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HIS Platonic desire of his proved to be not at all an invalid's mere whim; and, to the pleased amusement of his sister, he omitted no opportunity to gratify it. In the afternoons, when the tea tables were set along the walls of the long, dark monkish corridor, Orbison would come hobbling forth from his cell and direct her to find places as near Miss Ambler's as possible; he had the maître d'hôtel change their table in the great refectory to one next to that of Miss Ambler and her mother; and when he was prevented from sitting near the Americans for after-dinner coffee, cordials, and music in the corridor, Miss Orbison accused him of becoming querulous.

"He swears," she informed Mr. Eugene Rennie one morning in the garden, a week after his interruption of the reading of the Odyssey. "Whenever I miss a chance to get him near Miss Ambler he uses the most fearful language he knows, and he knows a great deal."