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Two of the men wore the Légion d’Honneur; the elder of the two, who looked more like a soldier or a diplomat than a painter, seemed to be the object of constant solicitude on the part of the younger, whose ruddy, cheerful ironic face was like a picture by Franz Hals—but a Franz Hals in the mood of Rabelais. He seemed particularly anxious lest the other should say something unfortunate, but he should really have been looking round the corner, for there was where the danger lay.
    Round that corner, all arms and legs, came swinging the agile body of no less a person than the mystic, Simon Iff.
    His first greeting was the bombshell! “Ah ha!” he cried, grasping the hand of the elder of the two decores. “and how’s the dear old Sea?” For the person addressed happened to be famous all over the world as a marine painter. The younger man sprang to his feet. “Just don’t mention the sea, please, for a few months!” he said in Simon’s ear. It was unnecessary. Even in the general joy at the return of an old friend, Iff’s quick apprehension could not fail to detect a suppressed spasm of pain on every face.
    The mystic turned and greeted the man who had interrupted him with honest gladness; then his other hand shot out to Flynn. “I’ve been out of the world all summer,” he cried, shaking hands all round, “in a hermitage after my own heart. Fancy a castle dating from the crusades, on the very edge of a glacier, and every practicable route barred against the world the flesh, and the devil, in the shape of tourists, tables d’hôte, and newspapers!” “You look thirty!” declared one of the men. “And I feel twenty,” laughed the magician; “what do you say to a little dinner at Lapérouse? I want to walk across the Luxembourg to a feast, as I’ve done any time these fifty years!”
    As it happened, only two of the party were free; Major, the young man with the button, and Jack Flynn.
    After some quiet chat the three strolled off together, arm in arm, down the Boulevard Montparnasse.
    When they reached the Avenue de l’Observatoire, they turned down that noble grove. Here, at all hours of day and night, is a stately solitude. Intended for gaiety, devised as a symbol of gaiety by the most frivolous age of all time, it has become by virtue of age the very incarnation of melancholy grandeur. It seems almost to lament that eighteenth century which fathered it.
    Before they had passed into this majesty more than an hundred yards, the mystic said abruptly: “What’s the trouble?”
    “Haven’t you really seen a paper for six months?” countered Flynn.
    “Of course I haven’t. You know my life; you know that I retire, whenever I am able, from this nightmare illusion of matter to a world of reality. So tell me your latest evil dream!”
    “Evil enough!” said Major, “it doesn’t actually touch us, but it’s a narrow escape. We only heard the climax three days ago; so it’s a green wound, you see.”
    “Yet it doesn’t touch you.”
    “No; but it touches Art, and that’s me, all right!”
    “Will you tell me the story?”
    “I´ll leave that to Flynn. He´s been on the trail all the time.”
    “I was even at the trial.” said Flynn.
    “Come, come” laughed Iff “all these be riddles.”
    “I’ll make them clear enough—all but the one. Now, no interruptions! I have the thing orderly in my mind.”
    “Five: four three: two one: gun!”
    “The place is a small rocky islet off the west coast of Scotland, by name Dubhbheagg. A few fisher-folk live there; nobody else. There is one landing-place, and one only, even in calm weather; in a storm it is inaccessible altogether. Overlooking this quay is a house perched on the cliff; an old stone mansion. The proprietor is one of our sacred guild, and spends most of his time in Central Asia or Central Africa or Central America or Central Australia—anything to be central!— and he lets the house to any one who is fool enough to pay the