"Ah-ha, my lady!" said Harman, to himself. "Are you, perhaps, interested

in the Ricci? Is it possible even that you have seen her before?"

Kitty, however, betrayed herself to no one else. To other people it was

only evident that she did not mean to be introduced to the actress. She

pointedly and sharply avoided it. This was interpreted as aristocratic

_hauteur_, and did her no harm. On the contrary, she was soon chattering

French with a group of diplomats, and the centre of the most animated

group in the room. All the new-comers who could attached themselves to

it, and the actress found herself presently almost deserted. She put up

her eye-glass, studied Kitty impertinently, and asked a man sitting near

her for the name of the strange lady.

"Isn't she lovely, my little Kitty!" said Madame d'Estrées, in the ears

of a Bavarian baron, who was also much occupied in staring at the small

beauty in black. "I may say it, though I am her mother. And my

son-in-law, too. Have you seen him? Such a handsome fellow!--and _such_

a dear!--so kind to me. They _say_, you know, that he will be Prime

Minister."

The baron bowed, ironically, and inquired who the gentleman might be. He

had not caught Kitty's name, and Madame d'Estrées had been for some time

labelled in his mind as something very near to an adventuress.

Madame d'Estrées eagerly explained, and he bowed again, with a

difference. He was a man of great intelligence, acquainted with English

politics. So that was _really_ the wife of the man to whose personality

and future the London correspondent of the _Allgemeine Zeitung_ had

within the preceding week devoted a particularly interesting article,

which he had read with attention. His estimate of Madame d'Estrées'

place in the world altered at once. Yet it was strange that she--or,

rather, Donna Laura--should admit such a person as Mademoiselle Ricci to

their _salon_.

The mother, indeed, that afternoon had much reason to be socially

grateful to the daughter. Curious contrast with the days when Kitty had

been the mere troublesome appendage of her mother's life! It was clear

to Marguerite d'Estrées now that if she was to accept restraint and

virtuous living, if she was to submit to this marriage she dreaded, yet

saw no way to escape, her best link with the gay world in the future

might well be through the Ashes. Kitty could do a great deal for her;

let her cultivate Kitty; and begin, perhaps, by convincing William Ashe

on this present occasion that for once she was not going to ask him for

money.

In the height of the party, Lord Magellan appeared. Madame d'Estrées at

first looked at him with bewilderment, till Kitty, shaking herself free,

came hastily forward to introduce him. At the name the mother's face

flashed into smiles. The ramifications of two or three aristocracies

represented the only subject she might be said to know. Dear Kitty!

Lord Magellan, after Madame d'Estrées had talked to him about his family

in a few light and skilful phrases, which suggested knowledge, while

avoiding flattery, was introduced to the Bavarian baron and a French

naval officer. But he was not interesting to them, nor they to him;

Kitty was surrounded and unapproachable; and a flood of new arrivals

distracted Madame d'Estrées' attention. The Ricci, who had noticed the

restrained _empressement_ of his reception, pounced on the young man,

taming her ways and gestures to what she supposed to be his English

prudery, and produced an immediate effect upon him. Lord Magellan, who

was only dumb with English marriageable girls, allowed himself to be

amused, and threw himself into a low chair by the actress--a capture

apparently for the afternoon.

Louis Harman was sitting behind Kitty, a little to her right. He saw her

watching the actress and her companion; noticed a compression of the

lip, a flash in the eye. She sprang up, said she must go home, and

practically dissolved the party.

Mademoiselle Ricci, who had also risen, proposed to Lord Magellan that

she should take him in her gondola to the shop of a famous dealer on the

Canal.

"Thank you very much," said Lord Magellan, irresolute, and he looked at

Kitty. The look apparently decided him, for he immediately added that he

had unfortunately an engagement in the opposite direction. The actress

angrily drew herself up, and proposed a later appointment. Then Kitty

carelessly intervened.

"Do you remember that you promised to see me home?" she said to the

young man. "Don't if it bores you!"

Lord Magellan eagerly protested. Kitty moved away, and he followed her.

"Chère madame, will you present me to your daughter?" said the Ricci, in

an unnecessarily loud voice.

Madame d'Estrées, with a flurried gesture, touched Kitty on the arm.

"Kitty, Mademoiselle Ricci."

Kitty took no notice. Madame d'Estrées said, quickly, in a low,

imploring voice:

"Please, dear Kitty. I'll explain."

Kitty turned abruptly, looked at her mother, and at the woman to whom

she was to be introduced.

"Ah! comme elle est charmante!" cried the actress, with an inflection of

irony in her strident voice. "Miladi, il faut absolument que nous nous

connaissions. Je connais votre chère mère depuis si longtemps! À Paris,

l'hiver passé c'était une amitié des plus tendres!"

The nasal drag she gave to the words was partly natural, partly

insolent. Madame d'Estrées bit her lip.

"Oui?" said Kitty, indifferently. "Je n'en avais jamais entendu parler."

Her brilliant eyes studied the woman before her. "She has some hold on

maman," she said to herself, in disgust. "She knows of something shady

that maman has done." Then another thought stung her; and with the most

indifferent bow, triumphing in the evident offence that she was giving,

she turned to Lord Magellan.

"You'd like to see the Palazzo?"

Warington at once offered himself as a guide.

But Kitty declared she knew the way, would just show Lord Magellan the

_piano nobile_, dismiss him at the grand staircase, and return. Lord

Magellan made his farewells.

As Kitty passed through the door of the _salon_, while the young man

held back the velvet _portière_ which hung over it, she was aware that

Mademoiselle Ricci was watching her. The Marseillaise was leaning

heavily on a _fauteuil_, supported by a hand behind her. A slow,

disdainful smile played about her lips, some evil threatening thought

expressed itself through every feature of her rounded, coarsened beauty.

Kitty's sharp look met hers, and the curtain dropped.

* * * * *

"Don't, please, let that woman take you anywhere--to see anything!" said

Kitty, with energy, to her companion, as they walked through the rooms

of the _mezzanino_.

Lord Magellan laughed. "What's the matter with her?"

"Oh, nothing!" said Kitty, impatiently, "except that she's wicked--and

common--and a snake--and your mother would have a fit if she knew you

had anything to do with her."

The red-haired youth looked grave.

"Thank you, Lady Kitty," he said, quietly. "I'll take your advice."

"Oh, I say, what a nice boy you are!" cried Kitty, impulsively, laying a

hand a moment on his shoulder. And then, as though his filial instinct

had awakened hers, she added, with hasty falsehood: "Maman, of course,

knows nothing about her. That was just bluff what she said. But Donna

Laura oughtn't to ask such people. There--that's the way."

And she pointed to a small staircase in the wall, whereof the trap-door

at the top was open. They climbed it, and found themselves at once in

one of the great rooms of the _piano nobile_, to which this quick and

easy access from the inhabited _entresol_ had been but recently

contrived.

"What a marvellous place!" cried Lord Magellan, looking round him.

They were in the principal apartment of the famous Vercelli palace, a

legacy from one of those classical architects whose work may be seen in

the late seventeenth-century buildings of Venice. The rooms, enormously

high, panelled here and there in tattered velvets and brocades, or

frescoed in fast-fading scenes of old Venetian life, stretched in

bewildering succession on either side of a central passage or broad

corridor, all of them leading at last on the northern side to a vast

hall painted in architectural perspective by the pupils of Tiepolo, and

overarched by a ceiling in which the master himself had massed a

multitude of forms equal to Rubens in variety and facility of design,

expressed in a thin trenchancy of style. Figures recalling the ancient

triumphs and possessions of Venice, in days when she sat dishonored and

despoiled, crowded the coved roof, the painted cornices and pediments.

Gayly colored birds hovered in blue skies; philosophers and poets in

grisaille made a strange background for large-limbed beauties couched on

roses, or young warriors amid trophies of shining arms; and while all

this garrulous commonplace lived and breathed above, the walls below,

cold in color and academic in treatment, maintained as best they could

the dignity of the vast place, thus given up to one of the greatest of

artists and emptiest of minds.

On the floor of this magnificent hall stood a few old and broken chairs.

But the candelabra of glass and ormolu, hanging from the ceiling, were

very nearly of the date of the palace, and superb. Meanwhile, through a

faded taffeta of a golden-brown shade, the afternoon light from the high

windows to the southwest poured into the stately room.

"How it dwarfs us!" said Lord Magellan, looking at his companion. "One

feels the merest pygmy! From the age of decadence indeed!" He glanced at

the guide-book in his hand. "Good Heavens!--if this was their decay,

what was their bloom?"

"Yes--it's big--and jolly. I like it," said Kitty, absently. Then she

recollected herself. "This is your way out. Federigo!" she called to an

old man, the _custode_ of the palace, who appeared at the magnificent

door leading to the grand staircase.

"Commanda, eccellenza!" The old man, bent and feeble, approached. He

carried a watering-pot wherewith he was about to minister to some

straggling flowers in the windows fronting the Grand Canal. A thin cat

rubbed itself against his legs. As he stood in his shabbiness under the

high, carved door, the only permanent denizen of the building, he seemed

an embodiment of the old shrunken Venetian life, still haunting a city

it was no longer strong enough to use.

"Will you show this signor the way out?" said Kitty, in tourists'

Italian. "Are you soon shutting up?"

For the main palazzo, which during the day was often shown to

sightseers, was locked at half-past five, only the two _entresols_--one

tenanted by Donna Laura, the other by the _custode_--remaining

accessible.

The old man murmured something which Kitty did not understand, pointing

at the same time to a door leading to the interior of the _piano

nobile_. Kitty thought that he asked her to be quick, if she wished

still to go round the palace. She tried to explain that he might lock up

if he pleased; her way of retreat to the _mezzanino_, down the small

staircase, was always open. Federigo looked puzzled, again said

something in unintelligible Venetian, and led the way to the grand

staircase followed by Lord Magellan.

* * * * *

A heavy door clanged below. Kitty was alone. She looked round her, at

the stretches of marble floor, and the streaks of pale sunshine that lay

upon its black and white, at the lofty walls painted with a dim superb

architecture, at the crowded ceiling, the gorgeous candelabra. With its

costly decoration, the great room suggested a rich and festal life;

thronging groups below answering to the Tiepolo groups above; beauties

patched and masked; gallants in brocaded coats; splendid senators, robed

like William at the fancy ball.

Suddenly she caught sight of herself in one of the high and narrow

mirrors that filled the spaces between the windows. In her mourning

dress, with the light behind her, she made a tiny spectre in the immense

hall. The image of her present self--frail, black-robed--recalled the

two figures in the glass of her Hill Street room--the sparkling white of

her goddess dress, and William's smiling face above hers, his arm round

her waist.

How happy she had been that night! Even her wild fury with Mary Lyster

seemed to her now a kind of happiness. How gladly would she have

exchanged for it either of the two terrors that now possessed her!

With a shiver she crossed the hall, and pushed her way into the suite of

rooms on the northern side. She felt herself in absolute possession of

the palace. Federigo no doubt had locked up; her mother and a few guests

were still talking in the _salon_ of the _mezzanine_, expecting her to

return. She would return--soon; but the solitariness and wildness of

this deserted place drew her on.

Room after room opened before her--bare, save for a few worm-eaten

chairs, a fragment of tapestry on the wall, or some tattered portraits

in the Longhi manner, indifferent to begin with, and long since ruined

by neglect. Yet here and there a young face looked out, roses in the

hair and at the breast; or a Doge's cap--and beneath it phantom features

still breathing even in the last decay of canvas and paint the violence

and intrigue of the living man--the ghost of character held there by

the ghost of art. Or a lad in slashed brocade, for whom even in this

silent palace, and in spite of the gaping crack across his face, life

was still young; a cardinal; a nun; a man of letters in clerical dress,

the Abbé Prévost of his day....

Presently she found herself in a wide corridor, before a high, closed

door. She tried it, and saw a staircase mounting and descending. A

passion of curiosity that was half romance, half restlessness, drove her

on. She began to ascend the marble steps, hearing only the echo of her

own movements, a little afraid of the cold spaces of the vast house, and

yet delighting in the fancies that crowded upon her. At the top of the

flight she found, of course, another apartment, on the same plan as the

one below, but smaller and less stately. The central hall entered from a

door supported by marble caryatids, was flagged in yellow marble, and

frescoed freely with faded eighteenth-century scenes--cardinals walking

in stiff gardens, a pope alighting from his coach, surrounded by

peasants on their knees, and behind him fountains and obelisk and the

towering façade of St. Peter's. At the moment, thanks to a last glow of

light coming in through a west window at the farther end, it was a place

beautiful though forlorn. But the rooms into which she looked on either

side were wreck and desolation itself, crowded with broken furniture,

many of them shuttered and dark.

As she closed the last door, her attention was caught by a strange bust

placed on a pedestal above the entrance. What was wrong with it? An

accident? An injury? She went nearer, straining her eyes to see.

No!--there was no injury. The face indeed was gone. Or, rather, where

the face should have been there now descended a marble veil from brow to

breast, of the most singular and sinister effect. Otherwise the bust was

that of a young and beautiful woman. A pleasing horror seized on Kitty

as she looked. Her fancy hunted for the clew. A faithless wife, blotted

from her place?--made infamous forever by the veil which hid from human

eye the beauty she had dishonored? Or a beloved mistress, on whom the

mourning lover could no longer bear to look--the veil an emblem of

undying and irremediable grief?

Kitty stood enthralled, striving to pierce the ghastly meaning of the

bust, when a sound--a distant sound--a shock through her. She heard a

step overhead, in the topmost apartment, or _mansarde_ of the palace, a

step that presently traversed the whole length of the floor immediately

above her head and began to descend the stair.

Strange! Federigo must have shut the great gates by this time--as she

had bade him? He himself inhabited the smaller _entresol_ on the farther

side of the palace, far away. Other inhabitants there were none; so

Donna Laura had assured her.

The step approached, resonant in the silence. Kitty, seized with nervous

fright, turned and ran down the broad staircase by which she had come,

through the series of deserted rooms in the _piano nobile_, till she

reached the great hall.

There she paused, panting, curiosity and daring once more getting the

upperhand. The door she had just passed through, which gave access to

the staircase, opened again and shut. The stranger who had entered came

leisurely towards the hall, lingering apparently now and then to look at

objects on the way. Presently a voice--an exclamation.

Kitty retreated, caught at the arm of a chair for support, clung to it

trembling. A man entered, holding his hat in one hand and a small white

glove in the other.

At sight of the lady in black, standing on the other side of the hall,

he started violently--and stopped. Then, just as Kitty, who had so far

made neither sound nor movement, took the first hurried step towards the

staircase by which she had entered, Geoffrey Cliffe came forward.

"How do you do, Lady Kitty? Do not, I beg of you, let me disturb you. I

had half an hour to spare, and I gave the old man down-stairs a franc or

two, that he might let me wander over this magnificent old place by

myself for a bit. I have always had a fancy for deserted houses. You, I

gather, have it, too. I will not interfere with you for a moment. Before

I go, however, let me return what I believe to be your property."

He came nearer, with a studied, deliberate air, and held out the white

glove. She saw it was her own and accepted it.

"Thank you."

She bowed with all the haughtiness she could muster, though her limbs

shook under her. Then as she walked quickly towards the door of exit,

Cliffe, who was nearer to it than she, also moved towards it, and threw

it open for her. As she approached him he said, quietly:

"This is not the first time we have met in Venice, Lady Kitty."

She wavered, could not avoid looking at him, and stood arrested. That

almost white head!--that furrowed brow!--those haggard eyes! A slight,

involuntary cry broke from her lips.

Cliffe smiled. Then he straightened his tall figure.

"You see, perhaps, that I have not grown younger. You are quite right. I

have left my youth--what remained of it--among those splendid fellows

whom the Turks have been harrying and torturing. Well!--they were worth

it. I would give it them again."

There was a short silence.

The eyes of each perused the other's face. Kitty began some words, and

left them unfinished. Cliffe resumed--in another tone--while the door he

held swung gently backward, his hand following it.

"I spent last winter, as perhaps you know, with the Bosnian insurgents

in the mountains. It was a tough business--hardships I should never have

had the pluck to face if I had known what was before me. Then, in July,

I got fever. I had to come away, to find a doctor, and I was a long time

at Cattaro pulling round. And, meanwhile, the Turks--God blast

them!--have been at their fiends' work. Half my particular friends, with

whom I spent the winter, have been hacked to pieces since I left them."

She wavered, held by his look, by the coercion of that mingled passion

and indifference with which he spoke. There was in his manner no

suggestion whatever of things behind, no reference to herself or to the

past between them. His passion, it seemed, was for his comrades; his

indifference for her. What had he to do with her any more? He had been

among the realities of battle and death, while she had been mincing and

ambling along the usual feminine path. That was the utterance, it

seemed, of the man's whole manner and personality, and nothing could

have more effectually recalled Kitty's wild nature to the lure.

"Are you going back?" She had turned from him and was pulling at the

fingers of the glove he had picked up.

"Of course! I am only kicking my heels here till I can collect the money

and stores--ay, and the _men_--I want. I give my orders in London, and I

must be here to see to the transshipment of stores and the embarkation

of my small force! Not meant for the newspapers, you see, Lady

Kitty--these little details!"

He drew himself up smiling, his worn aspect expressing just that

mingling of dare-devil adventure with subtler and more self-conscious

things which gave edge and power to his personality.

"I heard you were wounded," said Kitty, abruptly.

"So I was--badly. We were defending a _polje_--one of their high

mountain valleys, against a Beg and his troops. My left arm"--he pointed

to the black sling in which it was still held--"was nearly cut to

pieces. However, it is practically well."

He took it out of the sling and showed that he could use it. Then his

expression changed. He stepped back to the door, and opened it

ceremoniously.

"Don't, however, let me delay you, Lady Kitty--by my chatter."

Kitty's cheeks were crimson. Her momentary yielding vanished in a

passion of scorn. What!--he knew that she had seen him before, seen him

with that woman--and he dared to play the mere shattered hero, kept in

Venice by these crusader's reasons!

"Have you another volume on the way?" she asked him, as she advanced. "I

read your last."

Her smile was the smile of an enemy. He eyed her strangely.

"Did you? That was waste of time."

"I think you intended I should read it."

He hesitated.

"Lady Kitty, those things are very far away. I can't defend myself--for

they seem wiped out." He had crossed his arms, and was leaning back

against the open door, a fine, rugged figure, by no means repentant.

Kitty laughed.

"You overstate the difference!"

"Between the past and the present? What does that mean?"

She dropped her eyes a moment, then raised them.

"Do you often go to San Lazzaro?"

He bowed.

"I had a suspicion that the vision at the window--though it was there

only an instant--was you! So you saw Mademoiselle Ricci?"

His tone was assurance itself. Kitty disdained to answer. Her slight

gesture bade him let her pass through; but he ignored it.

"I find her kind, Lady Kitty. She listens to me--I get sympathy from

her."

"And you want sympathy?"

Her tone stung him. "As a hungry man wants food --as an artist wants

beauty. But I know where I shall _not_ get it."

"That is always a gain!" said Kitty, throwing back her little head. "Mr.

Cliffe, pray let me bid you good-bye."

He suddenly made a step forward. "Lady Kitty!"--his deep-set, imperious

eyes searched her face--"I can't restrain myself. Your look--your

expression--go to my heart. Laugh at me if you like. It's true. What

have you been doing with yourself?"

He bent towards her, scrutinizing every delicate feature, and, as it

seemed, shaken with agitation. She breathed fast.

"Mr. Cliffe, you must know that any sympathy from you to me--is an

insult! Kindly let me pass."

He, too, flushed deeply.

"Insult is a hard word, Lady Kitty. I regret that poem."

She swept forward in silence, but he still stood in the way.

"I wrote it--almost in delirium. Ah, well"--he shook his head

impatiently--"if you don't believe me, let it be. I am not the man I

was. The perspective of things is altered for me." His voice fell.

"Women and children in their blood--heroic trust--and brute hate--the

stars for candles--the high peaks for friends--those things have come

between me and the past. But you are right; we had better not talk any

more. I hear old Federigo coming up the stairs. Good-night, Lady

Kitty--good-night!"

He opened the door. She passed him, and, to her own intense annoyance, a

bunch of pale roses she carried at her belt brushed against the

doorway, so that one broke and fell. She turned to pick it up, but it

was already in Cliffe's hand. She held out hers, threateningly.

"I think not." He put it in his pocket. "Here is Federigo. Good-night."

It was quite dark when Kitty reached home. She groped her way up-stairs

and opened the door of the _salon_. So weary was she that she dropped

into the first chair, not seeing at first that any one was in the room.

Then she caught sight of a brown-paper parcel, apparently just

unfastened, on the table, and within it three books, of similar shape

and size. A movement startled her.

"William!"

Ashe rose slowly from the deep chair in which he had been sitting. His

aspect seemed to her terrified eyes utterly and wholly changed. In his

hand he held a book like those on the table, and a paper-cutter. His

face expressed the remote abstraction of a man who has been wrestling

his way through some hard contest of the mind.

She ran to him. She wound her arms round him.

"William, William! I didn't mean any harm! I didn't! Oh, I have been so

miserable! I tried to stop it--I did all I could. I have hardly slept at

all--since we talked--you remember? Oh, William, look at me! Don't be

angry with me!"

Ashe disengaged himself.

"I have asked Blanche to pack for me to-night, Kitty. I go home by the

early train to-morrow."

"Home!"

She stood petrified; then a light flashed into her face.

"You'll buy it all up? You'll stop it, William?"

Ashe drew himself together.

"I am going home," he said, with slow decision, "to place my resignation

in the hands of Lord Parham."

XXI

Kitty fell back in silence, staring at William. She loosened her mantle

and threw it off, then she sat down in a chair near the wood fire, and

bent over it, shivering.

"Of course you didn't mean that, William?" she said, at last.

Ashe turned.

"I should not have said it unless I had meant every word of it. It is,

of course, the only thing to be done."

Kitty looked at him miserably. "But you _can't_ mean that--that you'll

resign because of that book?"

She pulled it towards her and turned over the pages with a hand that

trembled. "That would be too foolish!"

Ashe made no reply. He was standing before the fire, with his hands in

his pockets, and a face half absent, half ironical, as though his mind

followed the sequences of a far distant future.

"William!" She caught the sleeve of his coat with a little cry. "I wrote

that book because I thought it would help you."

His attention came back to her.

"Yes, Kitty, I believe you did."

She gulped down a sob. His tone was so odd, so remote.

"Many people have done such things. I know they have. Why--why, it was

only meant--as a skit--to make people laugh! There's _no_ harm in it,

William."

Ashe, without speaking, took up the book and looked back at certain

pages, which he seemed to have marked. Kitty's feeling as she watched

him was the feeling of the condemned culprit, held dumb and strangled in

the grip of his own sense of justice, and yet passionately conscious how

much more he could say for himself than anybody is ever likely to say

for him.

"When did you have the first idea of this book, Kitty?"

"About a year ago," she said, in a low voice.

"In October? At Haggart?"

Kitty nodded.

Ashe thought. Her admission took him back to the autumn weeks at

Haggart, after the Cliffe crisis and the rearrangement of the ministry

in the July of that year. He well remembered that those weeks had been

weeks of special happiness for both of them. Afterwards, the winter had

brought many renewed qualms and vexations. But in that period, between

the storms of the session and Kitty's escapades in the hunting-field,

memory recalled a tender, melting time--a time rich in hidden and

exquisite hours, when with Kitty on his breast, lip to lip and heart to

heart, he had reaped, as it seemed to him, the fruits of that indulgence

which, as he knew, his mother scorned. And at that very moment, behind

his back, out of his sight, she had begun this atrocious thing.

He looked at her again--the bitterness almost at his lips, almost beyond

his control.

"I wish I knew what could have been your possible object in writing

it?"

She sat up and confronted him. The color flamed back again into her pale

cheeks.

"You know I told you--when we had that talk in London--that I wanted to

write. I thought it would be good for me--would take my thoughts

off--well, what had happened. And I began to write this--and it amused

me to find I could do it--and I suppose I got carried away. I loved

describing you, and glorifying you--and I loved making caricatures of

Lady Parham--and all the people I hated. I used to work at it whenever

you were away--or I was dull and there was nothing to do.

"Did it never occur to you," said Ashe, interrupting, "that it might get

you--get us both--into trouble, and that you ought to tell me?"

She wavered.

"No!" she said, at last. "I never did mean to tell you, while I was

writing it. You know I don't tell lies, William! The real fact is, I was

afraid you'd stop it."

"Good God!" He threw up his hands with a sound of amazement, then thrust

them again into his pockets and began to pace up and down.

"But then"--she resumed--"I thought you'd soon get over it, and that it

was funny--and everybody would laugh--and you'd laugh--and there would

be an end of it."

He turned and stared at her. "Frankly, Kitty--I don't understand what

you can be made of! You imagined that that sketch of Lord Parham"--he

struck the open page--"a sketch written by _my wife_, describing my

official chief--when he was my guest--under my own roof--with all sorts

of details of the most intimate and offensive kind--mocking his

speech--his manners--his little personal ways--charging him with being

the corrupt tool of Lady Parham, disloyal to his colleagues, a man not

to be trusted--and justifying all this by a sort of evidence that you

could only have got as my wife and Lord Parham's hostess--you actually

supposed that you could write and publish _that!_--without in the first

place its being plain to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that you had written

it--and in the next, without making it impossible for your husband to

remain a colleague of the man you had treated in such a way? Kitty!--you

are not a stupid woman! Do you really mean to say that you could write

and publish this book without _knowing_ that you were doing a wrong

action--which, so far from serving me, could only damage my career

irreparably? Did nothing--did no one warn you--if you were determined to

keep such a secret from your husband, whom it most concerned?"

He had come to stand beside her, both hands on the back of a

chair--stooping forward to emphasize his words--the lines of his fine

face and noble brow contracted by anger and pain.

"Mr. Darrell warned me," said Kitty, in a low voice, as though those

imperious eyes compelled the truth from her--"but of course I didn't

believe him."

"Darrell!" cried Ashe, in amazement--"Darrell! You confided in him?"

"I told him all about it. It was he who took it to a publisher."

"Hound!" said Ashe, between his teeth. "So that was his revenge."

"Oh, you needn't blame him too much," said Kitty, proudly, not

understanding the remark. "He wrote to me not long ago to say it was

horribly unwise--and that he washed his hands of it."

"Ay--when he'd done the deed! When did you show it him?" said Ashe,

impetuously.

"At Haggart--in August."

"_Et tu, Brute!_" said Ashe, turning away. "Well, that's done with. Now

the only thing to do is to face the music. I go home. Whatever can be

done to withdraw the book from circulation I shall, of course, do; but I

gather from this precious letter"--he held up the note which had been

enclosed in the parcel--"that some thousands of copies have already been

ordered by the booksellers, and a few distributed to 'persons in high

places.'"

"William," she said, in despair, catching his arm again--"listen! I

offered the man two hundred pounds only yesterday to stop it."

Ashe laughed.

"What did he reply?"

"He said it was impossible. Fifty copies had been already issued."

"The review copies, no doubt. By next week there will be, I should say,

five thousand in the shops. Your man understands his business, Kitty.

This is the kind of puff preliminary he has been scattering about."

And with sparkling eyes he handed to her a printed slip containing an

outline of the book for the information of the booksellers.

It drew attention to the extraordinary interest of the production as a

painting of the upper class by the hand of one belonging to its inmost

circle. "People of the highest social and political importance will be

recognized at once; the writer handles cabinet ministers and their wives

with equal freedom, and with a touch betraying the closest and most

intimate knowledge. Details hitherto quite unknown to the public of

ministerial combinations and intrigues--especially of the feminine

influences involved--will be found here in their lightest and most

amusing form. A certain famous fancy ball will be identified without

difficulty. Scathing as some of the portraits are, the writer is by no

means merely cynical. The central figure of the book is a young and

rising statesman, whose aim and hopes are touched with a loving

hand--the charm of the portrait being only equalled by the venom with

which the writer assails those who have thwarted or injured his hero.

But our advice is simply--'Buy and Read!' Conjecture will run wild about

the writer. All we can say is that the most romantic or interesting

surmise that can possibly be formed will fall far short of the reality."

"The beast is a shrewd beast!" said Ashe, as he raised himself from the

stooping position in which he had been following the sentences over

Kitty's shoulder. "He knows that the public will rush for his wares! How

much money did he offer you, Kitty?"

He turned sharply on his heel to wait for her reply.

"A hundred pounds," said Kitty, almost inaudibly--"and a hundred more if

five thousand sold." She had returned again to her crouching attitude

over the fire.

"Generous!--upon my word!" said Ashe, scornfully turning over the two

thick-leaved, loosely printed Mudie volumes. "A guinea to the public, I

suppose--fifteen shillings to the trade. Darrell didn't exactly advise

you to advantage, Kitty."

Kitty kept silence. The sarcastic violence of his tone fell on her like

a blow. She seemed to shrink together; while Ashe resumed his walk to

and fro.

Presently, however, she looked up, to ask, in a voice that tried for

steadiness:

"What do you mean to do--exactly--William?"

"I shall, of course, buy up all I can; I shall employ some lawyer

fellow, and appeal to the good feelings of the newspapers. There will be

no trouble with the respectable ones. But some copies will get out, and

some of the Opposition newspapers will make capital out of them.

Naturally!--they'd be precious fools if they didn't."

A momentary hope sprang up in Kitty.

"But if you buy it up--and stop all the papers that matter," she

faltered--"why should you resign, William? There won't be--such great

harm done."

For answer he opened the book, and without speaking pointed to two

passages--the first, an account full of point and malice of the

negotiations between himself and Lord Parham at the time when he entered

the cabinet, the conditions he himself had made, and the confidential

comments of the Premier on the men and affairs of the moment.

"Do you remember the night when I told you those things, Kitty?"

Yes, Kitty remembered well. It was a night of intimate talk between man

and wife, a night when she had shown him her sweetest, tenderest mood,

and he--incorrigible optimist!--had persuaded himself that she was

growing as wise as she was lovely.

Her lip trembled. Then he pointed to the second--to the pitiless picture

of Lord Parham at Haggart.

"You wrote that--when he was under our roof--there by our pressing

invitation! You couldn't have written it--unless he had so put himself

in your power. A wandering Arab, Kitty, will do no harm to the man who

has eaten and drunk in his tent!"

She looked up, and as she read his face she understood at last how what

she had done had outraged in him all the natural and all the inherited

instincts of a generous and fastidious nature. The "great gentleman," so

strong in him as in all the best of English statesmen, whether they

spring from the classes or the masses, was up in arms.

She sprang to her feet with a cry. "William, you can't give up politics!

It would make you miserable."

"That can't be helped. And I couldn't go on like this, Kitty--even if

this affair of the book could be patched up. The strain's too great."

They were but a yard apart, and yet she seemed to be looking at him

across a gulf.

"You have been so happy in your work!" This time the sob escaped her.

"Oh, don't let's talk about that," he said, abruptly, as he walked away.

"There'll be a certain relief in giving up the impossible. I'll go back

to my books. We can travel, I suppose, and put politics out of our

heads."

"But--you won't resign your seat?"

"No," he said, after a pause--"no. As far as I can see at present, I

sha'n't resign my seat, though my constituents, of course, will be very

sick. But I doubt whether I shall stand again."

Every phrase fell as though with a thud on Kitty's ear. It was the wreck

of a man's life, and she had done it.

"Shall you--shall you go and see Lord Parham?" she asked, after a pause.

"I shall write to him first. I imagine"--he pointed to the letter lying

on the table--"that creature has already sent him the book. Then later I

daresay I shall see him."

She looked up.

"If I wrote and told him it was all my doing, William?--if I grovelled

to him?"

"The responsibility is mine," he said, sternly. "I had no business to

tell even you the things printed there. I told them at my own risk. If

anything I say has any weight with you, Kitty, you will write nothing."

She spread out her hands to the fire again, and he heard her say, as

though to herself:

"The thing is--the awful thing is, that I'm mad--I must be mad. I never

thought of all this when I was writing it. I wrote it in a kind of

dream. In the first place, I wanted to glorify you--"

He broke into an exclamation.

"Your _taste_, Kitty!--where was your taste? That a wife should praise a

husband in public! You could only make us both laughing-stocks."

His handsome features quivered a little. He felt this part of it the

most galling, the most humiliating of all; and she understood. In his

eyes she had shown herself not only reckless and treacherous, but

indelicate, vulgar, capable of besmirching the most sacred and intimate

of relations.

She rose from her seat.

"I must go and take my things off," she said, in "a vague voice," and as

she moved she tottered a little. He turned to look at her. Amid his own

crushing sense of defeat and catastrophe, his natural and righteous

indignation, he remembered that she had been ill--he remembered their

child. But whether from the excitement, first of the meeting in the

Vercelli palace, and now of this scene--or merely from the heat of the

fire over which she had been hanging, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes

blazed. Her beauty had never been more evident; but it made little

appeal to him; it was the wild, ungovernable beauty from which he had

suffered. He saw that she was excited, but there was an air also of

returning physical vigor; and the nascent feeling which might have been

strengthened by pallor and prostration died away.

Kitty moved as though to pass him and go to her room, which opened out

of the _salon_. But as she neared him she suddenly caught him by the

arm.

"William!--William! don't do it!--don't resign! Let me apologize!"

He was angered by her persistence, and merely said, coldly:

"I have given you my reasons, Kitty, why such a course is impossible."

"And--and you start to-morrow morning?"

"By the early train. Please let me go, Kitty. There are many things to

arrange. I must order the gondola, and see if the people here can cash

me a check."

"You mean--to leave me alone?" The words had a curious emphasis.

"I had a few words with Miss French before you came in. The packet

arrived by the evening post, and seeing that it was books--for you--I

opened it. After about an hour"--he turned and walked away again--"I saw

my bearings. Then I called Miss French, told her I should have to go

to-morrow, and asked her how long she could stay with you."

"William!" cried Kitty again, leaning heavily on the table beside

her--"don't go!--don't leave me!"

His face darkened.

"So you would prevent me from taking the only honorable, the only decent

way out of this thing that remains to me?"

She made no immediate reply. She stood--wrapped apparently in painful

abstraction--a creature lovely and distraught. The masses of her fair

hair loosened by the breeze on the canal had fallen about her cheeks and

shoulders; her black hat framed the white brow and large, feverish eyes;

and the sable cape she had worn in the gondola had slipped down over the

thin, sloping shoulders, revealing the young figure and the slender

waist. She might have been a child of seventeen, grieving over the death

of her goldfinch.

Ashe gathered together his official letters and papers, found his

check-book, and began to write. While he wrote he explained that Miss

French could keep her company at least another fortnight, that he could

leave with them four or five circular notes for immediate expenses, and

would send more from home directly he arrived.

In the middle of his directions Kitty once more appealed to him in a

passionate, muffled voice not to go. This time he lost his temper, and

without answering her he hastily left the room to arrange his packing

with his valet.

* * * * *

When he returned to the _salon_ Kitty was not there. He and Miss

French--who knew only that something tragic had happened in which Kitty

was concerned--kept up a fragmentary conversation till dinner was

announced and Kitty entered. She had evidently been weeping, but with

powder and rouge she had tried to conceal the traces of her tears; and

at dinner she sat silent, hardly answering when Margaret French spoke to

her.

After dinner Ashe went out with his cigar towards the Piazza. He was in

a smarting, dazed state, beginning, however, to realize the blow more

than he had done at first. He believed that Parham himself would not be

at all sorry to be rid of him. He and his friends formed a powerful

group both in the cabinet and out of it. But they were forcing the pace,

and the elements of resistance and reaction were strong. He pictured the

dismay of his friends, the possible breakdown of the reforming party. Of

course they might so stand by him--and the suppression of the book might

be so complete--

At this moment he caught sight of a newspaper contents bill displayed at

the door of the only shop in the Piazza which sold English newspapers.

One of the lines ran, "Anonymous attack on the Premier." He started,

went in and bought the paper. There, in the "London Topics" column, was

the following paragraph:

"A string of extracts from a forthcoming book, accompanied by a somewhat

startling publisher's statement, has lately been sent round to the

press. We are asked not to print them before the day of publication, but

they have already roused much attention, if not excitement. They

certainly contain a very gross attack on the Prime Minister, based

apparently on first-hand information, and involving indiscretions

personal and political of an unusually serious character. The wife of a

cabinet minister is freely named as the writer, and even if no violation

of cabinet secrecy is concerned, it is clear that the book outrages the

confidential relations which ought to subsist between a Premier and his

colleagues, if government on our English system is to be satisfactorily

carried on. The statements it makes with every appearance of authority

both as to the relations between Lord Parham and some of the most

important members of his cabinet, and as to the Premier's intentions

with regard to one or two of the most vital questions now before the

country, are calculated seriously to embarrass the government. We fear

the book will have a veritable _succès de scandale_."

"That fellow at least has done his best to kick the ball, damn him!"

thought Ashe, with contempt, as he thrust the paper into his pocket.

It was no more than he expected; but it put an end to all thoughts of a

more hopeful kind. He walked up and down the _Piazza_ smoking, till

midnight, counting the hours till he could reach London, and revolving

the phrases of a telegram to be sent to his solicitor before starting.

Kitty made no sign or sound when he entered her room. Her fair head was

turned away from him, and all was dark. He could hardly believe that she

was asleep; but it was a relief to him to accept her pretence of it, and

to escape all further conversation. He himself slept but little. The

mere profundity of the Venetian silence teased him; it reminded him how

far he was from home.

Two images pursued him--of Kitty writing the book, while he was away

electioneering or toiling at his new office--and then, of his returns to

Haggart--tired or triumphant--on many a winter evening, of her glad rush

into his arms, her sparkling face on his breast.

Or again, he conjured up the scene when the MS. had been shown to

Darrell--his pretence of disapproval, his sham warnings, and the smile

on his sallow face as he walked off with it. Ashe looked back to the

early days of his friendship with Darrell, when he, Ashe, was one of the

leaders at Eton, popular with the masters in spite of his incorrigible

idleness, and popular with the boys because of his bodily prowess, and

Darrell had been a small, sickly, bullied colleger. Scene after scene

recurred to him, from their later relations at Oxford also. There was a

kind of deliberation in the way in which he forced his thoughts into

this channel; it made an outlet for a fierce bitterness of spirit, which

some imperious instinct forbade him to spend on Kitty.

He dozed in the later hours of the night, and was roused by something

touching his hand, which lay outside the bedclothes. Again the little

head!--and the soft curls. Kitty was there--crouched beside

him--weeping. There flashed into his mind an image of the night in

London when she had come to him thus; and unwelcome as the whole

remembrance was, he was conscious of a sudden swelling wave of pity and

passion. What if he sprang up, caught her in his arms, forgave her, and

bade the world go hang!

No! The impulse passed, and in his turn he feigned sleep. The thought of

her long deceit, of the selfish wilfulness wherewith she had requited

deep love and easy trust, was too much; it seared his heart. And there

was another and a subtler influence. To have forgiven so easily would

have seemed treachery to those high ambitions and ideals from which--as

he thought, only too certainly--she had now cut him off. It was part of

his surviving youth that the catastrophe seemed to him so absolute. Any

thought of the fresh efforts which would be necessary for the

reconquering of his position was no less sickening to him than that of

the immediate discomforts and humiliations to be undergone. He would go

back to books and amusement; and in the idling of the future there would

be plenty of time for love-making.

* * * * *

In the morning, when all preparations were made, the gondoliers waiting

below, Ashe's telegram sent, and the circular notes handed over to

Margaret French, who had discreetly left the room, William approached

his wife.

"Good-bye!" said Kitty, and gave him her hand, with a strange look and

smile.

Ashe, however, drew her to him and kissed her--against her will. "I'll

do my best, Kitty," he said, in a would-be cheery voice--"to pull us

through. Perhaps--I don't know!--things may turn out better than I

think. Good-bye. Take care of yourself. I'll write, of course. Don't

hurry home. You'll want a fortnight or three weeks yet."

Kitty said not a word, and in another minute he was gone. The Italian

servants congregated below at the water-gate sent laughing "A

rivederlas" after the handsome, good-tempered Englishman, whom they

liked and regretted; the gondola moved off; Kitty heard the plash of the

water. But she held back from the window.

Half-way to the bend of the canal beyond the Accademia, Ashe turned and

gave a long look at the balcony. No one was there. But just as the

gondola was passing out of sight, Kitty slipped onto the balcony. She

could see only the figure of Piero, the gondolier, and in another second

the boat was gone. She stayed there for many minutes, clinging to the

balustrade and staring, as it seemed, at the sparkle of autumnal sun

which danced on the green water and on the red palace to her right.

* * * * *

All the morning Kitty on her sofa pretended to write letters. Margaret

French, working or reading behind her, knew that she scarcely got

through a single note, that her pen lay idle on the paper, while her

eyes absently watched the palace windows on the other side of the canal.

Miss French was quite certain that some tragic cause of difference

between the husband and wife had arisen. Kitty, the indiscreet, had for

once kept her own counsel about the book, and Ashe had with his own

hands packed away the volumes which had arrived the night before; so

that she could only guess, and from that delicacy of feeling restrained

her as much as possible.

Once or twice Kitty seemed on the point of unburdening herself. Then

overmastering tears would threaten; she would break off and begin to

write. At luncheon her look alarmed Miss French, so white was the little

face, so large and restless the eyes. Ought Mr. Ashe to have left her,

and left her apparently in anger? No doubt he thought her much better.

But Margaret remembered the worst days of her illness, the anxious looks

of the doctors, and the anguish that Kitty had suffered in the first

weeks after her child's death. She seemed now, indeed, to have forgotten

little Harry, so far as outward expression went; but who could tell what

was passing in her strange, unstable mind? And it often seemed to

Margaret that the signs of the past summer were stamped on her

indelibly, for those who had eyes to see.

Was it the perception of this pity beside her that drove Kitty to

solitude and flight? At any rate, she said after luncheon that she would

go to Madame d'Estrées, and did not ask Miss French to accompany her.

She set out accordingly with the two gondoliers. But she had hardly

passed the Accademia before she bid her men take a cross-cut to the

Giudecca. On these wide waters, with their fresher air and fuller

sunshine, a certain physical comfort seemed to breathe upon her.

"Piero, it is not rough! Can we go to the Lido?" she asked the gondolier

behind her.

Piero, who was all smiles and complaisance, as well he might be with a

lady who scattered _lire_ as freely as Kitty did, turned the boat at

once for that channel "Del Orfano" where the bones of the vanquished

dead lie deep amid the ooze.

They passed San Giorgio, and were soon among the piles and sand-banks of

the lagoon. Kitty sat in a dream which blotted the sunshine from the

water. It seemed to her that she was a dead creature, floating in a dead

world. William had ceased to love her. She had wrecked his career and

destroyed her own happiness. Her child had been taken from her. Lady

Tranmore's affection had been long since alienated. Her own mother was

nothing to her; and her friends in society, like Madeleine Alcot, would

only laugh and gloat over the scandal of the book.

No--everything was finished! As her fingers hanging over the side of the

gondola felt the touch of the water, her morbid fancy, incredibly quick

and keen, fancied herself drowned, or poisoned--lying somehow white and

cold on a bed where William might see and forgive her.

Then with a start of memory which brought the blood rushing to her face,

she thought of Cliffe standing beside the door of the great hall in the

Vercelli palace--she seemed to be looking again into those deep,

expressive eyes, held by the irony and the passion with which they were

infused. Had the passion any reference to her?--or was it merely part of

the man's nature, as inseparable from it as flame from the volcano? If

William had cast her off, was there still one man--wild and bad, indeed,

like herself, but poet and hero nevertheless--who loved her?

She did not much believe it; but still the possibility of it lured her,

like some dark gulf that promised her oblivion from this pain--pain

which tortured one so impatient of distress, so hungry for pleasure and

praise.

* * * * *

In those days the Lido was still a noble and solitary shore, without the

degradations of to-day.

Kitty walked fast and furiously across the sandy road, and over the

shingles, turning, when she reached the firm sand, southward towards

Malamocco. It was between four and five, and the autumn afternoon was

fast declining. A fresh breeze was on the sea, and the short waves,

intensely blue under a wide, clear heaven, broke in dazzling foam on the

red-brown sand.

She seemed to be alone between sea and sky, save for two figures

approaching from the south--a fisher-boy with a shrimping-net and a man

walking bareheaded. She noticed them idly. A mirage of sun was between

her and them, and the agony of remorse and despair which held her

blunted all perceptions.

Thus it was that not till she was close upon him did her dazzled sight

recognize Geoffrey Cliffe.

He saw her first, and stopped in motionless astonishment on the edge of

the sand. She almost ran against him, when his voice arrested her.

"Lady Kitty!"

She put her hand to her breast, wavered, and came to a stand-still. He

saw a little figure in black between him and those "gorgeous towers and

cloud-capped palaces" of Alpine snow, which dimly closed in the north;

and beneath the drooping hat a face even more changed and tragic than

that which had haunted him since their meeting of the day before.

[Illustration: "SHE THOUGHT OF CLIFFE STANDING BESIDE THE DOOR OF THE

GREAT HALL."]

"How do you do?" she said, mechanically, and would have passed him.

But he stood in her path. As he stared at her an impulse of rage ran

through him, resenting the wreck of anything so beautiful--rage against

Ashe, who must surely be somehow responsible.

"Aren't you wandering too far, Lady Kitty?" His voice shook under the

restraint he put upon it. "You seem tired--very tired--and you are

perhaps farther from your gondola than you think."

"I am not tired."

He hesitated.

"Might I walk with you a little, or do you forbid me?"

She said nothing, but walked on. He turned and accompanied her. One or

two questions that he put to her--Had she companions?--Where had she

left her gondola?--remained unanswered. He studied her face, and at last

he laid a strong hand upon her arm.

"Sit down. You are not fit for any more walking."

He drew her towards some logs of driftwood on the upper sand, and she

sank down upon them. He found a place beside her.

"What is the matter with you?" he said, abruptly, with a harsh

authority. "You are in trouble."

A tremor shook her--as of the prisoner who feels on his limbs the first

touch of the fetter.

"No, no!" she said, trying to rise; "it is nothing. I--I didn't know it

was so far. I must go home."

His hand held her.

"Kitty!"

"Yes." Her voice was scarcely audible.

"Tell me what hurts you! Tell me why you are here, alone, with a face

like that! Don't be afraid of me! Could I lift a finger to harm a

mother that has lost her child? Give me your hands." He gathered both

hers into the warm shelter of his own. "Look at me--trust me! My heart

has grown, Kitty, since you knew me last. It has taken into itself so

many griefs--so many deaths. Tell me your griefs, poor child!--tell me!"

He stooped and kissed her hands--most tenderly, most gravely.

Tears rushed into her eyes. The wild emotions that were her being were

roused beyond control. Bending towards him she began to pour out, first

brokenly, then in a torrent, the wretched, incoherent story, of which

the mere telling, in such an ear, meant new treachery to William and new

ruin for herself.

XXII

On a certain cloudy afternoon, some ten days later, a fishing-boat, with

a patched orange sail, might have been seen scudding under a light

northwesterly breeze through the channels which connect the island of

San Francesco with the more easterly stretches of the Venetian lagoon.

The boat presently neared the shore of one of the cultivated

_lidi_--islands formed out of the silt of many rivers by the travail of

centuries, some of them still mere sand or mud banks, others covered by

vineyards and fruit orchards--which, with the _murazzi_ or sea-walls of

Venice, stand sentinel between the city and the sea. On the _lido_ along

which the boat was coasting, the vintage was long since over and the

fruit gathered; the last yellow and purple leaves in the orchards, "a

pestilent-stricken multitude," were to-day falling fast to earth, under

the sighing, importunate wind. The air was warm; November was at its

mildest. But all color and light were drowned in floating mists, and

darkness lay over the distant city. It was one of those drear and

ghostly days which may well have breathed into the soul of Shelley that

superb vision of the dead generations of Venice, rising, a phantom host

from the bosom of the sunset, and sweeping in "a rapid mask of death"

over the shadowed waters that saw the birth and may yet furnish the tomb

of so vast a fame.

Two persons were in the boat--Kitty, wrapped in sables, her straying

hair held close by a cap of the same fur--and Geoffrey Cliffe. They had

been wandering in the lagoons all day, in order to escape from Venice

and observers--first at Torcello, then at San Francesco, and now they

were ostensibly coming home in a wide sweep along the northern _lidi_

and _murazzi_, that Cliffe might show his companion, from near by, the

Porto del Lido, that exit from the lagoons where the salt lakes grow

into the sea.

A certain wildness and exaltation, drawn from the solitudes around them

and from their _tête-à-tête_, could be read in both the man and the

woman. Cliffe watched his companion incessantly. As he lay against the

side of the boat at her feet, he saw her framed in the curving sides of

the stern, and could read her changing expressions. Not a happy

face!--that he knew! A face haunted by shadows from an underworld of

thought--pursuing furies of remorse and fear. Not the less did he

triumph that he had it _there_, in his power; nor had the flashes of

terror and wavering will which he discerned in any way diminished its

beauty.

"How long have you known--that woman?" Kitty asked him, suddenly, after

a pause broken only by the playing of the wind with the sail.

Cliffe laughed.

"The Ricci? Why do you want to know, madame?"

She made a contemptuous lip.

"I knew her first," said Cliffe, "some years ago in Milan. She was then

at La Scala--walking on--paid for her good looks. Then somebody sent her

to Paris to the Conservatoire, which she only left this spring. This is

her first Italian engagement. Her people are shopkeepers here--in the

Merceria--which helped her. She is as vain as a peacock and as dangerous

as a pet panther."

"Dangerous!" Kitty's scorn had passed into her voice.

"Well, Italy is still the country of the knife," said Cliffe,

lightly--"and I could still hire a bravo or two--in Venice--if I wanted

them."

"Does the Ricci hire them?"

Cliffe shrugged his shoulders.

"She'd do it without winking, if it suited her." Then, after a

pause--"Do you still wonder why I should have chosen her society?"

"Oh no," said Kitty, hastily. "You told me."

"As much as a _friend_ cares to know?"

She nodded, flushing, and dropped the subject.

Cliffe's mouth still smiled, but his eyes studied her with a veiled and

sinister intensity.

"I have not seen the lady for a week," he resumed. "She pesters me with

notes. I promised to go and see her in a new play to-morrow night,

but--"

"Oh, go!" said Kitty--"by all means go!"

"'Ruy Blas' in Italian? I think not. Ah! did you see that gleam on the

Campanile?--marvellous!... Miladi, I have a question to ask you."

"_Dites!_" said Kitty.

"Did you put me into your book?"

"Certainly."

"What kind of things did you say?"

"The worst I could!"

"Ah! How shall I get a copy?" said Cliffe, musing.

She made no answer, but she was conscious of a sudden movement--was it

of terror? At the bottom of her soul was she, indeed, afraid of the man

beside her?

"By-the-way," he resumed, "you promised to tell me your news of this

morning. But you haven't told me a word!"

She turned away. She had gathered her furs around her, and her face was

almost hidden by them.

"Nothing is settled," she said, in a cold, reluctant voice.

"Which means that you won't tell me anything more?"

She was silent. Her lip had a proud line which piqued him.

"You think I am not worthy to know?"

Her eye gleamed.

"What does it matter to you?"

"Oh, nothing! I should have been glad to hear that all was well, and

Ashe's mind at rest about his prospects."

"His prospects!" she repeated, with a scorn which stung. "How _dare_ we

mention his name here at all?"

Cliffe reddened.

"I dare," he said, calmly.

Kitty looked at him--a quivering defiance in face and frame; then bent

forward.

"Would you like to know--who is the best--the noblest--the

handsomest--the most generous--the most delightful man I have ever met?"

Each word came out winged and charged with a strange intensity of

passion.

"Do I?" said Cliffe, raising his eyebrows--"do I want to know?"

Her look held him.

"My husband, William Ashe!"

And she fell back, flushed and breathless, like one who throws out a

rebel and challenging flag.

Cliffe was silent a moment, observing her.

"Strange!" he said, at last. "It is only when you are miserable you are

kind. I could wish you miserable again, _chérie_."

Tone and look broke into a sombre wildness before which she shrank. Her

own violence passed away. She leaned over the side of the boat,

struggling with tears.

"Then you have your wish," was her muffled answer.

The three bronzed Venetians, a father and two sons, who were working the

_bragozzo_ glanced curiously at the pair. They were persuaded that these

charterers of their boat were lovers flying from observation, and the

unknown tongue did but stimulate guessing.

Cliffe raised himself impatiently.

They were nearing a point where the line of _murazzi_ they had been

following--low breakwaters of great strength--swept away from them

outward and eastward towards a distant opening. On the other side of the

channel was a low line of shore, broadening into the Lido proper, with

its scattered houses and churches, and soon lost in the mist as it

stretched towards the south.

"Ecco!--il Porto del Lido!" said the older boatman, pointing far away to

a line of deeper color beneath a dark and lowering sky.

Kitty bent over the side of the boat staring towards the dim spot he

showed her--where was the mouth of the sea.

"Kitty!" said Cliffe's voice beside her, hoarse and hurried--"one word,

and I tell these fellows to set their helm for Trieste. This boat will

carry us well--and the wind is with us."

She turned and looked him in the face.

"And then?"

"Then? We'll think it out together, Kitty--together!" He bent his lips

to her hand, bending so as to conceal the action from the sailors. But

she drew her hand away.

"You and I," she said, fiercely--"would tire of each other in a week!"

"Have the courage to try! No!--you should not tire of me in a week! I

would find ways to keep you mine, Kitty--cradled, and comforted, and

happy."

"Happy!" Her slight laugh was the forlornest thing. "Take me out to

sea--and drop me there--with a stone round my neck. That might be worth

doing--perhaps."

He surveyed her unmoved.

"Listen, Kitty! This kind of thing can't go on forever."

"What are you waiting for?" she said, tauntingly. "You ought to have

gone last week."

"I am not going," he said, raising himself by a sudden movement--"till

you come with me!"

Kitty started, her eyes riveted to his.

"And yet go I will! Not even you shall stop me, Kitty. I'll take the

help I've gathered back to those poor devils--if I die for it. But

you'll come with me--you'll come!"

She drew back--trembling under an impression she strove to conceal.

"If you will talk such madness, I can't help it," she said, with

shortened breath.

"Yes--you'll come!" he said, nodding. "What have you to do with Ashe,

Kitty, any longer? You and he are already divided. You have tried life

together and what have you made of it? You're not fit for this mincing,

tripping London life--nor am I? And as for morals--- I'll tell you a

strange thing, Kitty." He bent forward and grasped her hands with a

force which hurt--from which she could not release herself. "I

believe--yes, by God, I believe!--that I am a better man than I was

before I started on this adventure. It's been like drinking at last at

the very source of life--living, not talking about it. One bitter night

last February, for instance, I helped a man--one of the insurgents--who

had taken to the mountains with his wife and children--to carry his

wife, a dying woman, over a mountain-pass to the only place where she

could possibly get help and shelter. We carried her on a litter, six men

taking turns. The cold and the fatigue were such that I shudder now when

I think of it. Yet at the end I seemed to myself a man reborn. I was

happier than I had ever been in my life. Some mystic virtue had flowed

into me. Among those men and women, instead of being the selfish beast

I've been all these years, I can forget myself. Death seems

nothing--brotherhood--liberty!--everything! And yet--"

His face relaxed, became ironical, reflective. But he held the hands

close, his grasp of them hidden by the folds of fur which hung about

her.

"And _yet_--I can say to you without a qualm--put this marriage which

has already come to naught behind you--and come with me! Ashe cramps

you. He blames you--you blame yourself. What _reality_ has all that? It

makes you miserable--it wastes life. _I_ accept your nature--I don't ask

you to be anything else than yourself--your wild, vain, adorable self!

Ashe asks you to put restraint on yourself--to make painful efforts--to

be good for his sake--the sake of something outside. _I_ say--come and

look at the elemental things--death and battle--hatred, solitude, love.

_They'll_ sweep us out of ourselves!--no need to strive and cry for

it--into the great current of the world's being--bring us close to the

forces at the root of things--the forces which create--and destroy. Dip

your heart in that stream, Kitty, and feel it grow in your breast. Take

a nurse's dress--put your hand in mine--and come! I can't promise you

luxuries or ease. You've had enough of those. Come and open another door

in the House of Life! Take starving women and hunted children into your

arms--- feel with them--weep with them--look with them into the face of

death! Make friends with nature--with rocks, forests, torrents--with

night and dawn, which you've never seen, Kitty! They'll love

you--they'll support you--the rough people--and the dark forests.

They'll draw nature's glamour round you--they'll pour her balm into your

soul. And I shall be with you--beside you!--your guardian--your

lover--your _lover_, Kitty--till death do us part."

He looked at her with the smile which was his only but sufficient

beauty; the violent, exciting words flowed in her ear, amid the sound of

rising waves and the distant talk of the fishermen. His hand crushed

hers; his mad, imploring eyes repelled and constrained her. The wild

hungers and curiosities of her being rushed to meet him; she heard the

echo of her own words to Ashe: "More life--more _life_!--even though it

lead to pain--and agony--and tears!"

Then she wrenched herself away--suddenly, contemptuously.

"Of course, that's all nonsense--romantic nonsense. You've perhaps

forgotten that I am one of the women who don't stir without their maid."

Cliffe's expression changed. He thrust his hands into his pockets.

"Oh, well, if you must have a maid," he said, dryly, "that settles it. A

maid would be the deuce. And yet--I think I could find you a Bosnian

girl--strong and faithful--"

Their eyes met--his already full of a kind of ownership, tender,

confident, humorous even--hers alive with passionate anger and

resistance.

"_Without a qualm_!" she repeated, in a low voice--"without a qualm! Mon

Dieu!"

She turned and looked towards the Adriatic.

"Where are we?" she said, imperiously.

For a gesture of command on Cliffe's part, unseen by her, had sent the

boat eastward, spinning before the wind. The lagoon was no longer

tranquil. It was covered with small waves; and the roar of the outer

sea, though still far off, was already in their ears. The mist lifting

showed white, distant crests of foam on a tumbling field of water, and

to the north, clothed in tempestuous purple, the dim shapes of

mountains.

Kitty raised herself, and beckoned towards the captain of the

_bragozzo_.

"Giuseppe!"

"Commanda, Eccellenza!"

The man came forward.

With a voice sharp and clear, she gave the order to return at once to

Venice. Cliffe watched her, the veins on his forehead swelling. She knew

that he debated with himself whether he should give a counter-order or

no.

"A Venezia!" said Kitty, waving her hand towards the sailors, her eyes

shining under the tangle of her hair.

The helm was put round, and beneath a tacking sail the boat swept

southward.

With an awkward laugh Cliffe fell back into his seat, stretching his

long limbs across the boat. He had spoken under a strong and genuine

impulse. His passion for her had made enormous strides in these few wild

days beside her. And yet the fantastic poet's sense responded at a touch

to the new impression. He shook off the heroic mood as he had doffed his

Bosnian cloak. In a few minutes, though the heightened color remained,

he was chatting and laughing as though nothing had happened.

* * * * *

She, exhausted physically and morally by her conflict with him, hardly

spoke on the way home. He entertained her, watching her all the time--a

hundred speculations about her passing through his brain. He understood

perfectly how the insight which she had allowed him into her grief and

her remorse had broken down the barriers between them. Her incapacity

for silence, and reticence, had undone her. Was he a villain to have

taken advantage of it?

Why? With a strange, half-cynical clearness he saw her, as the obstacle

that she was, in Ashe's life and career. For Ashe--supposing he, Cliffe,

persuaded her--there would be no doubt a first shock of wrath and

pain--then a sense of deliverance. For her, too, deliverance! It excited

his artist's sense to think of all the further developments through

which he might carry that eager, plastic nature. There would be a new

Kitty, with new capacities and powers. Wasn't that justification enough?

He felt himself a sculptor in the very substance of life, moulding a

living creature afresh, disengaging it from harsh and hindering

conditions. What was there vile in that?

The argument pursued itself.

"The modern judges for himself--makes his own laws, as a god, knowing

good and evil. No doubt in time a new social law will emerge--with new

sanctions. Meanwhile, here we are, in a moment of transition,

manufacturing new types, exploring new combinations--by which let those

who come after profit!"

Little delicate, distinguished thing!--every aspect of her, angry or

sweet, sad or wilful, delighted his taste and sense. Moreover, she was

_his_ deliverance, too--from an ugly and vulgar entanglement of which he

was ashamed. He shrank impatiently from memories which every now and

then pursued him of the Ricci's coarse beauty and exacting ways. Kitty

had just appeared in time! He felt himself rehabilitated in his own

eyes. Love may trifle as it pleases with what people call "law"; but

there are certain æsthetic limits not to be transgressed.

The Ricci, of course, was wild and thirsting for revenge. Let her!

Anxieties far more pressing disturbed him. What if he tempted Kitty to

this escapade--and the rough life killed her? He saw clearly how frail

she was.

But it was the artificiality of her life, the innumerable burdens of

civilization, which had brought her to this! Women were not the

weaklings they seemed, or believed themselves to be. For many of them,

probably for Kitty, a rude and simple life would mean not only fresh

mental but fresh physical strength. He had seen what women could endure,

for love's or patriotism's sake! Make but appeal to the spirit--the

proud and tameless spirit--and how the flesh answered! He knew that his

power with Kitty came largely from a certain stoicism, a certain

hardness, mingled, as he would prove to her, with a boundless devotion.

Let him carry it through--without fears--and so enlarge her being and

his own! And as to responsibilities beyond, as to their later lives--let

time take care of its own births. For the modern determinist of Cliffe's

type there _is_ no responsibility. He waits on life, following where it

leads, rejoicing in each new feeling, each fresh reaction of

consciousness on experience, and so links his fatalist belief to that

Nietzsche doctrine of self-development at all costs, and the coming man,

in which Cliffe's thought anticipated the years.

* * * * *

Kitty meanwhile listened to his intermittent talk of Venice, or Bosnia,

with all its suggestions of new worlds and far horizons, and scarcely

said a word.

But through the background of the brain there floated with her, as with

him, a procession of unspoken thoughts. She had received three letters

from William. Immediately on his arrival he had tendered his

resignation. Lord Parham had asked him to suspend the matter for ten

days. Only the pressure of his friends, it seemed, and the consternation

of his party had wrung from Ashe a reluctant consent. Meanwhile, all

copies of the book had been bought up; the important newspapers had

readily lent themselves to the suppression of the affair; private wraths

had been dealt with by conciliatory lawyers; and in general a far more

complete hushing-up had been attained than Ashe had ever imagined

possible. There was no doubt infinite gossip in the country-houses. But

sympathy for Kitty in her grief, for Ashe himself, and Lady Tranmore,

had done much to keep it within bounds. The little Dean especially,

beloved of all the world, had been incessantly active on behalf of peace

and oblivion.

All this Kitty read or guessed from William's letters. After all, then,

the harm had not been so great! Why such a panic!--such a hurry to leave

her!--when she was ill--and sorry? And now how curtly, how measuredly he

wrote! Behind the hopefulness of his tone she read the humiliation and

soreness of his mind--and said to herself, with a more headlong

conviction than ever, that he would never forgive her.

No, _never!_--and especially now that she had added a thousandfold to

the original offence. She had never written to him since his departure.

Margaret French, too, was angry with her--had almost broken with her.

* * * * *

They left their boat on the Riva, and walked to the _Piazza_, through

the now starry dusk. As they passed the great door of St. Mark's, two

persons came out of the church. Kitty recognized Mary Lyster and Sir

Richard. She bowed slightly; Sir Richard put his hand to his hat in a

flurried way; but Mary, looking them both in the face, passed without

the smallest sign, unless the scorn in face and bearing might pass for

recognition.

Kitty gasped.

"She cut me!" she said, in a shaking voice.

"Oh no!" said Cliffe. "She didn't see you in the dark."

Kitty made no reply. She hurried along the northern side of the Piazza,

avoiding the groups which were gathered in the sunset light round the

flocks of feeding pigeons, brushing past the tables in front of the

cafe's, still well filled on this mild evening.

"Take care!" said Cliffe, suddenly, in a low, imperative voice.

Kitty looked up. In her abstraction she saw that she had nearly come

into collision with a woman sitting at a café table and surrounded by a

noisy group of men.

With a painful start Kitty perceived the mocking eyes of Mademoiselle

Ricci. The Ricci said something in Italian, staring the while at the

English lady; and the men near her laughed, some furtively, some loudly.

Cliffe's face set. "Walk quickly!" he said in her ear, hurrying her

past.

When they had reached one of the narrow streets behind the Piazza, Kitty

looked at him--white and haughtily tremulous. "What did that mean?"

"Why should you deign to ask?" was Cliffe's impatient reply. "I have

ceased to go and see her. I suppose she guesses why."

"I will have no rivalry with Mademoiselle Ricci!" cried Kitty.

"You can't help it," said Cliffe, calmly. "The powers of light are

always in rivalry with the powers of darkness."

And without further pleading or excuse he stalked on, his gaunt form and

striking head towering above the crowded pavement. Kitty followed him

with difficulty, conscious of a magnetism and a force against which she

struggled in vain.

* * * * *

About a week afterwards Kitty shut herself up one evening in her room to

write to Ashe. She had just passed through an agitating conversation

with Margaret French, who had announced her intention of returning to

England at once, alone, if Kitty would not accompany her. Kitty's hands

were trembling as she began to write.

* * * * *

"I am glad--oh! so glad, William--that you _have_ withdrawn your

resignation--that people have come forward so splendidly, and _made_ you

withdraw it--that Lord Parham is behaving decently--and that you have

been able to get hold of all those copies of the book. I always hoped it

would not be quite so bad as you thought. But I know you must have gone

through an awful time--and I'm _sorry_.

"William, I want to tell you something--for I can't go on lying to

you--or even just hiding the truth. I met Geoffrey Cliffe here--before

you left--and I never told you. I saw him first in a gondola the night

of the serenata--and then at the Armenian convent. Do you remember my

hurrying you and Margaret into the garden? That was to escape meeting

him. And that same afternoon when I was in the unused rooms of the

Palazzo Vercelli--the rooms they show to tourists--he suddenly

appeared--and somehow I spoke to him, though I had never meant to do so

again.

"Then when you left me I met him again--that afternoon--and he found out

I was very miserable and made me tell him everything. I know I had no

right to do so--they were your secrets as well as mine. But you know how

little I can control myself--it's wretched, but it's true.

"William, I don't know what will happen. I can't make out from Margaret

whether she has written to you or not--she won't tell me. If she has,

this letter will not be much news to you. But, mind, I write it of my

own free will, and not because Margaret may have forced my hand. I

should have written it anyway. Poor old darling!--she thinks me mad and

bad, and to-night she tells me she can't take the responsibility of

looking after me any longer. Women like her can never understand

creatures like me--and I don't want her to. She's a dear saint, and as

true as steel--not like your Mary Lysters! I could go on my knees to

her. But she can't control or save me. Not even you could, William.

You've tried your best, and in spite of you I'm going to perdition, and

I can't stop myself.

"For, William, there's something broken forever between you and me. I

know it was I who did the wrong, and that you had no choice but to leave

me when you did. But yet you _did_ leave me, though I implored you not.

And I know very well that you don't love me as you used to--why should

you?--and that you never can love me in the same way again. Every letter

you write tells me that. And though I have deserved it all, I can't

bear it. When I think of coming home to England, and how you would try

to be nice to me--how good and dear and magnanimous you would be, and

what a beast I should feel--I want to drown myself and have done.

"It all seems to me so hopeless. It is my own nature--- the stuff out of

which I am cut--that's all wrong. I may promise my breath away that I

will be discreet and gentle and well behaved, that I'll behave properly

to people like Lady Parham, that I'll keep secrets, and not make absurd

friendships with absurd people, that I'll try and keep out of debt, and

so on. But what's the use? It's the _will_ in me--the something that

drives, or ought to drive--that won't work. And nobody ever taught me or

showed me, that I can remember, till I met you. In Paris at the Place

Vendôme, half the time I used to live with maman and papa, be hideously

spoiled, dressed absurdly, eat off silver plate, and make myself sick

with rich things--and then for days together maman would go out or away,

forget all about me, and I used to storm the kitchen for food. She

either neglected me or made a show of me; she was my worst enemy, and I

hated and fought her--till I went to the convent at ten. When I was

fourteen maman asked a doctor about me. He said I should probably go

mad--and at the convent they thought the same. Maman used to throw this

at me when she was cross with me.

"Well, I don't repeat this to make you excuse me and think better of

me--- it's all too late for that--but because I am such a puzzle to

myself, and I try to explain things. I _did_ love you, William--I

believe I do still--but when I think of our living together again, my

arms drop by my side and I feel like a dead creature. Your life is too

great a thing for me. Why should I spoil or hamper it? If you loved me,

as you did once--if you still thought _everything_ worth while, then, if

I had a spark of decency left, I might kill myself to free you, but I

should never do--what I may do now. But, William, you'll forget me soon.

You'll pass great laws, and make great speeches, and the years when I

tormented you--and all my wretched ways--will seem such a small, small

thing.

"Geoffrey says he loves me. And I think he does, though how long it will

last, or may be worth, no one can tell. As for me, I don't know whether

I love him. I have no illusion about him. But there are moments when he

absolutely holds me--when my will is like wax in his hands. It is

because, I think, of a certain grandness--_grandeur_ seems too

strong--in his character. It was always there; because no one could

write such poems as his without it. But now it's more marked, though I

don't know that it makes him a better man. He thinks it does; but we all

deceive ourselves. At any rate, he is often superb, and I feel that I

could die, if not for him, at least with him. And he is not unlikely to

die in some heroic way. He went out as you know simply as correspondent

and to distribute relief, but lately he has been fighting for these

people--of course he has!--and when he goes back he is to be one of

their regular leaders. When he talks of it he is noble, transformed. It

reminds me of Byron--his wicked life here--and then his death at

Missolonghi. Geoffrey can do such base, cruel things--and yet--

"But I haven't yet told you. He asks me to go with him, back to the

fighting-lines in upper Bosnia. There seems to be a great deal that

women can do. I shall wear a nurse's uniform, and probably nurse at a

little hospital he founded--high up in one of the mountain valleys. I

know this will almost make you laugh. You will think of me, not knowing

how to put on a button without Blanche--and wanting to be waited on

every moment. But you'll see; there'll be nothing of that sort. I wonder

whether it's hardship I've been thirsting for all my life--even when I

seemed such a selfish, luxurious little ape?

"At the same time, I think it will kill me--and that would be the best

end of all. To have some great, heroic experience, and then--'cease upon

the midnight with no pain!...'

"Oh, if I thought you'd care very, _very_ much, I should have

pain--horrible pain. But I know you won't. Politics have taken my place.

Think of me sometimes, as I was when we were first married--and of

Harry--my little, little fellow!

"--Maman and I have had a ghastly scene. She came to scold me for my

behavior--to say I was the talk of Venice. _She!_ Of course I know what

she means. She thinks if I am divorced she will lose her allowance--and

she can't bear the thought of that, though Markham Warington is quite

rich. My heart just _boiled_ within me. I told her it is the poison of

her life that works in me, and that whatever I do, _she_ has no right to

reproach me. Then she cried--and I was like ice--and at last she went.

Warington, good fellow, has written to me, and asked to see me. But what

is the use?

"I know you'll leave me the £500 a year that was settled on me. It'll be

so good for me to be poor--and dressed in serge--and trying to do

something else with these useless hands than writing books that break

your heart. I am giving away all my smart clothes. Blanche is going

home. Oh, William, William! I'm going to shut this, and it's like the

good-bye of death--a mean and ugly--_death_.

"... Later. They have just brought me a note from Danieli's. So Margaret

did write to you, and your mother has come. Why did you send her,

William? She doesn't love me--and I shall only stab and hurt her. Though

I'll try not--for your sake."

Two days later Ashe received almost by the same post which brought him

the letter from Kitty, just quoted, the following letter from his

mother:

"My DEAREST WILLIAM,--I have seen Kitty. With some difficulty she

consented to let me go and see her yesterday evening about nine

o'clock.

"I arrived between six and seven, having travelled straight through

without a break, except for an hour or two at Milan, and

immediately on arriving I sent a note to Margaret French. She came

in great distress, having just had a fresh scene with Kitty. Oh, my

dear William, her report could not well be worse. Since she wrote

to us Kitty seems to have thrown over all precautions. They used to

meet in churches or galleries, and go out for long days in the

gondola or a fishing-boat together, and Kitty would come home alone

and lie on the sofa through the evening, almost without speaking

or moving. But lately he comes in with her, and stays hours,

reading to her, or holding her hand, or talking to her in a low

voice, and Margaret cannot stop it.

"Yet she has done her best, poor girl! Knowing what we all knew

last year, it filled her with terror when she first discovered that

he was in Venice and that they had met. But it was not till it had

gone on about a week, with the strangest results on Kitty's spirits

and nerves, that she felt she must interfere. She not only spoke to

Kitty, but she spoke and wrote to him in a very firm, dignified

way. Kitty took no notice--only became very silent and secretive.

And he treated poor Margaret with a kind of courteous irony which

made her blood boil, and against which she could do nothing. She

says that Kitty seems to her sometimes like a person moving in

sleep--only half conscious of what she is doing; and at others she

is wildly excitable, irritable with everybody, and only calming

down and becoming reasonable when this man appears.

"There is much talk in Venice. They seem to have been seen together

by various London friends who knew--about the difficulties last

year. And then, of course, everybody is aware that you are not

here--and the whole story of the book goes from mouth to mouth--and

people say that a separation has been arranged--and so on. These

are the kind of rumors that Margaret hears, especially from Mary

Lyster, who is staying in this hotel with her father, and seems to

have a good many friends here.

"Dearest William--I have been lingering on these things because it

is so hard to have to tell you what passed between me and Kitty.

Oh! my dear, dear son, take courage. Even now everything is not

lost. Her conscience may awaken at the last moment; this bad man

may abandon his pursuit of her; I may still succeed in bringing her

back to you. But I am in terrible fear--and I must tell you the

whole truth.

"Kitty received me alone. The room was very dark--only one lamp

that gave a bad light--so that I saw her very indistinctly. She was

in black, and, as far as I could see, extremely pale and weary. And

what struck me painfully was her haggard, careless look. All the

little details of her dress and hair seemed so neglected. Blanche

says she is far too irritable and impatient in the mornings to let

her hair be done as usual. She just rolls it into one big knot

herself and puts a comb in it. She wears the simplest clothes, and

changes as little as possible. She says she is soon going to have

done with all that kind of thing, and she must get used to it. My

own impression is that she is going through great agony of

mind--above all, that she is ill--ill in body and soul.

"She told me quite calmly, however, that she had made up her mind

to leave you; she said that she had written to you to tell you so.

I asked her if it was because she had ceased to love you. After a

pause she said 'No.' Was it because some one else had come between

you? She threw up her head proudly, and said it was best to be

quite plain and frank. She had met Geoffrey Cliffe again, and she

meant henceforward to share his life. Then she went into the

wildest dreams about going back with him to the Balkans, and

nursing in a hospital, and dying--she hopes!--of hard work and

privations. And all this in a torrent of words--and her eyes

blazing, with that look in them as though she saw nothing but the

scenes of her own imagination. She talked of devotion--and of

forgetting herself in other people. I could only tell her, of

course, that all this sounded to me the most grotesque sophistry

and perversion. She was forgetting her first duty, breaking her

marriage vow, and tearing your life asunder. She shook her head,

and said you would soon forget her. 'If he had loved me he would

never have left me!' she said, again and again, with a passion I

shall never forget.

"Of course that made me very angry, and I described what the

situation had been when you reached London--Lord Parham's state of

mind--and the consternation caused everywhere by the wretched book.

I tried to make her understand what there was at stake--the hopes

of all who follow you in the House and the country--the great

reforms of which you are the life and soul--your personal and

political honor. I impressed on her the endless trouble and

correspondence in which you had been involved--and how meanwhile

all your Home Office and cabinet work had to be carried on as

usual, till it was decided whether your resignation should be

withdrawn or no. She listened with her head on her hands. I think

with regard to the book she is most genuinely ashamed and

miserable. And yet all the time there is this unreasonable, this

monstrous feeling that you should not have left her!

"As to the scandalous references to private persons, she said that

Madeleine Alcot had written to her about the country-house gossip.

That wretched being, Mr. Darrell, seems also to have written to

her, trying to save himself through her. And the only time I saw

her laugh was when she spoke of having had a furious letter from

Lady Grosville about the references to Grosville Park. It was like

the laugh of a mischievous, unhappy child.

"Then we came back to the main matter, and I implored her to let me

take her home. First I gave her your letter. She read it, flushed

up, and threw it away from her. 'He commands me!' she said,

fiercely. 'But I am no one's chattel.' I replied that you had only

summoned her back to her duty and her home, and I asked her if she

could really mean to repay your unfailing love by bringing anguish

and dishonor upon you? She sat dumb, and her stubbornness moved me

so that I fear I lost my self-control and said more, much more--in

denunciation of her conduct--than I had meant to do. She heard me

out, and then she got up and looked at me very bitterly and

strangely. I had never loved her, she said, and so I could not

judge her. Always from the beginning I had thought her unfit to be

your wife, and she had known it, and my dislike of her, especially

during the past year, had made her hard and reckless. It had seemed

no use trying. I just wanted her dead, that you might marry a wife

who would be a help and not a stumbling-block. Well, I should have

my wish, for she would soon be as good as dead, both to you and to

me.

"All this hurt me deeply, and I could not restrain myself from

crying. I felt so helpless, and so doubtful whether I had not done

more harm than good. Then she softened a little, and asked me to

let her go to bed--she would think it all over and write to me in

the morning....

"So, my dear William, I can only pray and wait. I am afraid there

is but little hope, but God is merciful and strong. He may yet save

us all.

"But whatever happens, remember that you have nothing to reproach

yourself with--that you have done all that man could do. I should

telegraph to you in the morning to say, 'Come, at all hazards,' but

that I feel sure all will be settled to-morrow one way or the

other. Either Kitty will start with me--or she will go with

Geoffrey Cliffe. You could do nothing--absolutely nothing. God help

us! She seems to have some money, and she told me that she counted

on retaining her jointure."

* * * * *

On the night following her interview with Lady Tranmore, Kitty went from

one restless, tormented dream into another, but towards morning she fell

into one of a different kind. She dreamed she was in a country of great

mountains. The peaks were snow-crowned, vast glaciers filled the chasms

on their flanks, forests of pines clothed the lower sides of the hills,

and the fields below were full of spring flowers. She saw a little

Alpine village, and a church with an old and slender campanile. A plain

stone building stood by--it seemed to be an inn of the old-fashioned

sort--and she entered it. The dinner-table was ready in the low-roofed

_salle-à-manger_, and as she sat down to eat she saw that two other

guests were at the same table. She glanced at them, and perceived that

one was William and the other her child, Harry, grown older--and

transfigured. Instead of the dull and clouded look which had wrung her

heart in the old days, against which she had striven, patiently and

impatiently, in vain, the blue eyes were alive with mind and affection.

It was as if the child beheld his mother for the first time and she him.

As he recognized her he gave a cry of joy, waving one hand towards her

while with the other he touched his father on the arm. William raised

his head. But when he saw his wife his face changed. He rose from his

seat, and drawing the little boy into his arms he walked away. Kitty saw

them disappear into a long passage, indeterminate and dark. The child's

face over his father's shoulder was turned in longing towards his

mother, and as he was carried away he stretched out his little hands to

her in lamentation.

Kitty woke up bathed in tears. She sprang out of bed and threw the

window nearest to her open to the night. The winter night was mild, and

a full moon sailed the southern sky. Not a sound on the water, not a

light in the palaces; a city of ebony and silver, Venice slept in the

moonlight. Kitty gathered a cloak and some shawls round her, and sank

into a low chair, still crying and half conscious. At his inn, some few

hundred yards away, between her and the Piazzetta, was Geoffrey Cliffe

waking too?--making his last preparations? She knew that all his stores

were ready, and that he proposed to ship them and the twenty young

fellows, Italians and Dalmatians, who were going with him to join the

insurgents, that morning, by a boat leaving for Cattaro. He himself was

to follow twenty-four hours later, and it was his firm and confident

expectation that Kitty would go with him--passing as his wife. And,

indeed, Kitty's own arrangements were almost complete, her money in her

purse, the clothes she meant to take with her packed in one small trunk,

some of the Tranmore jewels which she had been recently wearing ready

to be returned on the morrow to Lady Tranmore's keeping, other jewels,

which she regarded as her own, together with the remainder of her

clothes, put aside, in order to be left in the custody of the landlord

of the apartment till Kitty should claim them again.

One more day--which would probably see the departure of Margaret

French--one more wrestle with Lady Tranmore, and all the links with the

old life would be torn away. A bare, stripped soul, dependent henceforth

on Geoffrey Cliffe for every crumb of happiness, treading in unknown

paths, suffering unknown things, probing unknown passions and

excitements--it was so she saw herself; not without that corroding

double consciousness of the modern, that it was all very interesting,

and as such to be forgiven and admired.

Notwithstanding what she had said to Ashe, she did believe--with a

clinging and desperate faith--that Cliffe loved her. Had she really

doubted it, her conduct would have been inexplicable, even to herself,

and he must have seemed a madman. What else could have induced him to

burden himself with a woman on such an errand and at such a time? She

had promised, indeed, to be his lieutenant and comrade--and to return to

Venice if her health should be unequal to the common task. But in spite

of the sternness with which he put that task first--a sternness which

was one of his chief attractions for Kitty--she knew well that her

coming threw a glamour round it which it had never yet possessed, that

the passion she had aroused in him, and the triumph of binding her to

his fate, possessed him--for the moment at any rate--heart and soul. He

had the poet's resources, too, and a mind wherewith to organize and

govern. She shrank from him still, but she already envisaged the time

when her being would sink into and fuse with his, and like two colliding

stars they would flame together to one fiery death.

Thoughts like these ran in her mind. Yet all the time she saw the high

mountains of her dream, the old inn, the receding face of her child on

William's shoulder; and the tears ran down her cheeks. The letter from

William that Lady Tranmore had given her lay on a table near. She took

it up, and lit a candle to read it.

* * * * *

"Kitty--I bid you come home. I should have started for Venice an hour

ago, after reading Miss French's letter, but that honor and public duty

keep me here. But mother is going, and I implore and command you, as

your husband, to return with her. Oh, Kitty, have I ever failed

you?--have I ever been hard with you?--that you should betray our love

like this? Was I hard when we parted--a month ago? If I was, forgive me,

I was sore pressed. Come home, you poor child, and you shall hear no

reproaches from me. I think I have nearly succeeded in undoing your rash

work. But what good will that be to me if you are to use my absence for

that purpose to bring us both to ruin? Kitty, the grass is not yet green

on our child's grave. I was at Haggart last Sunday, and I went over in

the dusk to put some flowers upon it. I thought of you without a

moment's bitterness, and prayed for us both, if such as I may pray. Then

next morning came Miss French's letter. Kitty, have you no heart--and no

conscience? Will you bring disgrace on that little grave? Will you dig

between us the gulf which is irreparable, across which your hand and

mine can never touch each other any more? I cannot and I will not

believe it. Come back to me--come back!"

* * * * *

She reread it with a melting heart--with deep, shaking sobs. When she

first glanced through it the word "command" had burned into her proud

sense; the rest passed almost unnoticed. Now the very strangeness in it

as coming from William--the strangeness of its grave and deep

emotion--held and grappled with her.

Suddenly--some tension of the whole being seemed to give way. Her head

sank back on the chair, she felt herself weak and trembling, yet happy

as a soul new-born into a world of light. Waking dreams passed through

her brain in a feverish succession, reversing the dream of the

night--images of peace and goodness and reunion.

Minutes--hours--passed. With the first light she got up feebly, found

ink and paper, and began to write.

* * * * *

_From Lady Tranmore to William Ashe_:

"Oh! my dearest William--at last a gleam of hope.

"No letter this morning. I was in despair. Margaret reported that Kitty

refused to see any one--had locked her door, and was writing. Yet no

letter came. I made an attempt to see Geoffrey Cliffe, who is staying at

the 'Germania,' but he refused. He wrote me the most audacious letter to

say that an interview could only be very painful, that he and Kitty must

decide for themselves, that he was waiting every hour for a final word

from Kitty. It rested with her, and with her only. Coercion in these

matters was no longer possible, and he did not suppose that either you

or I would attempt it.

"And now comes this blessed note--a respite at least! '_I am going to

Verona to-night with Blanche. Please let no one attempt to follow me. I

wish to have two days alone--absolutely alone. Wait here. I will write.

K_.'

"... Margaret French, too, has just been here. She was almost hysterical

with relief and joy--and you know what a calm, self-controlled person

she is. But her dear, round face has grown white, and her eyes behind

her spectacles look as though she had not slept for nights. She says

that Kitty will not see her. She sent her a note by Blanche to ask her

to settle all the accounts, and told her that she should not say

good-bye--it would be too agitating for them both. In two days she

should hear. Meanwhile the maid Blanche is certainly going with Kitty;

and the gondola is ordered for the Milan train this evening.

"Two P.M. There is one thing that troubles me, and I must confess it. I

did not see that across Kitty's letter in the corner was written 'Tell

_nobody_ about this letter.' And Polly Lyster happened to be with me

when it came. She has been _au courant_ of the whole affair for the last

fortnight--that is, as an on-looker. She and Kitty have only met once or

twice since Mary reached Venice; but in one way or another she has been

extraordinarily well informed. And, as I told you, she came to see me

directly I arrived and told me all she knew. You know her old friendship

for us, William? She has many weaknesses, and of late I have thought her

much changed, grown very hard and bitter. But she is always _very_

loyal to you and me--and I could not help betraying my feeling when

Kitty's note reached me. Mary came and put her arms round me, and I said

to her, 'Oh, Mary, thank God!--she's broken with him! She's going to

Verona to-night on the way home!' And she kissed me and seemed so glad.

And I was very grateful to her for her sympathy, for I am beginning to

feel my age, and this has been rather a strain. But I oughtn't to have

told her!--or anybody! I see, of course, what Kitty meant. It is

incredible that Mary should breathe a word--or if she did that it should

reach that man. But I have just sent her a note to Danieli's to warn her

in the strongest way.

"Beloved son--if, indeed, we save her--we will be very good to her, you

and I. We will remember her bringing up and her inheritance. I will be

more loving--more like Christ. I hope He will forgive me for my

harshness in the past.... My William!--I love you so! God be merciful to

you and to your poor Kitty!"

* * * * *

"Will the signora have her dinner outside or in the _salle-à-manger?"_

The question was addressed to Kitty by a little Italian waiter belonging

to the Albergo San Zeno at Verona, who stood bent before her, his white

napkin under his arm.

"Out here, please--and for my maid also."

The speaker moved wearily towards the low wall which bounded the foaming

Adige, and looked across the river. Far away the Alps that look down on

Garda glistened under the stars; the citadel on its hill, the houses

across the river were alive with lights; to the left the great mediæval

bridge rose, a dark, ponderous mass, above the torrents of the Adige.

Overhead, the little outside restaurant was roofed with twining

vine-stems from which the leaves had fallen; colored lights twinkled

among them and on the white tables underneath. The night was mild and

still, and a veiled moon was just rising over the town of Juliet.

"Blanche!"

"Yes, my lady?"

"Bring a chair, Blanchie, and come and sit by me."

The little maid did as she was told, and Kitty slipped her hand into

hers with a long sigh.

"Are you very tired, my lady?"

"Yes--but don't talk!"

The two sat silent, clinging to each other.

A step on the cobble-stones disturbed them. Blanche looked up, and saw a

gentleman issuing from a lane which connected the narrow quay whereon

stood the old Albergo San Zeno with one of the main streets of Verona.

There was a cry from Kitty. The stranger paused--looked--advanced. The

little maid rose, half fierce, half frightened.

"Go, Blanche, go!" said Kitty, panting; "go back into the hotel."

"Not unless your ladyship wishes me to leave you," said the girl,

firmly.

"Go at once!" Kitty repeated, with a peremptory gesture. She herself

rose from her seat, and with one hand resting on the table awaited the

new-comer. Blanche looked at her--hesitated--and went.

Geoffrey Cliffe came to Kitty's side. As he approached her his eyes

fastened on the loveliness of her attitude, her fair head. In his own

expression there was a visionary, fantastic joy; it was the look of the

dreamer who, for once, finds in circumstance and the real, poetry

adequate and overflowing.

"Kitty!--why did you do this?" he said to her, passionately, as he

caught her hand.

Kitty snatched it away, trembling under his look. She began the answer

she had devised while he was crossing the flagged quay towards her. But

Cliffe paid no heed. He laid a hand on her shoulder, and she sank back

powerless into her chair as he bent over her.

"Cruel--cruel child, to play with me so! Did you mean to put me to a

last test?--or did your hard little heart misgive you at the last

moment? I cross-examined your landlady--I bribed the servants--the

gondoliers. Not a word! They were loyal--or you had paid them better. I

went back to my hotel in black despair. Oh, you artist!--you plotter!

Kitty--you shall pay me this some day! And there--there on my table--all

the time--lay your little crumpled note!"

"What note?" she gasped--"what note?"

"Actress!" he said, with an amused laugh.

And cautiously, playfully, lest she should snatch it from him, he

unfolded it before her.

Without signature and without date, the soiled half-sheet contained this

message, written in Italian and in a disguised handwriting:

* * * * *

"Too many spectators. Come to Verona to-night.

"K."

Kitty looked at it, and then at the face beside her--infused with a

triumphant power and passion. She seemed to shrink upon herself, and her

head fell back against one of the supports of the _pergola_. One of the

blue lights from above fell with ghastly effect upon the delicate tilted

face and closed eyes. Cliffe bent over her in a sharp alarm, and saw

that she had fainted away.