Paul
Author: Benson, E. F
Date: 2015-10-15T05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction
Description: Ebook prepared by crutledge@knology.net
Rights: Public Domain

TABLE of CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER I

The little bay of Silomo, unknown to the many, but known and loved most happily by the few, lies tucked away, like a crease in folded linen, among the big wooded hills of the coastline of Northwestern Italy. The eye of the swifter-going traveller seeking Florence or Rome or other great cities of the south will never light on it, for as he passes it his train will be at the moment burrowing deep into the mountain range behind, which keeps it so sequestered; and though as he roars and shrieks by, he may, watchful or wakeful, catch a glimpse of Santa Lucia, which lies but a mile away on one side, or of Delfino swimming with humped promontories out into the sea a mile on the other side, yet Silomo, sequestered and withdrawn between its hills, will never be visible to him, nor yet its Castello, standing boldly out, pine-encompassed on the edge of the grey steep rocks, that plunge down, precipitous and sheer, into the sapphire caves of the sea.

And even if its green valley, its Castello, its single row of houses that stand along the shore, with but half a dozen half-buried roofs of mills and villas among the trees behind, were visible to him, he would perhaps think that he but looked on some curious little backwater of life, where change can hardly come, and where the swift, turbulent passage of the austere years bears along no wreckage or flotsam tom from the banks, so remote and peaceful it lies, like some deep sea abyss, where, whatever winds and storms madden and tear the surface into foam-capped breakers, the same impenetrable peace and calm immutability always abide. Yet such a conclusion is shallow and necessarily false, for wherever the unquiet race of man has come, that company of pathetic children, whose cry, “We only want to be happy,” goes up for ever to the incurious stars, since the time when first they vexed themselves with their impossible quest, proceeding at the same time with terrible industry to wreck any chance of happiness that might come in their way, there too, you may be sure, has come love and passion and death and desire. And beyond these genial and natural things come others which man has invented for himself, those echoes and consequences of unsatisfied need, which breed in the darkness of lonely souls,—hate and suspicion and the leanness of the soul when desire is satisfied,—and above all, fear. To Silomo, though to the eye it looks the home of abiding peace, these things have come.

But without doubt May had come, that perfection of southern May, when the air is a caress and the sunlight a kiss, and when every unspoiled and healthy soul longs only to lay itself open, body and spirit alike, to receive the utmost favour of this most liberal month. The tearful, tantalizing spring of the south, which beckons with one hand only to strike with the other, was over, and the drought and heat of the summer were not yet heavy on the land. Spring had brought all things to the uttermost verge of promise, while summer, that conscientious utilitarian, which, in its undoubted mission of bringing the fruits of the earth to ripeness and perfection, thinks it necessary to bake them in an uncomfortably warm sun-oven, had not yet definitely started; as if on the war-path, on its torrid though benignant mission. It was the pause between spring and summer, and the pathetic children of men felt unreasonably and unaccountably content. The winter was over and past, the time of the singing-bird was come, but as yet the heat had not rendered him hoarse, and even at noonday he was brisk and melodious.

The road from Santa Lucia to Silomo lies in curves, like a flicked whip-lash close to the margin of the sea, and at the point where the Castello stands in the middle of a company of pines on its steep promontory of rock, takes a sharp turn into the little bay. On the landward side of it the hills rise abruptly, even as on the seaward side the rocks go down sheer, with just an edging of bottle-green water, into the dim, unplumbed blue. Terrace after terrace has been laboriously built on these hillsides with walls made of the stones picked from the microscopic fields, so that in the winter rains the exiguous soil shall not be utterly washed away, but be treasured as in some stone purse. On each of these some half-dozen of olive-trees find footing, and yield their few gallons of oil to the thrifty possessor, but a couple of hundred feet of climbing up the cobbled mountain paths will take the walker out of these scantily-productive zones into the untutored woodlands above. And though the purely economical mind might be pained there at the fallowness of soil that labour would make productive, yet such mind must be blind to all passions except economy not to feel a rapture independent of this consideration. For overhead meets the yellow-green foliage of beech and corn-beam, so bright in their spring freshness of leaf that the full-flowering wild laburnums that grow mixed with them are not of a more flame-like hue. Their roots are cunningly entwined in grey moss-covered rocks, and from the smaller interstices of these, and from every pocket of the ruddy earth that lies between them, spring a hundred flowers. orchides are there in bewildering variety; from one hang, as it were, the hinder-ends of bumble-bees, as if seeking honey and burrowing with their heads into the heart of the tapering pink petals, so realistic to the eye that the observer almost waits to see them shuffle out backwards and take wing; here a foam of white blossom, as of some minute cascade of water bubbling out from the green stem and suddenly turned to velvet, hangs suspended; here is a peal of purple bells, and here a white mouth gapes with orange throat. Stone-crops trail their long nets of green leaf and tiny flower over the rocks, the white rosettes of the wild strawberry-flower are already falling, and in some the green germ of the fruit is beginning to turn red. Elsewhere on this steep hillside a clearing has at one time been made, and over this, thick long grass is starred with the pheasant-eye of the white narcissus, and purple campanulas are silent campaniles of bells, while ragged-robin and campions, poppies and tall marguerites, combine to make a meadow expectant of the brush of Fra Angelico. And over all, bright and unbroken on the open fields, and filtering down in flecks of gold and shadows of green, the sun sheds the warm soft radiance of May.

High up on the hillside at the top edge of one of these clearings there sat a girl. She had come to where the pines of the upper hillside began, and her seat was on the red, aromatic needles fallen from the trees. The ground fell very sharply away below her, and her eyes looked straight over the tops of the trees on the lower side of the clearing on to the still deep blue of the bay, and the Castello, half hidden in its pine-trees, that stood perched on the extreme rocks to the left of it. Her hat, a big hat of soft straw, was on her knees, and the air just ruffled her hair. Her face was flushed with exercise, and her breath, that came rather quickly through her half-opened mouth, suggested that she had sat down for a moment to recover herself after her climb. A few yards above her, also sitting on the carpet of pine-needles, was a young man, who looked neither at the view nor at his companion, both of which were well worth attention, but at a tablespoon which he held and was examining. At length he gave a great sigh, and, looking up, addressed himself to Norah.

“In Genoa, too, of all places,” he said. “A Queen Anne rat-tail in Genoa! You must have been praying to Saint Anthony, Norah.”

Norah laughed.

“No, I only bowed to the moon very carefully,” she said. “Besides, Saint Anthony only helps you to find what you have lost.”

“Well, this was lost in a pawnshop in Genoa.”

Norah did not reply for a moment.

“They are opening all the shutters in the Castello,” she remarked at length.

Paul Norris made a little impatient noise with his tongue.

“I thought we had got rid of the Castello and all that’ appertains to it for this morning/’ he said. “Surely one thing is enough at a time.”

“It depends on the thing/’ remarked Norah.

“Well, this rat-tail.”

Norah laughed again.

“Oh, Paul, you really have solved the whole secret of life,” she said. “You care, to the exclusion of everything else, for the one thing that at the moment happens to interest you. And something always does. Yesterday you cared for nothing at all except the caché.

Paul put the spoon in his pocket, at the mention of the word, and slid down the yard or two of pine-needles till he sat by Norah.

“Oh, we must go and lunch there again one day before I leave,” he said. “And we must go with faith, taking no corkscrew and no glasses. We shall climb up, you and I, to the point above the mill, and then I shall go to the third tree from the end and find a string attached to the trunk. I shall undo this and let down from—oh, ever so high up in the pine-two glasses. Meantime-”

“Meantime I shall go to the next tree but four,” interrupted Norah, “and find among the moss at the bottom of it a corkscrew. So we shall uncork our wine and drink it out of the glasses. Oh dear!”

“Why?” asked Paul.

“Because it is such fun being a baby, and we can’t be babies for ever. How old are you?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Yes, by the silly things called years,” said the girl. “But essentially you are eleven.”

“Eleven is a very good age to be,” said Paul.

“Yes, but how long can one go on being eleven? And I am eleven and twenty-three. But it’s absurd to suppose that when you are seventy and I am sixty-eight we shall still be eleven. The only question is when we shall stop being eleven.”

Paul struck a match with a resolute air.

“I shall go on being eleven as long as I choose,” he said.

“At least, it isn’t really a question of choice at all. One’s essential age is the age one feels. Besides, being eleven only means one cares for silly games like making caches.

“But when—but when you are the head of your insurance office it’s impossible to imagine that you will still hurry out into Lombard Street during lunch-time and make a cache. Besides, being eleven means much more than that. It means there is nothing in the world except your playthings and other children to play with you.”

Paul’s face suddenly fell.

“There you go,” he said, “spoiling all my pleasure. From the giddy heights of the rat-tail and the making of caches, you pull me down, bang, into the office. I am sixty-five already, and if you mention it again I shall be seventy. Then, unless I am very strong, I shall probably die, and you will have my corpse on your head.”

Paul had lit his cigarette but the match he had thrown away still burned bravely, making for itself a little ring of flame in the dry pine-needles. And before these last words were really out of his mouth his attention had been completely absorbed by this.

“Oh,, quick, quick!” he said. “Let’s have the death of Brunnhilde. Feed the fire very carefully, Norah, while I make Brunnhilde.”

He tore up half a dozen shreds of moss, and with his nimble, artistic-looking fingers fashioned them into the semblance of a human figure, and pompously sang the motif of the Valkyrie.

“Oh, but the horse!” cried Norah, who was still feeding the flame.

“No horse obtainable. We’re not Bayreuth, but only a strolling company.”

He threw the little moss figure into the blazing pine-needles, and watched it shrivel up and disappear in flame.

“And lest we should set Italy on fire,” he remarked, “my boot shall be the Rhine and quench the flames. Amen.”

Norah was silent a moment.

“Brunnhilde was slightly stiff and stately,” she said, “and I doubt if you are eleven, Paul. I think you are only just ten. Do you know, I wish sometimes-”

“That is easy enough,” he remarked. “I hardly ever do anything else. It doesn’t much matter what one wishes as long as one wishes. Fancy not wanting! Lots of people don’t want. I find them dull. What do you wish, by the way?”

“I don’t really know if I do,” said she.

“Well, tell me, then, and I will decide whether you wish it or not.”

The girl put on her hat before replying.

“Something serious, then,” said he. “I notice you always put on your hat when you are going to be serious. Like going to church.”

“Well, I wish, or I don’t wish, whichever the case may be, that you were more than eleven sometimes. Are you ever going to grow up, in fact?”

The last act of the “Gotterdammerung” lost its interest at this. The new subject absorbed Paul as much as the rat-tail or Brunnhilde had done.

“How can I tell?” he said. “Why, it’s easier to add a cubit to your stature than add a day to your essential age.” “Are you sure? Have you tried?”

“Tried? No. How can one try? You might as well try to feel hungry or thirsty or tired. You can’t force what you feel. I would leave off making caches and burning Brunnhildes if you liked. But I shouldn’t cease to want to.” Norah took off her hat again; the serious mood apparently was over; she had come out of church. But, so to speak, she talked about the sermon.

“Then how is one to grow up?” she said. If one doesn’t grow essentially older naturally, must one remain in short frocks all one’s life? I’m not sure that I should like that.” Paul looked at her quickly with a half-dosing of his blue eyes and his head a little on one side, as if he was focussing them for some critical examination of a picture.

“Do you know what you have said?” he asked. “You have said practically that you are growing up. At least, you have expressed a sort of prospective discontent with the permanent age of eleven. That is half-way towards being twelve.”

The girl nodded.

“Yes, I suppose that is so,” she said. “So 1’m older than you.”

“How did you do it?” asked he.

“I don’t know. It came. I woke—about a minute ago— and found I was twelve. Is that nonsense? ”

Paul considered this.

“I’m afraid not,” he said.

“Why afraid?”

“Because it’s rather a bore if you are going to grow up. You won’t care to play any more. And you’ll think about your trailing clouds of glory, instead of just trailing them.”

Norah sat up quickly, and put her hat on again with great firmness. Though she had said she was twenty-three, and there was no reason to doubt the accuracy of the statement, she looked, even now, when she was quite serious, certainly a couple of years younger. Except for her eyes, half hidden for the time under the flapping hat, there was no feature of strict beauty in her face, yet the effect of the combined features was of a far higher kind than mere beauty, so full was it of subtle and elusive charm. Her mouth, for instance, had the most delicious irregularities to mar its beauty and increase its attractiveness. One side of it just now seemed to smile, the other corner was inclined downwards. The upper lip, very narrow, was slightly parted from the full curve of the other. Her nose, too, was the nose of a child, and had not yet, it seemed, made up its mind as to what sort of a nose it meant it be. At present it was a little upturned, expressing curiosity; but the mouth told you that the curiosity was of a kindly sort. And grey eyes—eyes Celtically soft, Celtically pleasant, but of wonderful vividness—completed the mere catalogue of features. But with the thin, dark eyebrows that roofed them, and the long, dark eyelashes that framed them, their beauty was undeniable. They were kind and gay together; they were eyes, like x in algebra, which could mean anything. And like all grey eyes, eyes of the true grey, sometimes they were blue, sometimes they were brown. Only they were never grey.

Just now, when she sat up suddenly and put on her hat, they were brown. And her mouth, as if to confirm this, was grave on both sides.

“Oh, Paul,” she said, “of course, I am at least twelve! You know why.”

He looked at her a moment; then at the Castello of Silomo, which lay small and sparkling below them. As she had said, the shutters had been opened, and in the sparkling white walls they showed as specks of black, with green streaks on each side of them. Against the noonstricken white of the walls the pines looked black, but the sea below was intensified in its blue.

“You mean that,” he said, nodding at it.

“Yes, or him.”

Paul was at no time remarkable for the polish of his manner. But at this moment he was remarkable for the absence of it.

“It isn’t him,” he said; “it’s It.”

Norah would have put her hat more firmly on if she could. But it had been quite firmly put on before.

“It is no use saying that sort of thing,” she remarked.

“No, one doesn’t say things because they are of use. At least, I don’t. I say tilings because I want to.”

He paused a moment.

“How can you!”

Norah had the most admirable gift of silence. She exercised it now until it was quite clear she was being silent on purpose, not choosing to reply to this last remark. This caused Paul to continue speaking.

“I know that it is no concern of mine,” he said. “I have got no more right to interfere in what you do than you have to interfere in what I do. Yet here we are, great friends. Oh, let us state it once for all. We are not in the least in love with each other. Why I’m not in love with you I can’t imagine. Why you are not in love with me I can easily imagine. I can’t see how you possibly could be. But you allow It to come here; why, It’s simply ‘walking out’ with you.’*

“It hasn’t—he hasn’t walked out yet,” remarked Norah.

“No, but he—I mean It—will. Are you going to marry him? I want to know. Why shouldn’t I know?”

Norah paused before she answered.

“Oh, Paul,” she said at length, “I really would tell you if I knew. But I don’t know. You aren’t a woman; you can’t possibly understand. Why does a woman do anything? It is just because she can’t understand. To a woman that is the only reason for doing it. We don’t care for anything we know. What we care for is what we don’t know. That is why girls marry, and that also is why they marry total strangers. We are a case in point. To be admitted entirely into your life would give me nothing new.”

“I haven’t asked you to marry me yet,” remarked Paul parenthetically.

“‘No, but as you have said you don’t mean to, I can say these things. Also, if you did, I should certainly say ‘No.’ Even if a man is delightful no woman would marry him if she knew what he was like. No, I am sure it is so. Our motto is ‘I don’t know, so I want.’ But the motto of a man is ‘I know; give it me.’”

Paul looked vaguely round.

“I can’t think how you find all these things out,” he said. “You are always finding things out. Where do they come from? If I had studied men and women for years I should never have thought of that.”

“Of course not,” said Norah. “You’re a man—and know—consequently you won’t take the trouble to think about it.”

She got up as she spoke, and stood leaning for a little against the red-brown trunk of the pine, while round them the myriad noises of the noon all contributed to the paean and the apparent silence of the woodland. Bees hummed in the flowers of the clearing in front of them, shouldering their honey-laden way into the hearts of the flowers; birds chirped and sang in the thickets; the earliest crickets of the year clicked unweariedly; and the wind stirred softly in the pines above them, like die noise of some remote ocean. Down below them the woods stretched to the very margin of the blue, tideless sea, so that the eye looked over a floor of tree-tops and over the sleeping glass of the gulf to where the further coastline, with its towns and villages lying on the edge of the sea, and sparkling like grains of salt, stretched itself dim and blue along the eastern horizon. Overhead the sky was an unclouded space of azure, across which darted and swerved companies of swifts and martins, and the sun, near to noontide and almost directly overhead, filtered through the dark foliage of the pines in little specks and spangles of light. And all was instinct with the spirit of spring, radiant, full of growth and greenness, and the girl herself, as she leaned against the tree, might well have been the visible incarnation of it. For it was her month of May too; spring with her trembled on the verge of summer; she stood on the threshold of life and conscious womanhood.

“Dear Paul,” she said at length, “it is quite true. I am growing up; but I shall always like playing with you.”

He shook his head.

“Ah, if you know you are playing it ceases to be play at all,” he said. “The whole point of games is that you take them quite seriously; otherwise they are not worth while.” He got up too, laughing.

“I shall keep my eye on you,” he said, “and let you know how old you are getting.”

“Perhaps you will grow up too,” she said.

“Perhaps, but no amount of thought will make me. One only grows up because one has got to.”

He rubbed his foot across the little black patch of burned fir-needles, where the pyre of Brunnhilde had been.

“I foresee that I shall have to play alone,” he said. “Don’t be distressed; it isn’t at all pathetic. I assure you that I shall do it quite beautifully. And now we’ve been serious quite long enough. Oh, the spoon. I haven’t thought about it for ten minutes at least. Let’s go home, Norah. I shall only just have time to have a bathe before lunch.”

“You lunch with us, you know.”

“I do. Why, it’s twelve already. I shall run on, I think, or I shall be late. And don’t grow up like Alice when she ate the mushroom. It would be so disconcerting.”

He ran on down the cobbled path, leaving the girl to follow in more leisurely fashion. The conversation they had had about essential age, light and nonsensical as it appeared on the surface, yet held for her a germ of truth which was quite serious. She had known Paul Norris since they were children together, and it seemed to be very true indeed that he was essentially a child. Others, girls and boys alike, had grown up, but he and she, so it appeared to her, had till just lately continued children. Life had held for them both nothing serious at all, and for him still it held nothing serious. Others, their contemporaries, married and were given in marriage, but love which, though we are told it is ever young, is still the most fuitful cause of making children into men and women, had as yet touched neither him nor her. The world, in fact, for them both had been till now one huge box of toys of the most absorbing interest; yet, however interesting and absorbing, nothing was more than a toy. They had both played at life with unabated zest, and now this morning for the first time consciously she was standing with her toys about her, wondering whether they were really toys at all. No such wonder certainly had crossed his mind, but it had crossed hers, and as she made her way more slowly down the path he had run down it was extremely vivid to her. Her thought was in no way self-conscious; it did not dwell on herself at all, but was concerned wholly with those things—men, women, her friends, her whole environment— which at present had been but the implements of this game called life.

She walked but slowly, for in the air, just for this hour of noonday, there was a hint of the heat and stillness of the summer that was coming. The breeze that had stirred in the pines higher up, where they had sat half an hour ago, had died down, or at any rate was not felt on the lower hillside, and the air was curiously still, while the sea, an untarnished mirror, reflected the pines and walls of the Castello in sharp unwavering lines. A little way out from the shore there was a boat lying idly, becalmed, with sail that did not even flap, much less fill, in the windless air. Round her too the leaves of the trees, even in the delicate tassels of the laburnums, hung motionless as if in a room. Here too the birds were silent, and no quick chirpings or scurryings of activity came from the bushes. Even the flowers drooped a little, and the five-fingered leaves of the fig-trees beside the mill hung heavily, as if with bent wrists. Only on the wall a grass-green lizard lay basking, and whisked off at her approach.

Yes, indeed, this was the first hour of summer, the first touch of that brooding heat which was necessary to bring the fruits of the earth to their perfection, and give the fields the russet-brown that shows they are fit for harvesting. Many such scorching and windless hours would blaze from the midsummer sky before this was accomplished, and often and often would the earth lie baked and parched, panting with heat. Storm would come too with swift, violent, tropical rain, with fires of lightning and tumult of thunder. Yet somehow these heats and these convulsions of nature were necessary, were beneficent even, for without them the wheat would not grow full-eared, nor the black grapes swell to maturity. It was only through the fires of summer and the storms of summer that the days of harvest could be reached. And what if in some such sort storm and drought and fiery trial were necessary for the maturing and ripening of the human soul? To her, at any rate, she felt that in this hour there had come the first hint of summer.

CHAPTER II

Lady Ravenscroft, Norah’s mother, was allowed on all sides to be a very original woman, and in nothing was her originality more clearly shown than in her methods of dealing with the financial crises that not infrequently beset her. This year, for instance, since financial affairs had become rather acute about April, she had thought of a charming scheme whereby she might retrench. Like all great thoughts it was quite simple, and consisted merely in the letting of her London house for the season, and taking this delightful villa which she at present occupied at Silorno.

“Norah and I shall go there directly after Easter,” she had explained to her friends, “and stop there till the end of June. Then, if it gets very hot, we shall go up to the Italian lakes just for a month, and come back to London in time for Cowes simply rolling in wealth. My dear, the villa is only eight pounds a week, and I’m sure the garden will easily give us enough fruit and vegetables, and nobody can eat meat in the hot weather, so that our food will really cost nothing. Wine so cheap too—in fact, I think the villa has a vineyard of its own, and we shall brew it like ginger-beer. And as for spending money there, why, it is a thing quite impossible. You can buy large red umbrellas at Delfino, but there is not another article of any kind to be obtained there, except bait for fishing. Of course it’s a bore giving up the season, but I’m sure people will be kind and come and stay with us, and the scenery is too divine.”

This brilliant plan had been put into instant execution, and she and Norah had accordingly left England directly after Easter. They each took a maid, and a couple of men-servants also came with them, as well as the cook, who—this was a great piece of luck—was an Italian woman, and would thus know her way about when she got to Silorno, and hold her own in the matter of marketing. Lady Ravenscroft also took a motor with her, for what was the use of the beautiful 14 scenery unless you could get about and see it? Italian horses were so bad; they always fell down and cut their knees, and then one had to pay extra bills, which it was her express object to avoid. And as the motor went round by sea to Genoa it would hardly cost anything, traveling by sea being so cheap.

Indeed, the only weak point in the plan hitherto had been that the London house had not at present got a tenant. Still, it was only as yet the middle of May, so there was plenty of time. In any case the failure to let it did not detract one atom from the brilliance of the plan, since Lady Ravenscroft could not be held responsible in any way for the omission on the part of other people to take it. There was the house ready for anybody to take, provided, of course, they would pay the rent. No one could do more than she had done.

But she constantly had other financial irons in the fire. She was an excellent gardener, and during the summer months sent up masses of flowers from her country house for sale at Covent Garden, while during the last winter she had even tried the experiment of forcing fruit and flowers and selling them. This, however, though it was all great fun, and she got her own early vegetables, so she said, for nothing, had to be abandoned owing to the expense. She would, in fact, have readily confessed that she had made a mistake over this, the mistake partly consisting in the fact that in her estimates she had allowed nothing for the cost of fuel for the greenhouses, or for the wages of the gardener who looked after them. There were other slight omissions, indeed, as well, one being the cost of transport from Bircham, her house in Hampshire, up to London. But, as she said, this was a mere bagatelle, and on the scale on which she meant to do things might really be disregarded. The summer supply for Covent Garden, however, still went on, even though she was in Italy, and not able, as she would have liked, to give an eye to it herself. She had, however, secured the services of a first-rate bailiff with a good head on his shoulders, who, at a considerable salary (it was impossible to get good men cheap), saw to everything. He was a Presbyterian, too, which sounded extremely respectable.

It would perhaps have been well if Lady Ravenscroft’s financial genius had confined itself to not letting her London house, and sending vegetables to Covent Garden. But when things were very bad indeed, as they were now, she sometimes adopted more vigorous and direct methods of getting money by speculating on the Stock Exchange. She had at the present moment a very large account open, and was daily expecting news of wonderful success. Her broker telegraphed to her every day at some length, but at present, owing to the general dullness of markets, she had not received the news she expected. In fact, only the week before she had paid out a rather considerable cheque to meet her differences. This was a bore, but it did not in the least depress her. She called it “sitting on her shares,” and felt extraordinarily acute in consequence. In any case, since her income was manifestly not adequate to meet her annual expenditure, she had to supplement it somehow. Indeed, to do her justice, she would willingly have sung songs in Gros-venor Square (and enjoyed it immensely) if she could have made anything worth having that way. It would have been great fun, and since her house was in Grosvenor Street, most convenient. She could have come in to lunch and started out again immediately afterwards.

But though, apart from the brilliance of the conception, her financial scheme did not show any sound point at all, it must not be in the least imagined that Lady Ravenscroft resembled a fool in the slightest degree. She was, moreover, a person of great vitality, which, after all, when all is said and done, remains perhaps the most attractive quality known to exist in this imperfect race of mankind. And her vitality was of the most exuberant and bubbling kind; not the deep, still vitality that endures and remains calm, but the bubbling, frothing vitality that effervesces and enjoys. Untoward events, the utter collapse of her schemes, had not the smallest power to depress her. Instead, she turned with unabated enthusiasm to a less sordid subject, for she had> nothing of the miser about her; she did not like money in the least—she only disliked the absence of it, which is a far different matter.

Lady Ravenscroft had married very young, and though she had a daughter, as we have seen, of twenty-three, she was herself scarcely over forty. And though the hither side of forty is in general considered the sunny side of that critical age, it was astonishing to see how much sun this admirable lady found on the other side. She had even once found a latent cause for satisfaction in the fact that her banking balance was heavily overdrawn, for this had led to a personal interview between herself and one of the directors of the bank, an acquaintance who, she felt sure, would be useful to her, and smooth over any fresh difficulties which might just conceivably arise in the future. Indeed, she secretly held the very rosy view that if she had Mr. Launceston to dinner now and then, so indelicate a subject as overdrawn accounts could not be mentioned between them. It would be, in fact, an unfriendly action, and Mr. Launceston was always most friendly.

Her optimism, indeed, was almost sublime. Trouble she had had in her life, and real sorrow, but that had been quite powerless to spoil her powers of enjoyment, or ever so faintly to embitter her. Like most people of forty-two, she had known death, and though death had taken from her a most beloved husband, it had left undiminished her joy of life. He had been nearly thirty years her senior, and she had married him when he was but a stranger to her, and when she was not in the smallest degree in love with him. But by one of those fortunate occurrences, which happen too frequently to call accidents, her girlish indifference had ripened into a true and most tender affection. No marriage could on the face, of it have been less well assorted, yet no marriage could have been more intensely happy. For several years before his death he had been prey to a deadly and painful disease, but his wonderful fortitude on the one hand, and her womanly love on the other, had sufficed to make out of this tragedy a triumphant happiness. His pain was soothed almost out of existence by her presence, his final release from pain was hailed by them both with the same welcome.

It was of such parents that Norah came, and thus it was not surprising that she had as a birthright high courage, an enthusiasm for life, and a warm desire for all experience. To enjoy, to endure, to suffer, were privileges to one of such blood; all that bit and moved her nature was an object of rapturous welcome. And though till to-day her welcome of the world had been that of a child, to whom both sunshine and rain bring joys of their own, the one of the open air, the other of the firelit hearth, she stood with arms open to hail all that might come. Something, too, of Amazon or gipsy blood was hers; adventure and combat and “the glory of going on” were natural to her. She had her mother’s optimism, her father’s courage, and was inclined to take all that came with a frolic welcome.

Lady Ravenscroft’s sister just now was staying with her, and all that Lady Ravenscroft had of courage and optimism, in addition to the general allowance given to most people, might perhaps be regarded as having been subtracted from Mrs. Mundy. The poor lady was, indeed, abnormally endowed with general cowardice, and the habit of expecting the worst possible. She never faced the world at all; instead, she turned her face to the wall, like a permanent Hezekiah, and moaned. Indeed, to be prepared for the worst was a constant condition of her life; so much so, indeed, that when the worst did not happen, she was vaguely disappointed. But since she was a person of but feeble imagination, the worst usually came up to her expectations. This pessimism was hid evenly over her nature like butter over properly appointed slices of bread. It covered everything alike in uniform thickness. Her husband, Henry Mundy, was also staying at the villa. His was a thoroughly undistinguished nature, and his life had been almost portentous in its mediocrity. He was stout and slow in habit, and regarded his sister-in-law as a sleepy man may regard a collection of undischarged fireworks. There was no knowing which might go off next, or what it would be like, The innate pessimism of his wife did not disturb him. In fact, nothing disturbed him, and for the rest he was a retired solicitor, who lived at Wroxton. The place, a country cathedral town, suited him. He was also much esteemed there, and had a sort of brevet rank, being counted as of “ the county,” owing to the marriage of his wife’s sister. This, joined with tne impression of culture produced by this stay in Italy, would, he felt, make his position peculiarly enviable when he got back. He was a person of some humour, and smiled gently to himself at the thought.

Lady Ravenscroft never found anyone unsatisfactory or tiresome, so thoroughgoing was her own optimism, and instead of being infected with the dullness or pessimism of others, she but illumined them with her own radiance. And even now, when her sister had had the most depressing letter about a dispute concerning a tree in her neighbour’s garden, a limb of which she had wanted to saw off, since it made an undesirable shade and dripping over her own strawberry-beds, she did not find such a subject less than engrossing.

“It is too tiresome,” sister Kate was saying, as she sat in a chair on the terrace of the villa, where lunch was being laid in the open air. “We shall get no strawberries at all, and I am told that it is quite out of my power to cut off that dreadful bough. If the Perkinses do that to me, and spoil my garden, why shouldn’t I tell my gardener to drop all the snails he finds over their wall?”

“It depends on ‘they,’ dear Kate,” said Lady Ravenscroft “Who are‘they’?”

“I don’t know. The Perkinses. Some dreadful people who took the house next ours. I thought that in a Cathedral Close we should have no annoyance from neighbours. It is most disappointing. And the worst of it is, Henry doesn’t seem to care.”

Lady Ravenscroft, one of whose amiable peccadilloes was that she could never manage not to be busy at something, snipped off a couple of withered roses from the bushes on the pergola.

“Yes, very tiresome, as you say,” she said. “But, dear Kate, surely it does not matter very much. Even if you have no strawberries, you can surely buy some. And if it is very important, why not saw off the bough, and see what happens? Surely they won’t go to law about it.”

Mrs. Mundy considered this with gathering gloom.

“You can’t tell about strangers,” she said.. “Henry took Canon—Canon Something’s house because we should not be overlooked, and there was a nice garden. But how wrong we have been. Everything is so tiresome and disappointing. And my housemaid has given notice, too, whom I had trained so carefully. That is so like her class. They learn their work, and as soon as they know it they go away. Misfortunes never come singly. I don’t know where I shall get another one. And she never disturbed Henry’s papers. He often said that. I shall have to break it to him.”

Lady Ravenscroft gave a sudden giggle of laughter.

“Dear Kate, you talk as if he had been flirting with her,” she said.

Kate said nothing. There was no use in words. But she bridled. Sometimes her sister was rather common. But this commonness, though depressing, did not occupy her mind long. There were so many aspects, all of them gloomy, to be considered with regard to the housemaid’s giving notice.

“And this year of all others,” she said, “when we should have had people to stay with us so much. You and Norah were coming, you know, in July, and I am sure there were heaps of others. I shall have to put everybody off. And Bertie will be at home for the holidays at the end of July, taking books out of the shelves and never putting them back, and carrying mud all over the house, and nobody to sweep it up.”

Lady Ravenscroft never attempted to console her sister since she had found by experience that consolation only made matters worse, and produced lamentations compared to which those of the prophet Jeremiah might be considered hymns of praise. And Mrs. Mundy again read this terrible letter from her cook, which announced the approaching departure of the housemaid, in order to find out fresh vantage-points of gloom and misery. Apparently she found none, for she turned elsewhere.

“And if we miss the train at Genoa, I don’t know what Henry and I can do/’ she said.

“I should go to a hotel, dear,” said Lady Ravenscroft briskly, “and go on next day.”

“But the luggage will be registered through,” said Kate, shaking her head, “and we shall be able to get at nothing. I shall have to pack a bag specially with all I want for the night, and think of everything Henry will want.”

“Henry will want a sponge, a toothbrush, and a clean handkerchief,” remarked that gentleman, who had just come out of the house.

Mrs. Mundy considered this gloomily.

“A razor, too,” she suggested. “One is sure to forget something.”

“After all, you have an hour and a half in Genoa if your train is punctual,” said her sister. “And you only have to go from one platform to another. Indeed, probably your train will start from the same platform.”

“But there is the difference between French time and Italian time,” said Mrs. Mundy, “and it always counts against you.”

She paused a moment.

“And if the train is punctual,” she continued, struck by a brilliantly gloomy thought, “we shall have an hour and a half to wait, grilling there at Genoa station. Such an uncomfortable time; not long enough to go to a hotel. It will be too terrible waiting there.”

These frightful auguries for the future were interrupted at this moment by the arrival of Norah. Serious contemplation apparently was over for the time, for her hat was in her hand. This led to Mrs. Mundy’s pessimism being turned on to her like a bull’s-eye lantern.

“Dear Norah, how flushed and feverish you look,” she said. “Fancy going about without a hat in this sun! I feel sure you have got sunstroke. Henry had sunstroke once, and looked just like you. I should go to my room at once if I were you, and eat nothing solid.1*

Norah’s attitude towards her aunt was one of undisguised amusement “Darling Aunt Kate,” she said, “how wise you are. But I’m much too ill for anything of that sort to be of any use. So I shall continue to sit in the sun without any hat, and eat an enormous lunch. And what has happened, dear? Has the post brought you more terrible news than usual?”

Mr. Mundy had been sitting apart, reading his papers. But here, expecting a full and fresh recital of all these tragedies, he gave a little sigh.

“Yes, everything is going wrong,” she said, “and your uncle can suggest nothing. And Bertie comes home for his long leave a month from to-morrow with a friend. And all the strawberries will be spoiled, and I know there will be no housemaid.”

“Dear me, how awful,” said Norah. “But if you’ll ask me to stay with you, Aunt Kate, Fll empty all the slops. And here’s Paul. Isn’t lunch ready, mother?”

Paul at this moment, though strictly he did not look exactly respectable, was a figure after Lady Ravenscroft’s heart. He had the oldest possible flannels on, tennis shoes, no waistcoat, a loosely-knotted tie, so that a triangle of white skin showed below the sun-tan of his neck, a bathing-towel in one hand and a hat in the other, while a mop of thick rebellious hair was drying back into its usual black thatch. He was all sun and wind, you would have said, a breezy embodiment of the day. By none but the most blatant misuse of language could he have been called handsome, but only by the sourest-minded could he have failed to have been called good to look on. His mouth was altogether too large, his nose was nothing particular, his eyes were merely bright, and this great shock of black hair came low on to his forehead. But in spite of this heaviness of feature it was easy to see at once that he was almost incapable of heaviness; a soul full of violence of all sorts looked from his eyes. And though just now it seemed as if huge animal enjoyment was his chief mental occupation, a student of physiognomy might have hazarded a guess that he was capable of violent passion. Above all he looked rapid; he walked quickly, his eyes looked quickly here and there; he seemed like a child in a toy-shop surrounded by objects of ecstasy. As he came up the paved garden-path through the pergola of mingled roses and vines to where the table was laid for lunch he did a dozen things where others would simply have walked. He plucked a little green grape, bit it, and, as Dr. Johnson said, rejected it; he plucked a rose and put it in his buttonhole, from which it instantly fell out, so he stuck it in his tie; he tried with combing fingers to bring his hair into some semblance of order, and signally failed; he had a wild encounter, using his towel as a weapon, with a hornet; he read the address of an envelope which lay on the path. All the time too he walked quickly, and shouted remarks to those on the terrace.

“Yes, I know I’m late,” he cried, “and I haven’t brushed my hair. Can you see that from here? How clever of you. Oh, there’s a hornet There’s one less now. Yes, my button* hole is not constructed for roses. That’ll do. It was all Norah’s fault that I’m late. Dear ladyship, how are you? Shall I brush my hair or come as I am? I’m so hungry, and the sea is just beginning to get warm, and I go back in two days. And Norah won’t play with me any more. And who is dead, Aunt Kate, that you look so?”

“Aunt,” it may be remarked, was a compendious way of expressing the fact that Paul’s mother was sister-in-law to Aunt Kate’s husband, and, indeed, as he said, “aunt” was nearer than anything else.

“No one is dead,” said Lady Ravenscroft as they sat down. “But whether Kate catches the train at Genoa or not, it leaves her wretched, doesn’t it, dear? Paul, why don’t you stay here another week? I can give you a bed here on Monday.”

Here the rat-tail spoon slipped out of Paul’s pocket.

“Can you reallv?” he asked. “ Oh, it is a rat-tail. Queen Anne too—too heavenly. I must eat with it. And board as well? Because that’s the important thing. I haven’t any more money to speak of, and so I was saving the other week of my holiday for the autumn, when perhaps I might have. But if you could put me up. Oh, I don’t know, though.”

He frowned suddenly and was silent. Rude and utterly ungracious as he appeared, no one ever was annoyed at or resentful of his rudeness, since no one could suspect him of studied discourtesy. If Paul Norris, so to speak, wiped his feet on your dress, it was not because he designed insolent behaviour, but merely because he was not thinking. And now, so far from treating Lady Ravenscroft’s offer with scant respect it was only that he was thinking about some private reason for refusing.

Norah was helping herself to fish, and did not notice this.

“Ah, do stop, Paul,” she said. “We shall have another week’s play.”

“I thought you weren’t going to play with me any more,” said Paul rather savagely.

“Only in principle,” said she.

Then suddenly he seemed to realize that he was not being rude all by himself—making faces like a child, as it were, at an absent cause of offence—but that he was acting mannerlessly to those who were present.

“It’s awfully kind of you, dear Lady Ravenscroft,” he said. “I should love to stop. Hurrah! I needn’t think about packing or nights in the train for another week.”

This was not tactful, for it set Aunt Kate off again, and for the rest of lunch she let off lamentations at short intervals, like a minute gun, on the formidable character of what she would have to go through at Genoa, whether the train were punctual or not.

This Villa Martino, where Lady Ravenscroft was practising her pleasant economies, was really a most tolerable place of banishment from the muddy streets or, as it was turning out this year, the baked pavements of London. It was not large as suited economy, and there were but four bedrooms, not counting the servants’ room, and but a couple of cool living-rooms, very empty, as is the genius of Italian houses, but with high vaulted ceilings and stone floors, on which a rug or two were laid. On two sides of the house, south and east, ran a broad terrace with a wooden pergola, thickly twined with mingled roses and vines running across it, and bounded by a low stone wall, plastered and painted red. From the eastern of these two terraces, where they were now lunching, a steep paved path led down to the gate which communicated with a high road outside. This, too, was now fragrant and flaming with roses, and above it lay the half-dozen little terraces, like big steps in the steep hillside, that formed the garden. A staircase of rough-hewn stones, wandering haphazard like one of the ordinary mountain paths, made communication between these, and by the side of it ran a small clear stream that even in the height of summer never ran wholly dry. Pools and cool caves of water had been dug out to make its course delectable, in which gold-fish flashed and twinkled, and the steep, prattling stream-bed that lay between these was purple with Japanese iris and feathered with Osmunda fern. Rough walls of stone, as on the rest of the mountain-side, separated these terraces, and all over these the legion of stone-loving plants flowered. Wallflowers made a thick fragrance in the air, snap-dragons reared their velvet-covered spires of bloom with flowers mouthed like the muzzle of gay-coloured horses, pink clusters of valerian found footing in the larger interstices, and on each terrace the creeping roses from the terrace above hung in loops and festoons. There was some shadow of cause, too, for Lady Ravenscroft’s cheerful prognostication that the garden would support them, for one terrace was given up to kitchen stuff, and the bean-flowers boon was thick there, and round red strawberries nestled below their varnished leaves. But most delightful of all, perhaps, was the top terrace; a narrow gravel path led round it, but the whole of the centre was covered with long thick grass. But out of this endless profusion, stood up a wealth of flowering bulbs. The daffodils were over, but a milky way of narcissus starred the grass; Spanish iris, all hues, from flaming yellow to the darkest brown, with blue of turquoise, blue of the sea, and purple of distant hills, stood exquisite in shape and colour, while the wild crinkle-petalled poppies flamed between. Most of the trees, when the garden was made, had been felled in order to let in the sunlight, but three or four gnarled ilexes were left, through the masses of whose leaves not even the noonday arrow of the sun could pierce, and the wooden pergolas that strayed everywhere over the garden were thick with vines that let but a pale-green light through their spreading foliage, so that it was as if one walked in some cool ocean cave. And over all, as over the wooded hillside behind, and the level sea immediately in front, there lay the deep blue of the Italian sky, and the huge radiance of the golden sun.

Just a single row of houses abutting on the road itself lay below the garden, one of them being the little country hotel where at present Paul was lodged, while immediately beyond the road came the shingle and sand of the beach at the end of the bay. To right and left the road rose again, and was carried on the tops of the steep grey rocks that ran down into the sea, leading on the right through the woods to Delfino, and on the left to Santa Lucia, and at the extreme corner of this bay, a couple of hundred yards only distant, stood the Castello, where, as Norah had observed, preparations were going on for the coming of its occupants. It stood on a little private promontory of its own, covered with black-foliaged pines, and an iron gate, giving on to the road, led up a steep path cut and blasted among the rocks to the fop of the little ridge on which it was perched. On three sides of it the rocks plunged steeply into deep water, and on the right had been made a little boat-house, and steps and shelter for bathers. Though modern, it had been admirably built in antique style, and the large, simple, vaulted rooms, with great thickness of wall, were both warm in winter and cool even at the top of the summer. It belonged to an Englishman, who generally let it for these spring and early summer months, preferring himself the joys of a flat in Jermyn Street. Half a dozen English servants had arrived the evening before with a vanload of luggage and packing-cases, and were, in company with a bewildered Italian caretaker, making things ready for the arrival of Theodore Beckwith and his sister, who had been expected to-morrow. A telegram, however, had just come to say that they would arrive to-night, and things were moving briskly. News of this had filtered through to the Villa Martino at lunch-time, and afterwards, as Lady Ravenscroft strolled through the garden with Paul, leaving Norah to demonstrate the facility of catching the train at Genoa to Aunt Kate, discussion of the arrivals formed part of their conversation.

“You have met Theodore Beckwith, have you not?” she asked.

“Seen him half a dozen times,” remarked Paul. “That’s six times too much.”

“Ah, was it because he was coming that you hesitated whether to stop on here?”

“How did you guess?”

“It wasn’t a guess, you silly boy; it was a certainty. It could have been nothing else. Now, why do you dislike him? Or shall I tell you that, too?”

“I don’t really know myself,” said he. “I should be grateful if you would.”

“Well, it is this. Three reasons, in fact. The first, because Norah is very far from agreeing with you. The second because he isn’t like the general run of people. The third, because you are afraid of him. And I think the third reason is the most important.”

Paul stopped.

“Afraid of him?” he said. “What have I got to be afraid of him about?”

“Ah, if you knew that, you would probably cease to be afraid of him.”

Paul moved on again a step or two; then waited for Lady Ravenscroft, who was doing a little wayside weeding, to join him.

“I should like to know one thing,” he said. “Is he going to marry Norah?”

“He would like to. But whether he will or not is a question that I feel sure Norah couldn’t tell you.”

Paul picked up a couple of pebbles from the path and threw them viciously at the gold-fish in the pool.

“I hate fish,” he said, “they are so—so fishy. Well, I can tell you this: Norah is thinking about it But she isn’t in love with him.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Yes, or she would have told me. We were talking about him this morning. She tells me everything, just as I tell her everything. But-” He paused a moment, and then clapped his hands softly together, as if he had made some subtle discovery. “But she’s afraid of him, too,” he said.

“Too?” asked Lady Ravenscroft.

“Yes; you told me I was. You were quite right.”

“Then there are three of us,” said Lady Ravenscroft candidly.

CHAPTER III

It was a little after ten next morning, and Theodore Beckwith was sitting in his bedroom at the Castello with a litter of letters round him, glancing now at one and putting it aside, or handing another over to Mr. Lucas, his secretary, who sat by him, with a few words of explanation as to the answer which it required. He wore a very brightly-coloured silk dressing-gown, reaching to his feet, and buttoned with large onyx buttons down the front, while on his feet—apparently his only other clothing—he wore red morocco slippers. Between these and his dressing-gown there was a slight hiatus, and a very white slim ankle showed itself. He had already shaved, and his chin showed blue-black against the collar of his dressing-gown; his hair was very carefully brushed, and on the fourth finger of his left hand were two rings, one with an emerald in it, the other with two opals. His tray of early breakfast—coffee and a couple of rolls— stood on a small silver-topped table by him, and as he read or dictated he sometimes drank a sip from the Sevres coffee-cup, or with his even white teeth crunched a piece of roll. Coffee-pot and milk-pot were of wonderfully fine Queen Anne silver, and an embroidered napkin covered his red-lacquer tray. A Louis Seize bedstead, which had arrived the day before in a huge packing-case, showed where he had slept; but the room was otherwise, except for three or four straight-backed chairs, and the one easy-chair in which he sat, almost completely empty. The door into his dressing-room, however, was open, and through that could be seen a toilet-table covered with silver, a bath still steaming, and exhaling the clean, aromatic smell of cedar, and a patient, immobile valet, waiting for the moment when his master might choose to go on with his dressing. His secretary, finally, a young man, fresh of face and vigorous of frame, scribbled notes of the answers to the letters Theodore passed to him, and seemed extraordinarily attentive.

Certainly Theodore Beckwith did not appear to be at all a formidable figure. Though his voluminous dressing-gown encompassed him, it was quite clear he was of very slight, almost meagre make; and when he rose, as he did now and then, to walk up and down the room considering the letter under his notice, he was of but meagre height. He wore pince-nez, which hung on a thin gold chain round his neck, and his face was very narrow and weakly to the appearance. His nose was slightly hooked, his mouth small and compressed, and his hair, already thin, was touched with grey above the temples. But when you came to his eyes, you lighted on a possible explanation as to why three such normal and healthy people as Norah, Lady Ravenscroft, and Paul should consider him formidable. They were very pale blue, and so extraordinarily steady that it seemed as if they must almost be of glass. They looked at whatever they were looking at with absolutely unswerving gaze. Also (this, too, would have struck the most casual observer before long), he never winked. Letter after letter passed before him; there were answers to some, others were laid aside, after they had been read, on his private packet, but never once did his eyelids move. And the impression of this infinitesimal phenomenon perhaps was interpreted by others into some dreadful and unceasing watchfulness about the man. His eyes, too, were of an indescribable stony hardness; whether he laughed or scolded, no reflection of his mood passed across them. They were merely the organs of sight, as immobile and unexpressive of emotion as ears or finger-tips.

At this moment he was frowning slightly. Then he raised the letter he was reading to his nose and smelt it.

“Please put it outside the room/’ he said. “It smells of frangipanni. And tell her she is a damned fool, and that if I hear another word of the kind she’ll see how the law deals with blackmailers.”

He laughed, a thin little cackle of a laugh, which yet reeked of some gusto of merriment “A great laide woman,” he said, “who sang contralto, I picked her out of the gutter almost, and got her a dozen engagements last year. And now she tries to get money out of me. Oh, I’ve no patience with that sort of thing. Give me the letter back; I’ll answer it myself.”

His mouth quivered with sudden rage, and he put the letter back into his private packet Then he lit a cigarette, and with the match still burning strolled back towards the open window. On the shutter of it was sitting a mosquito.

“I thought there was one buzzing about last night,” he said softly, and put the blazing match below it And again he laughed with a horrible little cackle of sound as it shrivelled up in the flame.

“Write those letters now,” he said, “and bring them up to me. I shall dress. And go over to the Villa Martino and find out exactly who is there. Then come back here, and be quick. Order the boat to be ready at twelve. I shall go for a sail before breakfast”

Theodore Beckwith, after the immolation of the guilty mosquito, strolled up and down his bedroom once or twice with slowly-increasing vivacity. He had, as was common with him, slept hardly at all the night before, for he was prey to that most agonizing form of insomnia which does not allow even drowsiness to its victim, but keeps the mind terribly awake and acute. Morning in consequence found him fatigued of body, but the fatigue had been wearing off as he discussed his letters. Sun and light always helped to banish it; so, too, in an extraordinary degree did the presence of anyone who was strong and vigorous, and all the time that his secretary had been with him he had riveted his eyes on the healthy, night-refreshed face of the man. Then, when his cigarette was smoked out, he went into his dressing-room. The valet was there waiting for him, and on the sofa were laid out half a dozen suits for his choice, half a dozen ties were on the dressing-table, and a case of tie-pins was open. He pottered among these for a time, fingering one, rejecting another, and eventually chose a blue flannel suit, a blue satin tie, and a sapphire pin. Yet no personal vanity dictated this care. It was not, so to speak, he who wore them, or spent such time over their decision. They were to go abroad in the eye of day; he wished them to be congruous among themselves.

He slipped into his trousers, and then took off his dressing-gown, showing a narrow, meagre chest and sticks of arms. Yet somehow that puny frame was frightfully instinct with vitality; it was of the same unbending quality as his eyes. Tired and fatigued with sleeplessness it might be, but there was something terribly potent about it. Then a silk shirt, for the morning was sweltering hot, was sufficient, and the valet stood by with the tie and the tie-pin he had chosen.

Theodore looked at himself in the glass.

“Tell me about your wife, Ellis,” he said.

“She’s all right, sir. Slept well. Thinks it’s a nice place.”

“And you slept, too? “

“Yes, sir. Slept like a dead pig. Beg your pardon, sir.”

Again Theodore laughed.

“Why should you?” he said. “Yes, stand in the sun, Ellis. How strong you lookl And the baby, too. Did baby sleep?”

“He never woke, sir.”

“Ah, how nice! Yes, how very nice. Ask Mrs. Ellis, with my compliments, to come—to step up here with the baby. I should like to see the family group. Go now; I can finish dressing alone.”

This was done with much embarrassment Theodore drew up the blind in his bedroom, and grouped them there, as if he had been a photographer. The mother, a shy, red-faced English girl, stood in the centre; on one side was her husband, on the floor on the other sprawled the ecstatic baby. Theodore looked at the group critically through his pince-nez and laughed, feeding his eyes, as it were, now on the rosy-faced mother, now on the tall, square-shouldered man, now on the crowing baby. This latter stretched out its little creased hands to him, as if hailing a friend. He picked up the child from the floor with the deftness of a woman, and cuddled it close to him. He softly bit its ear, while the child laughed rapturously; he laid his thin, tired-looking face against it, and crooned nonsensical baby words to it. Yet there was something rather awful about his greed for the child; it was as if he fed on it. For some five minutes he nursed and nuzzled it, and then gave it back to its mother. For one moment it screamed with open mouth at this transference, which was so little to its taste; the next, it fell sound asleep, as if suddenly tired.

Then Theodore got up from his chair, briskly and lightly.

“So glad you think you will like Silorno, Mrs. Ellis,” he said. “I am sure it will suit you and the baby. What a soft, fat little angel, is he not? What a strong child, too! There, he is fast asleep, the lucky one 1 You must bring him to see me every day, you and the baby, and this fortunate husband of yours. Good-bye. Give me my coat, Ellis.”

Ellis ceased to be father as his red-cheeked wife withdrew, and became valet again. He fetched his master’s coat, and from the corner of the room took up a bundle of sticks and umbrellas. Theodore looked at him a moment in silence.

“ I didn’t ask for those, you ass,” he observed.

A broad loggia, supported on brick pillars, opened out of his bedroom, overlooking the sea, and he took a turn up and down it while waiting for his secretary, with his short, mincing little steps. He had picked up from his table a pair of gold-mounted opera-glasses, and he turned them now on to a brown-sailed boat that was passing close to the end of the Castello promontory, and now on to Lady Ravenscroft’s villa, which lay half buried among its trees. There was little to be made out there, and he turned his attention to the sea again. Another boat, this time a small rowing-boat, had come round the comer from the bay, containing one man only, who was rowing with vigorous strokes. At the stem of the boat were lying his clothes in a heap, and he had on only a bathing-dress that left his arms and legs uncovered. He had apparently already been in the water once, for through the glasses Theodore could see that his black hair was matted together with the brine, and his brown, suntanned arms still glistened with the wet. He rowed opt a 8 couple of hundred yards perhaps, then shipped his oars and stood balanced for a moment on the bows of the boat The next he had shot from it, and disappeared in a foam of bubbles.

The sea was a mirror, and Theodore, with his eyes still glued to his glasses, followed the movements of those vigorously pushing legs and the strokes of those arms. The bather was swimming on his side, and at every stroke his left arm was lifted out of the water above his head, and then came shoving back through the sea, as if, clutching at some ladder-rung, it pulled him along. He swam with wonderful speed and strength, and at each stroke his head was covered by the water, through which he clove his way with that swift, rhythmical rush of the skilled swimmer. The boat he had left far out in the bay, and at every stroke he came nearer to the rocks of the Castello. Soon he was quite close in, and in another moment had hoisted himself out of the water at the extreme end of the promontory.

Theodore left his post of observation and went downstairs and out into the garden. He had on white tennis shoes, and his step was noiseless on the rocks. The trees, too, screened him from the bather, and when he came out of their cover he was quite close to him, and not till then did Paul turn and see him. He looked round, startled, and for the moment seemed inclined to leap back into the sea again without ceremony or salutation, but then thought better of this. By the side of Theodore he looked like some large, wet, retriever puppy standing by a lady’s lap-dog.

“I really beg your pardon for trespassing,” he said, “but the Castello has been empty all the time I have been here, and I quite forgot that you came last night, and remembered only what excellent rocks these are for taking headers off. It is very stupid of me; I am extremely sorry.”

Theodore put out his hand with the greatest cordiality and shook Paul’s dripping paw.

“You are Mr. Norris, are you not?” he said. “I remember meeting you. So what talk is this of trespass? I have been watching you swim with envy and admiration.”

He spoke with much friendliness and entire absence of embarrassment, as if his life was passed in welcoming large wet strangers, and Paul felt slightly ashamed of his remarks of the day before.

“But will you not get sunstroke or a chill, or both, standing there all wet and without a hat?” Theodore went on. “Or does the sunstroke cancel with the chill, and leave you uninjured? I think it must be that. By the way, I am Theodore Beckwith. Pray don’t say you remember me, for I feel sure you don’t, and I don’t think you would prevaricate well.”

Paul laughed.

“It does seem somehow difficult to prevaricate with no clothes on,” he said. “But I can assure you without prevarication that I do remember you.”

Theodore suddenly looked at Paul’s bare feet.

“But aren’t you cut to ribbons on these rocks?” he asked.

“Oh no, one’s feet get hard very quickly”; and he held up a thick-skinned sole.

“But you came here to take headers,” continued Theodore, “so please do so. There is nothing so beautiful to watch; it is like the swoop of some great diving bird. Or am I in the way? Are you sure I am not? Then let me sit down, and look at you.”

Certainly, if it was not mere politeness that expressed such an interest in headers, Theodore was in luck. Paul climbed laughing to high pinnacles of rock, and flung himself arrow-like into the blue caves of sea, dividing the waves with swift, clean plunge, his head buried between outstretched arms, his legs straight and rigid behind, while Theodore watched him with those unwinking eyes, even as he had looked at the baby, and seemed to feed on the vigour and swiftness of his outflung body.

Then, for a little while, when Paul h*d had enough of this, he sat on the rocks and smoked a cigarette before swimming back to his boat.

“And you are here another week, you say,” observed Theodore,“and will be staying at the Villa Martino? That is charming, for the Ravenscrofts are old friends, and I hope I shall see a great deal of you all. You don’t know my sister? No? Then I am sure she will not forgive me unless I instantly ask you to lunch with us to-day. Look, your boat is drifting towards the rocks there; the current seems to set this way. You can dress and tie it up here.”

“It’s very kind of you; I shall be delighted.”

Theodore blew on a little gold whistle that hung from his watch-chain.

“And you will take more headers for my delight another morning?” he said.

Paul laughed.

“I certainly shall for my own,” he said. “But why do you delight in headers?”

Theodore looked at him with his pale, snake-like eyes.

“I delight in everything that is strong and vigorous and well,” he said. “It makes me forget my own wretched little abortion of a body. It even strengthens it, I think.”

Ellis had appeared, breathless and running, at the whistle.

“Mr. Norris will lunch here,” said Theodore.

Then he turned to Paul again.

“And so Mr. Norris will now swim back to his boat, will he not?” he asked.

Theodore went back to the Castello again after watching the final header with a little smile on his mouth, walking quite briskly up the rocks. In spite of an almost white night (he was not sure whether he had slept or not a little after dawn, but certainly till then he had been terribly alert), he felt quite invigorated and refreshed by his morning. The nursing of the vigorous, crowing child of his valet had begun the recuperative process, and this watching the nude, cool vigour of Paul, with his glorious headers, had given himself an additional sense of strength. Yet though Paul had unconsciously put fresh life into him, he felt (apart from his athletic powers) a certain contempt for him.

“These full-blooded people are so easy to flatter,” he thought to himself. “One only has to allude to one’s self as a little abortion, and they thank God that they are such fine fellows themselves, and that puts them into an admirable humour, and makes them well-disposed to one. He loathed me when we met; he doesn’t loathe me now. He even pities me! How very entertaining!”

Lady Orpington, his widowed sister, had come down when he got back, and was sitting out in the cool shade of the loggia that opened from the drawing-room. She was a big, jolly woman, with a bass voice and a loud, hoarse laugh, full of spirits and vitality, and altogether as unlike her brother as Mrs. Mundy was unlike Lady Ravenscroft. Theodore came out of the drawing-room to join her in extreme good-humour.

“There’s a large, strong barbarian coming to lunch, dear Bee,” he said. “I knew you would want somebody provided for you to flirt with, and I think he will fulfill your requirements admirably. He’s very young and large, and takes headers all morning like a tumbler pigeon. It’s delightful to watch him.”

Lady Orpington laughed.

“Yes, but I can’t watch him,” she said.

“I don’t see why not; there’s nothing shocking in having arms and legs. And he pities me—I’m sure he pities me for being such a little, puny creature. Where’s Lucas, do you know? I must look through the letters. And I want to know who is at the Villa.”

He slipped out of his chair again, where he had just sat down, and stood in front of his big sister.

“You pity me, too, sometimes,” he said. “It makes me just cackle with laughter to be pitied.”

“I pity you when you lie awake all night,” said she. “But you look as if you had slept last night.”

“Slept? I don’t think I slept a wink. But I’ve had a very invigorating morning. I am beginning to think sleep is unnecessary, if you only see enough of the right people.”

“I hope I’m one of the right people,” she said, “for you’ll see enough of me.”

“You are indeed, dear Bee,” he said. “That’s why I asked you here.”

Not because you thought I would like it?” she asked.

Theodore laughed his thin little laugh again.

“Not the least in the world/’ he said. “Now I must go and find Lucas. He is getting rather tiresome; he is never here when I happen to want him. Perhaps-”

The afternoon turned out very hot, and after lunch the little party at the Castello sat indoors, where it was cooler than outside, with the reverberation of heat from the scorched rocks. And with Lady Orpington, as well as her brother, Paul found himself strangely and quickly at home. Whether, as Lady Ravenscroft had suggested, his dislike of Theodore was owing to the fact that he had been afraid of him, he did not trouble to consider; the fact remained that he was not afraid of him now, and certainly did not dislike him. Lady Orpington, too, treated Paul with the friendliest welcome, and though she did not show the slightest signs of flirting with him, all three of them had a great mutual success with each other. Unlike as each was to the others, there must have been some spiritual affinity between them, and it was already getting near tea-time when Paul, still accompanied by his host, went down to the rocks, where his boat was moored. Theodore had on a Panama hat, turned up at the back, and in his hand he carried a long ivory stick with a gold top to it.

“Delightful to know you are a neighbour for another week,” he said, “and who knows whether one may not persuade* you to stop even a little longer?”

“Ah, I’ve got to get back to work,” said Paul.

“ Well, we shall see. My sister also is enchanted with you. We shall always be boring you to come and see us. Au revoir, my dear boy.”

Theodore did not, as is the trying habit of some people, continue looking after the boat when Paul had got in, or speed the parting guest by again shouting after him the farewell speeches that had already been said, but turned at once and went up the hot rocks to the Castello. He and his sister were going to call at the villa about tea-time, and he prepared to make rather a more formal toilet than this silk shirt and suit of blue, even though supported by an ivory and goldheaded cane.

Paul meantime, who had to go to Delfino on no less cardinal an errand than the purchase of tobacco, had, after rowing round the point, found a breeze admirably adapted for his proposed direction. So, as is the custom with lazy and not ancient mariners, he tied his sheet, finding he could probably make a straight run for the port, and sitting down in the stem of his boat, abandoned himself to the retrospective reverie which is the natural accompaniment of sailing, that laziest and most liquid of movements. Besides, he felt somehow quite unaccountably tired and indolent, to a degree that could not be put down to his ordinary morning of swimming. Of course, the day was very hot; that might conceivably be responsible for his languor, yet it seemed to him to go deeper than that, as if some extraordinary exertion had sapped and drained his vitality. Yet no extraordinary exertion had been his; he had but swum, and lunched with his accustomed appetite.

How utterly misled, so he confessed to himself, he had been with regard to this new tenant of the Castello. His appearance, no doubt—that lean, meagre little frame, and the thin, curiously old-looking face—was against him, and no doubt he himself had judged too much by that. How wrongly, too, he had reasoned on his little foppish ways, his carefully-chosen scheme of colour for his dress, and his tasselled cane of ivory, all the little womanish airs and graces of clothing and manner. In fact, during lunch they had discussed dress, and Paul had broadly laid down the rule that as long as a man is comfortable it does not matter what he looks like. The sequel seemed to him now rather pathetic.

“Ah, that is all very well for you, my dear fellow,” said his host—“you, with your big, strong limbs, and your brown, laughing face. But think of a little creature like me! I am so deplorable an object that, not from any notion of self-respect, I assure you, but simply in order not to shock others, I must put on nice colours, hold nice things in my hand, wear stones in my pin and my rings, or I should simply make everyone feel ill at the sight of me. You should see me in a Jaeger nightshirt—I am so rheumatic—after a sleepless night! Oh, I am awful! You, even you, with your breeziness and sunniness, would scream at me like a frightened child.”

He laughed with his little merry, goat-like laugh.

“Bee knows, don’t you,” he went on, “when sometimes I come into your room in the morning? I am a horror, a perfect horror. Now, when I am dressed, with nice clothes on, I don’t say I am attractive, and I can easily see that you may think me ridiculous, but I’m not so insulting to the light of day.”

All this to Paul, as he sat now and was soothed by the steady hiss of the water as it sped by him, and the gentle tap and cluck of the encountered ripples had the pathos of bravery about it, and set the seal of condemnation on his earlier impression of the man. Then, too—a high merit in Paul’s eye—Theodore had a very fine conception of silly play, and the dignity with which they all three of them conducted the obsequies of a dead thrush they found in the veranda was worthy of praise. Lady Orpington had quite seen the seriousness of it all, and played melting music on the piano as the funeral went on its way. Then Theodore had actually run upstairs and put on a nightshirt—not Jaeger —and thrown a pair of trousers round his neck by way of a stole, and delivered a funeral oration at the grave below a pine-tree in all respects worthy of Pericles. Even now Paul half laughed to himself at the solemn absurdity of it. The secretary, Lucas, had been no good, and having dug the grave, he was sternly banished as being likely to jar with the solemnity and rapture of their silliness. And who would have thought that Theodore could play?

The sun was very hot, and Paul’s drowsiness, soothed by the smooth sound and movement of the boat, grew invincible. There was no other craft in sight; he would easily run behind the headland of Delfino, where he would lose the wind again; and from merely nodding he passed into the margin of dream that encircles sleep. And his dream, which by its horror soon plucked him again from sleep, was very vivid.

He thought he was standing in his bathing-dress on the rocks at the Castello. The sun had set, and it was deep twilight The sky was covered with clouds; he could but just make out the shapes of hills and trees, and the undefined ominousness of dream was over him. Then from the Castello above there came silently flying through the air towards him some ill-defined shape, like a huge bat of some . sort. As it drew nearer he saw it was not a bat, but human in form. Then he saw who it was. The eyes, somehow visible in the deep gloom, were unwinkingly fixed on him; the mouth moved greedily as if in anticipation of food. Then nameless terror overcame him, and at the same moment the paralysis of sleep was on him: he could not stir.

The figure, flying, it seemed, by gentle strokings of its arms through the air, as if swimming, circled round his head once or twice; then suddenly swooped and fastened on his neck. Paul felt the sharp entry of teeth through his skin, and at the moment the paralysis passed and he struck down the flapping form on to the rocks at his feet, where it lay feebly flapping like a burnt moth. It was not quite dead, however, and he stamped on it to kill it. Then he was aware he was in the clutch of nightmare, and wrenched himself into waking consciousness again, to find that his boat was still alone on the bay, and that a fair wind still followed him;

For a moment or two, so hideous had been the reality of the dream, he sat quiet, merely to recover himself. But in a few instants the terror had passed, and he was his own man again. But the dream, while it lasted, had fully shared the vividness and colour of his own vitality; it was as real and as convincing as his own consciousness. But a little analysis accounted for it all: his tiredness, the sense of being somehow drained and exhausted, explained the vampire-like attack of this twilight shape; the unwinking eyes of the ghoul, the sudden swoop as of some header taken through the air, his own presence on the rocks of the Castello were all dream-distortions of what had been within his own experience that day. So he consigned it all to the lumber-room of his mind.

CHAPTER IV

Later in the afternoon Theodore Beckwith was seated on the terrace at the Villa Martino. His sister had strolled away with Lady Ravenscroft into the garden after she had had tea, and for the present he was left with Norah and the mournful Mrs. Mundy. He had already been made acquainted with the tragedy of the bough over the strawberry-bed, the desertion of the housemaid, and the terrible prospective crisis at Genoa, and had made himself charmingly sympathetic. With Norah he had had but little talk, but had devoted himself to the woes of the elder lady. He was dressed slightly more elaborately now in a scheme of reds. He wore a suit of russet-coloured cloth, a tie of brown satin shot with flame-colour, and a ruby pin. He had even changed his rings for the sake of completeness.

“I am so accustomed to be rather uncomfortable, dear Mrs. Mundy,” he was saying, “that I have begun not to mind. If you woke as I do every morning—that is to say, if I wake at all—with a headache that lasts most of the day you would get not to mind much where you had your headaches, at the barbarous station of Genoa, or in the train, or in this delicious garden. But when you are used to being pleased, comfortable, happy, it is a perfect tragedy to be uncomfortable. As I say, I am so seldom comfortable myself that I have ceased to expect that.”

“How terribly tiresome for you,” said Mrs. Mundy, stirred into vague sympathy for another, a state not very common with her. “And do you have these dreadful headaches every day?”

“Yes, I think I may say every day. They are not of the smallest importance. Perhaps I should even miss them if I did not have them. But if I had a toothache it would be intolerable, because I am not used to it. One gets used to anything; nothing is either pleasurable or painful when you have had it a few days or a few weeks. So one snatches at new pleasures and avoids new pain. I am always snatching.” He turned to Norah.

“I had a quite unexpected pleasure this morning,” he said, “when I saw your delightful friend Mr. Norris, whom I persuaded to have lunch with us. Indeed, I had a morning full of pleasure. I looked at a wonderful family picture too—-my excellent man, his excellent wife, and their adorable baby. I was allowed to nurse the baby. Don’t you worship babies?”

Norah laughed.

“I don’t think I do,” she said. “They are so—so unfinished. And did Paul behave properly? He has execrable manners.”

“Surely not. He evidently enjoyed himself so, and to appear to enjoy yourself is the acme of good manners, which most people assiduously and imperfectly cultivate, but which he has perfectly and naturally. The true social motto nowadays is * Look pleased.’ And he not only looks, but feels pleased.”

This certainly was pleasant to the girl, and being praise of a friend the most satisfactory of conversation. She would have joined in the hymn of Pauline praise, but Theodore turned to Mrs. Mundy again.

“But there is such an obvious solution of your difficulty at Genoa,” he said. “Won’t you give me the privilege of driving you there in my motor-car? It is a delicious drive, and you can send your luggage in earlier, so that it will be all registered when you get there.”

“But what if I want something at the last moment, and it has gone?” asked Mrs. Mundy.

“ You think of everything. We will take your luggage with us. You are going on Tuesday, I am afraid you said. But, as a minor consolation, that is the very day I must go in myself. It is all arranged then.”

He got up as he spoke, and turned to Norah.

“Do let me see the garden,” he said. “Also I have not had a word with you yet Won’t you take me round it?” The girl got up.

“Why, with pleasure,” she said. “Aunt Kate, will you come?”

“I think not, dear. I must think over Mr. Beckwith’s very kind plan. It is so upsetting, too, to have fresh plans at the last moment.”

Theodore laughed shrilly.

“ I won’t upset you,” he said. “ I promise you that.”

“You drive yourself?” asked Mrs. Mundy.

“Oh yes. I am really quite safe.”

The two wandered out into the garden, Theodore with his short mincing steps, Norah moving like a ship beside him. Even with his high-heeled shoes he was a clear inch or two shorter than she, and by the girl’s big, breezy beauty looked extraordinarily wizened. He was in the matter of years but little over thirty, yet he might have been sixty, or (rather less likely) the age he was. But in spite of his fragile frame and old face there was a look of deep-seated strength about him, the unbending strength of some steel rod.

“ I wanted particularly to talk to you,” he said. “ In fact, I came to Italy to do that.”

He waited till the corner of the house had definitely screened Aunt Kate from them.

“ I love you,” he said. “ I ask you to be my wife. Pray don’t answer me now. I only wished to tell you. I know you must think it over, at least I hope you will go as far as that. I lay all I am and have at your feet. And I will ask you later what your answer is.”

He did not even look at her as he spoke; his intention clearly was to propose impersonally as if by a letter. And next moment he walked quickly towards the edge of the terrace, which was bounded by huge misshapen cactuses.

“ What wonderful things, are they not?” he said. “ Look at this one; its leaves are like those dreadful hairy gloves you find in a bathroom at some houses. I believe you are supposed to put them on and rub yourself with them. Look at this one too; it is like some dreadful sort of wart, with hair growing through it.”

Again he cackled with laughter.

“I am too disgusting, am I not?” he said. “But cactuses are so enthralling. They are like dreadful pictures at an anatomical museum—strange abnormal growths.”

A sudden shiver passed through the girl in spite of the heat of the sun. Then she laughed, an odd, unnatural sort of laugh. He turned his face to her.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing, my thoughts only.”

He struck with his long ivory cane at one of the leaves which he had compared to a bath-glove.

“You think I am like a cactus myself,” he said with his little shrill laugh. “Yet you like them in your garden,” he added. I ask to come into your garden too, the secret, fragrant garden of your soul. Tell me soon, don’t keep me waiting too long. When shall I know?”

He had not intended within himself to go back to this subject, but the sight of the girl by him in her young, vigorous beauty was too much for him. His hands were trembling too, and again he struck nervously at the thick, fleshy cactus-leaves. Then again he looked at her with his direct, unwinking gaze.

“You are not offended with me,” he asked, “at my venturing to ask you?”

The look of trouble in the girl’s eyes deepened.

“Ah, how could I be offended,” she said, “when you have done me the greatest compliment—the greatest honour that a man can? But let me think it over. I will tell you in three days’ time.”

“In three days’ time, then,” he said. “And here. I should like it to be here.”

“Here,” said she.

Yet once more he had to go back to it.

“And can you tell me that there is some hope?” he asked.

“If there were not I would tell you now,” she said.

Norah sat out on the terrace that night with her mother after Henry, according to custom, had gone in to look at his wife playing patience. She played it with a dreariness that baffles description, keeping up a running comment anticipatory of failure (which, as a matter of fact, was usually justified) from the first cards dealt out “Nothing but kings and high cards,” she said. “It is too tiresome. We shall never get them clear. Now don’t be in such a hurry to-night. It would have come out last night if you hadn’t moved the wrong seven.”

She regarded her four rows of eight with a mournful eye as if they had been little objects belonging to some friend sent to her after his death.

“Well, you’ve got an ace there,” said Henry.

“I know, but it is scarcely worth while putting it up. It leads to nothing.”

“You can’t go on at all unless you do,” remarked her husband.

Mrs. Mundy gave a deep sigh and put it up.

Outside the transparent dusk of the southern night was growing more and more crystalline. No wind stirred, and the faint, sleepy murmur of the ripples on the beach alone broke the stillness. The moon was not yet risen, but the hosts of stars burned large and low, making a diffused glimmer as from some ceiling uniformly luminous. The woods of the hillside were black in this light, but in front of them, as if some spangled curtain had been hung there, twinkled the dancing swarm of fireflies. Up and down the pergolas of the garden too they flitted in countless companies; the whole night was alive with them. It was alive too with the veiled night-scent of flowers, that scent which seems but the echo of what they give forth to the challenge of the sun, scents that had something of the vagueness of the dark about them, and stole along the dark alleys on some imperceptible draught of warm air. From inside came the gentle querulous voice of Mrs. Mundy when kings behaved like knaves, but her words were not audible. All through dinner Norah had been rather silent and distracted, and her mother, even before she spoke, half guessed what had taken place.

“He asked me to marry him,” she said at length, no name being needed.

“Yes, dear, I suppose so,” said her mother. *’ What did you say to him?”

“I said I would tell him in three days.”

Lady Ravenscroft moved in her chair.

“Three days! That is a long time,” she said. “If one can make up one’s mind at all, one ought to be able to do it in as many hours. And if one can’t, one may as well ask for three hundred years.”

She was silent a moment.

“Tell me what you feel, dear Norah,” she said.

Norah turned her broad, luminous look on her mother.

“Ah, that’s just it. I don’t know what I feel. He interests me; I think we should get on well together. But I can’t quite welcome the thought of being his wife, being always with him.”

“And can you imagine being no one’s wife?” asked her mother. “Can you imagine growing old alone, and getting always more lonely? Unmarried women do that More and more lonely, and all the time more and more wanting somebody.”

“Is it like that?” she asked.

“Yes, certainly, unless you are a celibate by nature. And I feel sure you are not.”

Again there was silence, while all the fireflies danced as if they were bidden to the wedding.

“There is no one else in your mind, Norah?” asked her mother.

“No.”

“Not—not Paul? Of course, in his present circumstances you couldn’t marry him; you would have to wait years. But you have never thought of him like that?”

Norah shook her head most decidedly.

“No, nor has he of me. He remarked it only yesterday.”

Again she paused a moment.

“But I am afraid of him—not Paul, of course,” she said. “I don’t really know what he is like. Yet Paul says he isn’t a bit like what he thought. He called him ‘a decent sort of fellow,’ which is high praise from Paul,”

“I shouldn’t marry merely on Paul’s approval,” said her mother.

“Of course not, but Paul and I are rather alike, you know. And we like the same sort of people.”

Lady Ravenscroft drew her chair rather closer to Norah’s and laid her hand on hers.

“Dear, I can only lay facts before you. I can’t tell you your feelings,” she said, “and the chief of those facts as concerns me is that your happiness should be secured. Now frankly, I do not think you are the sort of girl who will find it alone. I think, in fact, that you had much better marry. There is this, too—I don’t want to talk in a worldly manner, because I really am not a worldly woman—but out of the millions of marriages which turn out very happily, many begin, or are planned anyhow, without very strong feeling on the girl’s side. My own was an admirable case in point. And my marriage turned out more than very happily; it turned out ideally.”

She paused a moment.

“Then, again, there is the question of money,” she said. “Love in a cottage is all very well for those who are accustomed to live in cottages, but not for others. People say quite justly that wealth does not make happiness, but, on the other hand, wealth certainly prevents a thousand small jars and irritations which produce, anyhow, great discomfort. Besides, he is the eldest nephew of a childless Duke, and will succeed. Now, I don’t say that being a Duchess makes you happy, but it has its advantages. It is mere nonsense to pretend otherwise. Being happy is, of course, a matter of temperament, and being kings and queens or beggars doesn’t really interfere with that. But a position is some sort of a frame.”

Again she paused. As she had most truly said, she was not a worldly woman, and the advice she felt bound to give— since it had been asked by her daughter—sounded at any rate rather materialistic.

“You see, dear, it is like this,” she said. “Supposing you were in love with a man who was always very dirty and untidy,or left out his h’s, and asked my advice on the subject, I should advise you not to marry him. You might say that love is the great thing, and so indeed it is. But I should be very foolish not to warn you that Love in such a case would have an uphill battle to fight. It would have continual distaste to contend with. On the other hand, therefore, when all will be so congenial to you—wealth, position, and the freedom from all care of any kind that comes with them— it would be absurd not to consider such things an advantage. After all, when one happens to be in this material world, one cannot legislate for one’s self as if one was an incorporeal spirit. Dear me, yes; how terribly philosophical I am becoming!”

Again there was a long silence. Norah knew quite well where her inclination lay; she knew, on the other hand, that she had to take a step (or not take it, which was the same thing) that was the most important step that she would, in all probability, be ever called upon to take. She had to decide whether she would marry this particular man or not marry him, whether she would bind up her life with him, or refuse to do so. In the one case her portion, her ration was given her; in the other she was still questing about for, well, for the other piece of her. As her mother had said, she was not celibate by nature. She carried her puzzle about with kjr, wondering who had the key to it.

Fireflies danced, the ripples still whispered on the shore. Then suddenly there was a crisp, rapid step up the path from the road beneath the spangled curtain of fireflies. She felt she knew at once who it was. Then the figure of the footfall came into the light; it was not what she expected. It was the postman only, with letters and papers, and a telegram for her mother.

Lady Ravenscroft opened this last. She moved into the light cast from the lamp, where the melancholy Mrs. Mundy was still playing patience, to read it. Then she put it neatly back into its envelope.

“Norah, dear,” she said, “ I’ve had bad news. I have lost a very large sum of money. I have lost more than I possess.”

CHAPTER V

Norah woke next morning very early out of dreamless sleep with the sort of awaking we sometimes experience in new places and strange rooms. Just as then we do not know quite where we are, but are conscious of something unfamiliar in our surroundings, so now she was conscious of new facts and factors having come into her life, though at this first moment of waking she did not know what they were. But soon the thoughts rushed into the empty chambers of her brain like water through the sluices of a lock—in foam and riot and splashing. Then, as her brain filled again, the foam and splashing died away, till at length, so to speak, it was brimful, as the lock gets brimful of deep, quiet water; and as from it then the boats can pass up to the new stretches of river that lie above, so from that reservoir of thought, actions, which are but the craft that float on the top of thought, would pass on up the new stretches of life that lay in front of them, past fields and meadows of country as yet unconjectured, past scenes as yet unvisited, and perhaps past smoky, darkened towns, and thick, troubled places, where the genial light of the sun would be darkened, and for green banks and the peaceful shade and sunlight of the country waterway the houses of strangers would frown down on her craft, and for the subaqueous combing weeds that stroked it, she would jostle among the boats or barges of strangers and be jeered at by alien faces.

The sun had not yet risen, but her windows looked eastward, and her room was full of the young light of morning, which is so different in essential characteristics from the light at the other end of the day, when the sun has just passed below the horizon. She got up and put on a dressing-gown, and walked over to the window. The air blew in, deliciously soft and cool, and she stepped out on to the little balcony, the ribbons and lace of her wrapper just fluttered and stirred by the breeze of morning. Below, the garden lay 50 quiet and drowsy, waiting for the uprising of the day. There had been a heavy dew in the night; the clusters of roses were a little weighed down by the moisture, but the strong-sinewed vine-leaves bore that burden of refreshment unbent, and the dew but varnished and brightened their firm surfaces. It glistened, too, on the gravel of the terrace below, and turned the painted terrace wall to a deeper red; while on the utilitarian garden of beans and strawberries it was made visible in pearl on the strings and nets of the gossamer webs that covered them. Due east, still in the clear darkness before dawn rose the wooded hillside; to the right lay the dim bay, and at the eastern end of it, glistening white among its black pines, stood the Castello, still sleeping, its window-eyes still closed and shuttered. And at the sight of the Castello her brain, that river-lock, was full to the brim. It, so to speak, might prove to be the new track of country, meadows, woods, towns, by which the boat of her life would pass; it required but a word to make the lock-gate fly open and send her out on her new course. But now, though the lock was full, and the river ready, she would not pass out.

She had sat up very late with her mother the night .before after the telegram had come. With it also, though the latter had remained long unopened, came letters, and one of these announced from her agent that the house in Grosvenor Street had just been let till the end of July. This, to Lady Ravenscroft’s childishly sanguine nature had in the course of an hour grown from being at first merely the silver lining of a cloud to be, as it were, not part of a cloud at all, but a separate sun, luminous and all-pervasive. Characteristically, before she went to bed, the frightful financial smash that had occurred had almost ceased to trouble her, so full had her mind become of glorious auguries for the future, and visions of fresh economies. Indeed she had started putting down on a half-sheet of paper the various sums she could quite easily save in her ordinary expenses, and realize by a few sales.

“There’s that diamond star and necklace, Norah,” she said, “which of course I must part with at once. I meant it for you, darling, but I know you will understand. It will fetch seven hundred at least Then of course there’s the motor, which must go too. It cost six hundred, so we’ll say four hundred, though it’s quite new, and I added acetylene lamps. Then there’s the chauffeur and two footmen. That’s twenty-five, fifty, a hundred and fifty a year, not to mention their keep. And I’m sure a couple of neat parlour maids will be in every way more satisfactory, and I shall save beer-money too. Then the Grosvenor Street house—I must see if I can’t let that for the winter as well. Fourteen thousand pounds, though—it will take a good deal of making up.”

The sky was clouded again for the moment as she turned once more to the telegram, reading again what she had read twenty times in a sort of vague hope that it might perhaps mean something different. But even to her optimistic eye no change for the better had come over that uncompromising piece of news. Incredible and revolting as had been the conduct of the South African mining market it had behaved in this way and no other. After a long fit of depression, instead of recovering, it had grown suddenly and seriously worse, and without doubt she had to meet differences which amounted to this rather considerable sum. But since to lament over the inevitable was not a practice of Lady Ravenscroft she looked forward again.

“And I’m afraid we shan’t be able to manage the Italian lakes, dear,” she said. “We shall just have to stop grilling here until the end of July. I hope it won’t be very hot.”

“But surely you’ll terminate your lease here as soon as you can?” said Norah.

“But one must live somewhere,” said her mother, “and think of the expense of going back to England. If only I had taken return tickets now.”

Norah suddenly burst out laughing.

“Oh, you are priceless,” she said. “Mother, I shall always send for you if I’m worried or distressed. I don’t believe you can see the dark side of things. But Aunt Kate can. You must tell her.”

For a moment Lady Ravenscroft’s face fell.

“Yes, I had better tell her to-night,” she said. “She is still doing patience, is she not? ”

She got up and went indoors. Aunt Kate was still gloomily regarding her cards. The deep pervading melancholy had been too much for Henry, who had gone to bed.

“It’s too tiresome,” she said. “Henry insisted on putting the seven on that packet, and instead of bearing the consequences he’s gone to bed and left me to wrestle with it,” But at the news, the possible advantage of always being as depressed as possible, a thing hitherto unsuspected by Lady Ravenscroft, made its appearance. For if you are always as depressed as possible it stands to reason that you can*t be any more so. And twenty minutes later Lady Ravenscroft joined Norah again, when Aunt Kate went sadly to bed.

“I’m quite glad I told your aunt,” she said briskly; “she does not make so very much of it. Indeed I don*t think it seems to her more serious than the trains at Genoa.”

“They seemed rather serious,” remarked Norah.

“Yes, dear, but we all know what your aunt is like—how a little thing depresses her. And this doesn’t depress her any more.”

Norah did not reply. It seemed to her that if she herself had never until to-day looked on the serious side of life it was easy to see where her insouciance came from. Even an event like this seemed unable to check the extraordinary flow of cheerfulness in her mother; her habit of seeing the bright side of things was unchecked even for a moment, and things were as bright as ever. But even as she thought this her mother’s next words showed her that she was doing her an injustice.

“Ah, my dear,” she said, “and I have not yet said how sorry I am, how I blame myself too. There is no excuse for me; I had no business to run risks and defraud you—yes, that is what it comes to—of what would have been yours. Forgive me, say you forgive me.”

A look and the pressure of a hand was enough, but again there was silence. This time both were thinking of the same thing, and the knowledge that this was so silently passed from one to the other by the swift paths of the mind. At length Lady Ravenscroft rose.

“Well, one must go to bed, dear,” she said. “And—and Norah, when will you send your answer to him?”

The girl got up.

“I will send it to-morrow,” she said. “You see—you see this settles it. I was doubtful before; I didn’t know my own mind. But now I must say ‘No.’ Otherwise he must think that I marry him for his money; he would think no doubt that you had tried to persuade me to say ‘Yes* because of what we have just heard. I couldn’t bear that.” This touched her mother in a way that the event itself had been quite powerless to do.

“Ah, my dear,” she said with sudden sincere contrition, “I hadn’t thought of that. What a fool, what a wicked fool I have been!”

Her eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, Norah, forgive me,” she said, “if it is through me you have lost your chance of happiness.”

The girl smiled.

“I should very likely have said ‘No’ in any case,” she said. “It is only that this has made up my mind for me.” So this morning, as she looked out on the cool dawning of the day, she thought over all the events of the night before again. Her note must be written at once, for though her decision was firm enough, she wanted to make it irrevocable as soon as possible, to put it out of her power, since her inmost self told her that it was right, to reconsider it. What that decision would have been had not this smash occurred she did not really know, though the fact that she had so long thought about it meant that she would not have refused him lightly. But that he should have the idea that it was just for his money that she married him was intolerable, and the coincidence of the news of her mother’s misfortune and of her accepting him would have been too glaring to be overlooked. Her pride would not allow her to let such a coincidence happen; the very possibility of it set her teeth on edge. And since now she was going to refuse him, she had better do so at once. So she went to her table and wrote.

“Dear Mr. Beckwith :

“I am writing to tell you that I cannot accept your offer. I found last night that my mind was made up, so there was no reason for keeping you waiting. I have nothing to add except to thank you most sincerely for the honour you have done me, and to ask to be allowed to wish you all possible happiness in the future.”

She read it through twice, wondering if it was too formal, too like an after-dinner speech, but after all her words were sincere, she meant them, and had nothing more to say. So she signed and directed it, and with it in her hand walked on to the balcony again. The sun has just risen, and with solar punctuality the Italian gardener was even now coming up the path.

She called to him.

“Good-morning, Giovanni,” she said in Italian. “Here is a note. I want you to take it at once to the Castello. There is no answer.”

The cheerful Italian smiled as the note fluttered down.

“I will run, I will run, Signorina,” he said.

He went off quickly, as good as his word, down the path, and Norah lingered a moment longer. A small boat had just appeared on the mirror of the bay with a single rower in it, bare-legged, bare-armed. None but the “mad Englishman” would bathe at that hour, and Norah watched till he disappeared off the side of the boat. Then she looked up at the Castello again.

“So it’s all over,” she said to herself.

Theodore Beckwith received this note when his breakfast was brought in with his letters and secretary. He had slept well for him, that is to say, he had had three hours’ unbroken sleep when he went to bed, and two hours more towards morning. His warm bath, too, cloudy and aromatic with cedar essence, had further refreshed him, and he felt particularly active both in mind and body. He only paused for a moment after he had read it, then put it down on his private packet, and went on at once with the opening of letters. It was not a heavy post this morning, and in half an hour his secretary had left him to write the answers which, before they were posted, had to pass his approval. Even then he did not turn his mind at once to Norah’s note, but wrote such letters as he had to first. Then he took it up again, and read it for the second time.

He had on the same silk dressing-gown as yesterday morning; round his neck was the thin gold cord of his pince-nez, and yellow morocco slippers were on his feet. But the morning was very warm, and he strolled out again on to his balcony thinking very intently over it. But though his mind was actively engaged, his eye, aided by the opera-glass, took in several objects of interest. Paul had returned from his bathe, and was breakfasting, half dressed, by the open window of his bedroom. Norah and her mother were talking together on the east terrace of the house, and sitting alone on the shore, beneath a painting-umbrella, sat sad Aunt Kate. She was engaged on a gloomy water-colour of the bay, and had managed to infuse into the radiant Italian sunshine something of her own melancholy. One felt that it might begin to rain any minute. Theodore had noticed the sketch yesterday up at the villa.

He observed all these things while his mind was busy revolving Norah’s note, containing the answer that she had said she would give him in three days. Yet apparently she had made up her mind in as many hours, and Theodore at once took for granted—indeed, he wanted neither proof nor confirmation—that something had happened. What that was he had no idea, but he felt it would be very strange if he was not able soon to find out. Clearly, however, Norah was the last person in the world to go to for his information, since, obviously with design, she had said nothing about it in her note.

Now Theodore wa9 in no sense of the word conceited or complacent, yet it never occurred to him for a moment that this refusal was due to the fact that she preferred to continue her life alone than to pass it in company with him. For had this been the case, she would surely have refused him at once. Nor, again, so he felt certain, had she consulted her mother, who had dissuaded her from accepting him; for he felt, almost with a woman’s intuition, that Lady Ravens-croft was favourable to him. Besides, in both such cases, she would surely have taken the three days’ consideration. No; it must be something else, something that had happened between tea-time last night and the time she went to bed.

Now if this happening was connected with anyone here in Silorno, he could hardly be other than Paul Norris, for whom, in spite of his beautiful headers, Theodore felt a sudden spurt of hatred, at the thought that he, that barbarous child with the sunburnt face and the empty pocket, should get in his way. It would be easy, however, to find out that, and till then there was no object to be served in hating Paul. But failing that—here the thoughts in his busy, weaving brain moved more slowly—it must be some cause alien to Silorno, some news, some letter that had produced this. Here again it would be a mistake to approach Norah directly; oblique, sideway investigations were more promising of success, and, indeed, suited his talents better. He preferred moving sideways like a crab, walking one way and looking another. It took people in; they did not see where you were going until you popped out in perfectly unexpected places. But, most conveniently, sad Aunt Kate was sitting on the shore. It would be strange if he could not pump her, sufficiently, at any rate, to find out if she knew anything.

Now it would be unfair to him to say that this letter had not been a grievous disappointment to him, or rather, that it would have been, had he allowed himself to think of it as at all final. He had tom the envelope open, when he saw who his correspondent was, with a real and incontrollable fluttering of the heart, which, when he read it, sank down again like a stone in dark water. He was not—he would have been the first to confess it—romantically in love with her, for the very simple reason that no romance whatever found footing, as it were, on the steep, polished rock of his nature. But he desired her, her bodily presence, her whole healthy and vigorous self, more, just now, than he desired anything in the world. And since it was part of his creed —a creed, too, that had hitherto served him well—that in this world, peopled with so many who are utterly infirm of purpose, a man who is at all self-reliant generally gets what he wants, he wasted neither time nor energy in merely wanting, but instantly applied himself to the mere practical question of getting.

Even though he was only going to see sad Aunt Kate on the sea-shore, he dressed himself with his usual care, choosing a grey suit, a slate-coloured tie, in which he wore a moonlit star-sapphire; and as he dressed he carefully rehearsed to himself all he meant to say, or rather all the opportunities he meant to give Aunt Kate for saying things. He had an excellent manner for this sort of thing; a deferential, confidential way, not only of speaking, but of listening, which often led people to tell him more than they meant. He could prompt without seeming to prompt, and pump though you could swear he never lifted his elbow.

Mrs. Mundy, with her camp-stool and umbrella, was seated on the beach at the end of the bay, and gave a wan, regretful smile as Beckwith approached.

“Good-morning,” she said sadly. “What a lovely morning—so bright and sunny, and everything so full of life and joy! Such a contrast I”

Beckwith guessed, though Mrs. Mundy did not explain, what was supposed to be contrasted with the lovely morning, and waited, after giving a sympathetic murmur, as if he knew all about it, for more. It seemed probable that there would be very little need of any ppmping.

Mrs. Mundy put a wash of deep, funereal green over her hillside.

“And to think how happy and cheerful we all were yesterday,” she said, “little expecting this terrible thing. Everything seemed so bright and joyful, but now all our high spirits and our thoughtless mirth are shattered.”

Theodore dwelt for a moment on Mrs. Mundy’s high spirits and thoughtless mirth as exhibited yesterday with regard to the tree-bough, the housemaid, and the trains at Genoa, and concluded that it must have taken considerable agitation to shatter that, for, indeed, it seemed extremely firm and steadfastly rooted.

“Ah, pray tell me what has happened, then,” he said. “As you say, it was all so pleasant yesterday. I hope it is nothing serious.”

“ It is ruin,” said Mrs. Mundy calmly, waving her sketch to help the funereal green to dry. “ My sister is absolutely ruined, and she has to sell her diamonds and the footmen and the motor-car. It’s all this wretched, miserable South Africa, that took all our relations first of all, and now all our money, and there will be nothing left soon except the Chinese labourers.”

“ Pray tell me more,” he said. “ I am most grieved. Pray tell me.”

Mrs. Mundy had put her sketch back on to her easel upside down, but corrected this.

“ I always told Lady Ravenscroft how it would be,” she said, “ and she never would listen and now it’s come. Where she will get her next meal from I don’t know. Of course, she and Norah can come to live at Wroxtdn, but I hardly know how we shall manage with Bertie growing up and all this trouble with the servants. Indeed, it would be something to be thankful for if we were all safe at Wroxton now, with a roof over us, and a bed to lie on. And I must put off all the friends whom I hoped were going to pay us pleasant visits this year, for there won’t be a spare room in the house.”

Theodore could almost have shaken her, but he confined himself to his impatient little shrill laugh.

“ But, my dear lady,” he said, “ pray have pity on my ignorance, and tell me what has happened.”

Mrs. Mundy turned her world-weary eyes on him.

“Fourteen thousand pounds,” she said, “though I shouldn’t wonder if that proved but a drop in the bucket— the ocean, I mean.”

“Do I understand that Lady Ravenscroft has lost fourteen thousand pounds?” he asked, his impatience rather running away with his manners.

“Every penny,” said Mrs. Mundy.

“And is that all?” asked he, following his own train of thought.

“I should think that was enough for one evening,” said Mrs. Mundy with dignity. “And in a telegram, too; so violent and sudden. There was no breaking of the news; it came like a thunderbolt.”

Theodore again remembered the helpless lady by him.

“You all have my most sincere sympathy,” he said. “I am shocked at the news. And—and you heard it last night, do you say?”

“At about ten-thirty,” said Mrs. Mundy—“at least, my sister came and told me then. It must have been about then, for my husband had gone to bed, and I was at my second game. Nothing came out last night, either,”

“And Miss Ravenscroft, was she told last night?** asked he.

“Yes, poor girl I and think of that beautiful diamond star that would have been hers. I think she hardly realizes it all yet. No doubt she is stunned by it, for she seemed quite as usual this morning. She will have to go and be a governess or a companion, I suppose. What a dreadful change since yesterday! I often think the wealthy have got trials to endure which the poor know nothing of. Losing fourteen thousand pounds would mean nothing to a poor man. I suppose we ought to be thankful for that, but it is very hard to be thankful for anything just now.**

This was in the best Kate manner, for it was all-embracing in its blackness of outlook. There was no break in the clouds anywhere, nor did she expect it; and with a brushful of gloomy colour she again proceeded to darken the hillside.

Paul, meantime, had finished his breakfast, and, strolling out of the inn, saw the other two. It was probable that at present he knew nothing of what had happened. If he did it could not be helped, but if he did not, Beckwith rather preferred that he should not know just yet. He himself had something to think over, and he did not want the other to go up to the Villa with sympathy and regrets till he had settled what he meant to do. So, instead of letting Paul come and join them, in which case he would certainly learn from Aunt Kate what had happened, he went briskly to meet him along the hot, pebbly beach, framing some natural plan by which he could be got rid of for an hour or two.

“I was just coming to see you, Mr. Norris,” he said, “for I wondered whether you would be so kind as to go with my sister into Rapallo this morning. She has some shopping to do. I can’t go with her, as I have a terrible post to answer, and she hates going alone. She wondered if she might ask your escort, and sent me out to find whether you were at leisure.”

This was all delivered quite smoothly, for, as Theodore had once said, it is better not to lie at all unless you can do it decently, and he did it very decently indeed. He had shown considerable quickness of thought too, for without space for consideration he had remembered that his sister was going into Rapallo, and that Paul yesterday had expressed a general liking for motor-cars.

“It is only just ten,” he went on. “You will be easily back for your bathe before lunch. Yes? How kind of you! Come up to the Castello with me now, will you not? My sister will be ready, I expect, immediately.”

Theodore left Paul in the loggia which opened out of the drawing-room, and went to find Lady Orpington. She was still upstairs in her room, but visible, and he went in.

“Paul Norris is waiting downstairs,” he said quickly. “He is going with you now into Rapallo. You sent me out, remember, to ask him.”

Lady Orpington looked up in surprise.

“But I wasn’t going till this afternoon,” she said; “I______ was”

He interrupted her impatiently.

“But you are going this morning,” he said, “and you have asked him to go with you.”

“What has happened?” she asked. “What’s the matter?”

“I will tell you this afternoon. As far as you are concerned nothing has happened, and nothing is the matter. And as far as he is concerned nothing. Now please be quick. Your hat? There it is. Now what else?”

He had already ordered the motor, and in ten minutes the two were off, leaving him the coast clear till lunch. This despatch of Paul was not more than a precautionary measure; until he had settled exactly what to do he wanted nothing that could possibly interfere with his doing it, and Paul’s presence at the villa might possibly be inconvenient. But now he would be absent at Rapallo till mid-day, and then no doubt he would bathe as usual.

Theodore saw them off, and then went to a shady seat below the pines to think things over. Acute though he was, and skilled at fitting motive to action, he was at first utterly puzzled with regard to what had happened. Had he received a note from Norah this morning saying that she required no further time for consideration, but accepted him, and had he subsequently learned from Mrs. Mundy what she had just told him, he would have appreciated and understood Norah’s action completely. Though she might have wished for time for consideration before, this loss of money would have formed a most sensible and intelligible cause why she should no longer hesitate. It would have been a determining factor of the most determined kind. Yet if things had happened this way, though he would have quite well understood how she wished to accept him without delay, this brutally accountable speed would rather have surprised him. There would have been a sort of indelicacy about it which would not have been consistent with what he knew of her, though completely consistent with what he held to be the average woman.

But at first, things having happened in the opposite manner, he was quite at sea as to how to account for her sudden decision. He felt sure that Paul had nothing to do with it; he felt sure he was right in connecting her refusal of him with the loss of the money. But acute though he was, it was impossible for him, being what he was, to grasp at once the perfectly simple explanation. To refuse him because she was suddenly penniless seemed utterly unintelligible. He knew quite well the day before that the girl was hesitating— indeed, she had demanded three days’ consideration; and had his good fairy asked him yesterday what she could do to help him, he would very likely have begged the very thing that had happened—namely, that Lady Ravenscroft should be landed in serious financial difficulties. Nothing that he could think of would have been more likely to incline Norah to give him a favourable answer. Yet without any intervention on the part of the good fairy this very thing had happened, and the result of it was the diametric opposite of what he had expected.

He got up from his seat, and began walking with quick little steps up and down the gravel path below the trees, switching, half unconsciously, with his cane at the heads of the flowers that grew by the path. It was a row of pansies in particular that exasperated him; they had silly, purple, meaningless faces, and they wagged stupidly backwards and forwards in the wind. He vaguely disliked flowers at any time, but just now their placid stupidity aroused a more active hostility in him. He felt malignant, though for the moment baffled, and, like a fretful child, his instinct, not reasoned in any way, but purely subconscious, was to hurt, to destroy. A little further on, among the piled rocks, was a big spider’s web, cunningly woven across a crevice. A fat, buzzing fly was caught in the middle of it, and his stick was just raised to demolish the woven house when the spider darted out, nimbly running across the airy ropes, and seized its prey in thin brown arms. That was more to Beckwith’s mind; that spider was alive, anyhow, and strong and hungry, and he spared the web.

Then suddenly the real and simple explanation of Norah’s quick decision struck him, and he stopped. Twice he said to himself, “It can’t be that,” but the third time he said, “It must be that.” But not the faintest feeling of admiration stirred in him; there was nothing in his nature which vibrated in sympathy with such an impulse. It was absurd, ridiculous, like the noble heroine in some middle-class feuilleton. It was as unsympathetic to him as the silly, innocent faces of the pansies. No doubt, also, it was as easy to dispose of.

But he felt he must be careful to make no blunder. The scruple itself did not belong to his own plane of thought, and he must therefore put himself in the frame of mind to which such a scruple was essential in his dealing with and disposing of it. He must use not the arguments natural to him, but those that would be felt by one who had felt the scruple. A mistake now might be fatal; above all, any indication as to how he really regarded such a point of view would bring disaster. He must be cunning to the verge of simplicity.

Yet, though he felt no touch of admiration at the instinct which had made it necessary for Norah to give him a negative answer, the fact that she had done so kindled to an immense degree his desire for her. In spite of his active, scheming mind, his brain that was always busy with suspicions and surmisings and the construction of the motives of others, he had some strange, secret passion for anything that was young and strong and simple. His valet’s baby, Paul’s headers, Norah’s hatless rambles in the sun, all had for him an extraordinary attraction. And her mind, too, it seemed now, was as hatless and unsophisticated as her head, and all this simplicity and strength was resident in her, in her womanhood. For the moment his scheming and weaving were still; he loved her simply and straightforwardly as a man loves a woman.

An hour later he went to the villa. Mrs. Mundy was still under her umbrella on the beach, and he went softly by, for she had done her part. Up the rose-smothered pergola he went, and at the top of it stood she whom he wanted. He gave her no greeting, however.

“I received your note this morning,” he said, “and I understand why you wrote it.”

She would have stopped him, but he would not allow it.

“ I have come to say something to you,” he said, “and in ordinary justice you must hear me say it. I know the cause why you wrote so quickly. I have heard of your mother’s misfortune, and you felt that I must think that if you said ‘Yes’ you married me in order to escape those—those tiresome little difficulties. You could not marry anyone into whose head that had entered. Please tell me if that was so. I think you are bound to tell me.”

She gazed at him a moment, meeting his unwinking eyes.

“Yes,” she said.

“Then are you not doing me a frightful injustice,” he asked, “ in supposing that I could think that of you?”

Norah looked at him again in silence.

“ I don’t quite understand,” she said.

“I will explain, then. You felt that I might think you married me for my money, to put it frankly. You are doing me a frightful injustice, I say, in supposing I could think anything so mean.”

She thought over this a moment.

“ Quite true,” she said. “ I was thinking only of the injustice to myself that you should think so.”

He came a step closer; hitherto they had stood a couple of yards apart.

“ Then I ask you to retract your note of this morning,” he said.

“Yes, I will do that.”

“ And in three days, as you said before, I may expect your answer?” he asked.

Norah did not reply. A sudden trembling seized her hands, and the rose she was fastening in her dress broke off its stem. The blood had flushed her sun-tanned face, and her mouth was parted slightly, showing the white line of teeth. He saw this; he read the sudden confusion of the girl, and his heart leaped within him.

“ Or will you give me my answer now?” he said gently.

She raised her eyes again to him, and though no sound came, her lips said “ Yes.”

CHAPTER VI

The village of Ravenscroft, at no time very strenuous or wide awake, seemed to have given itself up to the depressing influences of this cold, wet November afternoon, and though the time was still a couple of hours before the moment when almanacs said that the sun set, to have despaired of the day, and gone to bed. The rain, which, we are told, rains every day, had on this occasion rained all day as well from a low and gloomy arch of grey sky; and so far from its appearing likely that it would stop, it looked rather not only as if it wouldn’t, but as if it couldn’t stop, and the village street, with its single row on each side of straggling houses, really seemed in danger of ceasing to be a road altogether, and being resolved again into the unstable elements of mud and water. The village was but an inconsiderable hamlet, which, like so many of the smaller collections of houses in England, seemed to have no visible means of support whatever. Half a mile away on one side lay the Bath road, from which the ground dipped sharply into this damp valley of the Kennet, and the river itself, spanned by a steepangled stone bridge, and swollen and muddy with these weeks of rain, lay just outside the village on the other. From there again the road lay between close-cut hedges that bordered the stubble-fields, then passed between the woods of the Park, left the lodge-gates on the right, and then began the serious work of climbing its way up on to the broad-backed Wiltshire downs, which stretched from horizon to horizon on every side.

The house stood on the slope just above the river, and was bordered on that side bv a long stone terrace, punctuated with urns. From the middle of this a flight of steps went down to the water-meadow below, and on the other three sides were lawns and flower-beds. It was of Jacobean style, and had a great air of solid comfort, and, indeed, on such a day it seemed that Theodore Beckwith, who was sitting by 66 the fire in the library, having quite distinctly refused to go partridge-shooting in this weather, had chosen perhaps the better, and certainly the drier, part. He had refused also to join the rest of the party at that immemorial and uncomfortable festivity known as “taking lunch to the shooters,” seeing no reason, since this warm, Jacobean house had an excellent dining-room, to forsake it for the rickety chairs and general atmosphere of damp clothes which he would find in a gamekeeper’s cottage.

Though it was still early in the afternoon, he had had tea brought him, but at present it stood untasted on a side-table, while he went on with the embroidery at which he was working. This was stretched on a frame in front of him, and was certainly a wonderful, if slightly barbaric, piece of work. It represented a group of peacocks with tails spread, so that the gorgeous-coloured feathers filled the entire background. From the whole canvas flamed the green and vivid blue of their eyes, and they stood in a meadow starred with brilliant flowers. The design was his own, and now, as it approached completion, the daring success of it was apparent, while not less successful was the exquisite workmanship of its execution. But it was rapidly getting too dark to see the colours of the silks with any certitude, and before long he left it and strolled about the room as he drank his tea.

The present Lord Ravenscroft was Norah’s first cousin, and she and her husband had arrived here two days before. They had been married in the unfashionable month of September, and after a six weeks’ cruise on his yacht, were spending the time till Christmas at other people’s houses. Little in common though he had with the sport of English country-houses, Theodore always rather enjoyed the pleasant kaleidoscope of three-day visits. He pursued his own life in front of the various backgrounds exactly as usual, and would do his embroidery in the midst of fox-hunters and partridge-shooters with an indifference to their comments which was quite superb. This was quite in accordance with his way of life; he never allowed anyone to interfere with him. But this afternoon the combined influences of solitude and rain had perhaps somewhat depressed him, and he was wondering whether this visit, which was to have lasted a week, should not be a little curtailed.

There was a typical party in the house, very English, very hungry, and very completely and simply employed. The men were out all day shooting, and everyone played bridge all evening. Theodore alone did neither the one nor the other. Shooting, he said frankly, bored him at any time; there was a terrible monotony in putting up one’s gun to one’s shoulder, hearing an unpleasantly loud noise, and seeing a lump of feathers fall down.

He had made this almost blasphemous remark in the smoking-room on the first evening of his stay as he sat in a somewhat glorious smoking-suit, occasionally sipping a little lemonade, which he took in preference to brandy-and-soda, and puffing at his rose-scented cigarettes. He was fully aware that there was an attitude of hostility about. He had already refused to play bridge, and even at this moment was contemplating his embroidery, which stood by his chair. But this remark of the monotony of seeing lumps of feathers fall could not go unchallenged, and Frank Pakenham voiced the general feeling of the smoking-room on the subject.

“I should have thought you would have found more monotony in not seeing the lumps of feathers fall down,” he remarked with a certain acidity.

Beckwith put up his pince-nez and looked at the speaker a moment, for the remark was distinctly on the borderland of bad manners. Then he laughed.

“As you have never seen me shoot,” he said, “it doesn’t much matter what you would have thought. But I’ll have a match with you to-morrow, if you like, if you’ll care to back yourself.”

Now Pakenham was more than a fair shot—he was even more than a good one; also, he loved a wager that depended on skill, especially his own, better than anything in the world. And having launched this challenge, Beckwith finished his lemonade, and lit himself a bedroom candle.

“Anything up to a hundred pounds a side,” he said, yawning slightly, “and any arrangements and conditions you make I’m sure will be satisfactory to me. I think I shall go to bed. Oh, I don’t think I brought a gun. I wonder if anyone would be kind enough to lend me one.”

The result of this match, which had taken place next morning with clay pigeons, certainly increased the respect in which he was held, though it did not perhaps diminish the hostility. Indeed, it was generally felt that to be able to shoot like that, and not care to, was worse than not to be able to shoot at all; for the indifference of the expert and his contempt for one’s favourite pursuit is a thing harder to bear without resentment than the contempt of someone who knows nothing about it. Moreover, Pakenham had not shot badly, not failing till his fifteenth shot. And having made sixteen hits and won the wager, Beckwith gave his gun back to its owner.

“And you really mean you don’t care for that?” asked Lord Ravenscroft, who had only two ideas in his head, one of which was a gun and the other a horse.

“No, I really don’t. Surely it is monotonous.”

“I wish you’d go on and see how long you can continue to be monotonous.”

Beckwith gave a little sigh, which he instantly suppressed. As a matter of fact, he was enjoying himself considerably. It distinctly amused him to beat this barbarian youth at his own game. He took up his gun again.

“Yes, if you like,” he said.

He made a dozen more hits and then missed.

“A loathsome exhibition,” he said, “but I have not had a gun in my hand for a year.”

He put down the gun, and picked up the long cane he had brought out. He had been carefully reserving the tit-bit for the end.

“Perhaps I may remind you that I shot at Monte Carlo as Mr. Oakley,” he said, naming the winner of the Grand Prix of three years ago. “Pray don’t spread abroad my disgrace.”

The situation was irresistible, and even his adversary joined in the laugh against himself.

There were but a dozen people in the house altogether, and they had all come out to witness this scene; and when it was over the shooters started for the day, while Beckwith joined the ladies to enjoy their conversation until they went out to take lunch to the shooters. Young Lady Ravenscroft in particular had been delighted with his performance (her pleasure partaking a little of the nature of revenge, since Mrs. Pakenham dressed rather better than herself), and the two walked up and down the terrace together. She was a woman of extraordinary vitality, and Theodore had gravitated towards her at once. She had been married only a few months, and her whole attention seemed to be centred on the speed with which she could land her husband in the bankruptcy court. She was charmingly pretty, and Theodore had already told her that talking to her was like drinking champagne out of a silver mug.

“It was too heavenly/’ she was saying now. Men are so ridiculous. They think it really makes a difference if you shoot straight or crooked/’

“It does to the bird,” remarked Theodore.

“Yes, but you are not a bird, though, of course, everybody is really of animal type. But you are certainly not a bird. You are—you are—do you know, I think you are a weasel? Anyhow, something that bites.”

Theodore shrugged his shoulders.

“Things that can’t bite have a very poor time in this world,” he said.

“Yes, and I should think you had a good time. You probably do what you want.”

“Yes, I do what I want,” he remarked rather pensively. Somehow this conversation occurred to him this afternoon as he looked out of the window into the fading light and the drenched landscape. Paul Norris, Norah’s old friend, was expected this evening, and her husband was quite aware that she looked forward to his coming with peculiar pleasure. How exactly he knew that he could scarcely have told himself, for Norah had not mentioned him or alluded to him in any way. Perhaps it was that very absence of mention that had led him to think that she wanted very much to see Paul. For when she had heard that he was coming she expressed, Theodore remembered, no pleasure of any kind, and did not comment on it, did not say what great friends they were. Surely it could only be because she wanted to see him that she had let it appear that his coming made no difference to her. Also, so he remembered, she had after a few seconds looked across at him, to see if he was observing her. He happened to be doing so, and she had at once turned her eyes away. Yes, now he came to think over it, that was how he knew she so wanted to see him, because she had made a mistake in too obviously desiring that it should appear that she did not care whether she saw him or not. How intensely, how profoundly shallow that sort of thing was! And no doubt it struck Norah as being diplomatic.

Theodore had put on a little flesh in the last two months, and his narrow, colourless face was not so utterly bloodless to the appearance as it had been. Stout or ruddy he would probably never become, but he had certainly filled out a little since his marriage. But in other respects he was quite unaltered; his pale eyes were as unwavering and unwinking as ever; fragile and thin in build as he still was, he still looked as if made of steel. Though for the moment his forehead creased itself into sudden sharp wrinkles, and his eyes smouldered with impatience as he thought of this shallow diplomacy, it was not in the least that he resented Norah’s wishing to see her friend again; he only resented anyone— even his wife—not giving him credit for more sense than to suppose this sort of thing deceived him. And the point, the subject-matter of her diplomacy, was as futile as her methods. Of course she would be pleased to see Paul again; the fact itself was as obvious as were her childish attempts to screen it from him. Besides, whether it pleased her or not, it was probable that she was going to see a very great deal more of Paul. That, however, was not yet settled.

Beckwith had not yet made the proposal to him that he was meditating. Ah, what a wonderful thing to have life and vigour like Paul’s. How a person with that amount of animal energy, if only he had brains, ought to dominate those with whom he came in contact. But how seldom the two were combined in one person, and how brains dominated everything else.

Beckwith was never dull when he was alone; he had always so much to think about, and it was rather with a sense of unwelcome interruption that he heard the door open. The room was getting very dark, and from his seat, half hidden in the curtain by the window, he peered into the obscurity a moment before he saw who had entered. Even then he was not at once seen by Norah. Before she saw him, in fact, he spoke.

“Would you kindly ring the bell?” he asked. “ They seem to have forgotten to bring lights. They always do, I notice.”

Norah started slightly at his voice, and did as he asked with rather marked alacrity.

“The others are not in yet?” he went on.

“No, I left them and came home.”

Theodore laughed.

“To see how I was getting on?” he suggested. “To make sure I wasn’t bored or lonely? All morning and all afternoon up till now that hadn’t occured to you.”

The footman had come into the room with lamps, and after putting them on the tables went to the windows to shutter and curtain them. Beckwith got up and went across to the fire.

“ Rather late in the day to see if I feel lonely,” he said, “but let it pass. What an execrable climate this is. I really think it’s hardly possible to stop our week out. A week is an infernal time. Will not that lampshade come a little lower? English people seem to think a room is well lighted when there is such a glare in your eye that you can see nothing whatever.”

Norah went across to the table and adjusted this.

“I rather like this soft, rainy weather,” she said. “It touches something in my blood, and makes me feel at home. I was born here, you see.”

Theodore drew his chair a little closer to the fire.

“It touches something in my blood too,” he said with a little cackle of laughter, “and produces rheumatism. Anyhow, here we are again. The moment I say I want to go away you find some sentimental reason for wanting to stop. And you think it selfish that I rate my rheumatism as high as your sentiments. After all, what on earth do childish remembrances amount to? We are supposed to think them all very wonderful; * Heaven lies about us in our infancy/ and so on; but though Heaven, I daresay, lay about me, I know the hand of my nurse laid about her. Were you so happy as a child? I wasn’t. My chief recollection of childish days is being naughty and being found out. I daresay one is naughty now, but one is not found out so often. That makes one happier.”

Norah listened to this with the air of one who knows the sort of thing. She merely waited, in fact, till he had finished.

“We go away, then,” she said. “When do you want to go?”

Beckwith took up the poker, and hit with the point of it at a tarry, gaseous coal.

“Oh, don’t act the martyred wife,” he said. “You are not martyred, you know. You have a very pleasant time. Or do you regret having married me? Would you rather have been stuffed away in Aunt Kate’s house at Wroxton, and have to listen to the tragedies of a very silly old woman? My God, shall I ever forget the drive into Genoa? If I went fast she moaned in terror, and asked me to stop. If I went slow she said she was sure she would miss the train. She could see an objection to anything.”

There was no reply possible to this, and Norah attempted none. But her silence served the purpose of the little hawkfaced man who stabbed at the coals.

“Oh, let us have done with reproachful silences,” he said, “and silent reproaches, and tears, if you have any on tap. What is the use of displays of emotion? Really, I want you to be happy, but for that I will not pay the price of my being miserable. I like to have you with me, I love your companionship when you are happy. But what do you want? Mayn’t I say that I don’t see any reason in staying in this ill-kept house in a rheumatic swamp in Wiltshire? Good God, aren’t there pleasanter places?”

“I thought you liked it,” said she. “You did yesterday.” “But what has yesterday to do with now?” he asked. “Oh yes, I liked that Pakenham should learn what a very second-rate shot he was. But what next? I can do all I like doing under less boring conditions.”

Norah pointed at the screen.

“Your patchwork—needlework, you mean,” she said. Theodore gave a shrill little cackle of merriment, and stabbed away at the coals again.

“Do you call it patchwork in order to annoy me?” he asked. “I can think of no other reason, because you know quite well it is not patchwork, and as for annoying me, you can call it crochet or knitting if you wish, and I shan’t mind. Really, you are very amusing. You are full of surprises. How you would like at this moment to box my ears.” She had sat down in a low chair by the tea-table nearly behind him, and as she did not answer he turned round, and with the poker still in his hand put up his pince-nez to look at her.

“Wouldn’t you like to box my ears?” he repeated. “Now tell me the truth.”

“Indeed, then, I would not,” she said. “You don’t understand me at all, Theodore. I try to please you. But sometimes whatever I do seems to irritate you. If I speak you find some fault in what I say; if I am silent, you say I am treating you to reproachful silences. What do you want me to say or do? Did you really want me to sit indoors all day with you just because you chose not to go out? Then, again, you say you want to go away, and I say, ‘Very well, when shall we go?’ What do you complain of there?”

He got tip from his chair altogether, and came and sat by her on the edge of the table.

“Oh, pray don’t let us have another of these interminable discussions/1 he said. “ You know quite well that I object to the reason why you called my embroidery patchwork. As I said, you may call it crochet if you like; I don’t care what you call it. But I object to your wanting to annoy me, to your trying to assume a contemptuous tone towards me. It is so silly, you know. There’s not a particle of good in it. You’ve been out with these red-faced cousins of yours all day, and I daresay they’ve been wondering how I was getting on all alone sitting by the fire with my crochet. I know that sort of thing. You can talk and laugh with them as much as you like. But don’t say that sort of thing to me with the intention of annoying me. Besides, after all, when it comes to shooting, which they all think is a sort of criterion of manliness, I’m not so very far behind them.”

Norah considered this for a moment. Then she turned to her husband with an extraordinarily frank smile.

“You are quite right,” she said. “I called it patchwork to annoy you. It was very silly of me either to want to annoy you or to think I could do it that sort of way. On the other hand, Theodore, you had been rather beastly to me.”

“Oh, yes, that’s perfectly true,” he said, “but I can’t imagine why you mind. Hard words break no bones. That is one of the few true proverbs, but so obvious that one wonders that it was worth while saying it at all.”

“No, but hard words hurt,” said she. “They smart most horribly. At least yours do.”

This apparently had a complimentary ring to Theodore’s ear, for he got off the table, and walked up and down the room with his quick little steps in high good humour.

” Do they really?” he said. “How silly of you to care. I care so little what people say. Now what about going away? I don’t want to go to-morrow. But I think perhaps the next day, unless it clears up. My rheumatism is quite excuse enough. I want to sit in the sun again.”

Norah went upstairs after this to change her wet things, leaving on the table the few letters she had found waiting for her when she came in, which she had read before she joined her husband. With them also was her pass-book, which had just been sent back from the bank. She had taken it half out of its envelope, just to see what it was, and it lay half concealed by her letters, but visible. It soon caught Theodore’s eye as he strolled about the room, for in spite of his shortness of vision he was extremely observant, and next moment he had drawn it from its cover, opened it, and ran his eye quickly over the page or two of the transactions it contained. He did not reason at all as to the propriety of his action; he merely wanted to know how Norah spent her money, and thus adopted this very simple plan of finding out. For only three days before she had come to him to ask for the prepayment of her next quarter, if it made no difference to him. He had at once and without a single word of comment done as she had asked him, only saying that it was perfectly convenient. But if she thought that he did not wonder in his own mind why she wanted this prepayment, or that he had not every intention of finding out, she was completely in error. But since on this occasion it had not occurred to her to tell him why she wanted it, he had not been so simple as to ask, for she would either have refused to tell him, or merely have given up the question of prepayment, or perhaps have treated him (though this was not likely) to some ingenious fabrication. He had, therefore, not said a word to her on the subject, but had made a very emphatic mental note to find out all about it on the first opportunity. Opportunities always came, if one held one’s tongue and kept one’s eyes open, and did not spoil things by talking. He had thought at the time, too, that he could make a very good guess as to where Norah’s money went, and it was absurd to let slip so admirable an opportunity of testing the truth of his theory. Besides, so he told himself, any husband in the world would have agreed with him that he had some right to know why quarterly payments of five hundred pounds—a very generous allowance, surely, for a girl who had only to dress herself—were insufficient. Other men, perhaps, would have appealed to their wives, or made scenes, or at any rate have vexed themselves with suspicions. Theodore did none of these; he hated violence, and so took this much simpler and quieter method of ascertaining what he wanted.

The bank-book had just been brought up to date, and the cheque he had given her three days before was duly entered. Next day, it appeared, she had drawn a cheque for the same sum to her mother. All, in fact, was exactly as he had supposed.

Now Theodore had treated Lady Ravenscroft with great generosity. He had paid up every farthing of that considerable sum she had lost in the spring, so that she had not suffered the very smallest inconvenience in any way from the failure of her own mad speculations, and in addition he made her a very handsome allowance. It is true that he was himself a very wealthy man; it is true also that he enjoyed being generous to her, just as he enjoyed having a very handsome and beautifully-appointed yacht. Shabbiness in money matters was as repugnant to him as shabbiness in dress, but his generosity anyhow was undeniable, and it had been a very convenient thing for her. In consequence, he very strongly resented the discovery he had just made, for not only, it appeared, was he to provide directly for his mother-in-law, but indirectly also through his wife. He knew very well, moreover, what this meant, for Lady Ravenscroft had, thanks to him, an income perfectly adequate to meet her ordinary expenditure. He felt sure that she had been gambling again.

Now Theodore had behaved to her not only with great generosity, but with great delicacy. He had neither at the time nor afterward alluded to the folly which had landed her in these difficulties, and made it necessary for him to extricate her. He had read her no lecture on the subject, he had exacted no promise from her that she would for the future avert her eye from the dazzling possibilities of the mining-market, nor, as he gave her the cheque with one hand, had he, so to speak, pointed a warning or reproachful finger at her with the other, or said, “ Remember that this is the last time.” But it had been none the less clearly understood and taken for granted by them both that all this was implied. He had gone into her affairs with her; seen that everything was put straight, and had just remarked that it was a real pleasure to him to be able to put her beyond the reach of material cares for the future. And her acceptation of this naturally implied that it was her fixed resolve not to place her finger in the mouths of city sharks again. But because no formal promise had been made, he said cynically to himself, a woman’s code of honour was still untransgressed.

His resentment, too, at Norah’s part in this was scarcely less keen than at her mother’s. It was no use saying that the money was hers, and that she might do as her sweet fancy listed with it; in the end it would be he who would have to pay the piper. Already in so few months she had given a quarter’s allowance to her mother; it would happen again and yet again, and at the end she would come to him with the whole story, and bills long unpaid, of her dressmaker or what not, would at last be sent in to him. He would have to pay eventually, whether she called it her own money or not. To do him justice, he did not mind about the money in the least; what he was concerned about, however, was that his wife and mother-in-law should, so he considered, combine in their efforts to make a fool of him. It was true, so he thought with a fierce little smile on his mouth, that their charming little designs would not long continue to be attended with the success that at present seemed to crown them, but he resented the mere attempt on their part, whatever the result might be. Meantime he would write a note to Lady Ravenscroft, which would perhaps rather astonish her; while Norah, being on the spot, should receive, as the tradesmen say, his best personal attention.

The note was soon written. It was concise and to the point:

Dear Lady Ravenscroft :

“I find that Norah has advanced you the sum of five hundred pounds, and I draw the conclusion that you have been speculating again. You are, of course, perfectly at liberty to speculate as much as you please, but I wish you clearly to understand that I will not pay your debts again, and that if I find that Norah again does so, I shall from that moment and for ever stop the allowance I make you, which I should be very sorry to do. The money I allow her is given her for her personal needs, and not for yours.

“Norah is not yet aware that I know all this. You will be good enough not to say any word to her on the subject. Otherwise I shall again resort to the step I mentioned above.

“Pray do not trouble to answer this note. The weather here is quite vile. We miss our Italy.

“Affectionately yours,

“T. Beckwith.”

He paused for a moment, and then wrote the word “very” before “affectionately.” He did not try to do it very neatly; it was to be clear that it was an afterthought.

He replaced the pass-book so that the other letters partly covered it, and put it half in, half out of its envelope, as it had been. He had not the smallest sense of having done a thing ever so slightly dishonourable, for he had not looked at it so much to gain information as to confirm the idea that existed already in his own mind so clearly that it was more a certainty than a suspicion. It would, too, have been quite easy for him to obtain his information directly by taxing his wife with a question that she must either refuse to answer or answer in the affirmative. Norah, however, might see things in a different light, and it was not his intention that she should guess either the source of his information, or, indeed, at present that he had any certain information at all.

But though the incident itself of her paying her quarter’s allowance in advance to her mother had considerably irritated him, yet his way of dealing with the situation, the cream of which was yet to come, gave him sudden smiles of secret glee as he sat ten minutes longer, thinking what he should do. Yes; the matter should have his best personal attention.

Paul was arriving that evening, and Theodore paid him the compliment of looking out his train, so as to find the exact hour when he might be expected. He would reach the house, so he calculated, at about twenty minutes before dinner-time, when, it might be supposed, the rest of the party would be up in their rooms dressing. Theodore, however, without disturbing his wife in their bedroom, went to dress half an hour before that, and then sat there waiting for the sound of carriage-wheels. When they stopped he went downstairs and entered the big inner-hall, where they usually sat, just as Paul came in. Norah, as he had anticipated, was there, and was already half way across the room to meet her friend.

“Oh, Paul,” she cried, with hands outstretched, “I am glad you have come.”

Then she saw her husband, and her voice changed.

“Ah, here is Theodore come to welcome you, too,” she added.

Theodore advanced with his little tiptoe steps across the hall, and his beringed little hand outstretched in welcome.

“Did you ever see more charming harmony,” he cried shrilly, “or more singleness of purpose in wife and husband? Without consultation, I assure you—without consultation, she and I both have dressed early, it appears, in order to welcome you. We said not a word to each other on the subject. Is it not so, dearest?”

Paul felt hugely friendly at the moment. To be welcomed is always pleasing, and Theodore’s pleasure at seeing him was expressed in an admirably spontaneous manner, and had all the naturalness (this did not occur to him) of the highest art. Utterly spontaneous, too, was the way he encircled Norah’s arm with his own; it seemed quite instinctively done. Norah herself, however, had stopped dead when Theodore advanced, as if a shot had been fired across her bows. But this, too, Theodore covered up in the warmth of the welcome he gave on behalf of them both,

“We have both been a little bored, my dear fellow,” he said, “with our party, and we have looked forward to your coming. It takes us bade, we said, to those dear Italian days in May—eh, Norah? And look at this wife of mine! A new gown to welcome you in. You are the reason of this gorgeousness. Now we know why the quarter’s allowance was so badly wanted.”

This last sentence was spoken in aside to Norah, but spoken so that Paul, though he did not understand, could not help hearing it It was emphasized also with a pressure of the arm, so that she could scarcely help replying.

“Ah, what nonsense,” she said. “Fancy my putting on a new gown for Paul. When have you known me dress up for you, Paul? New gown! Why I have worn it fifty times.”

This all passed in a moment, but swift though it was Paul felt there had been a break, a check of some sort. What it was, what was this talk of new gowns and prepaid allowances he had no idea, nor could he gather anything from Theodore’s manner. But the note of welcome in Norah’s voice, the warmth, the ebullition, were entirely checked. Something had been said which put her ill at ease. There was no time to waste, however, and he at once went upstairs to dress, leaving the other two alone.

Theodore sat down in a chair under the lamp as soon as he had gone, and took up the evening paper that Paul had brought down. It is to be presumed that he had expected Norah to say more on the subject he had so lightly and deftly touched on, for when she spoke he laid down the paper at once as if he had anticipated the interruption to his reading.

“How odd you should have thought this a new dress,” she said.

Theodore put up his glasses, and examined her as she stood by him.

“Yes, I see it is not new,” he said. “ But I was expecting you to appear in something gorgeous to-night.”

“Why?”

“To welcome your friend. Partly, also, it would account for your having wanted your quarter’s allowance prepaid.” There was a moment’s silence, and Theodore wondered whether she would tell him what its real destination had been. Her opportunity was made for her, did she intend to; they were alone; he gave her time to reply. Then, as she said nothing he turned to his paper again.

“South Africans lower again,’’ he said. “Well, I suppose the public needs a lesson to cure them of senseless speculation.”

CHAPTER VII

Paul’s arrival completed the party, and though it was in no sense a remarkable one it contained its elements of comedy. The tragic mask, as we see in ancient sculpture, is always tied with the comic, but certainly this evening the tragic had turned its face to the wall, and comedy smiled broadly on the dinner-table. They were but a dozen altogether, and thus at a round table conversation could join itself together into one lump, or split up like bits of mercury into separate globules. Just at this moment it was piled, so to speak, in the middle of the table, and everyone paid his contribution into the general fund as he felt disposed. Paul had been and still was extremely open-handed.

“No, I eat large quantities of solid food,” he said, “because I am hungry, and I drink large quantities of delicious wine because I am thirsty, and it tastes nice.”

Mrs. Pakenham pointed a warning finger at him. As usual, she was quite exquisitely dressed, but could really only talk on one subject, which was uric acid.

“Yes, Paul,” she said, “it’s all very well. But when, as will shortly happen, I meet you hobbling along with all your joints stiff with gout, and your temples corded with atheromatous arteries-”

“I beg your pardon,” said Paul.

“With arteries that have entirely lost their elasticity, and may burst any moment, then I shall be obliged to say, “I told you so! You die if they burst, you know, bang!” Paul pointed with withering scorn to her plate.

“I have seen you eat more nuts this evening than I have ever seen eaten except at the Zoo,” he said. “You will not be able to say, ‘I told you so*; you will only be able to chatter at me from the top branches.”

Frank Pakenham applauded this.

“That’s exactly what I tell her, only I didn’t use such lovely language,” he said.

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Lord Ravenscroft ranged himself with the party of attack.

“Stands to reason,” he said. “Why, what’s the use of cattle or sheep------”

Mrs. Pakenham pointed to her glass; she did not like quite so many assaults.

“That is a fluid called milk,” she explained. “I don’t know if you ever saw it before.”

This genuinely horrified her host.

“Milk and nuts, good Lord!” he said. “Just think of it. I should feel devilish queer if I did that sort of thing. No use playing with one’s digestion like‘that.”

But Mrs. Pakenham had not despaired of Paul as a convert, and attacked him again.

“Try it, only try it,” she said. “Give it a good trial; cut off meat and alcohol and cigarettes-”

Paul turned an agonized eye on her.

“I would sooner cut off my head,” he said. “Heavens, what would be left? It is just that sort of thing that I live for. I haven’t got any complicated pleasures. Mine are all simple ones.”

Mrs. Atley, who was sitting next Theodore on the other side of the table, gave a great gasp. She was a large, elderly woman with a mania for writing third-rate novels. She was supposed to be collecting materials wherever she went, and culling specimens to “put in” her books. She was largely covered with beads and coins, and wore in her hair objects that reminded one of winter dessert. She had, it may be said, two manners—one stately and impressive which she used in the world, one playful and kittenish which her intimates only knew.

“Anyone who lives at all,” she said to him in her impressive baritone, “is either a gourmand or a gourmet. That beloved Paul is a gourmand. Large quantities of simple, solid food. What a type.”

Theodore turned to her.

“Yes, a gourmand”he said. He devours life as a boy devours buns. A boy, a cousin of my wife’s, came to stay with us the other day. He arrived at seven in the evening, and had a great many buns for tea. They appeared only to act as a whet to his appetite for dinner. Paul is rather like that. He takes large simple chunks of life, and they merely give him an appetite for more.”

Mrs. Atley shook her head, and the winter dessert stirred uneasily among her hair. At the very top of her head-dress there was a sort of hag.

“I have got permanent indigestion,” she observed, “not indigestion of the physical sort, which Mrs. Pakenham finds sufficient to supply all her mental needs, but, psychical indigestion. I receive too many impressions; I am too greedy of them. Look round the table—what types, what bewildering variety of types. Paul now, the boyish, and you, if you will excuse my saying so, the educated, the searcher after the exquisite-” Mrs. Atley, as usual, was laying it on with a spade, her favourite maxim being that if you throw enough flattery at’ anybody some of it is sure to stick. At this moment, however, it seemed that none of it had stuck, for Theodore, who was watching Paul’s laughing, animated face across the table, as he talked to Norah, was paying her but the very slightest attention. So she proceeded to throw more.

“And one, I am sure, who realizes the exquisite so entirely,” she went on. “ Tell me, how do you manage so to environ yourself with what is beautiful? Your wife,

Theodore turned his wandering attention again to her with his shrill little laugh.

“Really, you overwhelm me,” he said. “Just now my wife strikes me as being so extraordinarily like Paul. There is the same abandonment of enjoyment about her, the same instinctive gaiety. What are they talking about?”

As soon as he ceased speaking the two voices opposite were distinctly audible.

“ Oh, Paul,” she was saying, “ it was the last tree on that plateau where we hid the glasses. I bet you what you like. You must come out in the spring to stay with us, and you will see I am right.”

“I thought you had given up all your interest in playing,” said he.

“So I have. At least, now I see you again, I don’t feel so sure about it. Have you been serious once since I saw you last?”

Beckwith again turned his attention completely away from his neighbour, and leaned forward.

“Ah, think carefully,” he said across the table. “Do be able to say you are never serious at all.”

“Why? Does that seem to you admirable?” he asked.

“Completely admirable.”

“Please tell the directors of the insurance company your views,” said Paul. “Put it strongly, if you will.”

” You shall take me as your client to have my life insured,” said Beckwith. “That will convince them you have not neglected your work even while you were having a holiday. I have other business matters as well to talk over with you if you will not take them seriously.”

Elsewhere round the table the talk was split up into couples. Lady Anstruther and Mrs. Ellicott were talking to each other’s husbands, to whom they were devoted. This very fortunate circumstance enabled each of them to tolerate her own for the sake of the other’s, and since all four were people of the world that never bores itself, they got along capitally. Lady Anstruther, a dark, keen, scheming woman, had admirable methods, and whenever it seemed to her that people were beginning to talk about her private affairs in a manner that might conceivably be damaging, she covered up her traces, so to speak, by starting a dairy or a home for something that was suffering, dumb friends or nursery governesses, in one of the more remote counties, and put paragraphs in the papers to say that she was there. This diverted attention from herself to her more public deeds, and people alluded to her as philanthropist of the first water without the ghost of a smile. Mr. Ellicott, to whom she was talking now, was one of those men who look tired in the morning and fresh in the evening. He was equally acute, however, at any time of the day. At this moment he was talking about Theodore, and to disarm suspicion was also looking fixedly at him, so that it could occur to nobody that he was speaking of him, or else he would have looked elsewhere. Lady Anstruther had just said something disparaging about him.

“But it’s no use saying he doesn’t matter,” he said, “because neither you nor I understand anything whatever about him. He lays down his needle and proceeds to knock Frank’s head off with a borrowed gun. That is only a superficial instance of what one may expect. In fact,” his voice sank a little, “he strikes me as a person who borrows everything. At least, you can’t say ‘ borrow’; he takes.”

“Takes what?” asked she.

“Everything. Have you ever talked to him for half an hour?”

“Yes, or he has talked to me.”

“And you felt tired at the end, did you not? So does everybody. He somehow-”

Lady Ravenscroft rose at the moment, and the sentence was unfinished. But as Lady Anstruther passed his chair, she finished it for him.

“Drains one, you mean,” she said. “But what nonsense, surely.”

The men of the party, after a long and rather tiring day, did not show much tendency to sit up late, but soon yawned themselves to bed. Thus it happened that soon after the break-up of bridge-tables, Paul and Theodore found themselves alone. Paul had played with unparalleled ignorance and success, and was chinking five sovereigns together.

“Oh, I’m really fitted for this,” he said. “On a knowledge of the cardinal value of cards, and really little else, I won five pounds. What should I not win if I knew about the eleven rule, and the correct lead from fifty-nine spades, which Mrs. Ellicott was trying to din into me?”

Theodore, as usual, had not played, but sat with his work like Penelope. On the exit of lie last man, however, he had put his needle into the canvas, and wheeled the frame away. All evening he had sat close to Norah, changing his place as she changed hers, and had sympathized with her losses, gloried in her gains, and put his purse at her disposal.

“You would be quite extraordinary, whatever you learned or forgot,” he remarked. “Only learning things is a very dangerous experiment. It may make one quite different.”

“That’s exactly what they wish me to be,” remarked Paul. He was standing in front of the fire, big and radiant, as he had been all evening, diffusing all round him somehow the atmosphere of enjoyment. By him now stood Theodore, with the eternal little rose-scented cigarette in his mouth, looking strangely minute. Yet no one could have doubted which of the two had more potential force. Paul looked down on him with his big, boyish eyes.

“In fact, things are critical,” he said. “I go out to a dance, you see, in the evening, and arrive at the office very late next morning, or very sleepy. They can take their choice, but I must be one or the other. And sometimes, if I have been very late the night before, it is both. What lucky devils people like you are, who never need do anything at all! My goodness, what a good time I should have! Lord, did you see the silver, too, at Christie’s last week?”

Theodore did not, so to speak, know silver from gold, but he sat down with an appearance of great interest.

“Do tell me about it,” he said.

Paul looked quite solemn.

“Oh, Stuart stuff,” he said. “Early rat-tails, seal tops, set of twelve Apostle spoons! My goodness, what nice things there are in the world! Then there was a print sale next day. And the day after Prince’s opened, and I went* and skated, and came an infernal cropper. Do you care for skating?” he added politely. “Oh, I’m so thirsty! There’s whisky-and-soda. Will you have some?”

“No thanks. But go on; go straight on.”

“What about? Oh, who is Lady Anstruther? What fun she is! Fancy starting a home for decayed governesses in Norfolk! Or was it the home for lost dogs there? She seems to like lots of things. We had no end of a talk, and I think I revoked. How well Norah looks, doesn’t she? Aren’t you awfully happy? Why are you laughing?”

Paul did not wait for a reply, but drank off the whisky-and-soda he had splashed into his glass.

“Will there be shooting to-morrow, do you think?” he said. “They said nothing about it, so I didn’t like to ask. Do you shoot?”

“I shot yesterday morning,” said Theodore. “I didn’t to-day. Now, can you attend for a minute, or do you want to go to bed?”

“ I never want to go to bed,” said Paul. “ It’s so dull. One goes to sleep, and doesn’t know anything about it. What am I to attend to?”

“ To a proposal I wish to make to you. Now, if you don’t mind my asking, what do you get in your insurance company?”

“Four hundred,” said Paul promptly. “ And six weeks’ holiday.”

“Do you like it?”

“ Loathe it.”

“ I make you an offer, then. Will you be my secretary?”

Some fleeting remembrance of business-habits came back to Paul.

“ I don’t know what it means,” he said. “ And what does it lead to?”

“ It means that you answer my business letters, and live in the house or the yacht or wherever we are. Of course, you will have no expenses of board and lodging. I will give you exactly what I give my present secretary, which is six hundred a year.”

Paul had stopped dead from sheer astonishment.

“But why?” he said.

“ Merely because I have to have a secretary, and it annoys me very much to have one whom I don’t like. But I like you.”

Theodore lit another cigarette from the stump of his old one.

“ In case of my death,” he said, “ I will settle five hundred pounds a year on you for life. You will then be free. Now, don’t answer me now. Think it over. You won’t have a very unpleasant time, I hope, and, of course, you are great friends with Norah, which will be nice for you. And for her, I am sure I may add.”

He got up as he spoke, and warmed his hands at the fire, while Paul stood by, on the edge of the hearthrug.

“Golly!” he said at length. “I don’t know—I really hardly know.”

Theodore stopped him.

“I ask you only to think about it,” he said. “Consult Norah, if you wish. Think it over; talk it over. But I hate a man in the house whom I don’t like. I like somebody with a certain gaiety and life and spirits. I shall go to bed, I think.”

The weather certainly showed no sign whatever of clearing or anything like it next morning, and since the rain was too heavy for even the most ardent sportsman to wish to go abroad, it followed that about half-past eleven a section of the party was gathered about the fire in the library, getting through the hours before lunch with very fair success. Paul had already wearied two opponents out at Badminton, and had talked to such an extent to Mrs. Atley about the terrible state society was getting into in London (a subject of which he knew nothing whatever, but merely desired to make himself agreeable) that she had just hurried upstairs to her bedroom in order to put down all she remembered as material for the scarifying book on which she was now engaged, for which she contemplated an enormous success among upper servants and typewriters, who constituted the bulk of her readers. The book was to be called “The Scarlet Sinners,” and simply reeked of Earls and Viscounts, who behaved in a manner perfectly indescribable except by her, and habitually addressed each other as “Viscount” and “Earl.” Their sons and daughters were all Lords and Ladies.

Mrs. Atley, however, had gone upstairs to record Paul’s priceless conversation, and with the exception of his fatigued opponents at Badminton, and one or two people who had not appeared yet, the rest, as soon as the door was closed, proceeded to discuss Mrs. Atley. A few sentences were sufficient, and Paul had the honour of the last.

“Her face looks like a whitey-brown paper bag,” he said, “which has got crumpled. She has got the face I should like if I wanted to commit a murder. Nobody who saw one immediately after or before could possibly remember one. So many people’s faces are like paper bags. And paper bags are so like one another.”

Norah was sitting by him on a sort of cushioned fender that ran round the fireplace.

“Oh, Paul, that’s quite a new game,” she said. “How would you set about murdering anybody? ”

Lady Anstruther was there, too, and though murder was a subject which one would have thought alien to one who had so many kind homes for dumb friends, she joined in with alacrity.

“I should take a situation as cook to the person I wished to murder, who would have to be a solitary bachelor or a maiden lady, and poison my victim in anchovy toast,” she said. “The remains of the anchovy toast, and the saucepan in which it was cooked, I should bury in the next back-garden but two. I should have a follower there, you see, who would be my accomplice.”

Paul shook his head.

“The accomplice is a weak spot,” he said.

“Not if you have the right one,” said Norah. “I should make a beautiful accomplice. I should be so calm. Most accomplices are agitated, and it all comes out.”

Paul looked at her a moment.

“Yes, you wouldn’t be a bad one,” he said, “if one wanted to murder an enemy. But if one wanted to murder a friend you might be sorry afterwards. There is a vein of sentiment about you, and hymns on Sunday evening might bring it out.”

Mr. Ellicot, looking, as was his wont, extremely tired, said, “I should-” and then Relapsed again.

“You would make a mess of it,” said Lady Anstruther.

“Or you would be so conceited at finding it was not discovered that you would tell somebody how it was done.”

“That would be fatal,” said Paul in a tone of deep thought Then he suddenly jumped up.

“Oh, what a pity Mrs. Atley isn’t here,” he cried. “She could put it into her next book. First of all, I should have influenza, and all the time I should be somebody else. Oh, it’s so simple. I should have a white nose and no beard and lie in bed all morning till the doctor came to tell me I mustn’t get up.”

“But supposing he said you might?”

“Then I should put the bulb of my thermometer into my soup till it registered high fever. Don’t interrupt, Norah. Then as soon as he had gone I should get up and have an ordinary nose and a large beard, and live a double life during the afternoon in a semi-detached villa next my victim. Then I should kill him, and wrap the beard—not his—up in some stones and throw it into the Thames, and go back to bed as before, with no beard and a white nose. I should only have one servant, and she should have every afternoon out, so that she wouldn’t see me come home. Besides, I should come home with a white nose, so it wouldn’t matter. And I would wait for a London fog. I wish I wanted to kill somebody.”

Norah did not approve of this.

“It is all too elaborate,” she said. “You would get confused about beards and noses. It would be much simpler to be an engine-driver on a line where your victim lived, and wait till you saw him walking over a level-crossing-”

Lady Anstruther broke in.

“Simpler yet,” she cried. “Be a chauffeur with an excellent character, and say you skidded.”

Paul turned on her with solemn admiration.

“I believe you’ve done it,” he said gravely. “Who was it? Why, look! there’s the sun!”

This same portentous fact had struck Lord Ravenscroft a minute before, and now he hurried into the room.

“We can still get in an hour or two before lunch,” he said. “It really has quite cleared.”

Murder, except the murder of partridges, was instantly expunged from Paul’s mind.

“Give me two minutes,” he cried. “I took my shooting-boots off when it looked so bad. Are you going to walk with us, Norah? Do.”

She shook her head.

“I think I’ll stay with Theodore,” she said. “He was alone all yesterday.”

Paul’s face fell.

“Oh, but do come,” he said. “Half the fun is spoiled, if you don’t. Or why doesn’t he? He can shoot, can’t he?” Ravenscroft laughed.

“Yes, my dear fellow,” he said. “He can, indeed. Get Pakenham to tell you about it. But he won’t.”

Paul still lingered a moment.

“I particularly wanted to talk to you about something,” he said to Norah aside.

“Won’t it keep till this evening?”

“Yes, well, perhaps it will. Three cheers for the sun! I’m so glad I didn’t die in the night. I’ll be down again in two seconds.”

Lady Anstruther was quick at phrases.

“Aerated quicksilver,” she remarked; and the justice of the comment was recognised.

She was not, it appeared, going out with the shooters either before lunch, for she drew a chair close up to the cushioned fender and lit a cigarette.

“Where did that extraordinary creature come from?” she asked Norah, “and why have I never been told of his existence? I wish to see him every morning from ten to eleven.” Mrs. Pakenham could not resist putting in a word of the gospel.

“Yes, he does take away that tired feeling,” she admitted, “but he gives one reaction afterwards. We shall all feel terribly flat in a few minutes. But you would have none of it, I assure you, and no reaction, if you only gave up flesh foods. Paul himself would be twice as fit and efficient, as I have often told him, if he would do the same. My dear, you have no conception of the amount of waste-products contained in a mutton-chop, and they all pass into the blood.”

“Well, it’s a good thing that he sticks to mutton-chops, then,” said Lady Anstruther. “ Otherwise, he would simply fly into bits. Did you say he was in an insurance office, Norah? What an excellent person to have about! He would make the clients live for ever. I shall not take him down to the governesses’ home.”

Norah laughed at this.

“But isn’t that the point, that they should live?” she asked.

“ Yes, dear, but not for ever. One has so many applicants, and it is difficult enough to make vacancies as it is. Norfolk is so healthy. But I don’t want to talk about them just now. Tell me about Paul.”

“ Well, I’ve known him all my life,” she said, “and he is a sort of cousin of mine. He has lived with us most of his life, in fact, as he has neither father nor mother living. Of course, not since my marriage,” she added.

“And weren’t you dreadfully in love with him till—till you met Mr. Beckwith?” added Lady Anstruther hastily.

Norah laughed again, with genuine innocent amusement.

“ No, never,” she said. “ It never occurred to me. Paul and I used to play together. And when I see him, I want to play still.”

She got up, suddenly conscious of a perfectly unforeseen embarrassment. All yesterday evening, all this morning, she had, after this two months’ separation from Paul, merely gone back, as far as she thought of it at all, to her old, thoughtless comradeship with him. And now, for the first time, she realized, though only for a moment, how extraordinarily pleasant that comradeship had been; how, also, now that it was suddenly renewed, how big a part of her life it had been. And for the last two months that part had not entered into it. All this came upon her with the same sort of shock as one sometimes experiences when one suddenly sees one’s self in some mirror set round the corner of a passage, without previously knowing that a mirror was there. For one moment, without expecting it, she saw herself, and at the first instant of seeing herself, she did not know that it was she. A stranger, some other wanderer in this big house of life, faced her. But next moment she saw it was no stranger, but herself.

The whole sensation was but momentary, but it was queer, it was also extremely vivid. But so short was it in actual duration that she had hardly got on her feet when the door opened, and her husband entered. And the moment she saw him, the vision of herself, the intuitive, internal glimpse, was gone. The flicker of lightning through cloud was not more instantaneous; before and after it the sky was dark.

The others had gone out, and only Lady Anstruther and his wife remained when he came in. He carried the current number of the Parisian in his hand, and one of his fingers was among the pages, keeping the place.

“It has positively cleared,” he said, “and I am sure that it was Paul who made it.”

“Apollos watered, Paul made it cease to water,” remarked Lady Anstruther.

“Yes; how neat. Dear me, how neat. Where is Paul?”

“Gone with the shooters,” said Norah.

“And are you not going, too?”

“No; I thought I would stop with you.”

Theodore laughed shrilly.

“All roads lead to Paul,” he said. “At least, I am going to shoot. If you stop with me, you will go with Paul.”

She looked at him in surprise. He had on a sort of Sunday country-clothes, and very shiny cloth-topped boots.

“Like that?” she asked.

“Yes, like this. I haven’t brought any shooting things. But one shoots with a gun, not with one’s trousers. Have they already started? Let us go after them. I only wanted to show you a costume that I thought would suit you, Norah. Look, sable trimming. If you were thinking of getting another coat, I don’t think you could do better. It would suit you admirably.”

Lady Anstruther snatched at half the paper.

“Too divine,” she cried. “What an eye you have for clothes. Oh, Norah, it would suit you admirably. Dear me, I wish I could afford to buy whatever suited me admirably! So many things do, particularly extremely expensive fur.”

Norah gazed for one moment at the tinted picture of this very elegant young person in the fur-trimmed dress.

“No, don’t tempt me,” she said. “I’ve got all my clothes for the winter, and I simply must not get any more. Besides, I haven’t a penny.”

The words were not fairly out of her mouth before she would have given a good deal to recall them, and she looked up quickly in some confusion at her husband. And though he took no notice at all of this, did not even put up his pince-nez or cast one glance at her, she knew perfectly well that he had heard, and that the thought of her prepaid quarter’s allowance was as clearly in his head as it was in her own. He did not even hang for a moment on his little, tripping steps towards the door, but went straight on, and held it open for Lady Anstruther and his wife.

But Norah did not move from the table. She felt suddenly sick and frightened. She had given herself away; she would be one mass of miserable apprehension till she had told Theodore where her quarter’s allowance had gone, and her apprehension, she felt sure, when she told him, would be amply justified. Then she remembered his little dropped remark about the South African market the evening before. Was it mere chance that he had said that, or did he in some horrible, secret way read all her thoughts and actions, so that nothing she did was private from him? More than once before now he had seemed to her to be able to divine thoughts that she hardly admitted to herself. There had been nothing to be ashamed of, but she felt that her mind was always naked before him.

Lady Anstruther meantime had passed through the door that Theodore held open, and he waited for her to follow.

“Come along—come along,” he said impatiently.

For the twentieth time Norah tried to resist him, to make a stand and assert her own freedom of action.

“ I think I won’t,” she said. “ I think I will remain behind, as I intended to do.”

Theodore left the door to swing to, and came quickly towards her, with his eyes shining with a cold gleam.

“I wish you to come,” he said. “ So don’t let us have any nonsense. Do behave sanely. You said you were going to stop in to keep me company. But I am going to shoot. Therefore you are coming, too.”

Tiny and insignificant as was the mere subject-matter of the dispute in which they were engaged, the whole thing being no more than the decision as to whether Norah should sit in the library or go out of doors, both knew that the question involved was one of vital import to them both. For over this infinitesimal decision as to whether she should spend the morning in a chair or on her feet their two natures had become locked together in a struggle that could only end by a fall on one side, a victory on the other. And through the three or four seconds that passed in silence after he had said this Norah felt herself weakening, though she put all her strength in a grip that never relaxed nor tired for the infinitesimal part of a second. Then Theodore spoke again.

“You are frightened, you know,” he said, “and, like an animal when it is frightened, you get your back to the wall. That will do no good. It will be better for you to come out Of course, I know all about your allowance. But it won’t make things better to annoy me and worry me like this. Now, are you coming?”

Norah got up; without a word Or a cry on her part, it was all over.

“ Oh yes, I suppose so,” she said.

Theodore took her arm in his thin fingers with the friendliest pressure, and laughed.

“ There, then, do you see how silly you have been?” he said, “giving yourself and me all this bother for nothing? Now we mustn’t keep them waiting any longer.”

It was over; the grip that numbed her was relaxed, and now, when she stood free again, she wondered, with almost a pang of shame, at her own cowardice, why she had not resisted. What would have happened, she asked herself for the twentieth time, if she did resist, if she did go her own way? He could not injure her, he could not hurt her. Yet she knew, deep down in herself, that when a similar situation arose again, as it certainly would, perhaps even before the day was over, she would be unable to act differently. Even now she was trembling, and took hold of the table for a moment to steady herself. He saw this, and at once was all kindness and consideration.

“Wait a minute, then,” he said, “till you are yourself. What ails you? Is it the allowance? Don’t think of it again. I am sure you will never do it again.”

“What are you going to do about it?” she asked.

“I shall just speak to you about it sometime,” he said, “and tell you what I think. As regards your mother, I have already done all that will be necessary.”

Norah pulled herself together with an effort.

“Then please speak now, and have done with it,” she said. “How did you know, by the way? ”

Theodore cracked his fingers contemptuously, as if dismissing that “It could have been nothing else,” he said. “You are not the sort of woman who gets into debt, and your clothes can’t cost you as much as I allow you. It must have been that you wanted to give money to your mother. Paul occurred to me for a moment, but only a moment. He wouldn’t take money from you, I was sure.”

“Paul!” said she indignantly.

“Yes, as I say, he occurred to me only for a moment. Now, my view is this. You and your, mother between you have tried to defraud me, to fool me. I paid all her debts, as you know. You did know, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Yes, you were most generous,” she said.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“That is nothing,” he said, “but I did pay them, and it was distinctly understood that she should not make a fool of herself again. Also, I gave her an allowance which, with her jointure is amply sufficient for anything she cares to do, except gamble. You both knew that, yet you tried, as I say, to make a fool of me, to take what I give you for your personal expenses, and transfer it to your mother behind my back. You allow I have been generous to her—that is as it may be—but in spite of that you pilfer—that’s what it comes to—behind my back. You won’t do it again, however. Nor will your mother wish you to, for on the next penny she accepts from you, her allowance from me stops at once and for ever.”

Theodore paused a moment, leaning on the chimney-piece, and looking at himself in the glass above it.

“Of course, a woman who gambles, like a woman who drinks,” he said, “is usually incurable, and I fully expect to have the pleasure of paying your mother’s debts again. But she will have to come to me direct, and she won’t like that.”

He turned back towards the room again, and picked up the Parisian. Norah was standing by the table, looking at him, no longer defiantly, but obediently, learning his pleasure.

“And now we must go out,” he said. “But I particularly want you to get that dress I showed you. Of course, I will pay for it.”

Norah winced.

“Ah, please not,” she said. “It will remind me of—of all this.”

He laughed, and again took her arm.

“How funny you are,” he said in his little half-cracked voice. “I should think of it as the sugar-plum that came after the medicine, if I were you. By the way, have you had any talk to Paul this morning?”

“No, but he said he wanted to talk to me.”

“Ah, then, when he does, please give him your very best attention.”

The day had cleared up in the handsomest manner, possible, and instead of the cold bleakness of a wet November morning they had a noon of warm, jubilant sun. Though it was already half-way through the month, pheasant shooting in the covers was still impossible, for the firm, temperate weather of the autumn up till the last three days had made bold the beeches to continue clad in their full russet liveries, and the woods, with little leaf yet fallen, glowed with a wonderful brilliance. But for all their luxuriant glory, and for all the brightness of the sun, the hint of winter was in the air. A wind, that would have been warm in spring with the promise of summer, was touched with prescience of the coming winter, and though, an hour later, the sky was an unflecked turquoise from horizon to horizon, it was good to walk briskly. These two days of rain had been succeeded by the clear shining after rain, of which King David sings, and the Kennet over which they crossed was swollen from bank to bank, and chuckling as it flowed. Chuckling, too, no doubt, were the silver trout, secure in the close time from wile of angler, and contentedly and ravenously feeding on the gifts that the river rolled down to them at the bottom of its stream-bed. Even the huge, humping downs, that rose like the round backs of some gigantic flock of sheep, though browned and grey from the drought of the summer, seemed to show a livelier flush of colour, as if their skins, the grasses and flowers of the uplands, had made one more effort to be gay before the blight and north wind of winter struck them colourless.

Theodore had telegraphed the day before for a gun or two, and now he walked trippingly along with Frank Pak-enham, followed by his servant, who carried several guns, a brilliant Inverness cape, a straw hat, and a camp-stool. The ways were extraordinarily thick with mud, but he skipped gaily along, plastered with mire on his cloth-topped boots, in the highest of humours. His straw hat apparently had been a good thought, for they had not gone far before he took off his cloth cap and exchanged it for the wider-brimmed hat. He had two or three very brilliant rings on, and a huge jewel in his tie; he had not even troubled to turn up his fawn-coloured trousers. The other men, it so happened, were all large, English-looking folk, clad in the most weather-proof homespuns, and a more incongruous figure, as they took their places for the first drive, it would be impossible to imagine. The head-keeper, who had thought him at first to be one of the other ladies, so to speak, was surprised to be told he was going to shoot at all. The consultation which Ravenscroft held with him surprised him further.

There were six guns out, and the first drive was at the bottom end of two converging valleys of stubble, which could be driven simultaneously. Between these ran a long, narrow-shaped wedge of copse, which joined the hedge behind which the guns were placed at right angles. It was a difficult place, for birds would cross sharply, from whichever side they came. It was snap-shooting of the most snappy kind. But since it was midway between these converging valleys, more birds came over here than at any point in the line. It was known as “His Lordship’s Comer,” for Lord Ravenscroft, who was a fine shot, usually stood here, and though a place of glory, it was less markedly a place of death.

“Mr. Beckwith will be here,” said he. “Yes, that’s Mr. Beckwith. What?”

Lord Ravenscroft usually said “What?” at the end of his sentences, and the keeper but grumbled in his beard as Mr. Beckwith was assigned the place. The assignation was not fulfilled without care. For the sun was hot, and so Mr. Beckwith settled to retain his straw hat. It was not even an ordinary straw hat, which, though outré, might have been pardonable; but it was a “garden hat,” turned up behind. The wind, too, though the sun was hot, was of the chillier sort, so Mr. Beckwith put on his cloak, which had a silver clasp in front. Then his servant put out his camp-stool, laid by it a silver cigarette-box and a neat enamel match-box. These preparations made, Mr. Beckwith took off one kid glove, but kept the other on. Behind him gathered the ladies of the party.

The keeper was a conscientious man, and felt bound to explain the delicacy of the situation.

“They’ll come right and left, sir,” he said, “and they are gone in a moment behind the second hedge.”

Theodore laughed shrilly.

“No comets about, are there?” he said.

“Beg your pardon, sir?”

Theodore enjoyed the situation immensely. There were still a few minutes before the beaters could get to their places at the head of the valley, and he used them well.

“I can’t remember what a partridge is like,” he said. “Brown, isn’t it, or is that a pheasant?” Where do they come, do you say? Over the hedge in front? Then surely I can’t shoot them before they get over the hedge behind? Where’s my gun? I say, there are three guns. Are they all mine?”

“You needn’t use more than two, sir,” said the keeper. “His lordship is using only two.”

“How nice! Norah, do take care. I may shoot you.”

He turned and lit another cigarette from the stump of the one he was smoking.

“Fancy, it’s November 1” he said. “Where is Paul? Oh, down there in the valley. You couldn’t miss a haystack down there. How tiresome this waiting is! Lady Anstruther, do take my place. You have nothing to do.”

The keeper danced, simply danced. Theodore at present had not touched a gun at all. Then from far away came the cry of “Mark over!”

“Oh, yes, I know that,” said Theodore. “You put your heart in your mouth, and a thrush comes.”

Then he turned suddenly to his servant.

“Damn you, take the cartridges in your left hand,” he said. “Don’t you know that?”

Then followed ten memorable minutes. At the end Theodore lit another cigarette, for the one he held in the comer of his mouth had gone out.

“Yes, a good place,” he said. I enjoyed it. I missed once. How many cartridges?”

The camp-stool was folded up, and the cartridge cases counted.

“I suppose I didn’t miss, then,” he said. “Indeed, I thought the bird towered. Yes, fifty-three birds. How hot it is!”

Norah felt a sort of irritated pride in all this. Brought up, as she had been, in the atmosphere of English country-houses, she could not help being delighted that her husband should be so far beyond compare the finest shot of them all; even his quite unassumed indifference to shooting was a thing to be proud of. But in proportion as she could, so to speak, detach herself from him, stand outside and away from him and commend his skill, so also, by the same detachment, she could judge his straw hat, his silver-clasped cloak, his cloth-topped boots, and these she saw to be as ridiculous as his shooting was admirable. But the power of doing either the one or the other came to her, to tell the truth, only in gleams and flashes; only for a moment, like some diver-bird coming up to breathe, could she look on him from outside, standing away from him, judging him, appreciating him. For all the rest of the long hours of day and night she could not do this. He was he—she could only momentarily see beyond this—her husband, the man whom she feared, of whom her fear got deeper and deeper with unreasonable, nightmare-like intensity the better she knew him. Even before she married him she feared him, but with a very different fear to this. Then there was something exciting and alluring in her fear, even as a child feels a pleasing terror at playing hide-and-seek in a dark room, knowing indeed that something may stir in the blackness and leap upon it, but conscious all the time that what will leap upon it is really no bogey, but a friend. Also, a wild scamper to the door will restore the light to it. But now it was no longer a fear of that pleasing, exciting kind that filled Norah. She was in the dark room, and had gone there of her own accord; but the door had been shut, and in the darkest corner something was stirring. But she was not at all sure it was a friend. It was real enough, though, and it was terrible.

Now exactly why she feared him she could not tell, otherwise she might have found a weapon to fight her fear. Not a day passed without her questioning herself as to what her fear was, but she could never find an answer for it. It was some instinctive fear that could not be reasoned about, some feeling that she was in his power, and that she could not tell what that power was. All that she could dissect in him, all that she could reason about, was superficial to that which lay below. His extraordinary cleverness, his almost womanly intuition, his certainty of judgment (of which his deduction as to why she wanted her quarter’s allowance prepaid was but an infinitesimal instance), she regarded as things as unessential to him, the real man, as were his straw hat or his skill with the gun. It was not for any qualities she feared him. These were all characteristic of him, they were inseparable from him; but it was himself, what he was, that she feared. All this, too, made her unnatural, she was never at her ease with him, and just as an animal bites because it is afraid, so constantly she found herself opposing his will, merely because she feared him. Not that her opposition helped her; as this morning, a very little, a few short sentences, a few rather more terrible silences, were sufficient to break it down, and she advanced to these contests shaking in spirit, certain of defeat. What, too, made it worse was that he seemed to enjoy her opposition as a man enjoys playing a firmly-hooked fish. The playing it, the subduing it, as if it was an enemy, gave more pleasure than the regarding it afterwards as it lay gasping on the bank, a friend, as it were, again, to be present at the table. She felt that he cared less about the fact of victory than the process of it. And always, after one of these skirmishes, he was in an admirable humour; he would give her some little, pecking caress, and call her his “happy warrior.” He even seemed to provoke her to them, and though she had resolved fifty times not to be provoked into opposition, yet he usually managed to effect his purpose.

This fear of him, and the nervousness it produced, had already become chronic. When other people were with them it was less acute, but even then she was constantly wondering whether she was behaving in a way that satisfied him, or whether she might not be incurring for herself a few acid comments when they were next alone, which would sting her into retort despite herself and bring on one of these sickening little engagements. At other times she would, again despite herself, cast prudence to the winds, and intentionally speak or act in a way that she knew would displease him. Once, indeed, she was pointedly rude to him in public, but that was not likely to happen again, for she still quaked at what had followed. It was the only time she had seen him really angry with her, and she did not want to see it again. He had said so little, too; he had only told her that he had imagined she was a well-bred woman and was sorry to find he was mistaken. And then he had pointed to the door.

“Go up to your room, and wait there till you can behave yourself,” he said.

And she had gone, and remembered still how her knees had trembled so that she could scarcely walk upstairs, but kept glancing nervously behind her to see whether that white-faced, pale-eyed man, whose finger as he pointed was shaking with anger, was following her.

CHAPTER VIII

The game-keeper’s cottage, where they were to lunch, was more than Theodore could manage, for it was stone-floored, and smelt, so he said with a little cackle, of Sunday morning.

Also the damp—he explained all this—was beginning to penetrate through his cloth-topped boots, and to sit in damp boots was a thing he had never done yet and did not propose to begin doing now. An even weightier reason for his returning was that the drive had suggested to him a “ scheme” for a new piece of embroidery, namely, of birds falling against a blue sky. He was delighted with the idea, and though he would have considered the morning wasted if he had only shot, it was now full of gain, since it had suggested this design. So the valet, bristling with guns like Gibraltar, and further encumbered by the silver clasped cloak, the cigarette-box, the straw hat, and the camp-stool, followed his master home. Besides, there was going to be a small dance that night, and Theodore, though he did not dance himself, intended to be present. He wished, therefore, not to tire himself, but to rest a little, especially since he had hardly slept at all the night before.

After lunch, however, there was not much more shooting, for the brilliance of the morning grew thickly over-clouded, and by four o’clock the light was already getting very uncertain, and thus it happened that before five the whole party was home again, and at tea in the library. Theodore, however, was not there, and inquiry showed that he had gone up to his bedroom with orders that he was not to be disturbed till it was time to dress.

Paul’s spirits, as was usual with him, though sufficiently exuberant in the morning, had been steadily rising all day, and by now they had reached a very fair level of fatuity.

He, Norah, Frank Pakenham, and Lady Anstruther had all walked home together, talking simultaneously and not listening at all to each other. But after tea the usual dispersal to ‘ rooms had begun. Mrs. Atley had already retired, brimful of information, and, like Theodore, inspired by the events of the day with a new design. “The Scarlet Sinners,” in fact, with all its concomitant Viscounts, and their unexplainedly ennobled sons and daughters, was going to be shelved for a time, and she was already hard at work making notes on a sheet of what is known as “sermon” paper, at the top of which she had written as title the magic words “The Heir to the Dukedom.” Theodore, in fact, was to be laid before the eyes of her discriminating readers.

Paul had got up, full of secret joy, as she left the room.

“She has been gleaning romance all day,” he said. “I saw her sucking it in like a dry sponge. I hope she’ll put me in.”

“She put me into her last book,” said Lady Anstruther with pardonable superiority. “I am told I was the Lady Angela Chateau-Marnet. I had red hair, blue eyes, a highbred, aristocratic look, and quelled people by a glance. It was absolutely unmistakable.” i Paul shook his head.

“Oh, she has done with you, then,” he said. “She didn’t pay the smallest attention to you to-day. No, Beckwith and I are the favoured ones. I am to be the poor young man of obscure origin-”

“You are my cousin,” remarked Norah.

“I know, but you are obscure, too, except as Beckwith’s wife. No, he is the stars and garters of the piece. She couldn’t take her eyes off his cloak; it absolutely fascinated her. Oh, by the way, Norah, I want to talk to you. Yes, and she asked me what rights and lefts were, and so I told her they were partridges. That will be a dangerous page or two. I shouldn’t wonder if we had one of those descriptions of spring mornings in the country, with the dear little rights and lefts chirping in their nests.”

Lady Anstruther got up.

“Well, I’m going to my room,” she said. “It is next Mrs. Atley’s, and I shall hear the swift scratching of the inspired pen.

Paul put down his cup and came and sat next to Norah in a rather remote corner.

“I haven’t had a word with you all day,” he said. “Can’t we go and talk somewhere?”

“Yes, let’s. I haven’t seen you for so long. Come upstairs in a quarter of an hour, when I’ve got my wet things off. They’ve given us a sitting-room, but Theodore is in his bedroom, so we shall have .it to ourselves. Anything special, Paul?”

“Yes, something rather special.”

Norah got up.

“ How nice,” she said. “At least, I hope it’s nice. Come up in a quarter of an hour, then. It’s the end room of the passage, nearly opposite you.”

Norah was ready before Paul, who was dressing for dinner, so that they could talk till it was time to go down again, and waiting for him, looked through a few letters and remembered she had received some the evening before, of which she had now but a very imperfect recollection. They were not in her room apparently, and it suddenly struck her that she had read them, or rather glanced at them, in the library. The room was empty when she got down there, and she found them on the table, and with them her pass-book, half out of its envelope. She had not looked at it yet, and the fact of its arrival had not recalled itself to her all day. But now she drew it quickly out of its case, and opened it. The last entry on the debit side was the sum of five hundred pounds drawn to her mother.

Norah stood with this open in her hand a moment, recalling to her mind exactly what had happened yesterday afternoon. She had come into the library after picking up her letters in the hall, had talked to her husband a little, and then gone upstairs to change, leaving her letters there. Then this morning she had found out that he knew all about her disposal of her quarter’s allowance, and—judging from previous experience—had put it down to his extraordinary acuteness. But surely this was a far simpler explanation— he had looked at her pass-book.

She picked up her letters, and walked slowly upstairs again, not exactly thinking, but rather contemplating intensely. Her husband’s knowledge of how she had disposed of her allowance had seemed to her thoroughly characteristic-characteristic, that is, of his hideous quickness of perception. But here was the explanation—it was no cleverness at all, but merely a mean little dishonourable action; and she said to herself with bitter cynicism that it was her own fault. She ought not to have left her things about for servants, or her husband, to read. And was perhaps all the rest of him, his uncanny power over her, to be explained in some such other way? Was he nothing but a clever little mountebank? But that idea was but momentary, though whether she wished that she could think it true or not she hardly knew. But when to his horrible unexplained mastery over her there was superadded the fact that perhaps he did not disdain to read her private papers, she felt bitterly and cynically that there was indeed no vulnerable point in his armour.

She had, however, little time to think over this, for at the moment as she gained the top of the stairs he came out of his room, walking towards her very briskly, and whistling some merry little evil-sounding tune.

“And here’s my wonderful, strong Norah,” he said, “sweeping along like a queen. I have slept for an hour. And you are going upstairs, are you, to talk to Paul? That is right. He is waiting for you in your sitting-room.’*

He had laid his hand on Norah’s arm, but she shook it off. She had never felt so angry in all her life, but her anger was not disposed to noise or wordiness. It was quite still and calm and hot, like the whiteness of fire in the centre of some furnace.

“Don’t listen at the door, will you, Theodore?” she said quietly. “You know what happens to listeners.”

He put up his pince-nez and regarded her unwinkingly.

“Are you mad?” he asked.

“No, not in the least.”

He glanced at what she carried, and then suddenly laughed, his good-humour apparently quite restored for the moment.

“Ah, I see,” he said, “your pass-book. Well, you shouldn’t leave things about if you don’t want them read.”

“I thought only servants and that sort of person read private things not belonging to them,” she said. “I was wrong. I shall know better in the future.”

Theodore still looked at her steadily.

“You are quite splendid when you are angry,” he said, “and you can be angry as often as you like with me. Only you mustn’t speak to me like that. I won’t stand it for a moment. You had better beg my pardon.”

“You had better beg mine,” said she, though, as she said it, her voice trembled, and she felt her fear of him again gaining on her.

Theodore shrugged his shoulders and passed on.

“You are not wise,” he said over his shoulder to her.

Norah was still too angry to care about that, though in her inmost self she was afraid she knew it, and she went into her bedroom a moment to compose herself before she joined Paul in the next room. This discovery that her husband was not above doing what he had done, using his knowledge without shame, and being still perfectly shameless, only when discovered, recommending her not to leave her things about, was absolutely intolerable to her. She was utterly incapable of that sort of thing herself, and correspondingly incapable of excusing it in anybody else. Also, her feeling of helplessness in his hands had immeasurably increased, and she had learned another inexplicable thing about him. But Paul was waiting for her, and in a minute or two she joined him.

He was sitting in a long chair facing the fire, as she entered, and instantly began to talk.

“Ah, that’s jolly,” he said. “Now, Norah, before we really begin to talk, I mean before we both gabble, I’ve got something to say.”

He looked up, and saw the trouble and anger in her face.

“Why, what’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing. Perhaps I’ll tell you afterwards, or perhaps I won’t. Say what you’ve got to say first. Oh, Paul,” and she gave a great sigh, “I do hope it’s nice. I want something nice most frightfully.”

Paul, for all his ill-success with the directors of the insurance office, was a person of perception. He did not for a moment press for a confidence, or even express regret that she was troubled, but did exactly as she told him.

“Your husband wants me to be his secretary,” he said— “wants me to live with you, and all that.”

Norah had not sat down, but was walking up and down the room. But at this she stopped abruptly. For the moment it seemed far too good to be possible. Paul with them always; the whole nightmare of her loneliness with her husband would be removed. Yet Paul would see—and her pride revolted at this—how terrible a mistake her marriage had been. But on the other hand he would understand, and she liked him too well for his pity to hurt her since it is only the indifferent whose pity wounds. But his tale was only half told yet.

“And are you going to consent?” she asked, trying to command her voice.

“I hardly know; I wanted to consult you about it. Really, it is awfully good of him and he is making me the most generous offer.”

“Theodore is wonderfully generous about money,” said she.

“I know; that’s so jolly of him. Most of these rich people are such awful skinflints. But I really hardly think I can. Of course, it would be awfully nice being with you, and all that, but somehow to be a man’s secretary like that, with really so little to do, is rather like being put into somebody else’s pocket. It sounds dreadful nonsense to talk about the dignity of man and that sort of thing, but really there is something in it, when one is brought face to face with this. Supposing I wanted—oh, anything—to marry, to go away on my own account for a bit, to go and stay with other people, I couldn’t do it. It is an end to one’s independence.”

Norah’s heart suddenly sank, but she managed to speak as if she was discussing some indifferent and neutral matter.

“I don’t really quite see that,” she said. “I don’t see that you are any more independent now. As for marrying, for instance, you can do it equally well if you are Theodore’s secretary. And as for going about and staying with people, you can only do that, as it is, in your holidays, and, of course, Theodore would give you a holiday.”

She paused a moment, and her next argument had weight with him.

“Oh, Paul, it would be such fun!” she said.

Paul had forgotten for the time all the trouble he had seen in her face when she came in. With his genius for being absorbed in the immediate question, he had banished the other.

“Yes, I know it would be,” he said, “if you haven’t given up playing about, as you said you were going to. Have you given it up, by the way?”

“I think perhaps I should take to it again,” she said.

He lit a cigarette and got up, standing with his back to the fire.

“I really don’t know what to do about it,” he said. “If doesn’t lead to anything, you see. After a certain length of time I should have to begin again with something. I can’t go on being a secretary till I am seventy.”

“Oh, after a certain length of time we shall all be safe in our graves,” said Norah suddenly.

“Yes, no more playing about for anybody,” observed he.

There was a long silence. Paul, for his part, was ruminating with unusual concentration on the offer; Norah was racking her brains for some additional reason to suggest why he should accept it. She desired so much that he should that she could not seriously weigh the pros and cons of the question, for matters of feeling admit of no reasoning. Then she dismissed this ineffectual brain-work altogether, and spoke simply and inevitably, as she must.

“I implore you to say ‘Yes,’” she said.

This recalled Paul from the consideration of his prospects to her. For in her voice, when she made that appeal, there was a ring, an earnestness that was new to him. A woman whom he did not know spoke to him, a woman in some dreadful need and distress, calling on her friend. In all the years of their friendship she had never spoken to him like that; she had never like that “cried aloud with her voice/’ and among the thousand times that she had called to him to join her in the thousand pursuits they had followed together, that note of imminent need had never sounded. But it sounded now in no mistakable way; it was the wail of some trapped animal.

The moment she had spoken she knew what she had done; she knew she had called on Paul to help her, and on the moment he sprang to her. And at that moment all “values” were changed between them; each stood to the other (since in spirit he had instantly and instinctively responded to her call) in a new relation. They had been equal before, boy and girl playing together; now she leaned on him and he braced himself to the weight.

“What is it, Norah?” he said. “Tell me, for heaven’s sake, tell me.”

Norah did not reply at once, and in her silence those forces within her, her fear, her indignation, her bitter contempt, mingled together, forming, as it were, an explosive which she could not resist And when she spoke the words came in a torrent.

“Go and see then, that he is not listening at the door,” she cried, “while I search in the bedroom. Yes, it is Theodore I am speaking of. He is capable of it—oh, he is splendidly capable in all ways. He is master at whatever he wishes to do. You saw him shoot to-day. Well, he is like that all through. He is perfect, that is what he is. There is no weak place anywhere.”

The words had spurted out like some far-thrown arch of boiling water, and she was silent again as suddenly as she had spoken. Paul was standing in front of her, with bewildered dismay on his face. Eagerly as he had answered to her call to 1dm, he was still utterly at sea, her cry was not yet articulate. She was in need; there was something horribly wrong—he knew no more than that.

“Theodore? What do you mean?” he asked.

Norah looked at him a long moment without replying; her face was flushed, her breathing quick. But when she spoke, she was in her own control again; the words were no longer things she hurled.

“I am afraid of him,” she said, “and it is being alone with him that I fear most. Sometimes his sister is with us, and then it is not so bad. Sometimes—ah, it’s no use my telling you, I don’t see how you can understand.”

“I can try,” said Paul gravely.

Then he gave a great sigh.

“Oh, Norah, I am so sorry,” he said. “Why one of the nicest things in my life was the belief that you, my oldest and best friend, so much so that I feel as if 1 had no other friend but you, were awfully happy, having an awfully good time. I am sorry. There is no need for me to say that, is there?”

This, too, was product of the new relationship in which each stood to-day for the first time towards the other. Yet it was but the natural outcome of their long boy-and-girl friendship; the strong human sympathy of man for woman or woman for man had, perhaps, always been there, waiting in the shade till need, as now, called it out. And though, as he had said, there was indeed no need for him to tell her his regret, yet that simple avowal of it touched her, intimately and profoundly. And for the first time she realized that he, a man, stood by her, a woman, and gave her his sympathy and the true pity that cannot wound.

“Thank you, dear Paul,” she said. “But before I tell you more, I want you to make up your mind as to what you are going to do, whether you are going to take the post he has offered you or not. Because, if you are, I think I would sooner tell you all, rather than that you should see it, as you -will by degrees and bit by bit. But if you are not, I naturally do not want to say any more; Only I think I had no right to say 1 implored you to accept it. . I did that without thinking. I don’t really want to influence you in your decision by any wish of my own, however keen. If you took it simply because I wished it, and hurt your own life in consequence, I should never forgive myself.”

“Ah, but how can I do that?” said he quickly, his keen boyish perceptions showing their swiftness in this new sphere. “I can’t decide, leaving you out of the question like that. I shouldn’t wish to, even if I could. For surely there is no more potent determining factor in any decision than how one’s friends are affected by it. One isn’t quite so odiously selfish as to think only of one’s self. Besides, one can’t. One can’t conceive one’s self existing except as part of the group of one’s friends.”

“Oh, I should never have said it,” said she.

Paul looked at her a moment with a kindled eye. The change that had so suddenly taken place in their relationship was evident to him also, and it was more absorbing than their days of play had been.

“ You would have treated me very shabbily if you had not said it,” he said. “ I have the right of a friend to know how my actions affect you. So go on, Norah. Tell me just all you wish to tell me.”

“ You mean you are going to accept?” she said.

“That is the most unnecessary question I have ever heard,” he said.

But she was not satisfied.

“ Ah, you mustn’t do it—indeed, you mustn’t—because of me.”

“ I do it because I couldn’t possibly do otherwise,” he said quietly. One can’t in this world act as if one was hermetically soldered up inside a tin can, so that what one does is circumscribed within the tin. It would have been impossible, too, for you not to have told me how you felt about it. Why, surely-”

He paused a moment.

“ Surely we are friends,” he said. “ And that is such a big word.”

It was, indeed, a big Word, and Norah knew: that as it applied to herself and Paul it was a big thing, so big that no more words were required on the subject. Then, after a moment, she turned away from him and sat down.

“ And now, Paul, if you will listen,” she said, “I want to tell you certain things, now, myself, and once and finally, so that you will not in the future guess and worry and wonder, and so that I also shall not be always trying to conceal what I know cannot be concealed, and be wondering how much you guess. It will not take very long, but don’t interrupt me, please.. I want to get through with it.”

There was dead silence a moment. Then Norah spoke.

“You must give up what you called one of the nicest things in your life,” she said. “ My marriage is not exactly a happy one. It is easy really to put it into a word. You and I are friends, are we not? Well, Theodore and I are not friends. Again and again I irritate and disappoint him, and again and again he terrifies me. I suppose it merely amounts to what they call incompatibility. Well, incompatibility is a very serious thing. Do you know what it ends in, at least, what I fear it ends in? It ends in hate.”

Certainly, “ one of the nicest things in Paul’s life” was breaking up somewhat. In fact, it would not be too much to say that already there was nothing left of it. But in some subtle and but half-understood manner he felt even now that another thing was beginning to occupy its empty room. What exactly it was he did not know; all he knew was that his old playmate was taking him into regions that in all the years of their intimate companionship they had never explored, and that though these, so far as she had told him, were horrible places, full of terror and misunderstandings, yet the fact that she was taking him there, that he was her chosen companion, overpowered the rest He was not dismayed for her, all his thoughts were concentrated on what part he could play here, what help he could bring.

“ Paul, I believe it is you who can save us both from that,” she went on. “ He likes you; you suit him, you are strong, and you laugh and enjoy yourself. Just now, to put jt quite baldly, he doesn’t like me. I haven’t laughed, much lately, when I have been with him; I haven’t enjoyed myself. And the fact is that he lives, he thrives, on the enjoyment and high spirits of other people. That sounds as if his was a very amiable nature.”

She paused a moment, and then quite suddenly she lost all control over herself.

“Amiable!” she cried. He thrives on it, but he thrives on it as some vampire thrives on blood. I feel him spying at me, to see if he can find a bit of enjoyment, so that he may suck it out. He treats me always like that; it is on that he lives, and on my life and my beauty, such as it is. Once when we were alone he made me dress up in gold brocade; he hung ropes of pearls round me; he himself sewed all my diamonds on to the front of my gown, so that it was a river of precious stones. And he licked his lips, he called me his Queen of Sheba, and said he would teach me the wisdom of Solomon. That was the first time that I was filled with some dreadful horror of him. I remember I tore the pearls off. I said I was his wife, not his mistress. You may not understand that, but it is true; a man’s wife may be no more than his mistress.”

Norah gave a bitter little laugh.

“Yes, and indeed what have I to complain of?” she said. “Does that sound as if he ill-treated me, when all he did was to cover me with diamonds and pearls? And he doesn’t sleep; I don’t believe he ever sleeps. His brain never winks any more than his eyes wink. Oh, thank God, you are coming to live with us 1 He doesn’t like me, as I told you, and he does like you. Oh, it ought to be so easy I have only got to laugh and chatter as I used to with you, and eat a great deal with great enjoyment. and he would be perfectly satisfied. But I can’t alone. But you can. For heaven’s sake, enjoy yourself! It will make me enjoy myself again, and then he will be pleased, and then perhaps the incompatibility will cease, instead of going on from worse to worse.”

Norah stopped abruptly.

“I don’t know what I have been saying,” she added.

Paul jumped up. He had seen his line, and, with his usual swiftness, made up his mind to take it.

. “And I don’t know either,” he said. “I think you have been talking nonsense. Look here, Norah. I am going to tell you the position in which we all stand. The past, whatever it was, is over. I am coming to be his secretary, and we shall have the most glorious time. I should just think it was easy to enjoy one’s self! At least, I have never yet found the slightest difficulty about it, and I don’t intend to begin finding it now. Or is it any use talking about these past things any more? If it is, let us do so. But I don’t see what purpose it serves.”

Norah had ceased from her hurried walk up and down the room and was standing by the fire. Her agitation had subsided as quickly as it had sprung up, but here her face suddenly flushed again.

“But practically,” she said, “what would you do in certain contingencies?” It is all very well to say they belong to the past, but it is for that reason that they occur in the future.”

“What contingency?” asked he.

“That of his looking at private things one has left about.”

“Does that happen?”

“It happened to-day.”

“What a beast!” said Paul thoughtfully. “I think I should shake him. But what I should not do is to get agitated or angry.”

“Oh, it’s easy to say you wouldn’t be this or that,” said she. “But what are you to do when you can’t help it?”

Paul made a solemn, Sunday-school face.

“I should dismiss the failure from my mind, and hope for a more abundant measure of grace in the future,” he said.

Norah did not reply at once. Then the corners of her mouth broke down and she laughed.

“Oh, Paul, sometimes I think you have solved the whole riddle of life,” she said.

“And what is the answer?” he demanded.

“Why, to be the sort of person you are; to let nothing interfere with or diminish your powers of enjoyment, just as Mr. Gladstone let nothing interfere with his eight hours of solid sleep. How do you do it?”

Paul was a better practitioner in the art of joy than theorist, and he pondered over this.

“I think it’s only the donkey and the hail-storm,” he said, “One has to turn one’s back, and munch a thistle the while if possible. But, above all, if nothing can be done, just as no amount of thought will stop the hailstorm, it is most important not to turn one’s imagination loose upon it. It is especially so too, I think, when it is what you spoke of, terror, that is concerned. Why, there’s nothing that one couldn’t be afraid of if one only thought about it! Everything invests itself in terror if you give it leave. Life is terrible, death is terrible; we are all terrible. And—”

He broke off with a laugh and looked at her.

“Go on, do go on,” said Norah.

“Well, it is this, and it may conceivably be of use. Now, the other day our head director gave me a serious talking, to. He talked about the opportunities of youth that would never come again, and the formation of habits, till I felt like a crushed worm. But he had neat button boots on, extremely tight, and, as he talked, he walked, and as he walked one of the buttons flew off with incredible violence, and hit the wall opposite. Well, that was ludicrous, and it made me feel so much better. I think—I think it helps one to remain cheerful if one preserves a sense of the ludicrous.”

The application of this was obvious enough, but Norah shook her head.

“No, that doesn’t help me,” she said, “because things ludicrous and commonplace alike get invested with terror. Oh, Paul, I should have liked to see the button fly off!”

“I know you would. I’m glad you weren’t there. As it was, I had to put my tongue firmly between my teeth all the way round, and bite it.”

She was silent again.

“And I may take you and your gift of yourself without any back thought, then?” she asked at length.

“If you call having six hundred a year for light secretarial work a gift of myself, you may,” said Paul. “But it seems an odd use of words. It doesn’t make much sense.”

She got up.

“Oh, you are good for one!” she said. “Were you always as good for me as that without my knowing?”

This time it was he who was serious.

“No, certainly not,” he said, “because such a situation, when one of us (it doesn’t matter which) wanted help, and the other perhaps could give it, real help, I mean, has never arisen till now.”

He looked at her with that luminous, wide-eyed gaze which she had seen so often, but never, as he had said, over a situation like this.

“It’s chapter two,” he said, “it’s quite distinctly chapter two. And I am sure of this, that chapter two will be far, far happier if you make a real fresh start for it, and begin it really on a new page. Of course—dear me, I’m afraid I’m preaching, and it feels so strange-”

“Ah, never mind that,” said she, “go on. It’s the more abundant measure of grace, you dear.”

“Well, as I’m in for it,” said he, “I mean this. Just take a good look back, Norah, and recognise that you have tried to irritate him. I’m sure you have. Well, don’t do it again. That certainly can do no manner of good. I don’t take his side, and I don’t take yours; my whole object is—it’s purely selfish—to get back one of the nicest things of my life again. I really want it very much. Perhaps all your whole story comes to is that you have been getting on each other’s nerves. That may happen to anybody. So just take out of the past the—the little bitter tonic of failure-dear me, what beautiful language—swallow it, and throw the rest away. And I, with all my fatuity and admirable appetite for all that is pleasant, am coming to help. Hurrah! no more office at half-past nine! But after all this serious stuff we can’t chatter, so I shall go away at once. Besides, it’s five minutes to eight.”

He had been gone not more than a couple of minutes when Theodore entered. And with Paul’s words about the bitter little tonic in her mind, she rose at once and came to him.

“Theodore, I am sorry I spoke to you in the way I did/’ she said. “I had no business to. I am sorry, too, for all the countless times I have tried to irritate and annoy you. I am going to try to do better. And Paul is coming to be your secretary.”

CHAPTER IX

It was just a fortnight after the visit to Ravenscroft, and Theodore, with his wife and Paul, were sitting over their coffee after dinner in his flat in Knightsbridge. Something had pleased the master of the house, for he leaned back in his chair with his shrill little laugh.

“I could listen to you two for ever,” he said. “You are both perfectly divine. Go on being violent!”

“Well, you would have been violent yourself,” said Paul, “because when Pve said I am engaged, and can’t come, I imagine that ends it. I don’t expect to hear anymore about it.’’

“But Mrs. Atley did,’’ said Theodore.

“Yes, she heard more than she bargained for. She asked me why, if it subsequently turned out, as it certainly did, that I was dining here alone with you, I said I should be out of town. Of course, I didn’t know why I said that. I told her I didn’t know why I said it. I almost defied her to guess.’’

“But why didn’t you dine with Mrs. Atley, Paul? “ asked Theodore. “We could have spared you.’’

“Well, then it wasn’t very complimentary of you,’’ said he. “Not that I knew that, or that that was the reason. I said I was going into the country because I didn’t think Providence could have been as childishly omnipotent as to let me meet her at seven this evening, quite clearly in town; and I didn’t dine with her because I didn’t want to. After all, that is the best excuse there is.”

“And you really prefer dining here with Darby and Joan?” remarked Beckwith.

Paul’s eyes flitted by him, dwelt infinitesimally on Norah, and came back to Beckwith again.

“Yes, certainly I do,” he said. “I know I shall have a pleasant evening here, and, after all, you can’t do better than that. Oh, I’ll go now, if you wish,” he added. “Only I want a cigarette. Do let us have cigarettes in with coffee.”

“ Go on,” said Theodore.

“I can’t. I’ve got nothing to say. A fog like this fills the convolutions of one’s brain with soot That was another piece of ill-luck. If Mrs. Atley had only been ten feet off instead of two, she would never have seen me. As it was, we embraced violently opposite Woolland’s.”

“Paul, you’re perfectly indecent,” said Norah.

“Well, a fog is indecent. It makes every deed a deed of darkness. Oh, just think of Silomo on this sort of day! Liquid sunshine, hot in the sun, cold in the shade, like that ice we had with hot cherry sauce. I wish I had had some more.”

“That’s greedy,” said Norah.

“Not in the least—merely regretful. I never have a glazed eye during dinner, which all greedy people do. I am only a hungry person, with a preference for things that taste delicious.”

“Mrs. Atley has been staying with the “dear Countess,” she told me,” said Norah. “She did not specify the dear Countess, as I was supposed to know. I didn’t, but it didn’t matter. And to-night the dear Countess was coming to dine with her.”

Paul was eating almonds rapidly.

“So nice for both of them,” he said. “ Mrs. Atley thinks she is being smart, and the dear Countess thinks she is being Bohemian. She’ll put her into her book, I expect, and then she will think she has only been mistaken, and not Bohemian. I’m sure you are going in her book, Theodore. She was terribly taken up with you at Ravenscroft.”

Letters had come in, and a servant handed a couple to Theodore and one to Norah.

“Aunt Kate,” she said. “I must read it. I’m sure there is something terrible about a kitchen-maid.”

Theodore had glanced at his, and laid them down again on the table.

“Go on,” he said again to Paul.

“No, I want you to go on. Look here, it is Christmas Day next week. If you really are going abroad before then, do tell me. If not, I want, if you can spare me, to stay with Aunt Kate for a day or two.”

“She wants me to come, too,” said Norah, “and it isn’t the kitchen-maid.”

“And she doesn’t ask me?” remarked Theodore.

“Well, you refused so very decidedly before,” said Norah.

“ But, of course, she would be delighted-”

“No, not delighted,” said Paul. “Less resigned.”

“ You mean more resigned, more content. Oh, have you ever seen Aunt Kate at a Christmas-tree? She looks as if it was slight refreshment for a party of mourners after a funeral. What a darling 1”

“ Oh, let’s all go,” said Paul. “ What do you say, Theodore? Shan’t we go there just for Christmas? I don’t like Christmas particularly anywhere. It is always so hot and stuffy. But one must have it somewhere. Or do you want to start South before?”

Theodore pushed back his chair.

“We shall start on the twentieth,” he said.

He picked up his letters as he spoke, and Norah rose. “We ought to start at once if we are going to play,” she said. “ It’s rather thick, and we shall have to go slow.” Theodore peered out of the window.

“ Too foggy,” he said. “Send the motor back again. We shan’t go out.”

“ Oh, but the play is admirable,” said Paul.

“Yes, but the fog isn’t Who wants to go out in this black, suffocating air to see a man who smiles as if he was bearing pain with Christian fortitude, and calls it acting?” “Aren’t we going, then?” asked Norah, pausing in the door.

“ No,” said Theodore.

Paul had got up, too, and was following her. Theodore stopped him, and Norah went out “ I wish you to look at this letter,” he said.

Paul read it.

“ I am sorry,” he said. “ I answered the first one in the way I understood that you wished.”

“Yes, no doubt, but you didn’t understand. That damned pig proposes himself for to-morrow. You ought to have made it clear that he couldn’t propose himself. You knew that, surely?”

“Yes, but I thought-”

“ It is that I object to. I don’t want you to think. You had better show me the answers you give to letters of this kind in the future.”

Paul turned quickly on him.

“Wouldn’t it save trouble, then, if you answered them yourself?” he said.

Theodore looked at him a moment, with his narrow, unwinking gaze.

“ That is rather a cool remark for a secretary,” he said. “ If I thought it would save trouble to answer things myself, I should do so, and also, I may remind you, have left you in your insurance office. Please bear in mind what I said. You know the spirit in which I want letters like this answered, for who wants to have a company-promoter of that description to dinner, as we shall have to? I would sooner have Mrs. Atley. Your answer should have made that impossible. Two words would have done it. Only you didn’t write them. If you have any doubt in the future, refer it to me. Now, dear Paul, let us go into the next room. The pianola has come, and I will play that heavenly Tschaikowsky-sky waltz, and you and Norah will dance. I love seeing you two dance. You flood the place with your vitality.” Theodore took his arm as they left the room together. “Iam sorry,” said Paul. “ It was quite my fault.”

“ Yes, of course it was, my dear fellow,” said Theodore. “ That is exactly what I have been pointing out.”

Ever since Theodore had seen his wife dancing with Paul at Ravenscroft a fortnight ago, he had had a sort of passion for seeing them dance together, a passion which it was perfectly easy for him to indulge, for die two were usually ready to gratify him. He had bought a pianola really for this purpose, and it was his delight to play waltzes for them while they danced. There was a big parquetted music-room in the flat, with only the piano in it, a few rugs on the floor, and half a dozen chairs that could be wheeled out in a couple of minutes; and, indeed, as they came out of the diningroom, they found the rugs and chairs in the passage, as if, as was actually the case, Theodore had already given orders. Norah had lingered in the hall while the few words on the subject of the misunderstood letter passed between the two men, and Theodore took an arm of each of them and directed them towards the music-room. But Norah hung back.

“The fog really isn’t bad, Theodore,” she said, “and I particularly wanted to see the play. After all, poor Mr. Bartlett’s smile doesn’t hurt.”

“It hurts me very much,” said he.

“I should really rather like to see it,” she repeated.

Theodore dropped her arm instantly.

“Very well, go and see it,” he said. “But don’t take the motor. I don’t have it hitting its nose against all the lamp-posts in London because you want to see Mr. Bartlett’s smiles. You’d better be quick; you’ll miss some of them.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“Certainly not. Paul and I will bore ourselves together. Or perhaps he wants to go, too.”

“I should rather like to,” said PauL

Theodore dropped his arm also.

“Then I will bore myself alone,” he said.

The servant was just moving Theodore’s embroidery frame out of the music-room into the passage.

“Take it back again,” he said, “and also a rug and one chair.”

He passed into the room, followed by the servant, leaving the others outside. They looked at each other a moment in silence.

“Are we going?” asked Paul.

Norah had taken up her cloak, but on this she put it down again. :

^Oh, I suppose not, since you think there is any question about it/‘she said. ……

Paul looked rather relieved.

“It’s no use vexing him,” he said. “I’ve made one blunder already to-day over some letters.”

Norah shrugged her shoulders.

“Come in, then,” she said.

Theodore had not yet sat down when they got to the music-room, but was warming his hands at the fire. He did not turn round as they entered.

“You neither of you ever seem able to make up your minds without shilly-shallying,” he observed. “I hope I am not unreasonable if I ask what you are going to do? If you are going, pray go; if you are not, perhaps you would shut the door.”

Norah laid her hands on his shoulders.

“We are not,” she said. “We are all going to stop at home.”

Theodore turned to the servant.

“Take the rug and the chair out again,” he said. “Now, just listen to this Tschaikowsky waltz.”

He tripped across to the piano, and turned on the “Valse des Fleurs” out of “ Casse-Noisette.” He managed the ingenious contrivance with extraordinary skill, and the full, rich tone of the Steinway grand gave admirable voice to his playing.

For once the curious underlying sadness of dance-music was absent; it was as if some velvety, voluptuous creature* not man nor woman nor beast, but an incarnation of the pagan, sensuous, earth-loving instinct, that which delights to lie in the sun, that which loves love and life and laughter, lay dozing, just ready to wake, without thought of evil or good, only resolving, as the pulse of life and the waking consciousness returned, to enjoy, to feel to the utmost, the warmth and pleasure of life. Quicker and quicker, with imperceptible crescendo and accelerando its vitality increased. From the dewiness of night was born the colour and brightness of day; flowers sprang into being round it; all the life and joy of Nature Was echoed in it, its pain amid sorrow and striving were- all - banished,’ and at - length. it started up fully aware of itself, tingling to enjoy.

Norah and Paul had remained by the fireplace when Theodore went to the piano, and for a bar or two they stood there looking at each other, while all that remained of the sense of friction and disquiet in the minds of each slowly filtered away, and was covered up by the suggestion of the dance. And as the music quickened and grew louder, their eyes dwelt on each other with an increasing vividness. Something, some further produce of the moment when she had turned to him for help, was hugely growing within them, though now it was not help that one asked for, nor help that the other gave. Youth and the dawning wonder of love blazed in their eyes; each was a beacon, feeding its flame on the blaze of the other. Then, only conscious of that, but stirred and swayed as the suggestion of that intoxicating music waved and waned, Paul took one step towards her.

“Come!” he said, “dance! dance!”

And just at the moment the time burst into its broadest, most compelling rhythm, they slid gracefully off on to the floor.

Theodore up till this moment had been mainly looking at the punched roll of paper that was unwinding itself before him, but when he saw the two begin, he hastily put up his pince-nez, and for the rest of the dance did not take his eyes off them. Often when they were dancing, Paul or Norah would call directions to him, telling him to go slower or quicker, or play louder or what not But to-night neither spoke, and he, with eyes fixed on them, half followed their movements, half dictated them, as the accompanist should. But in truth it was the spirit of the tune that dictated with imperious decision to all three of them; neither pianist nor dancers interpreted it; it stood in no need of interpretation. As it swept on its way, all Nature danced, and those two figures that glided with such extraordinary grace and harmony over the polished floor just obeyed and were wafted along, as unable to resist, and thinking as little of resistance, as thistle down before some warm west wind. Though often before Theodore had watched them with eager, delighted eyes, absorbed in the spectacle of their vitality and swift grace, to-night some harmony more subtle than he had ever seen before seemed to fit the one to the other, so that one will, one control, guided their movements, and made it impossible to think of them as two living and independent beings. It was a moment caught up out of the ordinary routine of existence, and made into a jewel. Jewel-like, too, were the dancers as their figures moved over the shining floor, and were outlined against the dark panelling of the walls, burning in the flame of life and youth and vigour. Then, catching up the various threads of melody into one great ball of manifold and glowing colours, and throbbing with the reiterated pulsation of its rhythm, the tune rose on wings for its final flight, paused for a moment, like a lark on the top of its soaring in a crystal heaven, and then, without dropping, without coming to earth, ceased, burst, like some poised iridescent bubble or vanished skywards.

The two stopped instantly, without step or movement’ more, and in the moment’s silence that followed, Theodore, without moving hand or foot, watched them. Just for that second or two they both seemed entirely unconscious of him or of anything else except each other, and stood in the middle of the room, still interlaced as in the dance, looking at each other. Neither smiled, however, both looked absolutely grave, as if some news of vital import had been mysteriously conveyed to each, some news that for the moment was all-sufficing, so that neither of them thought of consequences, or anything that should follow after, but was merely absorbed in the news itself. The floor, the walls, the piano, and the thin little eager figure that sat at it, were all expunged; it might be evening or morning or noon or midnight; time and space alike had vanished, and they stood alone in the solitude of the knowledge of Love.

But the moment so infinite in import was infinitesimal in duration, and one less quick, less hideously acute than Theodore might easily not have been aware of its existence, for immediately almost Norah spoke.

“Never was there such a heavenly tune,” she said. “Oh, Paul, I hate complimenting you, because you are quite conceited already, but really you danced well. You were always right, you were inspired. Theodore, let us have it all over again; we missed the beginning.**

Theodore gave a little sigh, and wrinkled up his nose, so that his pince-nez fell off, and dangled on the chain.

“Certainly not,” he said; “it is the utmost mistake to repeat an emotion, because one can’t ever do a thing twice running without being disappointed. You two danced divinely. How much more are we all enjoying ourselves than if we had gone to see Mr. Bartlett smile! Let us wait a minute. It was rather hard work.”

He rose from the piano and came towards them. Then half way across the room a sort of spasm of glee seized him, and he tucked his elbows into his sides, wriggled with laughter, and clapped his hands.

“I feel ten years younger,” he said. “You two were made for each other, made to dance together, and send me mad with watching you. Now, let’s have something quite, quite different, something formal and stately, and I shall know all the time that there is all the fire that blazed out then burning within you both, and that you behave all the time with old-fashioned courtesy and dignity. You two dignified after that last exhibition! How delicious! How absurd to talk of you as two! All the time you were one, just one verse from some Greek poet, just one page of Boccaccio. I don’t know what you were: you were life, life itself, not two little bits of life!”

Paul had said nothing, and was standing there feeling suddenly shy and awkward, looking now for a moment at Theodore, now at Norah. His hands were trembling slightly, and he fidgeted from one foot to the other and back again. While he held Norah close to him, and moved and glided in unison with her, the knowledge that he had fallen in love with her was expressed in melody and movement; rapturous though it was, it was natural, and was clothed in song and dance. But now, in this pause, it was oppressive, over- whelming; it bound him hand and foot, he felt he could not stir for the weight of the golden chains. There was something ominous, terrifying, about anything so strong: he could not tell what it would do with him, but knew that whatever it willed him to do, that would be done. Then, as suddenly as it had come on, this stupor of paralysis passed, the human ecstacy, the splendour of love, rioted again in him, he sprang forward to meet and welcome whatever might be. All the youth and vigour of life that had been his before were but the shadow of this.

“Yes, yes, you are right!” he cried. “Let’s have something formal, as you say. Let’s have a minuet. It will be like a cork to a champagne bottle.”

He looked round with a sort of air of inquiry.

“I suppose we are all mad, but I don’t think it matters,” he said, “and anyhow, it’s very pleasant. But if we have a minuet we must dress up. Dancing a minuet in modern clothes is quite absurd. So is a grand piano, by the way.”

Theodore again clapped his hands and wriggled with laughter.

“Paul, I delight in you!” he cried. “I had no idea how fascinating your sense of play was. As for the grand piano, if one puts a newspaper over the strings it sounds just like a spinnet. So go, like a good boy, and put on breeches and a ruffle of lace in your cuffs and at your neck, and take off your collar. And you, Norah, you shall put on that brocade of my grandmother’s. You will be too enchanting! too enchanting!”

That sense of awkwardness and shyness had passed from Paul, but suddenly for a moment another emotion, more violent, more blinding, took its place. Theodore had already taken Norah by the arm and was tip-toeing across the room to the door with her, and at this moment she looked back over her shoulder at Paul, with a laugh of childish enjoyment. A thousand and ten thousand times he had seen that delicious abandonment of pleasure on her face, and had echoed it in his own; but now his answering laugh fell dead, and instead of a surface smile to her, the whole consciousness of his nature was congealed and frozen by the iron touch of hate for the man who led her away. For just that moment he was conscious of nothing but this, a hate so black and intense, so enthralling too and domineering, that he felt he must scream aloud like some angry beast. But it was as momentary as it was intense, and a second afterwards, before they had reached the door, it had gone, and, like some throb of intense pain when the pain is over, it was already difficult for him to recall what it had been like. For the extremes of hate and love and fear and joy cannot be remembered by the normal mind. They may leave the hands trembling, or the mouth dry, but when they are past, the imagination cannot repicture them.

Perhaps, too, as he said, they were all mad; in any case these two sudden thrills of topmost emotion, the one as unexpected as the other, had given him a strange sense of irresponsibility. They were going to dance a minuet anyhow, and Theodore had said something about ruffles of lace and knee breeches, both of which were alien to his wardrobe. And he went after the others.

“You must lend me ruffles, then,” he said, “because I no more own a piece of lace than I do a white elephant. And knee-breeches, where are they to come from?”

Theodore turned round to him with a little brisk movement, rather as if a goat had wagged its scut.

“Oh, we’ll manage,” he said. “I’ll just get out Norah’s dress, and then I’ll come to you.”

Paul lingered in the hall till Theodore was ready, with the same sense of detachment and irresponsibility still on him. Then in another flash—it was like some room suddenly illuminated and suddenly black again—for one moment he saw himself and where he stood. And he stood between Norah and her husband, and for that moment knew it There, in his heart, beamed the beacon of love, and there, too, so that the two formed one flame, burned the fires of hate. And as he saw that, his own inner voice, the voice of conscience, of his best self, of God, for the three are one, told him that he must go away, that it would be better to go now, hatless and moneyless, in his evening clothes, just as he stood, anywhere, out into the cold thick fog, without shelter for his head, or rest for the sole of his foot, than remain in his present position in the house. He loved, he hated, and though that hate had come in a flash and gone, yet he knew he was capable, since he had felt it once, of feeling it again. And should that hate come as a guest to him, he knew also that he was no longer in his own control.

There was a tray with whisky-and-soda on a table there, and without thought he splashed the spirit into his glass, half filled it up with water, and made one gulp of it. And instantaneously almost, at the touch of the stimulant, his mood changed again. What if for that half second he had hated Theodore? What did it matter? He did not hate him now. It was not a normal movement of the mind that had hated him, but a sudden aberration, a slewing and skidding of himself, as a motor skids on a slippery road. It was outside his own control; it was the fault of the road. And the love that had come to him to-night? Indeed, that was no skidding or slewing; it was the strong and certain forward movement of himself. But as for there being any harm in it, the idea was so ridiculous that it was hardly worth a smile. Why should he not love Norah? Why, and why, and again why? That alone made going away an utter impossibility. Besides, had he not come here, taken the post he now held, really from friendship to her? That friendship was his still, but there was added to it a motive infinitely more potent. Even as a friend he did that for her, and should a lover do less than a friend?

Then Theodore’s voice broke in.

“Dress quickly, dear Norah, while I go and get Paul some ruffles. I have some, I think.”

He came out of Norah’s bed-room.

“Ah, there you are,” he said. “Yes, I am sure I can find you some lace. And as for knee-breeches, you must just turn your trousers up, and put on black stockings. It can’t be helped for to-night. I will order you some to-morrow. What fun dressing up is! Dressing up privately like this, I mean; not the scarecrow work of a fancy-dress ball, with all the old dowagers in London going as Cleopatra, and all the gay young men of fifty as Piers Gaveston.”

Theodore’s wardrobe surprised even its owner by its amplitude, and though it was clearly futile for Paul to attempt to get on knee-breeches belonging to him, his impersonation of an eighteenth-century figure looked splendid when he came into the music-room a quarter of an hour later.

The servants, under Theodore’s direction, had deadened the resonance of the strings of the Steinway with superimposed newspaper, and brisk tinklings took the place of the sonorous tones that legitimately belonged to it. Norah was not yet ready, but Theodore sprang from his seat and made the tour of Paul, so to speak, with jerks of delight.

“Perfectly splendid, perfectly splendid 1” he cried. “Now sit down there, and when Norah comes in, rise and bow to her. Mind you don’t catch your sword between your legs, though; it is fatal to dignity. She will surprise you I Quick, sit down. Here she is.”

Theodore hurried back to the piano as Norah entered, but though he knew what her dress would be, he was himself astonished at the effect. She had gathered her hair high up on the top of her head in one undulated wave up from her forehead, and fastened it there with an old-fashioned pearl brooch. In it, too, she had fastened three big white feathers that drooped on each side almost over her ears, giving her face a sort of china delicacy. Her gown was, in the fashion of that day, cut not very low, and round her neck were the famous pearls. One row hung close round it, the others, seven in number, took wider and wider circuits, and the longest hung almost to her waist. Tiny diamond clasps secured all but the first of these in position on her dress, so that they should not swing or grate in the movement of the dance. Down the front of her gown to its lowest hem was cascade on cascade of lace, over the gold brocade of the dress itself, and the sleeves, which left only the lower part of her arm bare, hung from her elbows in long, wing-shaped points.

She had no gloves on, but she had loaded her fingers with rings, and in one hand she carried a tall, gold-topped, ivory cane.

Paul rose as she came in, and bowed low over his three-cornered hat, while she, just smiling at him, sank down with rustle of gold in a long, stately curtsey. Then, still without speaking—to have spoken would have robbed their play of its seriousness—he led her into the middle of the room, made a little sign to Theodore at the piano and again they bowed to each other as the formal music of the Bach minuet tinkled from the muffled piano. They had often practised this before together, and knew their steps and movements perfectly. Both kept their eyes on the other, she with that little formal smile on her mouth with which she had acknowledged his first bow to her; he, grave, attentive, with old-fashioned homage in his look. With high, slow steps, and hands just touching at the finger-tips, he led her round from this place to that, passed her under his arm held high above her head, went backwards before her as she advanced, and advanced to her as she stepped back to her place. The thing was perfectly done; it was all formal, gracious, subdued.

But, as Theodore had said, indeed the fire burned beneath. Often as the two in days gone by had played together, they had never played with such deadly earnestness as now. To Norah, as to Paul, there was something dangerous and very real abroad. Or was she mistaken? Did she read into Paul’s long gaze, that never left her, something that was but a suggestion for which her own self, her own consciousness, was really responsible, and was the gravity and fire of his eyes but an instance the more of his utter absorption in their play? Yet surely she must have looked at him like this a hundred times before, without consciousness of his meeting gaze. But now she was intensely conscious of it, she thought really of nothing else; in a way it was an effort, a continual effort, to keep looking at him, as the dance demanded. Yet in spite of that, it would have been a greater effort, an effort of which she was incapable, to look elsewhere. Some tie, some bond, invisible, intangible, came out from her, and was woven into that mysterious magnetism that came from him.

What did it mean? she asked herself. What did it all mean? This was only Paul, the same boy whom she had known all her life. Or was it a new Paul? Had something happened to him also? . . . And at the piano sat her husband, with his eyes watching them all the time. How could he help seeing? Yet seeing what? What was there to see? Did fire indeed bum beneath? He had said something else, too; he had said it was ridiculous to think of her and Paul as two. They were one, he had said; one page of Boccaccio. Who was Boccaccio? What did it all mean?

The dance was drawing to its end; there were but a dozen bars more. Again, and for the last time, Paul’s hand was held high to take hers, and as the tips of their fingers closed together some thrill, vivid and authentic, passed from him to her, from her to him. She had her back to Theodore at the moment, and for one half second that formal, gracious little smile, which so well was suited to the dance, died from her lips, her mouth trembled, and her eyes fluttered. Some sudden commotion shook him also; the smile that had died off her lips, it seemed, had floated across to his, but it was formal no longer; it was compounded of longing and of ecstacy. And though no question was put even dumbly by either, both answered it. Then they parted again; once more she sank back in a long curtsey, once more he bowed low towards her, and as they rose again from the obeisance, in which the heart of each bowed down before the other, the tune ceased, and Beckwith still sat there a moment looking at them.

The music had been like some little runnel of water between green banks; it had been a breeze on a sultry day, the wind-stirred shadow of a tree in an oasis surrounded by blinding sun, and when it ceased, so it seemed to Paul, he came suddenly into a hot place, through which blew a wind from the open mouth of a furnace. For one moment passion of love and hate, and recklessness of all that should follow, blew hot and intense round him; all the vivid instantaneous emotions that had seized him before, each in turn, seemed to crowd round him simultaneously: longing burned white, and hate burned red, and all the potential violence of his own nature blew the bellows for these furnaces. For half a second he was lost and confounded in the tumult of his soul; his spirit was stabbed through and through. It was as if forms of supernatural force and of huge import were shaking him from sleep, and behold, the fiery-coloured day, the storms and the joys of human life, were lightened round him. All his life till now he had made a game of existence; like a child he had played on the sea-shore, picking up shells and the pretty luminous pebbles cast up by the sea, and though he had been ever on its margin, he had, boylike, been unconcerned about it, the jetsam it threw up had given him employment sufficient. But now some great billow from the wondrous deep had rushed hissing up the beach, and in a moment borne him back seawards. Angry and mountainous was its aspect, but the huge sun swung overhead, and turned the broken surges into prisms and rainbows of light. Love, hate, life were around him, and if death was of the company, little he recked it.

For that moment, in which was gathered up all that he had felt separately and singly before, he was hardly conscious of himself or his surroundings; the next the panelled room, with its shining floor, swam back into sight again. Norah had barely raised herself again after her final curtsey, Theodore had not yet risen after his final chord had tinkled on to the air. Then his shrill laugh broke the moment’s silence, as he began stripping out the papers he had laid over the strings of the Steinway. His thin, pale face was quite flushed; he was as absorbed in the performance as the other two had been in each other.

“I have never enjoyed an evening so,” he said, “and though I always delighted in you both, I never guessed what you were capable of. Now, don’t speak either of you. Stay where you are, and I will play the introduction to that Tschaikowsky waltz again, and when the dance begins, just rush into each others’ arms and dance!”

Norah was standing at the far end of the room, and her eyes looked for a moment at her husband, then at Paul. Then a sudden frightened look came into them.

“Oh, Theodore, I don’t think I can dance any more,” she said hurriedly. “I am tired; I don’t think—”

He interrupted her, banging his hand fretfully on the piano, so that the strings all jarred and quivered, and stamped on the floor.

“Oh, that is just the way with you!” he cried shrilly. “The moment I want anything you find some reason for not doing it. The moment I have a little pleasure, you delight in spoiling it all. Damn, damn, damn! And 1 suppose Paul is tired too. You always agree.”

But Paul did not agree in the least. He had returned to himself with extraordinary completeness, and knew only that he was having, as he would have said, “awful fun.” That sense of irresponsibility was his again, too; he only wanted to dance with Norah. Why, or what it meant, he did not care.

“Oh, you simply must!” he cried. “That minuet was a heavenly piece of acting: now we’ll be ourselves again. Please, Norah.”

Norah looked at his vivid, beseeching face, then at her husband. They both wanted this. Well, why not? Perhaps they were all mad. She nodded to Theodore.

“Begin, then,” she said. “I am ready.”

Theodore’s peevish ill-humour vanished at once. He had got his way, or Paul had got if for him, and that was always enough for him. Less than that, however, would not do.

“What a fuss about nothing,” he said, seating himself again, and putting in the roll of the Tschaikowsky waltz. “Now, do it just as I told you. Let yourselves go, you two dears; the minuet is over, poke up the fire, let it blaze. Dance, just dance!”

So at his bidding they danced, and the tune that played upon their hearts was now doubly intoxicating. They were young, life and joy ran riot in their veins, and they abandoned themselves to the delirium of the moment, thinking nothing of what should be after, or what had been before. Simply for these minutes they were themselves, children of the sun, and children of the earth, who are always so ready to hail the present moment as fair, if only, as it did now, it can absorb them. Neither wanted anything different, the knowledge of the huge secret which both knew so well, though no word of it had passed between them, swallowed up everything else. Nothing mattered except the present There had been no past; there should be no future. They were guiltless, they only loved. Oh, soft, unconquerable God I Theodore sprang up from his chair at the end.

“Oh, let us be wise,” he said, “and not degenerate into ordinary life again. I am an artist in sensation, and I know I am right. It is twelve already. Let us go to bed at once, and not crumble our impressions away by discussing them. I am so happy. I’m sure I shall sleep. But you two deserve a drink first. I will bring the tray in: I delight to wait on you.” He hurried on tip-toe out of the room with his little wriggling walk, and the other two were left alone. They said no word to each other, and stood apart, Norah fingering the circles of pearls round her neck, while Paul took a cigarette from a box that stood on the mantelpiece. He looked about for matches, but could find none there, and from outside sounded the jingling of glasses on the tray which Theodore was bringing in. Norah saw all this with hideous distinctness, saw too that a box of matches was standing on the piano. But though she opened her lips once to tell him this, she could say nothing, not even give him that very commonplace piece of information. Then he turned and saw the match-box.

“Ah, I want a match,” he said.

He went across to the piano, pulling up his sleeves a little, for the lace ruffles were rather long, and took up the box. From outside the jingling of glasses sounded rather louder. He took out a match and tried to strike it, and as he struck he looked up at her.

“Norah,” he said. “Norah-”

And Theodore entered with the tray.

CHAPTER X

Norah came down about nine the next morning, to find that she was the first to put in an appearance. This was as she had expected, for she had left her husband sleeping as she had never known him sleep before. She herself had scarcely closed her eyes, but never did movement of stirring come from where he lay, and all night long his breathing had been slow and regular with the calm respiration of sleep. Once, indeed, he had laughed shrilly, but the dream that amused him had not been vivid enough to awake him, and when she got up an hour ago he was sleeping still. Paul, on the other hand, usually made his appearance some three-quarters of an hour after breakfast-time and he had not come down yet.

Norah made tea, looked at the dishes on the side-table, decided against them, and took up the paper, feeling somehow the need to occupy her mind very urgent within her. She had thought enough: for the greater part of the night she had been thinking intently, going over the same ground again and again, and she wanted distraction. But the morning paper apparently did not give it, and after a minute’s rather absent scanning of its columns, she went to the window and looked out.

The fog, which had been sufficiently dense to keep them indoors the evening before, had vastly increased in darkness and opacity, and from the window she could only just make out the square shape of the barrack that stood opposite against the murky darkness of the sky. Here and there, up and down the streets, a faintly luminous tinge of orange showed where the gas-lamps were struggling against the prevailing blackness, but everything else seemed shrouded, sealed up, without communication. Isolated, too, and wrapped round in that dismal pall, were, so she thought to herself, all those who were groping along the streets: they were each of them units lost and unseen in this dim world; it was only when one came really into contact with another that he could have evidence that he was not alone in this world of darkness and obscurity.

She turned away again. This sense of loneliness, of being by one’s self in an atmosphere of dubious things, dangers, and difficulties, and not knowing against what dim form out of the fog one might not run up, somehow struck with a very intimate touch, for from a psychical point of view she felt herself strangely attuned to those groping figures that she knew were passing unseen, this way and that, so close to her in actual yards, but so impenetrably veiled. They were thoughts of this sort that had kept her awake during the night, and this analogy of the fog-lost folk outside had a curious fitness about it. Her general direction she knew, just as they did: she had to go straight on, to put the matter baldly, but what if she, like they, might get confused in the density of the air, and be turning to right or left without knowing it? She did not know either, any more than they knew, who was near her; a friend might pass a yard or two away, and yet as far as that was concerned, he might as well be in another continent. Or perhaps an enemy might pass just a little nearer, and suddenly loom up into the tiny circle visible. Then henceforth she would move in a solitude worse than the previous blankness; it would be solitude shared by some hated thing. And the fog, this inner, spiritual fog, might go on for years: nothing but death in some form, so far as she could see, could cause it to shift or clear.

All night long she had been wandering in these obscurities, and on no side could she see the least break in them. Supposing Paul, for some reason, left them, she felt herself unable to imagine what life would be. From the abstract, impersonal point of view, she believed that this was the only solution of the knot which had so suddenly tied itself about them, but in the concrete, and as it affected herself, she was unable to accept it. Besides, and this had no answer, why should he go? The real reason was one that could never be spoken by her. It had been in the main through her entreaty that only a month or two ago he had come to them; she could not now entreat him to go away. It was impossible for her to do that unless—well, unless he declared his love for her. After all, too, she was assuming that he loved her; she had got nothing to go on, except that he had looked at her. Then she dismissed that excuse as unworthy; she did know it, and whether it was by word or look or act that she knew it mattered not at all.

Yet the main argument held good. She could not go to him and say: “Paul, I am in love with you. Please throw up your situation and leave us/’ And if speech on the subject was to be initiated by her, it was that in substance that she would have to say, and it was a speech which no woman could make. But there lay something rather further beyond, and with a sudden impulse of honesty she dragged it out into the light, and asked herself whether, even if she could say that, she would do so. Would she on these grounds voluntarily send Paul away, banish him from living below the same roof as her husband and herself, just because she loved him? She knew she would not. No harm could come of this, and she felt her cheek burn at the thought, as if another had insulted her by suggesting it. It was a matter for herself—and Paul, it might be—to settle for themselves. If she, so long as the secret was hers, though, apart, it might be his also, did not wish him to go, preferred the anguish and the love that his presence brought to his absence, that was her affair. In any case, however, this was a matter utterly apart from the present practical bearing of the discovery that had come to her last night in the dance. She, at any rate, could do nothing, not even let herself contemplate doing anything, unless Paul spoke.

For a moment, as she had done at intervals during the night, she let herself go, told to herself, as if she ran over the pearls of some necklace that she fingered secretly, the wonderful shining joys that were hers. Though sometimes she seemed to walk alone, like those wayfarers outside, in a dense and blinding blackness, yet again it was no blinding blackness that encompassed her, but a mist of rose-colour and gold, thick, indeed, so that the outlines of familiar objects were but dimly seen, and even then only when they came very close to her. She might walk gropingly and slowly, but each step of the way was an ecstasy, and close beside her, so that they two were lost together, stood he who had turned the fog to gold and rose. Some spell, perhaps, was on them, so that they might not speak to each other, might not even hold each other’s hands; but the knowledge of the presence that makes the wilderness to be “paradise anew” was there. And so wonderful was that that she did not ask for anything more; she wanted nothing as yet beyond the knowledge that was hers already. For Love was hers, given and received, without token or bond or even touch of hand to seal it. Since the beginning of the world poets have told us that this is enough, but to the end of the world this unquiet race of mankind will continue to think differently. They will continue, in fact, to want. It would be vastly edifying if they did not, but romance would have a hard time of it. Also, from the human point of view, which, though it may be unedifying, has after all the right of saying the last word on the subject, it would be rather dull.

Just now, it must be confessed, Norah found it entrancingly otherwise. Some fever and zest of living that was new to her had taken possession of her; and though this fever brought with it a certain sense of unreality, since it was altogether strange and unexpected, it could not be called dull. Then behind her she heard the door open, and at that somehow she froze back again into the self that had been hers before. She felt embarrassed, tongue-tied; the limitations of life, the necessity of dealing with this moment and that, of “behaving,” of obeying the code that for one brief flaring instant she had labelled conventional, closed round her.

And Paul, still behind her, spoke.

“Morning, Norah,” he said. “Is it morning, do you think? Dark as hell, and smells of—of soot.”

This was authentically Pauline; somehow, no one else said things exactly like that. Not that such things had the smallest merit of any kind; they were merely characteristic of him. But though the words were authentic, the voice was not Paul at breakfast-time was always rather cross; though late, he always wanted to sleep rather longer. And though the insignificant, silly words were cross enough, the voice was not. It was studied; it was as if he had thought over what he was going to say, and anything less characteristic than that could hardly be imagined.

“ Morning? Oh yes, I suppose so,” she said. “Tea?”

“Thanks. Oh, not just yet. I must look at these letters, and tea ought to be boiling hot.”

He sat down at right angles to her at the table, and took up the pile of letters which were by his plate. Norah did not at first look up at him, but began hurriedly to eat the toast and butter she had put on her plate a quarter of an hour ago. Then with her eyes still cast down, she felt quite sure that he was looking at her, though the sound of ripped-open envelopes went on with regularity. The embarrassment of not knowing grew on her, and before long she raised her eyes, first to the teapot, then to the hissing water-kettle, and then sideways to him. At the same moment he glanced up, and their eyes met. She had been right, so she saw at once, as regards the studied voice, for his face was studied, too. She felt that, she knew it. Somehow, somehow—his ordinary face was worn there, but like a mask: there was something beneath. He was sitting sideways in his chair, turned towards her, and his fingers paused over the envelope he was opening. Then he laid it down unopened, and got up and went to the side-table, where the hot dishes stood. And the same studied voice spoke.

“ Hullo, haven’t you had anything?” he asked. “ Bits of fish, ham toast. Cold—cold something made of bird. What will you have, Norah?”

“ Nothing, thanks,” she said.

“Why so? Mayn’t I tempt you? By the way, I heard Mrs. Thingummy, the woman who writes novels—oh yes, Mrs. Atley—I heard her really say that seriously. She didn’t know; she thought it was a polite form of speech.”

“ Not even Mrs. Atley would tempt me,” said Norah.

Paul helped himself and came back to the table. He was conscious, even to a greater degree than she, of his embarrassment Like her, he too had lain awake most of the night, turning over in his mind, this way and that, the impossibility of the situation. Yet, even at the moment when he called it impossible, he called it also inevitable, and hugged it to him.

True, she had only looked at him, even as he had only looked at her, but deep within himself he knew. A hundred times he told himself that he only read into her what was written in letters of flame on his own heart, but he knew. It was not he alone who had flown open, as it were. Her smile, that formal minuet-smile, had for a moment last night left her face; she had looked at him with wonder of knowledge in her eyes. It was all unmistakable, because there was nothing in the world the least like it. He was no puppy, no slimy imaginer of self-conceited things; the knowledge had come to a perfectly child-like mind. But about the knowledge there was no doubt; he loved, and was loved.

He sat down again, and began to eat. But, suddenly, his mouth and his throat were dry, the power of swallowing seemed gone. His throat was a brick passage, unelastic, powdery; but at the lower end of if something hammered, and he supposed it was his heart He did not dare to look up; he just laid his knife and fork down on his plate, and waited. Mechanically he took up another letter and began tearing it open.

Then Norah spoke.

“Aren’t you—aren’t you going to eat your breakfast, Paul? “ she said.

He heard the words, the ordinary, commonplace words, and suddenly there occurred to him a story he had once been told about a gaoler who had gone to wake a man who was to be hanged that self-same day, and had told him it was a fine morning. Perhaps even then it was necessary to say something; as long as life lasted the fineness or storm of the day still mattered, and perhaps now the fact that he himself did not eat the cold something made of bird was better in speech than silence would have been, more decent, more reminiscent of the existence of other days for other people. And in that spirit he answered her.

“No, I’m not hungry,” he said.

“Tea?”

“Oh yes, tea.”

Then he laughed, one note of laughter, more like the clearing of the throat.

“We settled once, do you remember, that if we were on the rack we should still drink tea,” he said.

He spoke without thought, but the moment the words were said they both found the significance of them; and her hand so shook as she handed him his cup that it rattled in the saucer, and came near to spilling.

“I am clumsy,” she said. “Sugar? I forget.”

Again she caught his eye, and something within her failed; her wrist gave way, the teacup fell from its saucer, drowned the tablecloth and Paul’s untasted plate, and broke.

“Ah, how clumsy I am!” she cried. “Please ring; they must wipe it up and take away the bits. Oh, don’t; you will cut yourself. And they must bring another cup—yes, bring another cup. I am so sorry.”

A splash of the tea—almost boiling, as he had desired it— had fallen on Paul’s hand. He shook it off mechanically, but felt no conscious pain, for the lower planes of nerves and tissues of the body are powerless to make themselves felt when the great commanders and admirals of life give orders. And he, Paul, the body and nerves of him, were no more than a sailor who obeys some little order compared to the huge movement of the navies, on which depend the fortune and future of an empire. He did not ring the bell; he did not stir from his place, but leaned forward with elbows on the table towards her.

“What is to be done?” he said, speaking quickly. “ What do you want me to do? Do you want me to go away? I will—oh, my God, I can’t!” he cried.

For a moment Norah looked at him, then lowered her eyes, and fingered her rings. Then suddenly a despairing courage took hold of her.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “Why should you go? What is it all about? I—I-”

But she was capable of no more, and sat there helpless. And as they sat in this dreadful silence, with the smoking fragments of the teacup and the drenched tablecloth between them, there rose in her mind with the vividness of hallucination the vision of what her life would be like if Paul left them. She saw herself sitting alone with Theodore, here in London, or on the yacht, or out at Silorno in the Castello on the edge of the sea, and each vision in turn was insupportable, for each was painted with the colours of hatred and fear. She saw him, too, getting to hate her. She could not let Paul go; whatever difficulties might lie in front of her with him there, they made not a tithe of the impossibilities which would daily be hers if he left them. And her courage failed her entirely.

“I know what you mean,” she said, still not looking up. “It was foolish of me to pretend otherwise. At least, I—I am not strong enough to pretend otherwise successfully. I don’t want you to go. I can’t let you go.”

Then she looked at him.

“Unless, unless you yourself wish to,” she said. “But don’t go because of me. As far as I am concerned, oh, stop with us.”

He looked at her with a face that grew radiant as she spoke, and her face brightened from the reflection, as it were, of his.

“Let us forget all about last night,” she went on. “We were mad, I think. We-”

But he interrupted her.

“‘We,’ do you say?”

She put her hands together in a sort of entreaty, but did not correct herself.

“Ah, don’t, don’t!” she cried. “Let us forget about it. Yes, we. I think—we must talk about it this once—I think the music drove us mad. I don’t know what it was. We— we looked at each other too much. We let ourselves go. But we didn’t know—I didn’t, at least—that there was dan- ger. We will be wiser, now we know, will we not? You must help me. You must-”

Her voice failed and choked, and she looked at him dumbly, beseechingly.

“Yes, help me,” she went on. “It is you who make my life possible. We—we will manage somehow. But let us forget about last night.”

“As if I could forget!” said he.

“No, you can’t; no more can I. But we must put it utterly away. Of course, we can’t forget. But we can cover up the knowledge. We can-”

Paul got up quickly, for a hand was on the door, and began collecting the fragments of the broken teacup. Next moment Theodore entered. He had on a silk dressing-gown and morocco slippers, and came tripping across the room in the highest good-humour.

“I have slept,” he said, “as I never remember sleeping for years. Good-morning, dear Norah. Good-morning, you wonderful creature of the age of Anne. How is your lord-ship? And I feel so hungry, too; I actually want breakfast, which is such an English and manly thing to do that I am rather ashamed of it. And have you two dears been throwing the crockery at each other? I suppose that is a natural reaction from last night. When one has a great success one always feels cross next morning.”

Paul felt as if someone had jerked him, like a fish out of the sea, on to dry land, where for a moment he lay gasping. Then he remembered, so to speak, that he was no fish, and the dry land was his natural element.

“Yes, Norah threw a teacup at me,” he said. “But she couldn’t hit me even from there.”

“Why?” asked Theodore, hovering rather like a gnat over the dishes on the side-table.

“Because I would read letters instead of talking,” he said. “I told her that was what I was paid for. You never laid down that part of my duties were to amuse your wife, you know.”

Yet, try as he might, his voice was not quite natural.

The things he said were sufficiently Pauline, but Theodore, no less than Norah, noticed some abnormality in his tone. He glanced quickly at him for a moment, but said nothing, and came back to the table.

“I really think I shall get another secretary,” he said, “and make you chief dancer instead, Paul; you dance better than you write, you know. What a morning! Even Norah would not wish to go to see Mr. Bartlett smile in this.”

He peered out of the window before sitting down again.

“I delight in a fog occasionally,” he said. “One feels as one used to feel when one played games under the bedclothes when one was a child. One feels nobody can see one, however much they look—not even the nurse, the dreadful, omnipotent nurse. I was convinced my nurse was omnipotent; she gave me an orange, or took me to the dentist, exactly as it seemed good to her. I have never met anyone so omnipotent since.”

Norah got up; it was their custom at breakfast that any of them should leave at will without waiting for the others. But she had not spoken since Theodore came in, and though, it is true, there had been, in fact, no break for her to speak at all, since he and Paul had conducted conversation without pause, yet there are two very different sorts of silence— accidental silence, to wit, and essential silence. And though accidental silence, since the other two had talked; might have accounted for her want of speech, it struck Theodore that this was of the nature of essential rather than accidental silence. He had noticed already that Paul’s speech (though the things he said were normal enough) was not quite natural; he noticed now that Norah’s silence also was of unusual quality. And quick as a lizard, and narrowly as a snake, he looked at her as she got up. What he saw there brought back to his mind that moment the evening before, when, at the end of the first waltz, she and Paul had looked at each other without speaking. Her face was grave, as it had been then, and curiously intent; if was full of fire and tenderness. But the eyelids were heavy, as if she had not slept.

He had put up his pince-nez for this piece of observation; then, with a trick common to him, wrinkled up his nose so that the glasses dropped.

“You look tired, Norah,” he said. “Was the dancing last night too much for you?”

Norah had half turned away, and she started perceptibly as he spoke. To her great annoyance she felt she was flushing. But she answered readily enough.

“Oh dear, no. We enjoyed it—didn’t we, Paul?”

“I did,” said he.

“Ah, that’s capital,” said Theodore. “We will have plenty more of these balls for one couple and an organ-grinder. It will be something to do on the yacht, too, in the evening.”

Paul got up also, taking the letters.

“Oh, not to be in England, now December’s here!” he remarked.

“Well, you won’t be much longer,” said Theodore. “By the way, would your mother care to join us, do you think, Norah? My sister is delayed; she will come out overland.”

Norah leaped at this. Inconceivable as it had seemed to her half an hour ago to be alone with Theodore, somehow the picture of herself with these two was scarcely less difficult to imagine. But any addition to the party was an advantage. Four was infinitely better than three, five than four. She would have liked a crowd round about them always, so that they lived in the middle of distractions. And Theodore’s proposal that they should have many more of these balls for one couple had filled her with a sort of aching dismay. And yet, even as she quailed, her heart had bounded within her.

“Ah, do ask her,” she said. “I am sure she would love to come. She is never so happy as when she is at sea.”

Theodore laughed, but his merriment was like the sun in early spring, with the east wind blowing in it.

“Certainly I will ask her,” he said. “I expect it will be an economical arrangement both for her and me.”

“How do you mean?” asked Norah.

“Only that I passed her yesterday in a cab coming from the City.”

Norah had paused by the door.

“That is so like you,” she said.

But nothing could ruffle Theodore’s good-humour this morning. He had slept well, he was hungry, also some little ideas that had begun to take shape in his mind, owing to what he had observed in Norah and Paul at breakfast, amused him vastly. He laughed again.

“Oh yes, I keep my eyes open,” he said. “Though I’m very short-sighted, I have a certain range. Now, don’t bang the door. It is childish.”

“I had no intention of doing so,” she said.

“No, but you might do it by accident.”

All this, too, was thoroughly characteristic of him. Having little digs at other people at no time came amiss to him, and the fact that he was in a good temper himself did not make him dig the less, but only made him enjoy his digging the more. And Norah having left the room, he turned to Paul, to see if he could stand his brilliant touch better than she.

“I hope you won’t be dreadfully bored on the yacht,” he said. “It will be rather dull for you, I am afraid, just with Darby and Joan and Joan’s mamma. Why don’t you look about for a nice girl whom you can marry?”

Paul stood this pretty well.

“Oh, do find me one,” he said. “Somebody rich, please.”

“I think I won’t. I suppose you would leave me if you married? No, you had much better wait on and marry Norah when I die.”

That was a better dig; it got beautifully near a nerve. Theodore almost cackled with glee as he saw Paul quite distinctly turn paler.

“How he hates me!” he thought with amusement. “How he would like to throw the tea-kettle at me!”

And when Paul spoke, though again he was Pauline in substance, his voice was quite unsteady.

“Yes, do be quick about it,” he said. “And you might leave us the yacht as a wedding-present We should have a splendid time. Don’t be selfish, and live long.”

Paul looked down at the letters he carried as he spoke, and saw that his hand was so trembling that they visibly shook in his grasp. Somehow this came as a surprise to him. He had been conscious of a great effort to say something natural, and this betrayal of himself by his own flesh and blood struck him as an indignity. He felt himself saying to his own hand, “Keep still; I command you to keep still!” yet still it went on trembling like a steel spring. The very nerves and muscles of himself were out of his own control; he was no longer complete master of them. It was as though the hot air from some furnace of hate made them quiver.

Theodore did not reply to Paul’s last remark, but he noted, again with glee, the unsteadiness of his voice. He heard, too, the rustle of the papers Paul had in his hand, and even without his pince-nez could see them trembling. The next moment Paul had left the room.

He went straight to the music-room at the end of the passage, where they had danced the evening before, and where, in the morning, he answered letters, and sat down at his table in the window. But for a few minutes, though he at once began reading the correspondence, which to-day was rather heavy, he found that the letters simply meant nothing to him. He was incapable of fixing his mind on any sufficiently to gather the import of ordinary sentences, for his whole consciousness was absorbed in hate again—hate as sudden and overwhelming as it had been last night, when for the first time he knew what it meant. It seemed to him from Theodore’s tone that in some obscure and hellish manner he had guessed what he and Norah had spoken of; perhaps he had listened at the door, as she had once suggested he might do. And now he felt his ears buzzing with the vehemence of his hate; it tingled to the ends of his fingers. As he sat there collecting himself, the phrase “seeing red “ came unbidden into his mind, and he dismissed it as being totally inapplicable to what he felt. He saw black, hot, quivering black, of a hue as engrossing and indefinable as a nightmare.

For a moment or two he gave himself up to this master-passion; he encouraged it to take full possession of him, welcoming it, offering it, like meat to a wild beast, images and pictures of how he would revenge himself on Theodore, glut his devouring hunger by torture and death. He saw Theodore standing bound before him, while he pulled out with pincers the tongue that had just said these things to him. He imagined himself, hammer in hand, beating and breaking every bone in his body, so that he lay, a mere quivering lump waiting the more merciful blow on the skull that should end his torture. Norah must look at it, too; they would hammer him together. And at the thought of her the blackness of the black which he saw grew suddenly and infinitely more intense; it was as if out of the very soil and essence of love this hate grew. Vehement and vivid as he was in all he thought or did, he felt as if never until now had he concentrated all the energy of which he was capable as he concentrated it at this moment on this wild zest of hating. Yet it seemed to him as if some possession, some agency exterior to him, had the control of him; a huge, blind force held him in its grip, and his concentration was rather the completeness with which he delivered himself up to the control that hung this lurid blackness round him. And the blackness was quivering and instinct with some dreadful joy. The thought of it was honey to him, honey garnered from the flowers of hell.

For a minute or two, perhaps, he was gripped and held by this demoniac force; then it seemed to be slowly withdrawn again, and he came to himself, shaking and trembling, not now with hate, but with fright, with terror at this power in the grip of which he had been so helpless. It had been like a seizure that had overtaken his mind as some epileptic fit may make of the body of a sane man a foaming, wallowing thing, or as some poison may make the muscles and flexible tissues of the body into a rigidity that is like that of steel. But as this ebbed away, and he returned to himself, he was aware that in some curious manner the attitude, the contour of his mind was changed, as if the Hood that had passed over it had left some sort of sediment behind. For though the activity of hate was over, some searing, scorching process had taken place; bitterness was left behind, jealousy was there, dislike was there. Yet on these things a new sun looked down—love.

CHAPTER XI

Easter fell late the next spring, towards the end of April. This month had come in not so much like a lion as like a fish, and was going out, if like lamb at all, like hot roast lamb. In consequence, Lady Ravenscroft, who was spending a week or two with her sister, sad Aunt Kate, at Wroxton, was this afternoon sitting hatless and jacketless in the budding shade of the mulberry-tree in the garden, feeling that if any alteration was to be made in the temperature she would prefer that it should be in the direction of greater coolness rather than greater heat.

She was very well content, however, with things as they were, and this garden always seemed to her a place of singular charm. The house, of old red brick, opened on to it on one side, high red-brick walls shut it in from the Cathedral Close, and a tall trellis, wrapped about in creepers, screened the lawn, where she sat, from the kitchen-garden. Spacious and of admirable texture was the grass, and if, as it is said, it takes five hundred years to make a decent lawn, it must be concluded that this one was of antiquity far greater than that, so uniform and thick was its green velvet. The mulberry-tree below which Lady Ravenscroft was sitting stood at the comer furthest away from the house; close beside it ran the gravel walk which led to a door in the brick wall and communicated with the Close, while beyond this, towards the kitchen-garden, stretched a broad strip of untutored turf, in which, thick as the stars of a summer night, gleamed the myriad colours of spring-flowering bulbs, tulips and daffodils and brown-eyed narcissus. It was to this that Lady Ravenscroft’s attention so frequently wandered from the book she held, but she looked at it less with admiration of its brilliant hues as with groping in her mind for some association which it suggested. Then, suddenly, the connection was made; it was the top terrace of her garden at Silorno which was in her mind, and the time was just a year ago. After that she read no more in her book, also her contentment vanished. Strenuous optimist though she was, the thought of Silomo disquieted her; she was not happy about those at Silomo.

She had joined Theodore’s yacht at Marseilles soon after Christmas, but the smooth seas and shining heavens had not given them a halcyon voyage; for the peace and warmth that surrounded them was an external note only, and found no echo within. Then she had stayed with them a month at the Castello, and day by day her uneasiness increased. Day by day, too, the causes of vague disquiet, which at first she had herself laughed at as being impossible and unthinkable, had become both thinkable and possible. After that, with most disconcerting rapidity, they had, to her mind, become certain. At first they had been incredible, now she was forced to believe. Paul and Norah, to be brief, were in love with each other, and Theodore knew it.

That was bad enough, but what lay behind was vastly more ominous. For the situation seemed to amuse him; so to speak, he “egged them on.” He had no doubt, it appeared, any more than had Lady Ravenscroft, that his honour and Norah’s honour were safe enough; but any man of spirit would surely have ended this impossible situation in a perfectly simple and direct way, by sending Paul off. Yet he did nothing of the kind; he delighted in Paul. The three, in fact, were inseparable; they were always together. Times without number she had seen them strolling together on the terrace, Theodore in the middle, with an arm of each. And this was horrible; it was a position which no man ought to be able to stand. Yet he stood it; he did more than stand it, he revelled in it. To her mind he had thus become horrible, too; he had ceased to be a man, for everything which a man must feel most keenly and intimately seemed to be perfectly unperceived by him. It was as if she had seen him step into a bath of molten lead, and, like a child, splash gleefully about in it. He could be judged no longer by human rules; he thrived in conditions which should have been death to him. A year ago she had confessed that she was afraid of him; now she would have been willing to confess that she was terrified of him. And her fear, she also felt certain, was shared in double measure by the two others.

Lady Ravenscroft was interrupted in her very unsatisfactory meditation at this point by the slow and sad approach of Aunt Kate. She had last night talked to her sister about it all, hoping against hope that her fears, as is often the way with them, might vanish in the telling. For fears so often are like puff-balls: they swell and swell as long as they are left to themselves; but once speak of them, it is as if the puff-ball was pricked, and seen to be but a skinful of dust that is wholly disproportionate to the size of the globe. Aunt Kate, she should perhaps have remembered, was not’ one in whose mind pluck and cheerfulness could be called prominent, and so far from the puff-ball being pricked, Lady Ravenscroft found to her dismay that it waxed portentous instead.

Aunt Kate sighed heavily, and looked with mournful eyes across the sunny grass and basking red walls, above which rose the grey tower of the Cathedral.

“And just when I thought we were going to have a little peace, and perhaps a little happiness,” she said, “this dreadful thing comes upon us all. I scarcely slept a wink last night with thinking of Norah.”

“Dear Kate, I am so sorry,” said her sister.

Kate shook her head.

“If only lying awake helped things, I shouldn’t mind how long I did it,” she said. “That dreadful man! Shall I ever forget the drive I took with him into Genoa? And now to look at all these beautiful flowers, and the trees just bursting into leaf, and we with our sorrowful, tortured hearts!”

Lady Ravenscroft, troubled though she was, could scarcely help laughing. Her own optimism, too, was called into play by her sister’s matchless gloom.

“There are people coming to dinner to-night,” she went on, “and I really came out to ask you if you do not think I had better put them off with all this trouble hanging over us. I feel as if I could hardly bear to have to join in all the gaiety and merriment And there’s no fish to be got anywhere. It is bank-holiday; so selfish of the shop-people. Bertie has gone out to try to catch a trout or two, but one can’t tell: it is all so chancey. And I shall have to write out the menu-cards before he gets back, and I can’t put down trout before I know whether there will be any or not.”

Lady Ravenscroft had in a very high degree that sense of the ludicrous which is as stepping-stones to enable us to cross the muddy waters of life, and brings consolation to the darkest places. Again she felt much better.

“Dear Kate, you are invaluable,” she said. “Now, do tell me which really seems to you most troublesome, this affair I told you of last night, or the possible absence of trout at dinner?”

Kate turned to her slowly a reproachful, wounded look.

“I do not know what cause I have given you to misjudge me so,” she said, “but I suppose we must all expect to be misunderstood. As if anything mattered compared to this terrible trouble and disgrace that has come upon us!”

“I don’t see what disgrace has come upon us,” remarked Lady Ravenscroft, suddenly (and to her great relief) beginning to see the brighter side of things.

Kate shook her head.

“We have never had that sort of thing happen in our family,” she said, “and now Norah has spoiled it all. How true it is that riches don’t bring happiness!”

Kate always brought these wonderful and profound observations out with the air of some explorer just returned with strange trophies from untravelled lands—skins of animals hitherto unconjectured, and blossoms that had never yet come to the eye of the botanist. As she flashed this illuminating discovery on Lady Ravenscroft she sighed.

“Yes, I suppose we oughtn’t to be thinking about our pleasures or whether there will be fish,” she said. “One ought to think only of this terrible thing. I always try to concentrate my mind on a tragedy that is coming; one seems to be able to bear it better then.”

Lady Ravenscroft’s extraordinarily happy nature again came to her aid. She had told Kate of her private misgivings in the somewhat forlorn (or so it appeared now) hope of being told she was making mountains out of molehills. But now, when Kate took her molehills and made of them Pelion piled on Ossa, they began to shrink into molehills again. She had gone to Kate for consolation, but now, when Kate took the line that there was no consolation anywhere in the whole wide world, Lady Ravenscroft, by a sort of reactionary impulse, began to find it.

“Dear Kate, you talk as if Norah was actually on her way to the station to elope with Paul.”

“Genoa Station?” murmured Kate.

“Yes, any station. Well, of course, that would be very shocking indeed; but there’s as much chance of that happening as there is of the—the Dean and Chapter painting the Cathedral pea-green. All that one can dismiss from one’s mind at once. But Theodore ought to send Paul away without a moment’s pause. The whole situation is impossible. Yet one hardly knows. Of course, it is the right thing to do, but how on earth are he and Norah to live together alone? If Paul makes the situation impossible, he also makes it possible.”

Aunt Kate sighed again.

“It’s a wretched, miserable business,” she said. “Just at Easter-time, too, after all one has passed through in Lent. One is told that trouble is sometimes a blessing in disguise-”

“But one wishes the disguise was not quite so impenetrable,” remarked her sister briskly.

Mr. Mundy at this moment appeared at the door leading from the house into the garden, and came across the grass to the sisters. He walked with a slight limp, having had a bicycle accident the day before, and having cut his knee, so his wife feared, “to the bone.” But he wore, as usual, his expression of gentle good-humour, and carried in his hand “ The Makers of Florence,” into the leaves of which was inserted a paper-knife to keep his place. The possible bless- ing of his having had an accident seemed to his wife to be very successfully disguised indeed.

“Does your knee pain you very much, Henry?” she asked. “You look very faint and white. I hope you’ve thoroughly bathed it again. Remember what Dr. Armitage told you.”

“He told me it was a perfectly clean wound, and that it would be quite healed in a day or two,” remarked Henry rather acidly. His knee had been the staple of conversation for the last twenty-four hours.

His wife shook her head.

“Yes, it may appear quite clean,” she said, “on the surface, but all sorts of particles may have been driven in. I feel dreadfully uneasy about it. Does your head ache? I shouldn’t read too much if I were you.”

She regarded the flowering bulbs sadly for a minute or two.

“How quickly the daffodils are over!” she said. “The flowers seem scarcely to have bloomed before they are decayed and dead. So you recommend me not to put our guests off this evening?”

“Bless me, what were you thinking of doing that for?” asked her husband. “You can’t put people off at a few hours’ notice. And why should you, anyway?”

“Some dreadful news that Alice has told me,” said she. “And what with that, your accident, and Bertie’s holidays, one hardly knows which way to turn.”

She walked slowly back towards the house, but half-way there she paused.

“Bertie isn’t back yet, I suppose?” she said to her husband.

“No, my dear; he hasn’t been gone more than half an hour.”

“It seemed longer,” said Kate. “My watch has stopped. Some sort of an impediment must have got into the works. And it belonged to my grandfather. How things close in round one!”

Mr. Mundy withdrew the paper-knife from the leaves q£

“The Makers of Florence/’ but in case he wished subsequently to read, substituted his finger for it “Kate is a little depressed this morning,” he remarked. “Even the fact that her watch was her grandfather’s distresses her. I hope your news was not very dreadful.”

Lady Ravenscroft laughed.

“My telling Kate about it has made it seem less dreadful/’ she said, “because I am sure it is not so dreadful as she seems to think.”

Mr. Mundy opened his book, but looked up again.

“Pray tell me if I can be of any help,” he said. “It isn’t any—any financial difficulty?”

“No, you dear man,” said she. “I really almost wish it was.”

She paused a moment.

“It’s about Norah and Theodore,” she said. “I don’t think they are very settled, very happy.”

Henry considered this.

“I am sorry,” he said.

Henry Mundy was that somewhat rare character, a perfectly average person, of whom there are really very few in this world. For there are many pairs of people, who, if they could be melted into one, and then divided by two, would result in being two average people, but the average man or the average woman is very seldom seen. To be average it is necessary to be possessed of all the cardinal virtues in a useful and moderate degree, and to keep the mildly vicious tendencies of the nature in decent control. Above all, it requires the power of playing Patience with life—Patience not of the “double demon” kind, but Patience of some easy, satisfactory sort, in which all difficulties are got over, if you go quietly on long enough. Mr. Mundy always went quietly on, and he had at present gone on for nearly sixty years of singularly untroubled existence. He was in no sense quick, but he might always be relied on to do, in difficult circumstances, after consideration, the safe thing, and, in the ordinary affairs of life, the pleasant one. His sister-in-law had, when she turned her mind in his direction, a considerable 11 respect for him. It was nice to know he was there; there was, so to speak, if you came home hungry and tired and found that the servants had gone to bed, a nice piece of good cold beef. You might prefer elaborate cooking, exquisite flavours, and subtly-concocted sauces, but still, if you were hungry, there was the cold beef. Mr. Mundy, like it, was so very genuine and solid; he was no banquet for epicures, but it was easily possible to conceive situations, so it flashed across Lady Ravenscroft at this moment, when he said he was sorry, in which one might be very glad to know that he was there. What such a situation might be she did not trouble to think; he but gave her a sense, vague but solid, that he was generally reliable.

Contrary, anyhow, to Kate’s expectations, some of the tragedies which were closing in round her turned out to have happy endings. Her grandfather’s watch, for instance, it subsequently appeared, was only waiting to be wound up in order to go on again, and though, of course, the running-down of a watch was particularly bad for the works, still, the mere application of the key proved that things had not got into it. Bertie, similarly, returned with enough trout to neutralise the selfishness of tradespeople in indulging in a bank-holiday, and really when her guests began to arrive— dinner being at a quarter to eight, for the sake of the servants—the evening was closing in more auspiciously than the day had dawned. But in default of these subjects for lamentation, she easily found another in the fact of there being a dinner-party at all.

“People are so selfish,” she said to her sister as they waited for the earliest arrival, “ and I’m sure Henry won’t’ be down in time. And even if he is, it will be because he hasn’t bandaged his knee properly. Yes, they are so terribly selfish. Of course, all sorts of people called on us when we came here, and I returned the calls and thought it was all over. But it had only begun. They asked us to dinner, and Henry insisted on our going and being neighbourly, and so we have to ask them back. And I’m sure they will stop till I don’t know what hour, and we shall never get to bed.”

“Who is coming?” asked Lady Ravenscroft briskly. “I like new people; I hope I know none of them.”

“The Archdeacon and Mrs. Harold,” said Kate, in a tone of deep dejection, “and Mrs. Atley. They won’t get on at all, I know. However, she will sit on the other side of Henry, and we must hope for the best. Then there’s-”

She broke off as the door opened.

“They’ve begun to come already,” she said, “and Henry isn’t down yet.”

Mrs. Atley, who was the first arrival, was, though a lady of such varied gifts, rather disconcerted at finding Lady Ravenscroft here. For that immortal work, “The Heir to the Dukedom,” had made its appearance only a fortnight before, and her friend and companion, Miss Riever—who was also bidden to dinner, and came, giving the first impression of a bland but elderly white sheep, decked out for sacrifice in ribands and garlands of all descriptions—had told her that it would burst like a bombshell in the midst of the aristocracy. For Paul, it may be remembered, had given Mrs. Atley bales of the most highly-coloured information about the ways of the world, and the heir to the dukedom she had studied at first hand in the person of Theodore. Consequently this sudden collision against his mother-in-law was momentarily alarming; she might have been hit by pieces of the bursting bomb, which probably would have hurt her very much. But even if they had, Lady Ravenscroft seemed to put a brave face on the matter, and though she did not kiss the hand that had drawn her son-in-law, she shook it very genially. As a matter of fact, she knew nothing either of Mrs. Atley’s bomb or of its explosion, but she would have been genial in any case.

Mrs. Atley was a great and shining exception to the rule that a prophet has no honour in his own country. She was full of honour in Wroxton, and her circle of admirers and acquaintances always bought her books as soon as they came out, and quickly glanced through them with pleased but tremulous apprehension, to find out if she had “put them in.” If not, a more leisurely perusal would determine whom she had “put in.” Few escaped that distinction altogether: she culled her characters in huge handfuls, tore them, shrieking and bleeding, so to speak, out of life, and with a firm hand pressed them in her books. But though one “never could tell” about Mrs. Atley, the strong probability always was that the characters taken from Wroxton would be treated in the most appreciative and respectful manner, for the provincial towns of England she regarded as the homes of culture and sincerity, and considered that the great rural heart of England beat there. The more idyllic scenes of those volumes, in fact, were almost always laid at Wroxton, and the last chapter usually dealt with the reunion of lovers long estranged through some devilish wile of the aristocracy, while the moonlight (or occasionally sunlight) silvered (or gilded) the roofs of the city. Then, too, there were always half a dozen little sketches of the High Street, or the city gates, or a house in the Close, and indeed in this present volume Mrs. Mundy’s drawing-room had been described with ruthless fidelity. But the inhabitants of Wroxton generally recognised the honour done to them in being treated as “material” by Mrs. Atley, and delighted to be the food on the strength of which she stretched her pinions for these exalted flights.

Miss Riever, her friend and companion, was well fitted for her responsible and honourable post. She stood, so to speak, between the world and Mrs. Atley, sparing her the sordidness of household cares, and reaping for herself a rich reward, since (in addition to her board and lodging) the works were always read aloud to her in manuscript. Multifarious were her duties: she ran the house, she kept inquisitive visitors at a distance, and to the deserving gave glimpses of the Sybil. In fine weather, for instance, Mrs. Atley would work in the summer-house at the end of the garden, where the Cathedral tower looked over the red-brick wall, and the rose-beds reminded her that she was in the heart of rural England. She must not, of course, be disturbed under any circumstances while she was at work, but deserving visitors were sometimes led (treading softly on the grass) behind a certain lilac-bush, where, by cautiously parting the leaves, the beholder, unbeheld, could look at Mrs. Atley at her work. As a rule, she would not raise so much as an eyelash from the page, but now and then, when the rustle in the lilac-bush was loud, she would look up. Then Miss Riever would lay a cautious hand on the visitor’s arm, bidding her be as still as a stone till Mrs. Atley had resumed her work. But it had happened once or twice that some involuntary movement had betrayed them. Then Mrs. Atley would clap her hands and laugh merrily, not with the impressive manner that she used in society, but with the playfulness that characterized her domestic life.

“Peeping, peeping,” she would cry, “you naughty Rievie! Come out, you wicked girl, and let me see who you have brought. It is quite against the rules; you know that perfectly well.”

But the management of visitors was child’s-play compared to the management of Birdie herself. She was so naughty, Miss Riever would almost tearfully complain. She took no care of herself; she would work herself every day into a fever if she was not firmly managed. For instance, she would promise, ever so faithfully, to leave her work at twelve and come for a walk, but no one had any idea what a job it was to make her do so on some mornings. Sometimes Miss Riever had to take the extreme step of snatching the manuscript away from under her very hand, and then the prettiest scenes ensued. Miss Riever would run away with it, and dodge about round the garden-beds, Mrs. Atley in hot (very hot) pursuit, crying:

“I will be good; I will promise to be good! If you will just let me finish the page, I will stop. It will be just ten minutes.”

But Rievie would not give in at once.

“Word of honour, Birdie? Promise?” she would say.

“Promise!”

It was the light hand which was necessary in dealing with Birdie, and this, as has been already indicated, Miss Riever possessed. Yet though she was so playful (they both habitually left out their “r’s” when talking to each other), she was very firm, and altogether fit for her charge. Mrs. Atley had a hundred pet names for her too: usually she was “Rievie”; at other times “Keeper,” in allusion to her office; this had been shortened into “Teepie,” and “Teepie” again had, by a natural transition, become “Tea-pot” and “Five-o’clock.” She had, of course, in addition to the duties of house-management and the management of the authoress, the post of general trumpeter. This office also was performed in a perfectly satisfactory manner.

The Archdeacon had a commanding presence and a deferential manner, a combination which Wroxton in general found irresistible. He seemed to treat the person he was talking to as the one creature in the world whose opinion was worth having, whose presence was the fountain and origin of his happiness. This, in conjunction with his commanding presence, was a continual compliment, since one so highly favoured as he might easily have been expected to take no notice of anybody under the rank of a Duke. But this evening, it is true, he found himself rather in a difficulty. For Mrs. Atley, in that bombshell of a book, which he had been reading all the afternoon, had quite unmistakably drawn from him the figure of a most wonderful Bishop, a perfect knight of Christendom, yet a man of the world, the combination which the Archdeacon Harold felt to be peculiarly his own. But it was no use (it was a mere waste of energy, in fact) to pretend not to be conscious of the fact that it was drawn from him, and indeed Teepie, who considered it the most ideal figure that her friend had ever painted, had whispered softly to him when he came in:

“She has done you justice.”

But the unfortunate thing was that this same book bristled with withering scorn of the aristocracy, and to treat the aristocracy with anything but reverence and appreciation seemed to the Archdeacon a very serious offence. The situation was further complicated by the presence of Lady Ravenscroft, who, though Theodore and Norah, it is true, came through the book with astonishing credit, could not but be incensed about this attack on what the Archdeacon called “her order.” And the county families, assuredly, would not like it, whereas the Archdeacon very much liked the county families. So for the time he talked to Lady Ravenscroft, and kept an eye on the authoress; soon he would talk to the authoress, and keep an eye on Lady Ravenscroft Among all his gifts there was none so remarkable as his tact, which often landed him in rather difficult places. His wife, it may be remarked, had an agreeable supply of conversation on every subject under the sun. These subjects flowed into each other like rivers going seawards, but, unlike the river going seaward, they never got anywhere.

“Yes, I’m sure; such a pleasure,” she said, when the first change of interlocution took place, and Mr. Mundy turned to his left, leaving a Major from the depot to entertain Lady Ravenscroft—“such a pleasure to come to dine with you, and so kind of you to ask us. I think hospitality is like mercy, isn’t it? So nice to give it, and so nice to receive it What excellent trout, and your son caught them only to-day! FancylThat is why they are so deliciously fresh.

And how well Lady Ravenscroft is looking, is she not? Just back from Italy, I think she said. And of course you’ve seen Mrs. Atley’s new book. So clever, but a little severe, I think, sometimes; but, of course, she’s so brilliant, and has such a touch, has she not? Word-painting, the Archdeacon called it, and I thought it such a good phrase. And she describes that little comer where the garden of the Red House runs up to the Gose, so that if one shut one’s eyes one could positively see it. And the Bishop—what a wonderful character! I wonder where Mrs. Atley got him from.”

For Mrs. Harold, from constant intercourse with her husband, had caught something of his tact.

Now Mr. Mundy was not so devout a student of Mrs. Atley’s works (Teepie at one time had tried calling her the “mistress,” the analogy of the “master,” but it didn’t take) as he might have been. But it was impossible to be in Wroxton at all during this last week and not know who the “ original” of the knightly Bishop was.

“Well, it’s a dreadful thing to confess,” he said, “that really I haven’t read the book yet. But I have heard it said that we shouldn’t have to look very far-”

This was quite enough. The river started seawards again.

“Yes, I’m told people do say so, and of course there are certain points, though no doubt I’m a partial judge, in which one can see a certain resemblance. How nice of her, too, to make him a Bishop, was it not ?—so delicate! But of course you are not a great novel reader, are you? Florence, yes, and Venice—all the Renaissance; what a thing it must have been to have lived then, though I’m sure with wireless telegraphy and motor-cars we can’t say that we are not living in a very wonderful age. And poetry, too, and sculpture and painting: I so enjoy having a talk with you, Mr. Mundy, about it all, and I often tell the Archdeacon that it is a treat to sit next you, as I’m sure to hear so much of interest. What a traveller you are, too—you and dear Mrs. Mundy. How well she’s looking! But you really should read‘The Heir.’ ‘The Heir of Redclyffe,’ too. Miss Yonge, was it not? And she lived not so far off, which makes it quite a coincidence they should have hit on two titles beginning the same. So much in a title, is there not? ‘Vanity Fair,’ what a good title!”

However sure Mrs. Harold was to hear interesting things when she sat next Mr. Mundy, it did not appear necessary that it should be he who said them. Indeed, in a critical moment he had said once to his wife that to sit next Mrs. Harold was like a rest cure. It was monotonous, but required no effort of any kind—the mind lay fallow.

The Archdeacon meantime was booming like a bittern to Aunt Kate. His voice had got a sort of cathedral ring about it; it’ sounded like a voice which was accustomed to echo from the roof.

“Silomo, yes, Silomo,” he was saying; “we passed through merely, but it made an ineffaceable impression on me. The Castello there, you recollect, standing like some swimmer striking out into the sapphire gulf. And Lady Ravenscroft’s villa: how well I remember that, too—a bower, a paradise. And the Castello, you say, has been taken again by Mr. Beckwith?”

“My sister has just come back from there,” remarked Aunt Kate with a sad, wan smile.

The Archdeacon fingered his wine-glass for a moment with his head thrown back, looking in a sort of reverie at the wall opposite.

“Oh, to be in Italy now that April’s there,’” he remarked finely.

Aunt Kate smiled again sadly.

“I’m sure there’s trouble enough everywhere,” she said, “to make us want to be somewhere else.”

“Ah, don’t deprive me of my perfect Silomo, my perfect Silomo,” exclaimed he. “I often think of it—wonderful lines of Wordsworth, are they not?”

“* In vacant or in pensive mood . . .

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.’”

“The daffodils in my garden are in bloom,” said Mrs. Mundy faintly. “But they last so short a time. I was saying to my sister only to-day that before you know they are out, they are dead and decayed.”

The Archdeacon cleared his throat. He had, as has been mentioned, been reading “The Heir” all the afternoon, and perhaps from suggestion he was behaving extremely like the character of which he was the prototype. Like the Bishop in “The Heir,” “the word in season” was often on his lips; like that fine character, too, he would instantly turn to some mundane topic, to show that, though a priest, he was also a man of the world.

“Change and decay in all around I see,” he said sonorously; “but we mustn’t forget, dear Mrs. Mundy, the line, that beautiful line, that follows. Yes, yes. And now, Major you can tell me this. We were talking of daffodils— my yellow friends. Was it the Sixty-fifth or the Seventeenth that had the privilege of wearing a daffodil in their caps on the anniversary of Blenheim? I remember they were at Gib. when I was out in’85. Twenty years ago— dear me. Old Bob Anstruther was the Colonel.”

Now in “The Heir” Mrs. Atley had made the Bishop allude to the daffodil as “his yellow friend,” which sounded on first hearing rather like a sarcastic way of addressing someone who was suffering from jaundice, and though the Major was full of information about this interesting point, the Archdeacon’s eyes met those of the authoress, and as soon as he had finished speaking, she turned to him.

“Am I forgiven?” she asked.

And the two soared away into lofty themes like a balloon against the sunset.

Meantime the river of Mrs. Harold’s conversation flowed placidly on. It had overtopped its bank, so to speak, and had spread to Lady Ravenscroft, who was on the other side of Mr. Mundy.

“Yes, we were talking, dear Mr. Mundy and I, about Italy and the Renaissance and all that. And you have just come back from your daughter’s, have you not, Lady Ravenscroft? And Mr. Beckwith is charming, is he not? No, I don’t know him, but everybody says so, and I am sure I should like him, and find him altogether delightful. And Mr. Paul is with them as secretary to Mr. Beckwith, is he not? How interesting for him, and how charming, I am sure, for your daughter. They were always such friends, were they not? Quite devoted to each other. Yes, how nice! And her husband’s friend, too, though of course one isn’t surprised at that, for everyone delights in Mr. Paul. I’m sure it’s all a beautiful contradiction of the proverb about three not being company.”

Mrs. Harold did not commit the crowning offence of those who make long speeches, and fix her pale-blue eyes steadily on the person she addressed, but let them stray from one listener to another. During one of these intervals, when their light shone on* Mr. Mundy, Lady Ravenscroft looked up and saw Kate eyeing her with an expression compared to which despair was mild. This, and her own knowledge of herself, made her feel perfectly certain that if this went on any longer she would have giggles of a really serious nature, and she deliberately dammed up the river, plunging into it, so to speak, and flinging the obstacle of her own conversation wherever it burst out. Also behind her giggles, she knew, lay an anxiety and a disquietude that were no matter for laughing.

Mrs. Mundy’s gloomiest forebodings of all, as to the lateness of the hours into which her party would linger, were not fulfilled, and it was little after half-past ten when the last guests departed. These had been the Archdeacon and his wife, she river-like to the last.

“The Archdeacon and I always make it a rule, Lady Ravenscroft,” she was saying, “to leave at ten, and we say to ourselves whenever we come to Mrs. Mundy’s that we really will be strict with ourselves to-night, and though we should so like to stop we will go on the stroke of ten. Don’t we, Augustus? And here it is half-past ten already, and I should have thought, if I had had to guess, that it was a quarter past nine at the very latest. Such a pleasant evening; and you are here for another week, you say. Such a treat if we could tempt you all—would it not be, Augustus? —to dine with us some night. Good-night, Mrs. Mundy; such a pleasure. Yes, my fan; thank you so much, Mr. Bertie—and what a beautiful trout!”

The last post had come in during dinner, and Mr. Mundy, returning from the door after seeing the Archdeacon off, brought in a few letters. There was one for Lady Ravenscroft from Silorno. She opened it, glanced at it, then put it away again.

When they went upstairs she turned into her sister’s room.

“I have had news from Norah that makes me—makes me very glad,” she said. “She is going to have a baby.”

CHAPTER XII

Spring came early that year at Silomo, and one morning, only a day or two after Lady Ravenscroft’s departure for England, Theodore Beckwith, in his usual morning deshabille, was opening his letters as he nibbled and sipped at his breakfast, while Paul, also breakfasting, was seated at the other side of the table, in the veranda that opened out of Theodore’s bedroom, taking notes. On the floor sprawled the three-year-old child of his valet, and from time to time Theodore made encouraging little baby-cries to it, which caused immense satisfaction, apparently, in the infant mind. Strange as might seem the existence of any bond of sympathy between the man and the child, certain it was that the baby regarded him in the most favourable light. He possessed an extraordinary fascination for it, and, indeed, only the day before the child’s father had told his master that it seemed to care for nobody else. This had tickled Theodore immensely; he had cut its parents out.

May had come in not according to the calendar, which matters very little, but according to the spirit of Spring, and warm winds and golden day-long suns were working their swift, infallible miracle. The conjuring-rod of the renewal of life was waved across the earth, and the great conjuring trick that never goes wrong was being enacted before their eyes. Not alone did the burgeoning flowers and flush of vivider green betoken this; it had entered, too, into the hearts of those native children of the sun, and the jingling Italian cab, which just now was waiting at the gate of the Castello, some half-hour ago had brought here the English doctor from Delfino, was being decorated by the olive-skinned Italian lad who drove it, during this waiting, with bowers he plucked from the wayside. Here and there all over the harness, which consisted in about equal parts of leather and string, he had fastened his incongruous little posies, while he himself was embellished with a rose behind his ear and another between his teeth. Then his “Signor” came down the steep rock-path, and with crackings of the whip they jingled back through the sun-flecked woods into Delfino again.

Norah lingered in her room after the doctor had gone, not not so much thinking directly of anything as letting her mind just lie open to what he had told her. It was as she had thought: she was with child. She was going to bring life into the world: there would be borne of her that which was flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone; from her life would be born, from her and her husband. At that first moment of her knowledge she was conscious of a shock, of disgust, of loathing. The thought, now practically realized, that she was indeed one with him like this horrified her. She would have to tell him, confess to him the sign of their unity, whereas—how bitterly she knew it!—they were poles asunder. She went over in her mind—-or rather there passed before her mind, like pictures unrolled before it by some external agency-all the thousand little biting scenes and words of enmity that had been her constant environment. During these last weeks not a day, not an hour had passed when they were alone together in which he had not found some bitter word for her, some little sentence of double meaning, in which the second meaning lurked like a snake coiled up among the grass. The snake was always there, and it was always the same: the hint, namely, that he knew that she loved Paul. He did not object to it, as far as she could see; it seemed to amuse him. At any rate, the opportunity it gave him of saying these two-edged things, at which, despite herself, her colour would come and go, so that at one time he would put his pince-nez up and say how cold and white she looked, at another would inquire whether she did not wish the window opened further, for she looked so hot, afforded him, she could not doubt, tremendous entertainment. He was never cross or dissatisfied with her now; or if he was he never showed it. Occasionally the two-edged words were more numerous or less so. That was all, and the amusement he received from them never staled.

Yes, she hated him, and she was to be the mother of his child!

Then with a pang of self-pity she clutched her hands together, feeling the stones in her rings bite into her flesh. The irony of it all! From the very intensity of her rebellion against this, she could judge of the rapture of joy with which she would have known what she had just learned if her husband had been the man she loved. And for that passion of tenderness and love she had to bear her part in this bitter parody of it, this profanation, this outrage. She felt defiled, unclean; their child would perpetuate and keep alive their estrangement; its very existence would always speak to her of the unholiness of their so-called union.

It was about the time when she usually went to Theodore’s room to discuss the prospective doings for the day. He was always fond of the sea, and on most days they would sail in the small cutter if the wind was favourable, or, if not, go out on the steam yacht, coasting lazily along the glittering, wooded shores of the gulf. Sometimes they would anchor and fish, and here again Theodore filled her with a sort of incredulous wonder whether he could be a man or not, with such glee did he haul up the lines and giggle as he tore the hooks out of the fishes’ mouths, throwing them on the deck to gasp out their lives. It was not from mere carelessness nor from disregard of cruelty in his keenness for the sport, such as it was, that he did this; it was from pleasure in cruelty: it amused him to see things suffer; that was his nature. Sometimes he took the valet’s boy out, and put a line into its baby fingers, and the two would sit there laughing at the poor flapping creatures on the deck. That seemed to Norah most horrible of all: she shuddered at him, and that too amused him. He would give the child wine at lunch, and laugh at its subsequent uproariousness. Then sometimes this was succeeded by tears and depression, and Theodore would tell the boy’s father to take it away. And this man was the father of her child!

Such was the procession of images that passed in front of her as she sat lingering still before she joined the others.

Then suddenly these images were stayed, and next moment they were wiped out of her mind, so that it seemed they had never been. For the huger fact, love, that is always huger than hate and dominant over it, and motherhood, that one love known to womankind that is utterly pure and unmixed with the passions which are inevitably mingled with the love of woman for man and man for woman, flooded her, drowning all bitterness, all the sense of degradation and hate. Whatever estrangement and fear and hatred had been hers, it was all as but the flame of a wood-fire in sunlight, invisible in the brightness of the other: it vanished utterly in the pervading universal glory which the fact of motherhood kindled. Surely also the child that was to be born of her would accomplish the same miracle for her husband and her as the thought had just now accomplished for her alone. His child!—surely that thought would move him in some degree, as the thought that it was hers had moved her.

She went straight to his room, passionately desiring to tell him while this thought was so strong and luminous to her. If she could only make him see what it meant to her. he might enter into it too—might feel that something had come into their lives which made all the past bitterness superficial only, a thing that could be rubbed or shaken off like dust. Perhaps after all its root fibres were not twined about their hearts: surely it was a surface thing compared to this.

Paul had already gone to write out the notes of the morning’s correspondence, and her husband was alone. He was at the window, looking at the road on the other side of the way through his opera-glasses when Norah entered.

He turned when she came in.

“That’s the doctor’s carriage, is it not? “ he said. “Was it he who called here half an hour ago? Who wanted to see him? Who is ill? I hate people being ill.”

“I sent for him,” she said. “I wanted to see him.”

“You? What is the matter? You look well enough.”

She came close to him.

“Nothing is the matter, Theodore,” she said; “I’m not ill at all. I only wanted to know if I was right. And I was. It is as I thought.”

Then she told him.

Theodore clapped his hands, and gave a little skip into the air.

“Oh, what fun!” he cried. “How very nice l I hope it will be a boy. How furious my cousin Arnold will be, he and his brats.”

Norah froze back again into herself. All the glow and glory was gone; she could no more speak of what it meant to her, of what she hoped and longed that it might mean to them both, than she could have flown. That flood, which had rushed into her soul, covering, drowning all their mutual dislike and bitterness, subsided as suddenly as it had come, and the brown spikes and rugged edges were there still below.

He asked her a few more questions, still in high good-humour, observing her closely. Her face had grown absolutely cold and hard again; all the sense of her hatred and fear had returned at his words, which showed her so well exactly what her news meant to him—just pleasure at the prospect of having an heir himself, and, in particular, pleasure at the fact that his cousin’s children would be cut out of the succession. She bitterly told herself that she might have known that this would be all; it was idle to have hoped that he would have cared or understood. All her warm impulse towards him, all the pathetic longing that the news she brought him might somehow bring them together again, and heal their differences, was chilled and choked. She was a fool ever to have hoped anything. And with the knowledge of this there came back to her in double measure her enmity, her horror of him.

It was this that he watched: that, at any rate, he understood very well, for he had often studied it before, and derived entertainment from it. He did not in the least resent it; it mattered to him far too little for that. Besides, it was so absolutely powerless; its very ineffectiveness made it impossible to mind it. Had it bitten him at all, like a gnat’, he might have cared to retaliate; as it was, there was nothing to retaliate against; he had not been injured. But even as he looked at her, pleased at her news, amused at her enmity, he pictured to himself a moment how it would have been if she had gone with her news to the man she loved, if she had been Paul’s wife, and had told him this. And that for the moment did sting him.

“You don’t seem satisfied,” he remarked.

She looked at him with a burning eye.

“Oh, I am quite satisfied,” she said. “It—it is exactly like you. It was foolish of me to have expected anything else for a moment.”

“Oh, then you did expect something else. How very inconsistent you are. You are satisfied, yet you expected something else.”

“Only for a moment,” she said.

His own imagined picture had stung him, so he permitted himself a little malice.

“What did you expect? Reconciliation, happy tears, beautiful little speeches from me? Pray imagine them as already spoken. For goodness’ sake, I beg of you, don’t let us have any scenes! I never understand sentimentalizing. You would certainly see through me if I attempted it.”

“I feel sure I should.”

“So you only wanted the pleasure of seeing through me,” he remarked.

Norah looked at him with a sort of pity, that he should be like this.

“Poor Theodore!” she said.

She paused a moment, and then went on:

“So that is my news,” she said; “and now let us talk of something else. What are the plans for to-day? There is a good breeze. Shall we sail? I am ready at any time.”

But her pity had stung him, though her enmity could not, and he turned from her without speaking. He had no intention of letting that pass, though for the moment he had no reply. But there was a very unpleasant gleam in his eyes as he turned away. At his dressing-room door, however, he paused, and spoke in his ordinary voice.

“Yes, let us sail,” he said. “We will start as soon as Paul is ready; he has a few letters to write. We will take lunch with us.”

Theodore had caused to be sent out from England not long before several cases of books and pictures, for he found that Silorno suited him so well that he meant to spend some months here regularly every year, and wanted more of his own things round him. But before they were ready to start to-day for their sail, notice came that there had been some difficulty in the Custom-house at Genoa with the things, and it was necessary for him to go in for certain signatures and formalities before they could be passed through. He was in something of a hurry to get them, and in order to get them without delay his presence in Genoa was necessary. He determined, therefore, instead of going out sailing, to go at once on the yacht into Genoa, so that he could thus bring the cases back with him. There was no need for either Paul or Norah to go with him, and thus, before Paul had finished his letters, he had put off to the yacht in the small boat, leaving the others to their own devices for the day. Norah had walked down with him to the landing-stage, while his valet with a bag, or, rather, five or six bags for the night, followed them, as it was unlikely he would be able to get home before next day. The sun was already hot, and he held a white umbrella over his head, swore a little at the stupidity of Italian officials, and patted Norah’s hand as he got into the boat “Take care of yourself,” he said. “Get Paul to take good care of you. You will manage to amuse yourselves, I hope.”

Norah turned and walked back again to the Castello, feeling suddenly that she trod on air. Never for a day, since their marriage, had they been apart, and the sudden intensity of this relief almost frightened her. She could not have believed what the oppression of his presence was till it was removed. But it would not do to think about that. She had already learned that such thoughts were worse than barren: to indulge in them doubled the difficulties that were daily hers. Besides, to indulge in them now would but waste the moments of the day that lay before her. By no contrasting them with other moments would they be made sweeter; there could be nothing so good as just to enjoy them, to revel in this short spell of liberty. And even as she thought thus, she saw Paul coming down the steep path. The letters he had finished, still open, were in his hand for Theodore’s perusal.

“Why, what has happened?” he said, and then he paused.

“Has he gone?” he asked, with a sudden rising of his voice.

Norah almost ran towards him.

“Yes, you and I are alone,” she said. “He won’t be back till to-morrow. Paul, let us keep ourselves from thinking— thinking anything. Let us just have a day of play, as we used to, regarding neither yesterday, nor to-morrow, nor anything—anything, except just that—that we are playing together.”

For that first moment after seeing Theodore off mere relief, mere joy of a bird freed from its cage, had been hers; but before she spoke, as soon, indeed, as she set eyes on Paul coming down the path to her, a feeling far more intense, though it could not be more complete, was mingled with relief. It was not only that Theodore had gone: more intense than that was the knowledge that Paul was here. And it was that above all that was in her mind as she cried, “Let us not think of anything.” She longed—how passionately she scarcely knew—just to have one of those days of their childhood again together, little knowing that it was as easy to call back the actual repetition of a day that was passed with its sun or its rain, as to recall one hour of that childhood.

But that impossibility was as little recognised by Paul as it was by her. The call of childhood came to each; each felt that it was the one thing desirable, and the only thing that was desirable. They wanted the eternal riddle of sex, complicated or uncomplicated as it might be, to be expunged for a few hours from their consciousness. They wanted to go back, to put the clock and the years back, to have again any such day as they had had before the terrible tragedy of years, of man and woman, of love and hate, had entered to vex them. It was a longing fruitless and impossible; that which had happened, the too-late recognition of their love for each other, the too-late recognition that in the author-ized field of love hate, tares instead of wheat, had sprung up, had happened, also, and that which must endure till the kindly solving hand of death unknotted the tangle, was the stern thing that withheld them. Only, such is the eternal hope with regard to human affairs, they both believed that the inevitable could be disregarded, that they could make believe that things-as-they-are could be shifted, like theatre-scenes to things-as-they-once-were. Norah, as she ran up the steep path to Paul, practically asked him to eliminate all that which was now his essential self: he, as he ran down to meet her, thought he could do so. But for the moment, anyhow, the barrier that separated past from present seemed broken down, and as they came face to face, they were, as she and he had both longed to be, children again with a sunny day before them, and nothing before or after. And the impossibility of it all, the hopelessness of trying to recapture that, was momentarily non-existent. For that moment they met again, as they had met a thousand times before, merely to welcome this day of glorious sun, and, without thinking, to delight in its hours.

They met: two hands of each were clasped in the hands of the other.

“Oh, Norah, what fun!” he said. “There was some talk of sailing. Don’t let us sail. It is so dull. Let us go out without glasses—that is so important—and picnic where-” then his voice faltered for a moment—“where last year we strung the glasses into a tree. At the end of the olive-garden—surely you remember. You were to pull a string, and I was to dig somewhere. Or the other way round, was it? ”

Their hands were still clasped.

“Ah! let’s go straight back,” he said, “to where we were a year ago—-playing about on that hillside.”

“Just that,” she said. “There was a morning when I had found that rat-tail spoon in Genoa, a hot morning—the last that we spent together.”

Love, longing, the irrevocable past and the irrevocable present, were beating on the hearts of them, each battering, insisting on entrance, but as yet the entrance was denied them. Paul and Norah alike longed for the wine of love, but they thirsted also for the clear spring-water of the early days. Perhaps it was not out of their reach; they were determined, anyhow, to try hard to get it.

“Yes, I remember,” he cried. “I’m sure we are thinking of the same morning. We had made a cache, and we were going to picnic there without glasses. Yes, yes. Let’s do that Ah, the yacht is weighing anchor.”

The metallic clinking of the anchor-chain came to them very clearly across the hundred yards of still water, and they turned and watched in silence. The ship had both sail and steam, but it was clear that Theodore was going to start sailing in this fine breeze, though the smoke pouring from her funnel indicated that as soon as they could get steam up she would use her screw as well. The sails were already being unfurled, and by the time the anchor was up they began to fill, and, leaning over to the wind, she winged her way out of port.

“He has gone,” said Norah.

Then she turned to Paul with that laughing light in her eyes that he had not seen there for so long.

“I’ll tell them to put us up some lunch,” she said, “and I will carry that, and you will take a bottle of wine. And while that is getting ready, go and have a bathe, or you will be wanting to come back. And we’ll lunch up there, and go on and on through the woods, and play at being lost, and— oh, Paul-”

She broke off suddenly, and ran on up the path, unable just then to say more, so fiercely did the irrevocable things, marshaled, as it were, by what she had been told that morning, assault her heart But they should not win entrance, and silently she implored them to give her a truce, an armistice, for this one day. Just a few hours of rest: it was so little to ask.

Half an hour later he joined her, fresh from the sea, and, indeed, it seemed as if the prayer that had gone up from him as well as her was heard. The mere rebound and relief at the thought of the yacht that had vanished round the head-land of Delfino helped to give colour to that illusion of their make-believe, and the singleness of their desire to banish all thought had for the time being its reward. Norah had taken off her hat, always a symbolical action with her, and had swung the lunch-basket over her shoulder; Paul delicately carried the bottle of white wine. Then through the woods they went, beneath the brilliant yellow-green of the spring foliage, and the bending flames of the laburnums, up the brown mountain-paths, and orchid and iris and all the armies of spring flowers marched by them in the grass. Then as they approached the olive-grove where, a year before, they had strung their glasses up into one tree and hidden a corkscrew at the foot of another, the anxiety that caused their talk to become scattered and disconnected was due only to the solemnity of the approaching crisis. At length they reached the terrace in question, and Paul put down the bottle of wine.

“Which will you look for?” he said to Norah. “You may choose.”

“Corkscrew,” said she.”

Paul gave a great sigh.

“I was afraid you were going to choose the glasses,” he said, “and I don’t think I could have borne it. Now, yours is the third tree from that end; mine is the fourth tree from this.”

He marched up to the tree in question. There, tied to a branch some three feet off the ground, was the end of a string. This he undid, and held it.

“Look, Norah!” he said.

The string was carried up in his guiding hand, as by some weight at the other end of it; there was a gentle rustling in the branches, then, through the grey-green of the foliage, there came into view two thick, dropsical wine-glasses.

Norah gave a great sigh.

“That is the most beautiful thing that ever happened,” she said. “ Now, don’t speak to me.”

She knelt down by the other tree, and dug with her stick in the earth at its root. Soon a piece of grey, sodden cardboard appeared at the bottom of her excavation. She lifted this tenderly out.

“ Paul!” she said, and held it up. It had once been a cardboard box, and though now in ruins, there protruded from it an ordinary cheap corkscrew.

“ Nunc dimittis” said Paul piously. “ Let’s have lunch at once. I am so hungry. Oh, Norah, I haven’t been so happy for ages!”

That was a dangerous note, and as if it had been a ringing finger-glass, he stopped its vibrations instantly.

“ Quick, undo the lunch,” he said. “ I wonder if there are sardine sandwiches. Yes? Oh, it’s too good to be true. You don’t like them, I remember, so I’ll exchange my jam sandwiches in any quantity for your sardine ones. We must drink the health of the first day, though. The glasses are quite clean. How can you be so fussy? Well, it’s only an earwig; you may have the other if you like. There! I drink to the health of this happy and glorious day.”

The glasses and corkscrew had to be hidden before they started off again after lunch, and they went up and up till the zone of pines was reached, where the ground was silent and slippery with the fallen needles, and the air aromatic and full of the sound of distant seas. Then the pines, too, were left behind, and they came out on to the austerity of the grey hilltops. Southwards and eastwards lay the dim, misty blue of the Mediterranean, framed in the tops of the trees through which they had come, while landwards range after range of hills were folded and knit together as if they were the interlacing muscles of the good warm earth itself, while from the centre of the vast overhead blue streamed the benediction of the sun. Cool and fresh blew the wind from the Appennines, like a river of limpid water poured over the earth, making the harebells at their feet to tremble on spring-like stalks, and setting the chalice of the pink cistus a-quiver.

As they struck the top of the ridge Norah paused.

“Oh, Paul, if we could go on and on!” she cried. “I should like to walk through the day into the night, and through the night into the day again. What a good thing just * going’ like this is. Neither of us have walked enough lately. We are both—well, the elegant call it action of the skin.”

Paul looked up at her; she was a yard in front of him, a foot above him.

“I’ll come with you through the day and the night,” he said.

That again would not do; it lay on the borderland of all that which for to-day was to be forgotten. She let her eyes rest on him for a moment, then looked away again with a quick, troubled contraction of her brows.

“Ah, but as it is we must get home,” she said. “I don’t think in all our walks last year we got as far as this. Look, it will be sunset before we get home. And then there will be all the evening. Let us dine out on the terrace, and—and play games, silly games. I have enjoyed my walk, and it is only half over yet.”

They had started bravely enough on their day of play, but as the hours went on it became increasingly difficult, for there is nothing so hard to imitate as spontaneity, and as they went homewards long silences fell. For tugging at the heart-strings of them both was the love that had danced into sight that foggy evening in London, and it called to each of them that these hours belonged of right to it. Hopeless it knew itself to be, it did not argue or urge on that point, but it bitterly rebelled at being hidden away like this, forbidden to show its face. Where was the harm in looking at each other with clasped hands, maybe, and finding a comfort and consolation beyond all words in silence, in the still, quiet acknowledgment of love? And where was the good of playing at being children again, when they knew so well that they were man and woman, strong, eager, all aflame? They could not let all these hours that had been given to themselves alone pass without one word. Or, if they would have it so, no word need be spoken, and all that was necessary was that they should just look at each other. Then Love would be content; but he clamoured for just that acknowledgment. How could they pretend that he did not exist, he who was so much stronger than either of them?

Over the slippery carpet of fir needles their feet went noiselessly, and soon they were come again to the spring foliage of the woods below. Already the flames of sunset were spread over the sky, the vivid greens were turning sombre in the waning of the light, and they walked on as through some deep ocean cave of dim lights and wavering shadows. High on the hillside opposite the grey peaks were still flushed with the direct sunrays, but the sea below had lost its blue, and lay calm and grey as it fell asleep. A few birds fluted to each other in the thickets, and in the more shady places, already beginning to be filled with the dark clear essence of night, the fire-flies were assembling in dancing companies. A pale crescent moon, luminous only with the shining of dull silver, was beginning to steer its way over the heavens; the infinite sadness and beauty of the close of day was weaving its spell over them.

At the little terrace where they had lunched Paul paused. They had, like proper picnickers, buried the paper in which they had brought their food, but one small piece had been forgotten. Paul picked this up.

“Yes . . . bury that,” said Norah. “We must leave the dining-room tidy.”

He turned aside, scratched a hole in the ground, and made as though he would bury it. His back was turned to her, but she saw him not bury it, but put it in his pocket. And there was to her some dreadful poignancy in that: she could only just prevent herself crying out to him:

“Oh, give me a piece of that to keep!”

Then he straightened himself from his bending position and looked round.

“Yes, it’s all tidy now,” he said. “Ready for our next meal.”

Half an hour’s walking brought them down to the road again. Dusk had fallen in layer after rapid layer, in the manner of the South, and lights already glimmered from the houses scattered along the shore. In silence they walked side by side again once more, for in the narrowness of the wood-paths there was not room for two to walk abreast, and in silence they came to the heavy iron gate of the Castello.

Paul pushed it open, and held it for her to enter. Then came the inevitable: she looked at him to thank him, and he said:

“Norah!”

There came the long look which each had been hungering for. Then she gave a little moan below her breath.

“Ah, don’t, don’t!” she said.

His control was giving way.

“But let us just talk,” he said. “I can’t bear this. Surely we may talk. I have tried: I have done my best. But oh, how I love you! There, it is said.”

She had let her eyes fall as he spoke, but here she raised them again in entreaty.

“Don’t torture yourself,” she said. “Don’t torture me.”

And she passed quickly up the path in front of him, and went straight to her room. But a sudden fierce joy beat in Paul’s heart, at her last three words. They were stupefy-ingly sweet to him. He was ashamed, too, but the shame did not quench his joy.

There was a telegram for him on the hall table, which he opened. It was from Theodore, saying that he would not be back that night. Paul thought that was already understood, but sent the telegram up to Norah by her maid, scribbling on the back, “I will tell them that we shall dine outside, as you suggested.”

It was then already late, and he went upstairs to dress.

Every effort honestly made always has some sort of reward; fruitless effort is a phrase without meaning, for no energy, by the mere laws of the elements, can be expended without effect, and after that word spoken by the garden-gate, both Norah and Paul pulled themselves together again. In those hours they had spent together on the hills, certain reservoirs had been stored within them, and that word, so to speak, was the bursting of the banks. But the strength of the out-poured torrent had for the moment been spent: the word itself—the bare word—had been so much, so infinitely satisfying, and thus it was possible for them both to make a fresh effort, a fresh determination, with the effect that dinner passed off with a semblance of naturalness : each, in fact, thought the other natural and played up to the level set. Yet all the time the storage was going on again within, and after dinner, when the table had been cleared and cards put out, silence was the only thing possible. Norah drew her chair up, and began to play patience; but it was not long that she played. In a few minutes she swept the cards together, she could not go on.

They had dined on the paved square outside the house towards the sea. On one side rose the house-wall, with its balconies standing out against the velvet blue of the sky. Only in the drawing-room outside which they sat were any lights, and there a lamp stood on a table opposite the window, throwing an oblong of illumination on to the dark. On two other sides rose a few sombre-foliaged pines, with thickets of shrubs among their trunks, on the fourth the terrace wall, bordered by flowers, was open to the sea. Below, the languid whisper of ripples sounded with long pauses in between, and down the paths and alleys of the garden crept warm little wandering airs, and in dark places the companies of fire-flies burned silent as meteors. Then suddenly silence was no longer possible.

“Paul,” said Norah suddenly.

With one movement he had slid his chair beside her.

“ Yes, yes,” he said.

“ I want to talk to you; I can’t be silent. I have been thinking it all over. You must go away; you must leave us.

Ah, don’t interrupt, let me get through it; it is as much as I shall be able to manage.”

She swept the cards aside, and leaned with both elbows on the table, hiding her face from him.

“I am going to have a child,” she said, “and—and I can’t bear that you should be here any longer. It isn’t right; it can’t be right. We are not meant to suffer so. I only knew for certain this morning, and I can’t help telling you, I told —him. He is amused to think that his cousin’s children will be cut out of the succession if it is a boy. That is all.”

Then that possession of hate which he had known twice before seized Paul. He sprang to his feet.

“Damn him! damn him!” he cried.

Norah looked up at him, startled, and gave a little frightened cry as she saw a face she hardly recognised.

“Ah, don’t,” she said. “What is it? It is not you. Paul, you frighten me.”

But Paul was for the moment outside his own control.

“My God!” he cried. “How can it be allowed? Think, oh, think if- There, I am sorry.”

He sat down again opposite her, and was silent a while.

“Yes, I had better go,” he said. “I ought to have gone, I suppose, when I knew first that I loved you. But I could not. And—and you wanted me to stop.”

“I know I did. And I thank you for all you have done. And I thank you for your love for me-”

She stopped, pointed suddenly at the oblong of drawingroom window, and then sprang to her feet.

“Look!” she cried to Paul, still pointing.

In the window, looking out at them and quietly smoking, sat Theodore.

CHAPTER XIII

Theodore got up at once, and came tripping out with his quick little step, and his shrill little laugh.

“Norah, you are abominable/’ he cried. “Why did you interrupt like that? I? Yes, I changed my mind, and came back by train instead. You wonderful people. How wonderful we all are. I want a drink. Why haven’t these damned servants brought out the whisky? Don’t you want a drink, Paul? I am sure you must after that emotion. Emotion is so thirsty. Here, Ellis, where the devil are you ?”

There was a bell close by the window, and he rang it as he stepped out into the garden. Then he sat down in the chair Paul had occupied, and shook with laughter.

“Paul, I adore you,” he cried. “What was it? ‘Damn him! damn him!’ That was me, wasn’t it? Oh, I feel five years younger. I shall be able to be violent too, if you will only go on.”

As the servant appeared with the tray he was silent anyhow. Afterwards he went back into the drawing-room to see that there was no one there. Then with the same satyr-like merriment he rejoined them.

“I will answer straight off all the questions you will certainly ask me,” he said. “ Genoa was—well, it was Genoa, and my own house, I was sure, would be infinitely more entertaining. How right I was. But I felt certain that I should get the maximum of entertainment if I was unexpected. So I sat quiet in my stall inside.”

He suddenly turned a hideous face of malice to Norah.

“You silly Mrs. Grundy,” he cried. “Why did you point at me like that? It is so rude to point. Paul, pray go on exactly as you would have done if you had not been made aware that I was present. How long have I been here? Oh, about twenty minutes. I saw Norah begin to play patience. I saw all the rest since—and heard it. I came back by train—that is all. Had you not been so absorbed in each other you must have heard my carriage.

Norah had not stirred from her chair. Now she leaned a little forward in it.

“1 have said nothing of which 1 am ashamed/’ she said.

Theodore was drinking at the moment He almost choked in his glass.

“Oh, you have wide views/’ he cried. “To make love, yes, exactly that, to make love to your husband’s secretary is quite as it should be. It was all going so nicely too. The course of true love was running beautifully smooth. Oh— you two are wonderful. I delight in you.”

Paul had risen when Theodore came out from the house, and was standing quite still, his hands on the back of a chair, looking at him with a sort of quiet wonder. For the moment he felt detached, isolated not only from all that was going on round him, but even from himself. Soon, no doubt, he, his essential self, would step back into his brain and body, but at present everything seemed as separate from him as a dream. He wondered, indeed, for half a second whether it was all a dream, but knew it was all too quiet, too connected for that. It was so dreadfully inevitable toothings somehow must have happened in this way and no other. And with the same quiet wonder he asked himself if this was a man or some incarnate fiend that sat giggling with this hellish merriment in front of him.

Theodore’s pince-nez had fallen off as he laughed, and he put them up again and looked at Paul.

“You are too splendid,” he cried, “simply too splendid. You are like a summer gale blowing a hurricane one moment, and then quite still again. You are both divine, though. Did you not say ‘poor Theodore’ this morning to me, Norah? I had not much need of your pity then, but if it makes you arrange scenes like this for my entertainment I hope you will pity me every day. How still Paul is, isn’t he? It reminds me of that minuet you danced together so formally with all the fire burning beneath. You have stoked it up well since then, you dear volcanoes.”

Still neither Paul nor Norah moved, and Theodore turned to his wife.

“Say good-night, and go to bed, my darling,” he said. “You must take care of yourself, and not get agitated, you know. Aren’t you going to kiss me as usual? Very well, 1 must do without it. And I’m afraid, as I’ve come home, Paul will have to do without it too.”

Paul just stirred at this, and for a moment it looked as if he would speak. His eyes followed Norah as, without a word, she passed into the drawing-room, but then they returned and looked steadily at Theodore again.

“So you have been making all sorts of plans, you and Norah, about your leaving me,” he continued. “Pray put that out of your head at once. You will do nothing of the kind. You will stop here, and I shall make you dance like a monkey on a hot plate.”

Paul tried to speak once and failed.

“Makes one a bit dry in the throat, doesn’t it,” said Theodore. “Better have a drink. And sit down; I must have a few moments’ conversation with you. You damned fool, don’t stand staring at me like a stuffed cormorant. Be animated again. I love you when you are animated.”

Paul sat down.

“I must go to-morrow,” he said. “I would go to-night if I could.”

Theodore leaned back in his chair.

“Of course I can’t retain a young Hercules like you by force,” he said, “but do you know what I shall do if you go? I shall instantly institute divorce proceedings against Norah?”

“Though you know there is no shadow of foundation,” began Paul.

“Counsel are very ingenious,” said Theodore. “They ask all sorts of questions. And—and really an ingenious counsel might make something out of what I have seen to-night. Think it over, my dear Paul.”

“You want to keep me here just—just to torture us both?”

“Oh, dear no. As far as torture goes, which is a very exaggerated word, it isn’t I who torture you; it is you who torture yourselves. No, I keep you because you suit me as a secretary. Also you afford me intense amusement. Perhaps you will say it is not very kind of me, but I really must indulge my sense of humour now and then. So think it over. Ask yourself whether a searching cross-examination will amuse you, and whether it will amuse Norah. Perhaps it may; it will certainly amuse me. You shall tell me to-morrow morning. Of course you are perfectly free to go if you think it wise. You could catch the midday train at Santa Lucia, and be in happy England the evening of the day after. We should miss you and your society, but I will not stand in your way. And we shall meet again at that terribly stuffy divorce court. I wonder that the upper classes don’t subscribe for its being rebuilt, as they are so frequently there.”

He got up and minced across to the terrace wall, whistling to himself.

“So much nicer here than in Genoa,” he said. “I am glad I came back. Ah, by the way, I wish you would drive into Delfino to-morrow morning, and meet the yacht there. They will unload my cases of books and pictures at the Marina. You will have to sign things again. You can go over in the motor. There will be plenty of time for you still to catch the midday train if you decide to go.”

The same strange isolation and quietness was over Paul throughout that night. He slept a little from time to time, but woke constantly, and lay quite still, hardly thinking, but being entirely conscious of all that had happened. He pictured the scene over and over again to himself, but for the present all feeling within him was stunned. He knew that deep down in the centre of his nature was burning a fierce love and a scorching hate. But at present his consciousness did not reach down to this. Either or both, he suspected, might at any moment flare up in pillar of flame, but both as yet were quiet This too he was aware of, he would not catch the midday train to England. Something— he did not know what—had to happen first So he lay quite quiet, looking with open eyes on to the blackness. The glorious clearness of the day before had become overclouded soon after nightfall, and through the dark hours he heard the sad hiss of the rain falling steadily and windlessly outside on the shrubs and trees. But towards morning it cleared, and the earliest light showed him a clear heaven of palest blue, a still sleeping sea, while from the bushes came the chirrupings of the waking birds.

Theodore occasionally took a little walk before breakfast, especially if he had slept well, and when Paul went to his room as usual at half-past eight that morning, to learn his instructions about the letters of the day, he found he had already gone out. His valet told him that he had set out nearly half an hour ago, and had ordered breakfast at nine.

“And such a romp as he had with my boy first, I never see,” he added. “Ted wanted to go out, too, but Mr. Beckwith wouldn’t let him. He went along the road towards Delfino, sir, if you was wanting him. The motor is round, sir, if you were going out in it.”

It still wanted half an hour to the time when Beckwith might be expected back, long enough, if he went quickly, for Paul to do his errand at the custom-house at Delfino, and sooner than Wait with nothing to do, he made up his mind to go to Delfino now. The same strange insouciance still possessed him; he could remember with extraordinary distinctness every word, every movement, that had gone to make up that scene on the paved square outside last night; and yet, though the vitriol of it all had gone deep into his brain, at present it did not bum. It was there, that was all. But, as it were, little premonitory stabs, as of some awakening activity, were his; he seemed to know that, before long, he would realize it all again, not with memory alone, but with mind and soul, and this made inaction unwelcome to him. He wanted to be doing something. Anything would do as long as it took up his attention; to be employed was the great thing. So he went down to the gate of the Cas-tello, where the huge six-cylinder Amddde was waiting. He 18 usually drove it himself, and meant to do so this morning. There was no need for the chauffeur to come; it was but a couple of miles into Delfino.

“I shan’t want you,” he said to him. “I am only going into Delfino. I shall be back in half an hour.”

The man touched his cap.

“The roads are very greasy, sir, after the rain,” he said. “She slipped about coming up the hill.”

“Thanks; I will take care,” said Paul.

He pulled the starting lever, and the great car slid slowly forward. Often and often he had rhapsodized to Norah and Theodore about it. It was not like a machine, he said, but like a horse with a fine mouth, that seemed to answer to the wish—scarcely expressed—of its driver. The road, as the chauffeur had warned him, was very slippery, but the sagacious monster took heed to its steps, wary of the stone wall on one side, the steep bank on the other. Once as they went down the steep hill into the little fishing-village he hooted to warn a cart ahead, and then they got on to the level, and Paul let it go.

The air rushed swiftly about him, rising to the scream of a gale. He thought no more of the slippery road, nor, as he breasted the ascent after the level, of the wall and the long drop into the sea, for with the movement his brain had awoke again. That which was written there, all the taunts and insults of the night before, were screamed at him in Theodore’s voice, and, as had happened to him once before, he saw black. The green of the trees was black, black was the shining shield of the sea, but blackest of all was his hatred.

“You cannot kiss Paul as I am here . . . the course of true love was running beautifully smooth . . . will cross-examination amuse you? It will amuse me . . .” Phrases such as these and a hundred other such smoked and bubbled in his brain.

The wonderful monster, rejoicing in its speed and the control of a master-hand, flowed up the hill, with the crape of the woodlands flying in blurred lines by it. Once or twice it slid a yard or two instead of biting the road, but Paul cared not for that. All night he had known that “something” must happen, and perhaps it was this, a plunge at the low stone wall, a hissing fall, and no more. Whatever it was to be, he cared not. Love was gone from his heart— love of life, love of Norah, even. He only saw black.

Half a mile of level with a sharpish curve at the. end followed the ascent; from there a little decline led into Delfino. Instinctively, through no volition, as far as he knew, of his own, he slowed down at the comer, and the comer turned, he went full speed again. Two hundred yards away was a speck—it seemed no more—in the middle of the road. Then he saw who it was. Overhead the branches of the trees made an arch over the road; they were still dripping, and after this long drought they made a slime on the surface.

When the car was fifty yards away Theodore heard the noise of its coming, and began moving to the side of the road away from the sea. He was walking back towards the Cas-tello, having reached apparently the limit of his stroll, and was returning for his breakfast. At this moment the car slewed violently, and for perhaps two seconds Paul had time to think. That he was doing a hideously dangerous thing as concerned himself in going fast over these roads he knew perfectly well. Another swerve might easily take him at high speed into the steep bank on one side or into the sea-wall on the other. That he had known before, but what he definitely knew in these two seconds was that if he went on without slowing down he was doing a hideously dangerous thing for the man on the road. But he saw black, and went on; he was on the top speed, going not less than forty miles an hour. His eyes were fixed on Theodore.

Then suddenly the car swerved again towards the right, on the side where Theodore was walking, and simultaneously a voice rang in his ears, crying, “Hurrah! you will kill him.” He was perfectly himself; he knew well that for these two seconds he went recklessly on, hoping—yes, hoping—that one jarring movement would end everything for them both. But as Theodore skipped sideways to avoid the car, Paul tried to remedy that impulse of murder, and turned sharply towards the sea-wall.

He had gone on, he knew, in the blind desire to kill; but now that was over, and he had put the car at the wall to get out of the way of the man who was so close in front of it, at any cost Then he saw that his repentance was too late.

From in front and very close at hand he heard one shrill thin scream as of a weasel. The car bumped over something, and then crashed into the low wall. Paul saw the lamps and bonnet rising for a moment, then ducking suddenly down. He was jerked upwards and sideways, and saw the grey rocks below rising swiftly to meet him.

CHAPTER XIV

Four days later Norah was sitting on the paved square outside the drawing-room at the Castello. In front of her was the breakfast-table, laid for two, for her mother had arrived, and though the table showed that the china had already been used, it was still very early. Three cups, in point of fact, had been used; the third had been for Dr. Philips, who had drunk a cup with them before he went upstairs. He* had told them his hopes and his fears. Then Lady Ravenscroft had gone with him indoors, and Norah was alone. She sat quite still, with her hands on her lap, and though she was waiting, she was conscious of no* impatience, no fear, no hope. The shock of what had happened had struck her rigid; she was but a machine which was dealt with by others. Yet certain memories were turned over quietly in her mind; though it was with no sense of agony or dread that they occurred to her. But nothing else was present to her, neither the sea, nor the whispering pines, nor hunger nor thirst, nor any consciousness of herself. Those few things only turned round and round in her mind, and they were these.

Life was within her: his child would be born. Yesterday she had been at Theodore’s funeral. Upstairs Paul was lying between life and death. There was no comment: just these three things went round and round. Ah, there was one comment: probably within a few minutes a plump little man would come out of that drawing-room window and tell her whether, according to human calculation, Paul would live or die. That was simple too; perhaps she would attend another funeral. If not-

Like a mere drop-scene another grouping of persons arranged itself in her mind. Four mornings ago she had rushed downstairs when her maid had come into her room saying, “There has been an accident, ma’am.” She had gone as far as the heavy iron gate into the main road, which Paul the evening before had held open for her. Something had been carried past her, covered with a sheet She remembered clinging to the gate, which was slippery with the dew of the morning. Also, there was the smell of paint about it, and she remembered it had been newly painted. Close behind that which was covered by a sheet had come something else. The head was propped up, and it was bound with a white bandage, through which something dark had soaked.

Even now, four days afterwards, her own voice rang in her ears, when she cried, “Paul! Paul! ”

There was the sound of a shutting door, and the muffled noise of footsteps inside the house. She heard a gasping chuckle in her own throat, which it was beyond her power to control. The footsteps were of more than one person, she had thought, but it was only one figure that appeared in the window out of which Theodore had stepped so unexpectedly five nights ago. So her mother had waited in the drawingroom, for it was the funny little roundabout doctor who came out. He was rubbing his hands in a professional manner. But Norah did not move; she sat quite still, not even turning round to him. She simply could not.

“The treatment which I recommended,” began Dr. Philips, “was one which I had seen applied-”

Then she moved, with a jerk like a marionette, and faced him.

“For God’s sake, tell me 1” she cried.

“Mr. Norris is doing well,” said the doctor.

Then something like a wave began to move deep down at the base of Norah’s throat. It came half-way up her neck, and like a wave fell back. Then from even deeper than before it moved upwards again, and her shoulders shook with it. Then came the blessed boon of tears. She leaned forward over the table, and sobbed her heart, not out, but back to her again—sobbed it in. No words came; there were no half-stifled exclamations and hints of speech—it was most unconventional sobbing; she only cried. And the little roundabout doctor did not attempt to stop or to console her. He let her cry. Nor did her mother come out from inside the house to comfort her. Like the little roundabout doctor, she waited.

Eventually Dr. Philips spoke.

“And now, my dear lady, will you go to see Mr. Norris?” he said. “Of course, it shall be as you wish. But he has been asking where you are: whether you are in England or not. I must tell you that he doesn’t always know what has happened. Sometimes he seems to know, at other times to think, so I gather, that he has gone back to England, and that you—you and Mr. Beckwith—are still in Italy. Then again, sometimes he—well, he wanders, you know—he thinks that he has quarrelled with—with your late husband. But I think it would comfort him to see you. Of course, you will be gentle with any moods of his. It is most important that he should not be agitated.”

Norah had half risen on the suggestion that she should see Paul. But before the doctor had finished his speech, she had sat down again. She passed the back of her hands over her eyes, and made no apology for her tears.

“Yes, go on,” she said quietly. “Tell me any delusions he may have, so that I shall know how—how to behave.”

The little doctor cleared his throat. He could deal with patients better than with their friends.

“I do not say he will have any delusions,” he said. “Certainly when I left him his brain was quite clear, and for the time, at any rate, he knew everything. But it will not necessarily be so in ten minutes. But—yes, my dear lady, I must tell you this—-during the last day or two he has talked— unconsciously of course,—a great deal. He has imagined all sorts of things—you will excuse me, I am sure—he has imagined himself in love with you. He has imagined that he hated your husband. He has imagined that he killed him intentionally. Dear me, yes, it is all very painful, but as you and I know, there is no question what happened. He— Mr. Norris, I mean—simply turned the car straight at the wall, courting certain death, to get out of your husband’s way. The tracks of the wheels proved it. There was not the slightest question about it. But that is a delusion of his.

If he gets excited at all, please call for me. I shall be just outside on the landing. Of course, your seeing him is experimental. Only my opinion is that it will calm him. He has called for you so much. Should the interview have the effect I anticipate, he will be much safer for it”

“Safer?” asked Norah.

“Yes; there has been severe injury to the head. As I told you, he is doing very well, though I dread excitement for him. But I think that to see you may very likely quiet him. I want him to get a good long natural sleep. Nature’s restorative, you know. I would sooner not give him any more drugs. If he can, somehow, relieve his mind, and feel—well, sure of you—I think he will sleep naturally. I send you to him in that hope.”

Norah rose.

“Yes, I will go,” she said.

“And you,” he asked, “are you quite yourself? You will not-”

“Break down again?” she asked. “There is not the slightest fear.”

A nurse was waiting on the landing at the top of the stairs, who took Norah to Paul’s room. He was lying propped up in bed, looking towards the window, and paid no attention to the opening of the door. Norah turned to the nurse.

“Wait outside, please,” she said. “I will call you if there is the slightest need.”

The door closed again behind the nurse, and Norah went straight to the bedside.

“Well, Paul,” she said.

He looked at her, quite himself, recognising her.

“Ah, Norah,” he said. “I have wanted to see you.”

He paused a moment, frowning.

“There was something I wanted to tell you,” he said, “but it has got covered up. Ah, I know. I was going fast, and the road was greasy, and I tried to get out of his way. You believe that? ”

His eyes looked at her with some dreadful, secret anxiety.

“Why, of course,” she said. “We all know you chose rather to go straight for the sea-wall. Has that been bothering you? If so, you must never think of it again/’

“Yes, how it has been bothering me! They have tried to cover it all up—I can’t find the right words—cover it up somehow with drugs and things; but a corner of it was always peeping out, you understand: the fear that you might think that after what had happened the evening before-”

His voice failed again.

“You must promise me one thing,” said she.

“I will promise you anything.”

“Promise me to say to yourself, if ever that peeps out again, that I know you did your utmost, that you risked your life to—to save him.”

Paul’s eyes suddenly filled with tears.

“Thank God!” he said.

He was silent for a time after that. One hand of his was lying outside the bed-clothes, and Norah gently patted it. Then he spoke again.

“Am I dying?” he asked. “I don’t want to die. At least, I am so tired, I don’t mind much.”

“No, you are not dying, dear Paul,” she said. “You are ever so much better. And as for being tired, you must go to sleep.”

A sudden look of fright came into his eyes.

“I know there is something more,” he said, “which I can’t remember now, something when I first saw him on the road. I am afraid I shall have a nightmare about it if I go to sleep.”

Norah laughed gently.

“Ah, it is just the other way,” she said. “If you sleep all thoughts of the nightmare will vanish.”

Paul was listening to her like a child listening to a story.

“On your word of honour?” he asked.

“Yes, I am sure of it.”

“And it won’t be rude of me?” he asked. “You don’t want to talk?”

“I couldn’t stop to talk anyhow,” she said. “I have a lot to do this morning.”

Already Paul’s eyelids were beginning to flutter.

“I’m glad I haven’t,” he said. “And you are sure that I did my best, that I tried to—to save-”

At that his eyelids closed completely. For ten minutes more Norah sat by him, but he did not move. Then she went quietly to the door.

“He’s sleeping,” she said to the nurse.

Norah went downstairs again to tell her mother and the doctor what had happened, and as she went she became suddenly aware that she herself was also so sleepy and tired that she could hardly put one foot down in front of the other. For the last four nights she had hardly closed her eyes, yet all the time she had up till this moment felt tensely wideawake and unfatigued. That awful anxiety for Paul which she had betrayed once when, as his senseless body was carried through the gate into the Castello garden, she had cried out “Paul, Paul,” had been like some bright lamp burning in her brain, which kept it incessantly lit and busy. Of that self-betrayal she cared nothing (it was but to half a dozen Italian labourers she had betrayed herself), except that she had felt now and then a sort of wonder at herself at the completeness of her absorption in him. And at present death, even death, had not softened her towards her husband. He seemed to her, if she thought of him, to have forfeited all claims to humanity on that evening when he had unexpectedly, but clearly designedly, surprised them by his return, and all she had been capable of at present during these four days was to avoid thinking of him. That she could manage to do, death could lend her mind a cloak of oblivion to hide her face.

But now, as she came downstairs, she felt some sort of thaw and softness coming over her. It was blurred and indistinct, for just now she had only one desire, since that’ cruel lamp which her tense anxiety had lit was burning dim, and that was to sleep. Her activity had reached its limits: it could continue no longer. And the forms of her mother and the doctor were dim also as she entered the drawingroom. She just sat down on the chair nearest her.

“He has gone to sleep,” she said. “I shall sleep too.”

So, for the time, unconsciousness, kind because it gives a respite, cruel because it recuperates the power of suffering in the weary, descended on the two actors in this swift tragedy who were left, and perhaps the third was the luckiest of the three. His chapter, at any rate, was closed; there was no more struggle for him, nothing any more for him to strive to forget. From that frail little body and busy brain would spring the flowers and grasses of the next spring time—aye, perhaps even this summer some delving rose-root would cause him to rise again in folded leaf or foam of tinted blossom. And not less sure would be his resurrection in the minds and the lives of others, for nature will let nobody either live alone or die alone: the fibres of us all, whether in life or death, are entwined in other lives. He would live again also in his child.

The little doctor, after his ministrations upstairs, gently took his leave, promising to call again in the afternoon, and Lady Ravenscroft, when he had gone, betook herself to the terrace outside, underneath the pines, leaving Norah, as the doctor had recommended, sleeping in her chair.

Italy and all spring were in that noon; it was almost possible to hear, so she thought, the steady throb of life, constantly accelerated, in the vivid opening of leaf and flower. Below her the sea was halcyon, at the end of the little bay she could see the green-smothered roofs of the Villa Martino, where she had spent this May-month a year ago, where, too, she had spoken to Norah of the advantages of the match that had been offered her. Lady Ravenscroft was not a woman much given to regret; she was of too vital a nature to dwell fruitlessly on the past, for if the past needed remedy, the remedy was surely not to be sought in raking among its ashes, but in an eager scrutiny of the future; for it was only the future that could repair what had happened. Yet, scrutinize as she might, she could conjecture no remedy. She had heard from Norah of the evening which had preceded the fatal morning; she knew, too, of the child that should be born, and she asked herself whether in all the pharmacy of love there was a balm that could heal those things. Nor was that all. Whatever the history of the accident was, it was still Paul who had brought death to the man—her husband—who had so vilely insulted him. No doubt now Norah could think only of one thing—since all else was irremediable—namely, the recovery of the man she loved. But would it be always so? If he recovered, would not a pale ghost slip in between them, even as Theodore, unexpected and malevolent, had slipped between them out of the drawing-room window on that evening? And was it humanely possible, considering what had immediately gone before, that Norah should not question herself, should not wonder whether an accident could be so well-timed. . .? It was not that she would believe that her questioning was well-founded (for there, indeed, was tragedy full-fledged); it was that she should question at all. Here was a Marah that would turn a whole well-spring bitter. Lady Ravens-croft herself was utterly and entirely willing to believe that it was all an accident—an accident which Paul had done his very best to avoid, choosing rather what seemed almost certain death than that it should happen. But she could have given no guarantee that she would never at any future time let such a doubt occur to her. And if it occurred to Norah?

Then, too, there were people—people, that terrible Greek chorus, which commented long and loud on anything that happened. For to take the best possible view—supposing Norah married Paul—supposing the woman who loved married the man who loved—an ideal event—still. . . . She married her husband’s secretary, a man who had lived with them almost since her first marriage, a man whom she had known from boyhood and girlhood. This was common property; common property, again, must be the fact that the first marriage had not been ideal—-everyone knew that. A baby (please God) would be born in two or three months. . . . The world was so charitable.

Such was her first review. Then, with great good sense, she tore it all up. She told herself that she had been guilty of the unpardonable crime of taking a pessimistic view without sufficient reason. Yet one page of her review remained untorn. For she knew the details of the evening when Theodore had come back from Genoa; she knew, too, the bare fact that Paul had driven at reckless speed towards Delfino next morning. That was certain. The chauffeur had watched the earlier part of his course in dismay. Also, complete fracture of the low sea-wall and the distance that Paul had been flung were open corroboration of his recklessness. And if she could not help being haunted by these thoughts, what would others do? She could picture to herself the accounts in the daily press—in fact, she had seen one paper. The story would not get less vivid in the telling. Of course journalists knew nothing of the private life of Norah with her husband. But “people” did. They would supply that hiatus.

Or if Paul died? Hundreds of people died every day. But a death or two in one’s own immediate circle mattered more (otherwise the millennium would have come long since) than a holocaust of strangers. She felt sure—sure somewhere deep down—that Norah could not live without Paul. But could she live with him? Where was the antidote for these insidious poisons of thought?

She sat out there in the garden till the long, superb day began to wane. At intervals throughout it she had looked in at the drawing-room only to see Norah still there, and still sleeping. As she had sunk down into that chair, so she had remained, her head back, her mouth closed, her hands lying outwards and relaxed, sleeping like a child. The news from upstairs was the same: Paul still slept. Then came the doctor, after his visit to the two sleepers, full of professional satisfaction. There was nothing like sleep—Nature’s restorative. It occurred to Lady Ravenscroft to ask what Nature proposed to do after she had restored. But since he could not have answered that question, she did not ask.

The shadows began to lengthen round the still house. Cabs full of Germans, who express all sentiment gutturally, drove by to catch the night train at Santa Lucia. Their songs were mainly patriotic, so Lady Ravenscroft hoped they would speedily find themselves in Germany. She wished that all Germans were there. But though she wished this profoundly at intervals, she much more wished that all English people were in England. She thought no more, as the setting rays of the sun grew level over the sea, of her abandoned pessimism. She wanted to have Norah and Paul safe home, and the house in which she pictured them was the house of Kate Mundy at Wroxton. Given that cool green lawn, that grey tower overtopping the red-brick wall, she felt that she would have them screened from the Fates that now seemed to her hot on their trail. Nothing ever happened in that dozing, red-brick house (Kate’s habitual moumful-ness, perhaps, was understood by the powers that vex the spirit of man, to mean that she voluntarily paid her quota towards human misery, without her bill being sent in), and Lady Ravenscroft dearly longed for nothing to happen; she longed to feel secure, on behalf of Norah, against the wild striking of further blind blows like these. In spite of herself she dreaded the future, yet she had turned to the future to find the medicine for the past. So, as both were for the time equally unsatisfactory, she determined, like a wise woman, as that very wise man, Marcus Aurelius, had done before her, to circumscribe the present, not to anticipate evil, but should evil come, to deal with it when it came. It was no use clutching at the reins in panic: the firm, steady hand controlled runaways.

After sundown the evening turned a little chilly, and she came quietly indoors into the drawing-room and sat down to read her book till something happened—till Norah awoke, that is to say, or till it was dinner-time. The former happened just before the latter, and Norah suddenly came back to full consciousness.

“Have I slept long?” she asked. “Why, it is evening! And Paul?”

“He was sleeping still half an hour ago,” said her mother. “Yes, dear, you have slept all day.”

Norah gave a great sigh.

“Ah, why could I not sleep till the end—till all was over?” she said. “And now I have to take up everything again—all the burden, all the fears.”

Lady Ravenscroft shut up her book.

“That is what I thought two or three hours ago, dear,” she said. “But I am sure now that is not the right way to meet life. For if burdens are to be bound on one, and fears to come true, it will be time to think about them when they happen. One should not saddle one’s self with them before there is need.”

Norah began walking rapidly up and down. That cruel-kindly gift of sleep had certainly come to her in both its qualities, and while it restored her strength, it had restored also her power, her capability for suffering.

“Oh, I am afraid,” she cried. “I fear everything. I fear-”

Lady Ravenscroft got up, and took hold of her two hands.

“Come out of that, Norah,” she said. “If one thing in this very uncertain life is quite certain, it is that fear—vague fear—is the most destructive and fatal thing in the world. No good ever came out of it, nor can it ever come. It is absolutely and entirely unprofitable. Now, dear, aren’t you hungry after your long sleep? You have eaten nothing since breakfast.”

In that firm, kind grasp Norah grew quiet.

“ Yes, I am hungry,” she said, “now you ask me.”

“Well, it is nearly dinner-time, and I propose to ring, and tell them to bring dinner up as soon as they can. Then after dinner we will talk if you wish. Really, all the wisdom of the world is to be found in nurseries. Don’t you remember, if one was fractious and on edge, one’s nurse always said, ‘You’ll be better after dinner’? And one always was.”

She rang the bell briskly, gave her order, and went back to Norah.

“Now, we’ll neither of us dress to-night, for a treat,” she said, “and instead we’ll walk up and down the terrace till dinner is ready.”

“Ah, I must just go up and see if Paul is still asleep,” said Norah. “I must tell them to let me know, too, as soon as he wakes. I am anxious about his waking.”

“Why?”

“Because just before he went to sleep, he wanted to be sure that I did not think—ah, how can I say it?—he wanted to be assured that I believed he had done his best to-—to get out of the way.”

“But you told him so, I suppose?”

“Yes; but thoughts that are in one’s brain just before going to sleep come back there again. I must see him again as soon as he wakes.”

Norah went upstairs on what proved an unnecessary errand, for Paul still slept. Not once since the morning had he moved, but still lay like a child tired with play, his cheek on his hand, breathing the long, slow inspiration of dreamless sleep. And while evening passed into night he still slept’. The doctor, however, had given orders that he should be gently awakened just to have some beef-tea before they settled down for the night, and while this was done, Norah waited upstairs outside his room in case he asked for her, or in case anything troubled him. But he took his food, still heavy-eyed, just passively obedient, and slept again. Another nurse was to sit up with him through the night, and promised to awake Norah if she was wanted.

Silence and darkness settled down over the house. Norah, in spite of her long sleep of the day, was still utterly weary, and the keener edge of her anxiety about Paul being relieved, she fell asleep at once. In Paul’s room the nurse sat behind a screen, where there burned a single light, shaded from the bed. And night passed into the dove-coloured hues that herald day, and from them there blossomed the rose of dawn. Then quite suddenly he awoke.

For the first time since the accident five mornings ago he was completely himself. Instantaneously he knew where he was and why he was there. He remembered exactly the menacing appearance of that grey rock towards which he was being hurled through the air, though it had seemed to him as if he was stock still, while the rock and the little foam-steaked ripples at its base, and the trees round it, were coming rushing up to meet him. A bird had been sitting on it, but flew away. He remembered a horrible leaping of the car over something while it was still in the road, and a short, shrill, little scream. Then still remembering backwards, he recalled the moment or two before that, and the moment when he knew that to drive on at this pace over the treacherous road might mean death for himself, or death for another. And he remembered that for a second or two after he had realized that, he had not slowed down.

He lay quite still, with his eyes fixed on the brightness of the dawn, and within him there dawned a brightness that made it dull in comparison. Theodore was dead, dead, dead; and every fibre and brain-cell within him rejoiced. He did not seek to excuse or palliate what he knew he had done; he did not care to tell himself that it was in the highest degree unlikely that he could have slowed down between the moment that he saw that his furious speed was dangerous, in case the car slewed, for the foot-passenger, and the moment at which he desperately put the car at the wall in order to avert the accident that was then inevitable. He accepted without remorse of any kind all responsibility that might have been his. He knew that he was mad with ungovernable hate at that moment, else, no doubt, he could not have done what he did; but in this awaking, clear-brained, in the rose-coloured flush of dawn, he had no regret for what had happened. Indeed, it was only for a moment or two that he dwelt on the past at all, for on the wings of the morning his ‘ soul sped forth into the incredible rose-colour of the future. There one waited for him, she whose very soul had gone out when they carried him in through the iron gate, in the cry, “Paul! Paul!”

Then again for a space he turned his mind away, from the future to the past, to what he had done; but again he faced what he had done unterrified, and with a feeling of irresponsibility that he himself wondered at. Yet, indeed, so curiously logical are the workings of the human soul, so blindly it obeys the master-passion of the Ego, that there was but little cause for wonder. For the step between an action we have contemplated and imagined and the action itself is scarcely a step at all, especially to those who live and think vividly. To the dull and sluggish of imagination, no doubt, that transition between soberly and fixedly contemplating a thing and doing it, is more marked, but to any of fervid and vivid brain an action in those quarters is performed as soon as it is seriously contemplated. It was so with Paul. Again and again he had hated Theodore with an intensity that left action little to do. and it was then that he had truly murdered him, not when he let the car run on. He had let himself, seeing black, imagine Theodore in his power, and pictured himself hammering him into a bag of broken bones. And in that second or two when he had the power of choice, it was the logical sequence that he chose to go on, not to slacken speed. True, a moment after that he had done anything, risked everything to avoid him; but that, to tell the truth, had been but a physical shrinking, as independent of the will as is the wincing of a brave man under some sudden torturing pain. The flesh had been weak; it was not the will, in his case, that had shrunk from the deed that had really been done by his brain months before.

Such was the awakening of Paul.

CHAPTER XV

Paul was lying out some ten days later under the trees on the terrace at the Castello. From the moment he awoke his recovery had been unbroken and wonderfully rapid. He was still not allowed to exert himself at all, or to read or talk for any lengthy period. But it must be confessed that, though his permitted periods of talking were short, he got an extraordinary amount into them. Just now Lady Ravens-croft was the receptacle into which he poured his conversation.

“Well, you know how it is if you just cut your finger,” he was saying, “what a positive joy the healing of the cut is. Don’t you know what I mean?”

Lady Ravenscroft considered this for a moment.

“I don’t think I do cut my fingers,” she said; “but yesterday I had a pebble in my shoe, and walked a mile or so, wondering whether it was worth while to take it out. Eventually I sat down and did so. I must say I was rapturously happy for several minutes afterwards. Will that do? ”

“Yes, perfectly,” said Paul. “And I assure you that it’s the same about a cut finger. Well, multiply that by fifty or so,” and he pointed to his bandaged head, “and you will know the rapture of healing which I feel.”

Paul gave a great sigh.

“And what’s that for?” she asked.

“I don’t know; I had to. I think I merely wanted to fill my lungs quite full of this hot, scented air. Oh, yes, depend on it, it is more than worth while to be ill in order to get better. But, of course, you must be very ill, and if you are that, there’s a certain risk that you won’t get better, in which case you have had all your trouble for nothing, and a funeral into the bargain. The only bother about getting well is that there are so many things to enjoy, and there really isn’t time for them all.

He paused, and with one of those changes of thought that were so characteristic of him, he went on with sudden seriousness:

“Am I—am I heartless, do you think?” he asked. “Ought I to be utterly knocked down by what has happened? Would it be more decent?”

Lady Ravenscroft felt quite strongly and decisively on this point.

“Good heavens! no,” she said. “That is one of the great delusions that people with want of vitality try to impress on us. We all know—Norah and I, at any rate—what you felt, what you must have felt when—when you knew what had happened.”

“I knew at once,” said Paul quickly.

“Yes, and afterwards. Of course, one takes that for granted. And I admire you, dear Paul, and I honour you for facing it all as you have done, for not being knocked down, as you say, for determining to make the best of the future. And you have no idea—I have wanted to tell you this—how wonderfully you have helped Norah.”

Paul was looking at her with bright, rather excited, eyes.

“Helped her? How is that?” he said.

“Helped her to face the future, to look forward instead of looking back. I had a long talk with her on the evening when it happened. Of course”—she paused a moment— “of course I know about—about your mutual relation, you three.”

“How? When? What?” demanded Paul.

“I saw—I could not help seeing it—when I was here with you six weeks ago. And Norah told me everything in that one talk I had with her. It seemed to us both best that she should say all she had in her mind just once. I think one often gets rid of things, of the poison of things, by speaking of them.”

Once more Paul saw black at the thought of Theodore, and his eyes sparkled with that hard, cold light that had shone in them when he charged down on the man walking on the road in front of the buzzing car. Dead though he was, he yet lived and throve in Paul’s heart, in the flowers of hate.

Had time been put back again to that early morning hour a fortnight ago, he would have done again what he did then. But the spasm passed in a moment, like a sudden squall blackening the smooth surface of the sea, and as the squall leaves what had been the unruffled mirror rough and agitated with ripples and broken water, so this left him quivering. Lady Ravenscroft saw it, and guessed its origin.

“Ah, Paul,” she said, “you have both got a big task in front of you. You have both got to forgive. Some people say that the fact of death must mean forgiveness almost automatically. Well, I think that is a very poor sort of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a far more vital and active principle than that mere saying, ‘It is all over; he is dead: it can rest/ I have wondered myself sometimes, since Norah told me everything, whether on that evening before the accident he was not really possessed by some spirit that made him delight in—well, you know what.”

Again the spasm of hate seized Paul.

“No; he was always like that,” he said quickly. “That was he.”

Lady Ravenscroft got up.

“We must stop talking, my dear,” she said, “for you are getting excited, and that is bad for you. But I want to say one thing more, and then I think we had better close the subject altogether, and, as far as we can, banish it from our thoughts. Of course, we can’t do that at once; it is impossible to expect that. But do try your utmost not to hate him, but to forgive him. Whatever he did, he has paid for it; the uttermost payment has been made. And he had things to forgive, too. You were not blameless; that you and Norah fell in love with each other was a thing beyond the control of either of you, no doubt. But when you knew that, you ought to have gone away at once.”

“That occurred to me, I remember,” said Paul. “But on the other hand-”

“There is no other hand. It is inconceivable that there is anything that could weigh against that. So remember that he had something to forgive, too. And also remember this: that in the inscrutable decrees of God it was through you and no other that he met his death. I am sorry for you, dear Paul, beyond all power of words to tell you. I admire, as I have told you, the way you face it, and 1 thank you for the help you give to Norah. But to make anything of the years to come you must forgive, not passively, but actively. Otherwise the dead must always and for ever come between you. And now lie still and rest, and don’t think.”

Paul did not answer this, neither did she wait for an answer, but went at once into the house. But though the advice to lie still was easily enough put into practice, he could not manage to follow the rest of it, and abstain from thought.

It was no consecutive chain of thought that he followed: it was as if his mind picked up some little handful of pebbles and kept feeling first one and then another. Ever since he had woke after his long sleep he had mentally done nothing else but that. He was still, no doubt, weak and incapable of effort, either mental or physical, but this incessant handling of the past had gone on now for six days, and this morning he wondered whether it was to go on all the rest of his life. Often and often he had tried to think of anything else: to feel the least interest in what was going on round him, in the tacking of some brown-sailed vessel across the bay, in the flight of a white-sailed sea-bird, in any event external to himself, but those were not the pebbles his mind cared to or even could finger. It just wanted that other little handful. One of these pebbles, which at first had been the most brilliantly coloured of all, had begun to occupy him less, and that was the one concerned with the future, with himself and Norah. He had seized it with ecstasy on. his awaking, had kissed and fondled it, and been lost in amazement at it; but during these days it had somehow grown remote and dull. Perhaps it would never be his, for the others, he recognised now, had to be got rid of, thrown away, before he would really possess this. He had tried to throw them away, but he could not: his mind always picked them up again, and handled them. He handled them now.

One was black: he incessantly and absorbedly hated Theodore. Though he was dead, that made no difference whatever. Why on earth should it? The only effect of his death was that he was no longer able to give Paul fresh cause for hatred. But all the old causes for hatred were still there. True, he had taken his vengeance, but the cause was still there. To kill a wasp does not cure the sting it has inflicted. It was as a wasp, an insect, vermin, that he thought of him. It was this inveterate hate, he began to feel now, that was coming between him and Norah, and eclipsing his love for her. Love was there just the same, but hate, as small in comparison to it as the moon is in comparison to the sun, was in front of it, screening him from its rays, so that he was left cold and in darkness when it might have been noonday. But at present it was not in him even to want with any activity of will to get rid of it. Something in what had happened seemed to paralyse his will; he was like a tired man unable to make an effort. Simply he handled his hate in his mind, and found it round and solid. There was no question of getting rid of it.

He dropped that pebble and began fingering another. He had actually been the cause of Theodore’s death, he had been the cause of his death in intention also. In other words, he had murdered him. But in these last days he had grown somehow perfectly familiar with that thought. When he woke after his long sleep, the full significance of it had been dim and obscured in the blaze of light that the thought of the future shed over him; but now, though the latter was cold and eclipsed, while the other had become fully significant, there had been no shock to him as he realized it. He did not wonder at himself for having done it; he did not wonder at the fact that he did not wonder. The deed had already become part of him, a thing no more remarkable, no less a part of himself than his own hands and feet. He realized, too, as he sat here this morning, that the essential deed was committed when he allowed or rather set himself and his whole imagination to hate Theodore. That had been the seed of murder planted in a fruitful soil. He had not weeded it out, and when it began to sprout, he had watched the growth without horror. That it should mature till the ripe fruit hung there was perfectly natural.

But this morning for the first time another thread began to weave itself into this incessant repeating pattern, a thread he had not seen at first. And it was Fear. No deed, so violent, so decisive as this, could possibly be without consequences to himself, consequences more vital and essential than this mere crack on the head, which was, as he had told Lady Ravenscroft, no more now than an instance of the joys of healing. But a man who had done as he had done was in a class apart from ordinary folk: the mark of Cain was on him. He had branded it there himself, and though at present he felt nothing of that branding, would it not some day eat into his live flesh ? Would not, to take the consequences at their lightest, the mere incessant repetition of these two or three images that filled his mind, drive him insane? Then, too, there was another fear. How could he ever until the end of his life feel secure again? There was no security possible any more for him. The fact that he had shed man’s blood existed in the world, it was there; a fact as solid and as well-established as trigonometry. It would have its effects, for nothing was without effects. What would they be? Would they only concern him, or would they spread? Would others get to know? Would . . .

Paul got up quickly from his chair, obeying that instinct that makes us half expect that a change of posture in the body will work a corresponding change of posture in the mind, and stood facing the sea, while questions dropped into his mind like the measured dose from some drug-bottle. The drug, however, whatever it might be, was not narcotic; all his old vividness of mind was returning to him in sudden flashes and sparks. What if Norah got to know, if she got even to suspect ever so dimly, if she got even to ask herself the question? Or if Lady Ravenscroft knew? How could she even now, indeed, fail to ask herself certain questions, fail to put together in their hideous sequence the events of the evening before, the conditions under which all three of them were living, and that one swift event of the morning?

He did not fear detection in the ordinary sense of the word; the road had been empty, no witnesses had been there, and the evidence, as the doctor had said, had gone conclusively to prove that he had risked everything in order to avoid the accident. But he feared the mere fact that both Norah and her mother must constantly have in their minds ail that had happened. He feared that those events should array themselves correctly in their minds.

Then suddenly on the top of this there came over him, striking him with its full force, that common little truism which strikes us all at one time or another with crushing weight, the sense, namely, of the irrevocableness of the past. What has happened can be undone by nobody: God, even God, can only forgive; He cannot make it not to have been. The power of free-will which is ours is unfettered even by His omnipotence. We are omnipotent, too, and if we choose to act, our act will remain when the sun has turned to blood, and the moon to ashes.

Paul stood quite still when this came on him. He was not sorry for what he had done, but the fact that it could never be undone made him for the moment very still, as he looked into the awful, unchangeable face of the past. Then he turned away from that silent presence, and came out again, as it were, from that mortuary-chamber into life. And the revulsion of feeling was as great as when he had entered it. The world was still here, Norah was here, everything that had made his life so passionately happy was here, except just now his old self, that which had been able to enjoy. And it was with an audible cry of thanks that he came out and saw the sweet face of the world. The past was irrevocable. Yet it had always been so, it had only been he who had not looked it in the face. But it had been his mistake, that even for a moment only he had done so. But never again would he do that. It was towards the future he would direct his eyes: the future that contained so much, that contained indeed everything that concerned him. As for detection, as for any shadow of the shadow of suspicion that could cross Norah’s mind, he must have been in nightmare to conceive such a thing possible. Besides, madness, sheer madness, lay that way. He did not at all want to be mad, and he would take no further step in that direction. But what he did want, and never till now had he so soberly realized it, was to be what he had always been, happy. He longed now to be happy, whereas hitherto he had been happy without longing for it. But provided he only looked forward, not backward, how glorious were his possibilities. Love was his, and the love of his beloved was his; neither earth nor heaven could hold more than that. Also the very fact that the fruition, and even the open recognition of that love had for a time been denied them both, being a forbidden thing, made it now, if possible, more wonderful than it could have been without that. When one deals with the infinite, he felt, it is idle to apply gauge or measurement to it, but still a boon for a time withheld and then granted, has an added sweetness, a splendour it would have lacked otherwise. Yet somehow now, this morning, some shadow from the past made an eclipsed sun of it; radiant and huge as he knew it to be as he stood there, striving with every fibre of his being to look forward, to put the past behind him, something, that shadow from the past, which was irrevocable, stood between him and it, so that he himself felt chilled. The warmth and glory that he knew was there did not reach him. And again, on the moment, his mind began picking up those pebbles again and fingering them: one was black, that was hate, another was red as blood. Fear was there, too; his fingers quivered as he turned them over. But not for a moment did sorrow or regret or even the desire for either enter his mind; while the black pebble of hate was there, the existence of sorrow was impossible. He only wished that the consequence of what he had done, namely, the incessant contemplation of these mental pictures, could cease. But no doubt that would come in time: they would be gradually obliterated, and fade away like some fresco on a mouldering wall. Or—or would they become more and more vivid and insistent, till his very reason reeled?

In any case the power of the human will, a power that is the stronger twin of a man’s destiny, was his, and again, as he had done five minutes ago, he wrenched his mind away from the past, and looked forward into the sunlit mists of the future. It was false, so he told himself, and what is worse, it was cowardly to allow for a moment that the future was the child, the inheritor of the past, which was at every moment of life beyond a man’s control. It was far truer to consider the future as the child and the inheritor of the present.

There was something exceedingly concrete and practical about Paul, and even now in the first week of a year which he could never forget, and could never, to the end of his life, quite recover from, so full was it doomed to be of suffering that had to be borne in silence and without any alleviation from the sympathy of others, even now he saw that his best chance of success in burying the past was to be constantly active, continually employed. Idleness always tended towards brooding and retrospection, a thing which his whole will was set on avoiding; he would not allow his mind to drop back into the past and sink there as a stone sinks in dark waters. To avoid that he must keep his mind ever busy. It mattered not with what, so long as he could make it absorbed in anything that kept it chained to the present or the future. Having once seen and understood that, he did not anticipate much difficulty in putting it into effect, for certainly his gift of finding entrancing interests everywhere was of a notable order. He and Norah had talked about this once more than a year ago, when they walked up the hills opposite, the day after she had found the rattailed spoon in a shop in Genoa. They had enacted the funeral of Brunnhilde that day too, and had settled that Paul’s essential age was eleven. He had been eleven so long: the secret of being that age was surely familiar to him, and to be eleven was the solution of the whole question. They had looked across at the Castello, too, and seen that the windows were opened, after being shut so long. Yes; Theodore had been expected next day . . . Theodore.

No, that would not do; he must get some employment, some hobby, totally unconnected with—with certain things, and spend his leisure in that. Clay-modelling, now. A year or two ago he had feverishly taken that up for as long as six months, a veritable grand passion. His extraordinary facility at whatever he attempted, combined with an undoubted eye for the lines and shape of things, had enabled him to make great progress in a very short time, and he would easily pick up the threads of it again. He would work really hard at it, and it was wonderfully absorbing. One could think of nothing else when one was knitting the muscles into each other. It was creative too: the lump of clay which had been but a mere dead block really got life. It was like the birth of a child . . . Norah’s child, Theodore’s child.

Then-

The white road leading to Delfino, with the sunlight filtering through the leaves, the road that opened like torn linen as the car raced along. Or the car was like some monster that gulped down the road and all that was on it. There was only one figure on it: the car had gulped that down. And did all paths of thought lead to that one white road?

The terrace became suddenly hateful and intolerable to him, and he got up and went indoors. The dining-room door was open, and he saw that lunch had been already laid, while on a side-table stood syphons and wine and spirits. Then, unbidden, there flashed across him the remembrance of that evening in London, when he and Norah had danced to the “Valse des Fleurs,” and with that he remembered how a tray of spirits had stood in the passage, how he had drunk some, and how he had instantly felt irresponsible, as if the power of choice and purpose had been taken from him. The whole feeling came back to him now with extreme distinctness and poignancy, and he knew that it was just that sense of not being responsible that he so longed for at this moment, just as some pain-racked patient longs for the forgetful morphia that lets him rest. So he went quietly in, for he felt that he should not like even the servants to know what he was doing, took the first glass he saw on the table, and drank a tumblerful of whisky-and-soda.

Then he saw that he had taken the glass from the place where Norah always sat, so he replaced it with the clean glass from his own place, and carefully wiped the one he had used with his napkin. He did this very scrupulously. When he was satisfied, it would have been impossible to tell that any glass had been used.

What then? Even before he had wiped the tumbler clean, something benignant—since it expunged the sense of evil— began to flow through him. It was just that: some flowing of tide began to cover mud-banks; that which was ugly and unsightly disappeared, the poison of remembrance vanished, and what he remembered, the road that opened like torn linen and the filtering of sunlight on that road, were no longer instinct with horror. The same facts were there: Theodore was still dead, and dead in the same manner, but the manner no longer terrified him. A motor, no doubt, had run over him and someone had driven that motor. But it was no longer he who had driven it. The name of the driver was still Paul Norris, but responsibility was blurred.

It was well, then, to live in the present, not in the past, and it seemed that so insignificant an affair as this—this mere drinking of a glass of spirits and water—was a panacea for the past. Gaiety was possible again; the sense of the present and the outlook for the future were possible. Paul did not wish to intensify the effect: he had no thought of courting stupor. He only said to himself that once before he had found stimulant efficacious in removing a probably morbid sense of responsibility, and he found it equally efficacious now. That was all he desired. And even as he left the dining-room he accounted to himself for this. He was still weak and ill; the stimulant but restored him to his usual health. It made him eleven years old again, just temporarily. When he was stronger, he would again be eleven years old without it. As to the question of this being a first (or second) definite step towards a habit, such an idea never occurred to him. That is the worst danger of habits. A man does not know that anything is a habit till the habit is already formed.

It was still a quarter of an hour before luncheon time, and he went out on to the terrace again. The same boat was still tacking across the bay, the same woods from which he and Norah had watched the opening of the Castello windows were still there, the same sun still poured life and health on to the earth. But now he felt the life and health, the dark, brooding trouble of his mind had, for the moment anyhow, passed, the dark associations were removed, and his thoughts no longer leaped back like a released spring to one spot. Nor for the moment did he look into the past at all: he had required, so he told himself, just that little fillip to enable him to look into the future instead. He was hungry, too, and he took pleasure in that; he liked the thought of lunchtime.

At lunch—and this, too, seemed a good omen to Paul— they talked for the first time about plans. Hitherto no future movements had been spoken of, since these all depended primarily on Paul’s speediness of recovery. But to-day, so it seemed to Norah, he was far more like his normal self than he had been since the accident, and after lunch, Lady Ravenscroft having been obliged to go into Rapallo on some shopping errand, the other two had their first intimate talk together since the accident. It drifted into intimacy but gradually, beginning, as talks usually do, even between close friends, on the surface of things. They had already fixed a tentative date for the return to England.

“Of course, it entirely depends on how you get on, Paul,” she was saying, “and we must get the doctor’s sanction. But I think with you, the sooner we are able to go the better, given that he allows it.”

Paul turned to her quickly, and looked at her in silence a moment as she sat in her black gown in front of the sombre alley of cypress that led down to the sea at the back of the garden, and the darkness of the background threw into extraordinary vividness the radiance of her beauty. For the first time since that moment of awaking after his long sleep she was significant and living to him again. Up till now the thought of his relation to her and the future that waited for them both had been eclipsed, as has been mentioned, by the black treadmill of thought that went round and round in his mind with such unending persistence. But to-day for the first time again he seemed to himself to be thoroughly awake, and to be able to address himself to the future. There sat his future, and, ah! how he desired it! She, too, was conscious of the new light that shone in his eyes; she knew that it was the beacon she had herself kindled, while in herself another burned for him. And if he was going to speak to her of that future now, she was ready to hear him.

But for the moment he went backwards.

“Oh, it is quite certain that he will let me travel next week,” he said. “And, now that we are alone, and we haven’t talked yet, let us talk. I want first of all to know from you where you are, how you stand, what has been your life since—since-”

Norah clasped her hands together.

“Yes, and how I have wanted to tell you!” she said. “Oh, Paul, it has been so dreadful. I felt as if a hundred cords were attached to me, all pulling different ways. Remorse, good heavens! One knows what that is now.”

Paul looked suddenly startled.

“Remorse?” he said. “What do you mean?”

“Why, for all the millions of occasions on which one might somehow have behaved better. All my married life I have been so paltry. And the sense of the past—the irrevocable!”

Paul gave a half-stifled exclamation.

“Yes, I know that, too,” he said; “but if we are to make anything of our lives we must leave that behind us.”

Some nameless thrill of ecstasy shot through Norah to hear how unconsciously he spoke of their future as being one, but she went back to the other.

“Yes, eventually, I suppose,” she said, “though I don’t see how such a thing as has happened can ever be entirely got over. And perhaps we aren’t meant to get over it entirely. I think it must change one; it would be such a—such a hideous piece of wantonness on the part of Providence to let such a tragedy happen, if someone is not going to be made the better for it.”

She paused a moment.

“But there is a certain ingredient in remorse which I am sure one ought to get over as quickly as one can,” she went on, “and that is the ingredient that paralyzes one, that makes one sit and brood merely. That can be of no good.”

Paul just nodded at this, but with the relations that existed between them she did not want more than mere recognition of her thought. Indeed, she scarcely wanted that; she knew that what she felt Paul felt also. Thus, though she seemed to soliloquize, the silent answer, more convincing than paragraphs of reply, was given her as she went on, her voice speaking for both of them. And with this she plunged downwards into the abysses of human relationship, knowing that where she was Paul was there also. He must be there, otherwise that which each was to each could never have existed.

“But the worst was the thought of you, dear Paul,” she said. “Yes, yes, I want to say it once and for all. I want you to know that all you inevitably felt was felt by me. You did it, after all, and that knowledge must be always with you. Well, if it is any good, I tell you now that the same knowledge is with me equally. I don’t think you could ever do anything which I do not feel as you feel it. I was there, so it seems to me, I saw you, I felt you risk all to avoid it.”

Then one monosyllable fell from him.

“It?” he asked.

“Yes, the accident,” she said. “And I honour you, I admire you. Ah, I honour and admire the man who makes light of his life as you did in the moment you risked everything. I had to tell you that. I must have told you.”

She got up from her chair, and sat on the arm of the wicker sofa where he lay.

“That is another of the hundred cords that pulled me,” she said, “and that is the strongest of all. For Theodore was—it must have been so—he was your deadliest enemy, and—oh, Paul, in intention you laid down your life, not for your friend, but for your enemy. I—I wanted, I have wanted all the time to tell you that. Now it is said. There is no answer. Don’t answer.”

For one moment an impulse, almost overmastering, possessed him, the desire to tell her all he knew, all the secret history of the morning. So few words were necessary, and the secret burden would be gone. In a way that tempted him to speak, to share the secret with her would have been so much, yet it was more, it was that she should not know, and the impulse to speak was scattered and dispersed by the pause which naturally would come at the end of words far less momentous than hers. He was conscious, too, of its dispersal, and in silence he watched it, and, with unutterable relief, felt it die within him. For if he followed it, if he told Norah, there would no longer be any future any more for them together, and that they should be one was the future. For if he spoke, then, indeed, would Theodore for ever be between them, and to himself, at any rate, there would be nothing left except the past, that past which his whole soul was bent on getting rid of, on annihilating. Besides, no good could conceivably come of his confession; it was utterly barren in that direction, but it was fruitful, prolific beyond belief in the production of hopeless, endless misery for them both. Yet for the moment the impulse had been almost overmastering: that honesty which is inherent in love could scarcely bear that she should not know, or that she should conceive of him as so diametrically opposite to what he was. Then, simultaneously almost with his relief at the dispersal of his impulse to tell her, came another relief, in its way even more poignant than that. For his fear, his imagined fear that some day others, and above all, she, would come to know, was clearly groundless, and might be dismissed for ever from his mind. She had herself told him just now that she believed that in intention he had laid down his life for his enemy. He need never again imagine or picture her getting to know that he had in intention taken his enemy’s life. None knew that but he, and he almost now smiled at the idea of telling her. Yet a moment before the opposite impulse had been very strong. But he considered it, and rejected it She had told him not to answer, and in a moment continued :

“I won’t brood any more,” she said. “I won’t think any more of what is past and irrevocable, whether it was I or you who once had the power of doing differently. I am sorry— so I really believe—for all in that past life with him that was my fault, and I hope that sorrow will always be with me, so long as it stirs me to do better. But all of it that is merely vague and horrifying and paralysing we must both get nd of. And Paul, I cannot tell you how you have helped me to do that. You have never for a moment seemed to me to halt, as it were, to stare merely into the past. I have tried to imitate you.”

Here again Paul found comfort. Hopelessly as he had been striving, so he thought, with these ever-circling phantasms of his mind, it appeared that Norah, she who knew him best, had seen no preoccupation about him, none of that futile brooding to which he had been so continually a prey. It was something, and that not a small thing, to him to know that he was capable of leading his ordinary exterior life in the ordinary way. For that, too, he now saw was necessary: nobody must be able to argue from any outward abnormality that there was anything wrong within.

“And do you forgive him?” he asked. “Do you actively and willing forgive him, as your mother tells me you do, in the only manner in which forgiveness can be worth anything?”

Norah’s eyes wandered out over the blue bay.

“Ah, God knows I do,” she said, “if there is anything to forgive. You must also, Paul, otherwise—otherwise, dear, he will come between us. Besides, before long I shall be the mother of his child. You can’t guess what that means, and I can’t tell you. I only know that it makes it not easy only, but essential that if I have anything to forgive, I forgive it. Ah, it is more than that even: there can be nothing for me to forgive.”

There was something divine in the humanness of this, and in her eyes, as she looked back at him again from the sea, the human and divine were so mingled together that there was no disentangling them, for they formed one indivisible thing, the woman he loved. But with the mention of the child that should be born, Theodore’s child and hers, there entered and mingled with his love, strong and absorbing as it was, something akin to jealousy of the dead. And though jealousy is a very ugly thing, it yet springs only from those emotions that are the highest known to us. Indifference, selfishness, never give birth to it; it co-exists only with love. And in that the prospective motherhood of Theodore’s child made forgiveness, as she had said, a thing not only easy but inevitable, automatic, he was jealous of him, jealous of the share he still held in the woman he himself loved. So, though his jealousy sprang from love, it made him ask a question that was altogether brutal and unwarrantable. But he could not, or did not, stop to think, for jealousy is swift in speech.

“Do you wish he was alive still?’’ he said.

But the words had hardly left his lips when he saw the horror of them, and almost before a sudden, bewildered pain had troubled Norah’s eyes, he had sprung up and was kneeling by her.

“Oh, Norah,” he cried, “forgive me, if you can. It was horrible of me; yet it was me who asked it. I am such a brute, and—and you must make a better fellow of me. I was damnable to ask that. But I was jealous. Jealousy makes one mad, you know. You don’t, probably, but I do. But I have one excuse, and it is a good one. I do love you so. I am mad for love of you. Perhaps I ought not to say that to you now, yet, but there it is. I love you.”

Norah sat quite still for a moment. Cords had pulled her in different directions before; now all at once they were loosed. Whatever else stirred strongly within her, and how strongly the fact of her approaching motherhood stirred she only knew, she knew also which was the strongest and most unbreakable of them all—Paul’s love, and her love for him.

And though she did not answer him with words, he knew, he could not help knowing, that he was answered, and he rose, and next moment his arms were round her, and his kiss was on her cheek and on her mouth. For that moment the past had ceased to be, even the future ceased; he knew only that he was his beloved’s, and his beloved was his.

CHAPTER XVI

By the provisions of Theodore’s will, Norah was left in any event very well off. He himself had been an only son, and at his father’s death some ten years ago, had come into a very considerable property. But a very short codicil made on the very day that Norah had told him that she expected a baby, and drawn up and witnessed in Genoa, where, it may be remembered, he had gone on that day, and from where he had so unexpectedly returned in the evening, over-rode the other provisions of the will itself. By this it was directed that Norah—alluded to as my “beloved widow”—should have complete command, control, and enjoyment of the whole of his income and possessions from whatever source arising, till such child, if born and if male, came of age or died. In the first of these events he was to succeed to all such estates and possessions, but the first call on his income was the annuity of £5,000 to be paid quarterly to the testator’s beloved widow. In case of the child’s death the property was to revert to his cousin Arnold, the father of the brats of whom he had once spoken, the same provision being still made for Norah. Should the expected child be a girl, Norah again was to have entire enjoyment of the whole property till the girl’s marriage. On that event taking place the estate would be disposed of in various other ways, but the annuity of £5,000 was in any case secured to her.

Bircham, her mother’s house, and also Evrington Manor, Theodore’s country place, were both let when she and Lady Ravenscroft came back to England from Silomo, and since Norah did not wish to be in London, they settled for the present with Aunt Kate. Even she could find nothing particularly depressing in such a disposition of the property, beyond remarking to Lady Ravenscroft with that strange acuteness in searching out mournful matters which was characteristic of her, that if Norah had twins the whole estate would certainly be eaten up with litigation before it could be decided in what manner it should be shared. For, as usual, Theodore had been very generous in money mat-ters, and though it may be said that to be generous with your money when it is quite certain that on the day on which your generosity will be called upon to pay, you yourself will no longer possibly feel the want of that with which you are so open-handed, yet the habit and attitude of the miser is nearly always reflected even in arrangements which, relatively to him, are posthumous. Norah had felt this. The dispositions made for her comfort and well-being were thoroughly characteristic of what Theodore had been when alive.

It was the close of a very hot summer day, about a week after their return to England, and she and her mother were sitting after dinner outside on the gravel path that bordered Aunt Kate’s lawn. She had just gone in to play her evening patience, while Mr. Mundy, who had complained of the short rations of strawberries at dinner, had strolled quietly away in the direction of the kitchen-garden. In order to disarm suspicion he had said that he did not care for strawberries except in the civilisation of cream and sugar, which deceived nobody. He had then walked whistling away, but his whistling had ceased, and Lady Ravenscroft from her basket-chair on the gravel called to him to know if they were good. Then the whistling hurriedly began again, but huskily.

An extraordinary sense of peace and tranquillity and ordered stability was everywhere. The sleepy pervasive chime of the cathedral clock had just struck nine, and the curfew bell, which had been rung without intermission of a single evening for more centuries than a man has fingers on his hand, had begun on the cessation of the striking of the hour. The sky was still luminous, and the chirping of birds at their choral vespers in the bushes had not altogether ceased. High above the garden wall rose the grey tower of the cathedral, and here and there thin little whorls of smoke, rising perpendicularly from kitchen fires through the windless air, just stained the crystalline purity of the sky. One of these, after she had enjoyed her laugh at her brother-in-law’s shallow diplomacy, caught Lady Ravenscroft’s eye.

“ Look, Norah,” she said, “someone has just lit a fire for cooking supper. That sight of smoke rising from some chimney in the evening is always typical to me of quietness and domesticity and fireside comfort. Not that there is much comfort by the fireside in this grilling weather, but the spirit is the same. Everyone has come home.”

Norah just stirred in her chair. This somehow appealed very intimately to her.

“Ah, yes,” she said, “and what a lot that means.”

She paused a moment.

“I wonder if I am heartless,” she said, “but I have had that feeling, that sense of home-coming so constantly since we came back to England.”

“But why heartless?” asked her mother.

“Because all the sorrow, all the tragedy, has perhaps touched me too little, because-”

Again she paused a moment.

“Because I was so unhappy, and because, in spite of it all, I am so happy,” she said simply. “I shall be the mother of a child, you see, and I shall be the wife of the man I love. These two thoughts seem to fill my whole consciousness. I can scarcely attend when I think about the past. It is far more dreamlike, though it has happened, than the future, which as yet exists only in my imagination.”

“Thank God,” said Lady Ravenscroft rather hastily. Then, fearing that this expressed her own private view of the matter rather too nakedly, she qualified it.

“All that is a sign of youth and vitality, dear Norah,” she said, “and—yes, I do say 4 thank God’ for it. To get over things, just as Paul did, is not a sign of heartlessness, as I remember telling him, but of strength.”

Norah sighed.

“I wish Paul could feel differently about Theodore,” she said. “He must learn not to feel bitterly about him.”

“Yes, dear, give him time, though,” said her mother. “In your case there is the child, his child, that is to be born—that helps you. That doesn’t help Paul. He has got nothing like that, which makes forgiveness easy.”

Norah did not answer, for the gradual crescendo of Mr. Mundy’s whistling indicated his approach. At the moment too the sound of the postman’s knock with the last delivery of the day resounded through the open door into the garden, and she went to see if there were any letters.

“Bring mine out too, Norah,” said her mother. “Well Henry, have you finished practising whistling for the present?”

The post was scanty—there was but one for Norah,abillish thing or two for her mother, and a picture-postcard, sadly garish, for Aunt Kate. She distributed these, then opened her own letter. It was from Theodore’s solicitors, who were engaged on the business of his will, and contained an enclosure. She read the letter first. It was quite short

“Dear Madam :

“The enclosed was found in Mr. Theodore Beckwith’s private despatch-box, which has only just reached us from Silorao. It has not, of course, been opened.

“Faithfully yours,

“Roberts and Macadam.”

Norah looked at the enclosure. It was an envelope with this direction:

“Private wishes. To be read only by my Wife, and by her to be acted on should she think fit.”

Norah hesitated a moment; she had that vague sense of something impending which, however, so often proves to be unfounded, and she wondered whether she would be wise to take this away and read it in private. But her mother was occupied over the billish things, and Mr. Mundy had lit his cigar, and was puffing smoke into a Beaute inconstante, which was at present more remarkable for the number and the constancy of the blight that beset it than for its beauty, and she was to all intents and purposes alone. Besides, what could there be to hurt her? So she opened it. She saw at a glance that it was quite short—a half-sheet of foolscap not half filled. So she read:

(i.) In case my wife Norah Beckwith, subsequently marries again, I suggest that that five thousand pounds annuity mentioned in the codicil executed to-day by me in Genoa should be equally divided between her and her husband. I add this clause to mark my deep appreciation of the services rendered to her and me by my esteemed and valued secretary, Paul Norris.

(ii.) That this provision be communicated to him on the day of, but subsequent to, his marriage with my wife, Norah Beckwith.

(iii.) Should my decease occur before the birth of the child which I have been to-day informed is expected, I suggest that its names, if male, be Theodore Paul; if female, Theodora Paula. Or perhaps Paul Theodore.

(iv.) Should I meet my death in any violent way when I am alone with my much-esteemed secretary, Paul Norris, I should suggest that my wife should not, on the general ground of decency, pay for counsel in his defence in any murder trial that may subsequently ensue.

“Theodore Beckwith.”

Norah read this through once with that perfect understanding, yet sense of blankness and entire absence of emotion for the moment, that always comes with anything that, like this, hit as with a stunning blow. She looked up, saw her mother still at her letters, saw Mr. Mundy still puffing at the copper-coloured roses, and heard the slow, vibrating bell of the curfew. Then she read it again, and at that the blankness, the sense of being stunned, vanished. She crumpled the paper up, and stamped it into the earth of a flowerbed; nobody anyhow should ever know how low a man, and that her husband, the father of the child that was coming, could descend. Deeper yet, she must bury it deeper.

Just one cry, a sort of moan, came from her below her breath.

“God forgive him,” she said, “I cannot.”

Lady Ravenscroft had finished her letters, and the words reached her.

“What is the matter, dear?” she said.

But Norah did not answer till she had buried the paper beyond range of rake or prowling cat.

“It is nothing,” she said at length, her voice trembling; “at least, it is only some private wishes of Theodore’s which his solicitors sent me to-day. … I have just read them; they—they hurt me. It was not—it was not right of him, I think, to say that. It was not true; he must have known it was not true. He did it to hurt me after he was dead. As if he had not hurt me enough—it used to amuse him. But it can’t amuse him now. Why did he do it?”

Her voice broke utterly, and she turned aside down the garden path with the large choking sobs gathering in her throat. Her dead husband could not, with all his cunning and ingenuity, have hurt her more than he had done by that vile insinuation. There was no doubt of what he meant, though he said nothing explicitly in that dastardly third clause of his wishes, but that was often his way; his innuendo was a crisper stroke than any direct statement. And the wantonness of it! It could amuse him no longer to hurt her; he did it from the sheer love of cruelty; it pleased him when alive to think that after he was dead he could still make her wince and cry out.

Paul too—how odious and vile was the insinuation rather more openly expressed in the last clause. That too was aimed at her happiness, was meant, under certain circumstances, to prevent her and Paul coming together. And by the horrible irony of destiny that exact concatenation of circumstances had occurred; he had died violently when alone with Paul. The coincidence was hideous. How could he have foreseen it? And what of the rest of the clause— the murder trial ?

Her sobs had altogether ceased as she thought of this fourth clause, and she looked out over the scene which just now she had thought so peaceful, so secure, with eyes in which there lurked a dim but deep-seated horror. That horror was, it is true, partly at herself for having ever been able to ask herself the question which she had quite undoubtedly just now done. For she had quite distinctly said to herself, “What if it is true?” Yes, indeed, what then?

But the vileness, the wanton cruelty of torturing her like this, when it could not even serve the purpose of amusing him! Freely, and from the bottom of her heart, she had forgiven him if there was anything to forgive; she had gone further, for in that he was the father of the child she was to bear there was somehow, as she had told Paul, no question of forgiveness possible. But now at this moment, at the double insult, planned and calculated while he was alive, in case of his death, she felt that she could not forgive him. None but a fiend could have done this. She hated him herself, she understood why Paul-

There she pulled up short. There was swift poison in those “private wishes.” It had already begun to work, for that which before was inconceivable to her had become, though ever so remotely, conceivable.

Her mother after a while followed her, and found her in the gloom at the far end of the kitchen-garden sitting on a bench there, dry-eyed, but quivering with the dreadful agitation of this.

“Norah, dear, what is it?” she said. “Why, you are trembling! Won’t you tell me?”

She shook her head.

“No; it would do no good,” she said. “I must forget it, if I can. But, oh, mother, he is terrible—he, yes, Theodore.” But since Norah had left her a few minutes before, Lady Ravenscroft’s mind had been very busy. He had hurt her, Norah had said, and it required no very ingenious conjecture to guess the nature of the hurt, for a woman, like Achilles, is only mortally vulnerable in one place, not her heel, but her heart. And it was only in connection with one person that he could get his arrow in there. Also, Lady Ravenscroft had very sound and sensible ideas about the folly of brooding over a matter privately; for it is in privacy that bogies get inflated to balloon-size, obscuring the sun, while to mention the bogey to another is often like pricking the balloon: it collapses helplessly.

“ Norah,” she said, “I recommend you to tell me if you can. I guess, of course, whom it all concerns: it must concern you and Paul; nothing else could have power to hurt you like that.”

Norah’s first impulse—the impulse of a generous nature— had been to bury the whole thing as completely as she buried the paper on which it was written. But, as must have happened, passionate resentment—resentment that she knew had frozen for a moment into hate—had occupied her. And she felt so dreadfully the need of comfort—felt, too, a dread of the course her thoughts must follow unless she shared this secret with someone else. The working of the poison so cunningly contained in the clause concerning Theodore’s death, had acted instantaneously on her. Already she had said to herself that she understood what- There, indeed she stopped, but she knew quite well what the remainder of the averted thought had beei^ and it was “what Paul had done.” It was her mother, too, who asked for her confidence, and it would puzzle Solomon to say what can happen in the world that a daughter may not tell her mother.

So it was told; a few words were sufficient. Then there was silence a little while, and then Lady Ravenscroft spoke.

“Your first thought was the right one, dear,” she said, “when you said ‘God forgive him.’ Hold close to that, Norah. That is for God; and for you, what? Well, this: his insinuations are lies. They are clever ones, too: he was always clever. But, as you know, and as he knew, God forgive him, that the insinuation implied in his suggestion for the Christian names of the child is false; so you must argue, as is the only conclusion, that the insinuation about his own death is false also.”

She paused a moment.

“There are certain things which you must never let your mind step on,” she said, “just as with your foot you avoid a quicksand. It is a moral quicksand that your—your husband contrived for you. If you dwell on that, it will, quickly or slowly, swallow you up. You will sink in it. He wanted you to. It was damnable!”

Lady Ravenscroft was not in the smallest degree ashamed of using the word, because it expressed her thought succinctly and accurately.

“My poor darling,” she said to Norah, “you know how sorry I am. But you must face it. And with regard to Paul and Theodore’s death, recollect that the man who wrote that wrote also the clause about his own child. So there was nothing in the world sacred to him.”

Norah gave a long sigh.

“That is true,” she said. “Not even his child was sacred. He could tell that lie about his child that shall be born. Oh, mother! poor Theodore! Fancy being like that!”

That “poor Theodore!” was perfectly genuine. Her moment of horror and hate, through which it was almost necessary that she must pass, as through some darkness of a tunnel, to the higher forgiveness, was over for the time, and once more the brave, serene, sweetness of her nature was triumphant. Lady Ravenscroft was profoundly touched.

“Ah, God bless you, my darling!” she said. “If you can already say that, there is no need for us to talk more about it. And there is your aunt coming out. Let us go to her.” Lady Ravenscroft was no believer in sentimentality, though she had a high opinion of true sentiment, and the fact that Norah could say “poor Theodore!” already, seemed to her to make any further discussion unnecessary, if not sentimental. Norah had taken the high road. She did not attempt to minimize or excuse the dastardly purpose of those “private wishes,” but having recognised it, was sorry for the man who had been so base. And so, without more words, she went forward with her mother to see what could have tempted Aunt Kate out into the garden after dinner. Aunt Kate walked towards them when she saw them, and though it would perhaps be an exaggeration to say that there was triumph in her tone, it is no more than the truth to say that her tone was not tragic.

“I came out because I had finished my patience/9 she said. “Miss Milligan came out twice. It has never happened before.”

“How tiresome for her mother 1” remarked Lady Ravens-croft flippantly. “Had she to go to all the balls over again?”

Aunt Kate sighed. If there had been triumph at all in her voice, it had been very short-lived; no speck of it appeared now.

“I sometimes wish you were more sympathetic,” she said. “I have so few amusements or pleasures, and you don’t seem to care to enter into them.”

But if Norah thought that the back-handed stroke thrust at her by Theodore’s “private wishes ” was now over, that she had felt all of the smart and aching that they contained, she was destined to be bitterly mistaken. And, indeed, she would have done great injustice to her late husband, had she supposed that he had thought this all out and worked it with such care, if all the effect that it was to have was but a moment’s disquietude. The wound (as, indeed, he had fully intended it to be) was more of the nature of a stab, small indeed in actual extent (for that suggestion about the child’s Christian names was so palpably malicious and unfounded), but dealt with a poisoned point. For the moment it would smart; then for a time, no doubt, there would be quiescence; then would come the knowledge of the poison spreading itself. This Norah did not at present guess herself. Her mother had told her how she must deduce the falsity of one accusation from the known falsity of the other and this had seemed reasonable enough. And she thought, poor soul! that when, honestly and instinctively, speaking from the bottom of her heart, she had said “Poor Theodore!” that pity had begun to heal the wound, that ache and throb and fester were already things of the past, instead of their not having yet begun, save for that moment of incision.

Norah had never yet seen Evrington Manor, Theodore’s country-house, for visits had taken up the autumn months after their return from the yachting honeymoon, and after a fortnight in London they had gone out to Silomo. But the lease of the present tenant expired in the July of this year, and Norah, having gone over to see it, decided at once that she would not let it again, but live there herself. Her husband had described it to her as “a bog-hole in the Black Forest, or somewhere,” but she had found instead a charming house, with a lake in front, near Brockenhurst, in the New Forest. It was by no means extravagantly large, and as soon as it was vacant, she was to go down and there spend quietly the months that lay between now and the birth of her child. There was a fortnight and more, however, before then, and their plan had been to stop here in Wroxton with Aunt Kate till Evrington was at liberty.

But that evening, when curfew sounded, when no wind stirred the trees, but everything seemed to echo and re-echo the note of peace and security, was the last peaceful evening that Norah knew for many weeks. Do what she would, try as she might, those “private wishes” had disturbed her fundamentally, essentially, and it was from the very inmost of her being that the waves and disquietness spread. A thousand times she told herself that the fourth clause was as wildly and wantonly false as the other, the falsity of which she knew, but if—if. . . . Yet, if Paul was in any degree whatever responsible for the accident, she understood. She knew herself now, since she had read those “private wishes,” what hate meant. A thousand times she told herself that it was not conceivable; that in no way whatever could he be responsible for Theodore’s death; only, if the inconceivable had happened in the smallest degree, if what she knew to be false was in a nail-paring of a motive true, she understood.

Then, again, with a pang of shame she would pull herself up, when she realized that she was imputing to Paul even the impulse of murder. It could not be so. But how strange that Theodore before his death had written so prophetically of its manner.

But that, after all, was easy of explanation. He knew best what worthy and proper cause Paul had to hate him, and, knowing that, it required no more than the malice which had suggested the two Christian names for the child to prompt the clause that followed. He had, with the ingenuity with which Norah was perfectly familiar, but invented that tissue of lies which would hurt her most. Indeed, nothing else, except just what he had said, could have power to hurt her. He had pitched with claws outspread on her heart with the same certainty that a bird pitches on a spray. Yes, it was all false. She wanted no proof, no assurance of its falsity but what her heart gave her. Yet she could not help the question stealing into her mind again and again, like salt water flooding a creek.

Now, after those few words that Norah had had with her mother on the evening of the arrival of these “private wishes,” it was difficult for either of them to open the subject again, for the very simple reason that Lady Ravenscroft had expressed herself as unmistakably as possible, and that Norah had entirely assented to what she said. But though Lady Ravenscroft did not withdraw one jot or tittle from the completeness of her expression, during the days that followed she began to look further in other directions. These directions were not, so to speak, essentials; but they were, it seemed to her, the roads of worldly wisdom. For simplicity, she argued, though it may be a very excellent and spiritual thing, sometimes sanctions proceedings which wisdom—wisdom of the children of this generation, if you like —will not permit for a moment. And if, without spoiling noble motives, it is yet possible to combine them with wariness, it was the opinion of Lady Ravenscroft that it was wise so to combine them. The eternal justice of heaven may perhaps pronounce both courses to be flawless, but in the meantime it is wiser to adopt that course to which the temporary injustice of the earth does not take exception.

Lady Ravenscroft, as was her way, which was always an eminently practical one, did not descend from general principles to particular instances, but with particular instances in her mind referred them to general principles to see what these latter had to say about them. These, as set forth above, as she sat waiting for Norah to come downstairs for a drive, she found to be satisfactory, and she then devoted her mind to the particular instance again. That was, it need hardly be remarked, the wisest attitude in which Norah and Paul should just now be presented to the public. The eternal principle behind was of course their love for each other, which nothing could alter; it was merely their external public attitude which Norah’s mother was not quite certain about. Up till now Paul had already been down here for two week ends, and Lady Ravenscroft knew that he and Norah had talked about his spending all August with them at Evrington. She had felt at the time that this was not an ideally wise plan for many reasons, and since the affair of the “private wishes” she had felt this far more keenly than before. For it was no use, while one happened to be in the world, to pretend not to mind what the world said. On one’s deathbed it might perhaps matter very little what the world said, but until the deathbed was quite evidently imminent it mattered very much. And Lady Ravenscroft had no notion whatever of deathbeds being imminent for any of those concerned. She fully contemplated Norah and Paul living for more years than it was at all necessary to count; their life, in fact, had not begun, it all lay in front of them. But she knew that the world in general expected them to marry as soon as was decently possible, and she guessed very fairly and truthfully what the world did not say to her— namely, that Norah’s first marriage had not been extremely successful, and the accident that had removed Theodore had been a wonderfully lucky one as regards the greatest happiness of the greatest number. More than that, she hoped and trusted, the world did not say; but she knew very well what the world thought—namely, that it was a singular coincidence (without more implied) that it was by Paul’s hand that death had come to the other. No one could help thinking that.

Then, again, there was Norah’s present condition. In a little over a month a child would be born of her—Theodore’s child. From there she rushed to her conclusion: the world being what it is, it would be very injudicious if Paul 16 stayed with them all August. It was a bétise that he should do that. Yet as regards Norah, her tongue was absolutely tied; she would sooner have bitten it out than suggest the wisdom of the other course. But if only Norah or Paul had an ounce or two of the wisdom of the children of this generation. She was very much afraid they had not. But Paul— perhaps she could throw a hint to Paul, cast a fly over him, so to speak, to see if he would rise to it If he rose he could not complain of being caught Norah came downstairs at this stage of her meditations, and the carriage being at the door they started. Wroxton by in a scoop of downs, and on all sides but where the river ran seawards the clear bare hills climbed up from the town, so that half an hour of foot-pace and of comparative silence, was in front of them. For Norah had been thinking not less intently than her mother, and though when she spoke she did not say exactly that which Lady Ravenscroft could not say to her, yet the subjects were akin; they lay in the same field.

It had been their custom for this last week to drive out together like this. The carriage, with one sad horse, which always reminded Lady Ravenscroft of her sister, usually conveyed them to some hilltop of down, and there it was their custom to leave it, and walk together over the tops. The wind, whatever heat brooded below, was cool there, the grass was springy to the foot, and a thousand flowers of the chalk soil, scabious and dwarf-meadowsweet, rock-rose and hairbell, purple vetch and purple orchids, made an infinitely various carpet. Below in the hollow the town smouldered— here were the airs and the coolness of the sky.

Lady Ravenscroft hated silences when she was with others; she would talk about anything rather than put foot in front of foot or take mouthful after mouthful at meals with only the employment of mastication. But this morning as they walked over the downland, Nor ah’s silence had beaten her, and when at last Norah spoke her mother realized that something which had occupied her completely was coming.

“I want to talk to you about Paul,” she said. “I am not quite happy about him. You won’t mind my talking slowly, will you? I will tell you when I have finished. But I want to say all I have to say.”

It had been their habit to collect all the wild-flowers that the downs gave them, and Lady Ravenscroft could not help plucking a bee-orchis, the first that they had seen. She just held it up for Norah to see.

“Ah, yes, on the hillside of Silomo how many there were,” she said. “About Paul-”

“Paul is too gay,” she said. “I don’t understand it. He is the person in London. Lady Anstruther wrote to me the other day. She said they all intrigued to get Paul at their parties. I daresay that was chaff, some of it. But still—oh, mother, think what he went through. How is it possible that he is gay?”

Then for a moment Norah came back to the present.

“Bee-orchis,” she said. “That is the first we have seen, is it not? That makes”—and her voice, so Lady Ravenscroft thought, was like that of a child at its lesson—“that makes thirty-eight flowers we have seen on these downs.”

Then she went back again.

“It is a pretence, a make-believe,” she said. “He is not gay really; he is acting gaiety. Oh, I know that. How? Because I have seen him when he thought he was alone.”

Norah paused again.

“It was two Sundays ago,” she continued, “when he was down here. We had all sat about on the lawn, do you remember, after lunch, and Paul was too ridiculous for words. He climbed the mulberry-tree, and stepped through the cucumber-frame, and dressed up as Archdeacon Harold, and preached to us from a basket-chair.”

Norah’s lips could not help uncurling for a moment into a smile, but she grew quickly grave again.

“And then the rest of us went in,” she said, “but as I went upstairs I looked out of the window. Paul was seated there with—with despair on his face. And then he leaned forward, and buried his face in his hands. Then I called him, and he jumped up and was absurd again. But why does he act and make-believe to me? Oh, he wants comforting,” she cried, “about something, and he doesn’t come to me for it.”

She stopped and faced her mother.

“Theodore is between us still,” she said. “He is between us in Paul’s despair, and in his terrible gaiety. What are we to do?”

The cool wind stirred Norah’s hair, and round them all Nature on this high-day of summer and sunshine flowered and rejoiced, but it seemed to Lady Ravenscroft that another presence, tragedy and lifelong sorrow, had come near. It had not yet touched Norah, but it stood by her, and it wanted but that it should lay the compelling hand on her arm to make her look in its eyes. Indeed it was with an effort that she restrained herself from calling to her daughter, “No, no, do not look there.” But if this was to be averted she must take Norah’s attention off; she must speak quickly and wisely. And suddenly, with masterly ingenuity, she saw her way, the way that she had been pondering for days to herself, unable to speak to Norah of it, unless she spoke first.

“Yes, dear,” she said, “I too felt something of what you feel, though my explanation of it is simpler. You say it like that because the feeling is so vivid to you—that Theodore stands between you and Paul. Well, I do not put it like that; I say that you have both had a very great shock, and that shock prevents both of you from being quite natural and spontaneous.”

“Ah, but in the early days after it-” Norah began.

But her mother broke it.

“Ah, my dear,” she said, “it is not in the first moments of a shock that one is boulversé; one goes on very often acting correctly, so to speak, and automatically. It is afterwards that the hard time comes, when you have had time to think about it. Anyone can be spontaneous and natural at first; your very anxiety for Paul kept you on the rails, so to speak.”

She paused and, quite regardless of its rarity, prodded and spudded absentmindedly at another bee-orchis instead of carefully picking it,

“The shock didn’t affect you at first,” she said, “because you had Paul to think about acutely, since he was ill, and since he had done a heroic thing in risking his own life to save Theodore’s. But one has to feel a shock some time, or else it is not a shock at all. And you are feeling it now, and so is he. You say he is gay, unnaturally gay; well, I respect that; it is brave, it is to be referred to the always laudable desire of behaving decently. Then, no doubt, as you say, he has his times of terrible depression—those he tries to keep to himself. But as for telling you, as for not keeping it up before you, why, it would spoil it all if he did that. Of course it is with you, just because you are you, that it is hardest of all for him to keep it up. It is easy to act to strangers; it is very difficult to act to one’s friends. You must give him time, and in the interval you must say to yourself that any brave effort is praiseworthy. But, I assure you, it is only natural that you do not feel natural with him. One subject must greatly occupy you both, and of that you are right never to speak to each other. You have to let it die, wither, be finished.”

They had walked on again, and Lady Ravenscroft felt that Norah’s eyes were now averted from tragedy, that five minutes ago stood so close to her. Her anxiety for the present was gone: she had also a practical suggestion to make.

“Now I know that you had thought of getting Paul to spend August with us at Evrington,” she said, “I think that would be a great mistake. You would be wise, I am sure, not to see each other at all for a month or two. Besides, Norah, are you not thinking, dear, a little too much of yourself, and not enough of Paul?”

This startled Norah.

“No. How?” she said. “Honestly, I don’t think so.”

“I will tell you how, then. Your child will be born, please God, before many weeks are out. Now, that must be, my darling, a time of anxiety for us all, and of danger—yes, danger for you. And you think of getting Paul to spend that month before with us. Ah, consider! Whose child is it? Theodore’s. Just think of that for a moment! Oh,.my dear, you do not think of Paul. Paul in the house in the middle of all the anxiety. Paul waiting for that!”

Norah did not reply for a moment, but Lady Ravenscroft, stopping, looked at her. Then suddenly her mouth trembled, and she raised her eyes to her mother, and a little pitiful whimper of sound came from her lips.

“Ah, dear! ah, dear!” she said. “How can I have been so blind and so brutal? Yes, I see, or, mother, I see. But Paul—he never suggested that it would be hard; he never gave me the least hint-”

But Lady Ravenscroft interrupted.

“No; he loves you,” she said.

They walked on again in silence awhile over the prosperous carpet of short green and down flowers. Then Norah stopped again.

“What shall we do?” she asked simply. “I can’t ask Paul, can I, not to come?”

Lady Ravenscroft laughed.

“No, certainly not,” said she, “but this elderly old thing called Me can. Elderly old things, I assure you, can do all sorts of things that young people can’t. Besides, it will give me an excellent excuse for going to London.”

“But what will you say? What will you tell him?” asked Norah.

“I shall make him say that he finds things strained and not natural when he is with you. That is always the right plan. If you want to convince anybody, you have to make him say the thing that convinces himself. Paul will certainly do that; he will blame himself for feeling strained and unnatural.”

“Ah, poor Paul!” cried Norah, her heart calling out.

“But less poor than if he came to Evrington for August,” remarked Lady Ravenscroft.

“Ah, you will be gentle?” asked Norah.

Again Lady Ravenscroft laughed—a jolly, amused laugh, with real relief behind it that gave it resonance.

“I will give him gas, mentally speaking,” she said. “He shall not know anything about it till it is over.”

CHAPTER XVII

Summer, in spite of the experience London has had of icy Mays and snowy Junes, is still supposed to be the hot time of the year, and this year it certainly acted on that supposition. As usual, however, it manifested no sense of proportion, and produced a parody of heat that was simply silly. A fortnight of making up the fire had occurred in June, and at the end of that month, when everybody was hoping for an abatement of the nineties, the oven-doors of the celestial kitchen were thrown open, and all the poor little black-beetles that on earth do dwell were nearly roasted alive. Top-hats (the blackbeetle simile is supposed to finish here), a sure criterion of weather, vanished utterly, and a sort of molten age—an age of flannels and straw-hats and limp collars with regard to men, and of thin blouses and one feather in the hair by way of a hat as regards women, dawned on the earth. It affected conversation too, for weather as a topic could no longer be regarded as dull, for there was no subject conceivable which more closely concerned everybody. And with the amazing good humour and cheerfulness of the human race, people made a sort of game out of it, and bought thermometers which had to be hung up in bed-room or bath-room, and the bed-room or bath-room that recorded the highest temperature won.

Of course, the sensible thing for anyone who was able to do so would have been to leave London and go into the country; but the true Londoner scorned to do anything of the kind. He is not going to yield one inch because the sun comes nearer the earth, and he will stop in London as long as he chooses, whatever happens. Since partridges and pheasants and foxes are not ripe till the autumn and winter, and since they do not ripen in town at all, he has arranged to be in the country during those months, and therefore he is in London at that time of year, when walls are hot to the hand and pavements scorch the foot, and he runs about all day and dances all night, or goes to hermetically-sealed theatres. But if the powers of the air think that they will drive him out of town by heat or cold or fire or frost before the end of July, why, the sooner they learn their mistake the better.

The heat in any case made no difference to Lady Anstruther and her philanthropy, and during the very last week in July she had a huge bazaar at Anstruther House for some suffering object. People who wished to be unkind said that she had not the slightest idea, on this particular occasion, as to what the suffering object was, and she appeared herself to believe that it was in connection with dairies, whereas it was really on behalf of dogs. But that mattered very little, since, no doubt, the funds would eventually find their way to a suitable quarter, and the bazaar had been quite one of the most successful events of the season. But her philanthropy was by no means specialized; she swept with a wide net, and the same evening was giving a small dinner-party to those of her own world who were not suffering at all. People were coming in afterwards, and she had left a few hundred cards at different houses, on which she had written: “ Do come to a tiny dance on the 26th,” but the whole thing was perfectly informal. But as the whole world came, the effect was that she wound up the season just as she had opened it She had done a good deal in the interval as well But the dinner was small—really small—and of the nature of a dutiful dinner. Archdeacon Harold, for instance, who, like Bottom, had lately been translated to a canonry at St. Paul’s, with the cure of a perfectly empty City church, was there. He was more man of the world than ever, but his “word in season” was still frequent, and his voice had acquired a hollow, episcopal sonorousness, as if it was used to finding its echo in vaulted roofs. His wife was there also, still, like the brook, going on for ever; and even this drought and heat of an abnormal summer did not make her show any sign of running dry. She was talking now to her hostess.

“Yes, my husband preached in dear Wroxton last Sunday,” she was saying; “and it almost made me cry to see how crowded the cathedral was. All our old friends were there; so delightful to see them all again, and have some little quiet talks with them all Such a whirl, London life, is it not? and I wonder sometimes, Lady Anstruther, how you, with all your charities and work, can find time for all you do, with your social duties as well, which, of course, must take up so long. My husband was saying only the other day how tiring social engagements are, though, of course, they are pleasures and refreshment also. He goes out so very much, and likes me to be with him, for he thinks that the clergy make a great mistake if they stand aloof from the world. Indeed, I don’t suppose we have dined quietly at home half a dozen times in the last month.”

Lady Anstruther tried to remember when last she had dined quietly at home, but could not at the moment recollect having done so at all. So she picked out another of Mrs. Harold’s numerous topics.

“And you saw Lady Ravenscroft, I suppose,” she said. “Norah Beckwith is there, too, is she not?”

“Oh, yes; but they go this week to Evrington, because Mrs. Beckwith, you know, expects a baby soon, and it will be so nice if it is born there in the home of its fathers. We live again in our children, do we not? as the Canon said the other day.”

Lady Anstruther had no children, so she could not testify to her personal experience of the truth of this profound and beautiful observation, and Mrs. Harold flowed on.

“Yes; they were staying with dear Mrs. Mundy,” she said—“Lady Ravenscroft’s sister, you know. Such a very gentle, resigned woman, quite unlike Lady Ravenscroft, though I am sure she would be resigned, too, if she was called upon. So sad for Mrs. Beckwith to be a widow at such an early age, though, of course, it is very sad at any time. I should think she would marry again.”

Mr. Ellicott, who, as usual, was to be found where Lady Anstruther was to be found, looked up tiredly.

“It’s quite certain, isn’t it?” he asked—“Paul Norris, I mean.”

Lady Anstruther had, when she chose, a great gift of discretion. Without exactly changing the subject, she changed the direction of it.

“Ah, Paul is coming in this evening,” she said. “I have hardly seen him at all. It has been perfectly hopeless trying to get hold of him, except a year or two ahead. I don’t wonder at all, either. I am desperately in love with him. I never saw anybody enjoy himself as much as he does. And to enjoy one’s self is the supreme social gift. Dear me, it’s nearly eleven. I must go and stand like a grenadier at the top of the stairs and receive, as the papers say.”

Mr. Ellicott and Mrs. Pakenham slowly and stealthily detached themselves from the vicinity of Mrs. Harold, and glided imperceptibly further from her.

“Does she ever stop?” asked he.

“No, never. I wonder how it’s done. Apparently she opens her mouth, and says any words that happen to tumble out, with a great deal of 4 so’ in it. Yes, Paul is too wonderful. There never was anybody with such exuberance. Are people who have committed manslaughter always like that?”

“One might try,” remarked Ellicott.

“Ah, but if you tried it would be murder,” said Mrs. Pakenham, with a show of reason.

Mr. Ellicott laughed languidly.

“Do you remember Theodore Beckwith shooting a match with your husband?” he said. “Last year, wasn’t it, down at Ravenscroft?”

“Do I not? Frank lost a hundred pounds, and we had to get a motor that wouldn’t go instead of one that perhaps might. Yes; how very interesting it all is! Do you know, I think poor Mr. Beckwith was the most terrific man I ever saw.”

“All because of that hundred pounds? ‘*

“No, not in the least. But surely you know what I mean. He was uncanny. A man who does crochet or whatever it was, then shoots much better than anyone else, then takes as his secretary the man who is in love with his wife, is surely not quite normal. He used to sap one’s vitality, too.”

“He never sapped mine/’ remarked Mr. Ellicott.

“No, dear Mr. Ellicott, you haven’t got any. But he certainly sapped Norah’s. She used to look so frightfully tired when she was with him.”

“Well, Paul sapped him,” remarked Ellicott. “They sap longest who sap last. Look, there he is. And the canon’s lady is going to cull him like a wayside flower.”

Paul had arrived amongst the first after-dinner guests, and was making his hilarious way towards them. But as Mr. Ellicott had prophesied, he was culled by Mrs. Harold, and made to listen. From where they were, only a few yards off, they could watch the manner of his martyrdom with some particularity, and his abortive attempts to roll off his gridiron. From time to time he glanced at them with momentary raisings of the eyebrow and appeals for sympathy, while his interested smile grew momentarily more inane and forced, as Mrs. Harold’s tide equably flowed on. His face, always high-coloured, looked extraordinarily brilliant, his eyes sparkled with some curiously excited light, and Mrs. Pakenham, reverting to one of her pet theories, commented on this.

“I never saw anyone so vital,” she said, “and I’m sure it is largely due to his having given up alcohol. If only he would give up meat as well.”

At this moment Paul gave a sort of sudden prance, Mrs. Harold being occupied for the moment with someone else, and stole rapidly towards them.

“Oh, my aunt!” he said. “No, she’s no relation. Aunt Kate is my aunt, who is quite different. How are you, Mrs. Pakenham? But why is it allowed? Mrs. Harold, I mean. Why don’t we put a cork into her mouth, and tie it and wire it down like champagne? Though it isn’t a bit like champagne. It is like warm barley-water. I want to dance. Do come and dance. We shall get so hot. At least, I’ve got.”

“I thought you lived on barley-water now, Paul?” said Ellicott.

Paul jerked his head like a bird.

“Yes, but not warm,” he said. “Oh, do let us do something!”

“You shall sit this out with me,” said Mrs. Pakenham, “and we’ll dance the next. What have you been doing all day?”

Paul numbered his sentences off on his fingers.

“Mr. Norris was aroused with difficulty at eight a. m.,” he said, “and swore. Then I spent the morning at the office. Then I lunched out, and staggered back through the blinding sun to the scene of insurance till five o’clock. Then I modelled feverishly till dinner. Dined. Then I came here. And here I rest.”

The kaleidoscope of the shifting crowd passed swiftly and brilliantly in front of them, for that which had started life as a “tiny” party had, as has been mentioned, grown with remarkable speed to remarkable size, and since the knowledge of its growth had been common property, and most of the royal family were coming, everyone had put her biggest and brightest crown on, and the room, as Paul proceeded to say, reeked of diamonds.

“Simply reeks, which is so right,” he continued, “because there really are only two sorts of parties: one like this, where every one wears crowns and is perfectly gorgeous, and the other where you dine quietly with four or five other people and sit on the floor if you feel disposed. Only I hate middling parties; oh, yes, you know the sort of thing, twenty people or so who don’t know each other very well, eating a rich dinner and trying to believe that they are smart.”

“But you like dressing-up parties, don’t you?” asked Mrs. Pakenham.

“Yes, when everybody is covered with jewels and orders like this. It’s absurd to deny that it’s beautiful to look at. Oh, look, there’s Lady Cheshire with her wig over one ear, and at least three tiaras perched on the other like a forage cap. They say she celebrated her hundredth birthday yesterday, and I’m sure I don’t wonder. I’m told the British Museum sent for her the other day, but she refused to go. Of course, you must have a crowd to make dressing-up any fun, and give them a house like this, with Titians and marble staircases to play about on. You can’t have a smart party except in a big house, and you must have a crowd. I remember dressing up once-”

Paul stopped suddenly with a frown. He remembered dressing up very well indeed, but he had not meant to remember it. He felt as if he had suddenly come round some corner in his brain and found himself face to face with Norah in her brocaded dress with hand raised for the minuet. Yet the moment after, his frown uncreased itself again; indeed, he did not know why he had frowned at all, except that he had not expected that memory to be round the corner, that image of the foggy evening, with Theodore sitting at the pianola. Instantaneously, too, he reminded himself—a reminder which he gave himself a hundred times a day— that he must, for his own safety, be natural, he must not seem to shy away from any subjects, else surely people would notice it, and think it odd. They would ask themselves what was the matter with Paul Norris; then perhaps they would begin to ask that question of each other. A hundred times a day, too, he told himself he must seem to be light-hearted, amused, and eager, else people assuredly would begin to conjecture causes that had changed him. So before the pause was really perceptible he went on.

“Yes, one night just before we went out to Silomo,” he said. “Theodore got Norah and me to dress up in a sort of grandmother things and dance a minuet. I remember—what was I saying—oh, yes, thinking at the time that for two people to dress up while the third played the pianola was rather ridiculous. Oh, there’s Lady Anstruther taking crowned heads to the ball-room. How opulent and rich.”

Mrs. Pakenham stood up.

“ I quite agree,” she said. “If you are going to dress up, you must do it thoroughly with a crowd, like the actor who blacked himself all over when he was going to play Othello. Look at Canon Harold’s back. It always gets a particular arch in it when royalty is present; it curves automatically like a barometer going up. Would you sooner be cast away on a desert island with him or his wife? We nearly ran her down the other day in the motor. She was standing in the middle of the road, talking, oddly enough, and we only just pulled up in time.”

She turned from her contemplation of Canon Harold’s back to Paul, and not till she saw a horribly frightened look in his eyes did she remember what must be suggested to him by what she had said. She felt an intense annoyance at herself, blaming herself bitterly for her carelessness, but decided at once that it would be far better to go on talking naturally than to express regret or apology to him, since that would only emphasize what she had done, and so, looking away again, she continued:

“Personally, I would choose his wife,” she said, “because I think in a very short time one would cease to be conscious that she was speaking, just as one gets soon not to hear the noise of a train when one is in it. But Canon Harold! They say he has a page in his diary to record how many times he talks to duchesses. Well, Paul, shall we go and dance?”

She took his arm, and felt through his sleeve that it was trembling, and for a moment or two he could not speak. He felt that his mouth had gone suddenly dry, and that some dreadful internal suction had emptied the veins and arteries of blood. Once more he saw the lonely figure on the white road, and heard a sudden weasel cry. Then again he reminded himself that he must be natural, else people would suspect something, or, indeed, did not Mrs. Pakenham’s remark show that she had already suspected something, and was testing him, seeing if he would betray himself? That he would revolve mentally afterwards; it would indeed require a great deal of thinking over. But for the present at all events he must pull himself together. He longed too—teetotaller as he was supposed to be— for just one mouthful of spirits. That was unfailing; it always did its work, steadying him, and making him forget. But he had got to do without it now, he had got to speak, to say something, to make it appear that he was his own man. His voice was a little unsteady for the first two or three words when he did speak, but in a few seconds he had mastered that also, and the break was over.

Paul stayed late at the ball, dancing with extraordinary vigour, talking nineteen to the dozen, and, as usual, pervading his surroundings with that peculiar sparkle of vitality that is so rare and so infectious. It was as Lady Anstruther had said; his enjoyment was the greatest of social gifts, for it diffused itself, and spread in all directions. Then, when the rooms were beginning to empty, he was annexed by his hostess, and stayed talking to her for some half hour more, and was the last to pass out through the lines of yawning servants into the silent streets, below the silent sky, which already was growing dove-coloured with the approach of morning. He was in no particular hurry to get to bed, for he had a holiday to-day from office work, and was going down in the afternoon to spend the week-end with some friends on the Thames. But he was in a great hurry about something else, and his hands fingered the flask in his pocket impatiently until he had got out of sight of the door. Then he stopped, unscrewed it, and drank.

That was better. Slowly at first, but with increasing rapidity, the deadly depression and fear which all evening had wrapped him round like some heavy, dark cloak, fell away from him. All night, and especially after Mrs. Pakenham had made her most unfortunate remark, it had been by mere gymnastics of the mind and will that he had “kept it up.” High spirits, huge natural power of enjoyment, had been his birthright, and the habit of years, and it was probably these that enabled him so successfully to counterfeit them now. But when he was alone and unoccupied, he sank at once like a stone in a well to the depths of his private inferno. It was no mere dull or lethargic suffering that waited him there: it was active and edged. Fear, deadly and quivering, held him fast, while round and round, close before his eyes, went that series of images that had begun at Silomo. They had not got the least blurred by time; indeed, as the days passed, they seemed to him to be getting ever more vivid, to be presented to him in brighter, more penetrating colours. Nor was his fear less than it had been; it held him like a vice, and the toothed edges of it bit ever deeper into his flesh.

But as long as he was called upon, so that others should not suspect the truth, to make efforts, to strain the sinews and muscles of his mind and will, the activity of his tortures ceased, though all the time he knew they were there; a deep, dull ache was the background on which all else was painted. Again, when he was alone, so long as he could actively employ his mind, by his modelling, by reading or what not, the edge of them was dulled. But he could not thus abstract himself from them for long: the pricks and points began to pierce through the leaves of his book, and yet between him and his figure. He might rouse himself perhaps once more and again force himself to attend to what he was doing, but before long he was worn down; his forces were finite, whereas that which dwelt below was untiring as a river flowing seawards. There was always more, more. No sorrow as yet, no remorse or repentance was mingled with these things. He was only terrified at what the consequences might be, he dreaded people suspecting what the truth was, and it was this very dread, so poignant was it, that spurred him into exertions that were almost superhuman. But, dimly enough, he had begun to want to be sorry; he felt somehow that if he was sorry, a sort of healing process would be begun, as if something emollient would be spread over a raw wound. But at present sorrow or remorse for the hate which had led to this did not touch him.

Day by day it was the same dismal round. He did not as a rule wake early, but slept heavily—he himself provided for that—till he was called. The moment of waking too was always the same, for it came only as an almost imperceptible transition to be aroused from a sleep from which the knowledge of his trouble never wholly vanished to the rather clearer knowledge of it which was his by day. But all night long he felt it was with him, colouring his dreams, and colouring even his unconsciousness. Then came perhaps the few worst moments of the day, when with the low vitality of morning he had to face the hours that lay between him and evening. Also the effects of the evening before still hung about him; he felt heavy-eyed, a little giddy sometimes, dry of mouth and aching of head. But as soon as he had collected vitality enough to be able to get up he did so. Only on some mornings he would lie there for perhaps ten minutes unable, he felt, to move. But when he moved the worst was probably over for the day.

All morning and until about five of the afternoon he was employed in the City with the firm in which he had previously held a clerkship, which, after his return to England in June, he had again taken up. And though in old days it used to be a somewhat doubtful matter at what hour Mr. Paul Norris, radiant and full of brilliant excuses, would arrive, it was now more usual than not for him to be there before ten. But the radiant Mr. Norris was unknown now; it was a very grave and sombre replica of him who sat diligently at his desk. For here there was no need for keeping it up; it did not matter in the least what anybody thought here; he only wanted to be occupied, to dull his brain with figures and uninteresting correspondence. But to that he brought all his attention; his work was scrupulously accurate, and he got through a great quantity of it. But for the last week he had known that this opiate covering, so to speak, of work, by which he hid from himself what lay below, was beginning to wear thin—patches of subconsciousness began to show through, getting between him and his page as they got between him and his book if he tried to read. But the manual work of writing was something; it was something to be obliged to attend. Yet even here, in the staid routine of office work, he was not secure, and only a day or two ago he had, he felt, been thrust at out of the dark. He had had to turn up some entry a month or so old in a ledger that to which he had but rarely to make reference. He found the page, which was written as usual in black ink. But at the very top of it, entered by hazard in red ink, was the entry of the insurance money paid by the firm to the executors of Theodore Beckwith.

———page not readable ———

Then came those hours of the day when his efforts had to be most untiring, but yet brought a greater reward than did the attention he bestowed to the work in the office, or the fascination of form and line in his modelling. He always dined out, and for an hour or two he could generally procure not only unconsciousness of the nightmare that raged inside him, but even by dint of simulated gaiety reach spontaneous gaiety. Yet he was never secure—a chance word, as to-night, might tear away the flimsy curtain, so that terror fell upon him in all its panoply, or if there was no such direct attack as that, yet a dozen times in a couple of hours, at a moment’s silence or a moment’s waiting, his heart would sink and sicken within him at the knowledge that lurked there.

Often after dinner he would leave rather early on the excuse of going on to some party, or of hearing the last act at the opera, and instead of doing this would take a hansom and drive home to his studio in Chelsea almost with glee, knowing that he was going to enjoy the next two hours, and in these days enjoyment was a very precious thing, and one not to be missed if it came within range. For his statuette stood there waiting for him if he wished, or at any rate there was clay which he could handle and work into fantastic shapes, and on the table stood the decanter with its syphons. And in the evening he did not limit himself; he drank as much as he felt inclined for. He would have drunk nothing at dinner, because for this very reason he had dubbed himself a teetotaller, so that though he gulped down his first glass, and sipped his way through three or four more before he went to bed, he told himself, again with reason, that he certainly drank less than the hosts of men who took sherry with their soup, champagne all through dinner, liqueur with their coffee, and whisky-and-soda with their bridge. Yet somehow he knew his case, his manner of drinking, to be different to theirs, and far more dangerous. There was a sense too of moral guilt about it; he recognised that, and some- times wondered if he had not better give it up. But as soon as he reasoned about it to himself there was nothing guilty about it. He never got drunk, he only got into such a state that sleep came to him as soon as his head was on the pillow, and lasted almost always until he was called. True, he felt giddy sometimes then, or headachy, or heavy-eyed, but that passed off with his bath or soon after.

But to-night, or rather this morning, he had no intention of sitting over his statuette, or lingering over his drink. Even as he walked down Knightsbridge the neutral, pearly tints which colour the world when daybreak is beginning were getting intensified in hue; then they grew diverse and specialized, pearl colour deepening here to red, here quickening into green, while the dome of the sky flecked at the zenith by a feather or two of thinnest cloud, brightened into the pale blue of morning, and the rays of the sun, not yet risen upon the earth, tipped the grey of those filmy vapours with dim rose-colour. On his right was the empty glistening park, bird-haunted and filled with the first sleepy chirrupings of the day, while in front stretched the empty roadway, shining with dew, and reflecting the sky, so that it looked as if it was made of steel. Occasionally a van laden with fruit or vegetables passed to Covent Garden, but the huge, busy brain of London, with its myriads crawling about it by day, like thoughts in a brain, was asleep. How clean and cool it all looked; the birds alone were fit to be abroad at such an hour.

All this was extraordinarily soothing and quieting, and Paul stood still a moment looking this way and that up the empty street, letting his poor troubled brain lie open to the tranquillity of the morning. And even as he paused the thought of Norah rose within it, flooding it as with cool water. That eclipse which had been cast over the thought of her had strangely and awfully deepened this last week or two; his love for her was there, that was sure enough, but this deepening shadow lay ever over it. But now for these few moments the eclipse wa9 withdrawn; she dawned upon him just as the fresh day was dawning on the earth, and within him the birds began to awake and sing. Once more, like the night-refreshed earth, he felt himself clean again; he felt that his beloved stood here with him, that all the dreadful past was but a disordered dream and this was reality. But in a few seconds that passed also, and as if black banners had been waved from every window of the sleeping street the ghostly enemies of his own creation and doing swarmed round him again. His hate for Theodore led the van, his crime followed hard on it, fear was summoned too, and they all flocked round him like a beleaguered city. There was none to help him; he was completely cut off.

The transition was so brutally violent, so overwhelming in its reality, that it had almost the effect of actual hallucination. He felt suddenly weak and sick. Next moment he had finished the rest of the contents of his flask.

CHAPTER XVIII

Half an hour la+er Paul let himself into his house in the still white street Inside the curtains were drawn, but the wan, tired light of morning penetrated there, and he saw that a couple of letters, which had arrived no doubt by the last post of the night before, were waiting for him. Both were in familiar hands, and the first that he opened was from Lady Ravenscroft, saying she was making a flying visit to London that day, and would hope for lunch from him. If he was out, would he telegraph early, so that she would get his message before she left? The other was from the house in which he was to have spent this Saturday till Monday, and was full of regrets and influenza. So tiresome, but it was a mere hospital. These he read in the pale early light, and went upstairs to his bedroom. He felt hugely sleepy, and stuck an envelope on the outside of his door, telling his servant not to call him until he rang. A couple of minutes was sufficient for undressing, and, disbanding blankets, he curled himself up coolly in his sheet. It was delightful to feel naturally sleepy. That small flask of whisky was all he had drunk that night.

His room was at the back of the house, but already the murmur of wheeled traffic had begun. It was not disturbing, and he flirted with the noise a little, so to speak, sleepily conjecturing now a’bus, now a van. The crisp jingle of a hansom was scarcer. That was natural; there were few abroad at this hour. By the way, he would have to send out for a cab half an hour before he should start to the station this afternoon. There were so few here. Ah, no; he had been put off, and should spend the Sunday in London. Rather pleasant, rather a rest. Saturday till Monday in the country was usually as busy as town during the week. But Lady Ravenscroft was coming to lunch. He must remember that when he awoke. Lobster—she loved lobster. They must have lobster for lunch.

He yawned and turned over. That was all he wanted to remind himself of. Now he would sleep. But turning over meant that the light came in his eyes, and he turned back again. How the birds chirruped in the little dingy backyard, just as if it was some woodland forest, and the time of nesting—the time of the singing-birds had come. . . .

The sharp chirrupings grew blurred and indistinct to his ear, but then something like a spring jarred within his head with a sudden buzz and awoke him again. Lobster—yes, decidedly lobster. But what made Lady Ravenscroft propose herself? She usually turned up without warning, and went away again if he was not in. It looked as if she must have something special to say. What about? Surely about Norah. Something she could not write, then. Perhaps Norah was ill. No, that could not be, or she would not have left her. Something to be talked about, not written about . . . what could that be? Who else, by the way, had talked about something that concerned him, about running down Mrs. Harold in a motor-car? These things never came singly. Probably Lady Ravenscroft wanted to allude to running people down in a motor-car, too. And with this he was broad awake.

The light that came through his blind gave to the room a yellowish-grey tint—a sort of dead colour. He had meant to have new blinds put up, that would exclude the light more, but somehow it had not been done; and as he turned over again, he saw the whole room and the details of it with extraordinary distinctness. The dead colour of the blinds robbed things of tint, but shapes and outlines were wonderfully plain. A writing-table piled high with letters and all sorts of written rubbish stood near the head of the bed; between the two windows was the dressing-table. He could see his brushes, comb, a glint from nail-scissors, a snaky-looking razor-strop, and a sound steel back of a razor. In the middle stood the looking-glass, reflecting the far comer of the room. Beyond that stood a row of boots—black boots, brown boots, a pair of slippers, a pair of tennis shoes, a pair of something almost white. For the moment he could not make out what they were, and half-raised himself in bed to look at them. Ah, yes—rope-soled shoes that he used to climb about the rocks in at Silomo. How noisy the birds had become! And why had he not taken his go-to-bed glass of whisky? However, it was morning; that was out of the question now. Besides, it was downstairs in his sitting-room. At Silorno his bed-room was next Theodore’s sitting-room. . . .

He jerked Silorno out of his mind, and set himself to think of anything soothing, beautiful sounds, beautiful colours. Sound: the sound of a skate over ice; the sound of chuckling, flowing water; the sound of riotous, frothing water (how the weir at Odney, where he should have gone this afternoon, made a soda-water of bubbles into the pool below!). Soda-water: the hiss of soda-water into a glass. . . .

Colour: cool green, the colour of leaf-screened paths. That, again, was Silorno. But rose-coloured, the colour of the dawn-tinted clouds he had seen as he walked home. But they were remote. Yellow was a colour close to one— orange-yellow, topaz-colour, at the bottom of a glass, and the noise of froth over it. Or, alone even, just colour, without noise. He hated noise. There were squeals, shrieks.

His two servants—a man and his wife—slept overhead, and at this moment Paul heard some muffled sound above him. He must be quick, then. They were already getting up, and with the horror of the secret sinner at the thought of his deeds being made public, even to a servant, he got out of bed and turned the handle of his door slowly and firmly, so that no sound came from it. His bare feet made no noise on the carpeted stairs, and next minute he was in his sitting-room below. He was only going to take just a glass as medicine—medicine to make him sleep. Lots of people took bromide and sulphonal and all sorts of poison; he only wanted a moderate glass, such as half the world take without thinking. And as with silent craft he let the syphon trickle noiselessly into the glass, already half full, he looked at himself in the mirror above the chimney-piece. No one could look more healthy and fit. He was bright-eyed and dear-complexioned; his nightshirt, open at the throat, showed vigorous muscle and bones unpadded with fat Besides, one glass; he had no intention of making a habit of it.

He went stealthily up to his room again, and firmly and slowly let the door-latch go. Sleep: oh, how good! As he wrapped himself comfortably into his cool sheet again, he heard the slow, sonorous Westminster chime beginning to announce the hour of six. It was only when all about him was very still and a light breeze blew westwards that it was audible. But before the end of the hour was tolled, he slept.

It was more than five hours later when he woke, and with consciousness there returned some curious sense of degradation. Sleepily he felt ashamed, and, as always, the knowledge of his fear formed the background in front of which the images of the day began to move. This morning it was a very bad ten minutes before he was awake enough to remember the envelope he had put on his door. What had been in Mrs. Pakenham’s mind when she said that about nearly running over Mrs. Harold in the motor? Clearly, one thing; and in how many minds was the same? And why was Lady Ravenscroft coming to lunch? And why, and why. . . .

He rang the bell sharply, and lay back in bed again. What had happened? A ball, a return at dawn, a singing of birds, and now fear—fear. And why did nobody answer the bell? Had they gone for the police already?

He rang the bell again, and got up, going across to the window and pulling up the dead-coloured blind. There were people standing on the pavement opposite: it looked to him as if they were watching the house. It had often occurred to him before that his house was being watched. What should he do?

He looked out for some ten seconds, his nerves all on edge, his imagination running riot in this way; but he could not calm the one nor control the other. What if it was true? What if they were—this time—watching? He had feared it often enough. Then Parker entered.

“Came as quick as I could, sir,” he said good-humouredly. “Cold bath, sir? And breakfast here or downstairs?”

Paul turned from the window into the room again. Perhaps Parker’s business was just to gain time for the police to stop any exit. Ah, that was absurd. The absurdity of it pulled him together, and he could see what riot his imagination was running.

“Oh, cold, please, and I’ll come down. Lady Ravenscroft will lunch with me, so do you think Mrs. Parker could get a lobster? And I shan’t go away. I shall be here over the Sunday.”

Parker was laying his clothes down and picking up the tumbled heap of dress-clothes which Paul had worn the night before. The latter had lit a cigarette, and strolled up and down in his nightshirt as this was going on.

“And will you be in for lunch and dinner to-morrow, sir?” Parker asked.

“Yes, probably. Oh, yes, I shall stop at home to-morrow and have a quiet Sunday.”

“It’s not often you do that, sir,” said Parker.

Ah, how good the cigarette tasted 1 how crisp the blue smoke smelt to his clean morning palate, untouched by food! How good, too, was the warm breeze that poured in through the window, blowing his nightshirt close to his flesh. For the hundredth or the thousandth time he told himself that all his fears, all the hideous depression and sinkings of soul which blackened half the hours of every day, were purely imaginary, invented by himself to torture himself. Five minutes ago, for instance, he was telling himself that the house was being watched, that Parker, who had gone upstairs to turn on the bath-tap, was in league with the police. Surely that showed that some disorder of his own nerves alone was responsible for his terrors. For now he was natural, normal again. The cigarette, the warm air, was a delight to him; so, too, in anticipation, was this quiet, lonely Sunday he should spend in London. How enjoyable just the sensation of life was!

As he walked up and down waiting for the sound of the water spouting into his bath to cease, his eyes fell on a pair of light dumb-bells that stood by his lx>ots. That struck him with surprise. They had been there, without doubt, all these weeks. Without doubt he had often looked at them, but never till now had he seen them. They had not claimed connection with him. But now—why, those quick movements with light dumb-bells were the very things to fill up this minute or two of bath-filling; one got a glow, a surface-warmth, that made the touch of the cold water doubly thrilling. A year ago, when he was at work, as now, in the insurance office, he used always to begin the day with these, near an open window, stripped to the waist, and before a looking-glass, so that he could not only feel but see the muscles— those fit and orderly servants of the body of man, that fetched and carried and smote and drew back at will, perform their work. Mens sana was not complete without the corpus sanum, and to be conscious of it gave the joy of possession. So next moment he had stripped his nightshirt to the waist and tied the arms there, and began the exercises with a sense of wonder that he had neglected so long so clean and clear a means of sanity. And just as the warm wind was good to the skin, and the crisp cigarette to the palate, so to the body it was good to see and to feel the flex and tightening of the muscles that grew lean and long as they were extended, and knotted themselves together into hard, wholesome lumps on the return stroke, to feel the swift whip-lash turn of the wrist, and the slower movement of the big trunk muscles in their heavier work, to feel the stretching strain of them all together as he raised the dumb-bells over his head, or brought them down with knees unbent till they touched the floor.

Then quite suddenly, even in mid-movement, he stopped. That body which in the glass made such swift and accurate movements, that made his soul rejoice in its obedient strength, what use was it—what could it do for its owner? Could it deliver him from any one of the terrors that encompassed him, or make the past one whit less horrible or the future one jot less terrifying? No; the terror and the guilt were, since this body was his, knitted into it and its strength. It was guilty just as he was. The swift wrist had connived at his crime; it was his accomplice. His body was no corpus sonum; it, too, had sinned. It had been the agent, whose deed had blackened his soul.

All this came like a flash—a flood. The same instant that had conveyed to his brain the knowledge of his guilt, body and soul alike, was long enough to let him put down the dumb-bells again by the boots, and throw into the fire-place the half-smoked cigarette which he had laid down when he took them up. Back, too, came all the imaginings which five minutes ago he had told himself were utterly unfounded, and also the sense of degradation with which he had awoke.

For two or three minutes he sat on the side of his bed, abandoning himself to his terrors. The quiet Sunday in London with nothing to do, which just now had seemed so peacefully satisfactory, had become impossible to contemplate. How on earth was he to get through the hours?

Then again he made an effort and banished such thoughts. There were heaps of things to do. Lady Ravenscroft was coming to lunch; after that he would go out on his bicycle. Then came the blessed hour of five, when the consolation of the day began. He would, with the friend which never failed him in a glass by his side, model till dinner; he would dine alone and quickly, and go on with his modelling till his hand was tired.

Then Sunday—there was the twelve o’clock service at St. Paul’s, which Lady Anstruther, of all people, had told him was the most beautiful thing in the world. He had never heard it; that was an excellent opportunity. Then, in the afternoon, there was a Queen’s Hall concert. After that —well, five o’clock again. The day would be too short, not too long.

Lady Ravenscroft came to lunch, and the lobster was there. But from the first Paul had seen there was something on her mind—something which she wanted to say. When it came it was quite simple. It was, indeed, just what she and Norah had talked over, and it amounted to the fact that it was thought better that he should not see anything of Norah for the present.

They were still sitting over the table with their coffee when this came out. Paul got up when the meaning was quite clear, went to the window, and opened it a little further.

“Then, is Norah giving me up?” he asked.

Lady Ravenscroft felt as if she could not have heard aright.

“What did you say?” she asked.

Paul repeated what he had said word for word, and in a flash, instantaneous and to himself convincing, he ran over in his mind the reasons for this. Norah, like Mrs. Pakenham, like the man who had made the red-ink entry in the book of the insurance office, knew his secret; she, like everybody else, was trying to make him betray himself. Yet all the time at the very back and centre of his being was a little voice that said, “It is not so; you know it is not so.” Then Lady Ravenscroft laughed.

“Paul, dear, what a very bad joke!” she said.

He came back and sat down in his place again.

“What is a joke?” he said quietly. “I have heard no joke.”

She looked at him a moment, and the sight made her feel unaccountably uneasy. Paul was there; his face was there, looking well, brilliant, as he always did. But something— something in his eyes or in his mouth was furtive, and sat concealed. Or was it only the brilliant, reflected light from the window opposite which he sat?

But, anyhow, since he had spoken so gravely and outrageously, she knew she had a task of some kind before her.

“Ah, dear Paul,” she said. “It is such a pity ever to say untrue and bitter things.”

He caught her up.

“It is a bitter thing to me when Norah wishes me to keep away,” he said.

“Wishes! What do you mean by * wishes’?” said she. “You don’t understand at all. Now, you know as well as I do that Norah would like to have you with her all and every day. Answer me. Don’t you know that?”

Some demon of disordered nerves or what not possessed him.

“I thought I knew that/’ he said. “But it seems I was wrong.”

Then the demon got complete possession.

“You are breaking things to me,” he cried. “This is the first step, to which you will allow me to get accustomed. For the present Norah does not wish to see me. And for a little while yet—and a little while yet she will think we had better keep apart. Oh, yes, I see. And the little while will grow into the big while.”

He stopped suddenly. Across his imaginings, that turbulent, disordered vision came, like a boat calm-floating, another image—the image of Norah herself on that last evening at Silomo, when he was hers and she was his.

“ I am talking nonsense,” he said huskily. “I beg you to forget it.”

Lady Ravenscroft laid her hand on his.

“Yes, dear Paul,” she said; “you have been talking nonsense, as you say. But before I go on I want to ask you something. Are you well, dear? Are you not rather tired and overwrought? Have you not been doing too much? You look rather—rather overstrung.”

Paul looked at her with dumb animal eyes, absolutely unselfconscious, but with their direct message of suffering.

“I don’t know,” he said; “and, anyhow, it does not matter. I am quite well enough. I get through the day’s work, and sleep well. But I feel—yes, I feel as if I was sickening for something now and then. I shall be all right out of London.”

“You must take care of yourself,” she said quietly, knowing that nothing is so exasperating to the young male as to be inquired into with regard to health. “You see, you have had a bad time this spring. However, you look quite well. I shall tell Norah that, and least of all, dear, do I want you to fuss about yourself. Now, about what I was saying-”

She paused a moment.

“Paul,” she said, “after what has happened, it is quite inevitable that both you and Norah should have a reaction. You were both so brave, you both set your teeth to go forward, at a time when every hour was difficult. You both lived on your extreme limits. And after that frightful tension, it is certain that you must both be allowed to go slack. That is not pleasant: it means depression, it means reaction, as I said. And you can’t help each other over it. When you are together, you both try to screw yourselves up to the brave level again. My dear, we are all human; we have to collapse sometimes. And the more you screw yourselves. up the greater the collapse must be.”

“Collapse!” he cried suddenly. “That is just what I won’t do.”

“That is what I want you to avoid. Instead of collapsing, you can go slow—you can collapse gently, live without effort, and, by making no effort, recuperate. It is that I so strongly recommend. When you are with her, and she with you, you put an unnatural strain on yourselves. I don’t want you to do that. I want you both to win back to your normal level. Besides-”

Again she paused.

“You were going to spend August with her,” she said. “That would be a great mistake. All that month, Paul, you will see her approaching the time of child-birth. You must be anxious about it; she will see your anxiety, and try to do things she ought not in order to relieve it. She, too, must rest; she can’t rest when you are there. Don’t you see? And, then, it is Theodore’s baby. It would be very hard for her—ah, I can’t explain, because there is no explanation— but it would be hard for her if you were there. She would be tom in two.”

Again she laid her hand on his.

“Because she loves you,” she said.

Paul was sitting forward, his elbows and hands on the table. He sat motionless; Lady Ravenscroft had ceased to be a presence to him, her voice was but a message. But the message reached him; all the best of him rose and received it.

“Yes, I see,” he said at length. “And tell her I see, and say ‘God bless her!’”

That was full tide; for the moment the knowledge flooded him. And when they rose, he gave her her cloak and umbrella without a word, and on the doorstep she kissed him, and left him.

Paul watched her go a few yards down the white, sunbaked street, and then turned back into the house. Downstairs, the door at the top of the kitchen steps being open for coolness, he could hear the discreet clatter of knives and forks, Parker and his wife being at their dinner, but otherwise the house was quite empty, and he was alone, certainly if he wished it (and very likely if he did not), till Monday, with nothing to do, but with plenty if he chose (and very likely he did not) to think about. There is no such solitude as London: the very crowds of strangers in the street are fortifications and palisades to a man who wishes to be by himself, and as Paul went upstairs the solitude seemed to close round him with impregnable walls. In the evening, no doubt, at his club, or next day if he chose to go forth with amiability and small-talk, he could easily find people in whose company he might sit and talk, but that, after the sentence that had gone forth about Norah, seemed to him only an aggravated form of solitude. Though for the moment he had risen to the occasion, had been able to realize with clear sight and comprehension the sacrifice of her companionship which love entailed, and which mere common sense endorsed, now that Lady Ravenscroft was gone, how quickly that clarity of vision faded and that comprehension became dull and obscured. Once again, for the thousandth time, the dreaded dusk (and each time it fell it seemed more palpable), flooded his soul, and in that dusk a hundred questionings and doubts flitted bat-like about him with frequent touches of hideous wings. Surely he was right about Norah when first he suggested that it was a gradual process of breaking of the truth to him that had begun. For a little while he was not to see her, and the little while would grow to the great while, and the great while would grow commensurate with life. Of course, she had guessed his secret, that secret which, though unwitnessed by any eye, was as certain to calculation and conjecture as the existence to astronomers of some star that they had never yet seen. Given the forces that were abroad that morning, the hate, the sting of unfounded insults, the love, too, that existed between himself and Norah, Theodore’s death was arranged for, was already foreseen and inevitable. And what Norah had guessed, others, too, he felt, had guessed and would guess. The whole world would know it, and though he knew that all actual proof was wanting, actual proof was unnecessary. Of a legal tribunal he did not at present think at all; he only pictured the knowledge looking at him from the eyes of his friends. Silently they would look at him, and then be averted.

Then with an effort he pulled himself together again, conscious that he let his imagination play tricks with him. Yet it was in the brain, in the imagination, that the real events of the world took place. Bitterly he knew that: bitterly he knew that it was when he allowed and encouraged himself to hate Theodore that he had essentially killed him; his actual death was but a small step that followed inevitably on the larger though intangible process. So now, too, perhaps his imagination was building the future. Already his indelible stain was on the present, his very room, its books and furniture, the things he had bought and collected, the things, too, that he had known from childhood, were stained and steeped with the poison of his deed: they too shared his secret and his guilt. The very house itself was becoming a haunted house; not only did the knowledge lurk in the shadows there and at night-time, but the sun shafts were instinct with it, it floated among the motes. But at present it was still only the consequences of his deed that he feared; he was not sorry. If a wish might have recalled Theodore to life, Paul perhaps would have wished it, but only because of the hell which his death had kindled round him. He had told him-18 self three months ago that this fear and this secret knowledge would grow vague and faint with the passage of time, but never had it stood so close to him as to-day. But now, when the imminence of its presence was almost overwhelming, he found a sudden ray of hope. He knew that, whatever the future held, it was himself, his excited brain, his imagination, that made the present intolerable, and he knew also that there was that in his present mode of life which inflamed and disordered him. Months ago he had found that alcohol deadened the sense of regret and responsibility, and warmed the outlook, and now for months he had let alcohol do that for him. Every day he got temporary relief by its means, and though, as far as he knew, he had no craving for it in itself, yet he craved for the armistice it gave him. That, at any rate, as he determined now, was to be discontinued. His trouble, he told himself, was trouble of nerves, of imagination, and the temporary relief he purchased was purchased at a huge price, in a double measure of suffering during those hours in which he was not drugged.

Paul got up suddenly, and went to the window, standing in the blaze of the sun that streamed in. Drugged! The word struck him like a blow, and yet the blow was deserved. Drunkard! That was another ugly word, and though it was not applicable to him in its literal sense, since he did not get drunk, yet in essentials that was he. Already it was his habit to drink till he forgot his trouble. That result was attained before he had drunk himself into physical insensibility; but where was the difference? He drank till he had attained his object in drinking, which was mental insensibility. And, of course, that was purchased at the price at which all such relief is purchased: the increase of a hundred per cent, to be paid back in sober hours. And he was guilty of the cunning of the secret drinker, too; his own conscience accused him, for he had made it known that he was a teetotaller. That was a confession in itself; it implied his own knowledge of what he was doing.

But here was the door of hope: it was the degeneration of his physical life that so aggravated the disorder of his brain. Henceforth all that should cease. For weeks he had taken no exercise, for weeks he had secured sleep by drink, for weeks he had every day purchased a few hours of insouciance in the same way. That was why the rest of the hours were so evil, why depression and formless and unfounded fears closed round him all day. From the very beginning, when he and Norah had danced together on that foggy evening, he had tried to purchase irresponsibility by such means, and day by day, and week by week, he had had to pay a higher price for it. Henceforth he would pay nought in that currency. He would purchase no such relief in the future.

His purpose at the moment in any case was hot within him, and a couple of minutes saw him changed into a flannel suit and standing with his bicycle at the pavement edge. If insensibility to mental torture was to be purchased, he could at least purchase it healthily by honest physical fatigue, and a ride in this grilling sun was likely to be effective. And in some childish, primitive fashion he passionately desired trees and green things; they surely had some secret of repose. He wanted so much to be able to begin again, to start fresh, with the possibilities of the future waved before him, instead of the debts and exigencies of the past to drag at him.

The King’s Road was full of traffic, and, as he started, the need of hand and eye, working co-operatively, filled his consciousness. His physical nature was highly strung, prone to speed, and to sidle and steer through the crush of vehicles was a revived and absorbing pleasure. All down the road to Putney Bridge there were endless instantaneous decisions to be taken, the hair-breadth judgement as to whether there was room to pass between two nodding omnibuses, the unconscious calculation as to whether he could get in front of a slow-moving van before a hansom came broadside to it. And for this hour his habits revived; all his life till six months ago he had played with life, made a game out of its most insignificant operations, and for the time he was, as Norah had said, eleven years old, as he raced through the traffic of the street, smiling to himself as he heard a pursuing motor-car draw up, unable to get through some narrower channel where he passed in safety. He had five pounds, too, in his pocket, that might be spent. There was a shop on Richmond Hill where once he had seen a shield-top spoon before early silver meant anything to him. But now it would be a greater triumph to buy an undetected shield-top within ten miles of London than to get that rat-tail at Genoa.

Putney Bridge and a cessation of traffic. But enthralling though the traffic had been, it was even more entrancing to find the open road, where he could put forth his strength, and with the wholesome perspiration bursting from every pore, strain leg after leg, muscle-tightened, up the hill. The road was a ribbon of reflected sun, the sky was brass above, and as if his life depended on his speed, he breasted the ascent. Then came the peaceful level at the top, and the long hill to descend. That, too, after his exertions, was good; he sat still just to see the woods and hedgerows flying by him, and it was with exultation almost that he remembered how much out of his way he had come. So much the better; there was still the ride through the park, and the descent by the Star and Garter Hotel. Then came the hill down into Richmond, and the shop where there might be the shield-top spoon.

All that afternoon there was no break in his determined joie de vivre, in the confirmation of his plan, and it was nearly six when he reached Chelsea again. The shield-tQp spoon had left the shop, and his five pounds had not found an adequate exchange; but it was in the glow of earned heat that he dismounted and dragged his bicycle up the steps into his house. Bath, cold bath, was the proper sequence, and then two hours at the clay till dinner. He did not want tea, he never had tea. . . .

There was a flask of whisky in his sitting-room and a syphon, all just as usual. After this long grilling in the sun, after a twenty-mile ride too, it was only natural to be thirsty. The pail of ice also was irresistible; it clinked over the whisky, and the syphon hissed over it. But he wanted his bath too, so he would just have one short cold drink. He even ran upstairs and turned on the tap of the bath first so that he could not linger. But as there was to be only one drink it might be liberal. How many men took a whisky-and-soda at this hour without having ridden twenty miles! Surely, so he said to himself, he was getting out of focus about this too; he was devoting far more thought to the question whether he should have a whisky-and-soda or not than the question possibly deserved. He was behaving as if delirium tremens sat in every tumbler.

The bath-room and the room he used for a studio which had a north light, occupied the top story of the house, and from the one he passed in his dressing-gown straight into the other. He had not expected to be in London this afternoon, and so had not engaged his model; but there was a quantity of fine work to be done to the hands and feet of his figure for which his model would be useless, for, like most of his class, his hands and feet were coarse and ugly, with stubby fingers ending in broad bluntness. So instead he had modelled the hands from his own; it was his own hand he wanted.

The figure stood on a revolving wooden pedestal, surrounded by a wet canvas frame to keep it moist, and it was with singular avidity that Paul entered his studio and lifted this off. Nothing was so absorbing; it was creative work which, whether expressed in clay or pigment or in ink, most enthralls the producer. This afternoon als9, though his work was to be of so minute and detailed a character, he felt himself possessed of an extraordinary clarity of vision. He could visualize the “idea” of his figure in finger-tip and knuckle; every bone and muscle must be instinct with it. And the “idea” was fear.

The figure was of a young man. One leg was advanced to step forward, but the body, in momentary posture, had bent back, recoiling, so that the weight was on the hindermost leg, the muscles of which were tense and strained. One arm was held out across the face, as if warding off a blow, the other was at full stretch in front of the body, as if to keep off some advancing presence. Sharply as the whole trunk re-coiled back from the hips the head was still more sharply retracted, so that the neck-muscles behind stood out underneath the skin that was wrinkled below the short hairs of the neck. The mouth was half open, as if in terrified protest, the eyes half closed, as if blinking from the imminent blow. Immature and full of faults as the technique might be there was no question as to the unity of the idea. The whole figure shrank; every muscle and sinew of it recoiled, even the hair, growing low on the forehead, seemed to show the panic, and stood back from the head in a short abrupt wave. It was indeed the history of the past three months—Paul’s secret history.

He had lit a cigarette after his bath, and till this was smoked out he walked round his work, looking at it from this side and that, and, as is so often the case when a man is passionately engaged on something creative, he suddenly saw it as it was. For weeks now he had gone on working, rendering his idea as best he could in arm and leg and face of horror, and now he saw the whole result of the work that had occupied him in detail, and knew that whatever had come of hint and suggestion from his model, that the spirit and life of the thing was he, was drawn from himself. He felt like that; he had but expressed his own consciousness. A window had been opened into his heart; he saw himself.

But this was but momentary, or rather that passionate need for self-expression overscored it, and in two seconds he was working patiently, minutely, at the outstretched hand. At present it was but a mere sketch of fingers, each, however, standing apart from the other as with the horror that made the hair to rise, and he was lost in his work. All his conscious attention was taken up in it, and it was from no more than habit, automatically asserting itself, that he took cigarette after cigarette from the box that stood near him. Automatically, too, he had rung the bell, and knowing from custom what that ring meant Parker had brought him up the tray from below. And for two hours he sipped and smoked and feverishly wrought.

He was still working in his dressing-gown, as he had come out from the bath-room, when for the third time Parker came in.

“After eight, sir,” he said, “and you’re not dressed yet, sir.”

Paul reached out mechanically for his glass, and found it empty.

“Is it really?” he said. “Yes, I’ll be down in five minutes. Just put me out a coat and shirt and trousers. I shan’t dress, as I shall be working afterwards.”

Parker creaked downstairs again, and Paul sat down a moment and looked at his work. Yes, that was the hand he wanted, a thin, nervous hand, of which the very fingers and Joints were frightened. He had done all that since he came in. And what else? There was a pyramid of cigarette ends and an empty bottle. Surely that could not have been the bottle that was nearly half full when he came in from his ride. Yet he remembered ringing the bell, and remembered Parker bringing it up from the sitting-room. So within a few hours of his determination to have recourse to drink no more he had drunk that. What then? He had done that hand anyhow, and little as he knew technically of modelling he knew how good it was. It was his hand—a hand alert with fear.

But now, in this moment’s pause, he did not seem to know what fear was. There was nothing that he feared; what had he to fear? A memory of a morning in May. It stood aloof from him; perhaps he had put it all into the clay. How frightened, how terrified was his clay figure, every line of it was stiff with terror. Perhaps, perhaps he had transferred his fear into his work, perhaps it would trouble him no longer. It was easily possible to work a thing off like that. It was a form of confession. . . .

He heard Parker’s footsteps going downstairs from his bedroom, and got up. Ah, that was not it at all. He had but done again what he had done fifty times before, he had but stimulated himself to the ordinary level of mankind. There was the empty whisky bottle. He had not meant to drink, but from habit, his conscious self absorbed in his work, he had drunk. Habit had made his hand pour out the spirit, and he had drunk without knowing it The cigarette ends too; he must have smoked twenty since he came in.

Dinner was but a short feast, for he was burning to be upstairs again, and in half an hour he was back in the studio. Anyhow he could repair in some measure his previous excess, and till ten o’clock he worked on, though with a strange gnawing desire for drink. Then he heard steps on the landing below; Mrs. Parker had gone upstairs, and soon after came other steps, and the gentle jingle of glass. Parker came in with the tray.

“What time in the morning, sir?” he asked as he set the tray down.

“Oh, half-past nine,” said Paul. “I shan’t want anything more to-night. Good-night.”

Ten o’clock. It was about ten o’clock that Norah had pointed to the open window of the drawing-room when they sat outside the Castello, and said, “Look!” There was Theodore sitting, watching and listening. Theodore—Theodore. Next moment how coolly and deliciously the ice clanked in his glass. Ice filled up so much room too. He might allow himself a little more spirit. That was it—a cold sting.

He went back after his drink to the statuette again. But he had no longer that delicacy of touch which was necessary for the modelling of fingers. The oar-shaped wooden tool went wide; it scooped clumsily, it did not render the hairbreadth obedience that was needful. After all he had worked for three solid hours; no doubt his hand was tired.

He sat looking at his work for some minutes more. Bad or good, it was what he meant. But now he felt it no longer; his fear was quite outside him, and he covered the figure up in its wet canvas frame. Yet Theodore was there still, and hate was there.

Underneath a cloth was a big lump of modelling clay, and filling his glass again he pinched off a piece of it, and began shaping it into the contour of a head. He dug two little eyes in it, he gave it an aquiline nose, he fashioned a mouth. The mouth was too big; the mouth he meant was very small and thin-lipped. The face was too broad also, and not long enough. But one squeeze put that right, also it shortened the mouth. And how like, by that haphazard movement, the chin had become, a chin that stuck out a little. … A thin long neck followed, and he grabbed at a lump of the clay. A lean, narrow-chested*body, covered with a coat lightly buttoned. Thin legs, a mere sketch, and he set up the little figure, which had taken but half an hour to model, on the table. Oh, how like it was!

He got up, and now, quite unconsciously as far as intention went, lit a cigarette and refilled his glass. His constructive mind was entirely taken up with this little extempore figure, and his soul, his whole being was steeped in the hate that it inspired him with. He had begun it but idly, but as it grew his intention grew, and now when it stood there, rather rickety, a parody of a man, it became so real to him that all other reality vanished. A little statuette of Theodore. What a splendid subject!

But he must be careless no longer; the figure had to be characteristic. He always wore large buttons; two strokes for each gave them admirably. He was always smoking a cigarette, and a tiny sausage of clay at the risk of spoiling the mouth must be attached. The trousers, too, had to be altered; Theodore’s trousers always looked as if there was nothing inside them. Straight lines with a big knee joint did that. And the figure stood complete. Some clock outside” struck one; he had been absorbed in his hate for more than two hours.

But it stood complete. From hair to heel it was Theodore.

Then Paul remembered the hour. He poured out a little more whisky into his glass, heard the empty gurgle of the syphon above it, and drank. It was time to go to bed. And the little figure in front of him smoked its eternal cigarette.

At the sight his hate boiled over.

“Damn you! damn you!” he cried, and with one punch of his fist he reduced it to a mere splash of clay.

CHAPTER XIX

It was a brilliant morning of late September, lit by a sun of summer heat, and the week, just passed, of warm soft rain had so revivified the vegetable kingdoms after the scorching drought of August, that to-day it was as if July, crowned and triumphant, rioting in the luxuriance of the full-blown year, had usurped the dubious throne of early autumn. No touch of frost, no hint of winter or decay had yet gilded and reddened the foliage of birch or beech; no blackened dahlia in the garden beds stood like a lightning-stricken thing to warn its sisters of the imminence of autumnal chills; sunflowers still blazed there; salvias were scarlet, and chrysanthemums and daisies of Michaelmas made a feast of colour.

This broad herbaceous bed, where summer still rioted and bees still were busy, ran along the southern front of Evring-ton Manor. A lawn, thick as velvet, lay below it, and a couple of fields beyond were bordered on three sides by the huge woodlands of the New Forest. Though on the other side of the house, not a hundred yards away, ran the populous road that led to Brockenhurst, this side of the house was enchantingly secluded, and so securely and convincingly did the secular trees frame it, that one might think it was surrounded by forest, as a ship out of sight of all land is surrounded by sea. No sign nor sound of human habitation reached it; it was planted down, to all appearance, in an endless, untenanted space of wood. It was, in fact, a little too secluded for the private taste and inclination of Lady Ravenscroft, and though she had spent a most utterly ungrudged two months here with Norah, alone for the first month, but for this last four weeks with a third inhabitant, christened, as it happened, Theodore Paul, according to the “ wishes” in letter, but really because Paul was godfather.

She was quite conscious this morning as she walked up and down the walk by the long flower-bed, that it was nice to know that a few people were coming to-day. Dear Kate 282 and her husband were coming to spend a week with them, Lady Anstruther, who just now was very much taken up in philanthropical schemes, was coming down for the weekend, and Paul, also a week-ender, was coming with her. Mr. Pakenham was expected, and Lady Anstruther had just telegraphed to say that her husband wanted to come too. The telegram in question seemed to Lady Ravenscroft rather irritably written, but perhaps that was only the fault of the telegraph operator. Lord Anstruther, in any case, was coming by train, not in the motor; Paul was coming in the motor. Somehow, this amused Lady Ravenscroft; the primrose paths of philanthropy did not include the philanthropist’s husband. The motor, indeed, might be expected at any moment from now till to-morrow, since Lady Anstruther and Paul were to start from town directly after breakfast, and the car went from anything between fifty miles an hour to an average speed so low as to be almost incalculable. It had once taken three hours to go from Sloane Square to Hyde Park Corner, and, as Lady Anstruther said, it was impossible to get out and take a cab, because any moment it might be quite well again, and go on much faster than a cab. It did not break down, she always maintained, but sometimes it coughed. It could not run as long as it was coughing.

The thought of Paul and Susan Anstruther motoring down, while Lord Anstruther went by train, somehow amused Lady Ravenscroft. But as her thoughts drifted from that to the consideration of Paul and Norah, her amusement died. All had gone exactly as she had planned and wished, and yet she was not quite content. Paul, since her interview with him in London, had not seen Norah; he had spent his August holiday in Scotland, and this was the first occasion on which they were going to meet for more than two months. All that she had planned; she had hoped and longed also that all would go well with Norah in the interval. Well, indeed, in the main, it had gone. Her baby had been born— a son—a month ago, and no one could wish to see a healthier child or a healthier mother. But since that conversation on the downs above Wroxton, Paul’s name had hardly been mentioned between them. It was, indeed, at Norah’s suggestion that he was coming here to-day. But otherwise she had scarcely spoken of him.

Paul had spent August in paying visits, and had gone back to London early in September. His connection with the insurance office, however, had again been severed, for an aunt from whom he had no expectations had died, and shown that he might have had them. She had left him in any case with a few hundred a year, sufficient with what had been his before to render it unnecessary for him to work for his living. But it had seemed both to her and Norah that the fact of regular, though perhaps slightly distasteful, occupation was in itself far better for Paul than an objectless life, and they had both, in correspondence, tried, but ineffectually, to prevent him giving up his work. But he had entirely refused to let the wishes of others influence his conduct, and had answered, indeed with reason, that such a step really concerned him much more than it concerned anybody else. He said, moreover, that his modelling was in itself a regular occupation, and he enclosed a photograph of the figure which he had just completed, and which had been cast in bronze.

That had arrived perhaps a fortnight ago, and though it was evidence enough that he had not been idle, yet the evidence was in itself, in other ways, rather disquieting to Norah. It added a certain weight in her mind to something too vague, too fluid, so to speak, to call reasoning, but which was scarcely ever out of her thoughts. Well, too, she knew when first it had begun to take shape at all, and that was when on that quiet evening at Wroxton she had opened the solicitor’s letter that contained Theodore’s “private wishes.” Try as she might, she had been unable all these months to get that last clause out of her head. “If I die violently” (she forgot the wording, for she had only read it once through before burying it in the garden-bed), “when alone with my secretary, Paul Norris, any murder trial that may subsequently arise. …” A thousand times she rejected the possibility that it insinuated, but never had her rejection been so decided as to be final. She could not get it out of her head.

Then Paul himself, too. It was by her own wish and deed that she had not seen him for these last two months, and though he had often written to her, his letters, sparkling and vivacious as they always were, never once satisfied her, never once gave her the full sigh of content. She never expected him to write letters full of love and devotion: that was not in Paul’s manner at all; but these effervescent epistles were somehow unconvincing to her. His love for her she took entirely for granted, and wanted no expression of that except just that word or two which always came at the end; but his high spirits, his accounts of himself and his doings, always seemed forced to her. She imagined him writing them with that face of dejection and despair which she had once seen him wear, pumping up the hilarious phrase out of a vocabulary of habit, not out of the well of spontaneity. Then had come the photograph of this statuette—this type of strong young manhood, shrinking, terror-stricken from something unseen. That had seemed to her extraordinarily natural and spontaneous. There was no effort about that, no uncertain rendering. She could feel how true it must have been to him, how he felt it. Indeed, he had hinted that himself; he had said he scarcely wanted a model, for he knew what he meant: he could visualize it. “I call it Fear,” this letter had ended, “and the poor fellow does look in the devil of a funk, doesn’t he? Or shall I call it a study in delirium tremens?”

Sometimes for a moment she would let her thoughts go where they chose before reining them in again, and then the whole—Theodore’s wishes, Paul’s letters, his statuette of Fear—ran together into one solid, shining lump with the speed and complete fusion together of globules of quicksilver. But never for many seconds would she let that occupy her mind, even hypothetically; it was based on an impossibility, and so none of it could be true. Yet if it was, what then? Once or twice she had taken this further step, and asked herself that question. But she never quite answered it. The choice, the decision, was an impossible one, like in that preposterous game in which one has to choose whether one would save either brother or sister from 6ome lingering and dreadful death and leave the other to die. Such decisions could never actually come into real life; they were only torturing exercises of the imagination. All the same—just to torture herself for a moment—if Theodore in death stood between her and Paul like that, how could they ever meet in that completeness of union which alone is possible between those who love? Yet, on the other side, how could anything that either he or she had done keep them apart? Had Norah herself committed the vilest and grossest of crimes, she would have told Paul about it with entire-confidence that it could not conceivably stand between them. Even with a friendship—provided friendship was real—that was so; it was only the friendship of cowards, false friends, that could be shaken. And for another reason yet, no such decision as she had imagined could possibly be presented to her, for in the whole world there was only one person who could conceivably know that which in imagination she had pictured as coming between them, and that was Paul himself. And if he told her-

Yet though she often wandered among the possible consequences of this impossibility, it was not they any longer that formed the background or grazing-place of her consciousness, and in those many hours of every day in which the mind dwells inside itself, it was the miracle of her own motherhood that was her contemplation. Day by day for this last month, since the birth of her baby, it was that which had become more absorbing than all. She could not say that in any degree it had lessened or curtailed her love for Paul; merely her power of feeling had expanded, emotion had made room for itself. All that she had anticipated had been fulfilled, and for silver she had gold, since her anticipation, her conjecture as to what it might mean, had been of hopelessly inferior material to that which it was. Motherhood, she had thought, would wrestle with and no doubt overcome the bitterness of her life with Theodore and the bitterness of the cruel legacy of his private wishes. But—here was the greatest preciousness of the reality—there had been no wrestle, no struggle. All bitterness, regret, and what had once been hate, dropped dead. There was no struggle and no victory; the whole possibility of enmity had ceased. He was the father of her child; he was somehow indissolubly bound up in that which had called mother-love into being. She did not search to find lovable qualities in him, she did not seek to explain what in him had made her wretched. She merely left it all behind, without desiring to turn and examine it. The fact that survived was that he was her baby’s father. Nor did she analyse or dissect her feeling; it was too simple to admit of analysis, it was merely a fact, historically true.

This morning it was with an eagerness of expectation that far surpassed Lady Ravenscroft’s general desire for the presence of other people that Norah looked forward to Paul’s arrival. She had not seen him for more than two months, and though she had completely acquiesced in the wisdom of his not being at Evrington during August she longed to see him now. The public reason, so to speak, was cause enough, for she loved him; but there was a private reason also, for she longed to be convinced, by the sight and sense of him, of the futility of her imaginings when she read insincerity, or at any rate concealment of his real mind, into his letters, and saw naked sincerity staring at her from the photograph of his statuette. She felt sure with her power of loyalty, that she was somehow all wrong about it. Paul’s presence, he and his shock head of hair, and that extraordinarily straight gaze from those dear eyes would convince her.

It was close on lunch-time when she came downstairs, and strolled out into the garden. It was summer for her too, as well as for this encompassing woodland, but while it stole its summer from autumn, she anticipated her summer from spring. Her baby was like the daffodils, a divine event, but summer life with the man she loved was still in front of her, and though her heart danced with that which was hers, still—still “the best was yet to be,” She could not and did not try to weigh these huge joys in balances, but Paul— Paul. And though nothing could be dearer than that healthy, rebellious atom she had left upstairs, yet to bear a child to Paul. . . . She knew not what motherhood meant. Her eyes dazzled when she guessed what it might mean.

Sad Aunt Kate was the first of the guests to arrive. Something had happened to her maid at Southampton West, and whatever had occurred there it was perfectly certain that her maid had not arrived with her. It was too tiresome and upsetting, and she thought Norah looked very ill. With her came Lord Anstruther, to whom nothing ever happened, and the evening being warm they had all, with the exception of Norah, walked out into the forest after tea. A telegram of dubious import had arrived an hour ago from Basingstoke, which seemed to refer to the progress of the motor, and read:

“Repairs nearly finished. Ought to arrive before dinner with Paul and motor, but may come by train.—Susan.”

This might mean practically anything, but as one of the things it might mean was that Lady Anstruther was coming by train and Paul by motor, Norah sent in to meet what was known as the dinner train, and waited at home for anything and anybody that might come at any time.

Ah, but how divinely happy she was as she watched the glory of the setting sun ascending over the sky and kindling rosy flames in the zenith. She felt so certain that the sight and the presence of Paul would dissolve all the disquietude that her imagination had conjured up. It was those “private wishes “ that had started that fermentation in her mind; she had let them give forth the poisonous bubbles which had penetrated to the innermost recesses of her soul. She almost felt as if she would have to tell Paul what nightmare she had been indulging in. And then quite suddenly she heard a crisp step just behind her on the winding gravel-walk up which she was passing, and she turned. Her heart stood still in the hush of its certain expectation, and her hands were held out, for there was only one man in the world whose footfall was like that. Two steps more, and it came round the comer, and Paul was there. His face was set westwards, and the rose and gold of sunset burned on it.

“Oh, Paul,” she said.

And so they met.

Silence or a whispered word or two only was at first the essence of that which they had to say to each other, of which their hearts were full, for anything that could be spoken of was a triviality compared to that, and not worth speech; but by degrees, when that eloquent rush of silence was over, and they had said that which could not be spoken, their tongues were loosed. The first moments had been perfect, nothing could spoil them; but now, even while the strong early tide of speech was flowing, there was something felt by each that stood by and watched them, and listened to them; it was as if they were not alone. Paul’s presence had momentarily dispersed all that troubled Norah, but that dispersal was only momentary. The shadows had for those few seconds fled utterly out of sight, but now, though distantly, they were silently moving nearer again. With him, too, it was not otherwise, for those silent moments his whole consciousness knew no more than that he was .with her again; but slowly, imperceptibly, other knowledge, fears darker than hers, the sense of the irrevocable past and the unimaginable future, blotted out the present. She feared only vaguely without solid ground for her imaginings; his fears were built firmly on rock, not to be shaken.

But there was no lack of things to say, and his manner of speech was unchanged. But to her it was as unspontan-eous as his letters, and how terribly spontaneous that photograph of the statuette had seemed.

“You are a perfectly wretched correspondent, Norah,” he was saying, “you have given me the most meagre returns for the floods of twaddle I have poured out on you. And the statuette, surely I sent you a photograph of it to show I was not an idle apprentice. Why, it was the work of an elephant. I’m starting—at least, I’m going to—another. It is going to be Confidence. Dear me, it’s quite a new era in sculpture. A set of the virtues and vices by Paul Norris in bronze. Very chaste designs. Suitable for any parlour.”

Norah laughed, but grew grave again.

“Ah, do start one called Confidence,” she said. “The other really gave me the creeps. It was in such a fright, poor thing. And it was so natural, so easy, as if you knew. I quite felt as if you must have had a nightmare, and been able to remember exactly what it felt like.”

“ Ah, that struck you?” said Paul quietly.

Then he laughed.

“ You were quite right,” he said. “ I used to get Parker to hide behind doors with a kodak in his hand, and jump out saying * Boo!’ Then he photographed me, so that I could see how I looked.”

He glanced quickly at Norah, and then went on.

“ And oh, the drive to-day,” he said. “We took five hours to go the first forty miles, and then went forty more in rather less than one. Then we took an hour and a half to go no miles at all nor any fraction of one. It was too much for Lady Anstruther, and eventually she took a cab and went to Wroxton station to catch the next train. Her train had just started when the motor started too, and I actually passed the train with her screaming and shrieking from a window before I had gone a couple of miles. There is something gloriously incalculable about motors; you never can guess what will happen next. I-”

He stopped suddenly with a feeling of utter helplessness, as if he had betrayed himself. He would have given anything just to be able to go on saying something to avoid this pause, but he felt as if he could not articulate words. And in the silence which he could not break, he just raised his eyes to Norah, and looked at her in dumb appeal.

She too paused; for the moment she felt as if he was going to tell her something, and she had no need to conjecture what it was.

“Yes, Paul, yes,” she said below her breath.

Then fear came and stood very dose to him, closer than love. She expected him to tell her something; she looked as if she knew, yet longed to be told, some secret. Then for one moment it occurred to him to tell her. But the next the utter madness of so doing struck him; it was this—that she should know that was his worst fear, and was he by his own speech to make real the one thing in the world that he dreaded? And the impulse passed.

But all the fire, all the sparkle and bubble that was after all the thing most characteristic of him, had died from his face. He might have been old or ill.

“I don’t think I shall ever get over it,” he said simply, knowing that that of which he spoke needed no mention, no label. “A chance word, even as now a chance word that I myself speak, tears the whole thing open again.”

He stood apart from her. He had not taken—he did not appear to notice—her hand that was held out to him.

“I try to conceal it,” he said; “oh, yes, and I succeed, too. I am supposed to have such good spirits; I am supposed to enjoy myself so, and everyone likes that. But do you know what I really do? I grin and chatter like a monkey doing tricks, and then, suddenly, as now, all the silly pretence is tweaked away, like some gauze covering, and— and you see what remains.”

He kicked a pebble that lay loose on the gravel walk.

“You had better know this, Norah,” he said. “I did not mean to tell you—I meant to keep it up. But I can’t with you. I can with everyone else, simply because no one else matters.”

He looked at her again; and the pity, the welcome and pity of her love smote him so, that once again his impulse to tell her the whole was very strong. But, though he knew it not, there was lacking in himself the reason for telling her which made it essential that he should, for he was not sorry. Bitterly he suffered under the consequences of what he had done, and he was sorry enough, God knew, for them; but for his deed, not yet. He must have been near to sorrow for the deed, since the impulse to tell her was so nearly a mastering impulse, but it still lacked that breaking-down of Nature, that blind abandonment, which is repentance.

And she on her side, when he stopped speaking—and it was evident he had no more to say—felt merely bitterly disappointed. She thought that he was going to tell her something, and that thought, despite the fact that what she expected was something terrible, was somehow rapturous to her. There was no secret that cast a shadow over Paul of which she would not welcome the hearing. She loved him, and whatever he told her, since he told her, must make her more one with him. But then, as he told her nothing, she, womanlike, followed his silence. It was her own imagination, she told herself, her own dwelling on what, after all, she had constructed herself, that had made her think that Paul had a secret. So she banished all sense of disappointment, she banished, as well as she could, all thought that he kept anything back, and was filled only with passionate pity for the suffering which he had told her was his.

“Oh, Paul, Paul!” she said, “I am so sorry. I thought, I hoped, you had—no, not forgotten—but had put it all behind you.”

She paused a moment “And Theodore lives again, you know,” she said. “There is his child.”

Then Paul laughed, a sudden, bitter laugh—a laugh as incontrollable as a sob. And that one crack of laughter was succeeded by silence. There was nothing to say—there was no possible misinterpretation of it. Hate sounded there. But Norah, who, just as she had looked forward to telling Theodore that she would have a child, to heal the bitterness between them, had looked forward to showing her child to Paul, to heal the bitterness that lay between the dead and him, felt, when Paul laughed, that there were things which .were irremediable. The past seemed to shut like a closed book, and whatever was written there was written. It could not be healed; she wondered if it could be forgotten. It was like some malarial fever, liable to recur. But in any case, silence was intolerable, and she broke it, breaking also from all connection with anything they had spoken of.

“You wrote about Sundays in London, too,” she said, “and how you enjoyed them. Was it five Sundays you spent there? You are a very good correspondent, I must say, and I am a very bad one. I needn’t say that, since you said it for me.”

Paul suddenly brightened up again.

“ Ah, yes, Sunday,” he said. “ Oh, Norah, you are not musical, are you? so you can’t understand. But you have no idea of what that music is. I go every Sunday, when I am in town, to the church of my patron. I dare say you have never heard of St. Paul’s—most people haven’t. But I get there at twelve, towards the end of the sermon.”

Norah laughed.

“And the prayer of St. Chrysostom is sufficient?” she asked.

Paul got quite serious.

“ Ah, no,” he said. “ There is the sermon, and then there is the Communion. It is that I go for.”

Truly Paul was a person of surprises, and even the intimate knowledge of him that their love gave her had not in the least prepared Norah for this, and she was genuinely astonished. She had no notion, indeed, what part, if any, religion played in Paul’s life. In a thoroughly English manner—a manner perfectly normal and extremely common among our countrymen, she had taken for granted that he was a Christian; but of his religious practice she knew really nothing. For religion to the normal many is quite a private affair, unless they have clearly declared their lines by being either atheists or clergymen, and she felt as sure that Paul was not the former, as that he was not the latter. In the ordinary English life, as Norah knew it, some people went to church on Sunday morning, and others did not’; most people, indeed, went sometimes. Again, some people “had prayers”; the household or those of them who were not warming plates and frying bacon, knelt in a row at chairs set against the wall in the dining-room, ten minutes before breakfast. Aunt Kate, for instance, “had prayers,” though Lady Ravenscroft did not But Norah was quite certain that her mother was a Christian. Paul, again, she felt sure, did not read prayers in the morning to Mr. and Mrs. Parker; indeed, the image presented appeared to her to be slightly ridiculous. But here was Paul suddenly bulls-eyeing her with the fact that he went to Communion every Sunday in London. Had she known him less intimately she would have been less surprised.

Then he at once put into words about her all the ignorance she felt about him.

“I don’t know what it all means to you,” he said; “but I expect you and I are a good deal alike about it, and that is exactly why we have never talked about it. Anyhow, I have always believed in these things exactly—exactly as I have believed in Australia. I have never had any reason to doubt either, but supposing neither existed, I don’t imagine I should behave myself very differently. But somehow, when one hears again and again the same wonderful things, so beautifully said and sung, they haunt one. I dare say it is only the tunes, the music, the exquisite form. Certainly I shouldn’t go to any dreadful parish church with a wheezy organ and magenta glass in the windows.”

But Paul was as wrong about Norah as she was ignorant about him. Secret, hidden away as her religion was, it was no Australia-belief to her. From it, she knew, came the thin little cord that brought the current of light and heat to her life, and it was not less intensely real to her because she did not talk about it. In no sense, moreover, could she possibly be called narrow or bigoted, but the surprise that Paul went to Communion at all was not one hundredth part of the shock that the thought that he went only with but an Australia-belief was to her.

She looked at him, pained, puzzled.

“But, dear Paul,” she said, “do you go only believing like that? How can you?”

“Ah, I only go to listen,” said he. “I sit in the dome and just listen. It is wonderful; Lady Anstruther first told me about it. And the words are wonderful, too; I can feel that. One hears them quite distinctly down in the dome. They intone so well. Oh, Norah!”

Again his face lit up; all the deadness of it, when he had spoken of his suffering, passed from it.

“Do you know that thing that comes just after the Absolution?” he said. “You must come with me when you get back to town. “Hear what comfortable words”—yes, that is it. It is sung by the—I don’t know what he is—-clergyman, anyhow, from the altar, with just a soft accompaniment of simple chords on the organ. Yes, I remember. “Come unto Me all that travail and are heavy-laden, and I will refresh you.” It goes right down to the key from the dominant on the last word. Ah, what is it, what is it, that makes magic in words and sound like that? Do you know it?”

A sort of tender laughter seized Norah.

“Oh, Paul, you darling!” she said. “Why, of course I know it.”

All the Paul she knew was back now.

“Then why wasn’t I told?” he cried. “Had you any idea how beautiful it is? Do you care?”

Then her smile left her mouth, and she was quite grave. “Yes, dear, I do,” she said. “I—I care enormously.”

“It means what it says from you?” demanded Paul.

Then Norah’s smile came back. He had touched the secret spring, so to speak, that opened her inner life—a life that was not one atom less real or less essential to her because she did not speak of it. Nor because she did not speak of it—had never spoken of it even to Paul—was it the less her essential self. It had been there always. From the time when her nurse had told her to kneel down and say her prayers, morning and evening she had done so, and God, we must suppose, was not less real to her because she did not talk about Him. She had concealed nothing of what she had always felt, for it permeated her through and through. And now that it was Paul’s finger that touched the secret spring, and bade the door fly open, it seemed to her exquisite and natural that it should be so.

“Why, yes, it means to me exactly what it says,” she answered.

“It’s real, you mean—really real? Like—like things to eat and drink, like your mother or me? ”

Again the tender laughter uncurled her lips, and shone in her eyes.

“Yes, now you ask me,” she said, “quite as real. More real.”

“And we have never talked of it?” he asked.

“No. Oh, I can’t explain, if it is explanation you want. I don’t think one talks of things that are absolutely part of one. Oh, Paul, it is so real. Not Australia-belief, not the cook and the housemaids kneeling down, and Aunt Kate saying the General Confession. I can’t tell you—I—well, to go on from what you quoted. ‘This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be received, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.’ Does my heart beat? Do I put one foot in front of the other as I walk? I don’t talk to you about those things. I suppose—yes, I suppose that is why I never talked to you about the other. Just because it is so natural to me.”

Paul stopped; the flame of the sunset had begun to die out overhead, the long bed of herbaceous flowers, spires and clusters and clubs of blossom looked colourless in the withdrawal of the light. The wind of sunset was still, and the great groves of forest trees were motionless against the sky. The scurry and chatter of birds in the bushes was silent, day had waned, the hush of night was at hand. And the immeasurable peace filled him with something too quiet to be called envy. He felt just a great gush of longing to be like the night, like the still trees, like, above all, to the immense peace that was Norah’s, the peace that might be ruffled on the surface, but which held a deep abiding calm that passed understanding.

Then suddenly came a shrill voice, and, so to speak, a shrill form out of the drawing-room window.

“An hour ago,” cried Lady Anstruther. “Oh, yes, there he is. Oh, Paul, if only I had had the faith of a grain of mustard-seed, I would have stuck to the car, seccotined myself on. Dear Norah, and you are looking so well, I needn’t ask how you are. I’m sure that having a baby is so much better than having a tonic. I have heaps of tonics but no babies. Paul, what was the matter with the car? I told the chauffeur I was sure that it was only the ignition plug that had carburetted into the waste-pipe, and disconnected the feed-valve from—I don’t know what I said, but you passed me in a public train, and I could have murdered you.”

A sort of jerk passed through Paul; this imbecile fluidity seemed to call up some sort of corresponding gaiety from him.

“It wasn’t my fault that your train crawled,” he said. “I told you what would happen. The moment you went the ignition ignited, and the carburetter carburetted, and the waste-pipe piped. We simply flowed along, and went through a police trap like the children of Israel, with a cloud of dust so big that I feel sure they couldn’t have taken the number.”

“Well, if the Daily Mail offers a reward I shall give you up,” remarked she. “Dear Norah, what a heavenly place. And you are really monarch of all you survey? I hate the thought of the horizon belonging to anybody else. I opened a bazaar here once, I remember; at Brockenhurst, at least.”

“What for?” asked Paul.

“Oh, something decayed; not teeth—how can you be so disgusting. And who is here, Norah? Has Anstruther arrived? You will have to introduce me; we haven’t met for so long, and he has probably forgotten me. I think he came here on purpose to flirt with you, and so I shall flirt with Paul. I tried to once, did you know, and made the most dreadful failure of it. He dined with me alone in London, and I thought we were getting on nicely, when he suddenly said, ‘Do let us go to Madame Tussaud’s.* Do you remember, Paul?”

“Yes, perfectly. We went, too.”

“Yes, and you found a resemblance between my profile and that of some fierce-looking femah who cut people up and planted the—the chops and steaks in the back garden. Paul, I hope you are sure you didn’t run over anybody; you must have done about sixty miles an hour since you left Wroxton.”

There was a slight pause. Then Paul said:

“Oh, yes, quite sure. At least, I did not feel anything.”

Lady Anstruther was examining the forest trees through her lorgnette, as if suspecting they were made of cardboard, and noticed nothing. But Norah could not help looking at him, and saw that for the instant he shrank back as if from a blow.

Though the day had been borrowed from full summer a certain autumnal chill came on after sunset, and before long Norah went in, leaving the other two to stroll down the garden to meet the rest of them, who had gone out after tea and had not yet returned. She wanted, since she was going to dine down with her guests, to rest for an hour before dinner, but as she went upstairs this evening she knew that it was not rest she wanted so much as to be alone, to be able to think quietly without interruption. But she went in to see her child before going to her room, and nursed it for a few minutes. But somehow to-night it seemed to mean less to her, it was not absorbing. Some anxiety, some disturbance of soul, had come between her and it. It was not further from her, but something else was closer. Soon she went on into her bedroom, and lay down on the sofa opposite the fire. The room was already curtained and darkened, but she needed no other light than the sparkle of fire which had just been lit. Firelight, somehow, with its brooding dusk and its sudden inspirations of flame, suited her mood.

Perfect though the first moments of her meeting with Paul had been, the rest of their talk, or more accurately, the silences that had been interspersed in it, the things that had not been said rather than the things that had, agitated her a good deal. They pained her too, not with the vivid pain of exposed nerve or tortured sinew, but with some faint internal anguish that was not sharp, but very vital. Till this evening she had not known at all (she had only guessed vaguely at it) the acuteness of the double life that Paul was leading. She had indeed once seen him gay to all appearance, and the moment he thought he was alone with fallen despairing face; but never till to-night had it been brought home to her. There were two Pauls, one behaving as he had always behaved, alert, ridiculous, voluble—as such he had sprung on to the stage when Lady Anstruther appeared. That was not the real Paul any longer; it was but the mask he wore, the habit of years adjusted with conjurer-like quickness and dexterity to meet the social demand. But when he took that off, when he was startled, as he had been twice this evening, so that he dropped his disguise, how heart-rending was that which lay beneath. At last, thank God, he had taken her into his confidence, or so she must suppose, when he had said that he would never get over it, but though she was bound to accept that she knew that she accepted it as an article of faith, so to speak, which had better not be examined, for fear it should be found untenable. There was no question as to what he intended her to believe that he would never get over; he meant clearly the fact that he had killed Theodore in the way that she and all the world who knew of it accepted it. It had been a terrible accident which he had risked his life to try to avoid. But how unlike Paul to be without the vitality to rally from that. He had begun so splendidly too; he had seemed to throw it from him as a water-bird scatters the moisture from its wings when it flies. How she had adored that brave strength of his which at Silomo had enabled him to look forward. And now he looked back only, that memory rankled and festered within him. All his public gaiety did not represent him at all; it was only a mask through which, as he himself had said, he grinned and gibbered like a monkey.

Was there, then, some deep-seated trouble of the brain? Had the blow to his head on the rocks caused some dreadful inner injury which was not healed, but bled silently and inwardly while the mere surface functions went on their accustomed way? Anyhow, she would get a promise from him to go and see some eminent physician as soon as ever he went back to town. Something might have escaped detection from that little doctor at Silomo, who, delighted with immediate results, had not suspected a deeper trouble.

Or—or was it the Physician of souls that he needed, and if so, for what malady? “Come unto Me”; he had quoted that, speaking of the magic of words. There was no magic of words, it was all magic of meaning. He had been surprised; it had been absolute news to him to know that the words he quoted meant to her exactly what they said. How simple the words were, and how simple was their meaning.

Yet everything within her, her instinct, her judgement, even the belief in the words themselves, told her it was not her business, it was not designed for her to talk to Paul about it. She had nothing to say; she was no preacher or missionary, that was not the way for her. She felt sure that her touch on him was not that. He knew now that in the music he liked to hear, in the words that he said were magic, there was simple truth for her, and now it was just her love that was her touch on him. That was always on him; it never tired or relaxed, it was always completely and solely his.

Paul’s room was opposite hers, and three-quarters of an hour before dinner, when the dressing-bell rang, she heard his door open and shut. She knew well that ten hurried minutes were sufficient for him to dress in, and for her there were yet twenty minutes before her maid would come. He had gone to his room then—unless perhaps it was a servant who had gone to put out his things—to have a quiet half-hour alone. She wondered if his fire was lit, if he had all he wanted. She herself did not want to rest any longer, so why should not Paul come in here, so that they could sit and talk together till dressing-time?

She got up, crossed the passage, and tapped. Then from inside his voice said “Come in,” and she entered.

Paul had expected a servant to put out his clothes. He took a quick step forward as she entered, and with his elbow knocked something on to the ground with the staccato crash of glass.

“Ah, Norah,” he said. “What is it?”

She advanced into the room.

“I only came to see if you were comfortable,” she said, “or if you would come into my room-”

Then the stale acrid smell struck her.

“There’s a fire there,” she said, “and you haven’t got one.”

“I’ll come in a minute,” said he.

She went out. She had seen a broken bottle on the floor, she had seen a glass half full on the table, sh$ had smelt that pungent, stale odour of spirits.

In a few minutes he was with her, and stood for a moment by the fire without speaking. Then suddenly he burst out.

“Why shouldn’t I have a whisky-and-soda?” he said. “I know you are thinking of that.”

She knew she had been, and rang the bell.

“Why, indeed?” she said with a sort of laugh. “But you spilt it. I am going to tell them to bring you another.”

But somehow her heart sank and misgave her. She had heard, too, she remembered, that Paul was a teetotaller. Clearly that was not true—that was a mistake. But something was wrong—dreadfully, intimately wrong.

CHAPTER XX

Lady Ravenscroft had the ordering of the house at Evring-ton, and the most enlightened code of hospitality governed her ordering. Nobody, so ran the code, was expected to do anything, but if anybody wanted to they would find arrangements made. There would be found to be breakfast in the dining-room, for instance, if anyone wished to begin the day in publicity; if not, there were trays and teapots to supply the bed-rooms of her guests. And on this particular Sunday morning Aunt Kate alone had come sadly downstairs a little after nine, looking rather like the moon seen by daylight, and had breakfasted by herself with a huge, hissing silver urn in front of her, and several bubbling dishes on the side-table. She made her way slowly through a kidney, in the middle of which process Lady Anstruther put in a meteoric appearance. She was dressed in a blouse, a very short skirt, and wore no hat. She was a person as infinite in variety as Cleopatra, and the particular variety which she played in the early morning was no hat and no breakfast.

“Dear Mrs. Mundy,” she said, “how I envy you! Fancy eating breakfast. Kidneys, too; that’s why I don’t”

Aunt Kate turned her sad, patient gaze on to her.

“You are so strong,” she said vaguely. “Are you going to walk about?”

“Oh, no. I’ve done that. I have been out for an hour, and I chiefly ran.”

“But why you don’t what?” asked Aunt Kate. Her mind moved slowly and mournfully, and when conversation was rapid she had a tendency to allude to the last thing but two that had been said.

“Oh, kidneys; uric acid, you know,” said Lady Anstruther glibly. “Mrs. Pakenham taught me. I never have breakfast, and meat is so poisonous. Paul only goes in for teetotalism, and he is so wrong.”

“Have you been running already?” asked Aunt Kate, still moving slowly. “I should have thought that was so trying for one. I used to bathe, but I always had a cup of milk and a biscuit first. Not that bathing did me any good; I was most disappointed. They told me there was so much ozone. I don’t know whether there was or not, but it didn’t make me any better.”

Lady Anstruther had filled a cup with boiling water from the tea-urn, and was drinking it with a teaspoon.

“Ozone, yes,” she said; “but I don’t know that one wants ozone; it makes me sneeze. The real point is not to eat or drink anything whatever except boiling water, and also to be very busy. Alice Pakenham is going to give an address on work at my house in November. You ought never to sit and do nothing until you are so ill that you have a rest-cure. I wonder what time church is. I shall have to go because I opened a bazaar at Brockenhurst not long ago, and one has to go to church in places where one opens bazaars, or else they think one doesn’t mean it.”

“I noticed Paul only drank water at dinner last night,” said Aunt Kate, still a long way behind.

“I know; and how very gay he got in consequence. Water is far more exhilarating than anything else. It always goes straight to my head. Well, I must go and get ready. Good gracious, here’s Anstruther! Anstruther, what have you got that long black coat on for? You look like Guy Fawkes!”

Lord Anstruther never said anything without thinking, but often thought without saying anything. He had a very pink face and a head that would have been bald, only he trained seven or eight hairs that grew above his ears over the top of it, so that it looked rather like music-paper. He looked always as if he was just going to laugh.

“Gawd bless me!” he said. “Why, I’m going to church. Always go to church. Sleep so well.”

He looked at Aunt Kate’s mournful face, and then at his wife.

“Hullo! here’s Susie tucked up her skirts to run a mile,” he said. She never has breakfast now—runs a mile instead.

Has she been persuading you to run too, Mrs. Mundy?

* No, thank you/ I expect you said, * I’ll have breakfast instead/ Hey?”

Lord Anstruther whistled a bar or two of some indeterminate tune, a habit of bis, and murmured:

“Breakfast instead I guess you said” to a tuneless melody, and turned to the side-table.

“Why, if it isn’t a peach!” he remarked. “Best thing in the world, a peach for breakfast. Going to church, Susie? You can’t be going like that. They’ll think you’re a gipsy. Put something on your head, too, else they’ll turn you out. A woman’s hair is her glory, ain’t it? and so you’ve got to cover it up. Hey? Run up and change, there’s a little woman.”

“Anstruther, you are no less silly than when I saw you last,” remarked his wife.

Lord Anstruther had finished his peach, and from whistling burst into another tuneless song:

“Susie, Susie, Susie,

What on earth do you see?” he chanted to himself.

Aunt Kate rose, having struggled through her kidney, drunk her tea, and eaten marmalade. Breakfast was a rite with her—a funereal service it might be—but it had to be performed every morning, and it began with meat and ended with marmalade. She could not have imagined any other beginning to the day. It was as necessary to do this after getting up as it was to put on her nightgown before going to bed. One was the beginning of the day, the other was the beginning of the night. But this morning she was firmly determined not to go to church, and wished to get out of the region of drawing-room and hall, where people were swept to church like helpless fishes in a net, as soon as possible. She went, therefore, straight out of doors and sat in a distant and secluded corner of the garden. At home she always went to church, and drove her family there; when away, as often as not, she took her spiritual consolation in the garden. One never knew about other churches: there might be draughts or dreadful ritualistic tricks. The one disturbed her devotions as much as the other. Besides, though her maid had turned up, a bonnet-box was still missing. She felt it would be quite impossible to attend to church or anything else.

The church net swept widely this morning, and when she returned to the house after the church-bell had been silent for some minutes, she found she had the drawing-room to herself. Norah, she felt sure, would remain upstairs till lunch-time, and she had a nice quiet period for uninterrupted melancholy.

Everything was going wrong, and the bonnet-box quite clearly had gone wrong. There were steamers from Southampton to all parts of the world, and as like as not, the bonnet-box was voyaging at top-speed for the West Indies. Or it might only be going to Cowes, or perhaps it was still at Southampton West. From an agitated conversation she had had with her maid, it appeared that one of them—the bonnet-box or she—must miss the train, and she had chosen that the bonnet-box should. That was so selfish. People who went to Cowes by mistake were not lost for long, but bonnet-boxes at Cowes might be eternally so. She could think of no instance of their being recovered. She could not remember, either, what the bonnet-box contained, and she felt sure that there was a garnet brooch in it, which had been left her by her aunt by marriage, and which was the only link that connected her to the aunt in question. She was certain she had meant to bring the garnet brooch, and it was quite certain that the garnet brooch was not in the rest of her luggage. So, if it was lost, her aunt by marriage would be indeed dead to her, since she remembered nothing else whatever about her.

The thought of death ramified, and she sighed heavily as it occurred to her that everything died. The mulberry-tree in her garden at Wroxton had died, and though it was extremely old, and had not borne fruit for years and years, it was terrible. Theodore had died, too, and he was young, but it seemed that youth was no security against dying. She was sure that Lady Anstruther would fall down dead in one of her morning runs, especially since she ate no breakfast, and the corpse might lie undiscovered for weeks, since she simply tramped across country. How dreadful when it was discovered 1 They might think it was anybody else’s.

Then a brisk, cheerful whistle sounded in the hall, and Paul entered.

“Oh, Aunt Kate,” he exclaimed, “why are you not at church? However, you are detected by me, and I by you. Where’s everybody, anyway? Have they all gone to church? I hate church!”

“I think they’ve all gone,” said Aunt Kate. “I did not feel up to it.”

“And you’ve herded me to cathedral at Wroxton a hundred times,” he said, “when I didn’t feel up to it. Aunt Kate, what a fraud you are! What do you mean? And isn’t Norah down yet?”

Aunt Kate’s mind wandered.

“If a small box was left yesterday at Southampton West,” she said in a weak voice, “where do you think it would be now?”

“At Southampton West,” said Paul cheerily.

There was something flippant about this; he treated it as a riddle merely. So she became more serious.

“I don’t mind about my little box,” she said, “but it seems to me that everything goes wrong together. How ill Norah is looking! And I am sure she has some secret anxiety. You, too—you look terribly pulled down. Well, I suppose one must expect that. Are you sure your head doesn’t ache? ”

Paul frowned.

“My head ache?” he asked. “Why should it?”

“I didn’t know. I remember once I had a blow on the head not nearly so severe as yours, and it ached terribly. It is often better if it does ache: the pain is a warning that there is something wrong.”

Paul laughed.

“ Dear aunt, you are so consoling,” he said. “First you are afraid my head aches, and when I tell you it doesn’t, you think it might be better if it did. I don’t agree with you at all. I would much sooner it didn’t ache.”

He paused.

“Or is there a conspiracy?” he asked. “Norah made me promise to see a doctor when I went back to town. You both seem to think there is something the matter with me. And Aunt Alice, too, in London, I remember now, asked me if I was well. I don’t know what you all mean. I was never better in my life.”

Aunt Kate sighed.

“Yes, if only feeling well meant one was well,” she said; “but it so often means just the opposite. My grandmother ate an excellent breakfast one morning, and was dead before lunch-time. And the mulberry-tree is dead, too. We shall all be afflicted with sunstroke whenever we go into the garden.”

Paul used to delight in playing up to Aunt Kate, and though two minutes before he had felt all on edge, his serenity had come back again, and he was deeply sympathetic.

“It’s too dreadful for you,” he said. “And what about Wroxton generally?”

“Wrox ton is getting such a rush,” said Aunt Kate. “Henry and I went there to be quiet, and now if somebody doesn’t come to lunch you never know who mayn’t come to tea. And whenever Bertie is at home, he wants to go and play golf, and takes his lunch up to the golf-ground, or whatever they call it, on his bicycle. And he never gets back in time for tea, and has to have a fresh teapot sent up. And we’ve only got the house on a fourteen years’ lease, so that we may have to turn out again before we are really settled after putting in all those cupboards and a new kitchen range. There was the bath-room, too—Henry insisted on a bath-room. But one never knows from day to day, much less from year to year, what may happen. Perhaps the mulberry-tree was meant to warn us all.”

This was in the fine manner, and Paul waited for more. More came.

“It scarcely seems worth while to do anything,” said Aunt Kate, “because you never know that you will be able to finish and enjoy what you have begun. Do you know the Rileys, who took that house on the Fincham road last year? All last autumn Mr. Riley spent every afternoon in putting bulbs into the grass. But before a single daffodil came up, they lost all their money, and had to let the house, and live in Something Gardens, where there isn’t any garden. That sort of thing always happens. You make a plan for the future, and find you haven’t got one. Everything ends in semi-detached villas, and everybody comes to grief in some way.”

Some vision of the semi-detached rows of houses in Wroxton, stretching dismally in long feelers into the country, rose before Paul. He and Norah had often tried to construct the lives of those who lived in them.

“Norah used to say she could easily see herself in one,” he said, “but I never could. They are the harbour of the boats of the successful lower class and the unsuccessful upper. And there are always funerals going on. And somehow, they make no difference: exactly the same people come to live in them.”

This was far too discursive for Aunt Kate, and she went firmly back to a subject on which she felt herself competent to speak.

“In whatever sort of house you live,” she said, “trouble can come to you. The Rileys are quite respectable, I should say. It would make no difference if they lived in Buckingham Palace.”

“I shouldn’t like to live there, either,” said Paul, becoming parenthetically flippant. “ Besides, really the worst part of trouble is the fear that people will pity you. I can stand having toothache, but I can’t stand people being sorry for me. However much I ached, I should nail a grin to my face— grin and gibber like a monkey—oh, I said that before—and play up. I get as much pity as I have any use for from myself.”

Aunt Kate sighed again. She was having a beautifully unhappy morning. She immensely enjoyed talking of old and new unhappy times.

“I can’t understand that,” she said. “Pity and sympathy are the only things that make life bearable. It is all terribly sad, and I couldn’t bear it if I didn’t think that everybody else was sad too.”

“The Lord preserve us!” ejaculated Paul.

Then he laughed, but from the mouth only, and when he spoke there was no touch of laughter in his voice.

“If I thought we all had secret tragedies, I should cut my throat,” he said. “The only possible view is that everybody else is bursting with joy. I dare say they are not, but what on earth preserves one from madness except that thought? I applaud every time I hear somebody laugh. I say to myself, ‘Thank God you can laugh,’ and I laugh too. No; one’s own private hell is only bearable because other people’s heavens are just semi-detached from one’s own hell. Oh, let’s have lots of Te Deums, damn them!”

This singular conclusion brought him to a dead stop. He had said much more than he meant to say, but it was consoling to reflect that he had only said it to Aunt Kate, in whose mind everything was about equally tragic. But it irritated him immensely to see how little command he had of himself, how things got jerked out of his mouth. That instinct of self-expression which had been his all his life, so that all his pleasures, his bathes in the sea, his purchase of a rat-tail spoon, his silly games of hiding knives and forks, had to be partaken in with zest and absorption by others, asserted itself still. He was unhappy now, terrified at soul, keenly suffering, and he had to cry it aloud. The instinct was too natural to be called egotism. There was no self-consciousness about it. He never regarded himself and presented the interesting delineation of his feelings to others. He merely felt and said so without any intermediate step. The fact that he “kept it up,” grinned and gibbered like a monkey, was not inconsistent with that: the grinning and gibbering was a necessity to him.

Aunt Kate, if such a thing can be imagined, was turned topsy-turvy by this damnation of Deums, and merely waited to be set on her legs again. Paul did that.

“I’ve been talking nonsense, haven’t I?” he said. “But how does a syphon feel when somebody else presses the handle thing when it is empty, so that just a squishly-woozoo of air comes out? You pressed my handle, and I’m empty. Let’s play noughts and crosses, Aunt Kate. Oh, they are back from church. I heard Lady Anstruther’s voice. Now you must back me up. I saw you were not feeling up to going to church, and persuaded you not to go. You also wondered if I had not got a headache, and wished I had. Or have we read the psalms and lessons to each other? I will have done anything within reason.”

Lady Anstruther entered and dropped on to a chair.

“Husbands ought never to go to church,” she said. “He and I had one small Prayer-Book, and we both pulled. It came in half, and I was left alone with the baptism of those of riper years to be used at sea.”

“And were you ripe?” asked Paul.

“No; but I was at sea. And there are so many articles of faith. And I mayn’t marry my grandmother. What am I allowed to do? It suggests all kinds of things one never wanted to do before, but to be told that one mayn’t always makes one want to. Besides, both my grandmothers are dead. Why does it conjure up these impossible visions? I shall seldom, if ever, go to church again. What have you been talking about?”

“Sorrow,” said Paul promptly.

“And what did you find to say about it? At least, I don’t think I want to know. My form of sorrow is five o’clock remorse.”

“Oh, I have tea then, not remorse,” said Paul.

“No, in the morning. I wake at five, and am filled with regret and grief.”

This was all really luscious to Aunt Kate.

“You are lucky if it only begins at five,” she said. “I often wake earlier. Mrs. Atley recommended me to eat an apple. She said she often did, and instantly went to sleep again.”

“If I ate an apple at five in the morning,” said Lady Anstruther, “I should instantly fall into the sleep of death. I would sooner not go to sleep at all than do that. Ah, here’s Norah. Norah, do let us have lunch as soon as possible. We are all talking about remorse, and I’m beginning to feel as if I must have murdered somebody. I wish I could remember who it was.”

She had turned round to speak to Norah, and did not notice for the moment that Paul suddenly stepped out of the open French window into the garden.

“It’s all Paul’s fault,” she said, turning round again, “for telling us he has been talking of sorrow all morning. “Why, where is he?”

Pity, as sharp as a sword, had pierced Norah when she saw Paul’s face. At every moment some image that made him wince and shrink seemed to raise itself in front of him. And what was the image raised—in heaven’s name, what was it? For the first time, standing there with her friends round, that question, quite definitely and to her inward mind audibly and uninterrupted, asked itself. At last she faced it without turning aside, or trying to avert her eyes, or telling herself that it was only in her imagination that the question, and the consequences which its answer supplied, existed at all. At this moment she knew for the first time it was no question belonging to the dreamlands of imagination; it was a question that bore on hard, actual, practical life. And if, when in imagination she framed it, and let her heart go forth to Paul on the thought, a thousand times more fully it went forth now. She longed for him to tell her the truth, whether he had—yes, done it designedly or not; she only wanted him to tell her. She starved for his confidence—starved and thirsted for it.

Since his arrival, too, not four-and-twenty hours ago, she saw how something secret ramified through his life—his statuette of Fear, his desire for justification in that perfectly innocent whisky-and-soda he had intended to drink before dinner, had all linked themselves on to the other. Was he trying to forget? By the insight of love she knew the measure of his success.

Yet, after all, that night at dinner she could hardly bring herself to believe that such exuberant silliness as his could be other than spontaneous. He had an extraordinary gift of mimicry, and it was no longer Paul but Mrs. Harold herself who sat next Aunt Kate and talked about baptism and many other things. He did not merely say the things that Mrs. Harold almost must have said, but he looked, not like her, but her.

“I always think baptism is so important, dear Mrs. Mundy,” he was saying, “and whenever the Canon and I know we are going to meet you we really almost quarrel as to which of us shall sit next you. And Mr. Mundy is so clever too; we often argue as to which of you is the most brilliant. Pm sure you both think baptism is most important, and it makes one quite sad, doesn’t it, when one thinks of the ancient Greeks and Romans, to remember that they were never baptized at all. The Japanese too. And how very well Mrs. Beckwith is looking, and dear Lady Ravenscroft. So brilliant, is she not, and what a pleasure to be her sister. Of course we see a great deal of Mr. Paul in London, and often talk over happy old Wroxton times. So sad about the mulberry in your garden, but now your bonnet-box has come from Southampton West, you have a cause for thankfulness, have you not? And as the Canon said the other day, difficulties and trials are often only blessings in disguise, so that if anything has been stolen out of it we ought to be so glad for the sake of the thief who has perhaps got something at the pawnshop for it, and then he may repent, may he not, and how glad we ought to be about that; and a reclaimed thief may do so much good in the world, more perhaps than if he had never been a thief at all.”

Yet … yet … he had said that he gibbered and grinned like a monkey. And why did he drink water only? Surely, too, she heard Lady Anstruther saying something to him about teetotalism. Did he drink secretly, then?

Then the trills of girlish laughter, which were Mrs. At-ley’s, and the sonorous baritone of her Teepie interrupted.

“No peeping, Teepie, you naughty girl. I shall be vewy, vewy cwoss with you. Oh, have ‘oo come for Birdie? Mayn’t Birdie finish her chapter? Oh, cwuel Teepie, so unkind. Where are we going?”

“I shall be cwoss, too,” said Teepie. “Didn’t Birdie say she would come out at twelve? ”

Then there was a change of voice, and Mrs. Atley, from being playful, became the talented authoress with the burden of her responsibility on her.

“Oh, this chapter will kill me,” she said. “The Marquis must be unrepentant to the last. And there was good in him; it is too terrible to think he must die like that. Take me out, Teepie; let us try to forget.”

A loud smack, supposed to be Teepie’s sympathetic kiss, followed. There was no mistaking it; it was a firm, elderly kiss. And then Paul said:

“Oh Lord, oh Lord, aren’t they divine? And the kiss was exactly like. I saw Teepie kiss her in the hall of your house, Aunt Kate. It reverberated from the gong. Oh, do you know how to make a seasick passenger on the channel out of an orange? He’s awfully unwell.”

Then Norah told herself that all her secret fears had no existence except in her imagination. She felt that no one could behave like that except out of sheer exuberance. There was no parlour-trick about it, and all that was so tiresome if one felt it was rehearsed, all that made a man who mimicked and constructed seasick passengers merely tedious and suburban was entirely lacking in Paul. He did these silly things for fun, not because he wanted to be Paul Norris, who was such a mimic. He did it all because it amused him, surely, and for no other reason. If anyone was natural, though perfectly silly, Paul was. Yet . . . yet he gibbered and grinned successfully as he himself had said. Successfully? Was it successful when he rent her heart like this? If only he would look at her with his true eyes, and say in front of them all, “Norah, I have got something I must tell you.”

Those who were going to leave on Monday morning would be gone before she was down, and she said good-bye to them to-night. All, in fact, were going except Aunt Kate and her husband, and Lady Anstruther talked of starting at six in the morning in the motor, as she had an engagement on Tuesday afternoon, connected with governesses, at which her attendance was really essential.

But after Norah went upstairs and had sent her maid away she gently unlatched her door. She felt certain that Paul would soon come up, just to wish her good-bye properly, privately. She had parted from him among the others with a handshake merely. Surely she would soon hear his quick, crisp foot along the passage going to his room, but pausing at the door of hers.

She put two or three small pieces of coal on the fire in this anticipation, for the sun had set in a clear cold sky, and there would certainly be a frost enough to blacken the dahlias before morning. Besides, how predisposing it was to intimate talk to look at the varying sparkle of flame. One always talked most easily from the heart when some one of the senses was gently, passively employed, and the automatic employment of the eyes, when they looked at the firelight, somehow satisfied the instinct of the body for employment. The thoughts went home like sheep to their pasture. And in anticipation she imagined saying this, or something like it, to Paul, who no doubt would reply that that was no doubt why, when music was going on, conversation was always so brilliant. A whimsical application of that sort was so like him. He had so many ideas, and laughed at them all. But she must tell him, she felt, and perhaps could tell him by this firelight, how—well, how she loved him, for that was what it came to. How she longed to be allowed to share in all that gave him happiness, or joy, or fear, how every time that he admitted her into any secret place of his heart was to her the gift of that place, and each place, whatever it contained, was to her a treasure-house, and more than a treasure-house—home.

The coal she had put on was soon consumed in the frostily burning fire, and without rising she took the tongs and laid three or four more lumps on it. But while she was still feeding the hearth she paused, for a crisp, quick step came along the polished boards of the passage. Then came Paul’s voice from just outside in answer, it seemed, to someone at the far end of the passage by the head of the stairs.

“Well, we needn’t both have come up,’’ he cried, “and if you had told me you were going to get cigarettes I should have stopped downstairs. Now I’m here I’ll get mine, and you can go down and take out all cards below the seven. What? “

Then came an answer, in Lady Anstruther’s voice, which she could not hear. Paul replied.

“Oh no, I’ll play picquet with you, just one partie, if you like, but not bridge at this hour. As far as I know we start at six in the morning. You see—well, your revered husband would be the fourth, and he is so very—very andante. No, one game of picquet, if you like.”

Lady Anstruther had moved a little up the passage, it appeared, for now her words as well as her voice were quite clear to Norah.

“Well, if we go downstairs again they will insist on bridge,” she said. “Come to my room and play picquet there. I’ve got cards, and you can smoke.”

“Yes, all right,” said he.

Then the door of his room banged.

So Paul was going to play a game of picquet in Lady Anstruther’s bedroom. . . . And next moment Norah boxed her own ears, hard, first right and then left, so that her whole face tingled at the thought which had occurred to her. She . . . Paul. . . . Then Paul’s door banged again, and the very loudness of it made her more ashamed, and two quick steps sounded across the passage and then stopped.

Then came a swift rap at her door.

“Norah,” he said.

“Yes, Paul. Come in.”

He looked with his quick eager glance round the room, saw the firelight dancing on the walls, the two chairs by the fire, and, above all, saw her.

“Why did I say I would play picquet with Lady Anstruther? “ he cried. “It would be much nicer to stay here and talk to you. I’m going to play in her bed-room, too. Don’t tell Aunt Kate, and especially not Mrs. Atley.”

Norah smiled at him; surely this was not gibbering and grinning.

“I knew that,” she said. “You made your assignation at the tops of your voices. I expect everybody in the house knows.”

Paul sat down in the other chair that was by the fire. Norah had put it there.

‘I don’t want to go,” he said. “I want to stop and talk to you.”

“Oh, but you can’t,” said she. “You promised to play with her. Besides,” she added after a moment, “I want to go to bed.”

Paul got up.

“Very well, then,” he said, “and many thanks for a most pleasant Sunday, Mrs. Beckwith.”

“Idiot,” said Norah softly.

“Well, then, liar,” said Paul. “I don’t believe you want to go to bed at all. Now, do you? ”

“No,” said she.

And they both laughed as though it had been an excellent joke.

“But you must go,” she said.

“Yes. I’ve hardly seen you at all, though. And yesterday afternoon I was all on edge somehow.”

Laughter had ceased.

“I think it was the drive in the motor that upset me,” he said. “The very sight of one sometimes makes me feel sick. But if is better to behave like other people, isn’t it? People would talk, wouldn’t they, if I refused always to set foot in one. That is part of the monkey-tricks I go through.”

Norah got up.

“Ah, don’t,” she said—“don’t talk like that; don’t think like that. It isn’t sane. And it isn’t brave. Don’t talk of your monkey-tricks, as you call them. You are yourself, when you put those dreadful thoughts behind you—when you grin and gibber, as you call it. It is then that you are making your effort and being yourself. But it is not you, Paul, when you start and shiver and look as if someone had struck you.”

She paused a moment, and then came close to him, laying her hands on his shoulders. Perhaps all that she had constructed, put together, was only a work of her imagination, without any foundation, and what she had just said was based on that supposition. But if—if Paul had something to tell her, and—yes—did not dare, if she had imagined something which rested on fact, she must let him know somehow that she was ready.

“And, my darling, just this also,” she said, “if it is any help in any way to you. I love you, and since that is so, all that is yours, all your thoughts and joys and fears have— how shall I say it?—little shrines ready for them in my heart, and whatever they are, they are infinitely dear to me. I don’t say that I pity you for all the little chance words and so on that I now know make you frightened and miserable, because one can’t pity what one loves. Pity is so—so inferior, somehow. It is like a candle in sunlight. No, I can’t pity you; but when you suffer, the sword goes through me.”

“Ah, I am a selfish brute,” cried he suddenly, “to have ever let you see.”

“Ah, no, you don’t understand yet. You would have been selfish if you had not let me see. You are only selfish when you keep things back from me, whatever they are.”

She kissed him, and looked into his eyes, trying to smile, and bravely trying.

Then she let her hands drop.

“Go at once,” she said. “You are being rude to one of my guests. No, not a word. It was dear of you to come and wish me good-night. I confess I had put the chair ready for you. I should have been furious if you had not come. And now out you go. I dare say you have made assignations with Aunt Kate, and mother, too. Go away. Oh, dear Paul!”

He clung to her a moment, and then went without a word. But Norah had said her say. She had shown him how utterly she trusted him. She had told him how more than welcome were his fears and regrets, if there were any such; that they were hers by right indisputable. She had no more to say than that, for that was all there was in the world for her. Yet there was her baby, too. Talking to Paul, showing her heart to him, she had not remembered her baby. But whatever she did, never henceforth could she be without Paul. He was knitted into her life more now than ever before, and yet before he was knitted close enough. But she had shown him all herself to-night in a way she had not done before, and somehow the divine, incontrovertible logic of love told her that he must surrender himself likewise. She, like a besieging army, had surrounded him, and now his capitulation was assured. He had capitulated— when he first knew he loved her he had capitulated—yet if there was a secret chamber anywhere, if since his first surrender some underground passage had been digged, that, too, must be hers now, sooner or later. She was content. If there was more, it must sometime lie open to her; while if there was no more, it was already hugely enough.

Paul went back next day to a London that had only this year awoke to the fact of its own existence in the autumn months. Houses were opened, and the world appeared not merely passing through from Scotland to the country again, but to stop in town during October and November. Theatres were full, music was plentiful, and grand opera was played every night. But with all this there was an impromptu, picnicky feeling abroad that was extraordinarily pleasant. The hurry and inattention of the summer months were absent, but all their attractions were there; and week added itself to week, giving a constant flow of agreeable occupations. Paul’s day, too, remodelled itself now that the insurance office was given up, and working at his clay all morning, made the rest of the day, for the most part, fully occupied. Prince’s Skating Club had opened, and that elusive art was as absorbing to him as old silver, so that he flew from lunch to “slide and gloom and glance “ every afternoon till a gong rang him off the ice at half-past six. Then he would go home, thirsty and tired, and with the substitute for tea by him, since tea at a quarter to seven would assuredly wreck dinner, doze over the thought of continuous brackets till Parker told him it was dressing-time. Four or five nights out of the seven he dined out; on the rest he usually had a friend or two to dine with him. But when he returned from his dinner, or when the friend or two had gone, he usually went up to his studio. He had had an electric grate put there, which he could turn on, making a circle of warmth in a minute or two, and he often lingered there at night, reviewing, so to speak, his morning’s work, or planning the work of next day, till one or two in the morning. There was placed there every night a modest tray, bearing a bottle of soda-water, a tall glass, and a minute decanter of whisky. This decanter he had bought at his club. It contained just the ordinary allowance for a whisky-and-soda. And every morning Parker took away the empty soda-water bottle, the empty glass, and the empty decanter. Paul had enjoined this ration. He had told Parker frankly he only wished for one drink; if there was more in the room he would perhaps have more; but the one whisky-and-soda was what he wanted. Paul was also still a teetotaller at meals. He drank water gaily at lunch and dinner; nobody ever saw him take alcohol.

He came back thus one Saturday night at the end of this October. He had dined out and gone to the opera, and it was late when he returned. The night was warm, and when he went quickly upstairs to the studio, he did not turn on his electric warmer. The new statuette, “Confidence,” was screened behind its wet canvas frame, but he did not remove this. He poured out his ration of whisky, mixed it with half the contents of the soda-water, and drank it off in a gulp. Then for a moment he sat still, hugely refreshed by this, and thought and wondered, and was sick at himself. For he knew well what would happen next.

There was a big cupboard under the attic eaves, on which he had had a lock put, and he kept the key of it on his watch-chain. Inside there were standing rows of empty whisky-bottles, but there was always one there full, or half full. Evening after evening he bought a bottle, carried it home under his coat, and put it in the cupboard. And when his ration was drunk he opened the cupboard. Just outside the room was a tap, and when his one bottle of soda-water was finished he diluted any extra drinks here. A month ago he used to go down to his bed-room and use the water in the bottle there, but it had occurred to him that Parker or Mrs. Parker might think it odd that his bedroom bottle should always be empty, for it was clearly impossible to clean one’s teeth, even if one had thirty-two of them, to that extent. So the tap was safer. By opening the door quietly, and by turning the tap quietly, it was impossible anyone should know. That, too, was a fear of his; nobody—not even Parker—must know. Parker, of course, knew that he had one whisky-and-soda when he went to bed. But Parker also knew—here was the safeguard—that he had no more.

So to-night he knew what would happen next. He would drink the rest of his soda with some of the contents of a bottle inside that cupboard. Then there would be more of those contents added to a little water from the tap outside. Then more, and then more.

And why not? For it was these hours that now were life to him. Dead and heavy sleep—thank God!—succeeded them, but sleep was succeeded by hell in infinite variety. It was painted over. Talk, the gibbering of the monkey, might paint it over; his modelling in the morning painted it over; the skating in the afternoon added its coat; but beneath each and all there was hell. If at any of these pursuits he paused for a moment there came out the writing on the wall, the scroll of what he had done. But when he was alone up here, with the ‘whisky, the dear yellow friend—Canon Harold’s quaint name for daffodils (what an ass the man was!)—beside him, the writing vanished. He became himself again; he could laugh out loud at some ludicrous recollection; he could plan, he could imagine the future, and expunge the past. All day that was impossible. The past, irrevocable, and written in the book of doom, was a millstone round his neck; the future was unimaginable. For he could not tell Norah his secret; it was the possibility of her ever knowing if that was the one unimaginable thing. He could live in the Sahara with her, and though the whole world made mouths at him, as long as she never knew, life would be not endurable only, but ecstatic. Yet, if she did not know—if he never told her, for no one else could—how could he live with her at all? The impossibility of her knowing was only equalled by the impossibility of her not knowing. Did she guess, too? What did her parting words to him mean, unless she guessed? And if she guessed, how much better to say, once and for all, “No, it is not so,” than to drag on like this. It would even be better to say, “Yes, it is so,” and have done with it.

He had finished his ration, and by custom had got up to go to the cupboard, with the key already in his thirsty fingers, to pour out more consolation. A glass or two more, and he knew that these stinging thoughts would become limbo of the past. His throat had only to make a few swallowing movements, and all sense of the irrevocable, all regret and rebellion, would vanish. There would be two things only left alive; his love for Norah, his hate for Theodore. A little gurgling from a bottle would do all that for him. Sometimes—of late it had happened oftener—he had gone half-way to the cupboard, and then come back with his glass still unreplenished, and some faint flicker of resolution in his mind. That would burn there perhaps two or three minutes, or perhaps even a little longer; then it would die down and go out, leaving, so to speak, a smouldering wick, that smouldering wick being the determination—even after fifty failures he still called it determination—that this should be absolutely the last evening he would drink. To-morrow he would start altogether differently; to begin with, he would not smoke, or, at any rate, limit himself to quite a few cigarettes, for it was smoking, he felt sure, that made him thirsty. Also, he bound himself by self-registered vows to drink nothing till eleven at night, and then he would have just his one whisky-and-soda, his ration. Parker would think it odd of him not to have that, and it was with a horrible acuteness that he dreaded the thought of anyone thinking him odd. Or perhaps he would not drink even that. He would let Parker bring it up, and he would pour just one drop into the glass, so that it looked as if it had been drunk out of, and the ration of whisky itself he would pour into some empty bottle in the cupboard. There was room for a good deal of whisky there.

He thought of these sunny reformations when he had drunk heavily with quite a glow of anticipated pleasure: he was convinced that to leave off drinking would cure the trouble of his nerves, and he felt sure that his terrible daylong depression, his jumpiness, was due not to what he had done, but to what he drank. In the early days after that morning in May he had not suffered like this, and surely if it was some vital black spot in himself which occasioned it all, it would have been worse, blacker, more unendurable, when it was fresh. No; it was what advertisements elegantly called “errors in diet” that had so upset him. As they said, depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, besides all sorts of unnameable ailments, resulted from them. Well, he would err in diet no longer.

It was almost with surprise at this point that he became aware that he had taken the last new bottle out of the cupboard, and that it was standing by him on the table. He had been to the tap outside, too, and yet his glass was empty. After all, his resolution had been concerned with the morrow, not with to-night. To-night he would let himself be, and think over all that had passed, just reviewing it for this last time before putting it away from him for good. No, on the whole, he would drink no more to-night (had he been to the tap once or twice?) : he would begin breaking himself of it now, this minute.

He sat down again, feeling terribly wide-awake, and though he had thought it warm when he came in, he felt it cold now, and he turned on his electric heater, and drew his chair close to it. He had drunk his ration, he had drunk once more from the bottle in the cupboard, but as yet the spirits had not detached his depression and dread from him. But he would drink no more: he would begin to learn to-night what he had to face, this withdrawal of his evening armistice and truce; most likely, also, he would have to go through many sleepless nights. That was a dreadful thought. Surely sleeplessness would play as much havoc with his nerves as drink was doing. With drink, anyhow, he got every day a respite, a few hours when he could laugh again and put his fear from him, and every night a spell of unconsciousness. Why, it was that, he began to feel sure (thus allowing himself already to argue with himself about the wisdom of his resolution), that kept him from breaking down altogether, from going off his head perhaps.

He faced the thought of this: what if he was going mad? He felt it was not unlikely. There was a breaking-point for everybody. No one could stand (and be sane) for an indefinite period misery and dread like what he constantly suffered, except only when he bought his truce in the evening. The end must come sometime. He had had six months of it already, and it was growing worse day by day. He was less capable of bearing it than he had been; he had to make greater efforts every day to meet just the necessity of passing through the hours. He could not stand it much longer: he must give up. He must-

A memory of a day in the woods at Silomo came across him—a day he had spent with Norah, in complete, unconscious happiness. Happy! What a curious word! It did not seem to mean anything. It was a foreign language, understood, perhaps, by other people, but gibberish to him. What was it he wanted to remember? Something he had said to her with conviction. Ah, yes. “Never under any circumstances could I commit suicide.*’ And she had laughed, and told him she had no fears whatever that he would. She had laughed. It was not a laughing matter, really.

Madness, death, anything to make a change! He could not face the thought of this unrelenting misery going on for month after month. And how happy he had been. How well he had known the meaning of that word! And what a little thing—an action, or, rather, the inaction of one single second—had destroyed it all, had destroyed the possibility of it. For all the materials were his still. He had everything in the world that could make him happy: love was his, and youth and health no doubt might be his again if only he could be happy again, and thus get rid of the necessity of drugging himself into an hour or two’s quietude in these solitary evenings. Yet was it a little thing that had cut him off from the kindly race of men, and put him in the armies of Cain? It had lasted, it is true, a very short time—a second or two—in its intense form. But there had been weeks and months that led up to it. Was it a little thing? Only if hate—black, poisonous hate—and the desire to kill were little things.

And then suddenly in the gross blackness of his poor tortured soul there suddenly shone a little ray of light, very faint, very dim, and his soul was wrung with a new pain—a pain that was somehow different from that which he had suffered all these months. It was much more piercing, much more acute, yet even in the first anguish of it he knew that he welcomed it. The long misery of these months, the despair, the drinking itself then, led somewhere, meant something. And the anguish which was so piercing was the beginning of sorrow, of horror at his sin, of a true feeling of contrition.

Then all of a sudden he flung himself back in his chair, covered his eyes and his face with his hand and moaned to himself.

“I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it!” he cried.

CHAPTER XXI

It was a clear, bright Sunday morning towards the end of December, three days only before Christmas, and after a wretched week of fog the sky the night before had cleared, and a clean hard frost had set in. Sunshine—that inimitable primrose-coloured sunshine of London, pale but exquisite— flooded the town, and the air once more was breathable. Men were busy scattering gravel over the roadway, for the sun did not avail to thaw the frozen surface, which was treacherous to man and beast. Paul had come on the top of a ’bus from Chelsea to the foot of Ludgate Hill, but there he dismounted and walked quickly up the slope towards the cathedral.

It was just a month since that moment in his studio when the light, which then only manifested the awful darkness of his heart, had first broken on him. That light had not burned steadily at all. His awakening to the sense of his sin had not been a revelation, full of comfort and hope and joy. Among the angels there may have been joy, but it was hell where Paul was. Sometimes the sense of sorrow brought comfort to him—sometimes, added to his fears and the misery of these last months, it brought no comfort at all, but made with them a weight and a burden that was intolerable. Sometimes, too, that little ray seemed altogether quenched. Two or three times certainly it had, for all he knew, gone out altogether, and then he would leave his house—otherwise he had scarcely set foot outside it—and return with a bottle under his coat. But now there was more to drown than ever before. On these occasions he had staggered and felt his way to bed. But for the last fortnight he had had no lapse of this kind, and night by night—for still the instinct that nobody must know there was anything wrong with him was as strong as ever—he had poured the ration that Parker brought up into one of the empty bottles in the cupboard, just putting a drop or two into die glass, so that it might seem to have been used. And sometimes, poor soul 1 he had been unable to resist that couple of drops in the bottom of the glass, and had held it upside down till they trickled into his mouth. How deeply the habit had struck root in him he knew by that, and by his unutterable craving for the cold sting of the spirit; but that, too, by its very strength, gave a certain consolation to him, since he had for this last fortnight resisted it altogether, and by that he knew that his power of will was not dead.

Then these evenings, when now there was no remission of his suffering (and to it was added the horrible craving not only for remission, but for drink in itself) were succeeded by long, sleepless hours. Sometimes he would read, or try to read, but it seemed that all that books contained was vague, fantastic and unreal compared to the reality of himself and what he was going through. Books that had once delighted him had now no interest or amusement in them, and if he read a new book he hardly knew what it was about. His modelling stood him in no better stead, for the outline and contour of the human figure, with its absorbing, inexplicable beauty, was as meaningless as books. He had no pleasure in it, nor in the technical success of its reproduction. As he lay awake at night, after giving up the attempt to read, he would try to attach his mind to this or to any of those very numerous things which before had had the power to absorb him; but it was useless. Then, from very weariness, sometimes as late as the dawning of the short winter day, he would fall asleep, and dream with a pang of satisfied delight that he was drinking. He never dreamed of the days before last May; he never dreamed of Norah. It seemed that the very idea of happiness could no longer be grasped by him.

Of other people he saw nothing at all. To invitations he had one answer, that he was leaving town before the date in question, and since he hardly left the house at all, except on those few occasions when everything went to the winds, and he stole out to buy whisky, there was no fear of detection. And then the shop was but a dozen doors off in the King’s Road, and he went always after dark had fallen.

Sometimes for hours together he considered about telling Norah. She had told him that every thought, every feeling of his that he confided to her had a shrine ready in her heart, but for that which he had to tell her there could be no shrine. It and he must, if she knew, be cast out altogether. She loved him; he knew that, but there was that so scorching, so lethal in what he had to tell that love itself must wither before it. And to Norah’s love he still clung with all the passion and force of his own. There was just one thing existing in the world for him, and it was her love. All during this month it was shut from him, he could not get close to it or really feel it, but he knew it was there, and he knew, so he thought, equally well that if he told her it must cease.

He had not the slightest idea of whether this month had seemed long or short to him. Sometimes it seemed to have lasted since his consciousness began, sometimes the whole of its days seemed just one intense momentary pang. That was but natural, for time and space, finite and limited things, are not measurable by the side of anything so intense and real as joy or sorrow, which in their very nature are eternal and limitless, not to be gauged by rules and measures. In fact, as regards the sensation of length, this omnibus ride from Chelsea seemed to him longer than all that month spent within his house.

It was late the night before, or perhaps early in the morning, when, for the first time, the thought of St. Paul’s again occurred to him. It was no overmastering impulse; he had no feeling or anticipation that any solution, any revelation, awaited him, but the recollection of it brought with it a sense of peace; he felt as if the atmosphere of it, from his remembrance of his Sunday services there in the summer, was of a different texture in itself to that of the many other hours in which by active employment of his mind, or again by drink, he had been able to still the fears and miseries of these months. Tranquillity and rest from ache were associated with that big dim dome, with the music, with the wonderful words said at the altar. And when he woke again this morning, after a better night than usual, he woke first to a recollection of that; for the first time for months if was not his own hopeless misery that coloured his return to consciousness. That came soon enough, but to-day it did not come first.

The great church was very full, for a famous preacher was in the pulpit, and there was scarce a seat unoccupied anywhere within hearing. The wonderful winter sunshine penetrated there too, and cast huge dusty beams of saffron light from the windows high up in the dome. The sermon was not yet over, and according to his custom Paul made his way quietly up one of the side-alleys at the edge of the dome, and found himself a seat close under the lectern. The eloquent voice rose and fell; all faces were riveted on the preacher, but Paul heard nothing. He only knew that the peace of which his tortured soul had preserved the memory was round him again. It was closer, too, now; he could almost touch it, as it were. But his very soul was so tired that he could not reason or think positively at all. It was sick to death, and now for the first time he knew it.

The sermon drew to its close, but still he heard no word of it, though he was sitting near the preacher; he did not see the crowd of upturned faces nor the dusty shafts of winter sunshine. He was not conscious of the presence of others, he knew only that somehow all his pain and misery had for the moment ceased. He felt like some limb-tortured patient on whom an operation has been performed—that anyhow which had racked and tortured him before was removed. Often sitting here before in the very seat he now occupied he had felt something like that; he had known at any rate that peace and reconciliation were not very far away. But to-day they were close to him, the warmth and benediction of them reached him, though he was not “there” yet. What “to be there” meant he had no idea; he only knew that at this moment he rested, as he had never rested since that morning in May. There is a point in bodily pain where pain is felt no longer; he wondered if his tortured soul had come to a corresponding point.

The sermon was ended, and he still sat there, according to his custom, in order just to hear the celebration of the Divine feast. The sentences of offertory were sung, two singing-boys stood one on each side of the gate into the choir, and from it there came out the stream of people who were going away before the second service. At the entrance to the passages from the dome towards the choir little silent knots of people collected who were stopping, but the majority of the congregation in the dome kept their seats, waiting, as he had so often done, just to hear the service. He remembered at this moment that he had seen what the service was; it was the “Sterna Christi” of Palestrina. He had seen, too, in the Sunday Observer what the hymn was. The number of it only had been given, but he knew the number, having heard it before. That would be sung while the communicants were receiving, sung unaccompanied, but between the verses the organ always played a little symphony, gathering together the melody. The organ was like some gentle devout spirit thinking over what had been sung.

The string of people coming out from the choir was very long this morning. It had been full evidently of those who had come to hear the sermon. Then the opposite stream of those going up from the dome into the choir began to move, and Paul knew that he had got up and was moving with them. There was no volition on his part; it was as if his hand had been taken in another hand. He was going up into the choir, where he had never been before. He did not know why, nor did he care to know. But little every-day thoughts were with him still, and as he came to the step where the two singing-boys stood with the bags for offertory he fumbled in his pockets. He found some coin and dropped it into the bag. What it was he had no idea; it might have been a penny or a pound. But it seemed rather large; probably it was a penny, or perhaps a half-crown.

The ascending stream into the choir was small, and a verger held a gate open for him into the stalls on the right-hand side nearest to the altar. Except for himself the whole row was quite empty, and he moved up till he was close to the end of it. In the stall next him he put down his hat and stick, not cleverly, for the stick clattered to the floor, and he picked it up again. But all this, to him, happened in a dream. The peace that passed understanding was somehow very near, yet it was not his yet; some barrier of time or space still divided him from it. But at the moment he was content to be where he was. He was sick with misery no longer. He was neither sick nor miserable. He just waited. Remorse and contrition had been his and were his, and the sin for which they were the kindly, merciful consequence had been his also. What was to happen he did not know, nor cared to know. He had been taken to where he now knelt, as he had been taken through his months of misery, and through his insane attempts to forget. All fell into line— his sin, his degradation, his hopelessness seemed now to be part of a plan. He was still in a desert place, for the Presence was not his yet. But something had led him here through blind, uncomprehending days of wretchedness, and since those had been necessary—that he now understood— there was something further which was as necessary as what had gone before.

There was a long prayer which he did not heed. He knew, the external ear knew, that it prayed for the militant army of those who want to do better. It prayed for the dead too, or at any rate it thanked God for the rest of souls that had passed from the din and tumult of this life. It prayed for those who were in trouble, sorrow, sickness. . . .

Then suddenly Paul came out of his stupor.

“Does it mean me?” he asked himself. “My God, are they praying for me?”

Then there was a pause, and the Exhortation followed, and after that the Confession. One message was all that he really heard of it, a phrase that did not actually occur, but which was the voice of it all. It spoke to those who intended to lead a new life, the burden of whose sin was intolerable. And it said “Come.” It was addressed to the whole world; there was no selection, no parting of sheep from goats, no invitation to any class or creed. All were welcome provided only their burden was intolerable. It was they whom the hospitable Master bade to His table. And Paul knew his unworthiness to come to that feast, and his knowledge of his unworthiness was just that which made him welcome.

He knew too, though only remotely and vaguely, that he was crying. He was still lonely in a desert that he had himself made out of his sin and his hatred. But he knew that though he could not of himself cross those torturing and arid sands there was someone coming to him round whose footsteps the desert blossomed like the rose. But he still lay parched there, scorched and blinded and thirsty, and though it was out of his power to move, there was no need for him to do so. He who had washed His disciples* feet was coming to him with the bread and wine—His body. Paul only had to know that his burden was intolerable; that was all that was asked of him. The moment he knew that, Christ knew it too, and would come to him. He was coming now.

Then came the Absolution, his already, but said in human words with human voice for the comfort of the weakness of the flesh. And suddenly the light broke. The intolerable burden was not on him any longer. Christ had taken it, and it was mingled with the blood that streamed from the pierced hands and feet. Paul just laid his shame and his sin at the foot of the cross, and the Crucified took it as if it had been a treasure priceless to Him who had created the world, and knitted it with eager welcome into His crown of thorns which was His glory, and bled with it.

Comfortable words. Oh, God, how comfortable! The Divine alchemy of infinite love took from him all that was hellish and damnable, and out of that execrable dross it coined pure gold. His very sins added to God’s glory, the Infinite One would have lacked something for all eternity without them. The very giving of refreshment to those who were heavy-laden made Him more human and more divine. The glory of Christ was increased for every sin that was laid on Him. Utterly as He hated sin, how He welcomed and loved any who brought it to Him. He was like a child—He collected it; He wanted any specimen that anyone had to bring Him, each was a gift beyond price to Him who was omnipotent. And as a child Paul brought Him the burden that was intolerable. “Take it, take it,”he sobbed.

Soon the communicants began to move eastward and kneel at the step below the altar where their Host stood. In the courts of Heaven He gave them welcome, and since they were mortal also and of this earth, all the beauty and stateliness that surrounded them helped them into the Presence, the huge sublime church, the ministering priests, the gold cup that held the Blood of the Lord, all the mortal symbols of the immortal. And from lower down the choir bade them go to draw near and take the Body of the Lord.

Then the lines of those waiting grew shorter; they were but a few left. But still Paul knelt in his stall, still crying, still unnerved by the cessation of his misery. Verse by verse of the hymn was sung, and now and then a few words reached him, but only dimly, for he was at the feet of Christ, and in that Presence he could scarcely be conscious of anything else. And the Presence too said “Come.”

He raised his head, and saw all that was about him only through the blurred mist of tears. He doubted if he could see his way to the altar step. But he got up, and, feeling with his hands, he made his way to the end of the carved stalls, and feeling with his feet passed down the steps on to the floor of the chancel. Already the line in front of the altar was almost empty, but he got there, and knelt. Now that he moved and used hands and feet he was conscious that he was crying hopelessly, but what then? He wanted only to kneel there to receive what would be given him.

There was no one else; he had come there the last of all; he knelt there alone. He received the bread, but when the chalice came to him he could not take it. Deeper sobs, sobs that rent and shook him, made his hands powerless. He tried to raise them to take the cup, but they would not obey him; they were in control of his convulsion of weeping. Yet he was not ashamed of his impotency; he tried to raise them once, and once more. Then he just abandoned himself to what should come next.

From above him as he knelt came a quiet voice.

“I will hold it,” it said, “and give it you. There is no hurry; just raise your head when you can receive it.”

The last verse of the hymn was sung, and there was dead silence. Just in front of him stood the priest, waiting till he was ready, and by degrees he grew steadier, his hands trembled less. Then he raised his head, and drank of the precious Blood.

An hour later he was back in his house in Chelsea, having sent a telegram to Norah saying that he was coming down to Brockenhurst that afternoon. He no longer could imagine the possibility of debate as to whether he should tell her or not; he no longer even feared what he still believed must be the consequence of her knowing. He had never loved her more deeply and devotedly than now, and he was going by his own act and word to cut himself off from her for the rest of his life. Why he had to tell her he could not explain, but it was knit into the forgiveness and remission of his sin that she must know, and he could not heed or contemplate consequences. The human confession was implied, included in that he had already made and the pardon he had received.

So no thought of flinching, for that which had taken place to-day filled and upheld him, came to him as his train sped through the winter sunshine that shone on the white hoarfrost that covered tree and field, and despite his errand, despite the human wretchedness that it must bring on himself, and, what was so infinitely worse, the wretchedness it must bring on her who was so infinitely dear to him, nothing of that troubled or even touched him. To some degree at any rate now he could understand what was the meaning and the purport of misery and suffering, for it led somewhere; but the peace that filled him he could not understand, for it passed understanding.

Dark fell before he reached his journey’s end, but the half-moon rode luminous among the frostily-burning stars, shedding over everything a light clear like spring water, and kindling a myriad diamonds on the white roofs of houses and the hedges by the wayside. A carriage had been sent to meet him, and he drove first to the hotel in the village, and left the bag he had brought with him there, for there was no train that would take him back to town that night, and it would of course be impossible to stop at Evrington. And at that thought a sudden spasm of human agony at the sense of the misery that he must inflict overtook him. The misery that would be his he could scarcely regard as yet, so pervading was the peace that had come to him; but Norah, who loved him. . . . That thought rent and agonized him, but not once did he reconsider what he was going to do.

There was no breaking it possible. You could not break news like this. Just one fact had to be stated, the plunge had to be made, and it was better made at once. The carriage had turned in at the lodge-gates, and the evergreen leaves of the tall rhododendrons, shining with the frozen moisture like the leaves of a Christmas tree, almost brushed the windows. In a minute or two they would be there.

Paul put down the window and looked out. They had come out of the avenue, and there, a little above them on the ascending road, not a hundred yards away, the house stood. Its roofs also sparkled with the moonshine on the frost that covered them, and the welcome of red light through chinks and crevices of drawn curtains sent out comfortable, homelike rays. That sight was somehow very familiar to his inner vision; he had often imagined himself coming home thus, stepping in to the warmth and light of the house from some cold frosty night like this. It was as if some vision had been fulfilled in all its detail; he had imagined the house-roofs sparkling like that, the leaks of light from behind curtains, and, above all, the dear presence to welcome him which in a few moments now would do so. He had pictured, too, the hall door being opened just before he got to it (for the noise of wheels had been heard and he was expected), and seeing there a black silhouette against the luminous background, waiting on the doorstep. Even while the thought was in his mind it was fulfilled. Before the carriage stopped the door was opened, and a long oblong of light poured out on to the gravel. And in the middle of it she stood.

“Ah, Paul, how nice,” she said. “And, oddly enough, I was wondering this morning what day you would come, whether perhaps you would not come to-day. And you have come.”

They passed together into the hall, and then he stopped. The man who had opened the door to him took his coat and hat from him, which he surrendered mechanically, and still lingered. Paul turned to him.

“No, I have brought no luggage,” he said.

Norah heard, and she gave a little sigh. If there was anything to be broken she knew it now. She felt sure in her mind why he had come. And she waited for him to speak.

But he could not speak at once, and he could not take his eyes off her. The agony at the thought of the misery he must bring her kept him dumb, though still his own misery seemed insignificant in the peace which still closed round him. Then at length he took both her hands in his.

“I tried to kill him,” he said. “I wanted to.”

He heard the words as if they had been spoken by somebody else, but he knew they had been said. And then he saw that her lips still smiled at him, that her hands were not withdrawn, that the light of love was still a beacon in her eyes, and he felt as if she had not understood. So he must say it again.

“There was a moment when I could have stopped, and did not,” he said. “I chose to go on, because I did not care whether I killed myself or not. I only wanted to kill him. And then, when it was too late, I tried to avoid him, and put the car at that low wall that runs along the road. It swerved and would not turn quick enough. I am sorry now, sorry in myself, you understand. That is why I had to tell you.”

Yet still the lovelight shone in her eyes, though surely she must have known what he spoke of now. He could not understand why she did not turn from him.

“I am speaking of Theodore,” he said.

“Yes, Paul,” she said, “I know.”

Then he understood.

CHAPTER XXII

The day was a jewel of mid-May, and the sun that so gloriously gleamed in it was that brilliant Italian light that seems to shine not only on but through all that it illuminates, giving to sky and water and white palace-front a radiance that seems to come not only from without but from within. On each side of the traffic-way rose those distinguished, inimitable lines of columned houses, and between them, just now at high tide, so that the topmost of their doorsteps were covered with the water, flowed that wonderful road, cloudy-blue in the depths, and where it was shallower a dim aquamarine, shot with a vivid, intense brightness. The roadway was noiseless but for the liquid cluck of water; no tedious droning of wheels, or roar and rattle as they passed over cobble-stones, sounded there; there was buf the chuckle of the in-dipped oar, the gentle hissing of its propulsion, its chuckle as it left the water again. When the breeze ruffled the surface of that road it raised no dust-cloud nor whirling scurry of the debris of the roadside, it but broke the translucent reflections of the mirrored palaces, scattering them for a moment into some new mosaic of colour, or fringed the margin of the wayside with an edging of tiny wavelets, breaking, whiter even than the marble steps on which they broke into momentary snowy foam. And up and down passed the stately gondolas on their beautiful progress, treading proudly with neck and head high-lifted over the azure and green of their native streets, swift, obedient, and answering like a fine-mouthed horse to the least touch of their rider’s hand on the bridle of the oar, black from stem to stem, save where the chained horses of brass pranced amidships, a strange and marvellous note of absence of colour in that riotous symphony of the light of this rainbow-hued noon.

For the moment on this particular reach of the Grand Canal—the reach, that is to say, in view of the windows of the

Palazzo Meridolto—there was no single inharmonious note. No fussy, irritated steamer, churning the water with a vulgar, useful screw, bumping at its landing-stage, and sending out big waves behind it, which the bows of passing gondolas plunged into with a disdainful, broad-handed slap, was just now in sight. No beasts of burden, in the shape of high-piled barges, bearing the stone spoils from some disbanded palace garden, or, even more distressing, immense bales of some well-advertised wares from northern lands, were being painfully punted up the canal sides to the danger of the pali in front of the houses. The city was just the beautiful, leisurely queen of the sea, steeped in sun, and shining in all its ancient magnificence.

But the wonderful moment which Norah watched from the windows of the Palazzo was gone again like a flashlight, and intense and almost blinding as it had been, she yet could not object to what interrupted it. There was a traghetto just opposite, and down the narrow alley that led to it there came, swiftly and suddenly, two very familiar and modern figures. Lady Ravenscroft was the first, animated and gesticulating, trying to make a puzzled porter—really no figure at all, for he was completely extinguished by an enormous framed picture that he carried—understand her wishes on the subject. Her Italian was rather like Mrs. Plomish’s—at least, it consisted mainly of English words, to which she affixed “o” or “a” at the end, while in front of the substantive she put “il” or “la.” She filled up with words out of any other language, and spoke with extreme rapidity. And the other figure was that of Paul, who stood laughing as the two legs of the extinguished porter tottered towards the ferry. And though the indefinable magic of Venice had been completely extinguished by this sudden entry of familiar human drama, Norah found herself not regretting it. Venice could not make her as happy as the sight of those two figures. She wondered, however, what the picture was. Only a few days before her mother had brought home a small blackened daub, which she felt absolutely certain would prove to be a Johannes Bellinus, which 81 she had purchased for fourteen lire, a price, as she justly remarked, that was really quite ridiculous. She had begun to clean it with a reverent sponge and tepid water, but in some extraordinary manner the picture itself seemed to come away too, so she had put this priceless treasure away, to have it properly attended to in England. The fact that it was forbidden to take antiques out of Venice presented no difficulty to her sanguine imagination, and, to tell the truth, both Norah and Paul thought that the authorities would probably make no difficulty about the fourteen-franc Bellini. But this—this porter-staggering burden was perhaps an even more astounding purchase. There was no doubt, anyhow, that it was much larger.

The gondola of the traghetto lurched heavily as the picture was taken aboard like the elephant into the ark, but started safely enough, and soon passed out of sight up the little canal where was the landing-stage nearest their house. Norah had taken this flat for the month of May, and already, she reflected, half that month had gone in a perfect scurry of flying days, and though June was to bring to her her marriage to Paul, she almost grudged these swift-passing days, such was the spell that Italy threw over both her and him.

All the earlier part of the spring Italy had been in her mind, and she longed for it with that longing which is quite inexplicable to those who do not know the passionate attachment it is possible to get for a place, a country, an atmosphere. In spite of the tragedy of last year, enacted in this land, her desire for it was untouched. As far as Italy went the tragedy had been but a momentary discoloration of the stream, swept away again by the clear water. But if she went Paul must go too, for to be without him now was the one thing more impossible than to be without Italy, and she feared suggesting it to him. After that Christmas homecoming, when the cloud that hung over them both was dispersed for ever, he had had a complete nervous breakdown. Though he had stood those months of tension, he had been unable to stand the removal of it, or, perhaps, so the doctors said, it was the effects of the tension that made themselves felt afterwards. But before that he had told her all—he had told her the whole secret history of his fear, and his miserable attempts to find a drunkard’s relief. And then he had just gone to bits, and for six weeks had been in bed, simply resting and paying for the damage he had done himself. And Norah, somehow, was rather relieved at his breaking down. It was only natural, to be expected, that that dreadful high pressure of misery had to be paid for. Then, when he recovered, though his recovery was excellent, all that the doctors wished, yet it was not, and she knew it, could not be, the ridiculous, irresponsible Paul of old days who came back to her. The sin and the misery which had gone nigh to utterly embitter and poison him had not done that, for they had been turned into contrition, and so were altogether wholesome and tonic, but the boyish effervescence, the sheer animal spirits, had gone, nor was it likely, nor perhaps did she wish it, that they would ever return to him as a habit, a constant expression of his life. Perhaps, too, that frightened look that so often came into his eyes, though fear had gone, would never leave him altogether; for none can go through hell unseared.

And since it was Italy that was the scene of what had happened, she did not like to suggest it to him. But one morning, a radiant, pale-blue morning of April, as they strolled together in the garden at Evrington, he had looked up at the comer of the house.

“Look how clear-cut,” he said. “Do you remember the comer of the Castello against the sky? Just like that. By Jove! how beautiful it was!”

She stopped.

“Paul, do you like Italy?” she asked.

He laughed.

“I dream of Italy,” he said. “I long to be there. I did not speak to you of it ever, because—well, because-”

Her laughter joined his.

“So we have been both avoiding the one thing we wanted,” she said. “So we’ll go.”

“Ah, but not there,” he said—“not Siloim”

“ No, no; but Italy. May—shall we have May there?”

“Yes,” said he softly, “and then comes June.”

Lady Ravenscroft’s entrance interrupted her meditations. She was beaming, radiant, and a torrent of glorious polyglot poured from her as she directed the porter where to place her art treasure.

“Non, prenez la comera della pittura. Oui, comme ga, et placez contra la mura qui—Ecco I Cest sicuro, n’este pas. Oh, prenez garde de la chaira, non e sicuro. Un momento. Oh, do come and help, Paul, and don’t stand there giggling.” At last it was placed safely by the wall, and she came up to the end of the long gallery where Norah was.

“Norah, I’m ruined,” she said; “but if it isn’t a Tintoret, I’ll I’ll give it to you for a wedding present.”

Norah understood the intention of this offer, and took it in the spirit rather than in the more obvious interpretation that lay on the surface.

“It’s too wonderful,” her mother went on—“its’ a doge— one of the Mocenigo’s, I’m certain—and exactly like that wonderful one in the Academia. I shall go home third-class; it will be quite pleasant; they are so polite to one in trains abroad. Now, how am I to get it out of Venice? I can’t put it in my bag, can I? And the frame alone is worth what I paid for it, isn’t it, Paul?”

“More,” said Paul promptly. “At present I’ve paid for it, you know.”

“Yes, so kind of you. We found it in a dirty little side-street, and so, of course, I couldn’t leave it, so I stopped there while Paul went to Cook’s and they changed a cheque for him. Come and look at it, Norah. I mustn’t buy anything more as long as I am in Venice. Isn’t it wonderful? And isn’t lunch ready? Excitement always makes me so hungry. Ah, there’s Enrico come to tell us.”

Enrico was in reality neither more nor less than Henry, a servant of Norah’s, who had come out with them; but Lady Ravenscroft’s huge power of throwing herself into all that occupied or surrounded her had made Enrico of him before they got to Milan.

“But how are we to take it home?” continued she, as they sat down. Enrico, that new picture. Do you think you could pack it quite safely so as to travel? And how do you think it had better go to England?”

A faint grin spread over Enrico’s face as he handed omelette. He was a friend of the family, and his opinion on any question was usually the final word.

“I should think in a ship, m’lady,” he said. “There’s lots of big ships that call here.”

Norah laughed openly, and Enrico’s grin became a shade more marked.

“Well, it will be dreadful parting with it for so long,” said Lady Ravenscroft, “but if that is really safest, I suppose it had better be done. How delicious that omelette is! Yes, I think I will. And what are you darlings going to do this afternoon? The rest of my day is a hideous rush. In a moment of madness I said I would go to tea with Mrs. Harold. It’s very selfish of her to come to Venice. But, really, this year, though, it’s not Venice in London, it’s London in Venice.”

“Darling mother, you must be mad,” said Norah. “Why, Mrs. Harold and her husband are coming to dine here.”

Lady Ravenscroft laid down her fork and folded her hands in front of her in a calm despair.

“Yes, raving,” she said. “And I shall be worse before night. Mrs. Harold from four-thirty to eleven!”

“Well, you needn’t stop three hours at tea,” remarked Paul.

Lady Ravenscroft laughed in a hollow manner.

“Do you really suppose that she will leave one second’s pause during the first three hours? You don’t know her! And, Norah, why did you ask her to dine?”

“You asked her yourself,” said Norah.

Lady Ravenscroft groaned.

“I did,” she said. “Paul, you used to be a favourite; she said she always liked talking to dear Mr. Paul. Be a man, and come to tea with me. And then I needn’t go,” she added, with a brilliant inspiration.

But Paul on this occasion showed no tendency at all to exhibit himself in a manly light, and instead, went off after lunch with Norah in the gondola. During the past fortnight they had done a good deal of definite sight-seeing, and today, Paul having given his vote for “no interiors,” they were merely going out on to the lagoon, land, if they felt inclined, at the Lido, and bathe, or perhaps spend the afternoon in absolute inaction, content to be propelled lazily over that liquid mirror, and do no more than just be conscious of sun and air and Italy. How much that was, how it transfused all consciousness and quickened all other emotion, even that one great emotion that filled both of them—Italy intensified all one felt; it cleaned the perceptions somehow, and made them perceive more acutely; it was like a lantern illuminating the soul.

They had two gondoliers, and on the outgoing tide, which was running very swiftly out to the mouths of the lagoon, they made easy and rapid progress, following, since the water had already ebbed far, the channels indicated by the great grey pali which crossed the lagoon, showing where boats could go without fear of grounding. Already, on each side of them, were the flat green banks of the shoals appearing above water, and schools of white gulls screamed and hunted over them, seeking their food in the shape of the little scuttling crabs that were left defenceless by the recession of the water. To the north in this beautiful clear day there stood distinct and snow-clad the lines of the Alps, looking too ethereal to be conceived of as made of hard rock; in front of them and far away to the right stretched that marvellous barrier of the Lido that kept the waves and storms of the Adriatic from reaching this enchanted sea. Further to the left, cheating the eye a little with the haze of heat that hung low over the land, stood Torcello, and behind them the fairy palaces of Venice grew dim and jewel-like.

They had both been silent for a time, absorbed in Italy, and therefore the more absorbed in each other.

“It can’t be real,” said Paul at length. “It is the light that never was on sea or land. Norah, what if the shores ahead of us recede as we move, so that we never reach them, and go on like this for ever, just with the chuckle of water, and the gulls, and Italy, and—and it-”

“It being-?” she asked.

“Why, you!”

Norah smiled back at him. Even this, which was so natural, so spontaneous, was not the old Paul. It was more mature, more perceptive.

“And would you be happy if it was so?” she asked.

“Happy! My God, yes.”

“And content?”

“I hope not,” he said. “I don’t think one ought ever to be content till one is going to die. Then perhaps it is as well. But while one lives, it is rather feeble somehow to cease to want.”

The sense of the change that had come in him struck her keenly at this.

“And I don’t wish you to cease to want,” she said; “and sometimes, Paul, I wonder if you are wanting less than you used to. No, I don’t even wonder about it; I know it is so. Don’t be content.”

“Oh, I don’t propose to die,” said he briskly.

She laughed.

“I didn’t mean that,” she said, “though, since you mention it, I may say that it would be a very bad plan. It would annoy me seriously.”

He sat up quickly, with the backward shake of his head that was like the old Paul. Also, for the moment, his egotism—mere boyish egotism—having no root in selfishness, but springing merely from interest in life, and so, also, in himself, was like the eleven-year-old.

“I don’t feel gay,” he said, “and why on earth shouldn’t I? Why, two years ago I should have been catching crabs with an oar one minute, and kissing you the next, and talking about some scheme for catching other crabs on the paludi and gating them for dinner the third. What has happened? Do tell me.”

Norah laughed again.

“ Oh, you were eleven that minute,” she said, “if you remember how we talked about essential age once—there. You used always to lump things together like that—whether it was catching crabs on the paludi, or whether it was—well, kissing me, it was all one. Each, I mean, was utterly absorbing.”

“Then have I lost by changing?” asked he.

“ No; but you have gained. So have I. Don’t you see what has happened? You have become a man. It is children who can’t differentiate.”

“Good long word!” remarked Paul.

“ Yes. If a child loses its mother, you give it some bread and treacle, and it forgets about its mother. That is very nice in a child. And I was a girl. But I’m not now.”

Paul considered this.

“ So it’s not sad?” he asked at length.

“No more than it is sad that a fruit ripens on a tree.” There was food for thought here also. But he ever flew off at tangents. This particular tangent was a painful one.

“Then was I a boy when—when I did it?” he asked. “Was it a child’s passion?”

“ Ah, if you could only know how utterly I believe that,” she said. “ I felt that through it all. But I could not tell you that till you guessed it. Don’t you see? It gave God the opportunity He was wanting to make a man of you. He could not do it without. We are all too strong for God, until we find that we are weaker than the devil.”

They were both silent a moment. Then, since he did not speak, she changed the subject completely, for she still wanted Paul not to give himself any undue concern over certain things.

“ Now, you’ve had no exercise for this last fortnight,” she said. “ Take Antonio’s oar and catch crabs.”

“ I would sooner kiss you,” said he.

“ But I would much sooner you didn’t, since I would never be able to look either Antonio or Giovanni in the face again, which would be a bore, as I propose to go in the gondola often and often again. Go and make yourself messy and hot. Antonio, il signorino prende —what is it?—oh, ramo, and you can go and sedia yourself/’

This brilliant and forcible polyglot always delighted Antonio, and ministered to a childlike hope on his part that he really understood English entirely perfectly, because when the signora talked like that (since it was quite certain she was not talking Italian) she must be talking English, and Antonio understood at once, and therefore had acquired the difficult tongue with extraordinary ease and celerity. And with the Italian smile, in which die whole face—nose and ears as well—smiles, he abandoned his oar to Paul, and his mirth-loving soul to amusement. To see the signorino row was more laughable than even the marionettes.

Paul took off his coat and placed his feet in the required position, took a vigorous stroke, and the oar came out of the rowlock. He lifted it back with infinite effort, for it was extremely heavy, instead of letting it trail back through the water, and Antonio said:

“Bravo! Il signorino e molto, molto strong.”

“Silentio!” said Paul.

Then he caught in rapid succession a perfect haul of crabs. All the gulls fishing that sunny afternoon on the pauldi did not probably come up to his aggregate. Some were small crabs, some were perfectly immense, and the bewildered gondola, wishful to be obedient, turned its nose rapidly first in one direction, then in the other, like a dear willing horse, which is only anxious to do as its rider wants, but really cannot make out what he wants. But the oar did exactly that which Paul did not want it to do. It went through the water edge-ways when he wanted to make a stroke, so that it offered no resistance—he might as well have rowed through the air; and then, when he wanted it to come out, it turned its broad, stalwart face to the water, and resisted with limpetlike and incredible tenacity. Then it came out of its rowlock, and the handle nearly knocked Paul backwards.

“I have been showing—ho mostrato come fa Antonio,” said he. “Adesso, we will proceed into the Adriatic.”

This was not done immediately; they slewed backwards and forwards in the channel for a little, drifted slowly up against one of the stakes that marked its course, and then, all of a sudden, one of Paul’s vigorous strokes took the water exactly right, and they flew up on to a mudbank, like a crocodile making a rush for its prey. It took two sternly-labouring gondoliers, when their first helpless merriment was over, nearly half an hour to get off again.

Yes, after all, Paul could play the fool still, but Norah knew what he meant, and knew he was right, when he said that his gaiety had gone from him. It was no longer the spring of his nature; it was no longer the fountain-head. Like sunlight it flashed still on the surface, but there were depths below now, and she thanked God for them. The stream no longer came with flash and prattle, merely through rapids and shallow pools; it was from the heart of the mountain that it was drawn, and flowed out cool and deep.

Once free again it was time to turn, and they went back westwards across the unruffled lagoon. The great grey stakes, reflected without tremor in the water, marked their path for them, and the black bows of the gondola were notched into the sun, which was drawing near to its setting over the companiles and palaces of the town. Rose-colour and gold were laid in thin veils over the sky, here and there made more palpable where they caught a few little lost sheep of clouds that had got astray in the infinite blue. Behind them as they went back the long line of the Lido sank slowly down, but the campanile of Torcello stood up, a flaming finger, lit by the fire of the sunset. But the greys and huelessness of night came over that too, and the molten city in front of them, rising higher as they got nearer, faded also, till it was opal and pearl. It was the magic hour of the day in the magic city, and they were together; no cloud, not even as much as a single one of those rosy wisps above, was between them, and the silence that fell now was not like the silence that had been theirs at this same evening hour in the garden at Evrington, for that had been broken by anxiety and doubt and hidden, secret knowledge. But this, the longer it lasted, grew ever more crystalline and clear. As the night fell there were lit in it the myriad lamps of love, each in itself a world, even as above them the starry-kirtled firmament shone and sparkled in silence.

No one could accuse Mrs. Harold of having wasted her time since she came to Venice, and her mind was, as in some miracles of loaves and fishes, like a basket heaped full of stray bits and crusts and bones.

“Tintoret, yes, I think both the Canon and I, don’t we, Augustus, give the palm to Tintoret,” she said, before she had really finished shaking hands with Paul. “His pictures mean so much, don’t they? So wonderful how they tell their story. We hardly know which we like best. Of course, there’s the rich man’s feast—so like Henry the Eighth, is it not—and Lazarus at the Academia, but we think the Last Supper in the Santa Maria della Salute is perhaps the most spiritual of all. And here’s dear Lady Ravenscroft, who came to see me only this afternoon, so we’ve had a great talk already, and can go straight on, can’t we, as if there had been no interruption. And what a beautiful room this is, dear Mrs. Beckwith, looking out on to the Grand Canal this end, and I’m sure something equally beautiful the other. Oh, a little garden, is it? With some of those beautiful wellheads, I feel certain.”

As a matter of fact, the garden was “with” two rather stunted orange-trees and an antiquated garden syringe, but there was never any particular need to mention anything to Mrs. Harold, inasmuch as she did all the mentioning herself.

Lady Ravenscroft in this minute or two of waiting for dinner and the arrival of one more guest, had sought with Paul the seclusion of a window-seat, and raised her eyes heavenwards.

“Oh, it’s as good as a play,” said he cheerfully.

“A very bad play. Thank heaven, here’s Mr. Endicott. Now, perhaps, Enrico will tell us dinner is ready. I can bear it better at dinner.”

“Well, you asked her,” said Paul.

“It is not in good taste, Paul, to remind one of one’s past mistakes in the middle of present suffering,” she said rising. “How are you, Mr. Endicott?”

Mrs. Harold took no soup, and could therefore talk without interruption.

“Of course the Canon knows every stone of Venice,” she said, “but he tells me I know ‘ Stones of Venice/ and of course I spent a great deal of time reading it before I came. I thing it is the most inspired of all dear Mr. Ruskin’s books, and so clever. No, I never knew him, but after reading it I feel as if I did. And so vivid: the moment I saw the Square of St. Mark’s I knew at once which was St. Mark’s.”

This remarkable piece of intuition drew forth corroboration from her husband.

“It is quite true,” he said, “my wife led me to it. And we went in—shall I tell them, dear?—yes, we went in hand in hand.”

He dropped his voice, and spoke to Lady Ravenscroft alone.

“And she whispered,” he continued, “she whispered to me, ‘I was glad when they said unto me, “Let us go into the house of the Lord,”’ putting stress on the I was glad. That to me, all that sort of personal application,” and he let his voice boom out again, “is the true higher criticism.”

Mrs. Harold had got back to Tintoret.

“So wonderful, dear Mr. Paul,” she said. “I feel sure, and I told the Canon so, that if Tintoret had been alive now he would have been nothing less than a bishop. His was such a truly religious mind; he so feels the subject he paints, and gives you the hidden, inner meaning—the true hallmark of an artist.”

“But he lived to the age of nearly ninety without being a bishop,” said Paul.

“Yes, but in those days it was so different. Don’t you think—it is the Canon’s thought I am quoting—that he did more good then by being a religious painter than he would if he had taken orders? Whereas now painters concern themselves with trivial subjects, and anyone with any serious message goes into the church. But we are embarking on rather grave subjects, are we not, which have their time and place. And what do you like best in Venice? The Canon and I almost quarrel over it, but I say the Bellinis. So simple, are they not, and you hardly see how clever until you look into them. And you will be here all the month, won’t you, and go back to England in June. We go before, I am sorry to say; in fact, this is our last evening but nine in Venice. And so much to do yet. I give marks always to every picture I see up to a hundred, and two Tintorets and two Bellinis are the only ones that have got a hundred yet. I so very much hope to be able to give another hundred before we leave.”

Paul was always attentive when Mrs. Harold talked, since he saved it up “for afterwards,” when he would produce it with the most ruthless fidelity. He always looked rather rapt in consequence, an expression which Mrs. Harold called “so very earnest.” And to-night, after they had gone, he found his memory had been wonderfully retentive until Lady Ravenscroft stopped him.

“Paul, it is more than I can stand,” she said. “I’ve had the real ever since half-past four, and it’s now half-past eleven. Oh, is it only half-past ten? The evening seemed longer, and I can’t bear any more. It is too like to amuse me.

“Well, she gave your Tintoret eighty-five,” said Norah.

“It is that which makes me feel sure it isn’t a Tintoret at all. You will probably get your wedding-present.”

“Where shall we put it, Paul?” asked Norah.

“You may have it in your room,” said he. “I will come in to look at it.”

Lady Ravenscroft shook herself free from the obsession of Mrs. Harold at this.

“You two darlings,” she said. “How I love to think of you like that, and when you talk of coming into each other’s rooms it makes it seem so close. It is close too. And what of this afternoon? The only thought that buoyed me up was the thought that you two were having a delicious time. What did you do?”

“I rowed/’ said Paul, “and then we stuck. And then we came home.”

“All in silence?”

“There was a good deal of silence,” said Norah. “But we talked first We settled—what did we settle, Paul?”

Paul did not reply for a moment. Then-

“We settled that we had grown up,” he said. “But we did not think we were any the worse for that.”

CHAPTER XXIII

It was again the month of May—May a year later, not Venetian but English, not sunny, but on this particular morning a deluge of cold, untimely rain. It battered against the windows, flung therein sheets of peevish spray, and the eaves and gutters gurgled with it.

Norah, as she and Paul breakfasted together at Evrington, was opposite the window against which the gale from the south-west flung itself, and turned to him.

“Paul, I really think we had better put off going up to town till to-morrow,” she said.

Paul had his mouth extraordinarily full at the moment, and could not reply. Then—

“But why on earth?” he said at length. “The rain it raineth every day, and surely a wet day is much the best to travel on. You know, one doesn’t waste so much beautiful weather.”

“Yes, but you can’t prove things by quotations. Besides, the rain doesn’t rain every day.”

“But you’ve asked them to stop the express at Evrington, too,” he said.

“It isn’t till the afternoon,” she said. “They can just as well stop it for us to-morrow if I send down now.”

Paul held out his cup.

“More tea,” he said.

“You’ve had three cups,” remarked Norah.

“I know, otherwise I shouldn’t be holding it out now for a fourth. One always eats and drinks more if one is going on a journey, and nobody can tell why. I don’t mind stopping here till to-morrow in the least. But why do you want to?”

“Well, it is so wet, and there’s baby. It isn’t very good for a child being taken about in the wet.”

Paul put sugar thoughtfully into his cup.

“Is that really the reason?” he asked.

“No, you silly, of course not The reason is that I don’t want to go to-day.”

“All, well, that’s an excellent reason,” said he, “and it is perfectly sufficient But since it is entirely you who are making the change I refuse to take any steps or any trouble. You will have to give all orders and send all telegrams, and you mustn’t say it’s me. That’s reasonable, isn’t it?”

“Yes, certainly. And we’ll have a nice cosy day, and not look out of the window. I’ve got lots to do.”

“Thank God I haven’t,” said he.

Norah got up from the table, and in spite of her expressed intention not to look out of the window, she looked out of it for some time. In this driving rain it was not possible to see far; in fact, the whole forest was blotted out by the driving scuds and blurs of the squalls, and all that was really visible was the gravel path outside, with its standing pools of water, and the herbaceous bed on the far side of it. Yet that somehow pleased her exceedingly; all over it the stems of the perennial plants were beginning to sprout with young weak shoots, and the seeds of the clumps of sweet-peas had put their tender green above the earth. The last fortnight, up till yesterday, when the rain had begun, had been very dry, but yesterday had been a day of alternate stuffy heat and warm showers, and this morning the growth of the springtime had hugely advanced. That she saw at the first glance, and that glance led her imagination on. For May was the month of months; it was then somehow that growth took place in everything. The whole creation, animals and plants and people alike, all felt spring in their fibres or their bones; animals moulted off their winter coats and put on the finery of summer; birds and beasts were mated, they turned their faces forward to the beautiful time that was coming, and forgot the snows and sorrows of winter. And the human soul, so it seemed to her, did the same. Even in the courts of Heaven, perhaps, the spring was felt.

But though the evidence of the sprouting seeds and shooting plants was before her eyes, and though, too, there was a hope, a belief in her mind, which in an hour or two would be : Id made certain, and which, if true, would fill her with a joy beyond all telling, she felt herself somewhere, deep down in ad. need of reassurement. Some obscure cloud was over her; she es felt as if something terrible was imminent. That, though she rcc; had not told Paul, was one reason—if anything so irrational could be called reason—why she had wished to stop here today instead of going up to town as they had planned. Had : the reason been less feeble she would have disclosed it to him, but it was so manifestly absurd to confess such a thing as that.

She turned back again into the room. Paul, still apparently possessed by the necessity of eating well before a journey, even though the journey was postponed, was still if devouring toast and marmalade. Somehow that sight reassured her again, for vague uneasiness is best dispelled by the v sight of simple, healthy routine on the part of somebody jv else. With that, too, the whole spirit implied in the growing plants ousted her uneasiness.

“Darling, you really are eating too much,” she said, “when everybody is going on the plan of having no breakfast-”

“Silly nonsense,” said he.

“You can’t be sure. But what a nice day we will have. And the garden is simply bursting; everything is growing, and the birds this morning at dawn, did you hear them?”

“I heard nothing at dawn,” said he. “The first I heard was ‘Eight o’clock, sir,’ and I didn’t believe that. And what am I to do all day?”

Norah really did not know, but certainly did not say so.

“You haven’t even opened the paper yet,” she said. “Oh, Paul, though it’s May, do let me tell them to light a fire in your room, and we’ll sit there. It really is cold. Take the paper there when you’ve finished.”

“And?” he asked.

“Why, read it I must go and give all sorts of orders.”

“Entirely your own fault,” said he.

Paul’s room was at the back of the house, looking out on to the garden, and with the paper still in its wrapper he went there as he had been ordered. The fire had just been lit when he got there, and he devoted some minutes to the fascinating occupation of seeing the little blue flames turn yellow as they caught the kindling wood, die down when they met the coldness of the coal, and “burrow and build awhile,” till little jets of gas, little focuses of red, showed that they had done their work, and made alive again the heat of the sun which had shone on fossil forests. The eternal principle of life and heat was there, the timber submerged for thousands of years was called into flame and heat, life was eternally revivified in another form. And as the sight of the sprouting garden-beds had led Norah’s thoughts to the entrancing fact of spring, so the resuscitated life of the coal led him to the entrancing fact of life.

How for him it had sprung out of death and hell. How, from an abyss of misery and gradual self-destruction, he had been brought into this ecstatic serenity. A year ago in Venice he had thought he was happy, and rightly had he thought that, but now, how the horizon of happiness had enlarged. For love, which seemed illimitable then, had proved so vastly more illimitable. The infinite had been multiplied, if that was possible. And the infinity of this human love was to him now but an example, an instance of what was infinitely more, a light reflected from the brightness of the everlasting day. He saw Norah, he loved her now, in the light of that, but the fact that, well, God—to put it roughly— had become real, was no mere Australia fact any longer, did not one whit diminish or interfere with the human relationship of him, man, to her. He loved her, flesh and blood, as entirely as ever, nor did he consecrate or reason about that love. When he kissed her on her lips it was her lips he kissed, when her arms were round his neck it was Norah who was pressed close to him. And though she was right when she knew that mere high spirits, mere boyish vitality, could never be the spring of his life again, yet, with the complete return of his health and the huge gift of happiness, these had suffered no diminution. The babbling silliness, the sky-scraping absurdities, were his again, but they were no longer in company with his good looks, his intense vitality, his eager interest, all that there was of him. They were all there again, but there was something beneath them now.

Yet all this last year he had often had bad times, when the flesh was weak, and though the bad times were reality no longer, but mere nightmare, they managed to produce a very fair semblance of reality. Sin had bitten him to the soul, the iron of its consequences had entered there, and the scar of the healing still pained him. It pained him now, and when that happened he very wisely “did” something, for the pain, he knew, was but a remembrance of pain, a thing to be forgotten as soon as possible. Contrition had been his and forgiveness, of that he was certain, but sometimes he wondered if his punishment was finished yet. Considering what he had done, how light it had been; he who might have been hanged if men could read the heart. Instead he had been given just nine months of unhappiness, his soul had been in prison for nine months. Then, at that communion the Sunday before Christmas, the door of the prison-house had been opened, and he went forth free, and at the very threshold she, whose love he had thought was humanly forfeited, had met him, and kissed him on the lips. That moment, when he had told Norah what he must tell her, had shown him how utterly he had been ignorant of what human dove could be, how nothing, provided only that one trusted it, could stand in its way. It was on this human sphere indestructible. All else might be destroyed, but all else was founded on the sand. Professed friendships might wither, unable, since they were but shallowly-rooted, to reach their fibres to the real springs of love. But, as was proved now to him, the real friend, which is the lover, the person, man or woman, who loves, was but brought closer, if that was possible, by the shame and infamy of the beloved. Here was the test: the base metal could not help showing itself as dross, when the crucible and the fire tried it and found if wanting. But if the friend, the lover, told his friend he had done infamous things, the lover and friend said merely, as Norah had said, “I love you more for telling me,” But for the other $o-called friends—well, it was better to think of something else than to imagine what they would have done.

So he opened the paper and ran his eye down the pages with singular inattention. There was some half-column of arrangements for to-day and to-morrow, and the rest of the week. And then, for the first time, he saw that to-morrow was the twelfth. It was on the twelfth, two years ago, that the wind had screamed by the flying car, that something else gave a scream too. . . .

Ah! he must bear these dreadful sudden twinges patiently without complaint. How light his punishment had been, and how huge was his happiness! And if till the end of his life he had to suffer these black, stinging moments of remembrance, gladly would he do it, since somehow they were necessary, part of a bigger design than could be comprehended.

The fire had burned up bravely, but still Norah did not come. Apparently the cancelling of arrangements consequent upon their change of plan was more far-reaching than she had expected. Then he heard distinctly the sound of carriage-wheels on the drive at the other side of the house, and wondered what that was. And then Norah came.

He had taken up the paper again, and she sat down on the arm of his chair. But when she spoke there was something in the sound of her voice which was new to him, and when he looked up at her there was something in her face which was new also. It was a little flushed, and the brightness and tenderness of her eyes dazzled him.

“Paul, I have something to tell you,” she said. “And, dear, do you know what day it is? ”

Paul drew a long breath, but said nothing. His eyes were fixed on her, his whole self absorbed in her.

“I have just seen the doctor,” she said. “It is what I told Theodore two years ago to-day.”

But Paul said nothing, and only silence spoke for him. Then Norah bent down and kissed him.

“Are you content at last?” she asked.

If Norah, as she had said, had lots to do, it was to be feared that her sins of omission that day were something ghastly to contemplate, for she did absolutely nothing whatever. All morning they sat before the fire, here in Paul’s room, while the sheets of rain were flung against the window-panes, saying a word or two, one or other of them, from time to time, but for the most part silent, for there were no words of use to them. Complete and perfect, up to its possibilities, as had been their union before, lacking nothing, it had been intensified a thousandfold now, and each day that passed would intensify it further, as this gift of the May month drew nearer to its whole accomplishment, even as in the garden-beds the sprouting shoots would be crowned with bud and open into blossom. Nor was the afternoon productive of any greater industry, for the weather suddenly cleared, and it would certainly be a “pity” not to make the most of their last day in the country. So they went out into the forest, that was alive with odours of the warm, wet earth, with delicate scents of the young leaves, and with the innumerable songs of birds. And the silence and intensity of the morning broke, as some deep river at a waterfall breaks into iridescent spray and joyful tumult, into laughter and gabble of tongues. They played once more the silly games which had made the hillside of Silomo to sound with their laughter; they raced boats made of bark and fitted with sails made of dead leaves across the pools of water that lay in hollows of the forest. Paul tried to catch a butterfly in his hat, but, instead, catching his foot in a remarkably strong bramble-shoot, fell quite flat on his face, all in one piece, like a lead soldier. But there were intervals of silence or of a few low-spoken words that filled the heart of each, even as their mouths, too, were filled with laughter.

They had wandered far and heedlessly, and when it first occurred to Norah that* they ought soon to be thinking of going home, they found that it was already five o’clock. So they made for the highroad and had tea at the hotel at Brockenhurst. To-day the remembrance of the hour of that Sunday before Christmas, which had begun so terribly and ended in such peace, was strong in Paul.

“It was here I left my bag, do you remember,” he said, “when I came down on that Sunday. You had to send for it.”

Norah looked at him, smiling “It is so very likely, is it not, that I should have forgotten?” she remarked. “Paul, even now, when I know you pretty well, that is a complete puzzle to me. I can’t understand how you could have thought I should have sent you away.”

“Love is blind,” said he.

To-day, too, they could even be gay about this.

“Love on that occasion,” she said, “was very imbecile.”

“You are silly yourself sometimes,” he said.

“Never,” said she.

Yet, even in the midst of all this, that sense of there being danger imminent came back more than once to Norah’s mind. It was quite vague, connected with no one person, but it seemed to her it was connected with to-morrow, that day of a terrible anniversary. Then, however, the simple explanation suggested itself: it was the thought of tomorrow that gave her the sense of danger, not the sense of danger that reminded her of to-morrow. And at this she resolutely put it away. It should not—a mere fancy—spoil in any way this beautiful last day.

The squalls and gales of the morning had altogether passed, and the sky was full of the “ clear shining after rain,” and of the liquid brightness of the hour after sunset, as they walked back along the darkening road. Lights began to twinkle from cottage windows, and the lamps of heaven were kindled above them; and when they reached Evrington it was already deep dusk, and there, too, the secure lights of home welcomed them, shining ruddily out from the dear familiar rooms, and different associations, each very vivid, leaped into the minds of each. Then both broke out suddenly, “It reminds me,” and had to go through the mystic ceremony of locked fingers and unspoken wishes before further words. Norah got through her wants first.

“It reminds me of an evening at Wroxton, too,” she said, “when mother and I sat out and saw smoke curling up from chimneys. It all seemed so quiet and secure, just as it does now.”

Then she stopped suddenly, remembering how quickly and violently her sense of security had been broken by the receipt of the private wishes.

“Well?” said he.

“Nothing. Something rather insecure happened directly afterwards. I wish I hadn’t thought of it. Tell me what it reminds you of.”

“Of when I got here on that Sunday evening. There were the lights shining inside just as they do to-night.”

They paused a moment on the threshold, and he kissed her.

“And you to welcome me,” he added.

The next morning was spent by them both, as always happens before a household move, in aimless journeyings from room to room to see that nothing was left behind.

“As a matter of fact,” said Paul, who was particularly given to “joumeyitis,” “nothing ever is, but I can’t grasp that fact. Also, I have feebleness of mind before a journey, and can’t decide anything.”

“What can’t you decide?” asked she.

“At this moment whether I shall want this almanack which I am holding in London. I can’t be certain. Do settle for me,”

“No, leave it here; you won’t,” said she.

Paul sighed.

“That makes me almost certain that I shall.**

“Very well, then, take it,” said Norah.

“Oh, but if I didn’t want it, it would be such a bore to have it always lying about.”

“Well, if you find you don’t want it, you can send it back here by book-post to await arrival,” she said.

“That would be waste of money,” said Paul.

“Oh, go away; I’m busy,” she cried.

Paul sighed.

“I wish you would take me a little more seriously,” he said.

But these and other equally insoluble questions were set-tied somehow, and soon after lunch they left. The station at Evrington was considerably nearer to them than that of Brockenhurst, and as the express by which they were to go up to London naturally stopped at neither the one nor the other, it was clearly equally simple that it should stop at the station most convenient to them. The line ran through a part of the Evrington property, and this privilege of stopping trains was one that Paul hugely enjoyed. It gave him, he said, a greater sense of importance than he ever experienced in any other way.

“At my word,” he said, “the speed of the flying train is checked, and it meekly comes to a standstill at a small cowshed and a board, on which is written Evrington. Kings and Queens and Dukes and Ambassadors lean out of their carriage windows to see what has happened, and observe a young man, in a rather shabby tweed suit, skulk into a third-class compartment. That’s me. It is so chic to stop a train and then go third.”

“Paul, you are an egoist,” she said.

“I know. Norah, I hope you did tell them to stop the train.”

A faint uncertainty showed itself on Norah’s face.

“I think I did,” she said.

“That means you are afraid you didn’t,” remarked Paul.

“Oh, Paul, I am sorry if I didn’t,” she said. “You see, things happened yesterday, and it may have put it out of my head.”

It appeared, on arrival, that this was indeed the case. The express had stopped yesterday, and then gone on again. And—the station-master was very sorry—it could not be stopped without an order from the Southampton office, which it was now too late to get, as the train must have departed from its last stopping-place. Indeed, it was due in five minutes now.

The little Theodore, now nearly two years old, with a great will of his own, and of hideously active locomotive powers, had gone on before with his nurse, and for the moment was seated on the station bench “as good as gold,” while she Was making, some small alterations in the internal arrangements of her handbags. This, therefore, was a heaven-sent opportunity to use the gift of locomotion, and while her back was turned over her bag, and his mother and Paul, rather further up the platform, were discussing the situation with the station-master, he slipped off the bench and toddled off away from the direction of the enemy to where the platform had an incline on to the footway across the line. There the shining of the sun on the bright metal rails was irresistible, and his fingers next moment were busily engaged in the hopeful task of picking up and collecting this nice bright rail. A couple of hundred yards further down the line, in the direction from which the express would in a moment pass through, there was a tunnel.

The nurse finished the arrangement of her bag, and saw that the child was not where she had left him. Norah and Paul finished their conversation with the station-master, and simultaneously the shrill yell of the train was heard. The child was busy on the rail of the up-line, on the far-side from the platform where they stood. Paul heard the scream of the train, and, looking up, he saw where the child was, some twenty yards from them. He jumped a box that stood in his way, and before Norah had seen what was happening, was flying down the platform. Then she saw.

Then—it could not have been otherwise, for mother though she was, she was wife to him and mother to be—she yelled two words at him.

“Paul, don’t!” she cried.

The decision seemed to tear the very heart out of her, but she made it, and called to him. He was on the line by this time, within a few yards of the child, and, rushing towards them both, wreathed in steam, black-fronted, huge and screaming and swiff, came the train. And then Norah stood quite still, but with her fingers in her ears, looking, not at the child nor the train, but at Paul. Perhaps this was the last moment that her eyes should see him. But there was a chance, and though, indeed, she had shrieked out, “Paul, don’t!” her heart, her very love for him, applauded and embraced him. He, being he, could not do otherwise than he was doing.

Paul, as he rushed down the platform, was not exactly thinking, but a series of very clear images presented itself. He longed, first of all, to turn his head and look at Norah once more, but there was not time. Next, he believed that he might just reach the child and push it at arm’s length off the line, but it did not seem possible that he could get across himself.

And in the same flash of thought the fitness and justice of what he believed would happen came upon him. He had often known how light his punishment had been, but he saw now that it was not quite over yet, though so nearly. He had killed Theodore, and the calm, un-angiy, inevitable justice of God demanded a due reparation, and gave him the privilege of saving the life which was Theodore at the cost of his own. And the moment that this thought struck him he felt in himself certain that he was going to his death. But the thought did not impede his movement; his legs still raced towards the child and the train.

Then, for one half-second, he wondered if it would hurt He very keenly hoped not. And he was on the line.

Close and towering above him was the huge engine, steam and steel and fire. But bowing forward, as if taking a header, still running full-speed, his hands told him he had reached the child, who had just opened its mouth to howl at this huge big creature that was running at it. Then, feeling sure in that supreme moment that the child was safe, he felt his foot stumble on something, and fell heavily forward. He did not know at the moment of falling whether that on which he had stumbled was between the lines of rails or beyond them.

Still whistling and breathing smoke and steam, the train yelled through the station, a long train, and for all the length of its passage that which lay beyond the far line, or that which did not lie there, was hidden from Norah. She had no idea where Paul was, or where the child was. She had her eyes fixed on where she had seen Paul last, and her brain was practically blank. But would the train never pass? It seemed to hide the far side of the line from her for weeks and months.

Then it was gone. There was a cloud of dust behind it, in which scraps of paper were running and trundling cheerfully along in the draught made by its passage.

Then she saw the far side of the line. Paul was just disentangling his foot from the signal-wires which had caused his fall.

But still Norah did not move. The very knowledge that he was safe was a shock as stunning as any other shock could have been. She saw Paul pick up the child, then he picked up his hat and put it on.

As he walked back across the line with the child in his arms, her power came back to her, and she moved to meet him.

“We’re all right,” he said cheerily; “not a penny the worse. I fell quite soft—didn’t hurt myself a bit.”

But she could not speak yet; she could only look at him— him first, a long look, and then afterwards at her child. He set it down by its nurse, and the two strolled away again up the platform where they had been a minute before.

Then Norah said:

“You gave your life for the child. You gave it for Theodore.”

She had stopped and taken both his hands, in hers, and she looked at him gravely. She neither trembled nor cried, nor wished to. The moment was too big to admit of such expression.

“Yes,” said he—“at least, I meant to.”

“Well done, Paul,” said she.

THE END.