That evening the settlement was drawn up. When he had finished it,

Traill held it out to her.

"You'd better just read it through," he said; "the substance of it

is there. To legalize, merely means to write the same thing at greater

length and in less comprehensive English."

"I don't want to read it," she replied.

"But why?"

"It doesn't interest me. You've written it to please yourself, not

to please me. Please don't ask me to read it!"

He was unable to follow the reasoning of this, and he shrugged his

shoulders with a sense of irritation. "As you wish," he said quietly

and put the paper away in a drawer of his bureau. "I'll give you a

copy of this, at any rate."

Before they had gone abroad, Traill had taken a lease of the floor

above his chambers, which contained rooms similar in shape and size

to those in which he lived. These, he had decorated and furnished

according to the slightest wish that he could induce Sally to express.

In the room which she used as a sitting-room, he had given her a piano

with permission to play on it whenever he was not in the rooms below.

Most of the daytime, then, she was at liberty to make what noise she

liked and, at all times, free to have any friends she wished to see,

on the strict understanding that he was not to be bothered by them.

There was only one friend. Janet came to see her on every occasion

when Traill had to be out for the evening--at a Law Courts dinner

or some such public function, but she never met him.

"Why doesn't he want to meet your friends?" Janet once asked her.

"I have only one," Sally had replied, laughing.

"Well--why won't he meet me? I suppose you've shown him that

photograph you've got of me? It's enough to put any man off."

"I shall never take any notice when you talk like that," said Sally.

"Very well--don't! But why is it?"

"I think I know--but I'm afraid you'll be angry."

"No, I shan't. Come along--out with it!"

"Well--I told him once--that first day I dined with him--that I

should love you two to meet. I said I'd love to hear you argue--"

"Oh, God!" exclaimed Janet. She cast her eyes up to the ceiling. "That

did it! What did he say?"

"He said he could love a woman, but he couldn't argue with her."

"Yes--of course he did. A woman has to be confoundedly pretty before

a man's going to let her have a point of view. Even then, if she isn't

fairly cute, it's his own he gives her. Then I suppose when you came

to live here, he saw my photograph?"

"I suppose he--yes, I think he did. I showed it to him; or he asked

who it was."

Janet broke out into a peal of harsh--strident laughter.

"It's a wonder he risks your bringing me as near as the next floor,"

she had said. "Lord! A woman with a face like mine, who argues! God

help us!"

But once she had understood that point, Janet had never alluded to

it again; had made no effort to catch a glimpse of the man who so

filled Sally's life. So much, in fact, had she endeavoured to avoid

their contact that, on one occasion, when she and Sally had been

climbing up to the second floor, and the door of his room was opened,

through which his voice had sounded, calling to Sally, she had run

hurriedly up the stairs out of sight, her heart thumping with

excitement when he had shouted out--

"Who the devil's that?"

The inclination to shout back--"What the devil's that to you?" she

had clipped on the tip of her tongue; but only for Sally's sake.

On this evening, then, that the settlement was drawn up, Sally had

slowly climbed the stairs to the floor above, and once in her little

sitting-room, with the door closed behind her, she had seated herself

upon the settee near the fireplace and gazed into the cheerless,

unlighted fire with dry and tearless eyes.

To her, the shadow of the end fell on everything. Just a little more

than three years and a bend in the road had shown it stretching across

her path. True, it was only a shadow. He had said nothing whatever

about leaving her; had not even suggested it in the slightest word

he had uttered. She must pass through the shadow, then; but what lay

upon the other side was beyond her knowledge, though not beyond her

fear.

To drive the apprehensions from her mind, she rose suddenly,

shrugging shoulders, as though her blood were cold, and went to the

piano. Without thinking, she sat down, began to play; then her hands

lifted from the keys as if they burnt her touch. She had as suddenly

remembered. Traill was below. For a moment longer she sat there, just

touching, feeling the notes with the tips of her fingers--listening

to the sounds in her mind--then she rose, standing motionless,

attentive to all the little noises in the room below.

She heard the clink of a glass. He was taking his whisky. The sound

indicated that he would soon be going to bed. She glanced at the clock,

ticking daintily on her mantelpiece. It was just after eleven.

Thoughts, calculations began to wander to her mind. Downstairs, he

had said good night, kissed her--gently, as he always did--and opened

the door for her as she came upstairs. But then he did that every

night. Every evening he kissed her, every evening he said good night;

but then perhaps, some half-hour later, she would hear him mounting

the stairs to her room, and her heart would hammer like steel upon

an anvil until he had knocked at her door and she had whispered--"Come

in."

Would he come up that evening, she wondered. Two weeks now had passed

since he had been to her thus, and so her mind--searching, as it would

seem, for its trouble--intuitively connected the circumstance with

this event of the settlement. So she drove herself to judge him by

the lowest standards--those standards to which a woman at last

resorts when she thinks she sees the waning of her influence. That

in the heart of them they seldom put first, but last. Yet in the

ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it is, in a man, the soonest to

come and the soonest to go, while fondness, caring and affection may

remain behind, untouched by its departure. The beast in the every

man has little to do with the intellect, and it is with his intellect,

above all things, that he loves truest and most of all.

But here Sally fell into that most common of women's mistakes. She

judged him by his passions. If she did not hear his footsteps on the

stairs that night; if his knock did not fall upon the door and startle

the silence in her heart into a thousand pulsating echoes, then she

knew that she would be one step nearer to the realization that it

was the end indeed.

She looked again at the clock and then, with sudden decision, went

into the other room and began to undress. From a drawer in the

Chippendale chest which he had bought her, she brought forth a new

nightdress, in-let with dainty openwork, which a few days before she

had purchased. This she put on. Then she went to the mirror,

scrutinizing herself in its polished reflection. Her hair was untidy.

She took it all down and put it up afresh, curling the long strands

around her fingers as he had often said he had loved to see them.

When that was finished, she sprayed herself with scent--on her hair,

her arms, her breast, turning the spray, before it spluttered into

silence, in the direction of the pillow upon which she slept. Finally,

she knelt down by her bedside and prayed--

"Oh God--let him love me--always--always; show me how I can keep him

to love me--always--always."

So she prayed for a way, having already chosen it, as once before

she had prayed for guidance, well knowing what course she was about

to adopt. So most of us pray that we may know those things on which

we have decided knowledge already. It helps us in the throwing of

blame on to the shoulders of God. It consoles us--the deed being

done--when we think that--at least--we prayed.

When she rose to her feet, she stood listening--listening intently.

Then she moved to her bedroom door and opened it. She could hear him

still moving in his room below; but now it was in the room beneath

hers--beneath her bedroom. He was going to bed. She crept to the top

of the stairs. Every sound she could hear there, the dropping of his

boots on the floor, the opening and shutting of his cupboard doors

as he put his clothes away. Then, last of all, the creaking of the

springs of his bed as he got into it and moved to right and left,

seeking the comfortable groove.

A heavy sigh forced its way through her lips. She had to swallow

hastily in her throat to check the sudden rising of the tears. At

last, with impulsive decision, she went back to her room, took a silk

dressing-gown from the wardrobe, fitted her feet into little silk

slippers and, without hesitation, without pausing to formulate her

definite plan of action, she crept down the stairs again, opened the

door of his sitting-room and stole in.

"Jack," she whispered. "Jack!"

Her throat was dry and the low voice found no resonance from the roof

of her mouth. There was no answer. He had not heard her.

"Jack!" She said it again and tapped faintly on his door.

"That you, Sally?"

"Yes."

"What is it? Come in. I'm in bed. Believe I was asleep. What is it?

Come in."

She opened the door gently. He sat up in bed, found matches, struck

one and lit a candle.

"Lord!" he exclaimed, "you'll catch your death of cold. What do you

want, child?"

"I can't get to sleep," she murmured, blinking her eyes at the sudden

glare of the candle.

"Why not?"

He sat there, looking at her, his eyes dazed, half awake.

"I don't know."

"Thinking too much?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Well, count sheep going through a gate. A hundred's the prescribed

amount."

She tried to smile because she knew that if she did not, he would

think she was unhappy or depressed.

"No, I want you to let me have a book," she said; "I think perhaps

if I read--"

"Of course, take anything you like, and try smoking a cigarette. That

may make you drowsy."

He lay back on the pillows. For a moment, she stood, undecided as

to what to do; then she went into the other room, taking up the first

book that her hands touched in the darkness. There, again, she waited

in silence. At last she undid the fastenings that held her

dressing-gown tight about her and came back again into the room.

"What did you get?" he asked.

She looked for the first time at the cover.

"Macaulay's 'History of England.'"

The springs of the bed creaked to his chuckle of laughter.

"You'll go to sleep all right now," he said.

"But I think I'd like a cigarette, if I might."

"Yes, why not?"

"Where shall I find them?"

"In the case, in my waistcoat pocket. It's hanging over the back of

the chair. What a ridiculous child you are to let that dressing-gown

flap open like that. You'll catch your death of cold. Fasten it up--go

on!"

She reluctantly did as she was bid; then searched for the case. When

she had found it, she came down to the side of his bed and stood there,

picking nervously at the cigarette in her fingers.

"Would you like me to blow out the candle?" she asked.

"Oh no, that's all right. I can blow it out from here. You get to

the door and see your way out first."

She sat down slowly on the bed by his side, then bent forward, winding

one arm around his neck, leaning the full weight of her body upon

him.

"Good night," she whispered as her lips touched his.

"By Jove, you do smell of scent!" he exclaimed. "Do you always drown

yourself in scent before you go to bed?"

"No." Her mouth was dry, her tongue like leather, scraping against

her teeth. "Not always."

"Well, good night, little woman; you read half a page of Macaulay

and you'll soon get to sleep. Kiss me."

She kissed him, longingly and then, as he half tried to turn, she

felt conscious of her dismissal and rose hurriedly from the bed.

"Can you find your way upstairs without a candle?" he asked, when

she had opened the door.

"Oh yes," she said stridently, "quite easily." And she departed,

closing the door behind her. With a glimmer of wonder in his mind,

he blew out the candle, just listened until he heard her footsteps

pattering overhead, then turned over and fell asleep.

But there was no sleep to be found for Sally. When she was once within

her room, she flung book and cigarette upon the bed and her body,

just as she was, across them. Then came the deluge of her tears. If

he had waited, listening to the sounds one moment longer before he

went to sleep, he would have heard the choking sobs that broke between

her lips.

CHAPTER VII

When Traill came back early from the Temple the next evening and told

Sally that he was dining with his sister at the house in Sloane Street,

she took the announcement in silence, eyes lifting to his in a steady

question, her heart wearily adding one more figure to the column of

events which she had already compiled against her hopes of happiness.

As yet, openly, she dared question nothing. She knew too well the

outlook of his mind where freedom of his own action was concerned.

Now she was beginning to realize the full extent, the full impotence

of her position as his mistress. Had she been legally his wife, he

had given her no cause to complain, created no right for her criticism.

As his mistress, she was still less justified in questioning his

actions and to do so would, she knew to a certainty, bring down his

wrath, more surely than ever draw to a close their relationship, the

termination of which was shadowing itself upon the surface of her

suspicion.

"Is your sister getting on better with her husband?" she asked.

"Somewhat, I think. I don't really know--it's difficult to say. I

haven't seen him yet. She doesn't want me to speak to him about it.

She thinks it might only make things worse. Says I've got a blunt

way that 'ud ruffle what little patience he's got."

Sally looked directly, deeply into his eyes.

"You really think it is serious?" she said. "I suppose it wouldn't

have been possible for her to have imagined it?"

"Imagined it? No! Why? What should she have imagined it for? We

Traills haven't got an ounce of imagination between us. How could

she imagine it? What good would it do her? A woman doesn't hesitate

and stumble and drag a thing out of her with tears in her eyes, hating

to talk about it, when the whole business is only a tissue of her

imagination. Besides, what would she gain by it?"

"Your sympathy," Sally replied.

Traill walked into his bedroom with a laugh.

"A deuced lot she really cares about my sympathy," he exclaimed. "I

assure you Dolly's not a sentimentalist. She only wants to cling to

her rung of the ladder, that's all."

That was all, and Sally knew it; but she could say no more. She had

tried to plant the seed of suspicion in his mind. She had failed.

The ambitions which were a motive to all his sister's actions, he

could see well enough; but to the means she used in gratifying them,

he was blind. And Sally, though she knew nothing, dared not attempt

the opening of his eyes.

"Are you going to change now?" she asked.

He mumbled an affirmative. She realized, sensitively, that his mind

was pre-occupied with other things and, quietly, she crept out of

the room, upstairs to the other floor where she stood, looking out

of the window, finding her eyes watching the women who were wheeling

round the corner of the Circus into Piccadilly, with skirts tight

gripped about them, little reticule bags swinging with their

ungainly walk, heads alert to follow any direction that their eyes

might prompt them.

When Traill looked into his sitting-room a few moments later, looked

through the opening front of a white shirt which he was in the process

of dragging over his head, she had gone.

"What are you going to do with yourself this evening, Sally?" he asked,

before his head was free of the folds of the stiff, starched linen.

No answer was given him. Then, when he found he was alone, he cursed

volubly at the intractable shirt. The words steadied on his lips as

a knock fell on the door. He marched across the room as he was, holding

up his garments with one hand and flung it open--one of his

characteristic actions--he cared little how he appeared or whom his

appearance affected.

"You? Come in!" he said.

A tall, well-featured man, well-dressed, well-groomed, walked in

through the open door. With a certain amount of care--customary

enough in him to hide the obvious--he laid his silk hat, brim upwards,

upon the table, pulled off his gloves, threw them carelessly into

it, and turned round.

"You're going out?" he said.

"Yes."

"Can't come and have dinner with me?"

"No, couldn't."

"Taking the little lady out, I suppose?"

"No, she's upstairs."

The man's eyes passed across Traill's face as they wandered to the

portrait of James Brownrigg over the mantelpiece.

"Well, I'm at a loose end," he said. He took a gold cigarette-case

from his pocket and extracted a cigarette. Traill continued his

gymnastics with the shirt, forcing studs through obdurate holes,

fastening links and muttering under his breath.

"I thought we might have dined together and taken the little lady

to a music hall, like we did before. How long ago was that?"

Traill tramped into the other room and came out, struggling with a

collar.

"Oh, last September, wasn't it?"

"Something like that, getting on for a year. How is she?"

"Oh, first rate. Will you have a drink?"

"No, thanks, old man. Where are you going to?"

"I'm dining with my sister. Going to some theatre, I believe."

"Ah, I saw your sister the other day, about a couple of weeks ago."

He seated himself, hitching his trousers above the uppers of his

boots. "Prince's, I think it was. Yes, she was skating with that Miss

Standish-Roe."

"Yes, she's coming with my sister and me this evening."

"Is she?" Again his eye lifted to Traill's face. "Damned pretty

girl."

Traill did not reply. Had he made some casual answer in the

affirmative, the man's eyes might not have followed him as he walked

back into his bedroom; the humorous twist of the man's lips might

not have been visible. There would have been no thought to create

it.

"What theatre are you going to?" he asked unconcernedly.

Traill mentioned the name, and began the singing of a hymn tune with

impossible crescendos and various deviations from the melody.

"'Can a woman's tender care

Cease toward the child she bare?

Yes, she may forgetful be ...'"

"I say!" he called out with unceremonious interruption to himself.

"What?"

"You say you've got a loose end?"

"Yes, there's Time got to be killed somehow."

"Well, take Sally out to dinner."

"What, the little lady?"

"Yes, she'll be lonely by herself. I gave her such damned short notice

about this engagement of mine that she didn't have time to send for

that friend of hers--that Miss Hallard. Would you mind doing that?

Don't hesitate to say if you would."

"Oh no, I wouldn't mind in the least. But how about her?"

"I'll call out to her."

The visitor could hear him opening the door that led into the passage,

then his voice--

"Sally!" The clattering of feet above reached them, the hurried

opening of another door, as though the person called for had been

waiting eagerly for the summons.

"I'm coming," she replied. Her heels tapped loudly--the quick

successive knockings as on a cobbler's last--as she ran down the

stairs.

"Mr. Devenish has come in to ask me to dinner, Sally," he said, before

she reached the bottom. "He's going to take you instead; I can't go,

of course."

The footsteps stopped.

Devenish, within the room, half-closed his eyes, bent his head in

an attitude of amused attention. He heard many things in the silence

that followed.

"Had I better go and dress?" she asked, after the moment's pause.

"Oh no, he's not changed. He's in here; come along."

Sally entered and Devenish moved forward to shake hands.

"Good evening, Miss Bishop; don't you hesitate to say if you'd

thought of doing anything else. I just had a loose end, nothing to

do--so I looked in here, hoping he might come out to dinner."

"It's very kind of you to think of it."

"Oh, not a bit. I shall be delighted. You say where you'd like to

dine; it doesn't make the slightest difference to me. I'll go back

and change if you prefer to dress."

"Oh no, thanks. Really, I think I'd rather not. If you don't mind

my coming as I am."

"Not a bit."

She turned to Traill.

"Shall I go up and put on my hat, Jack?" There was no interest in

her voice, no enthusiasm. This was a child doing the bidding of his

master. Devenish saw through every note of it. He

gathered--erroneously--that Traill had told her he was taking Miss

Standish-Roe to the theatre; fancied that perhaps she may have seen

or heard of the girl's undeniable prettiness, and was piqued with

jealousy. Certainly it was not for love that she was coming out to

dine with him. But that was no deterrent. He looked forward to it

all the more.

"Yes, run up and put on your hat; we can all go out together if you're

quick."

She went away quietly. They heard her mounting the stairs, but only

Devenish noticed the difference in the way she had come down and the

manner in which she returned. He also read its meaning.

"How long has she been living with you here?" he asked, when Traill

had closed the door and returned to the continuance of his dressing.

"A few months over three years."

"Of course--I remember your telling me."

They fell into silence, Devenish watching his friend with

half-conscious amusement as he clumsily tied a white tie, then shot

his arms into waistcoat and coat, one after the other, with no study

of the effect and apparently but little interest.

Lest it should seem unaccountable that this man, seemingly a stranger,

walking casually one evening into his rooms, should be apparently

so intimately possessed of the circumstances of Traill's

relationship with Sally, it were as well to point out that men in

their friendship are bound by no necessity of constant meeting. In

a while they meet and for a while see nothing of each other; but when

they meet--no matter what time may have elapsed since their last

coming together--they are the same friends whose conversation might

just have been broken, needing only the formalities of welcome to

set it going on again, as you wind a clock that has run out the tether

of its spring. To account then for the friendship of these two so

diametrically opposed in character--for in Devenish's regard for

appearances and Traill's supercilious contempt of them, there are

the foundations of two utterly opposite characters--it is necessary

to say that their friendship had been formed at school, after which,

a train of circumstances had nursed it to maturity. At school,

Devenish had been an athlete, superior to Traill in every sport that

he took up. You have there the ground for approval and a certain

strain of sympathy between the two men. The fact that at the 'Varsity

Devenish had developed taste for dress was outweighed by the fact

that he was a double blue, holding place in the fifteen and winning

the quarter-mile in a time that justified admiration.

These qualities had left a lasting impression upon Traill. He

disliked the dandy with a strong predisposition to like the man.

Knowing little of his life in society, refusing to meet his

wife--where he assured Devenish all friendships between man and man

ended--he had retained that predisposition towards friendship and

in the light of it had spoken, as every man does to another who is

his friend, in an open yet casual way about his life with Sally.

"She lives with me," he had admitted. "If you'd rather not meet her,

say so. If you'd like to, don't look down on her--I don't suppose

you would, but I never trust the virtue of the married man, he's

compelled to wear it on his sleeve. Anyhow, she's the best. I've never

met any woman for whom I'd so readily contemplate the ghastly

ceremony of marriage. But I suppose every one lays hold of what he

can take. I'm absolutely satisfied as I am. The strange woman has

no fascination for me now."

Two years and a half had passed since Traill had said that. Now

Devenish had dropped in again for the third or fourth time and found

them, still together, but with a vague and subtle difference upon

it all, to which his astute mind had assigned the reason which Sally

only, beside himself, was aware of. Traill was tiring. If Devenish

did not know it instinctively, then he made his deductions from the

fact alone that brought about the mentioning of the name of Coralie

Standish-Roe. To him, with his own social knowledge of that young

lady, the fact in itself was sufficient.

By the time that Traill was ready, Sally came down prepared to go

out. They all descended the stairs together, parting in the street,

where Traill held Sally's hand affectionately, then called a hansom

and drove away.

With apparently casual glances, Devenish watched Sally's face as she

looked after the departing cab. She followed it with her eyes as they

walked up into the Circus; followed it until it welded into the mass

of traffic and was lost from sight.

"Where shall we go?" he asked, when her features relaxed from their

strain of momentary interest.

"Really, I don't mind," she replied indifferently.

He mentioned the restaurant in Soho. She shook her head definitely.

"Not there?"

"No, anywhere but there. I don't--" she hesitated.

"You don't care for the place?"

"Oh yes, I do. But--"

"Well, then--" He mentioned another and she agreed to anything rather

than that which held so many happy associations.

When they were seated at their table, he leant back in his chair and

looked at her pleasurably.

"You know, it's mighty good of you," he said, "to keep me company

like this."

She was too impervious to outer sensation then to find repugnance

at the tone of his voice; at another time she might have resented

it. Now, scarcely the sense of the words reached her.

"Which would you prefer, a theatre or a music hall afterwards?"

"Whichever you like."

"Oh, we'll say a music hall, then. In a theatre, you're so bound to

listen for the sake of the other people who want to hear. We'll go

to the Palace."

She nodded her head in assent. There was no concealment of her mood,

no hiding of her unhappiness. Even with this man above all others,

whom she well knew was thoroughly aware of the relationship that

existed between Traill and herself, she could not shake off the

entangling folds of her depression, lift eyes that were laughing,

throw head back and face it out until the ordeal of being in his

company was over. At moments she tried--drove a smile to her lips

for him to see; but she felt that it did not convince him; knew that

it utterly failed to convince herself. When he began to speak about

Traill, it faded completely from her expression.

"Jack's gone to a theatre to-night, hasn't he?" he asked ingenuously,

when they had half struggled through the courses.

"Yes--"

"Duke of York's, isn't it?"

"Yes--I think it is."

He watched her closely, but her eyes were lowered persistently to

her plate, or wandering aimlessly from table to table, never meeting

his. The thought that this man might guess the running of the current

of events, stung her to some show of pride that yet was not keen enough,

not great enough in itself to master, even for the moment, the despair

within. All the making up for the part it lent; but the acting of

it was beyond her.

"You've met his sister, Mrs. Durlacher--haven't you?" he asked

presently.

She saw no motive in this. She felt thankful for it--glad to be able

to say that she had.

"She was at Prince's the other day when I was there and she told me

that Jack had taken you down to Apsley."

"Yes, I went down with him in April."

"Lovely place--isn't it?"

"Yes, I thought it was wonderful. Did Mrs. Durlacher talk to you about

me at all?"

She could not hold herself from that curiosity. Into her voice she

drilled all the orderliness of casual inquiry; but give way to it

she must. Devenish thought of all the things that Traill's sister

had said to him; he thought of the many others, far more potent, that

she had left unsaid in the silent parenthesis of insinuation.

"She said how pretty she thought you were," he replied.

Had he thought that would please her? Scarcely. If he knew her mood

at all, he must have realized that this was but the sponge of vinegar

held to the lips, softened but little, if at all, with the gentle

flavour of hyssop.

They had finished dinner now and were just sipping coffee preparatory

to departure.

"Is that all she said?" Sally asked, imperturbably.

"Oh no, I'm sure it wasn't. But that girl--Miss Standish-Roe--who's

gone with them to-night--she was there, and she kept on breaking into

our conversation so that really I can't quite remember."

Had he watched Sally's face then, as closely as he had watched it

all through dinner, he would have seen the colour of ashes that swept

across it, tardily letting the blood drain back into her cheeks.

"Miss Standish-Roe?" she repeated, almost inaudibly.

"Yes--Coralie--she's the youngest daughter of old Sir Standish-Roe.

All the others have paired off. Didn't you know Jack was going with

them to-night?"

"Not with her."

"By Jove--I'm sorry, then." He shrugged his shoulders to free himself

from the sense of discomfort to his conscience. "I suppose I ought

not to have mentioned it."

"Why not?"

It is hard to prevent a woman, in the stress of emotion, from becoming

melodramatic. Tragedy twists her features, strikes unnatural lights

in her eyes. She has but little understanding of the drama of reserve.

She acts with her heart, not with her brain--with her emotions, not

with her intellect. In a moment of Tragedy, it is possible for a man

to think consciously in his mind of the appearance he presents. With

a woman that is impossible. Considerate at every other time of the

impression which she gives, a woman, with the full light of emotion

upon her, throws appearances to the winds. She will cry, though she

knows there is nothing less prepossessing; she will distend nostrils,

curl her lip with an ugly turn, fling herself utterly into the grip

of the situation, and lose dignity in the tempest of her feelings,

unless it be, as in some cases, that the imperiousness of anger should

add a dignity to her stature.

So, in that moment, it became with Sally. From the instant that she

knew there was another woman in Traill's life--and it needed even

less than instinct to show her that this girl was trying to steal

him from her--the whole flame of jealousy licked her with a burning

tongue. Quiet, sensitive, tender-hearted little Sally Bishop blazed

into a furnace of emotion. She did not even know that she was

melodramatic; she did not stop to think what effect her expression

or her action would have on this man beside her. When he questioned

the advisability of having told her that which came so near to the

whole system of her being, she let reserve go, and feelings--a pack

of sensations unleashed--raced riot across her mind, twisting her

childish face into a haggard distortion of jealousy.

"Why not?" she repeated under her breath--"Why shouldn't you have

mentioned it? Did he tell you not to?"

Before him, within the next few moments, Devenish could see the

rising of a storm, and so he set his sails, kept a clear head, talked

gently, almost beneath his breath, as if the matter were not of the

import she found it. The jealousy of women was not unknown to him.

He had met it often before; knew the tempest it called forth; had

sailed through it himself with canvas close-reefed and tiller

well-gripped in his hands. In Sally's eyes, as she branded her

question on his mind, he could discern that unnatural glint which

presages the driven action of a woman who is goaded to desperation.

For Traill's sake, for her sake also, for his own sake too, it was

essential to keep a steady head--move warily and take no risks.

"Did he tell you not to?" she asked again, before the plan of action

was settled in his mind.

"Not at all--of course not. Why should he? Besides, if he had, should

I have spoken to you about it? I thought you knew."

"No--I didn't know. How old is she--this girl?"

"About twenty-one, I suppose. Twenty-two--twenty-one."

"Is she pretty?"

Devenish screwed up his lips--lifted his shoulders.

"Is she?" she reiterated.

"Many people might not think so."

"But you do?"

"Well--I suppose--well, she's not what you'd call plain."

"Ah, you won't tell me. She is pretty--very pretty. Is she fair?"

"Yes."

"Fairer than I am?"

"Well--she has red hair, you see."

"Is her father wealthy?"

"I shouldn't think so. Of course they're by no means poor."

"He's a knight--you said."

"He's Sir--he's a baronet."

"That means the title's in the family."

"Exactly."

"Is she a nice girl? You know her--you said so."

"Oh yes, she's quite nice. Nothing very particular, nothing very

wonderful."

She looked full to his eyes, her own starved for knowledge.

"You're not telling me the truth," she exclaimed suddenly. "You're

telling me all lies. You're trying to save Jack. You know you've said

too much in telling me that he was going with her to-night, now you're

trying to smooth it over."

"My dear Miss Bishop--" He smiled amiably at her distress of

mind--"Surely Jack can go with his sister and some other lady to a

theatre without your being so unreasonably put out about it. You

can't wish to tie him down."

"I don't wish to tie him down. That's the last thing I should dream

of doing. But you know as well as I do that he hates that set in society,

would never have gone near the house in Sloane Street if it had not

been for his sister's unhappiness about her husband!"

Devenish looked up at her quickly with a swift change of expression.

"What unhappiness?" he asked.

"Why, that they're not getting on together."

The moment she had said it, a rush of fear that she had betrayed

Traill's confidence, overwhelmed her with a sense of nausea.

"Please don't say I've said that," she begged.

"Certainly not; but, how on earth can you say it? Captain and Mrs.

Durlacher may not be lovers in the passionate sense of the word, but

I know of few married people who get on as well as they do."

She looked at him with increasing amazement.

"Some time ago--yes--perhaps. But not now?"

"Yes, now. I know it for a fact. They hit it off admirably."

Hit it off--Traill's very words! Then it was a lie. A lie of Mrs.

Durlacher's that day when they were down at Apsley, a lie to win his

sympathy at a moment when she had all but lost it. She had come down

there to Apsley with the intention of estranging them. Traill had

seen through that. Sally had realized at the time that that was what

had stirred him to anger when he had come into the dining-room,

finding his sister there with her. Mrs. Durlacher had failed then.

She remembered her smothered feelings of delight at the attitude he

was taking when she left the room; but it was after that, after she

had gone upstairs, that Mrs. Durlacher, with this lie of her

unhappiness, had won him to her side.

"Are you absolutely sure of that?" she whispered.

"Why, of course! If anybody's spreading that report about, it's a

confounded lie."

Sally looked piteously about her. The iron teeth of the trap she had

seen were surely fast in her now. As yet, she was unable to discern

the deeper motive in Mrs. Durlacher's mind in which the

proprietorship of Apsley Manor played so vital a part; but she was

none the less certain of the designs that were being carried out so

effectually to wrest Traill from her side. She was an encumbrance

to his career. Had he told her that himself she would, with bowed

head, have accepted the inevitable; but, coming to her in this way,

this deep-laid plot and all the machinations of a woman whom, from

the very first, she had had good reason to despise, a devil of

jealousy was wakened in her. Obedience she might have given; her life

she would willingly have offered; yet when it was a subtle poison

that was being dropped into his mind to eat away his love for her,

all force in her nature rose uppermost and she was driven to ends

so foreign, so inconsistent with her whole being, that from that

moment Devenish scarcely recognized her as the same woman.

"I can't come to the music hall with you," she said suddenly.

He looked at her suspiciously.

"Why not?" he asked.

"I couldn't--I couldn't sit there--I--"

It was impossible not to feel sympathy for her. The hardest nature

in the world must yield its pity when the scourge of circumstance

falls upon the weak. Devenish only knew in part what she was suffering.

The mistress--deserted--is a position precarious enough,

undesirable enough for any man to realize and feel sympathy for. To

her mind, seeing that before her, he offered all such pity as he

possessed. But of the love wrenched from her life, the heart aching

with its overwhelming burden of misery, he saw nothing. She would

get over it. He knew that. Women did--women had to. She would settle

down into another type of existence. She would become some other

man's mistress. She would pull through. He looked at her childish

face and hoped she would pull through. The thought crossed his mind

that it would be a pity--a spoiling of something not meant to be

spoilt--if she lost caste and went on the streets. She deserved a

better fate than that. But it would never come to that.

"What are you going to do, then?" he asked quietly.

"Oh, I don't know--anything--I don't know."

"You won't do anything foolish?"

"Foolish? How? Foolish?"

He leant his elbows on the table, bearing his eyes direct upon hers.

The slight catch in her voice was breaking almost on a note of

hysteria.

"You're excited, you know," he said gently. "You know, you're

imagining things. You've got no grounds for them--I assure you you've

got no grounds. Come to the music hall with me and forget all about

it."

She shook her head.

"I couldn't," she replied; "I couldn't. I--I shan't do anything

foolish, but I think I'll go now--now--if you've finished."

"Yes, I've quite finished. But I'm going to say something first."

"What?"

"Don't let your imagination run riot with you; and if I can do

anything for you--there's nothing to be done, I mean--but if I can,

you let me know. Will you?"

She nodded her head vaguely. It meant nothing to her; but she nodded

her head.

CHAPTER VIII

Mrs. Durlacher had asked one of her guests to come early.

"Come at seven," she had said; "before if you can." And Miss

Standish-Roe had arrived at a quarter to the hour.

When she entered the drawing-room, Mrs. Durlacher kissed her

affectionately, then held her at arm's length, her hands on her

shoulders and gazed pensively into her eyes.

"Why do you look at me like that?" Coralie asked.

Mrs. Durlacher shrugged her shoulders and turned away to her chair.

"For no reason at all, my dear child, and for a million reasons. I

wish I was as pretty as you are."

"What nonsense!"

"Yes, isn't it? But if I had that red hair of yours, and those eyes,

I'd be happy for the rest of my life. You can't grow old with that

hair as long as you keep thin. Do you mind my telling you something?"

"No, not a bit; what?"

"You've got a little too much on that cheek, and your lips as well;

do you mind?"

"Heavens! No! Was that one of the million reasons?" She crossed the

room to a well-lighted mirror and, by the aid of its reflection,

rubbed her cheeks and lips with a handkerchief taken from the front

of her dress. "Was that why you stared at me?" she asked, turning

round, looking at Mrs. Durlacher, then at that part of the

handkerchief that her lips had touched.

"One of the reasons? Oh no. I only noticed it. That's all right now.

I believe you look better without it."

"Well, I felt so fagged this evening."

"I know; that's wretched. If you were a man, you'd drink; being a

woman, you make up. It's much more respectable really. By the way,

you don't see anything of Devenish now, do you?"

"No, nothing. We saw him that day at Prince's--I hadn't seen him for

two or three months before that--I haven't seen him since. I don't

think you can ever rely on a married man. Don't you know that line

of Kipling's?"

"Which?"

"In 'Barrack Room Ballads'--'Fuzzy Wuzzy,' I think."

"Nothing about a married man, surely?"

"No; but it fits him."

"''E's all 'ot sand and ginger when alive,

An' 'e's generally shammin' when 'e's dead.'"

Mrs. Durlacher broke into a peal of laughter. "What a quaint creature

you are!" she said. "Whatever made you think of that?"

"Well, he is like that--isn't he? I mean, you never know the moment

when his wife isn't going to hear a rumour. Then he shams dead, and

the next time he sees you, he just manages, with an effort, to

recognize you by your appearance."

"Is that what happened to Devenish?" asked Mrs. Durlacher with

amusement.

"I expect so. I never heard that his wife knew anything; but from

the way he suddenly fell in a heap, I should think it's quite likely.

And he's shamming still."

"Well, let him sham. I don't think he's worth anything else." She

paused, watching the effect of her words. "Oh, and you never told

me what you thought of my brother yesterday?"

"I think he's rather quaint."

"Yes, isn't he? I'm glad you like him."

"But why haven't I met him before? Don't you ever ask him down to

Apsley? I never realized you'd got a brother, you know, till the other

day you showed me that case in the paper."

"Very few people I know do," replied Mrs. Durlacher, whereby she

created a sense of the mysterious, raised curiosity and played a hand

that needed all her skill, all her ingenuity. "I shouldn't have told

you about him, even then," she continued, "if it hadn't been fairly

obvious to me that he was becoming a different sort of person."

"Why, what sort of an individual has he been?"

Mrs. Durlacher told her. Ah, but she made the telling interesting.

A man who owns such a place in the country as Apsley Manor, yet prefers

to live the life of the Bohemian in town, shunning society, reaping

none of the benefits that should naturally accrue to him from such

a position, can quite easily be surrounded with a halo of interest

if his narrative be placed in the hands of a skilful raconteur. Mrs.

Durlacher spared no pains in the telling of her story. Led it up

slowly through its various stages to the crisis, the crisis as she

made it. He owned Apsley Manor, not they! It was his property, capable

of repurchase at any moment! And--she leant back in her chair,

covering her face with her hands as though the blow were an unbearable

tragedy to her--he had said that he would take the place back. Five

thousand pounds was nothing to him. He could find it at a moment's

notice. So would any one, when such a place as Apsley was in the

balance.

"You can imagine," she concluded--bearing it bravely with the

resignation of martyrdom--"what a catastrophe that'll be to us."

"Poor Dolly; I never knew of that. I always thought the place was

yours. You always said so."

"Yes; why not? With every right. It is ours--till he repurchases.

You see he's beginning to nurse ambition now. I suppose there's no

doubt that he'll come up to the top of the ladder. I always knew he'd

make a splendid barrister if he once caught hold of the ambition.

Now, of course, he'll find that the possession of Apsley's of value

to him. He'll have to entertain. A Bohemian can't entertain any one

but a Bohemian. Then, I suppose, he'll marry--get a house in Town

like we have--and use Apsley, as we've done, for his friends."

"But, my dear Dolly--what on earth will you do?"

"Do?" Mrs. Durlacher rose with a sigh. "Well--there's prayer and

fasting; but there'll be considerably more fasting than prayer, I

should imagine. I assure you, I do pray that he doesn't make a fool

of himself and marry some woman out of the bottomless pit of Bohemia."

"Well, I should think so. It 'ud be an awful pity, wouldn't it?"

"A considerable pity--yes. Here he is." She turned quickly to her

friend, but her voice was cleverly pitched on a casual note. "Don't

say anything to him about Apsley," she remarked. "He never admits

to possession of it--that's one of his peculiarities. I don't suppose

he will until he planks down his five thousand pounds. He has what

he calls a legal sense of justice. Makes sure of a statement before

he delivers it. You'll never catch him out. That's the Scotch blood

on the mater's side of the family. I should think it's saved him out

of many a difficulty."

Traill strode into the drawing-room as unconscious of the fate that

Mrs. Durlacher had so deftly woven for him as is the unwieldy gull

that, tumbling down the wind, strikes into the meshes of the fowler's

net and finds itself enchained within the web. Coralie, herself, set

to the task of winning him, was as unconscious of the subtly

diaphonous mechanism of the trap as he. Yet she was versed well enough

in human nature in her way. Innocence could not be laid at her door

with the hope of finding it again. But it needs the long training

of social strategy for any one to realize the cunning knowledge that

things are not obtained in this world by asking for them, but by the

hidden method of suggestion. That Mrs. Durlacher was in search of

a suitable sister-in-law was obvious to the most untrained eye. It

was no capable deduction on Coralie's part to have made certain of

that. But she hesitated when she came to the wondering of whether

she was considered suitable to fill that position herself. The

hesitancy was of but little duration. The first time she had seen

Traill, he had attracted her; now the attraction was increased a

thousandfold. She had often stayed at Apsley Manor. Once her father

had gone down for the shooting and had returned glowing with

enthusiasm.

"Place I should like to have," he had grunted, "place I should like

to have." And after dinner he sat over his port and amused himself

with breaking the tenth commandment.

But there was no certainty in Coralie's mind that Mrs. Durlacher,

with all her outward show of friendship, would consider her to be

the eligible one. Yet here the chance offered. She determined to take

it--hand open, ready for the gift.

From the moment then, that he arrived, she began the outset of her

campaign. The social manner she knew he hated. That she cast off.

The astute woman of the world, he despised. Mrs. Durlacher had well

grounded her. She wrapped herself in the simplicity of a girl whose

eyes have scarcely opened to a knowledge of life and whose inner

consciousness is as yet untouched.

If she had given him any impression of a want of innocence the day

before when they discussed the case in the divorce court which he

had won, she now swept it from his mind. He found her ingenuousness

charming. Her eyes helped her. They were big, grey, wide-open like

a child's. He found himself looking interestedly for the simple

questions that they turned upon him. In the box at the theatre, they

leant back in their seats and talked in undertones through the acts

and Mrs. Durlacher, leaning out to watch the piece, heard not a word

that the actors said. Her ears were strained to catch the progress

of their conversation. During the intervals, she levelled her

glasses at the house and was apparently too pre-occupied to interrupt

their enjoyment. In the interval that followed the second act, her

glasses, roaming aimlessly across the stalls, became riveted to her

eyes. After a moment, she looked hastily away, then stealthily looked

again. Finally she turned round to her brother, curbing the surprise

which, notwithstanding her efforts, forced itself into the

expression of her face.

Then she beckoned to him. He rose from his chair and came to her side.

"In the interval after the next act," she whispered, "look through

the glasses at the third row in the pit. Not now--not now! It might

be noticed now."

"Who is it?" he asked.

"I don't know--I'm not certain."

The lights in the theatre were put out just as he was about to turn

his head in the direction. He went back to his seat and in five minutes

had forgotten about it.

When that act was over and the lights revived again, Mrs.

Durlacher handed him the glasses. He came to the edge of the box.

Coralie followed him, looking down on the rows of heads below her.

"Look round the house first," Mrs. Durlacher whispered.

He swept the glasses right and left, about the theatre in an

indiscriminate manner--seeing nothing. Then he turned them in the

direction his sister had indicated. From one face to another he

passed along the third row of the pit, seeing only clerks and their

young girls, shop-keepers and their wives. At last he stopped. There

was a girl sitting by herself. Her head was down, her face hidden;

but he recognized her. Then she looked up quickly--straight to the

box--turned direct to his glasses a pair of dark eyes that were

burning, cheeks that were pale, almost unhealthy in the pallor, and

white lips, half-parted to the breaths he could almost hear her

talking.

It was Sally!

Directly she thought that he had seen her, her head lowered guiltily

again. She kept it bent, hidden from him, lifting a programme to

shield her utterly from his gaze.

He put down his glasses on the ledge of the box.

"Do you allow that sort of thing?" Mrs. Durlacher whispered as she

took them up.

"My God--no!" he exclaimed.

She smiled in her mind. That word--allow--was chosen with

discretion.

CHAPTER IX

As the curtain fell Traill proposed supper at a restaurant. They

readily agreed. Mrs. Durlacher, in the best of spirits, thanking

Providence for the weakness of human nature that had driven Sally

to follow Traill to the theatre, still thrilling with the sound of

his exclamation in her ears, would have lit the dullest entertainment

in the world with the humour of her mood. There was a part for her

to play. She played it. All her remarks, bristling with the pointed

satires of spiteful criticism, were a foil to the gentle temper of

Coralie's conversation.

"My God!" said Traill, as they walked down one of the passages to

the _foyer_, and he listened to his sister's verdict upon a woman

who had gone out before them. "Do you women allow a stitch of

respectability to hang on each other's backs?"

"She'd want more than a stitch," Mrs. Durlacher replied, "if she's

not going to put on more clothes than that."

Traill shrugged his shoulders, half conscious of a comparison

between his sister and the quiet reserve of this girl beside him.

He had thought her pretty, seeing her at a distance on the night when

he had dined with Dolly. Meeting her the day before, in the dim light

of the drawing-room at Sloane Street, he had found her still more

attractive; but on this evening, in the glamour of bright

lights--young, fresh, charming as she seemed to him--his senses were

swept by her fascination.

At all times a beautiful woman is wonderful--the thing of beauty and

the joy for ever; the phrase that comes naturally to the mind. But

when, conscious of her own attractions, she lends that beauty to the

expression of pleasure which she finds in the company of the man

beside her, then, to possibly that man alone, but certainly to him,

she is doubly beautiful. Nature indeed had been generous with Coralie

Standish-Roe. Nature has her moods and her devilish humours. She was

more than amiable when she bestowed her gifts upon Coralie. You may

talk about the value of a noble heart beating in an empty corset,

shining out of pinched and tired eyes; but it is a value, unmarketable,

where the good things in a woman's life are given in exchange. Janet

Hallard and her like have learnt the realization of that. And of the

qualities of noble-heartedness, Coralie possessed but very few. Her

disposition was intensely selfish. She took all the admiration that

she could get--and it was infinitely more than some women dream

of--with a grace of gratitude whose parallel may be found in the

schoolboy galloping through one helping of food that he may begin

another. Her hunger for it was insatiable, but she was too young as

yet for any such reputation to have fastened itself upon her; too

young for the manner which becomes the natural expression of women

of this type to have blotted out her undeniable charm of youth. Youth

saved her from Traill's critical appreciation of women. Two years

later he would have passed her with a momentary lifting of interest

which she herself would unconsciously have dispelled at the first

touch of acquaintance. Now, he was not only thrilled, he was

interested. She was a child. He found her so--as much a child as Sally

had been. Add her beauty to that--a beauty unquestionably greater

than the simple charm of Sally's baby features--and add still again

that fallacious sense of social position by which Traill realized

that such a girl he could not ask promiscuously out to dinner, could

not casually persuade to come to his rooms, and you have, besides

the unavoidable comparison between the two in his mind, that subtle

difference which a life of ease and a life of labour makes in the

position of women to a man's conception of the sex.

Immediately they stepped outside the theatre into the blaze of light

where the attendants were rushing for carriages, and men and women,

in a confused mass, jostled each other to fight free of the crowd,

Traill's eyes searched quickly for a sight of Sally. Mrs. Durlacher

also was alert to the possibility of finding her watching their

movements. But they saw no trace of her.

In the mouth of a little alley, deep with shadows, on the other side

of St. Martin's Lane, she was standing, her heart throbbing, half

timidly, half jealously, yet secure in the knowledge that she was

safe from observation. With eyes, burnt in the fever of a fierce

emotion, she watched them as they stepped into the car that drew up

beneath the lighted portico. When she saw Mrs. Durlacher's gesture

inviting Traill to sit between them on the back seat; when she saw

him willingly accept, notwithstanding that there was more room, more

comfort in the seat opposite, she drew in a breath between her teeth,

and the nails of her fingers bit into the palms of her hands. Now,

from what little she had seen in the theatre, and taking into greatest

consideration of all the proof of her own eyes that the woman was

beautiful, eclipsing herself at every point of attraction, Sally was

full-swept into the mad whirlpool of unreasoning jealousy. Every

action and every incident that her starved eyes fed upon were

distorted, embittered to the taste as though the taint of aloes had

crept into everything.

She thought she saw him lay his hand upon hers as he took the place

beside her. In that position she knew that they would be wedged close

together, their limbs touching, thrilling his senses as she well knew

she herself had thrilled them by even slighter proximity than that.

Here, too, she judged again by the lowest of standards, if judgment

it can be said of a wild flinging of thoughts--vitriol hurled in a

moment of madness. Yet against him she could find no bitterness. The

woman, kissing the hand that strikes her, to shield it from the

falling of the law, is a type that has made no history; but in the

hearts of men she is to be found with her ineffaceable record.

It was against the two women, against Mrs. Durlacher with her

damnable cunning, against the other with her still more damnable

fascination, that all the blinding acid of Sally's thoughts was cast.

The woman who had hoodwinked him with her lies about her husband,

the woman who had crept in, seizing the moment of his blindness--these

were the two people in the world whom she could willingly have

strangled with her little hands that gripped and loosened in the mad

emotion of her rage. Under her breath she muttered--hissing the

words--the vain things that she would do. All the civilized refinement

of humanity was burnt out of her. She was not human. She had lost

control. The thoughts that revelled in her brain were animal; the

savage fury of the beast starved of its food and then deprived of the

flesh and blood that are snatched from the very clutching of its claws.

It is not so far a call, even now, for this divine humanity, weaned

upon the nutritious food of intelligence, nursed in the refining lap

of civilization, to hark back, driven by one rush of events, to the

lowest forms of nature that exist. If, in the hour of death, seeking

immunity from peril, there live men who have trodden down the bodies

of women, beaten them with naked fists, severed arms from their

bleeding hands that held to safety in order that they might find their

own escape; then, surely it is no very wonderful thing for a woman,

threatened with the destruction of all her happiness, to give herself

over to the mad riot of murderous intent that shouts the cry of bloody

revolution through her brain!

In these moments nothing human could have been accounted for in Sally.

In these moments the fire of the enraged animal glittered in her eyes,

the incoherent mutterings of dumb passion vibrated in her breath.

A man passing down through the dark shadows of the alley into the

street, turned and gazed at her. She took no notice. Did not even

see him. The car was just beginning to move out into the traffic.

As it turned, too eager to follow it, she stepped on to the pavement.

Traill's eyes caught her then, saw her begin to quicken her steps,

break even into a run following their tardy progress as they squeezed

a way through the press of other vehicles. He looked out through the

small, square window in the back of the hood and could still see her,

forcing her way through the crowds of people, sometimes jostling them

upon the path, then running in the gutter for the greater freedom

of passage.

"God!" he muttered under his breath, as he turned back again.

"What is it?" asked Coralie.

"Oh, nothing," he replied; "nothing."

Mrs. Durlacher caught her lips between her teeth to crush the smile

that rose to them. Now she was sure at least that Sally's power was

broken. Her subtle use of that word "allow" had served its double

purpose. Not only had it delicately questioned the possession of that

authority which she knew he held above all things; but also, in

permitting it, the admission had been deftly drawn from him that

Sally was his mistress. She had known it before, as women do know

things. Now she was certain of it and, in her certainty, realized

that this was the moment--to strike when he was weakest. A man, shaken

free of the ties that bind him to one woman, is more ready than another

in the reaction of indifference which follows to fetter himself again

in order that life may seem less void, less hollow than he finds it.

To Coralie, then, in the dressing-room of the restaurant, as they

took off their cloaks, she said--

"My dear girl, you're making that brother of mine in love with you."

And to Traill, she jested as they said good night--

"My dear boy, considering your obligations to other women, do you

think it's fair? The girl's losing her heart to you, or will be if

she sees you again."

CHAPTER X

The congestion of the traffic, the knotted lines of carriages

conveying to their houses the thousands of people whom the theatres

had disgorged into the streets, enabled Sally to keep Mrs.

Durlacher's car in sight until it passed through the wide portals

of a restaurant in the Strand where, from the street, she could see

them dismount and pass into the building. They had gone to supper.

Traill had told her nothing about that. Then it had only been decided

since he had met them; he must be enjoying himself in the society

of these very people whose society he professed to abhor. That they

might have pressed him to accompany them so that he found it

impossible to refuse, did not enter the argument in her mind. All

thoughts tended in one direction--instinct guiding them--instinct,

drunk with the noxious ferment of jealousy, whipping her mind down

paths where no reason could follow, yet bringing her invariably to

the truth with that same generosity of Providence which watches over

the besotted wanderings of a drunken man.

For some moments she stood there, watching the doors which a powdered

flunkey had swung to after their entrance. Wild suggestions flung

themselves before her consideration. She would go back to her room,

dress herself in the best frock that Traill had given her and go to

supper there herself. She would wait there an hour, an hour and a

half if necessary, to see if he went home with them. That she had

almost decided on, when a man of whose presence, passing behind her

once or twice upon the pavement, she had been unaware, stopped by

her side.

"Waiting for some one?" he said, with that insinuating tone of voice

which disposes of any need for introduction.

She drew away from him quickly in horror, fear driving cold through

the hot blood of her jealousy. Then she turned, as he laughed to

conceal his momentary embarrassment, and hurried off in the

direction of Trafalgar Square.

That incident proved her waiting to be impossible. She walked slowly

home, all the spirit within her sinking down into an impenetrable

mood of depression from which not even the persistent hope that love

must win her back her happiness in the end had any power to raise

her. Now she was crushed--burnt out. Only the charred cinders and

the ashes of herself were left behind from the flames of that furnace

which had torn its way through her.

Lighting just one candle, she sat in his room waiting for his return.

An hour passed, and at last she blew the candle out. He might think

it strange to find her there, sitting up for him; he might suspect,

and as yet she was sublimely unconscious that he had seen her. She

was sure when she had covered her face with the programme in the

theatre that the action had been in time; moreover, she was by no

means certain that from that distance his glasses had covered her

at all.

Mounting the uncarpeted stairs from his room to the floor above, she

stopped once or twice, thinking she heard a hansom pulling up in the

street. Her heart stopped with her and she held a breath in suspense;

but on each occasion it jingled on, losing the noise of its bells

in the murmuring night sounds which never quite die into silence in

that quarter.

When she reached her room, she lit a candle, holding it up before

the mirror on the dressing-table and gazing at her face in its

reflection.

"My God!" she whispered.

Truly, in the light of that one candle, she hardly recognized herself.

Violent sensations, deep emotions, these are the accelerations of

time. They produce--momentarily no doubt--the same effect as do the

passing of years over which such intensity of feeling is more evenly

distributed. In those few hours, since she had heard from Devenish

that another woman was claiming the attentions of Traill's mind,

Sally had aged--withered almost--in the fierce stress of her passion

of jealousy. It had passed over her like the sirocco of the desert,

leaving her parched, dried, shrivelled, as a child grown old before

its years. No colour was there in her cheeks, no vestige of the sign

that beneath a mere fraction's measurement of that white skin, the

blood was flowing through her veins. Yet the skin was not really white.

It was an ugly grey, smirched with a colour that bore but the faintest

resemblance to animation. Beneath the eyes deep shadows lay, smeared

into the sockets. She lifted the candle to their level, but they did

not disappear. Pain had cast them, and no shifting of material light

would wipe them out. But it was the eyes themselves that startled

her. When she looked into them--deep into the pupils--she realized

how close she had drifted to the moment beyond which control is of

no account--the moment of absolute madness. Even then, they

glittered unnaturally. A gleam from the candle again? She moved it

once more--this way and that--but still the light flickered there,

frightening her into a sudden effort of restraint. She tried to pull

herself together; put down the candle hurriedly and, feeling the

leathern dryness in her mouth, caught at a carafe of water, drinking

from it without use of the glass.

That steadied her. Thoughts drifted back into their channels and,

coming with them, looming with its portentous realization above the

others, the remembrance that only the evening before, he had drawn

out the settlement upon her life. Now she knew why he had done it.

Now she found the absolute trending of his mind. He had said if he

died! That was only to blind, only to tie a bandage about her eyes

in order to conceal from her the true motive that had instigated him.

But she saw the true motive now. Under the bandages she had already

tried to peer; now circumstance itself had wrenched them from her.

With feverish movements, she opened a drawer and took from it a little

slip of paper. This was a copy of the settlement as he had drawn it

out. He had presented it to her.

"You'd better keep it as a memorandum of the details," he had said

and, without glancing at its contents, she had thrust it into this

drawer. Now she hurriedly spread it open.

"In the event of my death, or the discontinuance of the relations

which now exist between Miss Sally Bishop and myself--"

These were the first words that met her eyes. Her fingers closed

automatically over the paper, crushing it into her palm. Could she

need any more proof than that? That a settlement and dealing with

a relationship such as theirs must be worded in such a way, carried

no weight with it to her mind. She knew then, that when he had alluded

to the event of his death, it had been farthest from his thoughts.

He had meant their separation. In three years--a little more than

three years it had come. He was tired of her. She knew well then how

useless had been her efforts to move him to passion the night before.

Her cheeks flamed, thinking that it had not been because he was

unconscious of her attempt. He had seen it. There was no doubt in

her mind that when he had told her to fasten her dressing-gown, when

he had noticed the perfumes of scent from her hair, he had realized

the motive that was acting within her. But he was tired--satiated.

And how he must have loathed her! Yet no greater than she, at that

moment, loathed herself. He knew--of course he knew--that her coming

down to get the book had all been an excuse. He had probably thought

that her desire had been for herself. How could he possibly have known

that she felt no desire, had been frigid, cold, without a strain of

passion in her thoughts, seeking only to tempt him to her side, for

his pleasure alone, with the delights of her body? How could he have

known? He did not know! Of a certainty he must have thought that it

was her own satisfaction she was seeking. The blood raced back from

her cheeks, leaving her shivering and cold. Oh, how he must have

loathed her! Why had she done it? Why was there not some illuminating

power to point out the intricacy of the ways when people came to such

a maze in life as this?

In a torture of shame that blent with all her misery, she flung

herself, dressed as she was, on to the bed. Let him find her

there--what did it matter! She realized that she had lost everything.

And there she lay, eyes burning and dry, heart just beating faintly

in her breast. But when she heard his footsteps mounting the stairs,

she suddenly got up. If he knew that she had followed them, he would

never forgive her. So, in the midst of her misery, she still found

the strength to hope. Jumping up from the bed she stood before her

mirror and began to take off her hat as though she had that moment

returned.

When his knock fell on the door, she forced fear from her voice, drove

eagerness into the place of it, and called him to enter.

The door opened. In the mirror's reflection, she could see him stop

abruptly as he came into the room. With hands still lifted,

extricating the pins from her hat, she turned. His lips were tight

closed, his eyes merciless. So he had looked that day at Apsley when

he had returned to find his sister with her in the dining-room. So

he had directed his gaze upon the woman whom she had heard him

cross-examine in the Law Courts. The suspicion leapt to her mind that

he knew, that he had seen her; but having steeled herself to tell

the lie, she did not attempt, in the sudden moment, to reconstruct

her mind to a hasty admission of the truth. She must tell the lie,

clinging to it through everything.

"Have you only just come in?" he asked.

The tone in his voice seemed to question her right to come in at all.

And she was no actress. Another woman in her place, even knowing all

she knew, suspecting all she did, would have turned to him in

amazement; questioning his right to speak to her like that; covered

her guilt with a cloak of astonished innocence and paraded her injury

before him. Sally took it for granted; did not even argue from it

the certainty that he had seen her. Her mind was made up for the lie

and she did not possess that agility of purpose which, at a moment's

notice, could enable her to twist her intentions--a mental

somersault that needs the double-jointedness of cunning and all the

consummate flexibility of tact. He might know that she had followed

them, but she must never admit it. It seemed a feasible argument to

her, in the whirling panic of her thoughts, that her admission would

be fatal--just as the prisoner in the dock pleads "not guilty"

against all the damning evidence of every witness who can be brought

against him.

"I've been in about half an hour," she replied.

"Did you dine with Devenish?"

The same direct form of question, thrown at her with the same

implacable scrutiny of his eyes.

"Yes," she replied.

"Where?"

She mentioned the name of the restaurant in Shaftesbury Avenue.

"Where did you go afterwards?"

It was all prepared on her tongue. She did not hesitate.

"To the Palace," she replied.

"To the Palace?" He repeated it. His eyes burnt into her. Then she

knew that he had seen her in the theatre; but only in the theatre

where she could still swear to him that he was mistaken. Every

instinct she possessed forced her to deny it until the last; beyond

that if breath were left her.

"Did you see it out? Did you see the performance out?" he continued.

"Yes--we waited till the end."

A note of warning despatched to Devenish would ensure his

confirmation of all she had said. He had told her that if ever she

needed a friend--now indeed she wanted one.

"What did you do then if you only came in half an hour ago? It's just

one o'clock."

A thought rushed exultingly to her mind that he was jealous--jealous

of Devenish. He had not seen her at all. This was jealousy. Her heart

cried out in thankfulness. She crossed the room to him, all the whole

wealth of her love alive and bright in her eyes.

"Jack"--she whispered--"you're not jealous of Devenish, are you?"

A laugh broke out from his lips, striking her with the sting of its

harshness.

"Where did you go afterwards?" he repeated.

"To supper--we went to supper--the same place where we had dined.

Why wouldn't you tell me if you were jealous? Do you think I should

mind?"

"Jealous?" He took her arm and led her nearer to the light of the

solitary candle. There he faced her, looking down into the weary

pupils of her eyes. "All these things you've been saying," he said

brutally--"are lies--the whole--blessed--pack of them. You never

went to the Palace Theatre, you went to the Duke of York's. You sat

in the third row of the pit and covered your face with a programme

whenever you thought we were looking in your direction. You never

went to supper afterwards. You tracked Dolly's car into the

Strand--running in the gutter to keep pace with it. Jealous? Great

God! No! What have I to be jealous about? What did you think you were

doing--eh? What did you think you were going to gain by it?"

Up to a moment, she met his eyes; but when he railed at her thoughts

of his jealousy, then all courage fell from her. "Jealous? Great God!

No!" She knew it was finished when he had said that and, beneath the

weight of his contempt, she crumbled into the dust of pitiful

obsession.

"Did you imagine," he went on mercilessly--"that I undertook the

arrangement of this life with you with the thought for a moment in

my mind that you would institute a close vigil over all my actions?"

"It was only because I knew you were being deceived," she said

brokenly.

"How being deceived? By whom?"

"By your sister."

"How has she deceived me?" He forced her eyes to his. "How?" he

repeated.

To defend her case, just as the woman in the Courts had done, she

told him of what Devenish had said; notwithstanding that she herself

had pleaded with Devenish to repeat nothing of what had passed

between them. Then, in the cold glittering of his eyes, she saw how

she had doubly wronged her cause.

"So you speak to outsiders," he said quietly, "about the things which

I have told you in confidence. My God! It's well that you and I are

not married; well for you and well for me that we haven't to smirch

our names in order to get the release of a divorce."

"Divorce?"

"Yes. Great heavens! Do you think I'm going to live on with you now?

Do you think I'm going to be followed in all my actions--tracked,

trapped--and dandle the private detective on my knee?"

"Ah, but Jack!" She flung arms around his neck, her head bent close

to his chest. "I was jealous--can't you see that? I was jealous of

that girl."

He put her firmly away from him. "Oh, that be damned for a tale!"

he exclaimed.

She shuddered. She had sought for pity--the last hope. In his voice

there was none. If only she had had some one to guide her, some one

to show her that it would all lead to this. She would have held him

longer; she would still have held him, had she not given way to let

jealousy wrestle with her soul, flinging it at his feet for him to

trample on. Whatever had been the attitude of his mind before, she

had afforded him no reason to leave her. Now there was cause--cause

enough. She could only see the enormity of her guilt with his eyes,

so completely did he dominate her. That a thousand circumstances had

mitigated her action, had goaded her, as the unwilling beast is

driven through the noise and smoke of battle, until, in the fury of

fear, it plunges headlong towards the murderous cannonade--that

these things should be taken into account did not enter her

conception of the situation. She had wronged him. That was all she

felt. And now, clutching his hand, raising it to her lips, drenching

it with her tears and kisses, she begged his forgiveness, humbling

herself down to the very dust.

He took his hand away. "What's the good of talking about

forgiveness?" he said unemotionally. "The thing's done. I was not

the only person who saw you."

"Your sister?"

"Yes; she pointed you out first."

"I might have guessed that!" Sally exclaimed bitterly.

"Why?"

"Because she hates me. She knew it 'ud make you angry if you saw me

there."

"Oh, that's nonsense! Why should she hate you?"

"Why, because she wants you for that other girl. And you do care for

her now, don't you--don't you?"

Traill turned away with annoyance. "We'll leave that matter alone,"

he said. "I haven't the slightest intention of discussing it.

To-morrow morning I shall see about letting my rooms. According to

the terms of the settlement I drew out last night, you retain

these--rent free--to the expiration of the lease. That's three years.

But you mayn't sub-let."

Sub-let! He could talk about sub-letting! The irony of it dragged

a laugh through her lips.

"Do you think I shall want to sub-let?" she said stridently. "Do you

think I shall care what I do, where I live, how I live?"

"You'll be a fool if you don't," he remarked.

The hysterical note in her voice had jarred through him. Once before

in his life he had had a woman screaming about his ears. There was

no desire in his mind to relish the enjoyment of it again. He turned

slowly towards the door. This was the worst of women. A man's

relations with them were bound to end something after this fashion.

In common with most men, he shared a hatred of that termination of

all intimacies which one calls a scene.

But, really, he had no cause for apprehension. The tears now were

streaming down her face, sobs were choking her, convulsive

shudderings that shook her body in a merciless grip. Her spirit was

utterly broken. No worse could happen to her now. But through all

her misery, she could still think first of him. That tentative

drawing away, the hand stretching out for the door, she knew the

meaning of that; she saw that he had had enough--enough of her weeping,

enough of her despair. Just as when, watching the fight, she had

struggled against her weakness lest it should spoil his pleasure,

so now she fought down the hysteria of her mind to give him ease.

Very wearily she crossed the room and stood beside him, forcing back

tears with lips that were trembling and contorted. It was no show

of bravado, no spurious bravery, aping self-respect, taking it well,

as the phrase has it. She was not brave. She felt a coward to all

of life that offered. Her heart was that of a derelict--numbed, inert,

no spirit left in it--just lifting its head with sluggish weariness

above the body of the waves. But simply out of love for him she could

not bear to see him annoyed by her suffering.

"You needn't hurry to go," she said finely; "I shan't make a fool

of myself--the way you think. I shan't be a drag on you--I promise

you that. And if you're going to-morrow, wouldn't you stop just a

little while and talk?"

At any other moment the simplicity of that would have touched him;

but the affection that Devenish had seen to be tiring had been

snapped--a thread in a flame--when he had found her watching his

actions, dogging his footsteps. His liberty--that which a man of his

type most prizes when he finds it being encroached upon--had been

threatened. There was no forgiveness in the heart of him for that.

In the sudden freedom of his affections--just as Mrs. Durlacher had

so deftly anticipated--he had let them drift--a moth to the nearest

candle, a floating seed to the nearest shore--and Coralie

Standish-Roe had claimed them.

"Can anything be gained by talking?" he asked, quietly.

"Yes--perhaps it's the last time."

"But nothing can be gained by it. You'll only make yourself more

miserable. What is the good of that?"

"Do you think I could be more miserable?" she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders.

This scarcely, without seeking defence for Traill, is the most

difficult part for a man to play well. He had never offered, in the

first beginning of their acquaintance, to deceive her. He was not

a man who had respect for marriage, he had said quite honestly. He

had told her to go--have no truck with him; and if she had gone, if

she had not taken upon herself to return his present, he would have

seen no more of her. She had known of his love of liberty, and she

herself had threatened it; yet now, seemingly, he was playing a mean

part, deserting her, casting her off, when she loved him with every

breath her trembling lips drew through her body. It is hard to play

such a part well. Even the least sensitive of men, conscious of their

own cruelty, will seek to end it as quickly as may be. Wherefore,

how could he be expected to see the good gained by staying and

talking? What good, in God's name, did talking do? With the agony

prolonged, the strain drawn out, how were they--either of them--to

benefit? Here, indeed, is a judgment of the head. But it was with

her heart alone that Sally craved for its continuance. It was the

last she was to see of him; the last time that he would be in her

bedroom where all the passionate associations of her life would

always lie buried. Can it be wondered that she would willingly have

dragged the misery of it through all that night, if only to keep him

for the moments as they passed, by her side?

Yet he was driven to play the mean part--the part for which there

never will be--perhaps never should be--any sympathy. And he must

play it with the best grace he could. A man is always a spectator

to his own actions; a woman, in her emotions--never. So women lose

their self-respect more easily than men.

But Traill was not the type to allow these abstract considerations

to worry him. The love in him she found to be dead. He was not even

moved by the piteousness of her appeal. There, then, it must end.

It was not his nature to choose the most graceful, the kindest way

to end it. He snapped it off as, across the knees, you break a faggot

for the burning. And that, too, is the only way to do it.

"I didn't come up here," he said, "to discuss anything. The whole

thing's discussed in my mind. When I saw you running after the car,

pushing your way along the gutter--that ended it. You'd better read

through your settlement now and if you don't think I've been generous

enough, tell me to-morrow morning. I shall be downstairs till

eleven."

He opened the door--passed through--closed it. She listened to each

one of his steps as he descended the stairs, her mouth hanging open,

her eyes struck in a fixed glare at the spot where he had stood. Then,

when she heard him close his door below, she just crumpled up in an

abandoned heap upon the floor, and with each breath she

moaned--"Oh--oh--oh."

Traill, undressing below, heard it. With a muttered exclamation, he

dragged his shirt over his head and flung it violently into the corner

of the room amongst the bundle of dirty linen.

END OF BOOK II

BOOK III

DERELICT

CHAPTER I

Virtue is the personality of many women. Rob them of it, those of

them whose value it enhances, and you prize a jewel from its setting,

you wrench a star out of the mystery of the heavens and bring it down

to earth. It is a common trend of the mind in these modern days to

make nobility out of the women whose personality needs no virtue to

lift it to a pedestal of fame. But really, it is they who make the

nobility for themselves. Phryne of Athens, Helen of Troy, Catherine

of Russia, Mary of Scotland--these are women who have ennobled

themselves without aid of eulogy. Personality has been theirs

without necessity for the robe of virtue to grace them in the eyes

of the world. But with the seemingly lesser women, the women of

seemingly no vast account--with those whose whole individuality

depends upon the invaluable possession of their virtue, no great epic

can well be sung, no loud paean sounded. You may find just a lyric

here, a rondel there, set to the lilt of a phrase in an idle hour

and sung in a passing moment to send a tired heart asleep. But that

is all. Yet they are the women upon whom the world has spent six

thousand years in the making; they are the women at whose breasts

are fed the sons of men. The whole race has been weaned by them; every

country has been nursed into manhood in their arms. But they are too

normal or they are too much a class to have men sing of them. There

is not one mother of children in the vast calendars of history who

stands out now for our eyes to reverence. Upon the stage of the world

their part is played, and what eye is there can grasp in comprehensive

glance the whole broad sweep of power which their frail hands have

wielded? Only upon that mimic platform of fame, raised where the eyes

of all can watch the figure as it treads the boards, have women stood

apart where the recorder can jot their names upon a scroll of history

for the world to read. There is no virtue essential here; virtue

indeed but adds a glamour with its absence.

There is some subtle attraction in a Catherine of Russia or a Manon

Lescaut which tempts the cunning lust of men to cry their praise for

the nobility of heart that lies beneath. But what elusive charm is

there in the mother of children whose stainless virtue is her only

personality? None? Yet to the all-seeing eye, to the all-comprehending

brain--to that omniscience whom some call God, be it in Trinity or in

Unity, and others know not what to call--these are the women who lift

immeasurably above fame, infinitely above repute.

So, therefore, rob them of their virtue and you prize a jewel from

its setting, you wrench a star from the mystery of the heavens and

bring it down to earth, you filch from the generous hand of Nature

that very possession which she holds most dear. For without virtue,

these women are nothing. Without virtue, you may see them dragging

the bed of the streets for the bodies they can find. It is the last

task which Nature sets them--bait to lure men from the theft of that

virtue in others which they can in no wise repay.

And this very virtue itself needs no little power of subtle

comprehension to understand; for intrinsically it is a fixed quality

while outwardly it changes, just as the tide of custom ebbs or flows.

Intrinsically then, it is that quality in a woman which breeds

respect in men--respect, the lure of which is so often their own

vanity. And the pure, the chaste, the untouched woman, whether it

be vanity or not, is she whom men most venerate. Of these they make

mothers--for these alone they will live continently. And however

much love a man may bear in his heart for a woman whom some other

than himself has possessed, the knowledge of it will corrupt like

a poison in the blood though he forgive her a thousand times.

Such a woman, pure, chaste, and untouched, had been Sally Bishop.

But to one man alone can a woman be this, and then, only so long as

she remains with him. Once he has cast her off, when once she is

discarded, she becomes to all who know her, a woman of easy virtue,

prey to the first hungry hands that are ready to claim her. This,

in an age when the binding sacrament of matrimony is being held up

to ridicule both in theory and in practice, is perhaps the only

reasonable argument that can be utilized in its defence. It is surely

not pedantic to hope that the purity of some women is still essential

for the race, and it is surely not illogical to suppose that marriage

is the means, in such cases as that of Sally Bishop, to this humble

end.

Pure, certainly, she had been, even in the eyes of such a man as

Devenish; but in the light of a discarded mistress, all her virtue

vanished. Innate in the mind of the worst of men is the timid

hesitation before he brands a virtuous woman; but when once he knows

that she has fallen, conscience lifts, like a feather on the breeze.

With a light heart, he reaps the harvest of tares which some other

than himself must be blamed for sowing, and with a light heart he

goes his way, immune to remorse.

This then is the Tragedy which, like some insect in the heart of the

rose, had eaten its way into the romance of Sally Bishop.

For three days after Traill had left her, she broke under the flood

of her despair. For those three days she did not move out of her rooms,

taking just what nourishment there was to be found in the cupboards

where they stored the food for their breakfasts. On the side of her

bed she sometimes sat, biting a dry piece of bread--anything that

she could find--in that unconscious instinct with which the body

prompts the mind for its own preservation. But these meals--if such

they can be called--she took at no stated times. Crusts of bread lay

about on the table, showing how indiscriminately of order she had

fed herself. For two hours together, she would sit in awful silence,

with eyes strained staringly before her. Of tears, there were none.

Sometimes a sob broke through her lips when a sound downstairs

reminded her of him; but no tears accompanied it. It was more like

the complaining cry of some animal in its sleep.

For the first two nights she just flung herself on her bed when the

darkness came. She did not undress. The nights were warm then, or

cold might have driven her between the clothes. But, on the third

evening, she disrobed. This was habit reasserting itself. She did

it unconsciously, only remembering as she crept, shuddering, between

the sheets, that for the two previous nights she had not gone to bed

at all.

The toppling fall of reason would soon have ended it; that merciful

potion of magic which can bring a torturing misery in the guise of

a quaint conceit to a mind made simple as a little child's. Another

day or so, and the frightened agony that glittered in her

eyes--fusing slowly towards the last great conflagration--would

have burnt up in the sudden panic-flare as the reason guttered out,

then smouldered down into that pitiable lightless flickering where

all glimmer of intelligence is dead.

Inevitably this must have followed, had not Janet visited her late

in the evening of the fourth day. Two days before, she had written

saying that she would come if Traill were not likely to be there.

Her note finished abruptly, characteristic of all her letters.

"If I don't hear from you to the contrary," it concluded, "I shall

arrive."

She heard nothing to the contrary. The letter had lain, since its

arrival, in the box downstairs. Sally had not moved out of her room.

The possibility of a letter from Traill might have drawn her forth;

but she knew that such a possibility did not exist. The woman who

attended to their rooms she had sent away.

"I shall be able to look after these two rooms myself," she had

thought vaguely. Then she had locked herself into her bedroom, taken

up a duster to begin the morning's work and, after five minutes, idly

lifting each thing in her hand, she had seated herself by the side

of the bed, allowing the duster to fall limply from her fingers. Then,

throwing herself on to the pillows, had given way with tearless eye

to her despair.

When Janet's knock fell, she was lying in bed, eyes gaping at the

ceiling above her in a gaze that scarcely wandered or moved from the

spot upon which they were fixed. At the unexpected sound, she sat

up. Intelligence struggled for the mastery in her mind. There, in

her eyes, you could see it fight for victory.

"Who's that?" she called out querulously in a thin voice.

"Janet! Do you mean to say you're not up yet?"

"No."

"Well, come and unlock the door. I can't get in."

Sally drove the energy into her limbs with an effort and tumbled from

the bed. As her feet touched the floor, she lurched forward with

weakness. She clutched at the clothes and held herself erect; but

her knees trembled, knocking together like wooden clubs that are

shaken by reckless vibration.

With a little moan of weakness she stumbled to the door, holding to

the end of the bed, the back of a chair, the handle of the door in

her uncertain progress.

As soon as she heard the key turned, Janet entered and found Sally

in her night-dress, a white ghost of what she was, swinging

unsteadily before her--so a dead body, swung from a gallows, eddies

in a lifting wind.

"Sally!" she exclaimed.

Sally stared at her. Her dry lips half-parted to make Janet's name.

Her eyes, burnt out in the deep black hollows, flickered with a light

of thankful recognition. Then she swung forward, a dead weight on

to Janet's shoulder.

For a moment, Janet held her there, looking over the shoulders that

crumbled against her thin breast, at the disordered room before her.

She saw the crusts of bread, she saw the bed-clothes hanging to the

floor. She gazed down at the unkempt head of hair that dragged

lifelessly on her shoulder, and her eyes were wide in bewildered

amazement.

"Great God!" she exclaimed.

And she realized how inadequate that was.

CHAPTER II

For three weeks Janet stayed with her, sleeping with her, arms

tight-locked about her yielding body as they had often slept together

in the days at Kew. With her own hands, she fed her; in the warmth

of her big, generous heart, she nursed her back to life, as you revive

some little bird, starved and cold, in the heat of your two hands.

During the first fortnight, she asked no questions. What had happened

was obvious. She learnt from the people on the second floor in the

office of the railway company that Traill had left his rooms; but

under what circumstances and why, she made no inquiries. Brought face

to face with the exigencies in the lives of others, there is a fund

of common sense to be found in the character of the revolutionary

woman. That Janet Hallard was an artist, now with a studio of sorts

of her own, says nothing for her temperament and less for her art.

She had no conception of the higher life, and to her mind the inner

mysticism was a jumble of confused nonsense--the blind leading the

blind, for whom the ultimate ditch was a bastard theosophy. As a

matter of fact, Janet had no mean ideas of design; but they were

vigorous and, for her living, she had to struggle against the

overwhelming sentimentalism of the _nouveau_ art.

In dealing with Sally then, a subject needing tact, common sense and

an unyielding strength of purpose, she was more than eminently fitted

to save her from the edge of the precipice towards which she had found

her so blindly stumbling. It was just such a moment as when one sees

one's dearest friend walking blindly to the verge of an abyss and

knows that too sudden a cry, too swift a movement to save them, may

plunge their reckless body for ever into eternity. In this moment,

Janet kept her wits. With infinite care, with infinite tenderness,

never weakening to the importunate demands that were made of her,

giving up her work, giving up every other interest that she had, she

slowly drew Sally back into the steady current of existence; saw day

by day the life come tardily again into the bloodless cheeks, and

watched the smearing shadows beneath the hollow eyes as they

disappeared.

Then, at the end of a fortnight, she learnt in quavering sentences

from Sally's lips, trembling as they told it, the story of her

desertion.

"You shouldn't have followed him, Sally," she whispered gently at

its conclusion.

"I know I shouldn't--I know I shouldn't. And so I know of course he

isn't to blame. It's that woman--his sister. I always knew she hated

me--knew it! She used to look at me like you look at soiled things

in a shop! She pointed me out to him in the theatre. I can guess the

things she said. She brought the other--the other one to see him.

Oh, wasn't it cunning of her? Mustn't she be a brute! Think what she's

done to me! Look how wretched she's made my life! And she's got every

single thing she can want. Oh, I don't wonder that people have their

doubts about this marvellous mercy of God! I don't see any mercy in

what's happened to me. I never saw any mercy in what happened to

father; and yet he only did what he ought to have done."

The excitement was rising within her--a steady torrent lifting to

the flood. Janet watched its progress steadily in her eyes. When it

reached this point, she adroitly changed the current of her thoughts.

"What did your father do?" she asked with interest.

Sally looked up and the expression in her eyes changed.

"Have I never told you?"

"No."

"He consecrated too much wine one Easter Sunday where he was taking

a _locum tenens_--and afterwards, when he had to drink it--it went

to his head."

She told it so seriously that Janet was driven to choke the rush of

laughter rising within her.

"Why did he have to drink it?" she asked.

"They have to. Consecrated wine mustn't be kept."

"But why not? Does it go bad?"

"Janet! No--but, don't you see?--they do keep it in the Roman

Catholic Church--on the altar--that's why the little red lamp is

always burning in front. That's why the people bow when they first

come into the church. And don't you see they're afraid in the Anglican

Church, that if the Bread and Wine were kept, people might venerate

it as the real Presence, which of course it isn't."

"Isn't it?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I couldn't tell you."

"Then he had to drink it all himself?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't he get somebody to help him?"

"He did try. He asked the warden--but the warden was a total

abstainer."

Janet looked sternly out of the window.

"Then he asked a man he saw outside the church--but he was apparently

an atheist. At any rate, he didn't believe in that."

"P'raps he thought the wine wasn't good?" Janet suggested.

"Oh no--he offered to drink it; but of course as he didn't believe--"

"Didn't believe in what? He believed it was wine, didn't he?"

"Oh yes--but he didn't believe in the Communion. So father had to

drink it himself. And then, the Bishop came into the vestry and found

him."

"What happened then?"

"Nothing then--but a few months later, he was appointed to the

chaplaincy of a Union--of course a much smaller position than the

one he had occupied."

"Didn't they give any reasons?"

"Oh yes--in a sort of a way. They said that they thought the

rectorship of Cailsham was rather too responsible a post for him.

They asked him to accept the other in such a way that it would have

been hard to refuse. Of course, they couldn't actually turn him out.

But mother hated him for going. It was soon after we left there that

I came up to you in London. They were getting so poor. My brother

couldn't be kept up at Oxford. The governess had to go. Father died

not long after I left. I know what he died of. They called it a general

break-up."

"Oh--I know that," said Janet. "There's the shot-gun

prescription--all the pharmacopoeia ground into a pill and fired

down the patient's throat. It must hit something. That general

break-up is the double-barrelled diagnosis. You believe it was the

resignation of the rectorship that finished him."

"Yes--I'm sure of it. I remember, the day I went away from home--when

I came in to say good-bye to him, he was writing a sermon for Easter.

It was just Easter then, don't you remember? I went to the little

church on Kew Green. He read a bit of it out to me--something about

there being the promise of everlasting life in the rising of Christ

from the dead--and yet I know, in his heart, he was cast down in the

very lowest depth of despair."

Janet shook her head up and down. Not one of us is too old to learn

some new mystery in the inner workings of the human machine. To Janet

it was a fairy tale, what had been life and death to the Rev. Samuel

Bishop. But she had achieved her object. Sally was quieter after the

relation of that little story and, seeing in her mood a good

opportunity for suggesting some plans about the future, Janet said

quietly--

"What are your mother and sisters doing now?"

"They've gone back to Cailsham. They've got a school there for little

boys--sons of gentlemen--preparatory for the Grammar School at

Maidstone. The sort of thing that nearly every woman takes up when

she gets as poor as mother is."

Janet left it at that, and set about the getting of a meal, talking

all the time in a light and flippant way about her studio; pointing

humorous descriptions of the managers of firms with whom she had to

deal in her business of designing.

"There's one man," she said. "You know the place up the Tottenham

Court Road--he weighs seventeen stone if he weighs an ounce, and he

comes up to business in the morning, all the way from Turnham Green

in a motor-car that makes the noise of thirty horses galloping over

a hard road, with the power of six of them in its inside. He asked

me down to dinner one night; I went. It meant business. His wife

weighs the ounce that he ought to weigh if he didn't weigh seventeen

stone, and they sit at each end of a huge table in a tiny room filled

with maroon plush against a green carpet, and all through dinner they

talk about carburetters and low-tension magnetos, and Mr. Cheeseman

discusses what friend living in the row of houses, of which theirs

is one, they would get most out of in return for a drive in the motor

next Sunday. 'There's one fellow I know,' I remember him saying.

'He's something to do with the stage--his brother's in the

booking-office at Daly's. He might get us some seats if we took him

out.'"

Sally laughed. The first moment that her lips had parted to the sound

since Janet had been with her.

"It's true," said Janet. "I'm not making it up. He got that

car--allowing for his trade discount--for a hundred and thirty-five

pounds--cape-cart hood and all. It only costs him thirteen pounds

a year in tyres--and it can do twenty-five miles to a gallon of petrol

with him inside, and he reckons he's been saved five shillings a week

regularly in dinners since he got it. Well, what else do you think

a man buys a motor-car for if he can't afford it? Some one has to

pay for it--why not his friends? That's the English system of

hospitality--what I buy you pay for; what you pay for I get, and what

I've got I must have bought, otherwise I shouldn't have it. It's the

principle of the _reductio ad absurdum_, if you know what that is.

Everybody gets what they want, everybody else pays for it, and

everybody's happy. I'll do your washing if you'll do mine. Can you

have a more generous hospitality than that?"

Sally laughed again, and then Janet launched her boat of enterprise.

"You're fond of kiddies, aren't you, Sally?" she asked suddenly.

A tender look crept into Sally's eyes. "You know I am," she replied.

"Well--why don't you go down to your people at Cailsham and help them

for a little while in the school?"

The look of tenderness died out. Her eyes roamed pitiably about the

room.

"I couldn't leave here," she said powerlessly.

"Why not?"

"I couldn't. It's all reminding me I know; but I couldn't be happy

anywhere else. I should be miserable away from here."

The meeting of such obstacles as this, Janet had anticipated. She

knew well that slough of the mind which sucks in its own despair,

and with all the concentration of her persuasion, she strove to lift

Sally out of the morass. Failing on that occasion, she turned the

conversation into another channel--let it drift as it pleased; but

the next day she led it back again. At all costs Sally must be removed

from the association of her surroundings, and no means offered better

than these. Yet at the end of three weeks, notwithstanding all the

patient persuasion that she employed, her object was as far from

being reached as at the beginning.

"If you spoil your life, Sally," she said, as she was going, "it'll

be the bitterest disappointment to me that I can think of. No man

is worth it to a woman--no woman's worth it to a man. Can't you get

some ambition to do something? All your time's your own, and you

haven't got to work for your living. He's been generous enough--I'll

admit that. Let me give you lessons in drawing."

"I could never learn anything like that," said Sally, wearily.

"Haven't got it in me."

This mood of wilful depression, bordering upon melancholia, can be

perhaps the most trying test to friendship that exists. To throw life

into the balance of chance--to fling it absolutely away in a moment

of heroism for a friend one loves, is a simple task compared with

the unwearying patience that is needed to face the lightless gloom

of another's misery. It taints all life, discolours all pleasures,

tracks one--dogs one, like a shadow on the wall. Yet Janet passed

the test with love the greater, even at the end of the gauntlet of

those three weeks.

"I'll be with you all day, the day after to-morrow," she said, as

she departed; "and think about teaching the kiddies--I would if I

were you. You'd get awfully fond of them--as if they were your own.

Sons of gentlemen! Think of them! Dear little chaps! My God--the

mothers bore them, though."

CHAPTER III

It should not be lightly touched upon, this heroism of Janet

Hallard's in sacrificing three weeks of her work--every hour of which

meant some living to her--in order to save Sally from that ultimate

dark world of dementia towards which she was inevitably drifting.

It was not the sacrifice of time alone, not the fact that on her return

she was compelled to sell some of her valued possessions in order

to meet the rent of her studio which the work she had left undone

would have amply supplied. Much rather was it the noble perseverance

of effort through the dim, impenetrable gloom of Sally's wide-eyed

misery, her own spirits never cast down by the seeming impossibility

of the task, her resources never exhausted by the persistent drain

that was made upon them. Here was the strength of her masculinity

united with the patient endurance of the woman in her heart. No man,

of his own nature alone, could have won through the sweating labour

of those three weeks--few women either. But that very combination

of sex, that very duality of her nature which, as a woman, made her

unlovable to any man, and endeared her so closely to Sally's life,

had succeeded where a thousand others of her sex would have failed.

She left Sally, it is true, a woman with a wounded heart to nurse,

an aching misery to bear; but she left her with a sanity of purpose

which can take up the tangled threads and, however blinded be the

eyes with weeping, with fingers feeling their way, can unravel the

knotted mass that lies before her.

So she slowly returned to the common factors of existence, and in

six weeks from the time of Traill's departure, was ready to smile

at any moment to the humour of Janet's dry criticisms of life. But

to move from her rooms, to disassociate herself from the past with

every sorrow and every joy that it contained, was more than she could

bring herself to do. Through all Janet's persuasions, Sally remained

obdurate.

"I've only got the rooms for three years," she replied finally. "I

can't think of it as really past until that time's gone by; Then,

I will. I'll go anywhere you like. I'll come and share your studio

with you."

They entered into a formal agreement on that and, knowing the Romance

in Sally's nature, Janet pursued her quest of success on the other

point no further.

But circumstance, with an arm stronger than Janet could ever wield,

succeeded where she had failed.

One evening, as Sally was preparing to go out alone to dinner, she

heard footsteps mounting the stairs to her floor. On the moment, her

heart leapt, beating to her throat. Her hands, raising the hat to

her head, so trembled that she had to put it back upon the

dressing-table. A cold dew damped her forehead. She put her hand up

and found it wet. Then the knock fell and, shaking in every limb,

she set her lips and walked as firmly as she could to the door. There

she stopped, taking a deep breath. Then she swung it open.

It was Devenish.

He took off his hat and held a hand out to her. She accepted it,

confused in her mind as to the reason of his coming. Did he know?

Or was he utterly unconscious? He must have known; he had come to

her door.

"Do you mind my coming in?" he asked.

"No, not at all."

She made way for him to pass into her sitting-room. There followed

an awkward pause which he tried to fill with the laying down of his

hat and the discarding of his gloves. Sally stood there where she

had closed the door, waiting for him to explain his presence. Had

he brought a message for her from Jack? Had he come to see

Jack--knowing nothing--and, finding the rooms below occupied by

another tenant, had he come to learn the reason of her? Why had he

come? And at last he turned frankly to her.

"Miss Bishop, I saw Jack the other day. He told me."

Sally lifted her head with an assumption of pride, a strained effort

to show the pride that Janet had urged her to possess. She crossed

the room and dropped into a chair.

"Aren't you going to sit down?" she asked.

"Thanks." He took the nearest chair, winding his watch-chain about

his finger to convey the air that he was at ease.

"Did Jack send you to see me?" she asked then.

"No."

"You've no message from him?"

"No."

"Then, why do you come here?" She wanted to put the question firmly,

but in her ears it sounded wavering; in his, touched only with

surprise.

"Do you remember that evening we dined together?" he asked in reply.

Could she forget it? She nodded her head in silence.

"If you recollect, I said I wished to offer my friendship?"

Her head nodded again. She did not make it easy for him; but the social

training inures one to the difficulties of forging conversation. He

ploughed through with a straight, undeviating edge that in no way

displeased her.

"Well, I don't want to distress you by going over the whole business

which, as you might quite justly say, was none of mine. I thought

you might find it a bit lonely, and so, as I'd taken you out to dinner

before"--he raised his eyes, finishing the sentence with a smile and

lifting eyebrows. "Were you going out to dinner now?" he added,

before she had time to reply.

"Yes, I was."

"Then will you come with me?"

She met his gaze with frank speculation. What did it matter where

she went? Who was there to care? Janet, the only one, would urge her

to it if she knew. There was no doubt in her mind that friendship

had prompted him. It was a considerate thought on his part to come

and offer to take her out because he had imagined she might be lonely.

She felt grateful to him, but with no desire to show it. If it pleased

him to be generous on her behalf, why should she refuse to profit

by it? But here was no thought of giving in return. A woman seldom

meets but one man in the world to whom she will give without a shadow

of the desire for the value in return. What was there in the world

now to prevent her from taking what life offered of its small,

distracting pleasures? A moment of recklessness brought a deceptive

lift to her spirits.

"I shall be very glad to," she said.

In her mind was no unfaithfulness to the memory of Traill. Unfaithful,

even to a slender memory, it was not in her nature to be. The benefit

of the Church now was the only door through which she could pass out

of his life. She considered no likelihood of it; for, in common with

those of her sex in whom the strong waters of emotion run deep in

the vein of sentiment, she felt--being once possessed by him--that

he was the lord of her life.

"But I warn you," she added, with a pathetic smile, "I shan't be good

company. You'll have to do all the talking. You'll have to make all

the jokes."

"I'm prepared to do as much and more," he said lightly.

"Then you must wait while I put on my hat. Play the piano--can you?"

"No--not I. Can you?"

"Yes--just a little."

"Sing?"

"Yes--sometimes."

"Ah, that settles it. We come back here after dinner, and you sing

every song in your repertoire."

She laughed brightly at his enthusiasm. "You're really fond of

music?" she said.

"Yes, passionately. And I suffer little for my passion because I know

absolutely nothing about it. That's a promise, then? You'll sing to

me after dinner?"

"Yes, I should love to."

So much had her spirits lifted in this deceptive atmosphere of

diversion that Devenish even heard her humming a tune in the other

room. And he smiled, looking up to the ceiling with hands spread out

and fingers lightly playing one upon the other.

At a restaurant in Great Portland Street, shut off from the rest of

the room by the astute arrangement of a screen--ranged around every

table, presumably to ward off the draught--they dined in comparative

seclusion. Into the selection of that dinner Devenish put a great

part of his ingenuity. The man who knows how to choose a meal and

savour those intervals between the courses with anecdote, has

reached a high-water mark of social excellence. Devenish was the type.

He was not hampered with the possession of intelligence. Wit he had,

but it was not his own. The man, after all, who can echo the wit of

others and suit its application to the moment is a man of no little

accomplishment. The least that can be said of him is that he is worthy

of his place at a dinner-table where conversation is as empty as the

bubbles that shoot through the glittering wine to the frothy surface.

To suffer from intelligence in such an atmosphere as this is a

disease--the silent sickness--of which such symptoms as the lips

tight bound, the heart heavy, and an aching void behind the eyes,

are common to all its victims. Later, in the course of its development,

if the attack is acute, comes the forced speech from lips now scarcely

opened--forced speech recognizable by its various degrees of

imbecility. The man, for instance, who asks you if you have been to

a theatre lately when you have just deftly foisted upon the company

the latest joke you heard in a musical comedy, has reached that stage

of the disease when retirement is the only cure. Like quinine in fever

districts, there is one drug which may ward off the icy fingers of

the complaint--champagne--but it should be administered at frequent

intervals.

From such a malady as this, Devenish was not only immune, but he

carried with him that lightness of spirit which may go far to relieve

others of their suffering. Add to this a face well-featured, a figure

well-planned with all the alertness of an athlete, an immaculate

taste in dress, and you have the type which the 'Varsity mould offers

yearly to the ephemeral needs of her country. The impression remains,

stamped upon the man until he is well-nigh forty. He knows how to

get drunk in the most gentlemanly way and his judgment about women

is sometimes very shrewd. A knowledge of the classics is of service

to him if he does nothing. If, on the other hand, he sets about the

earning of his living--a drudgery that some of these youths are

compelled to submit to--the classics are only the peas in the shoe

which, as a pilgrim to the far-off shrine of utility, he is compelled

to wear.

Not having to earn his own livelihood, or rather, having already

earned it in the profession of matrimony into which he had entered

in partnership with a wealthy woman, Devenish was a pride to the

college which had turned him out.