Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/204

180 "I don't quite know what you call the ordinary type of bravo."

"It is plain enough. I am myself an illustration. It is a fact that I am myself contemplating inserting a similar advertisement upon my own account."

"You find life an insupportable burden?"

"As for that, these many years! After one's childhood, one always wishes to make an end of it."

Mr. Kennard turned to Willie Nash to stare. Taking his cigarette from between his lips Mr. Nash addressed M. Gerbert, laughing as he spoke.

"So your glimpse of Paradise has vanished?"

"You mean Célestine—my wife? Bah! That is finished." "It was merely an entr'acte then?"

"No, it was not an entr'acte. It was a complete tragedy of the little, sordid sort, which, at present, is the fashion."

Mr. Nash had resumed his cigarette. Mr. Kennard had poised himself against a corner of the table.

"Gerbert, the other day you were raving about your wife as if she were something higher than the angels. Do you mean to tell me, sir, that that's all over?"

"My ravings? Ah, no!" M. Gerbert had continued to wear his hat Now, taking it off, crushing it up with his right hand, he held it out in front of him. "I shall always have my ravings, though my wife has gone."

"Gone? What the devil do you mean?"

M. Gerbert shrugged his shoulders.

"What does it matter? Perhaps she has begun to love another, or, without loving another, she has