was very solidly built. Yet that morning I missed in the stillness
that feeling of security and peace which ought to have been

associated with it. It is, I believe, generally admitted that the
dead are glad to be at rest. But I wasn't at rest. What was wrong

with that silence? There was something incongruous in that peace.
What was it that had got into that stillness? Suddenly I

remembered: the mother of Captain Blunt.
Why had she come all the way from Paris? And why should I bother

my head about it? H'm - the Blunt sphere" target="_blank" title="n.大气；空气；气氛">atmosphere, the reinforced Blunt
vibration stealing through the walls, through the thick walls and

the almost more solid stillness. Nothing to me, of course - the
movements of Mme. Blunt, mere. It was maternalaffection which had

brought her south by either the evening or morning Rapide, to take
anxious stock of the ravages of that insomnia. Very good thing,

insomnia, for a cavalry officer perpetually on outpost duty, a real
godsend, so to speak; but on leave a truly devilish condition to be

in.
The above sequence of thoughts was entirely unsympathetic and it

was followed by a feeling of satisfaction that I, at any rate, was
not suffering from insomnia. I could always sleep in the end. In

the end. Escape into a nightmare. Wouldn't he revel in that if he
could! But that wasn't for him. He had to toss about open-eyed

all night and get up weary, weary. But oh, wasn't I weary, too,
waiting for a sleep without dreams.

I heard the door behind me open. I had been standing with my face
to the window and, I declare, not knowing what I was looking at

across the road - the Desert of Sahara or a wall of bricks, a
landscape of rivers and forests or only the Consulate of Paraguay.

But I had been thinking, apparently, of Mr. Blunt with such
intensity that when I saw him enter the room it didn't really make

much difference. When I turned about the door behind him was
already shut. He advanced towards me, correct, supple, hollow-

eyed, and smiling; and as to his costume ready to go out except for
the old shooting jacket which he must have affectioned

particularly, for he never lost any time in getting into it at
every opportunity. Its material was some tweed mixture; it had

gone inconceivably shabby, it was shrunk from old age, it was
ragged at the elbows; but any one could see at a glance that it had

been made in London by a celebratedtailor, by a distinguished
specialist. Blunt came towards me in all the elegance of his

slimness and affirming in every line of his face and body, in the
correct set of his shoulders and the careless freedom of his

movements, the superiority, the inexpressible superiority, the
unconscious, the unmarked, the not-to-be-described, and even not-

to-be-caught, superiority of the naturally born and the perfectly
finished man of the world, over the simple young man. He was

smiling, easy, correct, perfectlydelightful, fit to kill
He had come to ask me, if I had no other engagement, to lunch with

him and his mother in about an hour's time. He did it in a most
degage tone. His mother had given him a surprise. The completest

. . . The foundation of his mother's psychology was her delightful
unexpectedness. She could never let things be (this in a peculiar

tone which he checked at once) and he really would take it very
kindly of me if I came to break the tete-e-tete for a while (that

is if I had no other engagement. Flash of teeth). His mother was
exquisitely and tenderlyabsurd. She had taken it into her head

that his health was endangered in some way. And when she took
anything into her head . . . Perhaps I might find something to say

which would reassure her. His mother had two long conversations
with Mills on his passage through Paris and had heard of me (I knew

how that thick man could speak of people, he interjected
ambiguously) and his mother, with an insatiable curiosity for

anything that was rare (filially humorousaccent here and a softer
flash of teeth), was very anxious to have me presented to her

(courteous intonation, but no teeth). He hoped I wouldn't mind if
she treated me a little as an "interesting young man." His mother

had never got over her seventeenth year, and the manner of the
spoilt beauty of at least three counties at the back of the

Carolinas. That again got overlaid by the sans-facon of a grande
dame of the Second Empire.

I accepted the invitation with a worldly grin and a perfectly just
intonation, because I really didn't care what I did. I only

wondered vaguely why that fellow required all the air in the room
for himself. There did not seem enough left to go down my throat.

I didn't say that I would come with pleasure or that I would be
delighted, but I said that I would come. He seemed to forget his

tongue in his head, put his hands in his pockets and moved about
vaguely. "I am a little nervous this morning," he said in French,

stopping short and looking me straight in the eyes. His own were
deep sunk, dark, fatal. I asked with some malice, that no one

could have detected in my intonation, "How's that sleeplessness?"
He muttered through his teeth, "Mal. Je ne dors plus." He moved

off to stand at the window with his back to the room. I sat down
on a sofa that was there and put my feet up, and silence took

possession of the room.
"Isn't this street ridiculous?" said Blunt suddenly, and crossing

the room rapidly waved his hand to me, "A bientot donc," and was
gone. He had seared himself into my mind. I did not understand

him nor his mother then; which made them more impressive; but I
have discovered since that those two figures required no mystery to

make them memorable. Of course it isn't every day that one meets a
mother that lives by her wits and a son that lives by his sword,

but there was a perfect finish about their ambiguous personalities
which is not to be met twice in a life-time. I shall never forget

that grey dress with ample skirts and long corsage yet with
infinite style, the ancient as if ghostly beauty of outlines, the

black lace, the silver hair, the harmonious, restrained movements
of those white, soft hands like the hands of a queen - or an

abbess; and in the general fresh effect of her person the brilliant
eyes like two stars with the calm reposeful way they had of moving

on and off one, as if nothing in the world had the right to veil
itself before their once sovereign beauty. Captain Blunt with

smiling formality" target="_blank" title="n.形式；礼仪；拘谨">formality introduced me by name, adding with a certain
relaxation of the formal tone the comment: "The Monsieur George!

whose fame you tell me has reached even Paris." Mrs. Blunt's
reception of me, glance, tones, even to the attitude of the

admirably corseted figure, was most friendly, approaching the limit
of half-familiarity. I had the feeling that I was beholding in her

a captured ideal. No common experience! But I didn't care. It
was very lucky perhaps for me that in a way I was like a very sick

man who has yet preserved all his lucidity. I was not even
wondering to myself at what on earth I was doing there. She

breathed out: "Comme c'est romantique," at large to the dusty
studio as it were; then pointing to a chair at her right hand, and

bending slightly towards me she said:
"I have heard this name murmured by pretty lips in more than one

royalist salon."
I didn't say anything to that ingratiating speech. I had only an

odd thought that she could not have had such a figure, nothing like
it, when she was seventeen and wore snowy muslin dresses on the

family plantation in South Carolina, in pre-abolition days.
"You won't mind, I am sure, if an old woman whose heart is still

young elects to call you by it," she declared.
"Certainly, Madame. It will be more romantic," I assented with a

respectful bow.
She dropped a calm: "Yes - there is nothing like romance while one

is young. So I will call you Monsieur George," she paused and then
added, "I could never get old," in a matter-of-fact final tone as

one would remark, "I could never learn to swim," and I had the
presence of mind to say in a tone to match, "C'est evident,

Madame." It was evident. She couldn't get old; and across the
table her thirty-year-old son who couldn't get sleep sat listening