He released her. Remained standing just where he was, arms hanging

inert at his sides. His eyes were weary and troubled. Presently,

replying to her silent questioning gaze, he said slowly:

"Yes--but you see ... there's Kathleen...."

CHAPTER IV

"But I didn't know he was married," murmured Patricia to the St.

Bernard, after Gareth had gone.

Still, now that she had placed him in the middle of her world, and

in a royal ecstasy of sacrifice offered up to him her previous

middle-of-the-world, the very book of her heart--it were folly now to

make another sacrifice of the altar itself. Patricia had been sincere

in her half-laughing remark to Hetty several years ago, that she could

not be bothered to give up the little things of life; but that one day

when she found someone worth while, she would revel in the supreme

indulgence of yielding up her all; flinging gift after gift upon the

bonfire, to feed it: her lesser loves, her friends, her memories, the

world's opinion of her, her tangible possessions, her individuality

even....

She wanted fervently to vindicate herself of the self-charge of egoism;

and chafed at the tardy arrival of the person who would be big enough.

Then, as in a transient flash, it seemed to her that Gareth Temple

stood revealed as this person. The revelation happened at the

mill-house during that pause after he had owned to her his tamperings

with the fate of her book. Something in the proud, sad humility of the

confession, confession of weakness and a lost ideal, threw him up to

her, clear-edged against a luminous background.... What a blind idiot

she had been to expect something worth while in its mere superficial

meaning--something magnificent and successful and compelling. This man,

this strayed idealist, excusing nothing, asking nothing, acquiescent

in his own ill-equipment for everyday contest; this sensitive dreamer,

with the fine strong face--enough of quick humanity in him to sin, and

enough of nobility to confess his sin.... Surely he was worth while!

The divine failure ... to him should be her bonfire.

And he loved her. She had to make him say outright he loved her. It

gave her the right to do this which she contemplated.

The fortnight between her resolution and her interview with Leslie

Campbell she spent in sorrowful discovery of the extent to which her

book mattered after all--output of the best of her brain; how she would

have rejoiced in its publication! It was no good telling herself that

the labour was the fun, and ought to be compensation in itself. The

suggestion met with no inner response.... A book written must be a book

shared, or it was purposeless, a mere emotional clearance upon paper. A

book written must be a book published.... Ruthlessly she had murdered

her brain-child--as once she had murdered love-memory....

And again she tingled to a queer excitement in being able to perform

these active interferences with destiny.

Yes--Gareth's book should be published when hers was withdrawn to clear

the way for him. He loved his book. It could not but be a beautiful and

scholarly expression of what was greatest in himself. Posterity would

lose nothing by the exchange.

But that interview with the partners had cost her something--had pulled

out resolution to the snapping-point; they had dangled success so very

alluringly before her eyes....

Gareth's visit, his inarticulate incredulous wonder, had been reward

enough. Tenderly she had loved him, and worshipfully.... But when

suddenly he forgot control, and had held her and kissed her as a man

kisses a woman--sometimes, then she too had forgotten tenderness and

worship, and had given him back the love a woman gives to a man--once.

... And then he had spoken of Kathleen. It was a slight shock, but the

girl recovered quickly. She was clenched in her determination that

her life and Gareth's should be fused. Obstacles only incited her the

more. The question now to be solved was the nature of this particular

obstacle. The situation was an old one: husband and wife and the third;

but Patricia introduced a variation by resolving in her most sunny

headlong fashion to go and see Kathleen, and find out--as she expressed

it--exactly what she was up against. Perhaps this wife would also

prefer to fight an adversary whose strength she had measured. It was

a mere absurd convention that the rival protagonists for the soul and

body of a man should not meet and talk it over. Besides, Patricia was

curious: was Kathleen fond of him? passionately fond of him? Was she

a weak drab little creature for whom one's pity and forbearance would

willy-nilly be demanded?--or else a shrew and a tyrant, who loudly

and stubbornly would stick out for her rights in Gareth? Kathleen ...

intellect, or flesh-and-blood, or a habit? Whichever it was, she would

have to go on the bonfire!

Patricia went the next afternoon to Pacific Villa.

... So this was where Gareth lived.... A queer lump came to her throat

at sight of the commonplace, hideous little red-brick residence in its

row of commonplace red brick. And if this was the house--what might not

the wife be like?... Some pretty waxen thing he had idealized when he

was dreaming through his twenties; some pretty brainless thing who had

grown querulous from social disappointment....

"Oh, my poor man--my poor fine man...."

All this, rushing through her mind, as the tousled maid led her through

the tiny hall, and into the parlour.

"Miss O'Neill, ma'am."

And a sigh of relief from Patricia, at sight of the keen haggard face

turned questioningly towards her. No, she need make no allowances for

this woman; this woman was a fighter.

"Don't say you're pleased to see me; you won't be in a minute, when

I've told you why I came. Look here--do you mind if I go straight to

the point? ... because I'm rather nervous really; and you do look as if

you were of the right stuff!"

Kathleen raised her thin black brows. "You flatter me. I haven't the

faintest notion who you are, but a sensation is always pleasant on a

dull day.... So sit down, and make yourself at home."

"You're sarcastic--good. It's not a weapon I can use myself; not with

much effect, that is--but I can appreciate it in others. Hasn't Gareth

told you about me?"

"No--but you have ... now. Well, under the circumstances, it's original

of you to call upon me, Miss O'Neill."

"Taken it like a brick," murmured Patricia. "But you aren't fond of

him, which accounts for the calmness. That's an enormous weight off my

mind. Now, as you can't be quite sure of the circumstances, even after

that tell-tale quiver in my voice which I suppose gave the whole show

away--or was it my damnable habit of flushing?--do you mind if I just

enlighten you?"

"Go on."

Patricia sprang to her feet, clasped her hands behind her, fingers

tightly interlocked. In spite of her assumption of lightness, she was

finding this interview with Gareth's wife something of a strain.

"I'm in love with your husband, and he's in love with me. We've known

each other about a month. I want him, and you've got him ... and unless

you and I talk it out clearly and coherently, we can go on messing

about for ages. I hate mess--I fancy you do, too. And Gareth is too

chivalrous ever to be quite blunt with you over facts."

"I'm glad to hear that you appreciate Gareth," remarked Kathleen,

darting her youthful rival an upward look of rapier mockery.

"_You_ don't!" Patricia flashed back.

"Indeed I do. With all my heart."

Patricia sat down again, restlessly, on the arm of her chair. "Your

heart is not involved in the matter, is it? Quite frankly, now? You

must have been dying to say so to someone, since ages. And why not to

me?"

"And why shouldn't we all be great friends?--is that the idea?...

Really, my dear child, your views are startlingly up-to-date, and

your insolence truly remarkable. Are you aware that in the sight of

convention and our neighbours, you've done me a bitter wrong?"

"I haven't--yet. And it's not a question of you and me; it's a question

of Gareth's happiness."

"Ah ... Gareth's happiness."

"Sneer!--that proves how much it needs attending to."

"Well ... what do you want me to do?"

"Divorce him."

"Hm! You might have hurled that at me on entrance, instead of

shilly-shallying."

Patricia fell into the trap. "Did I shilly-shally? How utterly

abominable of me. I apologize. But I really and truly brought in the

word as soon as I decently could."

"Don't reproach yourself with an excess of consideration. Does Gareth

know you've come on this mission?"

"Heavens, no! Wouldn't he be wanting to shield you from me, and shield

me from you, and shield everybody all round--except himself ... the

darling!"

Kathleen smiled. "In my very presence?"

"Certainly. I'm not ashamed of loving the man. Mrs. Temple---will you

divorce him--if we give you cause?"

"If you so adore him, why ... bother about a divorce?"

"I know what you mean," said Patricia slowly; "and I wouldn't be

afraid for myself. The marriage service is a mere trifle to me--may

the daughter of a good mother be forgiven for saying so. But Gareth is

not the right type of man for an unorthodox love-affair. He would be

worrying himself that I was worrying over all the slights and snubs

that didn't matter.... And we'd both end by worrying together. I've

thought it all out."

"I'm sure you have," said Kathleen politely.

"Isn't all this scathing irony rather unnecessary? I could be

marvellously witty and flippant if I chose to exert my talents that

way. But I had a sort of feeling that an interview between us two ought

to be conducted in a more reverent spirit."

The other shrugged her shoulders. "Oh--reverent!" She leant back

her head against the worn antimacassar, and half closed her eyes.

Patricia, watching her, thought in a spasm of generous admiration, how

handsome she was, with her aquiline features and sombre colouring and

bent weary mouth--"Like an Indian brave...."

And Kathleen, behind the mask of immobility, was absorbed in a

concentrated vengeful loathing of the man who had dared shatter her

romance, her last hot chance of romance ... and then himself flaunt a

love-affair. Let him go? Divorce him? Make the way easy for him with

this splendid wilful young creature who thought him divine? God in

heaven, no!... She would keep him from happiness, keep him dragging on

beside her, though his proximity were doubly hateful to herself. Never

again would she know the thrill of being desired.... Gareth should

be made to suffer now for having, in an access of petty malevolence,

interfered with her on the night she was to have joined Napier Kirby.

... Slowly she lifted her eyelids, to encounter Patricia's impatient

gaze.

"Well?"

"I don't think I'm going to divorce Gareth for your pleasure. As I

happen to be in possession, I'll stick to my nine points of the law,

thanks."

The girl's lip curled scornfully. "The dog-in-the-manger attitude--I

thought better of your intellect. What good will it do you, to live on

with a man you don't love? Besides, it's indecent!"

"Not indecent to throw yourself at the head of a married man, I

suppose?"

"Yes, very--if I had. Look here, don't let's descend to vituperation.

You won't give him up. And you won't give me a reason."

"Are we on a level with our claims, that I should have to give you a

reason?"

"Yes; tradition kicked in the wind--we are. And you want your

freedom--oh yes, you do!--and won't take it. You even faintly dislike

Gareth--but he's yours.... Frankly, Mrs. Temple, you make me feel as

though I'd put my hand in a glue-pot."

The ring of stripped exasperation in Patricia's voice sounded on

Kathleen's consciousness with an uncanny sense of familiarity ... and

not for the first time that afternoon. It was her own voice speaking

to Gareth--trying to urge him to some clear decision.... This girl

was strangely an echo of her own girlhood; but with all the gathered

advantages of a new generation; so that she marched gaily and by

right-of-way where Kathleen had been forced to struggle through thorny

barriers.

But what a queer fatality of blindness that Gareth should not

perceive the resemblance; that again he should be drawn and held and

enchanted by the same personality that during sixteen years' intimacy

had been goading him to madness.... If he were able to marry this

girl, she would find him out soon enough; soon enough be up against

that indefinable rottenness that Kathleen had named Atrophy of the

Initiative. And this girl would not bear with it, any more than

Kathleen had borne with it; but would contest it with all her vitality

and passionate impatience ... and Gareth would hear again that driving

note he so detested, from the lips he had newly kissed in love; and be

hurt as he had not been hurt for years ... a great many years; because

since he had ceased to love Kathleen, she had had to flog him harder

and ever harder before she could produce any effect on his numbed

spirit....

Where he cared once more, he could once more quiver to pain.

So would it not be a far subtler revenge, and far more poignant, to let

him go to this girl ... and let him meet with his disillusion all over

again?

Kathleen made her decision....

"I've changed my mind," she said abruptly to Patricia; "I do want my

freedom. You can have Gareth--when you like."

Patricia drew her brows together, puzzled at this sudden yielding of

obduracy.

"You mean you'll divorce him?"

"Not necessary, my dear. Gareth and I are not married."

... After a pause. "You seem astounded? And yet you remarked just now

that you were ready enough to dispense with the ceremony yourself."

"Yes--I am ... but----This is 1913, and we're beginning to open our

minds to the proposition of free love--monogamous free love, at least.

But surely it was an unusual step, twenty years ago?"

"Sixteen years," corrected the other sharply; "I'm not quite

prehistoric yet."

"... And Gareth--I can't imagine him----" For the first time the girl

had dropped her easy self-possession; spoke in broken stammering

sentences. She had set forth to deal with the situation of a wife to be

discarded as quickly and kindly as possible.... And here was her man's

mistress veritably unburdening herself of him as though he were an

encumbrance: "You can have him when you like."... It staggered Patricia

to find her wish so attainable; as though she had been gazing longingly

at an object set about with spiked railings--and suddenly the railings

were fallen flat to the ground, and she might advance as she chose....

"Did Gareth tell you I was his wife?"

"N-no. No, I don't think he did." Patricia laughed, and some of her

embarrassment went. "D'you know, I'm afraid I was conventional enough

to take it for granted. The Lord knows why! I've a decently improper

point of view as a rule. But Gareth does give the impression of what is

called 'a marrying man.'"

"You're right--and very keen-sighted. He is a marrying man. It was I

who was fool enough to try and remould what nature had cast him for.

I had lived too long and too intimately with a commonplace couple--my

brother and his wife--and had gradually sickened at the state of

marriage which deadened live things to clay. I thought that omission

of the actual ceremony would remove that possibility.... What do you

think of my brilliant reasoning?" with a harsh laugh.

And Patricia said gently: "It worked out to exactly the same thing, of

course."

"It worked out--a little bit worse."

... A barrel-organ started to play its tunes in the road just outside.

The sudden loud jangle fell startlingly into the silence which had

succeeded Kathleen's remark....

"Will you have some tea, Miss O'Neill?"

"Funny!" thought Patricia; "that's what I'd have said at this

juncture...." And aloud: "Thanks--yes, with the utmost goodwill. It

would be so melodramatic for us to refuse to break bread with each

other."

"I appreciate your magnanimity. Especially as you've obtained what you

wanted from me."

"You have a pretty gift for repartee, haven't you?"

Kathleen went to the door, and gave an order to Maggie. "What a tragedy

for Gareth to have had to live with it for sixteen years ... is that

what you were thinking?"

It was. And Patricia owned it cheerfully; thanking her stars the

while that she had this woman to cope with, and not a tearful bit of

helplessness, who would have pleaded: "Don't take him away--don't--he's

all I've got...."

She was curious to hear more of the long-drawn-out liaison which had

proved such a failure. "How did you first meet, you and Gareth?" as

her hostess poured out the tea which had just been brought in, and

tendered the thick bread-and-butter. These were curious circumstances

for a friendly meal ... and as their eyes met, each gave the other

reassurance as to her own appreciation of the existing blend of humour

and irony.

"Where did we meet? Oh, accidentally, on a summer holiday. I was a

teacher, shepherding a flock of chattering schoolgirls. He was a good

young man, seeing life with a band of touring botanists. We ran away

from our respective responsibilities, and enjoyed a most delightful

month at a mountain village called Alpenruh--do you know it? No?

Perhaps Gareth will take you there for your honeymoon.... It was an

entirely platonic affair, and it should have ended as such. But when we

got back to London, our horrified families seemed to expect Gareth to

repair the wrong he hadn't done me--and he went to pieces before their

attitude. One day he came galloping up to me on a metaphorical charger,

insisting that I should marry him...."

The organ outside effected an uneasy gulping transition from one tune

into another.... And absent-mindedly Kathleen refilled Patricia's cup,

as she brooded over that scene in Nelly Morrison's dining-room....

Nicholas's toys bestrewing the floor--old Mr. Jeyne asleep in the

corner--Nelly ostentatiously removing the children, to give her

sister-in-law a chance.

And Patricia too was seeing a vision--a serious young knight,

incredibly handsome, with his liquid dark eyes and waving black hair,

setting forth on his quest for right.... She wished she had known

Gareth in those days; how tenderly she could have loved his rapt boyish

ideals.

This Kathleen--she was like an eternal east wind; stimulating to those

who liked the chill and the nip of it--Patricia did, for one--but

deadly suffering to a nature unpractical and romantic, like Gareth's.

"You refused to marry him?"

"Yes. I talked him over. I was older than he--four years older; and

had the stronger will. Our respective families promptly cast us off,

as might have been expected. And thus we embarked upon--the idyll of

Pacific Villa. You see what it's made of us."

"And neither of you broke away? You dragged on--feeling like this?"

The melancholy in Kathleen's eyes deepened to bitterness.

"We had nothing tangible to break away from, except the necessity of

keeping up an illusion that it was all divine.... And you try breaking

away from that! It's like a tough sticky web ... an invisible web--I'd

sooner have steel chains to smash. Break away?--when already you are

free, except for voluntary propinquity.... My dear child, you are

very beautiful and immensely wise--but you don't know what you're

talking about. I couldn't budge, because _I_ had talked Gareth into

the situation, and had to keep up a feverish pretence that it was all

right--all right--quite different to the usual dreary matrimonial

failure; bound to be different, because we weren't married. For my

vindication in his eyes, in my own eyes, for my pride's sake, I had to

keep up the strain.... And besides, I dared not own that our life was

exactly, down to its hatefullest detail of a burst boiler on a winter's

day, what I had so dreaded----"

Patricia broke in impetuously. "And Gareth would not break away for

fear you might think it was because he held you in any less esteem than

if he had married you. That was like Gareth----"

"Hm. Always ready with a pretty picture to justify him, aren't you?"

"And you're always ready with a taunt to ridicule him. It would be vain

to pretend I'm violently astonished the household wasn't all harmony,

Mrs. Temple----"

"My name is Morrison. I've anticipated your future title long enough,

Miss O'Neill.... More crimson blushes? That's an incongruous charm of

yours, considering how extremely modern you are in all else."

"Yes, isn't it? Quite old-world, one might say!" Unabashed, Patricia

rose to go. "Good-bye. I won't say that we've had such a delightful

chat and when are we to have another?--for I take it that this

interview is for one performance only. But--wish me luck, won't you?

Just because you're the last person in the world from whom I ought to

be begging good wishes." She held out her hand; Kathleen took it.

"Certainly I wish you luck," stolidly and without hesitation. Then with

an almost witch-like lilt of voice and twist of the lip, she spoke

again. "I leave Gareth to you with the completest confidence."

"That's--fine of you!... Good-bye----"

Patricia ran down the three steps, and clanged the little gate behind

her.

"And she is a jolly fine person," she reflected further, as she walked

rapidly away from Pacific Villa; "but it was her fault, all the same,

that they came to grief, and that his whole career was mucked up. Lord!

sixteen years at that pitch of strain, in that beastly toadstool house,

pretending all the time...." She vowed that she would make up to Gareth

for this woman's hard unmerciful judgments. And again she murmured, as

on entrance: "My poor man...."

* * * * *

"Good-bye. I'm going."

Gareth looked up in bewilderment at the sight of Kathleen, in her

outdoor clothes, standing in the dining-room doorway.

"Going? Where?"

"Just going. You won't try to stop me this time, will you?"

"Yes; certainly I will. You can't walk out of the house in this--this

haphazard fashion."

"You mean, that I should discuss it for weeks beforehand, and write all

the luggage-labels twice over. That's not my way, Gareth. Besides, as

was rightly observed by that big radiant young person with the green

eyes, it's indecent, under the circumstances, for us to go on

sharing ... our meals."

"Patricia!"

"She had tea with me this afternoon," Kathleen explained casually,

drawing on her worn-out gloves; "and both being competent creatures,

we settled up matters without you. By the way, you might let me have

some money; any loose cash you have about you. We'll call it wages in

lieu of notice, to save my dignity. My boxes will be sent after me

directly I let Maggie know my address; I've given orders. Thank you,

that's plenty.... Good-bye."

"But--what are you going to do? Kathleen, I _must_ know ...

considering----"

"Considering the long and happy years we've dwelt together?"

she scoffed. "You've not the slightest claim to know, except

sentimentalism. And I don't want bits of you still hanging about me,

like wool from the box in which I've been smothered. Take the girl--I

genuinely congratulate your choice--and be thankful you're quit of

me--as I'm thankful to be quit of you!"

That stabbed him, even in his dazed condition resultant upon her

announcement. After all, he had endured patiently during sixteen years

of monotonous strife. He had not run away ... not attempted once to run

away. "I'm sorry, Kathleen. I did my best...."

"Especially on a certain occasion last October. If you had let me go

then...."

And again, subdued by the gloom of passionate regret which for an

instant darkened her face, he repeated, humbly and ineffectually: "I'm

sorry...."

"Well--we needn't linger any more over the farewells, need we?"

"Won't you wish me luck?" he entreated. And wondered why her laugh

grated so harshly.... They were really humorous, these two people in

love, each begging her for a final blessing on their union.

"With Patricia? Oh yes, I wish you luck."... An elfin gleam shot on him

from beneath her heavy eyelids.

A few seconds later, and he heard the front door bang.

He stood motionless, one hand clenched on the soiled plush

tablecloth ... gradually it relaxed.

He had once been given a book and his freedom. Both had been snatched

away from him. Now both were restored.

Wonderingly, he looked round at the walls; hideous dingy pattern of

red flowers clumped on a brown background. This room, in which he

and Kathleen had sat for two meals a day--three on Sundays--sixteen

years--one must subtract the recurring summer holidays ... or add them

on--which was it?... And the dusty black cat with its staring eyes had

overheard all that had been said at those meals--all that had not been

said.

He took his writing-case to the table; and began a letter to his

house-agent.

"PACIFIC VILLA,

"HAMMERSMITH.

"_Jan. 6th._

"DEAR SIR,

"I am desirous of sub-letting this house, which is mine on a

seven-years' lease renewed two years ago. Will you therefore...."

PART IV

CHAPTER I

"Very distinguished-looking, with all that wavy grey hair," pronounced

Mrs. O'Neill, after the first visit paid her by the prospective

son-in-law whom Patricia had so bewilderingly tumbled out of the

clouds; "but--Pat darling--he's almost old enough to be my husband."

"I shall take the utmost care that he is not," retorted Pat, sitting on

the sofa-end, and puffing at her cigarette; "forgive me for mentioning

that you've already had two of these necessary aids to comfort."

"And not an especially good match, is he?"

"Rotten bad!" her step-daughter assented sunnily; "reader to a firm of

publishers, at two-fifty per annum or thereabouts. Excellent dad, to

have left each of us girls two hundred a year when we marry."

"But with your fascination, Pat--I hate to make you conceited, but

Dr. Andrews was saying only the other day that you were a ripe young

Amazon."

"Indecent old satyr! Believe me, mother, I've considered my prospects

mathematically. I put it to you: two-thirds of the men I meet are

smaller than myself. No man can do with a girl who overtops him.

Rule them out. Of the remaining one-third, two-thirds again have a

preference for slender little clinging maidens. Which reduces my

chances to one-third of one-third of the entire male population."

"Even that allowance might be enough for you," remarked Mrs. O'Neill,

who was not devoid of gentle humour.

"Oh well," with a gurgle of laughter, "leave it at Gareth."

"I certainly was favourably impressed by the way he holds open the door

for one."

"The lamb!" Patricia whispered to her cigarette.

"Only it's all so----How often had you met him, dear, before he

proposed to you?"

"Thousands of times. Twice, to be exact."

She had already told her mother that she went to the firm of Leslie

Campbell to purchase a special book published by them, which the

libraries had informed her was out of print. For Gareth's sake she

wanted as few persons as possible to know of "The Reverse of the Medal."

"We ought to ask some of his family, his near relations, to dinner.

It's the proper thing to do. Do you know any of them, Pat?"

"Only Kathleen," murmured Patricia.

"His sister? How nice. Would she come?"

"N-no. I'm not sure that it would be frightfully nice.... Perhaps it

had better not be put to the test, anyway. He has no relatives, mother;

at least," darkly, "not presentable ones."

Mrs. O'Neill took the hint. But she was anxious not to offend

etiquette over the details of Pat's engagement. People might hint

that any deviation from the usual course was because it was not Ann

engaged, or Hetty, her own daughters. She was always morbidly afraid

of being saddled with the qualities of the traditional and legendary

step-mother. And she happened to be warmly fond of Pat, and very

dependent upon her.

"Then the firm of publishers, his employers--should they be invited to

dine? What did you say were their names? Pat, I can see no reason to

laugh."

"Sweetheart ... if I were walking out with a salesman at Lipton's, I

shouldn't expect you to entertain Sir Thomas to high tea. The notion of

a godfatherly Mr. Campbell and Mr. Alexander cutting the cake for me

and Gareth, overpowers me. It does, verily."

"I only hope, Patricia," with dignity, "that considering the

disgraceful haste of your engagement, you will not require the offices

of anyone to cut the cake, for a long while to come."

"Heavens, no. Not for ages. Not until the tenth of February." Patricia

sprang from her perch to anticipate with a rush of dishevelling kisses

any objection the good lady might be likely to raise. For this was the

twenty-ninth of January.

Neither she nor Gareth cared to wait. Hers was not a nature to brook

delay; and he was feverish lest again he should be thwarted of this

gift of wedlock which promised to be so fair. He had always desired

to be married; as a young man, dreamt of it; later, mused on the

state with the wistful envy of one who sees no hope of it for himself.

All the failure of his union with Kathleen, he now arbitrarily set

down to the fact that she had never been his wife. Nor did he realize

that owing to his dislike of the relationship between them, it was

never accepted by them openly and proudly; in which acceptance might

have lain their only possibility of finding happiness. It was he who

had first created tension, by his sensitive disposition to avoid the

subject; skirmishing round every allusion; doing his utmost to spare

her, taking for granted a shame in her which had never existed save

by his assumption. Thus Gareth had damaged irrevocably Kathleen's

experiment of a passionate free comradeship, by his always delicate and

chivalrous attempts to reassure her that they were tighter bound than

if they had been indeed man and wife. Little deceptions and pretences

and silences, swelling to giant proportions ... till they were a guilty

furtive nagging couple, nothing more noble than that; pitiful enough

end to his boyish high hopes--to the Songs his Mother Taught Him.

And suppose there had been children--Gareth shuddered at the

illimitable possibilities of misery entailed....

But Patricia had consented to marry him. They might have as many

children as they pleased. And a home without the forbidden subject to

make it ghastly. It would be all right this time--all right--Gareth

Albert Temple to Patricia O'Neill, on the tenth of February, nineteen

hundred and fourteen.

In anticipation of which date of release, release from the intolerable

wearying necessity of the outcast forever compelled to beat out a fresh

track untrodden by custom, Gareth, on the night of February the ninth,

stretched the cramped limbs of his dreams, with a great sigh of thanks

to Patricia, the wonderful girl who had freed him from his bondage of

freedom. On the morrow he might slacken his tautly drawn initiative;

settle down into a condition socially and legally sanctioned. Oh, the

hushed benison of rest which Patricia had achieved for him!

Patricia ... beloved ... he murmured her name as though in prayer

to a goddess. Patricia ... wife ... and his very soul he could have

flooded like moonlight at her feet. He would be such a husband as

had never before existed, so faithful in guardianship and vigilant

in loyalty. Supposing she were ever ill--almost he could have wished

her ill at once, for an opportunity to set in motion his solicitude

and tenderness. Patricia ... home ... with--hazily--a luxurious aroma

about it of comfort and harmony, which Kathleen had never succeeded in

imparting to Pacific Villa; but which his imagination infallibly allied

to Patricia, as mistress of the quaint squat old-maidish house they had

rented furnished in St. John's Wood.

He recollected with drowsy satisfaction ... the dining-room fire was

burning low now, and it was late--his last night at Pacific Villa ...

the sybaritic effect of Patricia's own sitting-room at Sydenham.

Raising his heavy eyes, he became aware of the black china cat; and by

way of a last precaution, knocked it with his foot off the mantelpiece,

and broke it.

* * * * *

On the same memorable eve of the tenth, Mrs. O'Neill was trying to

make up her mind to go to Patricia's room, and talk to her for a

little while ... the child had no mother of her own. The bride-to-be

had behaved all through dinner with what looked like the wildest high

spirits, but which Mrs. O'Neill did not doubt was hysteria; and then

in the traditional manner of brides-to-be, had vanished early to bed.

Mrs. O'Neill's hesitation in going up to her, arose from a misty

apprehension--engendered she knew not where nor how--that she would

find Patricia lying across her bed, shaken by sobs, and moaning: "I

can't! I can't! I can't!"...

And what was the proper conversational reply to be made by one who was

not quite the girl's mother, when confronted by this painful stress of

emotion, the sweet-faced little lady had not the remotest notion. But

she nerved herself finally to go upstairs. As she neared Pat's room,

she heard sounds that were ominous. And yet--surely, surely it could

not be that the girl was _singing_?

"Pat ... how--how are you?"

"Very brisk indeed, darling," Patricia assured her; Patricia, who was

neither prone across the bed, nor in floods of tears, nor protesting

that she would rather die ... nor in any way giving vent to maidenly

sentiments.

Mrs. O'Neill was mightily relieved; and--faintly disappointed.

"Is there nothing--nothing you want to ask me about, my dear? I

thought ... I wondered...."

And suddenly Patricia understood; and understood the disappointment

as well; and choked down the mischievous retort so ready to her lips.

The twentieth-century girl has little need of this stammering hour

of instruction.... But Pat crossed the room to her step-mother, and

dropped on both her knees in front of her, taking her hands.

"I'm so glad you came up.... Yes, please, you can help me.... I want to

know----"

* * * * *

They went for a short wedding-journey to the Fen Country. Patricia had

roamed before on and about these eerie desolate lands; and found a

curious fascination in the monotony of ancient sea-wall and sluggish

river, and sail flat against the unchanging horizon. So did Gareth;

at least, he thought he did, but was not quite sure. He was so happy

that he would have glorified Wormwood Scrubbs or Manchester as ideal

honeymoon resorts. He flung such quantities of word-drapery over the

landscape; over the little inn at which they stayed; over sky and water

and oozing mud-creeks; over Fen-legend and tradition, and the Isle of

Ely and the port of Lynn; over Patricia herself and the future, and

the books that might be written--should be written, and the books

that were already written; and over infinity, and the wonder of their

daily breakfast together ... until Patricia protested at last that in

view of the fact that she had married a strong, silent man, his fluent

babblings were disgracefully out of character.

Then home to number seventeen Blenheim Terrace. Gareth returned to

his work at the firm of Leslie Campbell. And Patricia applied herself

seriously to the suppression of her restive desire for authorship....

It was _fun_ to be aware of this power within her, and voluntarily to

keep it under hatches like a mutineer; fun ... perpetual bonfire to the

altar she had set up in the middle of her world; fun, to refrain from

writing, that Gareth should write and write and write.

She awoke to the fact that Gareth was not writing. And that his book

still awaited completion. Seemingly he had forgotten all about it.

Incredible. She spurred him with eager reminder.

"It's nearly finished," he assured her contentedly.

"Oh, you've been working at it in secret. Good."

"Well, not lately. But it only wants another half-dozen chapters or so."

"Hurry up with them then, you tortoise. I haven't even read the

masterpiece yet--think of it! And here I am, wilting away for want of

proof that I've married a genius."

He twinkled a fond look at her ... his wife. "I'm not used to

brilliantly overwhelming apparitions like yourself flashing into my

sober life. You've rather taken my breath away. Make allowances for

that, Patricia."

"I didn't notice it--at Lynn," she laughed; "_such_ a little

chatterbox!"

Promptly he exacted penance for her raillery.... And the subject of the

book was for the moment shelved.

But a few days later she resumed it. She was truly impatient to witness

"The Round Adventure" published; to hear the acclamation, critical or

enthusiastic, which should be apology for allowing her own talent to

lie fallow. Above all, she longed for the sight of his happiness when

his fellows should at last hail him as true artist, as One of Them ...

he had confided in her all those dreams of his.

Just at present, the machinery which should produce this sequence of

publication and recognition seemed to be unaccountably clogged. A

touch from her finger would suffice to set it in motion again. She

touched--in fact, sublimely unaware that delicacy was needed, she

banged.

"Gareth, call me a shrew and a harridan, but I insist that you should

unhand me this very instant, and retire to the library for an evening

of diligent inspiration. Your slothful aspect is a great grief to me;

it is, truly."

"Adorable, I'm not in the mood to-night."

"Oh dear--enter the artistic temperament! Would it start the mood, do

you suppose, if I were to prepare you a cup of cocoa beaten up with

white of egg and a drop of rum--or some such invigorating cordial?"

"God forbid! You're an invigorating cordial all by yourself. What I

need is a soothing syrup." "Man--man--and I putting all my soul into an

effort to be a Good Wife to you!"

He suggested, with a whimsical glance around the room, that she might

put a little of that same soul into an effort to make a bright and cosy

home for a fellow returning tired and dispirited from his day's toil....

"Yes?" submissively. "I foresee already that I'm to be heavily

lectured. What, may I ask, is wrong with the brightness and cosiness of

seventeen Blenheim Terrace?"

He frowned in an attempt to explain what had been dimly perceptible to

him from the first: that Patricia lacked that indefinable something

which might have given to her surroundings that likewise indefinable

something....

"Quite," said Patricia. "He expresses himself with such remarkable

coherence and style, that I am moved to rescue him from these

flounderings. You had pictured me straying about from room to room,

with a song upon my lips; achieving with a deft hand a sort of--of

draped charm. Isn't that it?... Here and there looping things ... here

and there a flower or two ... me in a white gown. Have I given speech

to your silent longings?"

She had; and so truly that he could not refrain from laughter, though

he was slightly annoyed as well.

"Burlesque it or not," he said; "but there _is_ such a thing as working

one's personality into a room, till it becomes beautiful. And you know

it as well as I, because I felt just this in your own sitting-room at

Sydenham. A sort of rhythm and colour which was--you."

"What you felt there, darling, was the je-ne-say-kwah of my mother's

housemaid.... Personally, I don't care a fig for my inanimate

surroundings. They're so subordinate, aren't they? Do they really

affect you?"

"When they're wrong, yes. But I've never had them right, so it doesn't

much matter."

He smiled at her rather sadly. And with a quick rush of repentance

that was still non-comprehending, she vowed to put a daily vase of

daffodils upon his writing-table, as is done by the very best type of

Novelist's-Wife, if only he would promise to apply himself to the task

of becoming illustrious.

Secretly she was not a little astonished at his reluctance to get on

with the book. She had anticipated that she would have to restrain

him from feverishly over-working. It had meant so much to him. She

remembered his account of that awful moment when Pat O'Neill had cut

across and cut him out; and the note of despair in his voice: "I was

middle-aged, and a failure--and this one idea had come to me--and I

could write only this one book...."

Well, and now that all obstacles were cleared away, why didn't he? Why?

Why? Patricia, never a very patient person, was suddenly exasperated

at the sight of the tall figure placid and inert every evening in an

arm-chair before the dining-room fire. Walking up to him, she seized

the journal he held, and flung it into a far corner.

"Damn you, Gareth!--go and write."

She was laughing ... and was not prepared for the deep intensity of his

upward look--fear and pleading commingled. Without a word he rose and

went into the library.

He could not write. He knew that beforehand. The atmosphere was too

expectant. Patricia was too expectant. Before, when his book had been

a secret thing ... but now he was paralysed by the sense that it _had_

to be finished, because something had been sacrificed for it ...

something big ... that other book, as good as his own, or--better?

"The Round Adventure" was no longer a matter for his own delight, a

spontaneous wonder that had been dropped into his brain to do with

as he pleased.... Was there more implied than mere concern for his

advancement, in Patricia's ceaseless urgings that he should idle no

longer? Was there the unspoken reproach: "I gave up my book for you.

Mine is wasted. Do you suppose I'll allow it to be wasted for nothing.

You owe it to me to make good!"

Yes--of course he must make a start on those last half-dozen chapters.

This dallying was absurd; he had so looked forward to the creation of

just this latter portion of Kay Rollinson's round adventure. If he

could write before, he could write now. Especially for Patricia's sake.

And again the panic seized him. He could not write--not a line. He

dared not write--what phrases would be good enough? By sacrifice she

had solidified his dream-bubble to such a great important heavy ball;

ball of lead ... all the airy rainbow hues turned to a sulky grey.

Such a heavy ball--he could not keep it aloft by his mere breath. Such

a heavy responsibility.... It was not his book any longer; he had

forfeited all right to abandon it if the humour took him thus; Patricia

was waiting for him to finish it, and to finish it worthily. There were

things she might say, otherwise....

It took him nine weeks of joyless plodding, before he could put into

her hands the completed manuscript. It was by no means a new emotion to

be working under dread of the suspended lash. He could have wished with

it all, that he had loved Patricia a little less. But this temporary

clouding of their happiness was not her fault; an accidental blend of

circumstances; he absolved her from all blame.

She started the book on the evening he yielded it to her; and read it

through at top speed during the whole of the next day while he was not

there, that she might not have to sit another evening with his dark

pleading eyes fixed steadily upon her face, as she turned page after

page.... She read with a beating hope that by this would be smothered

an uprising suspicion that she had made a mistake; that her last idea

had carried her above and beyond reality; that this man before whom she

had chosen to sweep all her previous litter of trifles into a supreme

consummation of fire, was not quite big enough--the altar not big

enough for the offering.

Of course, he was a dear....

Gareth came home late ... and at dinner performed pretty and intricate

little step-dances around the subject of which he most desired to

speak. After dinner, in the library, he attempted to resume the

step-dance, but Patricia straightway tripped him up.

"I've read it, Gareth."

"Oh?" casually.

She came and sat on the arm of his chair, slipped her arm about his

shoulders, leant a soft cheek against his.... And he knew she had been

disappointed.

"It's unequal; that's the worst that can be said about it. The first

half is charming; your style hasn't got a blemish to it--and I'm a

judge of style ... when it isn't my own!" She had made a slip here; she

ought not to have referred to her writing; rather more hurriedly she

went on: "And I especially love your detail work; all the quaint and

whimsical passages; they remind me very much of Richard Pryce--do you

know his stuff? The description of the harbour is delicious; and that

wood in early spring; and the girl, Sheila. But----"

She paused. And Gareth, neither moving away from her light caress, nor

responding to it, said dully: "Yes. Go on."

"But the whole treatment is not quite strong or vital enough to carry

the central theme."

Another pause. And then Gareth gave the same stolid assent. "No. I

suppose it isn't."

He was waiting for her to remark that the idea of the central theme

had been hers as well as his; and that in her case she had not spoilt

it utterly....

"And the last third of the book is--futile!" concluded Pat's clear

young voice, without any palliative or mercy.

He sprang upright, pushing her away from him.

"It isn't! It isn't!... Or do you think that I overestimated it on

purpose, so that you should ... I suppose you think I talked big about

it on purpose?"

She too was on her feet by now, surveying him scornfully.

"Oh, if you had wanted to be treated like a baby, and given sugar-plums

only----"

And then suddenly she remembered that just to-night she must be very

good to him--because of that doubt in her heart which had been finally

and unquestioningly acknowledged as a certainty. Just to-night she must

be very pitiful with him ... she could not quite answer for herself in

the future.

"Dear old man, I'm an ignorant brute, and ought to be kicked for my

bumptiousness. But I imagined you would rather have heard straight out

what I really thought. The first twenty chapters are so first-class

that it would have been a miracle if you could have kept it up all

through. Honestly and truly, Gareth, I expect it will do tremendously

well when it appears."

He put both his hands on her shoulders, smiling rather wryly.

"All right, darling; it's I who deserve the kicking; I'm one of those

terrible persons who wince at candid criticism ... the reader read,

you know. But I'm glad you liked the book."

He submitted it to Messrs. Jernyngham, of the Booke-Shoppe, who refused

it with praiseworthy promptitude, and quite sincere regrets that

the latter portion of the book had not fulfilled the promise of its

opening. They hoped, however, to have an opportunity of seeing more of

Mr. Temple's work.

"Send it to Locker and Swyn," advised Patricia, when her husband, with

a poor attempt at a laugh, informed her of the rejection.

"Yes, it's more in their line," he agreed.

He thought. "Supposing no publishing-house will accept it, and I shall

have to tell her each time it comes back.... She will remember how

quickly Campbell snapped up hers. Nonsense, she remembers already. How

long can the MS. travel round? How many publishers of fiction are there

in the United Kingdom? She won't let me give in before it has been

sent back by every one. But it's as good as hers, quite as good; this

is only my old luck dogging me. Say a hundred and fifty publishers and

three and a half weeks at each----"

Locker and Swyn freed him from this sort of arithmetic by accepting

"The Round Adventure." They asked him if he could polish up its most

conspicuous inequalities; and he replied, albeit grateful to them for

the release, that he was incapable of adding or subtracting a single

word from the original. And this was not author's arrogance, but a

genuine statement of fact. So they shrugged their shoulders; made him

a tolerable contract; and promised to bring the book out in the autumn

season. "Say in October, Mr. Temple." He assented. It was now April.

Six months to wait before the solid consummation of all his illusions.

There had been sadly little illusion about the actual acceptance of

the book. Locker and Swyn themselves were dummies; and the business

was run by a very practical manager, John Forrester; who, keen to win

the same prestige for "spotting genius" as Leslie Campbell, lacked the

little Scotsman's real enthusiasm for first-class stuff and supreme

indifference to big sales. It was reported that Forrester's beard had

gone hoary from the day that "Piccadilly" went into its thirty-seventh

edition.... He had been one of the famous Nineteen who had turned down

Graham Carr; and like his eighteen sorrowing confrères, could instantly

be subdued by airy mention of this instance of his blindness. Alexander

was exceedingly assiduous in reminder when chance threw him together

with the manager of the rival firm.

Patricia spent the summer in pursuit of as many sports as were possible

to one whose headquarters were in St. John's Wood. She was essentially

of the type who, given the opportunity, would have made a splendid

shot and an excellent horsewoman. As it was, she played golf; learnt

to drive a friend's motor; dashed down for several week-ends to the

seaside bungalow of another friend, for the sake of the swimming; and

when nothing better was forthcoming, took Vercingetorix for long

country tramps. She seemed eager to avoid more thoughtful indoor

occupations. Her creed was to soar with an idea, and accept with decent

cheerfulness the risk of broken bones. She had, metaphorically, broken

a good many bones on her fall from this last star-scamper, which had

landed her for good or for evil Gareth Temple's wife.... And one might

as well walk and swim and drive and golf.

Poor old Gareth--was he brooding too? But his book was accepted; and he

still loved her. Whereas her book was waste stuff; and----

Kathleen had foreseen all this. Patricia thought she had penetrated

at last with exact apprehension to that lady's point of view. It had

puzzled her before that the other should have yielded her claims so

easily. But now her motive was stripped bare. "Lord! _I_ don't blame

her. Sixteen years of it. And no tangible grievance to lay at his door.

Just that--that dry-rot in his system. No wonder she wanted me to have

a taste of the same Hell!"

Wherein Patricia's judgment fell short of the mark. But then she did

not know of the Napier Kirby episode. None of Kathleen's animosity had

been for the girl who was a second and more vivid edition of herself;

none at all.

"I wonder what has become of her?" mused Patricia, also without any

rancour. "Fallen on her feet somehow, certainly. If only Gareth, bless

him, didn't look so unutterably miserable at every subject I manage to

broach, I'd ask him quite merrily if he corresponds with her."

Gareth did not correspond with Kathleen. He spent his intervals

between busy reading for the firm--it was an eruptive season for new

authors,--in chafing at the shortcomings of housekeeping in his home;

in wondering where Pat could be; in wishing she had not quite such

a large and clamorous circle of friends, and would not rush about

such a lot, and would attend to him more. Put into words, his own

words, there was nothing lacking in the description he inspired, of

grey-haired scholarly husband looking indulgently upon his young wife's

unconquerable questing spirit. He welcomed her always with his old

adoring smile and slow courtliness of manner, when she did eventually

return from whatsoever bout of new energy had engaged her.... And

within five minutes, as she had herself noticed, she would by some

quite inconsequent remark contrive to render him unutterably miserable.

For there was so much he dreaded to hear, and which at any moment he

might be forced to hear, and to which any haphazard topic might be

introduction. For instance: "Gareth, when are you going to set to work

at another book?" But that question he fancied he could shelve adroitly

when it came, by the reply: "Oh, directly 'The Round Adventure' comes

out in the autumn; I want to benefit by what the critics have to say."

Temporary reprieve, at all events. Much, much worse than this, Would

be: "Gareth, I'm going to set to work at another book."... And here

he was helpless; for after all, though she had voluntarily withdrawn

"The Reverse of the Medal" from the press, because it had trespassed

on his chances, that was no guarantee that she never intended to write

again. He might have to sit week after week watching her pen tearing

its way towards success. That it would be very definite success, his

discrimination did not allow him to doubt. She was the very incarnation

of triumphant achievement. Which led to the next unspoken possibility:

"You know, Gareth," and quite simply this could be said, "my book is

better than yours." And: "Queer, isn't it, that our marriage is as much

a failure as though----Well, I mean, it doesn't make much difference in

the long run whether one is married or not, does it?"

This was one of the things that Gareth had realized very slowly, and

with the painful astonishment of a disappointed child. The actual fact

of the ceremony had made no difference whatsoever! It must therefore

be something in himself that prevented harmony with either of those

different two who had at different times so passionately and inevitably

attracted him. Comparing the then and the now, he speculated in a

troubled unhappy sort of fashion whether it were really impossible for

a pair to dwell together without their peace forever threatened by the

one thing unmentionable, the worst of all. One?--a great many

things ... they knocked wearily about in his brain, until, to escape

their persistent clangour and jar, he drifted again into the habit of

dreams ... old dreams--wan shadow-dreams--dreams of a girl ... whose

touch was cool.

CHAPTER II

"Armageddon!" said Gareth several times aloud to himself.

"Armageddon...." And then, with a proud upward jerk of the head:

"Jellicoe and the Grand Fleet!" After a pause: "... 'And the shores of

Ireland will be defended by her armed sons, North and South

together!'" ... He broke off, once more to rumble, with a curious slow

relish: "Armageddon."

For he was not yet muted to the thrill of this thing that the summer

of nineteen-fourteen had brought along with it; and which had made of

him a nervous responsive instrument for all the unwonted word-fragments

swarming about haphazard, as men fumbled to express the new conditions,

to find a language significant of their new emotions:

"The making of history--the war that will end war--violation

of neutral territory--the Allied Armies--crush the menace of

Prussianism--mobilization--transport--commissariat--Press

Bureau--moratorium----"

So quickly they poured in, these coins of the new mintage, that Gareth

had scarcely time to let his fancy handle them lovingly:

"The mad dog of Europe--defence of the Realm--wait till the Cossacks

get to Berlin" savouring the ominous implication: "Kitchener wants

five hundred thousand men----"

"Casualty list...."

There was a different note to the saying of that; a curt rather

harsh inflection, where in other cases one might slide the syllables

lingeringly. But--"Casualty list"--No, one was dry and businesslike

over that.

"Efficiency!" muttered Gareth in the same tone.

A newspaper boy scampered past him in the hot stale sunshine, creaking:

"Off-i-shul! six-thirty off-i-shul! 'Eavy fighting at...." the name was

blurred. "Off-i-shul!"

Official!... Of course one had heard it at the time of the Boer War;

a little while after he and Kathleen----He remembered bringing her

home the evening papers, and her fierce incisive comments upon the

situation. Well--now he brought the late editions home to Patricia.

The strain between them of the things unmentionable had been blown to

bits by the eruption of the war; now there was always news, real news,

off-i-shul news, for their discussion; general discussion, which as yet

had not dwindled to the personal question.

He glanced at the stop-press column. No longer any doubt about it:

Paris was saved. The German hordes had been rolled back at the eleventh

hour. Gareth swung down the Strand, with the Marseillaise crashing

exultantly through his brain, temporarily displacing his other

orchestral selection of phrases. The French, as a nation, appealed

to him tremendously; and he was glad we were concerned, in howsoever

a minor degree, with the salvation of the City of Light. His eye

caught a glimpse of a portrait of the Belgian King in the window of

a picture-shop; the handsome, fair, somewhat stolid face had lately

become familiar as the hitherto unknown strains of Belgium's anthem;

his ear was arrested by a passerby exclaiming excitedly: "Why did the

Russian steam-roller----" the rest was lost in a surge of human traffic

outside the recruiting-office. "Why did the steam-roller?" Gareth asked

himself absurdly; and went on with the question for quite a long time

before he realized that there was no prescribed answer to it.

A detachment of bluejackets marched past, their red faces grinning

cheerfully ... one globular patch of red after another, with a curious

rhythmical effect of repetition.

A patriotic shopkeeper had decorated his frontage with the intertwined

flags of the Allies ... "Intertwined...."

"... And the shores of Ireland will be defended by her armed sons,

North and South together!"

Perhaps more than by anything else, had Gareth's impressions of this

first month of war been dented by the peroration of Redmond's third of

August speech in the House of Commons. And the sequence of great and

small events served but to heighten this prevalent effect of cohesion,

of all stray units gathered up and knit together for a joint purpose:

North and South Ireland; Great Britain and her colonies; the regular

army with the raw recruits; the suffragette with the spoilt débutante;

Liberal and Conservative and Labour; France and Russia and Servia

and Belgium, rhapsody of concentration on one issue, one ideal ...

no single person left out who wanted to be in.... Here was the old

dream which for Gareth had previously been symbolized in the absorbed

fraternity of "Campbell's Young Men," repeated now on an immeasurably

larger scale. One of Them. The glamour of belonging.

Gareth had always been slightly appalled by the burden of each

individual responsible for himself; and his visions had naturally

taken the trend of mankind serving in a common cause; one need for

the scattered energies; one will pushing these along. The world as

a sort of club, excluding a few just to strengthen the privilege of

membership. In this case it was the Germans who had wantonly put

themselves outside the Crusade for Humanity.... _Somebody_ has to be

the enemy ... he recollected childhood's difficulty of finding the

offensive party in the game of French-and-English----

"I suppose that game will have to go now; and the Berlin polka; and

German measles; and Prussian binding; and--and Dresden china--and

music--and eau de Cologne--and the dachshund----" he pondered over

possible additions to this list of articles that were of obstreperously

enemy manufacture.

... The Strand and London and the British Isles--crowded with

little people, who in a crisis had proved big enough to be

lifted above their petty domestic squabbles, and belligerent

beat-your-neighbour-out-of-doors attitude. And he was one of them--One

of Them.... More recruits going by, in attire a grotesque mixture of

civilian and khaki. Here, there, and wherever one looked, evidences of

some personal sacrifice.--That was at once the clarion-call and the

march-rhythm of nineteen-fourteen. To participate, to fall in step, one

must sacrifice as well....

Suddenly he was conscious of a keen desire once more to live in

complete harmony with Patricia. After all, what stood between them but

the fact of her book suppressed that his might appear? Viewed in the

clearer colder searchlight which recent events had streamed into his

flinching soul, it seemed infinitely mean and selfish that he should

smugly have acquiesced in this arrangement.

For Pat's was the worthier book of the two. He admitted it now. He

would admit it presently to her. It was splendidly generous that she

should have aided him in dissembling the fact. But if Gareth Temple

were to be identified with the Crusade--and he did not mean to be left

out this time--he could straightway make a beginning by stripping

himself of the illusion that had hitherto been so pampered--illusion

that his book was in the very slightest degree important to anyone but

himself. Patricia's should be published instead of his; or--since it

was indeed too late except at an enormous expense to withdraw a novel

of which he had already received the page-proofs--Patricia's should be

published as well as his--and kill it.

Locker and Swyn could well afford a failure.

Gareth hurried home, flushed and exalted by this definite solution of

a vague desire; and not at all abashed by the thought that Pat had

already once anticipated him, by use of their accidentally overlapping

themes, to give herself a spiritual adventure. It stimulated

satisfaction in him to remember that it was no valueless contribution

he intended to make to the prevailing Fund for Remorseful Egoists. For

the first fortnight or so following the outbreak of hostilities, it had

seemed doubtful if literature and art were not doomed to be carried

away in a waste-paper basket, emptied irrespective of contents. But

since the news from the Front had been more hopeful, intellect and

civilization had begun to collect themselves; metaphorically, to look

round and discover how much of themselves remained after the shock. And

John Forrester had only yesterday written to announce that, barring

unforeseen complications, they intended to adhere to their original

resolution to publish "The Round Adventure" in October. So that by

this genuine offering of what was immediately precious, Gareth would

not only be subordinating himself fitly to the exactions of a great

impersonal Cause; but would also be witness of Patricia's impulsive

tumult of gratitude and happiness. Henceforth would exist no reason,

no reason at all, why their life together might not be all he had ever

pictured it.... He sprang off the step of the omnibus, and walked

rapidly up the road to number seventeen.

"Pat! Pat! Where are you?"--impatience was eager to act red-hot upon

resolve. "Pat!"

"Here!" her voice came distantly from the very top of the house.

"In the box-room? Why?" He vaulted up the two flights of stairs; and

then up another steep little flight.

Patricia was rummaging among a disorderly chaos of trunks and sacks

and broken packing-cases that had disgorged half their contents over

the bare uneven floor: picture-frames; torn books; a pair of ski; the

spring-mattress of a bed ... general litter of tools ... remnants of

fancy-dress, and old boots, and brown-paper, and a battered

bird-cage ... he wondered how all these inconsequent articles had

managed to accumulate during their seven months of marriage?--he could

not recall that they had ever had a bird.... Then speculation was split

asunder by lightning memory of his errand:

"Pat," breathless from mingled excitement and his quick passage up the

stairs, "Pat--I want your book to be published as well as mine; or

instead of mine. Yours is the better book. I've made up my mind----"

"_Books?_"--she looked up from her squatting position in front of an

old belabelled portmanteau; her arms still plunged elbow-deep in search

of some article. "Heavens above, my good man, who cares about books

now!"

... "They've stopped mattering," she added, an instant later, with

less of vehement scorn in her voice, seeing his expression of slapped

bewilderment.

He sat down on a dusty roll of carpet. It was not much good explaining

to her how his apparently irrelevant decision was indeed closely

linked up with the war ... a sort of readjustment of soul and

spring-cleaning of motive which in its ultimate working-out would at

least infinitesimally contribute towards his dreaming conception of

a nation massed to loftier aim than before August the fourth. He had

trusted to Patricia's understanding of this, since like impulses of her

own had always resolved themselves quickly into deed. But Pat, with

strangely shallow interpretation, said that books did not matter.... He

was six weeks too late to impress her by open admission of his literary

inferiority. Another failure----Why could he never once succeed in

pulling off anything with full staging and effects?

Dejectedly he asked: "What are you looking for?"

"My big waterproof boots. They ought to be here somewhere. I've found

everything else----" She came to an abrupt halt, tugging a sturdy strap

from the depths of the portmanteau. "Good; that'll come in useful. I'm

off to Belgium on Thursday."

"What?" He was on his feet in a moment.

"With Hume Ferguson's Ambulance Corps."

"But--but you're not a nurse."

"No.... My official capacities wall be treasurer, secretary, courier,

and emergency chauffeur. But between ourselves, the idea is that I

should write up incidents of our daily round; and knock them into a

book of which the enormous profits shall be devoted to the purchase of

more ambulances. We've an awfully scratch lot at present."

"Just now you said books didn't matter."

She shrugged her shoulders. "I should have said fiction didn't matter.

Campbell thinks that a volume of impressions jotted down on the spot

ought to go well, before the market is choked up with them."

"Campbell----?"

"Yes. He was up at Ferguson's the other day; and he made a fairly

generous advance offer."

Gareth sat down again, his hands propping his head, while his mind

swam with dim pellucid shapes ... hardly as yet apprehended. Sick

disappointment at his sacrifice so lightly spurned.... Sick fear that

Patricia was going into danger, and that he would not be there to

protect her.... Sick envy of the ease with which she had found a way

into the very centre of action--ungetatable centre where he so longed

to be.... But it was all wrong: she was a woman and he a man. In the

Quest for the Grail, in the Crusades for Jerusalem, it was the knight

who strode forth with mighty effect and clangour, the maiden who sat at

home musing over his shield....

So her intention was indeed to write again!... Already to have arranged

matters with Campbell--_his_ chief; _his_ firm--and he only to hear

now, and how casually, of the step taken!... Things would never be

right again between them--never! never! Although they were married;

although he was the husband;--still that inversion of leadership. And

after the war she would be able to say she had been in the thick of it;

she would be One of Them.... The old horror re-threatening him.

Supposing she did not come back. The Prussians did queer things in

Belgium; queer and ugly things to women--to Pat, who was beautiful and

fearless ... _his wife_. Oh, he was proud of her; but he wished she

had been confronted with sufficient difficulties that her desire, her

excellent and gallant desire to achieve her share in the war, might

have remained stuck fast in a bag of non-accomplishment. He would not

have had it otherwise than that she should wish to participate.

Above all and again ... it was not quite fair. He had been touched to

such an exalted mood during his walk down the Strand; exalted, yet

humble; eager to renounce; sensitive to appreciate each subtle evidence

of a nation quickened at last to nobility. The sort of mood one must

really cherish. And then Pat had thoroughly upset him.

He endeavoured to recapture something of that transparent sunlit

feeling, before it all filtered away....

"Listen, darling----"

"Yes?" She twisted round; and resting both her elbows upon his knees,

gave him a sudden and disconcerting measure of her attention. Almost

he was aware of his soul blinking nervously in a full flood of golden

light.

"I'm glad you feel that you want to give yourself up to the war,

Pat. Every man and every woman and every child in the kingdom ought

to be feeling the same. No matter if war is right or wrong; no matter

if this is the war that ends war, or else another of those beastly

life-spilling limb-lopping campaigns that signify nothing in the

end--still, any great upheaval is welcome when it means all eyes to

the right-about, all eyes fixed steadily upon the same vision--instead

of glancing askew; the shutting-down of obstinate lids; short sight

pitted unfairly against long sight; sight that even in peace-time was

bloodshot and distorted.--Oh, those little squinters at some little

personal advantage to be gained----"

"Gareth, if everyone stopped to say all that before they got to work,

it would waste a lot of the national energy, wouldn't it?"

He was silent, bitterly offended.

"I wasn't proposing to pour out my sentiments about the war at the

street-corners," he remarked at last. "But in a man's own home----"

She kissed him. "I was rude. I'm sorry. But frankly--there isn't much

time nowadays for 'sentiments about the war.'"

Gareth said simply: "I want to help as well. Both of us, Pat. That's

what I was trying to say."

"Good! Loud and enthusiastic applause. There's a mighty lot to be done.

Not for the old honour-and-glory business. This is just an overwhelming

shake-up and shake-together; and ... I'd hate to feel we didn't stand

shoulder-to-shoulder over the war, Gareth."

"We do, dear. Only you put it in five words where I use five hundred.

An overwhelming shake-up and shake-together!"

They were both erect; each looking at the other with a tremulous

half-fearful stir of hope that there was yet salvage to be effected

among the shipwreck of their joint adventure. Patricia, nimbler to

reverse emotions than the man, was silently administering harsh rebuke

to her own arbitrary judgment, that had allowed faith in his innate

fineness to lapse into intolerance. Perhaps after all there was that in

him--her divine failure--which would justify all her one-time beliefs.

She had let instinct be misled by his little irritating surface

faults....

Well--neither time nor place for private adjustments and

reconciliations, while the Germans were barely turned back from the

walls of Paris. She had little patience with those people who used the

war, instead of being used by it. When the crisis was over ... then

maybe she and Gareth, comparing their tiny shares in what was past,

might thus discover a generous new comradeship in mutual respect. Or

even the old glamour might break again, like luminous sunset between

black stripes of cloud. Meanwhile, she would leave it to Gareth's

awakened understanding, that for now silence between them was enough....

"There's a mighty lot to be done," she repeated in her most

matter-of-fact tones; "you might make a creditable start by finding my

waterproof boots."

"Pat--don't go to the Front on Thursday. Please don't. Let's do

something together for the war."

"What?"

"Something...."

"Rather silly for me to give up a definite job, for the sake of

something----"

"For the sake of doing it together."

"Je n'en vois pas la nécessité." She turned away from him, and with

quick restless movements began to throw back the scattered articles

into the portmanteau.

He affected not to notice the growing coldness in her replies. "Take me

with you in the Ambulance Corps."

"You're neither soldier, doctor, nor mechanic."

"Neither are you."

"I happen to be fitted to a job. There are plenty that will fit you,

without butting into the wrong place."

"I wanted us to work together," he reiterated stubbornly.

"Why encumber our separate usefulness by insisting on our private

preference to be useful hand-in-hand?"

"If it _were_ your private preference--it isn't! You're glad to be

dashing off without me."

"I'm glad of this chance to go with the Corps!" Patricia sprang

upright, and flung up her arms behind her head.... He could not refrain

from the thought of how triumphantly nature had equipped her for any

strenuous job she might care to undertake; how little likely that she

would bungle it; how untiring her limbs; how swift to any adjustment

the poised equilibrium of her mind. Nor would any hitch occur in the

plans of Ferguson's Ambulance Corps, robbing her of the forthcoming

rampant opportunities to--to show off. No hitch--where Pat was

concerned. It was fate. She would go. And she would excel.

"You might have waited for me before you settled anything;" he spoke

plaintively as a child who sees another child off to a party. "I

suppose you think I'm not in earnest when I tell you I want to help.

I've thought of nothing else."

"Your meditations do you credit, my lad."

"Is that meant for a taunt?" He flushed hotly. "I'd have enlisted, but

I'm over age."

"I know."

"Well----"

She was making havoc in a trunk at the far end of the room now, half

hidden by an enormous old arm-chair on three legs.... "Most people seem

to have tumbled into some sort of war-job by now, that's all."

Patricia was deliberately behaving like a brute. His futile efforts

to engage her promise that they should "do something together," had

deadened her to a cold fury, all the chillier for her previous glow

of reaction. For she perceived clearly, could not help perceiving,

that his actual motive in thus pleading for combined effort was less

affection for her than sudden panic of his inability to find himself a

place anywhere on the crowded slow-turning machine. He hoped that her

initiative might serve for two. And to this end, for the shielding of

his own self-respect, he would have prevented accomplishment of her

apportioned labours. Pat was not setting forth in any subjective mood

of vainglory. Things had to be done, and the ego who did them mattered

not at all save in efficiency. But Gareth Temple was totally incapable

of submerging his morbid sense of Gareth Temple.... She determined that

this time at least he should expose himself--if only to prevent all

future errors of illusion on her part.

And nothing that she could have said would have increased to such an

extent the terror to which he was naturally prone, as her last remark.

Other people--other people's books--other people's wars----

Was he again to be the one left out?

A rapid mental survey among his friends; thence to casual

acquaintances.... He could not find a single companion for his

isolation. Guy Burnett had obtained his commission in the London

Scottish; Alexander, surprisingly, had enlisted in the ranks; Ran

Wyman was war correspondent in Russia; Graham Carr had departed on a

secret service commission; Leslie Campbell neglected publishing, for

an important post connected with the Commissariat, for which he had

revealed an unexpected fund of expert knowledge. Jim Collins was head

of a branch of motor transport; and Lulu did canteen work with the

Y.M.C.A.; and Mr. Golding, from next door, was a Special Constable,

and dug trenches in Hyde Park on Sundays. Fred Worley went every night

to Victoria or Charing Cross to fetch the wounded; while Trixie sat

all day long romantically in the Tower, mending soldiers' socks. And

Mrs. O'Neill and Anne organized sewing and knitting classes in great

multitude. Everybody busy; everybody rushing about with portentous

faces, and bits of uniform--letters or buttons or badges--stuck

about them to signify they were a certified part of the new-erected

slow-grinding hardly tested machinery of war. Yes ... and via Collins

he had learnt of Napier Kirby among the first to pass brilliantly

the examination for the Royal Flying Corps; of Grace, training to

be a nurse; of Bobby, a strenuous member of the Motor-Cycle Cadets.

From Jim, too, had come news of Kathleen as superintendent in a large

munition factory....

While he had been obsessed with misty and beautiful visions of a people

linked by a common stress and a common sorrow to finding place in a

common cause.... _How_ did one find place? How had all these cogs

slipped into movement? Gareth wished passionately that he had been

of military age, that he might have enlisted, and been quit of the

necessity for initiative. And even then enlistment was voluntary. What

his temperament demanded was to be hauled into action, with no other

option but to submit. He was lost and confused amid this pell-mell

scurry, this upset of tradition and habit and circumstance.... If he

could have begun when the others began, to perceive exactly by what

process of single steps they separately attained to their goal; as far

as possible to imitate them, to get carried on with the impetus of the

rush.... He was resentful now at being confronted by the necessity of

making his own rush.

Above all, resentful of Patricia. She stood as epitome of the entire

faction of persons who had so annoyed him by obtaining before himself

an assured position in the scheme of war. She, at least, might not

have confronted him with the climax of insult. She was his wife ... a

traitor in the very camp. "I'm off to Belgium on Thursday." The easy

announcement had mocked his impotence. She had meant it in mockery....

"I don't know that I'm so keen on doing war-work, if we're not to do

it together," he said; and he said it hating this evil humour she

had thrust upon him; recurrent humour that when it came clung with

leech-like obduracy on to his ashamed consciousness; spirit of idiotic

perversity which caused him to represent himself in such a false light,

to say such foolish untrue things. This mood that stuck and stuck----

"The German menace seems to present itself to you as a merry little

dinner-party, to which we get our invitations in pairs!" Pat flicked at

him.

"It's you, not I, who are scrambling for a seat. I shall look round

quietly to see where I can be useful...."

"And in what direction did you think of exercising your talents?"--Yes,

he should be made to own his loose helpless incompetence, even if it

were ... a disgusting exhibition. For wavering before her mental vision

was a bald newspaper announcement of five weeks ago:--Captain Dacres

Upton--Died of Wounds. And now the pity of it smote her, as it had

not done at the time.... Died of wounds--God! why did that sound in

print as though it had been so terribly slow.... Within a week of the

outbreak of war he had already been on the soil of Flanders; below it,

within little more than a week. And Gareth had at last to meet with the

inevitable comparison. He threw up a shield of desperate bravado:

"I don't see that I need confide my intentions to you. You told me

nothing beforehand of this ambulance business of yours."

"But what do you mean to do, Gareth? Tell me. Say you start 'looking

round quietly' to-morrow ... where will you go? To whom will you apply?

I'm interested in the process."

She had thrown away all pretence, and was openly goading him.... He

recognized the tone and the attitude--as he recognized the answering

sullen lethargy they awakened in himself. In these dual positions he

and Kathleen had hated one another during sixteen years. And from

Kathleen he had rebounded to this younger and yet more vital Kathleen.

He recognized her at last; and at the same hour as her final wrenching

asunder of the man he was from the man he thought himself.

And Patricia realized suddenly that it was just as well she should be

going away from him, and going at once. For she had found that in him

which she could not forbear from tormenting ... again and again she

would be forcing him to lay bare that stupid helpless twitching little

nerve ... she knew now exactly where it cowered, beneath the deceptive

layers of quiet strength and picturesque sadness ... and it tempted

a certain cruelty foreign to her nature.... It was just as well she

should be going away.

He sat hunched on the packing-case, head moodily supported between

his hands. Over in the far corner, in noisy challenging fashion, she

emptied the tin trunk of its contents....

CHAPTER III

"The Round Adventure" was published in mid-October.

It sold seven hundred and thirty-two copies, counting the colonial

sales. A few reviews, closely packed between brimming columns of

war-tidings, mentioned the book in terms of "promising" "whimsical

charm" "pleasant fantasy"; others dismissed it as "inadequate"; one

critic remarked caustically that "Kay Rollinson" might with profit have

been sent for awhile to the front-line trenches.... "In these times,

when men are not afraid to face death every minute from every quarter

of earth and air and water, we have small patience with these morbid

self-analytic heroes beloved of the lady novelist. Gareth Temple--of

whom, despite the masculine pseudonym, one strongly suspects the

sex--must learn that there are many different names for 'funk'; but

nowadays, only one cure for it."

Mr. Campbell congratulated Gareth, absently, on the appearance of the

novel; said he would read it--and forgot. One elderly lady in Somerset

wrote to the author, saying what a beautiful and helpful message the

story had held for her. Locker and Swyn were not encouraged to do more

than advertise "The Round Adventure" inconspicuously for a month; and

then resigned themselves to the comparatively slight financial loss.

Unlike Campbell, however, who in all cases would rather exploit himself

as a good publisher than prove his client a bad author, Forrester was

careful to inform Mr. Temple that they were depressed over the sales.

And there was no perceptible increase of respect in Jimmy's manners.

As Patricia had remarked, these were times of war, and books had

temporarily ceased to matter.

So many dreams ... so much of exultation, of strife and heart-sickness

and envy, of sacrifice, and of rebounding hope ... all of life's issues

since a year and a half hooked on to the single obsession of a book

written and a book published.

And--"Is this _all_?" Gareth could not bring himself to believe that

this was indeed all.

"I shall never dream again...."

He was resentful of this over-toppling unheeding weight that had fallen

athwart his frail creation, and crushed it, and crushed it out of sight

and out of existence. The more resentful, since all about him were

real sufferings, real flesh-and-blood losses; pain and suspense; and

in comparison, the failure of his book counted for much neither in his

own sight nor in anyone else's. One could not even feel noble about it;

merely ... tepid.

He was not employed upon war-work. There was still sufficient to

occupy him as reader to Leslie Campbell. Books about Germany were

being published by the score; exposing German militarism and German

ethics; reminiscences of English governesses who had resided in

Germany; translations from the German writers.... People were curious

to understand this apparently civilized scientific philosophic folk who

had so startlingly revealed themselves savage and of insensitive honour.

Plenty for Gareth to do. Sometimes he almost succeeded in deluding

himself that this was indeed war-work, or meritoriously akin to it. The

first rush to active service was over; had crashed over his protesting

tenacity like a wave, leaving him still as a limpet adherent to the

rock. He also discovered, to his relief, that there were other limpets

on the rock. He did not much like the look of them ... but who was he

to complain? Now that the roar and foam and sputter of the wave had

died down, the limpet no longer felt seriously uncomfortable....

It would have required a very strong reminder of external circumstances

to reanimate Gareth's once flaming visions of all mankind bonded to

unity. One could not run about clamorously in an atmosphere already

adapted, still, settled, to the new conditions. If he had begun

earlier----

Gareth remained where he was.

In the spring of nineteen-fifteen he had the pleasure of assisting

in the publication of Pat O'Neill's volume of vivid impressionistic

jottings--"The Log-Book"--actual experience, veined by brilliant humour

or fiery pity. Published at half a crown, it sold over twenty thousand

copies, of which Ferguson's Ambulance Corps reaped the entire benefit.

Patricia did not even return to England to savour her success. "...

I'm only the gramophone needle," she scribbled to Gareth; "without me

these incidents would not be recorded on the wax; but I've created

nothing!"--This in answer to the letter of congratulation which he had

written at the prompting of one of his best and sweetest impulses; a

letter which was generous and sincere, and altogether charming.

It was another whole year before she eventually permitted herself a

short holiday in England. She was doing strenuous and useful work with

the Corps, and could very hardly be spared from any of her capacities,

to which time and emergency had added nursing and first-aid surgery. A

second volume of "The Log-Book" had recently been published, and was

already humming through its ninth edition ... Leslie Campbell forgave

that little matter of "The Reverse of the Medal" withdrawn; he was very

pleased with Pat O'Neill. So were Campbell's Young Men--such of the

band whose various leaves happened now, for the first time since the

outbreak of the war, to coincide. Vincent Alexander had been killed at

the Dardanelles; and young Burnett had lost a leg in the same sorrowful

expedition; Graham Carr was in London, convalescent from a light attack

of typhoid; Ran Wyman, on the other hand, was suffering from nothing

worse than a startled discovery of that especial form of Deity that is

born and bred solely in Russia, and whose divine simplicity is badly

damaged by import into England.

In and out of the office, as in pre-war days; the same arrogance of

freemasonry; the same disregard of persons outside the temporarily

predominating subject; the same eager brilliant discussions, confident

laying down of the law, flippant esoteric allusions; rather more of

manliness and common sense, perhaps, and less of windy theory.

And the reader sat at his desk and listened, with the same wistful

sense of being entirely superfluous. It did not add any strangeness

to the scene that Pat should now be One of Them. She merely occupied

the vacant space into which he had always dreamt his own person; and

seemed quite at home in it. He had seen practically nothing of his wife

during her week's nominal stay at Blenheim Terrace. She was claimed

incessantly, and seemed to enjoy the whirlwind holiday; though the

old contradiction was visible again between sad dead eyes and mocking

up-curve of the lips.... Patricia had received the stamp of war.

"Until your advent, I was the only feminine element in these sacred

offices," said Mona Gurney, whom Graham Carr had just introduced.

The latter put in: "And even now we only accept her ladylike little

person for the sake of her books' sturdy uncompromising masculinity.

Candidly, Pat, did you expect anything like this to be the author of

'Rust on the Plough'?"

Mona Gurney's fists flew up to her huddled shoulders, with a funny

little gesture of anger all her own: "Graham, you ask everybody

that.--It's _silly_ to expect me to wear straws in my hair and yellow

clay on my boots, just because I get good reviews in the 'Agricultural

Monthly.'" She turned a small pleading face towards Patricia: "Mr.

Campbell is quite as bad. For weeks he couldn't make head or tail

of me; then he had an inspiration: invited me to spend a day in the

country, led me into a field ... and waited for me to get excited.

When I didn't cast myself headlong on the earth and bite it, he was

disappointed, and took me back to town."

"If I were to make head or tail of you," Pat exclaimed laughing, "it

should be a fuzzy furry grey tail that was cocked upright ... and

between your wee paws I should just love to pop a nut! I'm delighted

to meet you, Miss Gurney; and since Graham has started us on odious

personalities, let me confess that never in my life have I encountered

anyone quite so fascinatingly like a squirrel!"

Mona's hands flew up again, accompanying a laugh that was midway

between a squeak and a gurgle: "Oh dear!--and Alex always used to call

me a Puritan."

"A Puritan squirrel expresses it exactly." But a lull fell upon

conversation at the mention of Vincent Alexander. He had been popular

among these of his friends who had pierced beneath his extreme outward

decorum.

The lull was broken by whir of the telephone bell.

"Let me answer it!" Guy Burnett exclaimed, who had that instant hobbled

in with Ran Wyman. "It will be like a taste of old times." For he

was still in his blue hospital suit; and far too weak and white to

think just yet of returning to the firm; though rumour whispered that

presently his father intended to buy him a partnership with Leslie

Campbell.... "Hello! Hello!... Come back, you blighter--what d'you

want to run away for?... Hello-o-o-o!... Carr, there was a time when I

could have betted on this being an order for 'Piccadilly.'"

"Yer can bet yer shirt it's fur the 'Log-Book' now," put in the

Heart-breaker, raising a damp crimson face from his parcel-packing, and

speaking in tones that were husky with pride and passion. "It's that

bloomin' 'Log-Book' 'ere all day long, till we're fair fed up with it.

Really we are, Miss O'Neill."

"... Hello!... Yes--yes.... All right. By to-morrow?--certainly,

nothing easier.... Hi! no! wait a minute...." Burnett turned to

Campbell who had thrust a head round the door of his sanctum.

"'Evening, sir--I say, I'm not up-to-date any more in these matters.

Hale's are asking if the hundred copies of 'The Log-Book' are ready for

'em yet, according to promise?"

"Nay, we can't get the edeetions through at that pace. Enquire if they

happen to ken there's a European War in prawgress!" with terrific scorn.

Burnett did so; and then with a cordial "good-bye," replaced the

receiver.

"It's really rather a miracle to find any sort of book-interest

surviving after two years of topsy-turvydom," Ran Wyman commented,

from the table on to which he had swung himself beside Pat. "We're a

marvellous nation; I expected a landslide in literature; and here we

are, flourishing!"

"Publishing is awnly being carried on under enormous deefficulties,"

Campbell announced cheerfully; "dearth of paper--dearth of

labour--dearth of railway faceelities--dearth of reviews--dearth of the

public's money----"

"Dearth of everything except authors. Behold us in rich quantities,

gladdening to the eye. And surely no dearth of material, either;

consider with what an infinitely fresh store of possibilities the war

has equipped our jaded brains."

"Yus--Ran thinks I left a leg at Suvla Bay, so that he should write

eight hundred pages on the theme of 'God's in his Russia, all's right

with the----'"

"Shut up!" Wyman's narrow black eyes were wet, and he blinked them

rapidly. Confronted with the boy's crippled condition, he was absurdly

ashamed of the luck which had carried him unscathed through eighteen

months of impudent exposure to all hazards.

Graham Carr put the general question as to whether they considered it

legitimate to use the war for purposes of fiction?

"What's your objection, Carr?"

"Life-and-death is a bigger thing than pen-and-ink."

"Dinna say that, laddie. In some cases, pen and ink has sur-r-rvived

life and death."

"One in every thousand. The nine hundred and ninety nine are merely ...

impertinent."

Patricia murmured reminiscently: "'... And when he came back to her, he

wore on his breast a little piece of metal inscribed: For Valour.... He

had made good, after all!'"

"That's the stuff. The editor of the 'Blue Sky' told me that in the

first month of the war he received uncountable short stories in the

line of 'Was He A Coward?' 'Coward V.C.' 'The Girl who Chucked up the

Man who Funked for his Brother who Didn't' ... and so on. It's all

very well in peace-time to pander to a certain maudlin moral hysteria

in the reading public. But the war's real enough and raw enough--and

ought to be immune from cheap serial exploitation." Carr spoke with the

authority of one who since the fourth of August, 1914, had not once

been betrayed into print.

"But the kind of penny serial stuff you mention is not real," Patricia

argued; "it's about a quite pretty little war--a war in muslin with a

light blue sash--the sort of war one could invite to tea with one's

children and know it would not set a bad example. Far enough removed

from the actual thing, to make it harmless. It's the sort of war in

which the heroine is always a Red Cross Nurse without any previous

training; with an adjustable face that can remind each and every

wounded officer in the ward of his girl at home.... Did any of you

ever stumble across that priceless gem: 'In spite of his lameness, he

embraced her passionately!'?"

"That's the rank and file of war fiction," Carr said; "the next

grade annoys me more, because it ought to know better: The pre-war

psychological problem presented, with the war conveniently lugged in

towards the end, as _deus ex_, to solve all difficulties, cut all

strains, adjust all quarrels. Then, for want of definite conclusion,

the Woman watches the Man (not the hero and heroine in this grade)

depart for the Front, with a queer uplifted premonition in her

heart that he will come safely through the Supreme Test--just he,

_ausgesucht_--as we say in the dead languages."

Campbell cried indignantly: "Ye're unjust, Carr. This is truth ye

were quoting. For in every single case all over the world, wasn't the

war just bound to tumble unexpectedly into some seetuation or other,

and deeslocate it?" Pat and Gareth exchanged a quick look; while

Campbell went on: "It's far more unnatural to work oot the problem to

its logical conclusion of what would have happened if the war hadn't

happened."

"It just depends if you look upon the war as the sum total of what each

individual's acts and feelings went to make it, and are still making

it; or as a complete descent from the Absolute, regardless of atomic

contribution?"

"Monism or pluralism--what does it matter?" cried Pat, impatient as

usual with unprofitable theorizing. "The answer makes no practical

difference either in the conduct or the result of the war."

Carr immediately accused her of pragmatism.

"The war has killed 'isms,'" declared Ran Wyman. To which Carr replied

curtly: "Till the day when the 'isms' shall kill war."

"All the same, the sort of modern novel that tries to ignore the war,

smells fusty--like a station cab. I've read a few: the author makes

no allusion at all to the fact of the war; but at the same time his

characters are rather inexplicably inclined to cold-shoulder Germany;

almost to cut it dead ... instinctive second-sight, I suppose. General

impression of: 'I know something about you, Mr. Germany, but I won't

tell, 'cos this isn't a war-novel!'--intensely irritating. Also an

occasional careless remark on the lines of: 'Yes, I want my son to

learn how to box a compass--it may be of use to him in the far-off

eventuality of European war, which I somehow think is not so far off as

it seems now!'--Clever fellow!"

"And even granted," said Pat, "that the best authors--top-grade--wait

for a focussed perspective of all this scurrying muddle----"

Unceremoniously Guy Burnett interrupted her:

"Why should they? It's just this scurrying muddle, as you call it, that

ought to be chronicled by any writer whose brain is sufficiently nimble

to catch it. We can trust to historians for the eventual consistent

balancing and summing-up; but just the slippery, shifting, sliding

kaleidoscope of the war, as filtered through this personality and

that----"

"Let me point out, Guy, that you can't filter a kaleidoscope ... at any

rate, not in the presence of Leslie Campbell. We owe something still to

the prestige of the firm."

"Nobody wants an impersonal and godlike summary of the Great War as

yet. _That_ would be impertinent, if you like!"

Patricia said lightly: "I beg of you not to apologize; I began a

sentence about ten minutes ago; it's not of the faintest interest to

anyone save myself--but allowing that, I'd like to finish it."

Burnett apologized profusely; and the company hushed their tongues, and

gazed with admiring expectancy upon Pat O'Neill.

"Take it for granted that a professional writer feels like Mr. Graham

Carr on the impertinence of nibbling at such a giant subject; take it

also that the said writer is anxious to satisfy the public's yearnful

plea for distraction from the one topic;--does Mr. Graham Carr realize

the petty difficulties that beset such a writer from the outset? A

novel that does not deal with the war, must presumably not be laid in

times of war; because the war, if once mentioned, inevitably occupies

the foreground--as it has in all our lives. Therefore the writer,

even if he or she wishes to be up-to-date, must break the tale off

sharply at the end of June, nineteen-fourteen. And if the characters

are to spread themselves and grow old, he must either let them disport

themselves in a wholly problematic after-the-war period--in which

God help the prophetic instinct!--or else reckon all his dates and

everybody's ages backwards from the last chapter, so as to be correct

in a false assumption that modern times ended two years ago ...

which mathematical callisthenics will probably land him in a bag of

anachronisms----"

"Heavens, child! it's not at all necessary to do all that; there are

surely millions of old books to satisfy that section of the reading

public who require distraction from the war."

"Then if WE--the literary fraternity--are neither to express ourselves

on the subject of the war, nor on the subject of otherwise, with what

do you suggest our busy pens shall be occupied?"

"With nothing, for the duration of the war. Let 'em rust. Nobody will

miss 'em; and there's plenty of emergency work to be done. I can safely

make this statement, as none of us present are squandering our energies

on irrelevant fiction."

Mona Gurney broke down, and shed tears.

"My darling! my precious!" Wyman leapt to her side, and attempted

ineffectually to console her. "What is it? What has the nasty man said

to upset you? Don't you believe a word of it----"

"It's such a beautiful book!" she sobbed. "And I thought I was keeping

the lamp of civilization trimmed and burning--I did, truly.... I said

so every time I sat down at my desk. It's two hundred and twenty

thousand words, and only five more chapters to write----"

"Two hundred and twenty thousand wur-r-rds, and not finished yet!"

Campbell was aghast. "But what may be the theme of this--this

paper-eating monstrosity, my dear?"

Mona broke away from Ran's cherishing arms, and sat up on her haunches

with spasmodic fidelity to Patricia's simile of a wee furry creature

about to beg: "Oh, it is, it _is_ a lovely book!" screwing up her eyes

and mouth in an ecstasy of remembrance. "It's all about the Wars of the

Roses!"

A shout of laughter greeted the announcement.

"But what's wrong with _this_ war, Mona?--what's wrong with it? Why be

prehistoric?--drag up these far-fetched relics from the ruins of time,

when the genuine article is in the next room, so to speak?"

"Because it's in _this_ room--and a little too genuine," Mona

explained. "I do agree with Graham in wanting to let the pudding get

cold before I dig in my spoon--but I can't write quite inconsequent

novels on heredity or _la femme incomprise_, either---just at present.

And I can't put out the lamp altogether, Graham; I can't! I can't!"

"Puddings and lamps ... surely one of the minor evils of the war is the

abundance of bad metaphor to which it can give rise even in this picked

assembly!"

Burnett enquired seriously: "Nothing amiss with the soil of Sussex, is

there, Miss Gurney, that you should abandon it? We like you when you're

agricultural ... you influenced me to start growing mignonette in a

window-box, once."

"You don't understand--I had to express myself about war--war in the

generic sense. The inner psychology of war always remains the same,

whether it's York and Lancaster--North and South America--the Assyrians

and the Babylonians--or the Allies and the Huns. There's not a problem

connected with the war which can be raised now, which could not have

been equally contended in any one of those campaigns."

"Thousands, Mona."

"Not one, Ran--in its underlying human substance. I'm not referring to

alterations in the method of warfare; naturally these are subject to

periodic changes----"

"And the human problems are dependent on these changes." He looked

round for his hat: "'Books and the War'! It's been a most illuminating

discussion. Patricia, you're dining with me in half an hour, and don't

forget it."

"Oh, Miss O'Neill, you must spare me an evening soon, away from all

these talkative men; won't you?" Mona Gurney was not alone in always

calling Pat by the name under which she wrote. They were all liable to

forget, at Leslie Campbell's, that she was the wife of Gareth Temple.

"Not this side of Christmas, Miss Gurney, unless you cross the Channel.

I'm off again to-night. But do send me a copy of the new book, if it

comes out in the autumn. Just to remind me of this past hour----"

"Of which the summing-up----"

"No, Ran--No!" they all cried in chorus. But unperturbedly sententious,

Wyman went on: "... is this: that the underlying motive power for

the continual and increasing eruption of war literature, in spite of

discouragement and difficulties, is neither impertinence, gold-greed,

nor public demand; but rather the fact that each person feels urgently

the necessity somehow to identify himself with the war, for fear of

being stranded for ever upon its outer rim. Expression is one way of

connection----"

"_No._"

It was Gareth who in a low voice had contradicted; though till the

rest of the company turned and stared at him in some surprise at his

unwonted contribution to the argument, he was not sure if he had spoken

aloud the negative shouted by his soul.

Carr said, after a pause, remembering vaguely that he had been

confidant to rather a queer outburst from the reader, some years ago:

"Why 'no,' Temple? You're qualified to put us all right on the subject;

you're in the thick of it here, while we've been scampering about the

globe."

"'The thick of it' is hardly in a publisher's office," Gareth

retorted bitterly, though the other man's remark had been made

without any sub-intention to hurt. "It's the 'thin of it'--the

war in words--you never grope through them to the realities going

on beyond. Words that muffle suffering till it reaches here

beautiful--poignant--noble--crude--restrained--oh, as anything but

itself! First the war books, and then criticism of the books, and

criticism of the criticism ... how are we--how am I to get past that

to the very beat of the war?... The very beat of the war--that's only

a phrase too--I don't know what it signifies, when I come to think

about it. But expression is _not_ connection. Those like you--and

you--and you----" His look roamed from Carr to Wyman, rested an instant

on young Burnett's drawn thin face--avoided Patricia altogether--"who

have fought in the war, can you be identified with it any closer by ...

writing about it?" He came to a halt; experienced a queer satisfaction

in the knowledge that for once they were all listening to him

intently ... then, in desperate realization that even now he was

only talking about talk, rushed on to achievement of his purpose: "I

intend to leave here--resign my job as reader. I can't stand it any

longer, Mr. Campbell; I want things straight from the source ... it's

indecent to feel as heroic as I do after reading a good war-novel ...

to respond as I do to a mere clump of words. Do you remember, at the

very beginning of hostilities, when the message came through: 'The

Black Watch is cut to pieces!'--I've never forgotten that--the stern

sombre ring of it.... I'd repeat it, and feel my face growing stern and

sombre. It was all in the sound; just as bad if it had been the Second

Middlesex ... but not to me. I can't get beneath the covers. Suvla

Bay--that's exciting too ... though hardly to you and me in quite the

same way, Burnett. I don't suppose the name matters much to you. Suvla

Bay....

"And when the war is over, I shall be left with a fistful of

second-hand quotations. Stranded on the outer rim. If I stop here,

reading about it, hearing about it. Here--where the best emotion the

Great War has to give me is a thrill out of someone else's book--and

the worst thing it can do to me is to spoil the chances of my own...."

He walked blindly from the room. On the threshold the conviction was

still upon him that he had been eloquent. Half-way down the flight of

stairs, he wondered if he had made a complete fool of himself. Already

it occurred to him that after all Campbell might not take seriously his

notice to resign his job. Although certainly it was meant seriously.

But the embers of feeling of the past two years had blazed up and burnt

themselves out in speech. ... And now his only desire was to ascertain

how his outburst had impressed Patricia. He stood stock-still, one

hand gripping the iron balustrade rail ... listened intently. He had

left the door ajar ... and was aware that Campbell had just said

something--he could not catch what. Then clear and careless, came Pat's

reply:

"Ah, but he'll be back in a day or two, Mr. Campbell. Dear old

Gareth--his intentions are sincere, but rather collapsible!"

... Gareth went on, down the stairs, and into the street.

Pat knew.

CHAPTER IV

He did not go back to Leslie Campbell's after two or three days. He

went back after a fortnight....

For one tensely expectant week, he waited for England to become

aware of the fact that he was now definitely free to take up any

war work it might have been holding in reserve for him. A phrase in

poster use became part of his mental equipment--he was ready to do

his bit--eager to do his bit--surely to the nation might be left the

minor responsibility of finding him the bit to do. Most people, he

conjectured hazily, "dropped into something" by invitation; a friend

"in the swim"; a chance encounter with another friend who "tipped

them the wink." And thus, by slang and by haphazard, the great ship

Organization was manned, and launched, to be tested in strange and

stormy seas.

Pending his new official appointment, Gareth made of his nights

a feverish inferno by conjuring up a series of horror-stricken

predicaments in which he might find himself involved in every fresh

employment that his fancy selected as probable to materialize on the

following day. Suppose he were given a job for which he was totally

incapable, and they did not believe his protestations, and he

bungled it--with disastrous public consequences. Or suppose, misled

by the quiet strength of his personality, they put him in a position

of authority--he who could never master the secret of dealing with

subordinates ... and suppose these noticed his lack of confidence,

mocked his waverings, flouted his commands; suppose he were told

to perform some important mission, and it were taken for granted

that he knew more than he did, and he did not fully understand his

instructions, and dared not ask further questions; suppose....

He had been too long in the sheltered routine of Leslie Campbell's, not

to torment himself with the dread of exposure to the awful unknown.

But still, there was a thrill and a sweetness in the daylight thought

that he was doing war-work at last!

And at last the long droning summer days of idleness and boredom

convinced him that he was doing nothing of the sort. There was really

and actually not much open to a man of forty-three, well over age

for the Conscription Act, both shy and contemptuous of home service

or the special constable badge, and not sufficiently One of Them, in

the generic sense of the phrase, to be swung aloft by the crane of

influence and lowered into exactly the right place.

He discovered there were Labour Bureaux, where one might put down one's

marketable assets. What were his marketable assets? Gareth spent a

whole night chasing these elusive qualities and trying to reduce them

to a clear statement.

"I should like a job in the Censorship," he decided finally. And left

it at that.

He had put down his name on the Civil Service list, and was told

that he would hear from them in due course. But though the rumour

was current that men were badly wanted to replace those who had been

called up, yet beyond sending him a paper to fill up with details of

age, citizenship, etc., the administration seemed to have successfully

pigeon-holed his application. He was glad of their forgetfulness;

having stood for a moment outside one of the big offices, quailing from

the prospect of being absorbed and lost among these hundreds of drab

little men scurrying out of the building for their hour of lunch and

relaxation. Too humble to deem himself fit for anything more splendid

than this, he was still too much the dreamer to accept the belief that

symbolically to bear a banner in the great Crusade could be reduced

actually to such humdrum insignificance.

And he missed the world of books. Ever more and more he missed it.

That, after all, was the atmosphere he best understood, where words

stood for deeds, and the importance of words for the importance of

deeds; where all life was imprisoned by language, translated into

style, shut between covers.... For nineteen years he had been a

reader ... two weeks astray on the hustling pavements were enough to

make him regard the dim little offices off Covent Garden as precious

sanctuary.

So he went back.

Leslie Campbell readily accepted his stumbling explanations of his

odd behaviour a fortnight ago. He had not been well--the strain of

the war--nerves out of order; and then the culminating anxiety of his

wife's departure that night for Flanders.... "It seems worse when they

return, and then go out again, doesn't it, sir?"

Campbell quite understood. He was only too glad of this reinstallation

of a person on whom he could rely; eager as he was to devote most of

his own time to his labours on the Commissariat. Alexander was dead;

and Guy Burnett not yet well enough to take up the partnership....

Gareth's departure from the firm had been a definite nuisance. "He's

no' indeespensable," reflected Campbell, "but time meks of a man a vary

useful habit!"

Gareth walked slowly down the Strand, haunted by a queer echo of his

own voice as it had recently spoken, only transposed to a higher

shriller key. "The strain of the war ... my nerves are out of

order ... and then my husband off to-night for the Front." So might a

woman have offered excuse for an outburst of hysteria. So might a woman

be placed, with the man she loved on the eve of departure. So might a

woman feel about the war, as he had been feeling all the while ... his

vague half-splendid, half-pitiful dreams; his stifled longing to have

the right, right of sex, maybe--to play the passive sacrificial part

unquestioned and unashamed....

He butted full into a figure standing stock-still, engrossed in the

open flapping sheets of an evening paper. At the force of the impact

she turned--and he broke off his apologies.

"Kathleen!"

She showed no surprise at the encounter. And indeed, it was curious

that this should be their first accidental meeting since she had bidden

him a curt good-bye in the dining-room of Pacific Villa.

"Have you seen this?" she asked directly, pointing to a column in the

paper, that dealt with a brilliant and successful feat on the part

of two British airmen in France, in combat with a number of enemy

aeroplanes sent up to prevent them from obtaining photographs of a very

important section of trench. Both pilot and observer were recommended

for the D.S.O.: Lieutenant Frank Morton and Captain Napier Kirby....

Gareth looked at Kathleen; her eyes were soft and shining; her mouth

tremulous.

"Only very slightly wounded, they say. But he was always a reckless

idiot!" with a half-laugh of tenderness that held a sheer girlish

quality. Then suddenly she seemed to realize Gareth, and her face

altered to its remembered harshness.

"Why didn't you let me go with him, that time? If you had ... he would

be mine now--now that...."

Gareth replied: "Yes, but I was too unhappy; somebody had got in first

with the theme of my book."

"Somebody? Who?"

"Patricia."

"Before you met her?"

"Yes."

She brooded a moment on this. The passers-by jostled their standing

figures impatiently.

"I read a novel of yours; in 1914, wasn't it? But hers----"

"She gave it up for mine."

"Oh.... Yes, she would. I daresay hers was a good deal better."

He repeated: "A good deal better."

"Where is your wife now?"

"In Flanders. With the Ambulance Corps. She has been out since the

beginning."

Kathleen's ironic smile comprehended and epitomized his entire married

life, its failure and the causes for its failure; nay, went still

further back, and assumed a triumphant intention on her own part that

he should have undergone this second and more poignant disillusion.

"We're in the way here. Good-bye."

He overtook her, and walked by her side towards Trafalgar Square.

"One minute. You've told me nothing about yourself."

"Touching display of interest!"

"Pat might have said that," he mused dispassionately.

She slightly lifted her brows. "Surely there can be no resemblance

between Patricia and myself?"

"You are being a little bit ungenerous," said the man, gently

enough. "Lulu Collins told me you held a very responsible post in a

high-explosive factory; do you like the work?"

"Yes. It's all-absorbing, which is the main thing. I was meant for

tough employment, I think; it strengthens my sinews. I'm only in London

for the day, sent down to interview the Minister of Munitions. What are

you doing? Still stuck with Leslie Campbell?"

"I gave him notice a fortnight ago," carefully adhering to the truth.

Then: "I'm going out to Flanders in a few days, as a free-lance

journalist."

"Is that allowed?"

"There are ways and means of squaring people--influence ..." said

Gareth Temple.

"You'll meet with difficulties."

"I shall be killed."

The quiet certainty of his tones attracted her notice. "Do you want to

die?"

He answered with seeming inconsequence: "This war wasn't made for the

little people. It's absurd to suppose that a big thing can inflate our

natures to correspond. We remain little people hopelessly out of scale

with the big thing, instead of little people comfortably tucked up

with little things. It's rather unfair--if the war hadn't happened, we

need never have been found out. Millions of little people have lived

honoured, respected, admired even, because their luck has never sent a

European conflict to test them."

It was queer to be confiding thus in Kathleen. But she stimulated

him ... as she had always done; she and her like. The sudden startling

resolve of the past few moments, startling even to himself, startlingly

clear and formulated, was entirely resultant upon her presence; the

keen ring of her voice, her aloof walk, sombre hawk's face, and thin

eyebrows like curved black scimitars. Spiritually and actually she

was worn by her own tempestuous impatience to the finest possible

edge. Patricia would one day be like this. He continued to walk beside

Kathleen, because of the acute thrill of those moments when she

reminded him of Patricia.... And he continued word-spinning in a dizzy

triumphant exultation at the ease with which the whole theme of his

life was unrolling itself into a final pageantry of speech. He supposed

there must be an uncanny finality about this indulgence accorded him in

his favourite pastime, since never before had he been able to express

himself unhindered by the drag of self-deception. No doubt but that

Kathleen was amazed to silence at his power to exhibit himself so

stripped of all illusion; he who had always been supremely a figure

of illusions. He would amaze her yet more. Tingling with a strange

excitement, he went on:

"You were my first love, Kathleen; and Patricia my last. And you

were the overture to Patricia, as she was the echo to you. No one in

between. Except a dream of the girl I would love to have loved ...

weaker than myself, frail and peaceful, a cool shadow-world ... and she

would have relied on my strength ... the typical maiden to a knight....

I dreamt of her when I was a boy, reading the 'Idylls of the King,' on

the hearthrug in the parlour above the shop.... Well--I dream of her

still. And I daresay if we met she could not awaken a single throb in

me. Just because I'm a woman-soul myself, Kathleen, I was fated to be

magnetically attracted again and again by the bolder and more vital

nature in your sex; the strong nature that could not fail to make me

miserable directly on finding me out. That other girl--my ideal--she

would have admired me. You never admired me, did you, Kathleen?"

a fleeting whimsicality in the smile he bestowed on her. "Nor did

Patricia ... Patricia....

"I've never been able to impress Patricia. That's why I'm setting

off for Flanders now. It was just an impulse that you inspired....

I believe the right one at last. Usually I play about too long with

the pretty word-rhythms and word-patterns, and the act comes too late

for effect. But not this time. This time I'm leaving out the talk. I

shall meet her somewhere in the chaos over there--one does meet people

strangely; why, you were only in London for one day! And I shall meet

my death, too, somehow, in the chaos over there ... because it's the

inevitable end of my round adventure."

There was a slight tinge of weariness in his companion's tone, as she

asked: "_Do_ people meet with their inevitable ends? Surely life is

haphazard and death inconsequent?"

He shook his head. "You say you have read my book? I believe every

life is formed as a complete wheel, of which the end closes up with

the start, and the axis is some special adventure. Only so few are

conscious of the shape ... they assume that adventure must of

necessity be joyous adventure--loud clarion-calls--the D.S.O.... My

round adventure was to be superfluous--the onlooker at other people's

adventures--never One of Them.... I've felt it, always. Now I can see

it--and give in. The Great War ... there's no room for superfluous

people in the Great War. The best way they can fulfil themselves is

by self-effacement ... self-removal. I haven't the pluck for suicide,

Kathleen; but I have faith in my round adventure--and I'm going to

Flanders, to Patricia, where my faith will prove itself ... some

significant completion of the whole. Perhaps even I may be allowed in

death what wasn't part of the scheme of life: to make an impression

on the woman I love. Childish, I know--but ... yes, I think the

Draughtsman will allow that. He has an excellent gift for irony."

"I must leave you here," said Kathleen abruptly.

They stood at the corner of Whitehall. She held out her hand.

"Good-bye."

Her inner thought was: "And I stood this sort of thing for sixteen

years...."

"Good-bye," he said absently; "when shall I see you again?"... and let

fall her hand and strolled away, his eyes still misty with visions.

* * * * *

About fifty seconds after he had left her side, a shattering explosion

was heard in the neighbourhood of Trafalgar Square. An apparently

friendly aeroplane had dropped a couple of random bombs; and then,

soaring from the swoop, disappeared among the clouds. One of the

bombs rolled harmlessly off the slate roof of an outhouse and did no

mischief. The other wounded a cat, damaged an outjutting iron balcony,

and killed Gareth Temple. A newspaper paragraph, reporting the incident

the following day, remarked that the machine must have been one of our

own which had fallen into German hands. "After releasing the bombs, the

enemy was able to effect an escape. Fortunately the casualties were

insignificant."

THE END

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PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND