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 Bard" the way every one else does, but show him up as a growling old lion who too early got enmeshed in the silken net of "Ladies' Albums.

'But...' began Lanice. The diligence was impatient to be off. The guard was beseeching her, or perhaps cursing her, in Italian. She sprang in. 'And write over your own name,' shouted Roger, bound to the last to keep the parting unsentimental.

'Oh...I have already sent off my Browning article over the nom de plume of "Tempus Fugit.

'Rubbish!' called Roger, and the diligence jingled and clattered through the Piazza della Signoria.

Roger looked at his watch, whistled thoughtfully, and went back to his waiting pony cart. He was very fond of this sleek, thin girl who had landed almost unannounced in the middle of his affairs, demanding in one breath the body of her mother and an answer to all the riddles of life. He believed, partly from what she let drop and partly intuitively, that she had recently been through some ordeal. Love, probably. Perhaps this witty Mr. Fox, whom she quoted so assiduously. Perhaps the professor, who he knew had written her several times and would meet her in London. Perhaps Jones—obviously one of those loose young Englishmen that always make a bad name for the white man in hot countries. If he still were in England and were the man whom this girl loved, she would probably seek him out—women have almost a genius for anticlimaxes. She was ambitious, perhaps more so than he realized. Could ambition have so wounded her? 'There's a flash to the girl—a je ne