Page:The Yellow Book - 02.djvu/26

18 and stood there till eleven o'clock; for not before then did he sell the last of his little penny hats. Another man, equally proud, might have done the same thing in Vernet's situation, but not with Vernet's absolute indifference to everything but the coldness of the night and the too-great stress of physical want.

But this Russian revolutionist was far too capable and versatile a man to lie long in low water. He had a genius for industrial chemistry which soon got him employment and from the sufficiently comfortable made him prosperous by rapid stages. But what of that? Before long another wave of political disturbance rose in Europe; Russia, Italy, France, 'twas all one to Vernet when his sympathies were roused; and after one or two temporary disappearances he was again lost altogether. There was no news of him for months; and then his wife, who all this while had been sinking back into the pallid speechless deadness of the King's Cross days, suddenly disappeared too.

For more than thirty years—a period of enormous change in all that men do or think—no word of Vernet came to my knowledge. But though quite passed away he was never forgotten long, and it was with an inrush of satisfaction that, a year or two ago, I received this letter from him:

". . . . I have been reading the Review, and it determines me to solicit a pleasure which I have been at full-cock to ask for many times since I returned to England in 1887. Let us meet. I have something to say to you. But let us not meet in this horrifically large and noisy town. You know Richmond? You know the Star Rh