I am, are two very different things."
"Judging by your face, they certainly are," retorted the detective, drily; "but what is the matter with you, grumbler? Are you hard up?"
"No! I have a sufficiency of this world's goods."
"The critics have been abusing your last poems, perhaps?"
"Pooh! I'm used to that."
"Ah! then there's only one reason left. You are in love?"
"True, oh king," said Roger, drawing hard at his pipe, "I am in love."
"Tell me all about it," said Fanks, curling himself up luxuriously in his chair. "I adore love confidences. When you were a small nuisance at school, you told me all your troubles, and I consoled you. Do so now, and—"
"No! no!" cried Axton, suddenly, "you can't console me now. No one can do that."
"That remains to be seen," said Fanks, smiling. "Come now, Roger, tell me your trouble. Though we have been parted for ten years, I have often thought of my school friend. Unburden your heart to me; it will relieve your mind if it does nothing else."
Thus adjured, Roger brightened up, and settling himself comfortably in his chair, put his feet against the mantelpiece, blew a thick cloud of smoke, and began to tell his story.
"I'm afraid my story hasn't the merit of novelty," he said, candidly. "After you left school I remained, as you know. Then my parents died—within a few months of each other—and I found myself a well-provided orphan. When I say well-provided, I mean that I had an income of three hundred a year, and one can always live comfortably on six pounds a week, if not extravagant. Being thus independent of the world, the flesh, and the devil, meaning thereby the employer, the publisher, and the critic, I went in for writing poetry. It didn't pay, of course, this being the age of sensational literature; but verse manufacturing amused me, and I wandered all over England and the Continent in a desultory sort of way. A kind of grand tour in the poet line, midway between the poverty of Goldsmith and the luxury of Byron. I published a book of poems and the critics abused it—found plenty of faults and no virtues. Well, I was wrathful at this new massacre of the literary innocents and fled to the land of Egypt—in plain English I went down to Ventnor in the Isle of Wight. There I met Her—"
"With a large 'H,' of course," murmured Mr. Fanks, sympathetically.
"For the second time. I then—"
"Ah! May I ask where you met her for the first time?"
"Oh, in some other place," said Roger, evasively; "but that's got nothing to do with the subject. The first time we met—well, it was the first time."
"I didn't think it was the second, fond lover. But I understand the second time was the critical one."
"Exactly! It was last August," said Axton, speaking rapidly, so as to give Fanks no further opportunity of interrupting. "I was, as I have stated, at Ventnor, with the idea of writing a drama—Shakespearean, of course—Elizabethan style, you understand, with a dash of modern cynicism, and fin de siècle flippancy in it. Wandering about Ventnor, I came across Judith Varlins."
"For the second time of asking—I mean meeting," interpolated Fanks, lightly. "So her name was Judith. Heroic name, suggestive of queenly woman, dark-browed Cleopatra, and all that sort of thing. I picture to myself a grand Semiramis."
Roger shook his head.
"No; she was not a handsome woman. Tall, graceful, dark-browed, if you like, but not pretty."
"Pshaw! who ever called regal Semiramis pretty? Such a weak adjective. But I guess your meaning. Her mind was more beautiful than her face."
"If her face had been as beautiful as her mind, sir," replied Axton, in the Johnsonian style, "she would have been the most beautiful woman in the world."
"Like Dulcinea, eh, Don Quixote Roger? Well; and you met often—juxtaposition is fatal—and love sprang up like Jonah's gourd in one night."
"No; she was not a woman to be lightly won. Judith had with her a cousin—a pretty, golden-haired damsel, whom she worshipped."
"Oh! had you met Golden-hair before?"
"Yes; but I didn't take much notice of her."
"Of course. Preferred brunette to blonde!"
"Decidedly. Well, Florry Marson—"
"The blue-eyed darling?"
"Yes. Florry Marson was a foolish, frivolous little thing, who had been confided to Judith's care by her dead mother."
"Whose dead mother, Florry's or Judith's?" asked Fanks, lightly.
"Florry's, of course," replied Roger, impatiently; "and Judith looked after her like the apple of her eye, though I'm afraid she had rather a hard task, for Miss Marson was one of those irritating girls who did all manner of things without thinking. She was engaged to marry a man called Spolger."
"Anything to do with 'Spolger's Soother, a Good Night's Rest'?"
"Yes; he's the owner."
"Oh! and frivolous Florry didn't like him."
"How do you know?" asked Roger, in a startled tone.
"Because I've seen Spolger's Soother, and he's not pretty enough for such an empty-headed minx as you describe Miss Marson."
"You are right. She was engaged to him by her father's desire, but she loved a scamp—good-looking, of course, with no money, and had been exiled to Ventnor to escape him."
"Eh! It's quite a romance," said Fanks, gaily. "What was the scamp's name?"
Roger fidgeted in his chair before replying, which action did not escape the lynx eyes of Mr. Fanks, who said nothing, but waited.
"I don't know," said Roger, turning away his head.
"That's a lie," thought Octavius, as he saw the manner in which Mr. Axton replied to a seemingly simple question. "Queer! Why should he tell me such a useless lie?"
"I don't know anything about the scamp," went on Axton, hurriedly; "but he is the cause of all my unhappiness."
"How so?"
"Because Judith—Miss Varlins—refused to marry me on his account."
"What! she loved him also. Fascinating scamp!"
"I don't know if she loved him exactly," said Axton, in a musing tone. "The reason she gave me for her rejection of my proposal was that she could not leave her cousin Florence; but she seemed strangely moved when she spoke of—of Florry's lover."
"Don't you remember his name?" asked Fanks, noticing the momentary hesitation.
"No, I don't," replied Roger, angrily. "Why do you keep asking me that question?"
"Oh, nothing," said Octavius, quietly; "only I thought that as these two girls had told you so much about
