There is but one love-look. A man knows it by his instinct, just as does a woman. A woman knows by intuition that the fool who takes her out to the theatre and supper, and is so profuse in his protestations of undying admiration, is only uttering outpourings of vapid nonsense. Just so, a man meets insincerity with insincerity. The woman gets to know in time how much her vain, shallow admirer is good for, for she knows he will soon pass out of her life, while the man's instinct is exactly the same. In a word, it is life—the life of this, our Twentieth Century.
The man laughed at and derided to-day, is a hero ten years hence.
A few years ago Mr. John Burns carried a banner perspiringly along the Thames Embankment, in a May Day procession, and I assisted him. To-day he is a Cabinet Minister. A few years ago my dear friend, George Griffith, wrote about air-ships in his romance, The Angel of the Revolution, and everybody made merry at his expense. To-day airships are declared to be the chief arm of Continental nations.
Ah, yes! The world proceeds apace, and the unknown to-morrow ever brings its amazing surprises and the adoption of the "crank's" ideas of yesterday.
Lola had called to see me. That fact conjured up in my imagination a thousand startling theories.
Why?
Why had she called, after all that had passed between us?
I waited, waited for the coming of that mysterious cyclist, who arose from nowhere, and whose business with Jules Jeanjean was of such vast and secret importance.
The very fact of Jeanjean being in Cromer had staggered me. As I sat there smoking, and listening, I recollected when last I had heard mention of his name. Hamard—the great Hamard—Chief of the Sûreté of Paris, had been seated in his private bureau in the offices of the detective police.
He had leaned back in his chair, and blowing a cloud of tobacco-smoke from his lips, had said in French—