THE first time I saw the advertisement on the 11th of June I took little notice of it. A hundred like it appear every year. I should have read it with complete indifference but that the two names given in it, both Christian names, were those of one of my oldest friends and his wife. Not that either he or she was old. Both were young, and so was I then. Mark is not a very out-of-the-way name for a man, and Minnie is certainly common for a woman, so there was nothing extraordinary in Mark asking Minnie to come back to him and promising all would be forgiven and forgotten.

      My own name is Marcus, and my eye is naturally alert to catch any name like my own. Hence "Mark" attracted my notice.

      The second time I saw the advertisement in the "agony column" I smiled. There was nothing amusing in it. Nothing could be more bald and prosaic. But I knew a Mark and a Minnie who were man and wife, and, to my mind, the most affectionate young couple in London. They had married three years before, for love, and I had spent a day with them no longer ago than a month back, when there seemed to be the most complete accord between them. I did not often meet the Fenchurches; they lived in the neighbourhood of Regent's Park, 3 Shrewsbury Terrace, and I at Streatham. Fenchurch was a landscape-painter, and in comfortable circumstances. I was then assistant chemist in a large drug manufactory in the East End. The distance between our homes prevented my meeting Fenchurch oftener than about once in three months. Our common hatred of letter-writing barred the use of the post more than four times a year. Upon my return from Shrewsbury Terrace, a month before the first advertisement of Mark to Minnie, I had written. It was then mid-May, now it was mid-June, and the chances were we should have no communication with one another until the middle or latter end of August. They never came to Streatham: I was a bachelor and always went to them.

      The advertisement made its appearance a third time in the "agony column" of the Standard, and then I was tempted to play a mild and rather heavy joke on my old friend Fenchurch. It was, I own, conceived more with a view to amusing his pretty, amiable little wife than himself. Fenchurch treated me and my humble attempts at humour with good-natured scorn, but his wife was more tolerant of my efforts, and to think I might amuse her gave me great comfort.

      I cut out the advertisement and gummed it in a sheet of note paper about half way down the page. Then I wrote:—

      "My dear Fenchurch, — I do not know that ever in my life I got a greater shock than when I read the advertisement from you to Mrs. Fenchurch in the Standard this morning. Nothing but the evidence of my own eyes would convince me such a miserable thing could happen, and nothing but the cutting from the paper could justify me in writing you. The matter is of course public property.

      "If Minnie, who left her home on Friday last, will return at once, all will be forgiven by Mark."

      "Can I do anything for you? If you want any one to track the fugitive will you accept my services? Write me a line, anyway. I will come and stay with you in your desolation if you wish me to do so. — Yours always most sincerely,

"MARCUS FALL."      

      As I posted my letter I fancied with a laugh his contemptuous growl as he threw it across the breakfast-table to his gay, good-humoured little wife the next morning. I saw in fancy the expression of uneasiness gather on her face and grow into alarm as she read until she came to the printed matter; then the look of mystification, and finally the smile with which she gathered that I had offered to track her and bring her back to her deserted husband and abandoned home!

      I did not expect Fenchurch would enter heartily into the spirit of my joke. I believe him to be at heart one of the most amiable and considerate of men, but in manner he was often gruff and satirical, and I felt now that (only the telegraph officials do not allow the wires over which they preside to be contaminated by intercourse with strong language) I should have a telegram from him containing terms of great strength and vindictiveness before the word "fool." I might, I thought, get a brief note from him telling me he was glad Satan had found a job for idle hands, or that he had secured handsome apartments for me in Bedlam, and I made sure of receiving a pleasant and appreciative letter from Mrs. Fenchurch containing some whimsical comment or suggestion. Nothing could have been in worse taste than my act if I had not up to that moment considered my friends' married life one of perfect unity and happiness. I was always glad to go to the Fenchurches, and among my other speculations I thought pleasantly that I might be commanded by Mrs. Fenchurch to expiate my offence by dining with them on some early day. If I got word they were both coming to see me in my wild bachelor haunts at Streatham, or my still more inaccessible lair in the East, I should not have been surprised. I invented a hundred forms and phrases of reply and reprisal, but I was wholly unprepared for what did happen. What. occurred was this:—

      Nothing!

      At first I felt chagrined, then offended, and finally alarmed. I tried to calm myself by thinking my letter to him or their letter to me had miscarried in the post. Against this explanation was my experience. I had never in all my life lost any letter in the post. When no letter reached me at Streatham the evening after I had despatched mine, I said to myself they had been away from Shrewsbury Terrace for the day, or by some unprecedented chance addressed the letter to the East End works.

      Next morning brought no news to Streatham, nor was anything from Regent's Park awaiting me in the laboratory. Three days went by, and Fenchurch made no sign. This would not do at all. We were too old and too good friends to drift asunder because of any foolish accident or misunderstanding.

      The morning of the fourth day turning out a blank at both my addresses, I left the works and set off to Regent's Park. The advertisement had been now appearing daily for upwards of a week.

      As I drove westward in a hansom from Liverpool Street through the unclouded blaze of the June morning, I felt far from easy, and the nearer I drew to my goal the more uneasy I became. In the face of my unanswered letter the coincidence between the names in the newspapers and the names of my friends became alarming. Nothing was more unlikely than that the Fenchurches should have gone out of town for a week in the height of the London season. The last time I had been at their place they had told me they did not purpose leaving town until August, when they would spend a month in Switzerland. I felt certain that if either was ill the other would write.

      In the glare of the summer sunlight my mind was more gloomy than it had been for many a long day. The Fenchurches were invested with additional interest in my mind by the fact that, although they had a large circle of acquaintances in London, they had few friends and no relatives. They were both from Yorkshire, and had been born and brought up in the village of Yatworth, four miles from the city of York. Mark had often told me he had not a single relative of whom he knew, and I had always heard his wife's nearest relative was an old aunt who lived in Yatworth. Mrs. Fenchurch never spoke affectionately of her aunt, and I knew that neither had been in the old village from the day Mark went there to marry his pretty little bride, and fetch her to the home he had made for her in Shrewsbury Terrace.

      Mark positively loathed his wife's aunt. He always spoke of her in terms of unlimited hatred. She kept a school, and Minnie had assisted in that school. She had cheated and half starved his little girl, he told me, and the only circumstances under which he could ever look upon her with pleasure would be if she stood in the dock receiving sentence for her accursed bad conduct to his wife.

      "Look here, Marcus," he said on one occasion, "I never was in the Tower until after I was married, and in the holidays with Min when we came back from Yorkshire I took her to the Tower to show her where Henry VIII. chopped of Anna Boleyn's head, to impress upon Min the marital power of man. When they showed me the rack and thumbscrews I offered to buy them. I'd have given all the world to be allowed, in the interests of science, to experiment with them on Aunt Teresa for half an hour. Painting a Dying Groan would have been nothing to it. If I had had my way I could have photographed a Lost Soul."

      "Your aunt," I said, "might not care for that kind of immortality. I don't think she would. And did you show Mrs. Fenchurch where they beheaded the unfortunate Queen?"

      "I forget. They showed us where they murdered Lady Jane Grey, and that put all about Anna Boleyn out of my mind. What an unpardonable sin that was! When they showed me where they killed the girl it appears I became violent, and used such language to Min about the assassination of the poor child that Min said she'd go back to Yatworth and live all her life with her dear Aunt Teresa if ever she heard anything of the kind from me again. But that was all bunkum."

      As I drove along in my hansom I recalled Mark's account of his visit to the Tower, and of his love of his Aunt Teresa by marriage. From his sentiments towards his aunt, nothing could be more unlikely than that he had gone on a visit to Yorkshire, and I did not think he was close enough to any one else in all England to go to his or her house. He was at Shrewsbury Terrace, Yatworth, or in an hotel. But no matter where he was, why did he not answer my letter? or why did not Mrs. Fenchurch write? This was forcing a mere possibility about Yatworth into my mind. I would have bet a hundred pounds to a penny he was not there.

      If I had made such a bet I should have won. As my cab turned into Shrewsbury Terrace, I saw a tall, lightly built, fair-haired young man walking slowly and reflectively up the steps of No. 3. That was my old friend Mark Fenchurch going up the steps of his own house in the bright, warm, white June sunshine.

      As the cab drew up and I jumped out Fenchurch turned round. By this time I was prepared for bad news of some kind; but for nothing so bad as the spectacle of misery and wreck presented by my friend. He was a remarkably handsome man of the fair-haired type, with tawny beard and moustache, white and red skin and full blue eyes. He was of slender and elegant figure, and much above the average height. Of old he had been careful, almost dandyish, in his dress. Now he was pallid and worn. His hair was unkempt, his beard and moustaches untrimmed, uncombed, his hat dull and glossless, his dark blue frock-coat unbrushed, unbuttoned, and wanting the customary flower in the button-hole, his trousers an old working pair with studio stains upon them, his boots not only unpolished, but furry and brown. What could have happened?

      He started on recognising me and looked hastily up and down the road as though he would flee if opportunity allowed flight. He could not escape me. He pushed his hat over his eyes and rested his left elbow against the pillars of the porch.

      I ran up the steps and took his hand and shook it in silence.

      "I did not want to see you, Marcus. I do not want to see any one I know. But since you are here, come in." He opened the door with his latch-key and we both entered the hall.

      That hall, which used to be as neat as hands could make it, was in a state of neglect, litter, dirt. On the rack and stand and table and chairs the dust lay white and thick. The umbrellas and sticks were scattered on the floor and in the corners. The door had been wrenched off the letter-box, and a great pile of newspapers and letters lay under the slit. The broken splices of a fishing-rod were under my feet. An opera-glass had fallen from a peg, burst from its case, and shot under the table. The shade of the lamp was smashed, and glittered in a hundred fragments on the oil-cloth.

      "Let us go to the studio; there is no one in the house," he said, and led the way without removing his hat.

      In silence, and cold and sick with fears, I followed him through the front hall, through the back hall, and down the sloping passage that led to the studio — an independent building without the walls of the house.

      This miserable condition of things needed, most unfortunately, no explanation beyond that afforded by the advertisement. Mrs. Fenchurch had left Mark, he did not know whither she had gone, and she had practically refused to return to her home.

      The studio was in its ordinary state of litter, nothing more, There were flowers still in the vases, but the flowers were faded and brown and dry, and beneath each cluster lay bleached petals and shrivelled leaves.

      Mark threw himself into a rocking-chair; I took a seat on a couch under the great northern light high up in the wall. He cleared his throat several times without essaying to speak, filled a pipe elaborately, nervously, and put it in his mouth without lighting it. He drew at the pipe for a while fiercely, and then with a start became aware of his omission. He turned round fully to me and said, "Have you got a match? I don't know where to find one. My wife has left me, and I have kicked the —– servants out of the house."

      "I have a match. Here you are. Your wife left you, Mark! That's very bad. I won't ask you, Are you serious?"

      "No," he said, "you needn't ask me, Am I serious? I don"t look like a man up to jokes, do I?" In what horrible taste my joke must seem to him now!

      "No, you do not. That's the wrong end of the match you're striking."

      "Ah, so it is! I seem to get hold of the wrong end of everything."

      He had now lighted his pipe, and thrown himself back in his chair with his profile to me. His eyes winked nervously, as though irritated by the smoke. His mouth twitched as if the pipe worried him. He rubbed the corner of his eye hastily with his finger, and knocked his pipe against the ash-tray before the tobacco in the bowl had turned white. His eyes were fixed straight before him, and he seemed to have made up his mind not to speak first.

      There was not a sound. I looked at the bracket on which the clock stood. It was seven minutes to six; the pendulum had ceased to swing. I was appalled by the spectacle of this strong man's agony. I was tortured by remorse at the memory of my jocose letter. I would have given the world then that I had never succumbed to the foolish temptation of writing it. Nothing could be more selfish than to think of my own trouble about that letter now. By an effort of great force of will I banished that letter from my mind wholly, and concentrated my whole thought on this man.

      The silence was becoming unsupportable, and it would be an outrage to affect an interest in any subject but that occupying both our minds to the exclusion of any other. I had a disquieting presentiment that when I did essay to speak my voice would be husky or unsteady. To my agreeable surprise I found it clear and under perfect control.

      "When did this happen, Mark?" I asked.

      "This day fortnight. She left the house this day fortnight, and I have never heard a word of her since."

      "Have you spoken to any one about the matter?"

      "No. I have not opened my mouth to a soul about it, except what I have said to you since you came into this house."

      "Mark, we know one another too well for either of us to be in danger of misunderstanding the other. You know I am not merely inquisitive. Talk to me. Tell me. Open your mind to me. For, Mark, I would give my life for you — or for her."

      He took his pipe out of his mouth and flung it against the wall opposite me. The red tobacco fell out and lay smouldering on the boards, a slender blue blade of smoke rising up from it, and when hip-high, swelling out like the basket of a sword. He leaned forward in his chair and bent down, resting his elbows on his knees and his temples on his palms. I waited. He took some minutes, his body swaying softly to and fro during the time.

      "We had a quarrel — or a difference rather. She said she would do a certain thing. I forbade her doing it. She said she would do it whether I wished or no, and I told her if she did we should never again be friends. Upon that she went, and upon that she has stayed away. That's all." He threw himself up into an erect position, caught hold of the elbows of his chair, and looked straight into my face with a strange, uncertain smile.

      "You did not mean what you said when you told her you could never be friends again?"

      "At the time I did, or thought I did; I lost my temper. An hour after I did not mean it — but she was gone then."

      "Where? Where had she gone to?"

      "To Yatworth. To her aunt."

      "She went straight there?"

      "So I think. So I believe."

      "What was it she said she'd do that you told her would — would be unpleasant between her and you?"

      "This day fortnight she got a telegram saying her aunt at Yatworth was very ill. She said she would go to Yatworth. You know how her aunt treated her. I told her she should not go. She insisted. That was the cause of the quarrel."

      "Did you tell her if she went she was not to come back here again?"

      "No. I simply said we should never be friends again."

      "No doubt she took that as meaning she would not be welcome back here again."

      "The words I used were ridiculously out of proportion to the occasion. I was in a rage. But such words are often used by people — once a week, once a month, once a year — who really do not mean them anything like literally. You know her aunt treated her abominably — robbed her and starved her, and made all the mischief she could between her and me." He threw himself back in his chair and groaned.

      "I know," I said. Then there was another pause of some minutes.

      I could not make it out clearly. My head was confused. No doubt my excitement and anxiety impeded my apprehension and perplexed my thought. How was it if he knew from the beginning where she was that he could not write to her or telegraph to her instead of advertising?

      "She is still at Yatworth, Mark?"

      "As far as I know, yes."

      It would be simply criminal to allow the best man and the best woman I knew to persist in stupidity such as this. In that odious letter of mine I had jocularly offered to go in search of the errant wife. If notions of foolish pride kept him from seeking her and persuading her to come back to her home and to him, I had no such feeling, and no matter what he might think of me I would attempt it. I might as well, however, know a little more of the affair first.

      "Have you written to her since she left?" I asked.

      He fidgeted uneasily in the chair for a few seconds before answering. His expression was unsettled, uneasy. "Wait a minute," he said. "Let me put it before you as it is before me. I did not mean to be confidential, but as I have spoken I may as well be quite open. I do not care to talk much of my private affairs or my own feelings. But in this matter the affair is not all my own."

      He picked up another pipe off the little table beside him, lit it and went on: "She did not tell me in words that she was going straight out of this to Yatworth at the time she left the house. She packed her big trunk and took it with her. I knew she was gone to her aunt's, and although my temper had cooled before she drove away I did not come back to the house. I did not see her start. I thought that in a day or two I would write to her and tell her I had been hasty and did not mean what I said."

      "You did write?"

      "Yes. On the third day I wrote a calm letter saying I was sorry we had quarrelled, and although I still disapproved of her firmness and objected to her staying with her aunt, I was willing to forgive her and make friends again."

      "And you got a reply?"

      "Here it is." He pulled a tattered telegram out of his pocket and handed it to me. I flattened it out and with some difficulty read, "After what has been done I can never see you or go back to London." The name of the addressor and addressee were given in initials only.

      "There are only initials in this," I said. "How do you know it was sent by her?"

      "I wrote again. I enclosed that telegram. I asked was it hers or some genial trick of dear aunt Teresa. Turn the telegram over and you will see the only reply she made."

      "I am quite serious. This is my telegram. Pray, do not continue to persecute M. F." That was all. "What was the persecution?" I asked.

      He shrugged his shoulders dismally. "Merely that I wrote my wife asking her to repudiate the telegram. You see there was no longer any hope. So I discharged the servants on the spot and have lived by myself and to myself ever since, and I have never spent any time in such hideous company. Marcus, I shall go mad." He got up out of his chair and began pacing up and down the studio with eyes bent upon the floor and moody eyebrows drawn low.

      I felt that now was my time. Hateful as the mere memory of my letter was I must refer to that letter now, if I hoped to be of use. "I know, Mark," I said, "that nothing could have seemed in worse taste than the letter I wrote you, but I had then not the faintest suspicion anything was wrong. If I had I would rather have cut off my hand than let it take part in what must have seemed a barbarous, an inhuman impertinence on my part, but —–"

      "What are you talking about?" he asked, pausing in his walk and standing over me.

      "I am talking of the letter I wrote you five or six days ago."

      "Oh, the letter you wrote me a few days ago," he said as he resumed his walk; "I saw it, but I did not open it."

      "Thank heaven for that!" I exclaimed with a feeling of unutterable relief.

      "No," he went on, not heeding my words, "since I got that telegram back from her I have opened no letters. I saw yours. It and a dozen others are on the floor in the hall. When I got that telegram back from — her, I think I went mad — I know I went mad for a while. I knocked about all the things I could lay hands on. Even your letter I could not endure to read. Marcus, was there anything important in it?"

      "No," I answered; "it was a foolish letter and I'll take it away or destroy it. I am most sincerely glad you did not open it. I should never forgive myself for having written it if you had read it in your trouble. You would have thought me one of the most inhuman of brutes."

      "The most inhuman of brutes! What on earth would have put such a monstrous notion in my head? I know you are serious, but your words sound very strange. I must get the letter and see now." He moved towards the door.

      "No — no. You must do nothing of the kind. I am still in confusion. I can't understand why you put that advertisement in the 'agony column' if you knew all along where Mrs. Fenchurch was. My letter was written in the belief the advertisement had nothing to do with you."

      "Advertisement of mine in the 'agony column'! Of what paper?"

      "I saw it in the Standard."

      "What was it?"

      "'If Minnie, who left her home on Friday last, will return, all will be forgiven by Mark.'"

      "What!" he shouted in rage and amazement.

      I repeated the advertisement.

      "What friend did this? What miscreant published the story of my misery? What traitor sold the secret of my innermost heart?"

      For a while he stormed and raged like a maniac. I did not try to soothe him. I was myself in a state of high excitement. Though he did not say so in explicit words, it was plain be had nothing to do with the appearance of the advertisement.

      When he became calmer I explained that I knew nothing of the published appeal beyond seeing it in the paper. He swore not a soul but me knew up to the moment we were speaking that his wife had left his roof against his will, unless she had told some one, and it was not likely she would seek a confidant in London on her way to the train for the North. Besides, if she did, what could be the object of such an advertisement? The servants had heard not a word of the quarrel and had parted on good terms with Mark. He had paid them more than their month's money, and told them his reason for letting them go was that unexpectedly Mrs. Fenchurch was obliged to go to Yorkshire because of the illness of her aunt, and he must leave London too for an indefinite time.

      Malice was out of the question. There was not, be thought, in all the world a man who owed him a grudge, and no one but an unprincipled scoundrel who hated him to the death could dream of invading the sanctity of his home by such a vile and cowardly device. It must be a coincidence. It could be nothing but a coincidence!

      Then he softened all at once.

      "What!" he cried, "drag my girl's name through the mire in that way! Why, if I were capable of such a piece of low villany as that I would deserve all I have suffered — more than I have suffered! What must the people who saw it have thought? Why, it's no better than the prelude to a case in the divorce court. Good God, my poor girl!"

      Suddenly a thought flashed into my mind. I jumped to my feet with a shout of delight and caught hold of Marks. "I have it! I have it! I have the key to the secret, the clue to the mystery!"

      "Out with it, man! Can"t you speak?"

      "She has seen it."

      "Who? Who has seen what?"

      "Your wife has seen the advertisement and believes it is yours."

      He fell against the wall as if he had been struck by a bullet. "Minnie has seen the advertisement and believes that I put it in the paper!"

      "She left this house on this day fortnight. The next day this advertisement appears. It continued to appear for upwards of a week. She sees it, and, as it has her Christian name and yours, and the day and fact of the flight correspond with the day and fact of her own flight, she could have thought nothing else but that the advertisement was yours. When she gets your letter she is broken-hearted at finding the particulars of her case in a public print. She decides she can no longer have anything to do with you, when you, as she imagines, parade her fault and give date and name. Naturally she concludes you can no longer care anything for her. Naturally she shrinks from the idea of facing London when she imagines every one that she knows has heard the story and seen the advertisement. She sees you pointing the finger of scorn at her, and all the world of hers looking on. Can you not see it now?"

      With a groan he staggered away from the wall and fell into a chair.

      "Oh, my poor darling!"

      "Many a woman would have died in the dereliction and ignominy."

      "Stop, Marcus! for God's sake, don"t." He bent his head and seized it between his hands.

      "Many a woman would have committed suicide."

      He looked up at me with distended eyes. His cheek was corpse-white. His mouth open. His jaw dropped. He whispered, "Don't, don't, my friend. My reason is going."

      "I wonder is she dead."

      "You wonder is who dead, Marcus?"

      "Your Minnie."

      "I understand. You think she may be dead by this time?"

      "I think you ought to go to Yatworth at once."

      "I will. Now."

      "That's right. Will you go to your room and change your clothes before you go?"

      "Oh, no. I'm all right. Marcus, will you do a favour for me?"

      "Certainly."

      "Stay here until! — until we come back. Just to keep the place home-like with a face she knows for her coming."

      "I will stay, Mark."

      "And — and if any letters come for her put them on the table in the drawing-room — no, put them on the table in our bedroom. You know the room."

      I could not speak.

      "She'll get them there when she runs upstairs and I'll come here to you and we'll smoke a pipe. Damn it, man, you're crying. I'll go at once. Good-bye, Marcus."

      The next evening we smoked that pipe together in the studio. No letter had come for Mrs. Fenchurch.

      "Are you tired after the journey?" I asked.

      "No. I think Min is a little. She said she'd be down in a few minutes to get us some tea. I think we'll have it here. Have you got any more of those matches?" The door opened quickly. "Here's Min!"

RICHARD DOWLING.      

(THE END)