PART II

THREE HUMAN HEARTS

I

And now I was twenty-six.

Everyone who knows Jove knows the poignant and delicious day when the

lovers, undeclared, but sure of mutual passion, await the magic moment of

avowal, with all its changeful consequences. I resume my fragmentary

narrative at such a day in my life. As for me, I waited for the avowal as

for an earthquake. I felt as though I were the captain of a ship on fire,

and the only person aware that the flames were creeping towards a powder

magazine. And my love shone fiercely in my heart, like a southern star;

it held me, hypnotized, in a thrilling and exquisite entrancement, so

that if my secret, silent lover was away from me, as on that fatal night

in my drawing-room, my friends were but phantom presences in a shadowy

world. This is not an exaggerated figure, but the truth, for when I have

loved I have loved much....

My drawing-room in Bedford Court, that night on which the violent drama

of my life recommenced, indicated fairly the sorts of success which I

had achieved, and the direction of my tastes. The victim of Diaz had

gradually passed away, and a new creature had replaced her--a creature

rapidly developed, and somewhat brazened in the process under the sun of

an extraordinary double prosperity in London. I had soon learnt that my

face had a magic to win for me what wealth cannot buy. My books had given

me fame and money. And I could not prevent the world from worshipping the

woman whom it deemed the gods had greatly favoured. I could not have

prevented it, even had I wished, and I did not wish, I knew well that no

merit and no virtue, but merely the accident of facial curves, and the

accident of a convolution of the brain, had brought me this ascendancy,

and at first I reminded myself of the duty of humility. But when homage

is reiterated, when the pleasure of obeying a command and satisfying a

caprice is begged for, when roses are strewn, and even necks put down in

the path, one forgets to be humble; one forgets that in meekness alone

lies the sole good; one confuses deserts with the hazards of heredity.

However, in the end fate has no favourites. A woman who has beauty wants

to frame it in beauty. The eye is a sensualist, and its appetites, once

aroused, grow. A beautiful woman takes the same pleasure in the sight of

another beautiful woman as a man does; only jealousy or fear prevents her

from admitting the pleasure. I collected beautiful women.... Elegance is

a form of beauty. It not only enhances beauty, but it is the one thing

which will console the eye for the absence of beauty. The first rule

which I made for my home was that in it my eye should not be offended. I

lost much, doubtless, by adhering to it, but not more than I gained. And

since elegance is impossible without good manners, and good manners are a

convention, though a supremely good one, the society by which I

surrounded myself was conventional; superficially, of course, for it is

the business of a convention to be not more than superficial. Some

persons after knowing my drawing-room were astounded by my books, others

after reading my books were astounded by my drawing-room; but these

persons lacked perception. Given elegance, with or without beauty itself,

I had naturally sought, in my friends, intellectual courage, honest

thinking, kindness of heart, creative talent, distinction, wit. My search

had not been unfortunate.... You see Heaven had been so kind to me!

That night in my drawing-room (far too full of bric-a-brac of all climes

and ages), beneath the blaze of the two Empire chandeliers, which

Vicary, the musical composer, had found for me in Chartres, there were

perhaps a dozen guests assembled.

Vicary had just given, in his driest manner, a description of his recent

visit to receive the accolade from the Queen. It was replete with the

usual quaint Vicary details--such as the solemn warning whisper of an

equerry in Vicary's ear as he walked backwards, '_Mind the edge of the

carpet';_ and we all laughed, I absently, and yet a little

hysterically--all save Vicary, whose foible was never to laugh. But

immediately afterwards there was a pause, one of those disconcerting,

involuntary pauses which at a social gathering are like a chill hint of

autumn in late summer, and which accuse the hostess. It was over in an

instant; the broken current was resumed; everybody pretended that

everything was as usual at my receptions. But that pause was the

beginning of the downfall.

With a fierce effort I tried to escape from my entrancement, to be

interested in these unreal shadows whose voices seemed to come to me from

a distance, and to make my glance forget the door, where the one reality

in the world for me, my unspoken lover, should have appeared long since.

I joined unskilfully in a conversation which Vicary and Mrs. Sardis and

her daughter Jocelyn were conducting quite well without my assistance.

The rest were chattering now, in one or two groups, except Lord Francis

Alcar, who, I suddenly noticed, sat alone on a settee behind the piano.

Here was another unfortunate result of my preoccupation. By what

negligence had I allowed him to be thus forsaken? I rose and went across

to him, penitent, and glad to leave the others.

There are only two fundamental differences in the world--the difference

between sex and sex, and the difference between youth and age. Lord

Francis Alcar was sixty years older than me. His life was over before

mine had commenced. It seemed incredible; but I had acquired the whole of

my mundane experience, while he was merely waiting for death. At seventy,

men begin to be separated from their fellow-creatures. At eighty, they

are like islets sticking out of a sea. At eighty-five, with their

trembling and deliberate speech, they are the abstract voice of human

wisdom. They gather wisdom with amazing rapidity in the latter years, and

even their folly is wise then. Lord Francis was eighty-six; his faculties

enfeebled but intact after a career devoted to the three most costly of

all luxuries--pretty women, fine pictures, and rare books; a tall, spare

man, quietly proud of his age, his ability to go out in the evening

unattended, his amorous past, and his contributions to the history of

English printing.

As I approached him, he leaned forward into his favourite attitude,

elbows on knees and fingertips lightly touching, and he looked up at me.

And his eyes, sunken and fatigued and yet audacious, seemed to flash out.

He opened his thin lips to speak. When old men speak, they have the air

of rousing themselves from an eternal contemplation in order to do so,

and what they say becomes accordingly oracular.

'Pallor suits you,' he piped gallantly, and then added: 'But do not carry

it to extremes.'

'Am I so pale, then?' I faltered, trying to smile naturally.

I sat down beside him, and smoothed out my black lace dress; he examined

it like a connoisseur.

'Yes,' he said at length. 'What is the matter?'

Lord Francis charged this apparently simple and naïve question with a

strange intimate meaning. The men who surround a woman such as I, living

as I lived, are always demanding, with a secret thirst, 'Does she really

live without love? What does she conceal?' I have read this interrogation

in the eyes of scores of men; but no one, save Lord Francis, would have

had the right to put it into the tones of his voice. We were so mutually

foreign and disinterested, so at the opposite ends of life, that he had

nothing to gain and I nothing to lose, and I could have permitted to this

sage ruin of a male almost a confessor's freedom. Moreover, we had an

affectionate regard for each other.

I said nothing, and he repeated in his treble:

'What is the matter?'

'Love is the matter!' I might have passionately cried out to him, had we

been alone. But I merely responded to his tone with my eyes. I thanked

him with my eyes for his bold and flattering curiosity, senile, but

thoroughly masculine to the last. And I said:

'I am only a little exhausted. I finished my novel yesterday.'

It was my sixth novel in five years.

'With you,' he said, 'work is simply a drug.'

'Lord Francis,' I expostulated, 'how do you know that?'

'And it has got such a hold of you that you cannot do without it,' he

proceeded, with slow, faint shrillness. 'Some women take to morphia,

others take to work.'

'On the contrary,' I said, 'I have quite determined to do no more work

for twelve months.'

'Seriously?'

'Seriously.'

He faced me, vivacious, and leaned against the back of the settee.

'Then you mean to give yourself time to love?' he murmured, as it were

with a kind malice, and every crease in his veined and yellow features

was intensified by an enigmatic smile.

'Why not?' I laughed encouragingly. 'Why not? What do you advise?'

'I advise it,' he said positively. 'I advise it. You have already wasted

the best years.'

'The best?'

'One can never afterwards love as one loves at twenty. But there! You

have nothing to learn about love!'

He gave me one of those disrobing glances of which men who have dedicated

their existence to women alone have the secret. I shrank under the

ordeal; I tried to clutch my clothes about me.

The chatter from the other end of the room grew louder. Vicary was gazing

critically at his chandeliers.

'Does love bring happiness?' I asked Lord Francis, carefully ignoring

his remark.

'For forty years,' he quavered, 'I made love to every pretty woman I

met, in the search for happiness. I may have got five per cent. return on

my outlay, which is perhaps not bad in these hard times; but I certainly

did not get even that in happiness. I got it in--other ways.'

'And if you had to begin afresh?'

He stood up, turned his back on the room, and looked down at me from his

bent height. His knotted hands were shaking, as they always shook.

'I would do the same again,' he whispered.

'Would you?' I said, looking up at him. 'Truly?'

'Yes. Only the fool and the very young expect happiness. The wise merely

hope to be interested, at least not to be bored, in their passage through

this world. Nothing is so interesting as love and grief, and the one

involves the other. Ah! would I not do the same again!'

He spoke gravely, wistfully, and vehemently, as if employing the last

spark of divine fire that was left in his decrepit frame. This undaunted

confession of a faith which had survived twenty years of inactive

meditation, this banner waved by an expiring arm in the face of the

eternity that mocks at the transience of human things, filled me with

admiration. My eyes moistened, but I continued to look up at him.

'What is the title of the new book?' he demanded casually, sinking

into a chair.

'_Burning Sappho_,' I answered. 'But the title is very misleading.'

'Bright star!' he exclaimed, taking my hand. 'With such a title you will

surely beat the record of the Good Dame.'

'Hsh!' I enjoined him.

Jocelyn Sardis was coming towards us.

The Good Dame was the sobriquet which Lord Francis had invented to

conceal--or to display--his courteous disdain of the ideals represented

by Mrs. Sardis, that pillar long established, that stately dowager, that

impeccable _doyenne_ of serious English fiction. Mrs. Sardis had

captured two continents. Her novels, dealing with all the profound

problems of the age, were read by philosophers and politicians, and one

of them had reached a circulation of a quarter of a million copies. Her

dignified and indefatigable pen furnished her with an income of fifteen

thousand pounds a year.

Jocelyn Sardis was just entering her mother's world, and she had

apparently not yet recovered from the surprise of the discovery that she

was a woman; a simple and lovable young creature with brains amply

sufficient for the making of apple-pies. As she greeted Lord Francis in

her clear, innocent voice, I wondered sadly why her mother should be so

anxious to embroider the work of Nature. I thought if Jocelyn could just

be left alone to fall in love with some average, kindly stockbroker, how

much more nearly the eternal purpose might be fulfilled....

'Yes, I remember,' Lord Francis was saying. 'It was at St. Malo. And what

did you think of the Breton peasant?'

'Oh,' said Jocelyn, 'mamma has not yet allowed us to study the condition

of the lower classes in France. We are all so busy with the new

Settlement.'

'It must be very exhausting, my dear child,' said Lord Francis.

I rose.

'I came to ask you to play something,' the child appealed to me. 'I have

never heard you play, and everyone says--'

'Jocelyn, my pet,' the precise, prim utterance of Mrs. Sardis floated

across the room.

'What, mamma?'

'You are not to trouble Miss Peel. Perhaps she does not feel equal

to playing.'

My blood rose in an instant. I cannot tell why, unless it was that I

resented from Mrs. Sardis even the slightest allusion to the fact that I

was not entirely myself. The latent antagonism between us became

violently active in my heart. I believe I blushed. I know that I felt

murderous towards Mrs. Sardis. I gave her my most adorable smile, and I

said, with sugar in my voice:

'But I shall be delighted to play for Jocelyn.'

It was an act of bravado on my part to attempt to play the piano in the

mood in which I found myself; and that I should have begun the opening

phrase of Chopin's first Ballade, that composition so laden with

formidable memories--begun it without thinking and without

apprehension--showed how far I had lost my self-control. Not that the

silver sounds which shimmered from the Broadwood under my feverish hands

filled me with sentimental regrets for an irrecoverable past. No! But I

saw the victim of Diaz as though I had never been she. She was for me one

of those ladies that have loved and are dead. The simplicity of her mind

and her situation, compared with my mind and my situation, seemed

unbearably piteous to me. Why, I knew not. The pathos of that brief and

vanished idyll overcame me like some sad story of an antique princess.

And then, magically, I saw the pathos of my present position in it as in

a truth-revealing mirror. My fame, and my knowledge and my experience,

my trained imagination, my skill, my social splendour, my wealth, were

stripped away from me as inessential, and I was merely a woman in love,

to whom love could not fail to bring calamity and grief; a woman

expecting her lover, and yet to whom his coming could only be disastrous;

a woman with a heart divided between tremulous joy and dull sorrow; who

was at once in heaven and in hell; the victim of love. How often have I

called my dead Carlotta the victim of Diaz! Let me be less unjust, and

say that he, too, was the victim of love. What was Diaz but the

instrument of the god?

Jocelyn stood near me by the piano. I glanced at her as I played, and

smiled. She answered my smile; her eyes glistened with tears; I bent my

gaze suddenly to the keyboard. 'You too!' I thought sadly, 'You too!...

One day! One day even you will know what life is, and the look in those

innocent eyes will never be innocent again!'

Then there was a sharp crack at the other end of the room; the handle of

the door turned, and the door began to open. My heart bounded and

stopped. It must be he, at last! I perceived the fearful intensity of my

longing for his presence. But it was only a servant with a tray. My

fingers stammered and stumbled. For a few instants I forced them to obey

me; my pride was equal to the strain, though I felt sick and fainting.

And then I became aware that my guests were staring at me with alarmed

and anxious faces. Mrs. Sardis had started from her chair. I dropped my

hands. It was useless to fight further; the battle was lost.

'I will not play any more,' I said quickly. 'I ought not to have tried to

play from memory. Excuse me.'

And I left the piano as calmly as I could. I knew that by an effort I

could walk steadily and in a straight line across the room to Vicary and

the others, and I succeeded. They should not learn my secret.

'Poor thing!' murmured Mrs. Sardis sympathetically. 'Do sit down, dear.'

'Won't you have something to drink?' said Vicary.

'I am perfectly all right,' I said. 'I'm only sorry that my memory is not

what it used to be.' And I persisted in standing for a few moments by the

mantelpiece. In the glass I caught one glimpse of a face as white as

milk, Jocelyn remained at her post by the piano, frightened by she knew

not what, like a young child.

'Our friend finished a new work only yesterday,' said Lord Francis

shakily. He had followed me. 'She has wisely decided to take a long

holiday. Good-bye, my dear.'

These were the last words he ever spoke to me, though I saw him again. We

shook hands in silence, and he left. Nor would the others stay. I had

ruined the night. We were all self-conscious, diffident, suspicious. Even

Vicary was affected. How thankful I was that my silent lover had not

come! My secret was my own--and his. And no one should surprise it unless

we chose. I cared nothing what they thought, or what they guessed, as

they filed out of the door, a brilliant procession of which I had the

right to be proud; they could not guess my secret. I was sufficiently

woman of the world to baffle them as long as I wished to baffle them.

Then I noticed that Mrs. Sardis had stayed behind; she was examining some

lustre ware in the further drawing-room.

'I'm afraid Jocelyn has gone without her mother,' I said,

approaching her.

'I have told Jocelyn to go home alone,' replied Mrs. Sardis. 'The

carriage will return for me. Dear friend, I want to have a little talk

with you. Do you permit?'

'I shall be delighted,' I said.

'You are sure you are well enough?'

'There is nothing whatever the matter with me,' I answered slowly and

distinctly. 'Come to the fire, and let us be comfortable. And I told

Emmeline Palmer, my companion and secretary, who just then appeared, that

she might retire to bed.

Mrs. Sardis was nervous, and this condition, so singular in Mrs. Sardis,

naturally made me curious as to the cause of it. But my eyes still

furtively wandered to the door.

'My dear co-worker,' she began, and hesitated.

'Yes,' I encouraged her.

She put her matron's lips together:

'You know how proud I am of your calling, and how jealous I am of its

honour and its good name, and what a great mission I think we novelists

have in the work of regenerating the world.'

I nodded. That kind of eloquence always makes me mute. It leaves nothing

to be said.

'I wonder,' Mrs. Sardis continued, 'if you have ever realized what a

power _you_ are in England and America to-day.'

'Power!' I echoed. 'I have done nothing but try to write as honestly and

as well as I could what I felt I wanted to write.'

'No one can doubt your sincerity, my dear friend,' Mrs. Sardis said. 'And

I needn't tell you that I am a warm admirer of your talent, and that I

rejoice in your success. But the tendency of your work--'

'Surely,' I interrupted her coldly, 'you are not taking the trouble to

tell me that my books are doing harm to the great and righteous

Anglo-Saxon public!'

'Do not let us poke fun at our public, my dear,' she protested. 'I

personally do not believe that your books are harmful, though their

originality is certainly daring, and their realism startling; but there

exists a considerable body of opinion, as you know, that strongly objects

to your books. It may be reactionary opinion, bigoted opinion, ignorant

opinion, what you like, but it exists, and it is not afraid to employ the

word "immoral."'

'What, then?'

'I speak as one old enough to be your mother, and I speak after all to a

motherless young girl who happens to have genius with, perhaps, some of

the disadvantages of genius, when I urge you so to arrange your personal

life that this body of quite respectable adverse opinion shall not find

in it a handle to use against the fair fame of our calling.'

'Mrs. Sardis!' I cried. 'What do you mean?'

I felt my nostrils dilate in anger as I gazed, astounded, at this

incarnation of mediocrity who had dared to affront me on my own hearth;

and by virtue of my youth and my beauty, and all the homage I had

received, and the clear sincerity of my vision of life, I despised and

detested the mother of a family who had never taken one step beyond the

conventions in which she was born. Had she not even the wit to perceive

that I was accustomed to be addressed as queens are addressed?... Then,

as suddenly as it had flamed, my anger cooled, for I could see the

painful earnestness in her face. And Mrs. Sardis and I--what were we but

two groups of vital instincts, groping our respective ways out of one

mystery into another? Had we made ourselves? Had we chosen our

characters? Mrs. Sardis was fulfilling herself, as I was. She was a

natural force, as I was. As well be angry with a hurricane, or the heat

of the sun.

'What do you mean?' I repeated quietly. 'Tell me exactly what you mean.'

I thought she was aiming at the company which I sometimes kept, or the

freedom of my diversions on the English Sabbath. I thought what trifles

were these compared to the dilemma in which, possibly within a few hours,

I should find myself.

'To put it in as few words as possible,' said she, 'I mean your relations

with a married man. Forgive my bluntness, dear girl.'

'My--'

Then my secret was not my secret! We were chattered about, he and I. We

had not hidden our feeling, our passions. And I had been imagining myself

a woman of the world equal to sustaining a difficult part in the masque

of existence. With an abandoned gesture I hid my face in my hands for a

moment, and then I dropped my hands, and leaned forward and looked

steadily at Mrs. Sardis. Her eyes were kind enough.

'You won't affect not to understand?' she said.

I assented with a motion of the head.

'Many persons say there is a--a liaison between you,' she said.

'And do you think that?' I asked quickly.

'If I had thought so, my daughter would not have been here to-night,' she

said solemnly. 'No, no; I do not believe it for an instant, and I brought

Jocelyn specially to prove to the world that I do not. I only heard the

gossip a few days ago; and to-night, as I sat here, it was borne in upon

me that I must speak to you to-night. And I have done so. Not everyone

would have done so, dear girl. Most of your friends are content to talk

among themselves.'

'About me? Oh!' It was the expression of an almost physical pain.

'What can you expect them to do?' asked Mrs. Sardis mildly.

'True,' I agreed.

'You see, the circumstances are so extremely peculiar. Your friendship

with her--'

'Let me tell you'--I stopped her--'that not a single word has ever passed

between me and--and the man you mean, that everybody might not hear. Not

a single word!'

'Dearest girl,' she exclaimed; 'how glad I am! How glad I am! Now I can

take measures to--.

'But--' I resumed.

'But what?'

In a flash I saw the futility of attempting to explain to a woman like

Mrs. Sardis, who had no doubts about the utter righteousness of her

own code, whose rules had no exceptions, whose principles could apply

to every conceivable case, and who was the very embodiment of the vast

stolid London that hemmed me in--of attempting to explain to such an

excellent, blind creature why, and in obedience to what ideal, I would

not answer for the future. I knew that I might as well talk to a

church steeple.

'Nothing,' I said, rising, 'except that I thank you. Be sure that I

am grateful. You have had a task which must have been very

unpleasant to you.'

She smiled, virtuously happy.

'You made it easy,' she murmured.

I perceived that she wanted to kiss me; but I avoided the caress. How I

hated kissing women!

'No more need be said,' she almost whispered, as I put my hand on the

knob of the front-door. I had escorted her myself to the hall.

'Only remember your great mission, the influence you wield, and the fair

fame of our calling.'

My impulse was to shriek. But I merely smiled as decently as I could; and

I opened the door.

And there, on the landing, just emerging from the lift, was Ispenlove,

haggard, pale, his necktie astray. He and Mrs. Sardis exchanged a brief

stare; she gave me a look of profound pain and passed in dignified

silence down the stairs; Ispenlove came into the flat.

'Nothing will convince her now that I am not a liar,' I reflected.

It was my last thought as I sank, exquisitely drowning, in the sea of

sensations caused by Ispenlove's presence.

II

Without a word, we passed together into the drawing-room, and I closed

the door. Ispenlove stood leaning against the piano, as though intensely

fatigued; he crushed his gibus with an almost savage movement, and then

bent his large, lustrous black eyes absently on the flat top of it. His

thin face was whiter even than usual, and his black hair, beard, and

moustache all dishevelled; the collar of his overcoat was twisted, and

his dinner-jacket rose an inch above it at the back of the neck.

I wanted to greet him, but I could not trust my lips. And I saw that he,

too, was trying in vain to speak.

At length I said, with that banality which too often surprises us in

supreme moments:

'What is it? Do you know that your tie is under your ear?'

And as I uttered these words, my voice, breaking of itself and in

defiance of me, descended into a tone which sounded harsh and inimical.

'Ah!' he murmured, lifting his eyes to mine, 'if you turn against me

to-night, I shall--'

'Turn against you!' I cried, shocked. 'Let me help you with your

overcoat!'

And I went near him, meaning to take his overcoat.

'It's finished between Mary and me,' he said, holding me with his gaze.

'It's finished. I've no one but you now; and I've come--I've come--'

He stopped. We read one another's eyes at arm's length, and all the

sorrow and pity and love that were in each of us rose to our eyes and

shone there. I shivered with pleasure when I saw his arms move, and then

he clutched and dragged me to him, and I hid my glowing face on his

shoulder, in the dear folds of his overcoat, and I felt his lips on my

neck. And then, since neither of us was a coward, we lifted our heads,

and our mouths met honestly and fairly, and, so united, we shut our eyes

for an eternal moment, and the world was not.

Such was the avowal.

I gave up my soul to him in that long kiss; all that was me, all that was

most secret and precious in me, ascended and poured itself out through my

tense lips, and was received by him. I kissed him with myself, with the

entire passionate energy of my being--not merely with my mouth. And if I

sighed, it was because I tried to give him more--more than I had--and

failed. Ah! The sensation of his nearness, the warmth of his face, the

titillation of his hair, the slow, luxurious intake of our breaths, the

sweet cruelty of his desperate clutch on my shoulders, the glimpses of

his skin through my eyelashes when I raised ever so little my eyelids!

Pain and joy of life, you were mingled then!

I remembered that I was a woman, and disengaged myself and withdrew from

him. I hated to do it; but I did it. We became self-conscious. The

brilliant and empty drawing-room scanned us unfavourably with all its

globes and mirrors. How difficult it is to be natural in a great crisis!

Our spirits clamoured for expression, beating vainly against a thousand

barred doors of speech. There was so much to say, to explain, to define,

and everything was so confused and dizzily revolving, that we knew not

which door to open first. And then I think we both felt, but I more than

he, that explanations and statements were futile, that even if all the

doors were thrown open together, they would be inadequate. The

deliciousness of silence, of wonder, of timidity, of things guessed at

and hidden....

'It makes me afraid,' he murmured at length.

'What?'

'To be loved like that.... Your kiss ... you don't know.'

I smiled almost sadly. As if I did not know what my kiss had done! As if

I did not know that my kiss had created between us the happiness which

brings ruin!

'You _do_ love me?' he demanded.

I nodded, and sat down.

'Say it, say it!' he pleaded.

'More than I can ever show you,' I said proudly.

'Honestly,' he said, 'I can't imagine what you have been able to see in

me. I'm nothing--I'm nobody--'

'Foolish boy!' I exclaimed. 'You are you.'

The profound significance of that age-worn phrase struck me for the

first time.

He rushed to me at the word 'boy,' and, standing over me, took my hand in

his hot hand. I let it lie, inert.

'But you haven't always loved me. I have always loved _you_, from the

moment when I drove with you, that first day, from the office to your

hotel. But you haven't always loved me.'

'No,' I admitted.

'Then when did you--? Tell me.'

'I was dull at first--I could not see. But when you told me that the end

of _Fate and Friendship_ was not as good as I could make it--do you

remember, that afternoon in the office?--and how reluctant you were to

tell me, how afraid you were to tell me?--your throat went dry, and you

stroked your forehead as you always do when you are nervous--There!

you are doing it now, foolish boy!'

I seized his left arm, and gently pulled it down from his face. Oh,

exquisite moment!

'It was brave of you to tell me--very brave! I loved you for telling me.

You were quite wrong about the end of that book. You didn't see the fine

point of it, and you never would have seen it--and I liked you, somehow,

for not seeing it, because it was so feminine--but I altered the book to

please you, and when I had altered it, against my conscience, I loved

you more.'

'It's incredible! incredible!' he muttered, half to himself. 'I never

hoped till lately that you would care for me. I never dared to think of

such a thing. I knew you oughtn't to! It passes comprehension.'

'That is just what love does,' I said.

'No, no,' he went on quickly; 'you don't understand; you can't understand

my feelings when I began to suspect, about two months ago, that, after

all, the incredible had happened. I'm nothing but your publisher. I can't

talk. I can't write. I can't play. I can't do anything. And look at the

men you have here! I've sometimes wondered how often you've been

besieged--'

'None of them was like you,' I said. 'Perhaps that is why I have always

kept them off.'

I raised my eyes and lips, and he stooped and kissed me. He wanted to

take me in his arms again, but I would not yield myself.

'Be reasonable,' I urged him. 'Ought we not to think of our situation?'

He loosed me, stammering apologies, abasing himself.

'I ought to leave you, I ought never to see you again.' He spoke roughly.

'What am I doing to you? You who are so innocent and pure!'

'I entreat you not to talk like that,' I gasped, reddening.

'But I must talk like that,' he insisted. 'I must talk like that. You had

everything that a woman can desire, and I come into your life and offer

you--what?'

'I _have_ everything a woman can desire,' I corrected him softly.

'Angel!' he breathed. 'If I bring you disaster, you will forgive me,

won't you?'

'My happiness will only cease with your love,' I said.

'Happiness!' he repeated. 'I have never been so happy as I am now; but

such happiness is terrible. It seems to me impossible that such happiness

can last.'

'Faint heart!' I chided him.

'It is for you I tremble,' he said. 'If--if--' He stopped. 'My darling,

forgive me!'

How I pitied him! How I enveloped him in an effluent sympathy that rushed

warm from my heart! He accused himself of having disturbed my existence.

Whereas, was it not I who had disturbed his? He had fought against me, I

knew well, but fate had ordained his defeat. He had been swept away; he

had been captured; he had been caught in a snare of the high gods. And he

was begging forgiveness, he who alone had made my life worth living! I

wanted to kneel before him, to worship him, to dry his tears with my

hair. I swear that my feelings were as much those of a mother as of a

lover. He was ten years older than me, and yet he seemed boyish, and I an

aged woman full of experience, as he sat there opposite to me with his

wide, melancholy eyes and restless mouth.

'Wonderful, is it not,' he said, 'that we should be talking like this

to-night, and only yesterday we were Mr. and Miss to each other?'

'Wonderful!' I responded. 'But yesterday we talked with our eyes, and our

eyes did not say Mr. or Miss. Our eyes said--Ah, what they said can

never be translated into words!'

My gaze brooded on him like a caress, explored him with the unappeasable

curiosity of love, and blinded him like the sun. Could it be true that

Heaven had made that fine creature--noble and modest, nervous and full of

courage, impetuous and self-controlled, but, above all things, fine and

delicate--could it be true that Heaven had made him and then given him to

me, with his enchanting imperfections that themselves constituted

perfection? Oh, wonder, wonder! Oh, miraculous bounty which I had not

deserved! This thing had happened to me, of all women! How it showed, by

comparison, the sterility of my success and my fame and my worldly

splendour! I had hungered and thirsted for years; I had travelled

interminably through the hot desert of my brilliant career, until I had

almost ceased to hope that I should reach, one evening, the pool of water

and the palm. And now I might eat and drink and rest in the shade.

Wonderful!

'Why were you so late to-night?' I asked abruptly.

'Late?' he replied absently. 'Is it late?'

We both looked at the clock. It was yet half an hour from midnight.

'Of course it isn't--not _very_,' I said. I was forgetting that.

Everybody left so early.'

'Why was that?'

I told him, in a confusion that was sweet to me, how I had suffered by

reason of his failure to appear. He glanced at me with tender amaze.

'But I am fortunate to-day,' I exclaimed. 'Was it not lucky they left

when they did? Suppose you had arrived, in that state, dearest man, and

burst into a room full of people? What would they have thought? Where

should I have looked?'

'Angel!' he cried. 'I'm so sorry. I forgot it was your evening. I must

have forgotten. I forgot everything, except that I was bound to see you

at once, instantly, with all speed.'

Poor boy! He was like a bird fluttering in my hand. Millions of women

must have so pictured to themselves the men who loved them, and whom

they loved.

'But still, you _were_ rather late, you know,' I smiled.

'Do not ask me why,' he begged, with an expression of deep pain on his

face. 'I have had a scene with Mary. It would humiliate me to tell

you--to tell even you--what passed between us. But it is over. Our

relations in the future can never, in any case, be more than formal.'

A spasm of fierce jealousy shot through me--jealousy of Mary, my friend

Mary, who knew him with such profound intimacy that they could go

through a scene together which was 'humiliating.' I saw that my own

intimacy with him was still crude with the crudity of newness, and that

only years could mellow it. Mary, the good, sentimental Mary, had wasted

the years of their marriage--had never understood the value of the

treasure in her keeping. Why had they always been sad in their house?

What was the origin of that resigned and even cheerful gloom which had

pervaded their domestic life, and which I had remarked on my first visit

to Bloomsbury Square? Were these, too, mysteries that I must not ask my

lover to reveal? Resentment filled me. I came near to hating Mary, not

because she had made him unhappy--oh no!--but because she had had the

priority in his regard, and because there was nothing about him, however

secret and recondite, that I could be absolutely sure of the sole

knowledge of. She had been in the depths with him. I desired fervently

that I also might descend with him, and even deeper. Oh, that I might

have the joy and privilege of humiliation with him!

'I shall ask you nothing, dearest,' I murmured.

I had risen from my seat and gone to him, and was lightly touching his

hair with my fingers. He did not move, but sat staring into the fire.

Somehow, I adored him because he made no response to the fondling of

my hand. His strange acceptance of the caress as a matter of course

gave me the illusion that I was his wife, and that the years had

mellowed our intimacy.

'Carlotta!'

He spoke my name slowly and distinctly, savouring it.

'Yes,' I answered softly and obediently.

'Carlotta! Listen! Our two lives are in our hands at this moment--this

moment while we talk here.'

His rapt eyes had not stirred from the fire.

'I feel it,' I said.

'What are we to do? What shall we decide to do?'

He slowly turned towards me. I lowered my glance.

'I don't know,' I said.

'Yes, you do, Carlotta,' he insisted. 'You do know.'

His voice trembled.

'Mary and I are such good friends,' I said. 'That is what makes it

so--'

'No, no, no!' he objected loudly. His nervousness had suddenly increased.

'Don't, for God's sake, begin to argue in that way! You are above

feminine logic. Mary is your friend. Good. You respect her; she respects

you. Good. Is that any reason why our lives should be ruined? Will that

benefit Mary? Do I not tell you that everything has ceased between us?'

'The idea of being false to Mary--'

'There's no question of being false. And if there was, would you be false

to love rather than to friendship? Between you and me there is love;

between Mary and me there is not love. It isn't her fault, nor mine,

least of all yours. It is the fault of the secret essence of existence.

Have you not yourself written that the only sacred thing is instinct? Are

we, or are we not, to be true to ourselves?'

'You see,' I said, 'your wife is so sentimental. She would be incapable

of looking at the affair as--as we do; as I should in her place.'

I knew that my protests were insincere, and that all my heart and brain

were with him, but I could not admit this frankly. Ah! And I knew also

that the sole avenue to peace and serenity, not to happiness, was the

path of renunciation and of obedience to the conventions of society, and

that this was precisely the path which we should never take. And on the

horizon of our joy I saw a dark cloud. It had always been there, but I

had refused to see it. I looked at it now steadily.

'Of course,' he groaned, 'if we are to be governed by Mary's

sentimentality--'

'Dear love,' I whispered, 'what do you want me to do?'

'The only possible, honest, just thing. I want you to go away with me, so

that Mary can get a divorce.'

He spoke sternly, as it were relentlessly.

'Does she guess--about me?' I asked, biting my lip, and looking

away from him.

'Not yet. Hasn't the slightest notion, I'm sure. But I'll tell her,

straight and fair.'

'Dearest friend,' I said, after a silence. 'Perhaps I know more of the

world than you think. Perhaps I'm a girl only in years and situation.

Forgive me if I speak plainly. Mary may prove unfaithfulness, but she

cannot get a decree unless she can prove other things as well.'

He stroked his forehead. As for me, I shuddered with agitation. He walked

across the room and back.

'Angel!' he said, putting his white face close to mine like an actor. 'I

will prove whether your love for me is great enough. I have struck her. I

struck her to-night in the presence of a servant. And I did it purposely,

in cold blood, so that she might be able to prove cruelty. Ah! Have I

not thought it all out? Have I not?'

A sob, painfully escaping, shook my whole frame.

'And this was before you had--had spoken to me!' I said bitterly.

Not myself, but some strange and frigid force within me uttered

those words.

'That is what love will do. That is the sort of thing love drives one

to,' he cried despairingly. 'Oh! I was not sure of you--I was not sure of

you. I struck her, on the off chance.'

And he sank on the sofa and wept passionately, unashamed, like a child.

I could not bear it. My heart would have broken if I had watched, without

assuaging, my boy's grief an instant longer than I did. I sprang to him.

I took him to my breast. I kissed his eyes until the tears ceased to

flow. Whatever it was or might be, I must share his dishonour.

'My poor girl!' he said at length. 'If you had refused me, if you had

even judged me, I intended to warn you plainly that it meant my death;

and if that failed, I should have gone to the office and shot myself.'

'Do not say such things,' I entreated him.

'But it is true. The revolver is in my pocket. Ah! I have made you cry!

You're frightened! But I'm not a brute; I'm only a little beside myself.

Pardon me, angel!'

He kissed me, smiling sadly with a trace of humour. He did not understand

me. He did not suspect the risk he had run. If I had hesitated to

surrender, and he had sought to move me by threatening suicide, I should

never have surrendered. I knew myself well enough to know that. I had a

conscience that was incapable of yielding to panic. A threat would have

parted us, perhaps for ever. Oh, the blindness of man! But I forgave him.

Nay, I cherished him the more for his childlike, savage simplicity.

'Carlotta,' he said, 'we shall leave everything. You grasp

it?--everything.'

'Yes,' I replied. 'Of all the things we have now, we shall have nothing

but ourselves.'

'If I thought it was a sacrifice for you, I would go out and never see

you again.'

Noble fellow, proud now in the certainty that he sufficed for me! He

meant what he said.

'It is no sacrifice for me,' I murmured. 'The sacrifice would be not to

give up all in exchange for you.'

'We shall be exiles,' he went on, 'until the divorce business is over.

And then perhaps we shall creep back--shall we?--and try to find out how

many of our friends are our equals in moral courage.'

'Yes,' I said. 'We shall come back. They all do.'

'What do you mean?' he demanded.

'Thousands have done what we are going to do,' I said. 'And all of them

have thought that their own case was different from the other cases.'

'Ah!'

'And a few have been happy. A few have not regretted the price. A few

have retained the illusion.'

'Illusion? Dearest girl, why do you talk like this?'

I could see that my heart's treasure was ruffled. He clasped my hand

tenaciously.

'I must not hide from you the kind of woman you have chosen,' I answered

quietly, and as I spoke a hush fell upon my amorous passion. 'In me there

are two beings--myself and the observer of myself. It is the novelist's

disease, this duplication of personality. When I said illusion, I meant

the supreme illusion of love. Is it not an illusion? I have seen it in

others, and in exactly the same way I see it in myself and I see it in

you. Will it last?--who knows? None can tell.'

'Angel!' he expostulated.

'No one can foresee the end of love,' I said, with an exquisite gentle

sorrow. 'But when the illusion is as intense as mine, as yours, even if

its hour is brief, that hour is worth all the terrible years of

disillusion which it will cost. Darling, this precious night alone would

not be too dear if I paid for it with the rest of my life.'

He thanked me with a marvellous smile of confident adoration, and

his disengaged hand played with the gold chain which hung loosely

round my neck.

'Call it illusion if you like,' he said. 'Words are nothing. I only know

that for me it will be eternal. I only know that my one desire is to be

with you always, never to leave you, not to miss a moment of you; to have

you for mine, openly, securely. Carlotta, where shall we go?'

'We must travel, mustn't we?'

'Travel?' he repeated, with an air of discontent. 'Yes. But where to?'

'Travel,' I said. 'See things. See the world.'

'I had thought we might find some quiet little place,' he said wistfully,

and as if apologetically, where we could be alone, undisturbed, some spot

where we could have ourselves wholly to ourselves, and go walks into

mountains and return for dinner; and then the long, calm evenings!

Dearest, our honeymoon!'

Our honeymoon! I had not, in the pursuit of my calling, studied human

nature and collected documents for nothing. With how many brides had I

not talked! How many loves did I not know to have been paralyzed and

killed by a surfeit in the frail early stages of their existence!

Inexperienced as I was, my learning in humanity was wiser than the

experience of my impulsive, generous, magnanimous lover, to whom the very

thought of calculation would have been abhorrent. But I saw, I felt, I

lived through in a few seconds the interminable and monotonous length of

those calm days, and especially those calm evenings succeeding each other

with a formidable sameness. I had watched great loves faint and die. And

I knew that our love--miraculously sweet as it was--probably was not

greater than many great ones that had not stood the test. You perceive

the cold observer in me. I knew that when love lasted, the credit of the

survival was due far more often to the woman than to the man. The woman

must husband herself, dole herself out, economize herself so that she

might be splendidly wasteful when need was. The woman must plan, scheme,

devise, invent, reconnoitre, take precautions; and do all this sincerely

and lovingly in the name and honour of love. A passion, for her, is a

campaign; and her deadliest enemy is satiety. Looking into my own heart,

and into his, I saw nothing but hope for the future of our love. But the

beautiful plant must not be exposed to hazard. Suppose it sickened, such

a love as ours--what then? The misery of hell, the torture of the damned!

Only its rich and ample continuance could justify us.

'My dear,' I said submissively, 'I shall leave everything to you. The

idea of travelling occurred to me; that was all. I have never travelled

further than Cannes. Still, we have all our lives before us.'

'We will travel,' he said unselfishly. 'We'll go round the world--slowly.

I'll get the tickets at Cook's to-morrow.'

'But, dearest, if you would rather--'

'No, no! In any case we shall always have our evenings.'

'Of course we shall. Dearest, how good you are!'

'I wish I was,' he murmured.

I was glad, then, that I had never allowed my portrait to appear in a

periodical. We could not prevent the appearance in American newspapers of

heralding paragraphs, but the likelihood of our being recognised was

sensibly lessened.

'Can you start soon?' he asked. 'Can you be ready?'

'Any time. The sooner the better, now that it is decided.'

'You do not regret? We have decided so quickly. Ah! you are the merest

girl, and I have taken advantage--'

I put my hand over his mouth. He seized it, and kept it there and kissed

it, and his ardent breath ran through my fingers.

'What about your business?' I said.

'I shall confide it to old Tate--tell him some story--he knows quite

as much about it as I do. To-morrow I will see to all that. The day

after, shall we start? No; to-morrow night. To-morrow night, eh? I'll

run in to-morrow and tell you what I've arranged. I must see you

to-morrow, early.'

'No,' I said. 'Do not come before lunch.'

'Not before lunch! Why?'

He was surprised. But I had been my own mistress for five years, with my

own habits, rules, privacies. I had never seen anyone before lunch. And

to-morrow, of all days, I should have so much to do and to arrange. Was

this man to come like an invader and disturb my morning? So felt the

celibate in me, instinctively, thoughtlessly. That deep-seated objection

to the intrusion of even the most loved male at certain times is common,

I think, to all women. Women are capable of putting love aside, like a

rich dress, and donning the _peignoir_ of matter-of-fact dailiness, in a

way which is an eternal enigma to men.... Then I saw, in a sudden flash,

that I had renounced my individual existence, that I had forfeited my

habits and rules, and privacies, that I was a man's woman. And the

passionate lover in me gloried in this.

'Come as soon as you like, dearest friend,' I said.

'Nobody except Mary will know anything till we are actually gone,' he

remarked. 'And I shall not tell her till the last thing. Afterwards,

won't they chatter! God! Let 'em.'

'They are already chattering,' I said. And I told him about Mrs. Sardis.

'When she met you on the landing,' I added, 'she drew her own

conclusions, my poor, poor boy!'

He was furious. I could see he wanted to take me in his arms and protect

me masculinely from the rising storm.

'All that is nothing,' I soothed him. 'Nothing. Against it, we have

our self-respect. We can scorn all that.' And I gave a short,

contemptuous laugh.

'Darling!' he murmured. 'You are more than a woman.'

'I hope not.' And I laughed again, but unnaturally.

He had risen; I leaned back in a large cushioned chair; we looked at

each other in silence--a silence that throbbed with the heavy pulse of an

unutterable and complex emotion--pleasure, pain, apprehension, even

terror. What had I done? Why had I, with a word--nay, without a word,

with merely a gesture and a glance--thrown my whole life into the

crucible of passion? Why did I exult in the tremendous and impetuous act,

like a martyr, and also like a girl? Was I playing with my existence as

an infant plays with a precious bibelot that a careless touch may

shatter? Why was I so fiercely, madly, drunkenly happy when I gazed into

those eyes?

'I suppose I must go,' he said disconsolately.

I nodded, and the next instant the clock struck.

'Yes,' he urged himself, 'I must go.'

He bent down, put his hands on the arms of the chair, and kissed me

violently, twice. The fire that consumes the world ran scorchingly

through me. Every muscle was suddenly strained into tension, and then

fell slack. My face flushed; I let my head slip sideways, so that my left

cheek was against the back of the chair. Through my drooping eyelashes I

could see the snake-like glitter of his eyes as he stood over me. I

shuddered and sighed. I was like someone fighting in vain against the

sweet seduction of an overwhelming and fatal drug. I wanted to entreat

him to go away, to rid me of the exquisite and sinister enchantment. But

I could not speak. I shut my eyes. This was love.

The next moment I heard the soft sound of his feet on the carpet. I

opened my eyes. He had stepped back. When our glances met he averted his

face, and went briskly for his overcoat, which lay on the floor by the

piano. I rose freed, re-established in my self-control. I arranged his

collar, straightened his necktie with a few touches, picked up his hat,

pushed back the crown, which flew up with a noise like a small explosion,

and gave it into his hands.

'Thank you,' he said. 'To-morrow morning, eh? I shall get to know

everything necessary before I come. And then we will fix things up.'

'Yes,' I said.

'I can let myself out,' he said.

I made a vague gesture, intended to signify that I could not think of

permitting him to let himself out. We left the drawing-room, and passed,

with precautions of silence, to the front-door, which I gently opened.

'Good-night, then,' he whispered formally, almost coldly.

I nodded. We neither of us even smiled.

We were grave, stern, and stiff in our immense self-consciousness.

'Too late for the lift,' I murmured out there with him in the vast,

glittering silence of the many-angled staircase, which disappeared above

us and below us into the mysterious unseen.

He nodded as I had nodded, and began to descend the broad, carpeted

steps, firmly, carefully, and neither quick nor slow. I leaned over the

baluster. When the turns of the staircase brought him opposite and below

me, he stopped and raised his hat, and we exchanged a smile. Then he

resolutely dropped his eyes and resumed the descent. From time to time I

had glimpses of parts of his figure as he passed story after story. Then

I heard his tread on the tessellated pavement of the main hall, the

distant clatter of double doors, and a shrill cab-whistle.

This was love, at last--the reality of love! He would have killed himself

had he failed to win me--killed himself! With the novelist's habit, I ran

off into a series of imagined scenes--the dead body, with the hole in the

temples and the awkward attitude of death; the discovery, the rush for

the police, the search for a motive, the inquest, the rapid-speaking

coroner, who spent his whole life at inquests; myself, cold and

impassive, giving evidence, and Mary listening to what I said.... But he

lived, with his delicate physical charm, his frail distinction, his

spiritual grace; and he had won me. The sense of mutual possession was

inexpressibly sweet to me. And it was all I had in the world now. When my

mind moved from that rock, all else seemed shifting, uncertain, perilous,

bodeful, and steeped in woe. The air was thick with disasters, and

injustice, and strange griefs immediately I loosed my hold on the immense

fact that he was mine.

'How calm I am!' I thought.

It was not till I had been in bed some three hours that I fully realized

the seismic upheaval which my soul had experienced.

III

I woke up from one of those dozes which, after a sleepless night, give

the brief illusion of complete rest, all my senses sharpened, and my mind

factitiously active. And I began at once to anticipate Frank's coming,

and to arrange rapidly my plans for closing the flat. I had determined

that it should be closed. Then someone knocked at the door, and it

occurred to me that there must have been a previous knock, which had, in

fact, wakened me. Save on special occasions, I was never wakened, and

Emmeline and my maid had injunctions not to come to me until I rang. My

thoughts ran instantly to Frank. He had arrived thus early, merely

because he could not keep away.

'How extremely indiscreet of him!' I thought. 'What detestable

prevarications with Emmeline this will lead to! I cannot possibly be

ready in time if he is to be in and out all day.'

Nevertheless, the prospect of seeing him quickly, and the idea of his

splendid impatience, drenched me with joy.

'What is it?' I called out.

Emmeline entered in that terrible mauve dressing-gown which I had been

powerless to persuade her to discard.

'So sorry to disturb you,' said Emmeline, feeling her loose golden hair

with one hand, 'but Mrs. Ispenlove has called, and wants to see you at

once. I'm afraid something has happened.'

'_Mrs_. Ispenlove?'

My voice shook.

'Yes. Yvonne came to my room and told me that Mrs. Ispenlove was here,

and was either mad or very unwell, and would I go to her? So I got up at

once. What shall I do? Perhaps it's something very serious. Not

half-past eight, and calling like this!'

'Let her come in here immediately,' I said, turning my head on the

pillow, so that Emmeline should not see the blush which had spread over

my face and my neck.

It was inevitable that a terrible and desolating scene must pass between

Mary Ispenlove and myself. I could not foresee how I should emerge from

it, but I desperately resolved that I would suffer the worst without a

moment's delay, and that no conceivable appeal should induce me to

abandon Frank. I was, as I waited for Mrs. Ispenlove to appear, nothing

but an embodied and fierce instinct to guard what I had won. No

consideration of mercy could have touched me.

She entered with a strange, hysterical cry:

'Carlotta!'

I had asked her long ago to use my Christian name--long before I ever

imagined what would come to pass between her husband and me; but I

always called her Mrs. Ispenlove. The difference in our ages justified

me. And that morning the difference seemed to be increased. I realized,

with a cruel justice of perception quite new in my estimate of her,

that she was old--an old woman. She had never been beautiful, but she

was tall and graceful, and her face had been attractive by the

sweetness of the mouth and the gray beneficence of the eyes; and now

that sweetness and that beneficence appeared suddenly to have been

swallowed up in the fatal despair of a woman who discovers that she has

lived too long. Gray hair, wrinkles, crow's-feet, tired eyes, drawn

mouth, and the terrible tell-tale hollow under the chin--these were

what I saw in Mary Ispenlove. She had learnt that the only thing worth

having in life is youth. I possessed everything that she lacked. Surely

the struggle was unequal. Fate might have chosen a less piteous victim.

I felt profoundly sorry for Mary Ispenlove, and this sorrow was

stronger in me even than the uneasiness, the false shame (for it was

not a real shame) which I experienced in her presence. I put out my

hands towards her, as it were, involuntarily. She sprang to me, took

them, and kissed me as I lay in bed.

'How beautiful you look--like that!' she exclaimed wildly, and with a

hopeless and acute envy in her tone.

'But why--' I began to protest, astounded.

'What will you think of me, disturbing you like this? What will you

think?' she moaned. And then her voice rose: 'I could not help it; I

couldn't, really. Oh, Carlotta! you are my friend, aren't you?'

One thing grew swiftly clear to me: that she was as yet perfectly

unaware of the relations between Frank and myself. My brain searched

hurriedly for an explanation of the visit. I was conscious of an

extraordinary relief.

'You are my friend, aren't you?' she repeated insistently.

Her tears were dropping on my bosom. But could I answer that I was her

friend? I did not wish to be her enemy; she and Frank and I were dolls in

the great hands of fate, irresponsible, guiltless, meet for an

understanding sympathy. Why was I not still her friend? Did not my heart

bleed for her? Yet such is the power of convention over honourableness

that I could not bring myself to reply directly, 'Yes, I am your friend.'

'We have known each other a long time,' I ventured.

'There was no one else I could come to,' she said.

Her whole frame was shaking. I sat up, and asked her to pass my

dressing-gown, which I put round my shoulders. Then I rang the bell.

'What are you going to do?' she demanded fearfully.

'I am going to have the gas-stove lighted and some tea brought in, and

then we will talk.

Take your hat off, dear, and sit down in that chair. You'll be more

yourself after a cup of tea.'

How young I was then! I remember my naïve satisfaction in this exhibition

of tact. I was young and hard, as youth is apt to be--hard in spite of

the compassion, too intellectual and arrogant, which I conceived for her.

And even while I forbade her to talk until she had drunk some tea, I

regretted the delay, and I suffered by it. Surely, I thought, she will

read in my demeanour something which she ought not to read there. But she

did not. She was one of the simplest of women. In ten thousand women one

is born without either claws or second-sight. She was that one,

defenceless as a rabbit.

'You are very kind to me,' she said, putting her cup on the mantelpiece

with a nervous rattle; 'and I need it.'

'Tell me,' I murmured. 'Tell me--what I can do.'