In the stern condemnation of moral delinquencies, when such are discovered or conjectured, we may be content to find nothing but what is praiseworthy; the simultaneous exhibition of a hungry curiosity about them is one of those features of human nature which it is best to accept without comment – if only for the reason that no man can be sure that he does not in some degree share it. In Catsford at this time it was decidedly prominent. The place went wild on the news that Sir John Aspenick, happening to be in Paris on a flying visit, thought that he saw Jenny go by as he stood outside the Café de la Paix: great was the disappointment that Sir John could not contrive even to think that he had seen Octon with her! Lady Sarah Lacey, working on the feminine clew of Jenny's having departed luggageless, set inquiries afoot among London dressmakers, with the happy result of revealing the fact that Jenny had bought a stock of several articles of wearing apparel: the news worked back to Chat from one of the dressmakers, and from Chat I had it, with more details of the wearing apparel that my memory carries. Mrs. Jepps waylaid Chat – who had timidly ventured into the town under a pressing need of finding some very special form of needle – in the main street and tried the comparative method, not at all a bad mode of investigation where manners forbid direct questions. She told Chat numbers of stories of other "sad cases" and looked to see how Chat "took" them – hoping to draw, augur-like, conclusions from Chat's expression. I myself – well, I would not be uncharitable. My friends were all honorable men; they might naturally conclude that I was depressed and lonely; why look farther for the cause of the frequent visits from them which I enjoyed? Bindlecombe and a dozen more so honored me, and Cartmell told me that only the severest office discipline kept his working hours sacred from kind intruders.

Moreover, a little problem arose, not in itself serious, but showing the extreme inconvenience which results when people who are in a position to confer pleasant favors so act as to make it doubtful whether favors can properly be accepted from them. Such a state of affairs puts an unfair strain on virtue, inconsiderately demanding martyrdom where righteousness only has been volunteered. As may have been gathered, Jenny's neighbors were in the habit of using the road through her park as an alternative route to the high road in their comings and goings to and from Catsford. For some it was shorter – as for the Wares, the Dormers, and the Aspenicks; for all it was pleasanter. What was to be done about this now? Fillingford had no doubt; neither he nor Lady Sarah used the park road any more; but then the road was no great saving of distance for the folks at the Manor – their martyrdom was easy – whereas it was very materially shorter for the Wares, the Dormers, and, above all, for the Aspenicks. The question was so acute for the Aspenicks that I heard of Lady Aspenick's collecting opinions on the subject from persons of light and leading. She did not consider Fillingford's course impartial – nor decisive of the question; it was easy for him to take the virtuous line; it did not involve his going pretty nearly two miles out of his way.

Discussion ran high on the question. Mrs. Jepps declared against using the road, though her fat pair of horses had been accustomed to get what little exercise they ever did get along it three afternoons a week.

"If I use the road, and she comes back and finds me using it, where am I?" asked Mrs. Jepps. "I can't cut her when I'm driving in her park by her permission. Yet I may feel obliged to refuse to bow to her!"

The attitude had all Mrs. Jepps's logic in it; it was unassailable. Very reluctantly old Mr. and Mrs. Dormer gave in to it – they would go round by the King's highway, longer though it was. Bertram Ware, lawyer and politician, stole round the difficulty – and along the park road – by adopting a provisional attitude; until more was known, he felt justified in using – and in allowing Mrs. Ware to use – the road. He reserved liberty of action if more facts condemnatory of Jenny should appear.

The Aspenicks remained – to whom the road was more precious than to any of the others. Sir John would have none of Ware's provisional attitude – it was not what he called "straight"; but then he had a prejudice against lawyers, and held no particularly high opinion of Bertram Ware.

"Make up your mind," he said to his wife. "Either we use it or we don't. But if we use it, it's taking a favor from her, and that may be awkward later on."

Now Lady Aspenick wanted to use the road very much indeed – and not merely the road for her tandem, so sadly famous in history, but also the turf alongside it for her canters. But in the first place Lady Aspenick was herself a model of propriety, and in the second – it was an even weightier consideration – she had a growing girl; Eunice Aspenick was now nearly sixteen – and rode with her mother. Supposing Lady Aspenick and Eunice used the road, supposing Jenny were guilty of enormities, came back guilty of them, and discovered Lady Aspenick, with Eunice, on the road! Lady Aspenick's problem was worse than Mrs. Jepps's – because of Eunice on the one hand, and of Lady Aspenick's remarkably strong desire to use the road on the other.

This question of the road – work on the Institute at a standstill – no more parties at Breysgate (what of the Flower Show next summer?)! Verily Jenny was causing endless inconvenience!

It would not be just to say that this difficulty about the road – and Eunice – determined Lady Aspenick's attitude toward Jenny; it is perhaps permissible to conjecture that it led her to reconsider it. After the lapse of a fortnight she came out on Jenny's side, and signified the same by calling on Chat at Breysgate Priory. Chat and I sometimes consoled one another's loneliness at afternoon tea; I was present when Lady Aspenick arrived.

We had our lesson pat – so long as we were not cross-examined. Jenny was wintering abroad; Chat's health (this was our own supplement) had made traveling inadvisable for her, and Jenny had found other companions. Lady Aspenick was most affable to the story; she admitted it to belief at once. Sympathy with Chat, pleasure at not being deprived of Chat's society, kind messages through Chat to Jenny – all came as easily and naturally as possible. Not an awkward question! It was with real gratitude that I conducted Lady Aspenick to her carriage. But she had a word for me there.

"I didn't want to talk about it to that poor old thing," she said, "but have you any – news, Mr. Austin?"

"None, except what I've told you. She isn't a great letter-writer."

"They're saying horrid things. Well, Sarah Lacey would, of course. I can't see any reason for believing them. I'm on her side! One may wonder at her taste – one must – but she has a right to please herself, and to take her own time about it. Of course that night journey – !" Lady Aspenick smiled in a deprecating manner.

"Impulsive!" I observed.

Lady Aspenick caught at the word joyfully. "That's it – impulsive! That's what I've always said. Dear Jenny is impulsive – that's all!" She got into her carriage and ordered the coachman to drive her to Mrs. Jepps's. She was going to tell Mrs. Jepps that Jenny was impulsive – going by the road through the park to tell Mrs. Jepps that it was no more than that.

Her own line taken, Lady Aspenick gathered a tiny faction to raise Jenny's banner. They could not do much against Lady Sarah's open viciousness, Fillingford's icy silence, the union of High Church and Low in the persons and the adherents of Alison and of Mrs. Jepps. But Sir John followed his wife, Bindlecombe took courage to uplift a friendly voice, and old Mr. Dormer began to waver. His memories went back to George IV. – days in which they were not hard on pretty women – having, indeed, remarkably little right to be. Mr. Dormer was reported to be inclined to think that the men of the surrounding families might ride in Jenny's park – about their ladies it was, perhaps, another question. It was understood that Lady Aspenick's faction gave great offense at Fillingford Manor. The alliance between the two houses had been close, and Fillingford Manor saw treachery to itself in any defense of Jenny.

So they debated and gossiped, sparred and wrangled – and no more news came. At the Priory we began to settle down into a sort of routine, trying to find ourselves work to do, trying to fill the lives that seemed now so empty. Our position – like Bertram Ware's attitude about the park road – was provisional – hopelessly provisional. We were not living; we were only waiting. Not the actual events of to-day, but the possible event of to-morrow was the thing for which we existed. It was like listening perpetually for a knock on the door. Little could be made of a life like that. Well, we were not to sink into the dullness of our routine just yet.

In my youth I have heard a sage preach to the young men, his hearers and critical disciples, on the text of the certainty of life; discarding, perhaps thinking trite, perhaps deeming misleading, the old Memento mori. He bade them recollect that for practical purposes they had to reckon on – and with – thirty, forty, fifty, years of life and activity. That was a long time – order the many days! You could not afford to calculate on the accident of an early death to end your responsibility. It was well said; yet not even the broadest sanest argument can altogether persuade Death out of his traditional rôle, nor induce Atropos to wield her shears always without caprice. Yet again, in this case there seemed little caprice; the likely ending came rather quickly – that was all; it was just such an ending as, in some form or other, might have been expected – just such as once, in talk with me, the man himself had, hardly gravely yet quite sincerely, treated as likely, almost as inevitable.

I was the first to get the news – at breakfast time one November morning. A telegram came to me from Jenny; it was sent from Tours. "Leonard has died from wound received in a duel. Do not come to me. I want to be alone. – Jenny Driver."

He had insulted somebody – in a country where men still fought on the point of honor. The conclusion sprang forward on a glance. He had passed much time abroad, I knew – the code was not strange to him, nor the use of his weapons. Though both had been strange, little would he have shunned the fight! He would take joy in it – joy in shedding the advantage of his mighty strength, glad to meet his man on even terms, eagerly accepting the leveling power of a bullet. He had made himself intolerable again; some one had uprisen and done away with the incubus of him. The whole affair seemed just what might be looked for; he had died fighting – for him a natural death.

So the life was out of the big man – and he had been so full of it. That was strange to think of.

Somehow he seemed incompatible with death. I remember drawing a long breath as I said to myself "Dead!" and thought grewsomely of the carrying out of that great coffin – with all the mighty weight of him inside; even dead he would oppress men by size, insolently crushing their shoulders with his bulk. "Part of the objection to me is because I'm so large," he had said. Even the undertaker's men would share in that objection. "I shall certainly be stamped out. Ah, well, small wonder – and what a pity!"

He had a power over me; something of his force had reached me, too – or my thoughts would not have dwelt on him so long; they would have turned sooner to Jenny. To what end? Her message forbade the one thing which it was in my mind to do – go to her directly. She would not have it; she would be – as she was – alone. I had no thought of disobedience – only a great sorrow that I must obey. I read the telegram again. "Jenny Driver!" She had hesitated too long. Ways could not be kept open forever. Mr. Powers had taught her this truth once, and she had not hearkened. Death himself came to enforce the lesson. She stood no longer between the fascination that she loved and feared and the independence which she cherished and yet wearied of. She was free perforce; the tenure of her liberty was no longer precarious; and the joy of her heart was dead. Her equipoise – another of her delicate balancings – was hopelessly upset; when Death flung his weight into one of her scales, the other kicked the beam.

So long as I was alone, it did not occur to me to think of the bearings of the event – and of its announcement – on her outward fortunes. My mind was with herself – asking how she faced the thing, in what mood it left her; nay, going back to the days before it, viewing them in the alien light of their sudden end. Not what would be said or thought, but what was, engrossed my meditation. Death brings that color to the mind; it takes us "beyond these voices." But they who live must soon return within hearing.

I did not hear Cartmell come in – I had been out before breakfast, and I believe I had left my door ajar. His hand was on my shoulder before I was aware of his presence. He held a morning paper in his hand, but he did not show it to me directly. He looked down in my face as I sat in my arm-chair and then said, "You've heard, haven't you?"

"Yes," I answered, giving him Jenny's telegram.

He read it. "This must be between you and me, Austin. So far, there's nothing in the paper to show that she was there – to show who the woman was, I mean."

"The woman?"

"The woman mentioned in the paper. Read it." He pushed it into my hand. His practical mind did not waste itself in memories or speculation; it flew to the present need. I had lost myself in wonderings about the man and the woman; he was concerned solely with our local institution – Miss Driver of Breysgate. He was right.

The telegram in the paper came from Reuter's news agency. "A quarrel in the Café de l'Univers last night resulted in a duel this morning, in which an Englishman named Octon was mortally wounded at the first fire. He subsequently expired at the house of a lady, understood to be Mrs. Octon, in the Rue Balzac, to which he had been carried at his own request."

Beneath was a short paragraph stating that it was conjectured that the "deceased gentleman" was "Mr. Leonard Octon, the well-known traveler and entomologist." On inquiry at his publishers', those gentlemen had stated that Mr. Octon was, to their knowledge, traveling in France.

"Not much harm done if it stops there," said Cartmell, thoughtfully rubbing his hands together.

"How can it? There'll have to be an inquest – or something corresponding to it, I suppose?"

"She's very clever."

"Will she care about being clever?" I asked, studying the paragraph again. "Understood to be Mrs. Octon" had a smack of Jenny's own ambiguity and elusiveness. And it hardly sounded as though the house to which he had been carried at his own request were the house where he himself had been lodging.

"Of course it'll be all over Catsford in an hour. There's no helping that. But, as I say, there's no particular harm done yet."

"They'll guess, won't they?"

"Of course they will; but there's all the difference between guessing and having it in print. We must wait. I've got to go out of town – and I'm glad of it."

I did not go away, but I hid myself. The only person I saw that day was Chat: she was entitled to the news.

Telling her was sad work; her devotion to Octon rose up against her accusingly. She railed at herself for all her dealings with Jenny; old-time delinquencies in duty at the Simpsons' dressed themselves in the guise of great crimes; she had been a guilty party to Jenny's misdemeanors; they had led to this.

"I shall have to render an account for it," said poor Chat, rocking her body to and fro, as was her habit in moments of agitation: her speech was obviously reminiscent of church services. "If I had done my duty by her, this would never have happened." I am afraid that "this" meant the scandal, rather than any conduct which gave rise to it. But if Chat were going to be so aggressively penitent as this, the case was lost.

"We must hope for the best – and, anyhow, put the best face on it," I urged.

Chat cheered up a little. "Dear Jenny is very resourceful." Cartmell had observed that she was clever. I was waiting with a vague expectancy for some move from her, some turn or twist in her favor. We had not lost faith in her, any of us; the faith had become blind – if you will, instinctive – surviving even the Waterloo of her flight and this calamitous tragedy.

Were we wrong? Only the future could show that; but the next day brought us some encouragement. There was a fuller paragraph, confirming the conjectured identification of Octon, giving a notice of his work, and the name of his opponent in the duel – an officer belonging to an old family distinguished for its orthodox Catholic opinions. "The quarrel is said to have originated in a discussion of religious differences." That sounded quite likely, and relieved the fear that it might have sprung from a more compromising origin. Then came – well, something very like an apology for that phrase about the lady "understood to be Mrs. Octon." The lady was not, it now appeared, Mrs. Octon; she was "a Miss Driver" (A Miss Driver – that would sound odd to Catsford!) to whom the deceased gentleman was engaged to be married. This Miss Driver had taken a house in the Rue Balzac, where she was residing with another lady, her friend: the deceased gentleman had recently arrived at the Hôtel de l'Univers; notice of their intended marriage had been given at the British Consulate three days before the fatal occurrence. A few days more would have seen them man and wife. "Much sympathy is felt for the lady under the very painful circumstances of the case. It is understood that she will leave Tours immediately after the funeral."

It would hardly be doing Cartmell a wrong to describe him as gleeful; the statement was so much less damaging than might have been expected. To the world at large it was, indeed, not damaging at all; it rather appealed to sympathy and invested Jenny with a pathetic interest. In Catsford the case was different: there was the flight, the silence, the interval. But even for Catsford we had a case – and the difference between even a bad case and no case at all is, in matters like this, enormous.

What was the truth of it? It was not possible to believe that the notice to the Consulate was a mere maneuver, a pretense, and a sham. She was neither so cold-blooded nor so foolish as that – and Octon would have ridiculed such a sham out of existence. The notice to the Consulate showed that her long hesitation had at last ended – possibly on Octon's entreaties, though I continued to doubt that – possibly for conscience' sake, possibly from regard for the world's opinion. She had made up her mind to let go her "precarious liberty." But for this stroke of fate she would have become Octon's wife.

How did the stroke of fate leave her? Or, rather, leave her fame? Of herself I knew nothing – save that she would be alone. She loved an equipoise. Her fame was balanced in one now. Fillingford and Lady Sarah, Mrs. Jepps and Alison, would think still what they had thought; probably the bulk of opinion would be with them. But we had a case. We could brazen it out. Bertram Ware could still be provisional, Lady Aspenick could use the road through the park – even Eunice might ride with her; and old Mr. Dormer would scarcely strain the proprieties to breaking point if he permitted himself to be accompanied by his wife. The verdict could be "Not Proven."

A week later the French authorities forwarded to me a letter from Octon – found on his table at the hotel and written the evening before the meeting:

"My Dear Austin – I have to fight a fellow to-morrow – a very decent fellow – on the ostensible ground of my having spoken disrespectfully of the Pope, which naturally is not at all the real cause of quarrel. I rather think I shall be killed – first, for the sensible reason that he is angry (I hit him. 'Of course you did,' I hear you say) and a good shot; secondly, because she has at last elected to settle things and that offers a temptation to chance – not such a sensible reason – indeed an utterly nonsensical one, which accordingly entirely convinces me. I leave her to you. Don't try to marry her – it only worries her – but serve her well, and as you serve her, so may God Almighty, in whom I believe though you think I don't, serve you. You couldn't spend your life (you're not a great man, you know) to better account. How I have spent mine doesn't matter. I have on the credit side of the balance the discovery of five new insects. It is to be hoped that this will not be overlooked. – Yours,

"L. O."

New insects – five! Private faults – how many? What is the Table of Weights? That must be known, to strike the balance of Leonard Octon's life.