tea ? " said 
 the Princess. 
 
 " No, thank you. I don't want it." 
 
 She looked at him, and there was a very 
 definite question in her eyes. 
 
 " You are angry with me ? That is why 
 you won't share this little meal with me ? " 
 
 " Yes ; that's it." 
 
 She said nothing, and poured out some tea 
 for herself. 
 
 Do you mean to tell me that you are 
 
 u 
 
238 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 surprised at that ? Do you deny that I have 
 the right to feel angry with you ? Haven't 
 you been false to our friendship ? Haven't 
 you trampled on it ? ' : 
 
 " You mean by intending to go away 
 without letting you know ? ' 
 
 " I suppose we English have different 
 notions about friendship from those held by 
 Russians. I considered we were friends. You 
 called me friend. You signed yourself ' Your 
 friend ' to me. Baroness Hausen told me 
 that you valued my friendship, even that you 
 had ideals about the friendship of a woman 
 and a man." 
 
 " I did not give Katya the right to say 
 anything about that." 
 
 " Then do you mean that you never felt 
 any friendship at all for me ? Is that it ? ' 
 
 " I enjoyed our talks, our expeditions in 
 the snows. Much that you said interested 
 me. There was much in your character which 
 I admired." 
 
 " But you never at any time, even at the 
 beginning, felt any real friendship for me ? " 
 
 She looked at him with eyes which seemed 
 to him to be full of brooding mystery. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 239 
 
 " In the vastness of our many lives what is 
 such a brief connexion as ours has been, yours 
 and mine ? " she answered. " We meet. We 
 pass a few weeks weeks only together. We 
 separate, probably for ever. To-morrow I 
 shall be on my way to India. Is it of any use 
 to try to analyse such a relation as ours ? It 
 was designed as everything is designed. It 
 had to be. And now it has to come to an 
 end." 
 
 " You have plenty of brains," said Derrick- 
 " But you have no heart at all. You are one 
 of the most deceiving characters I have ever 
 met with. You suggest warmth, and you are 
 as cold as ice. You suggest sympathy, and 
 you don't know what sympathy means. I 
 always felt at Montreux that you and Baroness 
 Hausen were at the opposite Poles. But it 
 wasn't so. I understand now why you were 
 friends, why you were able to be together. 
 You were linked by character. There was the 
 tie of a mutual frigidity between you. No 
 wonder you were able to live among the snows 
 and the ice. Such conditions suited you both. 
 You will be an alien among the fires of India 
 if you go there." 
 
240 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 6 You make a mistake. I belong rather to 
 Asia than to Europe, like many Russians." 
 
 After a moment of silence Derrick said : 
 
 " You have achieved something like a 
 miracle." 
 
 " What miracle ? " 
 
 " You have made me respect the Baroness. 
 She, at any rate, shows herself as she is. She 
 doesn't pretend friendship. She doesn't pre- 
 tend anything. She is made of stone, and 
 she lets you see the stone, touch it, know it for 
 what it is. You expect nothing from her." 
 
 He got up mechanically and went towards 
 the red curtains which hid the windows ; then 
 he turned and came back to the hearth. This 
 woman was making him feel the uselessness of 
 everything, the smallness, futility, momentari- 
 ness of everything, in an almost paralysing 
 way. Friendship, love even, anger, the sense 
 of outrage, the desire for revenge they seemed 
 inevitably to wilt, to wither under the action 
 of her peculiar mind and temperament on this 
 winter afternoon. And yet and that was 
 the Devil of it her attraction for him re- 
 mained, and had never been more great in 
 its influence upon him. 
 
The Spirit of the Time 241 
 
 As he stood still there, with the little fire 
 behind him, a cold jealousy possessed him, 
 with which his ignorance was horribly linked. 
 He had the feeling that there was something 
 which, known by him, would explain, make 
 clear, this woman to him. And he was jealous 
 of this mystery, almost as if it were a living 
 being. 
 
 " I have never understood you," he said 
 bitterly. " And I never shall understand 
 you." 
 
 He made an almost violent movement under 
 the influence of acute feeling. 
 
 " You are going ! r the Princess said. 
 
 He stopped. 
 
 " Going ! Do you wish me to go ? " 
 
 He looked down at her. 
 
 " I don't believe you care whether I go or 
 stay. I suppose I have no meaning for you 
 have never had any meaning for you. And 
 yet you were resolved to know me at Mon- 
 treux. Why was that ? Why was it ? " 
 
 After a moment she said : 
 
 " Directly I saw you I felt we were destined 
 to know each other." 
 
 " Destined ! It was your will power which 
 
242 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 drew me towards you. Do you deny that ? 
 Do you deny that human beings have will and 
 exercise it freely ? " 
 
 " The Arabs say that the outline of our 
 lives is imposed upon us but that we can 
 colour them as we will. Perhaps that is the 
 truth." 
 
 " And how have you led me to colour my 
 life ? " 
 
 " You are as free as I am." 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 He bent towards her. 
 
 " Perhaps I could force you to feel that I 
 have some power over you," he said. 
 
 She sat silent with her eyes fixed upon 
 him. 
 
 " I have the power to prevent you from 
 sailing to India to-morrow," he said. 
 
 " I don't think so." 
 
 " I have ! " he asserted, almost with vio- 
 lence. 
 
 He stared at her. He wished to tell her 
 the nature of the power he had asserted he 
 possessed, to tell her that he could lodge a 
 complaint against her, charge her with being a 
 swindler, have her arrested. The Ophir would 
 
The Spirit of the Time 243 
 
 sail without her if he took action in time. But 
 could he take action ? As he looked down at 
 this woman the terrible influence of personality 
 came upon him, that psychic mystery which 
 works like a thing underground in the dark, 
 and which can sap the foundations of life ; 
 he felt it like something as definite as wood 
 or iron, although it was as unsubstantial as 
 mist. 
 
 " I have ! " he had said. But was it true ? 
 Has a man power if he is unable to exercise it ? 
 Is not the exercise of the power the only 
 positive proof of its possession ? As Derrick 
 gazed at the Princess, something in her calm 
 and steady expression, even in her attitude, 
 in the shape of her body, in the forms of her 
 delicate hands, in the way the thick black 
 hair grew and was folded about her head, 
 told him that he would never denounce her 
 to the police of Marseilles or of any other 
 city, that he would never give away the 
 secret which he had found out in Paris. Could 
 he even tell it to her before he left her for 
 ever ? 
 
 " Well ? " she said at last, as he did not 
 speak. 
 
244 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 " When I was in Paris " he began. 
 
 " Yes ? " she said. 
 
 " It's no use ! " he muttered. 
 
 A cry, ridiculous and tragic, rose up in his 
 heart a,t that moment " Why have I the 
 feelings within me, the traditions behind me, 
 of a gentleman ? ' : 
 
 With a desperate effort to get the better of 
 those feelings and those traditions he said : 
 
 " Don't you know what happened in Paris?" 
 
 " No," she said in a calm voice. 
 
 He stood for a moment in silence looking 
 down, not at her now but at the dull red hotel 
 carpet, which was complicated with drab and 
 blue flowers. During that moment he was 
 trying to force himself to speak about the 
 pearls, to attack her for having so basely 
 swindled him. 
 
 " She shall know what I found out in 
 Paris," he said to himself. "I will tell 
 her." 
 
 But his lips obstinately refused to speak. 
 Within him a voice, persistent and final, 
 said : 
 
 " You wished to marry this woman. You 
 must let her alone." 
 
The Spirit of the Time 245 
 
 At last he looked at her again. He read 
 nothing in her eyes but a deep and sombre 
 fatalism. What she read in his he did not 
 know. Finally, he turned and went out of 
 the room without another word, shutting the 
 door behind him. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 HE went back to the hotel, dined with Cock- 
 ayne, to whom he told nothing, and then, 
 with the excuse that he was tired, went up 
 to his bedroom and shut himself in. 
 
 He told himself that he had seen the Princess 
 for the last time, that she had vanquished him 
 and that he had done with her. But in the 
 night a strange and cold and very intense 
 curiosity took possession of him and kept him 
 for a long time awake. He felt that the heart 
 of the mystery of this woman had escaped 
 his investigation, that he knew nothing of it, 
 absolutely nothing, that he had never drawn 
 near to it, but that if he could look into it 
 perhaps everything would be clear to him. 
 
 Even now was it too late to know some- 
 thing of the truth ? 
 
 Perhaps the next morning. 
 
 The morning came and with it decision. 
 He sent a message to Cockayne to say that he 
 
 would be in to lunch but was engaged till then, 
 
 246 
 
The Spirit of the Time 247 
 
 Afterwards he dressed, breakfasted, and by 
 ten was down at the wharf from which the 
 Ophir was to sail that morning for India. 
 
 There was a great bustle at the wharf. 
 Seafaring men were coming and going. Knots 
 of nondescript people were standing near the 
 sheds talking in many languages. Cabs were 
 driving up full of travellers and hand baggage. 
 Derrick was jostled by passers-by, and stared 
 at by lounging men, and by boys with hungry, 
 knowing eyes and dirty hands that looked 
 greedy. One ruffian approached him and said 
 in very bad French : 
 
 " Can I do anything for you, monsieur ? 
 Are you looking for anyone ? The ' Due 
 d'Aumale ' " 
 
 Derrick moved abruptly away. The man 
 with a scowl looked after him. 
 
 At half-past ten a large omnibus loaded 
 with luggage rumbled heavily over the cobble 
 stones. A placard fixed on it announced that 
 it was from the Hotel du Louvre est de la 
 Paix. Standing behind a pile of dirty sacks, 
 Derrick watched the descent of the people in 
 the omnibus. Among them was Marguerite. 
 She stood for some time on the quay quite near 
 
248 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 him, but did not see him. She was surrounded 
 by trunks and vociferating porters. Finally, 
 attended by a man in uniform from the hotel, 
 she disappeared under the shed roof in the 
 direction of the Ophir, grasping in one hand a 
 large case, which looked like a jewel-case, and 
 in the other some strapped-together umbrellas 
 and sticks. 
 
 Was the Princess's pointed stick among 
 them, the stick on which she had so often 
 leaned as she and Derrick had stood together 
 in the snows ? 
 
 Eleven o'clock was striking from the 
 churches of Marseilles when Derrick saw in 
 the distance a victoria drawn by a big brown 
 horse coming along the quay towards him. It 
 pulled up not far from him in front of the place 
 where the Ophir was berthed. As the horse 
 faced him, and the driver on the box was a 
 broad heavy man, Derrick could not see who 
 was inside the carriage. Directly it stopped, 
 a tall, thin and large-boned man got out with 
 a sort of almost awkward litheness. For a 
 moment his face was turned full towards 
 Derrick, a face framed in thick yellow-brown 
 and yellow hair, pale, with a bossy forehead, 
 
The Spirit of the Time 249 
 
 prominent cheek bones, large lips and large 
 white teeth the man Derrick had noticed on 
 the previous day in the hall of the Hotel du 
 Louvre. For an instant only the man's eyes 
 travelled along the crowded quay with a glance 
 that seemed at the same time piercing and 
 indifferent, and to Derrick it was as if a glare 
 of mind was just then turned on the stones, 
 the sheds, the vehicles and the people, like a 
 search-light, fierce, implacable and disturbing- 
 Then the man swung round. Derrick knew 
 why. He knew who was going to get out of 
 the carriage, who was the man's companion, 
 who was going with him on the Ophir to India. 
 The man held out a big hand. Another hand 
 took it. Princess Aranensky got down. For 
 a moment they stood together on the quay. 
 The man paid the driver, took the Princess 
 familiarly by the arm, and seemed to draw her 
 powerfully, but calmly, towards the great ship. 
 
 The crowd swallowed them up. 
 
 Derrick stood quite still by the pile of dirty 
 sacks. Should he follow them ? Should he 
 accost them ? Should he even now try to do 
 something to prevent the Princess from leaving 
 France with his money, and with this man, 
 
250 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 for whose sake probably, almost certainly, 
 she had done what she had done ? 
 
 " Can I do anything for you, monsieur ? 
 Are you " 
 
 It was the lounging ruffian again. 
 
 " Damn you ! Let me alone, will you ? >; 
 
 Derrick had turned upon him ferociously. 
 The man slunk away. And then Derrick 
 went off in the opposite direction without 
 another glance towards the Ophir, which in 
 an hour would be carrying her burden to Asia. 
 He turned to the left presently and came to 
 the harbour, where the conjurers and acrobats 
 were performing in the midst of the watching 
 crowds. There he drew out his watch and 
 looked at it. Twenty past eleven ! He had 
 forty minutes to do what he had just thought 
 of doing. Time enough ! He went on, walk- 
 ing fast. 
 
 Between twelve and half-past, from a point 
 on the sea front high above the sea, he saw the 
 Ophir ', pouring black smoke from her enormous 
 funnels, drawing out of the harbour into the 
 open waters of the Gulf of Lyons. He watched 
 her steady progress with a sort of dull, and yet 
 staring, interest. She was carrying away with 
 
The Spirit of the Time 251 
 
 her an unexplained mystery which had injured 
 his life. She faded presently upon the horizon 
 into greyness and a suggestion of mist. 
 
 When he was back~again in the hotel he went 
 up to his bedroom, took the pearls from their 
 case, spread them out mechanically on a table, 
 sat down and stared at them for a long time. 
 Presently there was a knock on the door and 
 a voice called out : 
 
 " Merton ! Are you there ? " 
 
 " Come in ! " Derrick answered. 
 
 Cockayne showed himself. 
 
 " I lunched long ago. Aren't you " 
 
 He saw the pearls and was silent. 
 
 " What do you think of these ? " said 
 Derrick. 
 
 Cockayne came up to the table, bent down 
 and picked up the pearls. 
 
 " They look remarkably fine," he said, after 
 a moment's consideration. 
 
 " Yes, don't they ? But they're false." 
 
 Cockayne put down the pearls. 
 
 " They make marvellous imitations now- 
 adays," he said. " It's easy to be taken 
 
 in." 
 
 Yes, isn't it? When I get back to 
 
252 The Spirit of the Time 
 
 London I think I shall give them to a 
 flapper." 
 
 Cockayne looked hard at him. 
 
 " I don't think you will," he said. 
 
 Derrick left the case open on the table, 
 threw the pearls carelessly into his dispatch 
 box, shut it, and said : 
 
 " Now I'll do anything you like ! " 
 
 PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C-4 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY