"There's no denying but what inferior minds have that power," he went

sorrowfully on. "They can't build up an enterprise, but they can knock,

and they been good and busy. You haven't heard of it? Well, that's good

as far as it goes, but they been at it for all that. Now I don't want to

knock back at your country, Mrs. Tasker, but it seems to me that's the

English character. You're hostile to the noo. The noo gives you cold

feet. You got a terrific capacity for stopping put. Your King Richard

Core de Lion did things in a certain way, and it ain't struck you yet

that he's been stiff and straight quite a while. And so when you see

something with snap and life to it you start knocking." Mr. Miller spoke

almost bitterly. "But I ain't holding you personally responsible, Mrs.

Tasker. I reckon you're a wonderful woman. Yours is a reel old family,

and if anybody's the right to knock it's you; but _you_ appreciate the

noo. _You_ look at it in the light of history. _You_ got the sense of

world-progress. _You're_ a sort of Lady Core de Lion to-day. I haven't

forgotten the Big Idee you started us off with. And so I come to you,

and tell you, straight and fair, we want you."

Dorothy was tingling with excitement; but she took up a piece of

sewing--the same piece on which she had bent her modest gaze when she

had machinated against her aunt on the afternoon on which Lady Tasker

had come on, weary and thirsty, from The Witan. It was a piece she kept

for such occasions as these. She stitched demurely, and Mr. Miller went

on again:--

"We want you. We want those bright feminine brains of yours, Mrs.

Tasker. And your ladies' intooition. We're stuck. We want another Idee

like the last. And so we come to the department where we got

satisfaction before."

Dorothy spoke slowly. She was glad the pond-room was beautifully

furnished--glad, too, that the hours Ruth spent over her "brights" were

not spent in vain. The porcelain gleamed in her cabinets and the silver

twinkled on her tables. At any rate she did not look poor.

"This is rather a surprise," she said. "I hardly know what to say. I

hadn't thought of taking on another contract."

But here Mr. Miller was prompt enough.

"Well, I don't know that we were thinking of a noo contract exactly.

You're a lady with a good many responsibilities now, and ain't got too

much time for contracts, I guess. No, it ain't a contract. It's an Idee

we want."

Far more quickly than Dorothy's hopes had risen they dropped again at

this. "An Idee:" naturally!... Everybody wanted that. She had not had to

hawk an idea like the last--so simple, so shapely, so beauty-bright. And

she had learned that it is not the ideas, but what follows them, that

pays--the flat and uninspired routine that forms the everyday work of a

lucrative contract. It is the irony of this gipsy life of living by your

wits. You do a stately thing and starve; you follow it up--or somebody

else does--with faint and empty echoes of that thing, and you are

overfed. An Idea--but not a contract; a picking of her brains, but no

permanent help against that tide of tradesman's books that flowed in at

the front door.... And Dorothy knew already that for another reason Mr.

Miller had sought her out in vain. Ideas are _not_ repeated. They visit

us, but we cannot fetch them. And as for echoes of that former

inspiration of hers, no doubt Mr. Miller had thought of all those for

himself and had rejected them.

"I see," she said slowly....

"Well," said Mr. Miller, his worry-map really piteous, "I wish you could

tell me where we've gone wrong. It must be something in the British

character we ain't appreciated, but what, well, that gets me. We been

Imperialistic. There ain't been one of our Monthly House Dinners but

what we've had all the Loyal Toasts, one after the other. There ain't

been a Royal Wedding but what we've had a special window-display, and

christenings the same, and what else you like. We ain't got gay with the

Union Jack nor Rotten Row nor the House of Lords. We've reminded folk it

was your own King George who said 'Wake up, England----!'"

But at this point Mr. Miller's doleful recital was cut short by a second

ring at the bell. Again Ruth's step was heard in the passage outside,

and again Ruth, loftily sulky but omitting no point of her duty, stood

with the door-knob in her hand.

"Mrs. Pratt," she announced; and Amory entered.

Seeing Mr. Miller, however, she backed again. Mr. Miller had risen and

bowed as if he was giving some invisible person a "back" for leapfrog.

"Oh, I do so beg your pardon!" said Amory hurriedly. "I didn't know

you'd anybody here. But--if I could speak to you for just a moment,

Dorothy--it won't take a minute----"

"Please excuse me," said Dorothy to Mr. Miller; and she went out.

She was back again in less than three minutes. Her face had an unusual

pinkness, but her voice was calm. She did not sit down again. Neither

did she extend her hand to Mr. Miller in a too abrupt good-bye.

Nevertheless, that worried man bowed again, and looked round for his hat

and stick.

"I shall have to think over what you've been saying," Dorothy said.

"I've no proposal to make off-hand, you see--and I'm rather afraid that

just at present I shan't be able to come and see you----"

There were signs in Mr. Miller's bearing of another access of reverence.

"So I'll write. Or better still, if it's not too much trouble for you to

come and see me again----? Perhaps I'd better write first.--But you'll

have tea, won't you?"

Mr. Miller put up a refusing hand.--"No, I thank you.--So you'll do your

possible, Mrs. Tasker? That's vurry good of you. I'm wurried, and I rely

on your sharp feminine brains. As for the honorarium, we shan't quarrel

about that. I wish I could have shaken hands with Mr. Stan. There ain't

a happier and prouder moment in a man's life than----"

"Good-bye."

And the father of three little goils of his own took his leave.

No sooner had he gone than Dorothy's brows contracted. She took three

strides across the room and rang for Ruth. Never before had she

realized the inferiority, as a means of expressing temper, of an

electric bell to a hand-rung one or to one of which a yard or two of

wire can be ripped from the wall. Only by mere continuance of pressure

till Ruth came did she obtain even a little relief. To the high resolve

on Ruth's face she paid no attention whatever.

"A parcel will be coming from Mrs. Pratt," she said. "Please see that it

goes back at once."

Ruth's head was heroically high. The late Mr. Mossop had had his faults,

but he had not kept his finger on electric-bell buttons till she came.

"No doubt there's them as would give better satisfaction, m'm," she said

warningly.

But Dorothy rushed on her fate.--"There seems very little satisfaction

anywhere to-day," she answered.

"Then I should wish to give the usual notice," said Ruth.

"Very well," said the reckless mistress.... "Ruth!" (Ruth returned).

"You forgot what I said about always shutting the door quietly."

This time the door close so quietly behind Ruth that Dorothy heard her

outburst into tears on the other side of it.

Second-hand woollies for her Bits!... Of course Amory Pratt had made the

proposal with almost effusive considerateness. No doubt the twins, Corin

and Bonniebell, _had_ outgrown them. Dorothy did not suppose for a

moment that they were _not_ the best of their kind that money could

buy; the Pratts seemed to roll in money. And beyond all dispute the

winter _might_ come any morning now, and the garments _would_ just fit

Jackie. But--her own Bits!... She had had her back to the bedroom window

when the offer had been made; she knew that her sudden flush had not

showed; and her voice had not changed as she had deliberately told her

lie--that she had bought the children's winter outfits only the day

before....

"I'm sure you won't have any difficulty in giving them away," she had

concluded as she had passed to the bedroom door.

"Far less difficulty than you'll find here," she might have added, but

had forborne....

Other children's woollies for her little Jackie!----

What gave sting to the cut was that Jackie sorely needed them; but then

it was not like Amory Pratt, Dorothy thought bitterly, to make a

graceful gift of an unrequired thing. She must blunder into people's

necessities. A gift of a useless Teddy Bear or of a toy that would be

broken in a week Dorothy might not have refused; but mere need!--"Oh!"

Dorothy exclaimed, twisting in her chair with anger....

What a day! What a life! And what a little thing thus to epitomize the

whole hopeless standstill of their circumstances!

And because it was a little thing, it had a power over Dorothy that

twenty greater things would not have had. She was about to call the

precious and disparaged Jackie when she thought better of it. Instead,

she dropped her face into her hands and melted utterly. What Ruth did in

the kitchen she did in the pond-room; and Jackie, who caught the

contagion, filled the passage between with an inconsolable howling.

It was into this house of lamentation that Stan entered at half-past

four.

"Steady, there!" he called to his younger son; and Jackie's bellow

ceased instantaneously.

"Ruth's c'ying, so I c'ied too," he confided solemnly to his father; and

the two entered the pond-room together, there to find Dorothy also in

tears.

"Hallo, what's this?" said Stan. "Jackie, run and tell Ruth to hurry up

with tea.... Head up, Dot--let's have a look at you----"

Perhaps he meant that Dot should have a look at him, for his face shone

with an--alas!--not unwonted excitement. Dorothy had seen that shining

before. It usually meant that he had been let in on the ground floor of

the International Syndicate for the manufacture of pig-spears, or had

secured an option on the world's supply of wooden pips for blackberry

jam, or an agency for a synthesized champagne. And she never dashed the

perennial hopefulness of it. The poor old boy would have been

heartbroken had he been allowed to suppose that he was not, in intent at

any rate, supporting his wife and children.

"What is it, old girl?" he said. "Just feeling low, eh? Never mind. I've

some news for you."

Dorothy summoned what interest she could,--

"Not an agency or anything?" she asked, wiping her eyes.

"Better than that."

"Well, some agencies are very good."

"Not as good as this!"

"Put your arm round me. I've been feeling _so_ wretched!"

"Come and sit here. There. Wretched, eh? Well, would three hundred a

year cheer you up any?"

It would have, very considerably; but Stan's schemes were seldom

estimated to produce a sum less than that.

"Eh?" Stan continued. "Paid weekly or monthly, whichever I like, and a

month's screw to be going on with?"

Suddenly Dorothy straightened herself in his arms. She knew that Stan

was trying to rouse her, but he needn't use a joke with quite so sharp a

barb. She sank back again.

"Don't, dear," she begged. "I know it's stupid of me, but I'm so dull

to-day. You go out somewhere this evening, and I'll go to bed early and

sleep it off. I shall be all right again in the morning."

But from the pocket into which she herself had put four half-crowns that

very morning--all she could spare--Stan drew out a large handful of

silver, with numerous pieces of gold sticking up among it. A glance told

her that Stan was not likely to have backed a winner at any such price

as that. Other people did, but not Stan. She had turned a little pale.

"Tell me, quick, Stan!" she gasped.

"You laughed rather at the Fortune & Brooks idea, didn't you?"

"Oh, don't joke, darling!----"

"Eh?... I say, you're upset. Anything been happening to-day? Look here,

let me get you a drink or something!"

"Do you mean--you've got a job, Stan?"

"Rather!--I say, do let me get you a drink----"

"I shall faint if you don't tell me----"

She probably would....

Stan had got a job. What was it, this job that had enabled Stan to come

home, before he had lifted a finger to earn it, with masses of silver in

his pocket, and the clean quids sticking up out of the lump like almonds

out of a trifle?

--He would have to lift more than a finger before that money was earned.

He would have to hang on wires by his toes, and to swim streams, and to

be knocked down by runaway horses, and to dash into burning houses, and

to fling himself on desperate men, and to ascend into the air in

water-planes and to descend in submarines into the deep. Hydrants would

be turned on him, and sacks of flour poured on him, and hogsheads of

whitewash and bags of soot. Not for his brains, but for his good looks

and steady nerves and his hard physical condition had he been the chosen

one among many. For Stan had joined a Film Producing Company, less as an

actor than as an acrobat. Go and see him this evening. He is as well

worth your hour as many a knighted actor. And the scene from "Quentin

Durward," in which Bonthron is strung up with the rope round his neck,

is not fake. They actually did string Stan up, in the studio near Barnet

that had been a Drill Hall, and came precious near to hanging him into

the bargain.

But he passed lightly over these and other perils as he poured it all

out to Dorothy at tea. Pounds, not perils, were the theme of his song.

"I didn't say anything about it for fear it didn't come off," he said,

"but I've been expecting it for weeks." He swallowed tea and cake at a

rate that must have put his internal economy to as severe a strain as

"Mazeppa" (Historical Film Series, No. XII) afterwards did his bones and

muscles. "I start on Monday, so breakfast at eight, sharp, Dot. 'Lola

Montez.' They've got a ripping little girl as Lola; took her out to tea

and shopping the other day; I'll bring her round." ("No you don't--not

with me sitting here like a Jumping Bean," quoth Dorothy). "Oh, that's

all right--she's getting married herself next month--furnishing her flat

now--I helped her to choose her electric-light fittings--you'd like

her.... _Ain't_ it stunning, Dot!----"

It was stunning. Part of the stunningness of it was that Dorothy, with

an abrupt "Excuse me a moment," was enabled to cross to her desk and to

dash off a note to Harrods. Second-hand woollies for her Bits! Oh no,

not if she knew it!... "Yes, go on, dear," she resumed, returning to the

tea-table again. "No, I don't wish it was something else. If we're poor

we're poor, and the Services are out of the question, and it's just as

good as lots of other jobs.--And oh, that reminds me: I had Mr. Miller

in this afternoon!"...

"And oh!" said Stan ten minutes later; "I forgot, too! I met a chap,

too--forgotten all about it. That fellow I gave a dressing-down about

India to up at the Pratts' there. He stopped me in the street, and what

do you think? It was all I could do not to laugh. He asked me whether I

could put him on to a job! Me, who haven't started myself yet!... I said

I could put him on to a drink if that would do--I had to stand somebody

a drink, just to wet my luck, and I didn't see another soul--and I

fetched it all out of my pocket in a pub in St. Martin's Lane--," he

fetched it all out of his pocket again now, "--fetched it out as if it

was nothing--you should have seen him look at it!--Strong his name

is--didn't catch it that day he was burbling such stuff----"

Dorothy's eyes shone. Dear old Stan! That too pleased her. No doubt the

Pratts would be told that Stan was going about so heavily laden with

money that he had to divide the weight in order not to walk lopsided----

Worn woollies for His Impudence's Bits!----

Rather not! There would be a parcel round from Harrods' to-morrow!

VI

POLICY

Amory would have been far less observant than she was had it not

occurred to her, as she left Dorothy's flat that day, that she had been

hustled out almost unceremoniously. She hoped--she sincerely hoped--that

she did not see the reason. To herself, as to any other person not

absolutely case-hardened by prejudice, the thing that presented itself

to her mind would not have been a reason at all; but these conventional

people were so extraordinary, and in nothing more extraordinary than in

their regulations for receiving callers of the opposite sex. That was

what she meant by the vulgarizing of words and the leaping to ready-made

conclusions. A conventional person coming upon herself and Mr. Strong

closeted together would have his stereotyped explanation; but that was

no reason why anybody clearer-eyed and more open-minded and

generous-hearted should fall into the same degrading supposition. It

would be ridiculous to suppose that there was "anything" between Dorothy

and Mr. Miller. Amory knew that in the past Dorothy had had genuine

business with Mr. Miller. And so now had she herself with Mr. Strong.

And as for Stan's going about in open daylight with a "dark Spanish

type"--a type traditionally wickeder than any other--Amory thought

nothing of that either. Stan had as much right to go about with his

Spanish female as Cosimo had to take Britomart Belchamber to a New Greek

Society matinee or to one of Walter's Lectures. Amory would never have

dreamed of putting a false interpretation on these things.

Nevertheless, her visit _had_ been cut singularly short, and Dorothy

plainly _had_ wanted to be rid of her. Because hearts are kind eyes need

not necessarily be blind. Amory could not conceal from herself that in

magnanimously passing these things over as nothing, she was, after all,

making Dorothy a present of a higher standard than she had any right to.

Judged by her own standards (which was all the judgment she could

strictly have claimed), there was--Amory would not say a fishiness about

the thing--in fact she would not say anything about it at all. The less

said the better. Pushed to its logically absurd conclusion, Dorothy's

standard meant that whenever people of both sexes met they should not be

fewer than three in number. In Amory's saner view, on the other hand,

two, or else a crowd, was far more interesting. Nobody except

misanthropists talked about the repulsion of sex. Very well: if it was

an attraction, it _was_ an attraction. And if it was an attraction to

Amory, it was an attraction to Dorothy also; if to Cosimo, then to Stan

as well. The only difference was that she and Cosimo openly admitted it

and acted upon it, while Stan and Dorothy did not admit it, but probably

acted furtively on it just the same.

It was very well worth the trouble of the call to have her ideas on the

subject so satisfactorily cleared up.

At the end of the path between the ponds she hesitated for a moment,

uncertain whether to keep to the road or to strike across the sodden

Heath. She decided for the Heath. Mr. Strong had said that he might

possibly come in that afternoon to discuss the Indian policy, and she

did not want to keep him waiting.

Then once more she remembered her unceremonious dismissal, and reflected

that after all that had left her with time on her hands. She would take

a turn. It would only bore her to wait in The Witan alone, or, which was

almost the same thing, with Cosimo. The Witan was rather jolly when

there were crowds and crowds of people there; otherwise it was dull.

She turned away to the right, passed the cricket-pitch, found the cycle

track, and wandered down towards the Highgate ponds.

She had reached the model-yacht pond, and was wondering whether she

should extend her walk still further, when she saw ahead of her, sitting

on a bench beneath an ivied stump, two figures deep in conversation. She

recognized them at a glance. They were the figures of Cosimo and

Britomart Belchamber. Britomart was looking absently away over the

pond; Cosimo was whispering in her ear. Another second or two and Amory

would have walked past them within a yard.

Now Amory and Cosimo had married on certain express understandings, of

which a wise and far-sighted anticipation of the various courses that

might be taken in the event of their not getting on very well together

had formed the base. Therefore the little warm flurry she felt suddenly

at her heart could not possibly have been a feeling of liberation. How

could it, when there was nothing to be liberated from? Just as much

liberty as either might wish had been involved in the contract itself,

and a formal announcement of intention on either part was to be

considered a valid release.

And so, in spite of that curious warm tingle, Amory was not one atom

more free, nor one atom less free, to develop (did she wish it) a

relationship with anybody else--Edgar Strong or anybody--than she had

been before. She saw this perfectly clearly. She had talked it all over

with Cosimo scores of times. Why, then, did she tingle? Was it that they

had not talked it over enough?

No. It was because of a certain furtiveness on Cosimo's part. Evidently

he wished to "take action" (if she might use the expression without

being guilty of a vulgarized meaning) _without_ having made his formal

announcement. That she had come upon them so far from The Witan was

evidence of this. They had deliberately chosen a part of the Heath they

had thought it unlikely Amory would visit. They could have

done--whatever they were doing--under her eyes had they wished, but

they had stolen off together instead. It was a breach of the

understanding.

Before they had seen her, she left the path, struck across the grass

behind them, and turned her face homewards. She was far, far too proud

to look back. Certainly it was his duty to have let her know. Never

mind. Since he hadn't....

Yet the tingling persisted, coming and going in quite pleasurable little

shocks. Then all at once she found herself wondering how far Cosimo and

Britomart had gone, or would go. Not that it was any business of hers.

She was not her husband's keeper. It would be futile to try to keep

somebody who evidently didn't want to be kept. It would also take away

the curious subtle pleasure of that thrill.

She was not conscious that she quickened the steps that took her to the

studio, where by this time Edgar Strong probably awaited her.

Most decidedly Cosimo ought to have given her warning----

As for Britomart Belchamber--sly creature--no doubt she had persuaded

him to slink away like that----

Well, there would be time enough to deal with her by and bye----

Amory reached The Witan again.

As she entered the hall a maid was coming out of the dining-room. Amory

called her.

"Has Mr. Strong been in?"

"He's in the studio, m'm," the maid replied.

"Are the children with Miss Belchamber?"

"No, m'm. They're with nurse, m'm."

"Is Miss Belchamber in her room?"

"No, m'm. She's gone out."

"How long ago?"

"About an hour, m'm."

"Is Mr. Pratt in?"

"I think so, m'm. I'll go and inquire."

"Never mind. I'm going upstairs."

Ah! Then they had gone out separately, by pre-arrangement! More slyness!

And this was Cosimo's "pretence" at being Miss Belchamber's devoted

admirer! Of course, if there had been any pretence at all about it, it

would have had to be that he was not her admirer. Very well; they would

see about that, too, later!----

She went quickly to her own room, changed her blouse for a tea-gown, and

then, with that tingling at her heart suddenly warm and crisp again,

descended to the studio.

It was high time (she told herself) that the "Novum's" Indian policy was

definitely settled. Mr. Strong also said so, the moment he had shaken

hands with her and said "Good afternoon." But Mr. Strong spoke

bustlingly, as if the more haste he made the more quickly the job would

be over.

"Now these are the lines we have to choose from," he said....

And he enumerated a variety of articles they had in hand, including Mr.

Prang's.

"Then there's this," he said....

He told Amory about a crisis in the Bombay cotton trade, and of a scare

in the papers that very morning about heavy withdrawals of native

capital from the North Western Banks....

"But I think the best thing of all would be for me to write an article

myself," he said, "and to back it up with a number of Notes. What I

really want cleared up is our precise objective. I want to know what

that's to be."

"We'll have tea in first, and then we shall be undisturbed," said Amory.

"Better wait for Cosimo, hadn't we?"

"He's out," said Amory, passing to the bell.

She sat down on the corner of the sofa, and watched the maid bring in

tea. Mr. Strong, who had placed himself on the footstool and was making

soughing noises by expelling the air from his locked hands, appeared to

be brooding over his forthcoming number. But that quick little tingle of

half an hour before had had a curious after-affect on Amory. How it had

come about she did not know, but the fact remained that she was not,

now, so very sure that even the "Novum" was quite as great a thing as

she had supposed it to be. Or rather, if the "Novum" itself was no less

great, she had, quite newly, if dimly, foreseen herself in a more

majestic role than that of a mere technical _directrice_.

Politics? Yes, it undoubtedly was the Great Game. Strong men fancied

themselves somewhat at it, and conceited themselves, after the fashion

of men, that it was they who wrought this marvel or that. But was it?

Had there not been women so much stronger than they that, doing

apparently nothing, their nothings had been more potent than all the

rest? She began to give her fancy play. For example, there was that

about a face launching a thousand ships. That was an old story, of

course; if a face could launch a thousand ships so many centuries ago,

there was practically no limit to its powers with the British Navy at

its present magnificent pitch of numerical efficiency. But that by the

way. It was the idea that had seized Amory. Say a face--Helen's, she

thought it was--had launched a thousand, or even five hundred ships;

where was the point? Why, surely that that old Greek Lord High Admiral,

whoever he was--(Amory must look him up; chapter and verse would be so

very silencing if she ever had occasion to put all this into

words)--surely he had thought, as all men thought, that he was obeying

no behest but his own. The chances were that he had hardly wasted a

thought on Helen's face as a factor in the launching....

Yet Helen's face had been the real launching force, or rather the brain

behind Helen's face ... but Amory admitted that she was not quite sure

of her ground there. Perhaps she was mixing Helen up with somebody else.

At any rate, if she was wrong about Helen she was not wrong about

Catherine of Russia. Nor about Cleopatra. Nor about the Pompadour. These

had all had brains, far superior to the brains of their men, which they

had used through the medium of their beauty. She knew this because she

had been reading about them quite recently, and could put her finger on

the very page; she had a wonderful memory for the places in books in

which passages occurred.... So there were Catherine the Second, and

Cleopatra, and the Pompadour, even if she had been wrong about Helen.

That was a curious omission of Homer's, by the way--or was it

Virgil?--the omission of all reference to the brain behind. Perhaps it

had seemed so obvious that he took it for granted. But barring that, the

notion of a face launching the ships was very fine. It was the Romantic

Point of View. Hitherto Amory had passed over the Romantic Point of View

rather lightly, but now she rather thought there was a good deal in it.

At any rate that about the face of a woman being the real

launching-force of a whole lot of ships--well, it was an exaggeration,

of course, and in a sense only a poetic way of putting it--but it was

quite a ripping idea.

So if a ship could be launched, apparently, not by a mere material

knocking away of the thingummy, but by the timeless beauty of a face, an

Indian policy ought not to present more difficulties. At all events it

was worth trying. Perhaps "trying" was not exactly the word. These

things happened or they didn't happen. But anybody not entirely stupid

would know what Amory meant.

The maid lighted the little lamp under the water-vessel that kept the

muffins hot and then withdrew. Amory turned languidly to Mr. Strong.

"Would you mind pouring out the tea? I'm so lazy," she said.

She had put her feet up on the sofa, and her hands were clasped behind

her head. The attitude allowed the wide-sleeved tea-gown into which she

had changed to fall away from her upper arm, showing her satiny triceps.

The studio was warm; it might be well to open the window a little; and

Amory, from her sofa, gave the order. It seemed to her that she had not

given orders enough from sofas. She had been doing too much of the work

herself instead of lying at her ease and stilly willing it to be done.

She knew better now. It was much better to take a leaf out of the book

of _les grandes maitresses_. She recognized that she ought to have done

that long ago.

So Mr. Strong brought her tea, and then returned to his footstool again,

where he ate enormous mouthfuls of muffin, spreading anchovy-paste over

them, and drank great gulps of tea. He fairly made a meal of it. But

Amory ate little, and allowed her tea to get cold. The cast which Stan

had coarsely called "the fore-quarter" had been hung up on the wall at

the sofa's end, and her eyes were musingly upon it. The trotter lay out

of sight behind her.

"Well, about that thing of Prang's," said Mr. Strong when he could eat

no more. "Hadn't we better be settling about it?"

"Don't shout across the room," said Amory languidly, and perhaps a

little pettishly. She was wondering what was the matter with her hand

that Mr. Strong had not kissed it when he had said good afternoon. He

had kissed it on a former occasion.

"Head bad?" said Mr. Strong.

"No, my head's all right, but there's no reason we should edit the

'Novum' from the housetops."

"Was I raising my voice? Sorry."

Mr. Strong rose from his footstool and took up a station between the

tea-table and the asbestos log.

Amory was getting rather tired of hearing about that thing of Prang's.

She did not see why Mr. Strong should shuffle about it in the way he

did. The article had been twice "modified," that was to say more or less

altered, and Amory could hardly be expected to go on reading it in its

various forms for ever. What did Mr. Strong want? If he whittled much

more at Mr. Prang's clear statement of a point of view of which the

single virtue was its admitted extremeness, he would be reducing the

"Novum" to the level of mere Liberalism, and they had long ago decided

that, of the Conservative who opposed and the Liberal who killed by

insidious kindnesses, the former was to be preferred as a foe. Besides,

there was an alluring glow about Mr. Prang's way of writing. No doubt

that was part and parcel of the glamour of the East. The Eastern style,

like the Eastern blood, had more sun in it. Keats had put that awfully

well, in the passage about "parched Abyssinia" and "old Tartary the

Fierce," and so had that modern man, who had spoken of Asia as lying

stretched out "in indolent magnificence of bloom." Yes, there was a

funny witchery about Asia. In all sorts of ways they "went it" in Asia.

Bacchus had had a spree there, and it was there--or was that

Egypt?--that Cleopatra or the Queen of Sheba or somebody had smuggled

her satiny self into a roll of carpets and had had herself carried as a

present to King Solomon or Mark Antony or whoever it was. It seemed to

be in the Asian atmosphere, and Mr. Prang's prose style had a smack of

it too. Mr. Strong--his literary style, of course, she meant--might have

been all the better for a touch of that blood-warmth and thrill....

And there were ripping bits of reckless passion in Herodotus too.

But Mr. Strong continued to stand between the tea-table and the asbestos

log, and to let fall irresolute sentences from time to time. Prang, he

said, really was a bit stiff, and he, Mr. Strong, wasn't sure that he

altogether liked certain responsibilities. Not that he had changed his

mind in the least degree. He only doubted whether in the long run it

would pay the "Novum" itself to acquire a reputation for exploiting what

everybody else knew as well as they did, but left severely alone. In

fact, he had assumed, when he had taken the job on, that the work for

which he received only an ordinary working-salary would be conditioned

by what other editors did and received for doing it.... At that Amory

looked up.

"Oh? But I thought that the truth, regardless of consequences, was our

motto?"

"Of course--without fear or favour in a sense--but where there are extra

risks----"

What did this slow-coach of a man mean?----"What risks?" Amory asked

abruptly.

"Well, say risks to Cosimo as proprietor."

"You mean he might lose his money?" she said, with a glance round the

satiny triceps and the apple-bud of an elbow.

"Well--does he _want_ to lose his money?--What I mean is, that we aren't

paying our way--we've scarcely any advertisements, you see----"

"I think that what you mean is that we ought to become Liberals?" There

was a little ring in Amory's voice.

Mr. Strong made no reply.

"Or Fabians, perhaps?"

Still Mr. Strong did not answer.

"Because if you _do_ mean that, I can only say I'm--disappointed in

you!"

Now those who knew Edgar Strong the best knew how exceedingly sensitive

he was to those very words--"I'm disappointed in you." In his large and

varied experience they were invariably the prelude to the sack. And he

very distinctly did not want the sack--not, at any rate, until he had

got something better. Perhaps he reasoned within himself that, of

himself and Prang, he would be the more discreet editor, and so lifted

the question a whole plane morally higher. Perhaps, if it came to the

next worst, he was prepared to accept the foisting of Prang upon him and

to take his chance. Anyway, his face grew very serious, and he reached

for the footstool, drew it close up to Amory's couch, and sat down on

it.

"I wonder," he said slowly, looking earnestly at his folded hands,

"whether you'll put the worst interpretation on what I'm going to say."

Amory waited. She dropped the satiny-white upper arm. Mr. Strong

resumed, more slowly still--

"It's this. We're risking things. Cosimo's risking his money, but he may

be risking more than that. And if he risks it, so do I."

Into Amory's pretty face had come the look of the woman who prefers men

to take risks rather than to talk about them.--"What do you risk?" she

asked in tones that once more chilled Mr. Strong.

"Well, for one thing, a prosecution. Prang's rather a whole-hogger. It's

what I said before--we want to use him, not have him use us."

"Oh?" said Amory with a faint smile. "And can't you manage Mr. Prang?"

There was no doubt at all in Mr. Strong's mind what that meant. "Because

if you can't," it plainly meant, "I dare say we can find somebody who

can." Without any qualification whatever, she really was beginning to be

a little disappointed in him. She wondered how Cleopatra or the Queen of

Sheba would have felt (had such a thing been conceivable) if, when that

carpet had been carried by the Nubians into her lover's presence and

unrolled, Antony or whatever his name was had blushed and turned away,

too faint-hearted to take the gift the gods offered him? Risks!

Weren't--Indian policies--worth a little risk?...

Besides, no doubt Cosimo was still with Britomart Belchamber....

She put her hands behind her head again and gave a little laugh.

Well, (as Edgar Strong himself might have put it in the days when his

conversation had been slangier than it was now), it was up to him to

make good pretty quickly or else to say good-bye to the editorship of a

rag that at least did one bit of good in the world--paid Edgar Strong

six pounds a week. And if it must be done it must, that was all. Damn

it!...

Perhaps the satiny upper arm decided his next action. Once before he had

made its plaster facsimile serve his turn, and on the whole he would

have preferred to be able to do so again; but even had that object not

been out of reach on the wall and its original not eighteen inches away

at the sofa's end, three hundred pounds a year in jeopardy must be made

surer than that. He would have given a month's screw could Cosimo have

come in at that moment. He actually did give a quick glance in the

direction of the door....

But no help came.

Damn it----!

The next moment he had kissed that satiny surface, and then, gloomily,

and as one who shoulders the consequences of an inevitable act, stalked

away and stood in the favourite attitude of Mr. Brimby's heroes under

great stress of emotion--with his head deeply bowed and his back to

Amory. There fell between them a silence so profound that either became

conscious at the same moment of the soft falling of rain on the studio

roof.

Then, after a full minute and a half, Mr. Strong, still without turning,

walked to the table on which his hat lay. Always without looking at

Amory, he moved towards the door.

"Good-bye," he said over his shoulder.

There was the note of a knell in his tone. He meant good-bye for ever.

All in a moment Amory knew that on the morrow Cosimo would receive Edgar

Strong's formal resignation from the "Novum's" editorial chair, and

that, though Edgar might retain his hold on the paper until his

successor had been found, he would never come to The Witan any more. He

had called Mr. Prang a whole-hogger, but in Love he himself appeared to

be rather a whole-hogger. He had all but told her that to see her again

would mean ... she trembled. The alternative was not to see her again.

His whole action had said, more plainly than any words could say, "After

that--all or nothing."

She had not moved. She hardly knew the voice for her own in which she

said, still without turning her head, "Wait--a minute----"

Mr. Strong waited. The minute for which she asked passed.

"One moment----," murmured Amory again.

At last Mr. Strong lifted his head.--"There's nothing to say," he said.

"I'm thinking," Amory replied in a low voice.

"Really nothing."

"Give me just a minute----"

For she was thinking that it was her face, nothing else, that had

launched him thus to the door. For a moment she felt compunction for

its tyranny. Poor fellow, what else had he been able to do?... Yet what,

between letting him go and bidding him stay, was she herself to do? At

his touch her heart had swelled--been constricted--either--both; even

had she not known that she was a pretty woman, now at any rate she had

put it to the proof; and the chances seemed real enough that if he

turned and looked at her now, he must give a cry, stride across the

studio floor, and take her in his arms. Dared she provoke him?...

The moment she asked herself whether she dared she did dare. Not to have

dared would to have been to be inferior to those great and splendid and

reckless ones who had turned their eyes on their lovers and had

whispered, "Antony--Louis--I am here!" If she courted less danger than

she knew, her daring remained the same. And the room itself backed her

up. So many doctrines were enunciated in that studio, the burden of one

and all of which was "Why not?" The atmosphere was charged with

permissions ... perhaps for him too. He was at the door now. It was only

the turning of a key....

Amory's low-thrilled voice called his name across the studio.

"Edgar----"

But he had thought no less quickly than she. He had turned. Shrewdly he

guessed that she meant nothing; so much the better--damn it! There was

something female about Edgar Strong; he knew more about some things than

a young man ought to know; and in an instant he had found the "line" he

meant to take. It was the "line" of honour rooted in dishonour--the

"line" of Cosimo his friend--the "line" of black treachery to the hand

that fed him with muffins and anchovy paste--or, failing these, the

all-or-nothing "line."... But on the whole he would a little rather go

straight than not....

Nor did he hesitate. Amory had turned on the sofa. "Edgar!" she had

called softly again. He swung round. The savagery of his reply--there

seemed to Amory to be no other word to describe it--almost frightened

her.

"Do you know what you're doing?" he broke out. "Haven't you done enough

already? What do you suppose I'm made of?"

The moment he had said it he saw that he had made no mistake. It would

not be necessary to go the length of turning the key. He glared at her

for a moment; then he spoke again, less savagely, but no less curtly.

"You called me back to say something," he said. "What is it?"

Instinctively Amory had covered her face with her hands. It was

fearfully sweet and dangerous. Flattery could hardly have gone further

than that tortured cry, "What do you think I'm made of?" Her heart was

thumping--thump, thump, thump, thump. A lesser woman would have taken

refuge in evasions, but not she--not she, with Cosimo carrying on with

Britomart, and Dorothy Tasker no doubt whispering to her Otis or Wilbur

or whatever her American's name might be, and Stan perhaps deep in an

intrigue with his Spanish female at that very moment. No, she had

provoked him, and he had now every right to cry, not "Have you read

'_The Tragic Comedians_'?" but "Do you know what you're doing?"... And

he was speaking again now.

"Because," he was saying quietly, "if _that's_ it ... I must know. I

must have a little time. There will be things to settle. I don't quite

know how it happened; I suddenly saw you--and did it. Anyway, it's

done--or begun.... But I won't stab Cosimo in the back.... It will have

to be the Continent, I suppose. Paris. There's a little hotel I know in

the Boulevard Montparnasse. It's not very luxurious, but it's cheap and

fairly clean. Seven francs a day, but it would come rather less for the

two of us. And you wouldn't have to spend much on dress in the Quartier.

Or there's Montmartre. Or some of those out-of-the-way seaside places. I

should like to take you to the sea first, and then to a town----"

He stopped, and began to walk up and down the studio.

Amory was suddenly pale. She had not thought of this. She had thought

that perhaps Mr. Strong might give a cry, rush across the studio, and

take her in his arms; but of this cold and almost passionless prevision

of details she had not dreamed. And yet that was magnificent too. Edgar

wasted no time in dalliance when there was planning to be done. There

would be time enough for softer delights when the whole of the Latin

Quarter lay spread out before them in indolent magnificence of bloom. He

was terrifying and superb. Such a man not manage Mr. Prang! Why, here he

was, ready to bear her off that very night at a word!

Paris--Montmartre--the Quartier!

It was Romance with a vengeance!

Then at a thought she grew paler still. The children! What about Corin

and Bonniebell? It didn't matter so much about Cosimo; it would serve

him right; but what about the twins? Were they also to be included in

the seven francs a day? And wouldn't it matter how they dressed either

in the Quarter? Or did Edgar propose that they should be left behind in

Cosimo's keeping, with Britomart Belchamber for a stepmother?

Edgar had reached the door again now. He was not hurrying her, but there

was a look on his face that seemed to say that all she needed was a hat

and a rug for the steamer.

Such a very different thing from a carpet to roll round her----

She had risen unsteadily from the sofa. She crossed the floor and stood

before Edgar, looking earnestly up into his blue eyes. She moistened her

lips.

"What's happened----" she began in a whisper....

He interrupted her only to make the slightest of forbidding gestures

with his hand; her own hands had moved, as if she would have put them on

his shoulders. And she saw that he was quite right. At the touch of her

his control would certainly have broken down. She went on, appealingly

and almost voicelessly.

"What's happened--had to happen, hadn't it?" she whispered. "_You_ felt

it sweeping us away too--didn't you?... But need we say any more about

it to-night?... I want to think, Edgar. We must both think.

There's--there's a lot to think about--and talk over. We mustn't be too

rash. It _would_ be rash, wouldn't it? Look at me, Edgar----"

"Oh--I must go----," he said with an impatience that he had not to

assume.

"But look at me," she begged. "I shan't sleep a wink to-night. I shall

think about it all night. It will be lovely--but torturing--dear!--But

you'll sleep, I expect...." She pouted this last.

"I'm going away," he announced abruptly.

"Oh!" she cried, startled.... "But you'll come in to-morrow?"

"I shall go away for a few days. Perhaps longer."

"But--but--we haven't settled about the paper!----"

He was grim.--"You don't suppose I can think about the paper _now_, do

you?"

"No, no--of course not--but it _must_ be done to-day, Edgar! Or

to-morrow at the very latest!... Can't we _try_ to put this on one side,

just for an hour?"

He shook his head before the impossibility....

And that was how it came about that the Indian policy of the "Novum" was

left in the hands of Mr. Suwarree Prang.

Part II

I

THE PIGEON PAIR

Amory had been at a great deal of trouble to gather all the opinions she

could get about the education of her twins, Corin and Bonniebell; but it

was not true, as an unkind visitor who had been once only to The Witan

had said, that they were everybody's children. Just because Amory had

taken Katie Deedes' advice and had had their hair chopped off short at

the nape like a Boutet de Monvel drawing--and had not disdained to

accept the spelling-books which Dickie Lemesurier had given them (books

in which the difficult abstraction of the letter "A" was visualized for

their young eyes as "Little Brown Brother," "B" as "Tabby Cat," and so

on)--and had listened to Mr. Brimby when he had said what a good thing

it would be to devote an hour on Friday afternoons to the study of

Altruism and Camaraderie--and, in a word, had not been too proud and

egotistical to make use of a good suggestion wherever she found

it--because she had done these things, it did not at all follow that she

had shirked her duties. If she did not influence them directly, having

other things to do, she influenced those who did influence them, which

came to the same thing. She influenced the Wyrons, for example, and

nobody could say that the Wyrons had not made a particularly careful

study of children. They had, and Walter had founded at least two

Lectures directly on the twins and their education.

But the Wyrons, who had submitted to the indignity of marriage for the

sake of the race, laboured and lectured under an obvious disadvantage;

they had no children of their own. And so Amory had to fill up the gaps

in their experience for herself. Still, it was wonderful how frequently

the Wyrons' excogitations and the things Amory had found out for herself

coincided. They were in absolute accord, for example, about the promise

of the immediate future and the hope that lay in the generation to come.

The Past was dead and damned; the Present at best was an ignoble

compromise; but the Morrow was to be bright and shining.

"Walter and I," Laura sometimes said sadly, "aren't anything to brag

about. There is much of the base in us. Our lives aren't what they

should be. We're in the grip of inherited instincts too. We strive for

the best, but the worst's sometimes too much for us. It's like Moses

seeing the Promised Land from afar. We're just in the position of Moses.

But these young Aarons----"

Amory thought that very modest and dignified of poor old Laura. She

frequently thought of her as 'poor old Laura,' but of course she didn't

mean her actual age, which was only two years more than Amory's own. And

that was very good, if a little sad, about Moses. The Wyrons did look

forth over a Canaan they weren't very likely ever to tread.

Lately--that is to say since that secret and tremendous moment between

herself and Edgar Strong in the studio--Amory had fallen into the habit

of musing long over the sight of the twins at lessons, at play, or at

that more enlightened combination that makes lessons play and play

lessons. Sometimes Mr. Brimby, the novelist, had come up to her as she

had mused and had asked her what she was thinking about.

"Your little Pigeon Pair, eh?" he had said. "Ah, the sweetness; ah,

lucky mother! Grey books have to be the children of some of us; ah, me;

yours is a pleasanter path!"

Then he would fondle the little round topiary trees of their heads.

Amory was almost as sorry for Mr. Brimby as she was for Laura. His books

sold only moderately well, and she had more than once thought she would

like the "Novum" to serialize one of them--the one with the little boy

rather like Corin and the little girl rather like Bonniebell in it--if

Mr. Brimby didn't want too much money for it.

Edgar Strong, on the other hand, never fondled the children, and Amory's

heart told her why. How could he be expected to do anything but hate

those poor innocents who had come between him and his desire? He must

have realized that only the twins had frustrated that flight to Paris.

Of course he was polite about it; he said that he was not very fond of

children at all; but Amory was not deceived. She was, in a way,

flattered that he did not fondle them. It was such an eloquent

abstention. But it would have been more eloquent still had he come to

The Witan and not-fondled them oftener.

Therefore it was that Amory looked on Corin and Bonniebell as the

precious repositories of her own relinquished joys, and heirs to a

happier life than she herself had known. She dreamed over them and their

future. Laura Wyron was quite right: by the time they had grown up the

fogs of cowardice and prejudice and self-seeking would have disappeared

for ever. Perhaps even by that time, as in Heaven, there would be no

more marrying nor giving in marriage. Things would have adjusted

themselves out of the rarer and sweeter and more liberal atmosphere.

Corin, grown to be twenty, would one day meet with some mite who was

still in her cradle or not yet born, and the two would look at one

another with amazement and delight, and the Ideal Love would be born in

their eyes, and Corin would recite a few of those brave and pure and

unashamed things out of "Leaves of Grass" to her, and--well, and there

they would be.... And Bonniebell, too, would do the same, on a Spring

morning very likely, simply clad, cool and without immodest

blushes--yes, she too would see somebody, and she would say, gladly and

simply, "I am here" (for there would be no reason, then, why she should

wait for the youth to speak first), and--well, and there they would be

too. And it would be Exogamy, or whatever the word was that Walter used.

Either would go forth from the family on the appointed day--or perhaps

only Corin would go, and Bonniebell remain behind--but anyway, one, if

not both of them would go forth, and rove the morning-flushed hills,

alone and free and singing and on the look-out for somebody, and they

would look just like pictures of young Greeks, and nobody would laugh,

as they did at the poor lady who walked in Greek robes down the

Strand....

And Amory herself? Alas! She would be left with the tribe. She would be

old then--say fifty-something on the eleventh of October. And Edgar

would be old too. They would have to recognize that _their_ youth had

been spent in the night-time of ignorance and suspicion. _They_ would

only be able to think of those spirited young things quoting "Leaves of

Grass" to one another and wondering what had happened to them....

No wonder Amory was sometimes pensive....

Mr. Wilkinson, the Labour Member, had been to all intents and purposes

asked not to fondle the twins. He was a tall spare man with a great bush

of pepper-and-salt hair, a Yorkshire accent, and an eye that hardly

rested on any single object long enough to get more than a fleeting

visual impression of it. He wrote on the first and third weeks of the

month the "Novum's" column of "Military Notes," and on the alternate

weeks filled the same column with officially inspired "Trade Union

Echoes." Between these two activities of Mr. Wilkinson's there was a

connexion. He, in common with everybody else at The Witan, was loud in

decrying the jobberies and vested interests of Departments, with the War

Office placed foremost in the shock of his wrath. But the Trade Unions

were another matter, and never a billet-creating measure came before

Parliament but he strove vehemently to have its wheels cogged in with

those of the existing Trade Union machine. That is to say, that while in

theory he was for democratic competitive examination, in practice he

found something to be said for jobbery, could the fitting Trade Unionist

but be found. He was, moreover, a firebrand by temperament, and this is

where the connexion between the "Military Matters" and the "Echoes"

appears. Trade Unionists he declared, ought to learn to shoot. The other

side, with their cant about "Law and Order," never hesitated to call out

the regular troops; therefore, until the Army itself should have been

won over by means of the leaflets that were disseminated for the

purpose, they ought in the event of a strike to be prepared to throw up

barricades, to shoot from cellar-windows, and to throw down

chimney-stacks from the housetops. Capitalist-employed troops would not

destroy more property than they need; in a crooked-streeted town the

advantage of long-range fire would be gone; and Mr. Wilkinson was

prepared to demonstrate that a town defended on his lines could hold

out, in the event of Industrial War pushed to an extreme, until it was

starved into surrender.--These arguments, by the way, had impressed Mr.

Prang profoundly.

Now (to come back to the twins) on Corin's fourth birthday Mr.

Wilkinson, moved by these considerations, had given him a wooden gun,

and in doing so had committed a double error in Amory's eyes. His first

mistake had been to suppose that even if, under the present lamentable

(but nevertheless existing) conditions of militarism, Corin should ever

become a soldier at all, he would be the uncommissioned bearer of a gun

and not the commissioned bearer of a sword. And his second mistake had

been like unto it, namely, to think that, in the case of a proletariat

uprising say in Cardiff or York, Corin would not similarly have held

some post of weight and responsibility on the other side. Corin shoot up

through the street-trap of a coal-hole or pot somebody from behind a

chimney-stack!... But Amory admitted that it must be difficult for Mr.

Wilkinson to shake off the effects of his upbringing. That upbringing

had been very different from, say, Mr. Brimby's. Mr. Brimby had been at

Oxford, and in nobly stooping to help the oppressed brought as it were a

fragrant whiff of graciousness and culture with him. Mr. Wilkinson was a

nobody. He came from the stratum of need, and, when it came to fondling

the twins, must not think himself a Brimby.... Therefore, Amory had had

to ask him to take the gun back (a deprivation which had provoked a

mighty outcry from Corin), and to give him, if he must give him

something, a Nature book instead.

Katie Deedes and Dickie Lemesurier were both permitted to fondle the

twins, though in somewhat different measure. This difference of measure

did not mean that either Katie or Dickie suffered from a chronic cold

that the twins might have contracted. Here again the case was almost as

complicated as the case of Mr. Wilkinson. Cases had a way of being

complicated at The Witan. It was this:--

Both of these ladies, as Amory had assured Mr. Brimby, were "quite all

right." She meant socially. No such difference was to be found between

them in this respect as that which yawned between Mr. Brimby and Mr.

Wilkinson. Indeed as far as Dickie was concerned, Amory had given a

little apologetic laugh at the idea of her having to place and appraise

a Lemesurier of Bath at all. The two girls had equally to work for their

living, and--but perhaps it was here that the difference came in. There

are jobs and jobs. It was a question of tone. Dickie, running the

Suffrage Book Shop, enjoyed something of the glamour of Letters; but

Katie, as manageress of the Eden Restaurant, was, after all, only a

caterer. It was not Amory's fault that Romance had pronounced

arbitrarily and a little harshly on the relative dignity of these

occupations. She could not help it that books are books and superior,

while baked beans are only baked beans, necessary, but not to be talked

about. If Dickie had, by her calling, a shade more consideration than

was strictly her due, while Katie, by hers, was slightly shorn of

something to which she would otherwise have been entitled, well, it was

not Amory who had arranged it so.

But between books and baked beans the twins did not hesitate for an

instant. They saw from no point of view but their unromantic own.

Dickie, overhauling the remainder stock at the Suffrage Shop, was able

to bring them a book from time to time; but Katie, whose days were spent

in a really interesting place full of things to eat, brought them

sweetened Proteids, and cold roasted chestnuts, and sugared Filbertine,

and sometimes a pot of the Eden Non-Neuritic Honey for tea. And because

the flesh was stronger in them than Amory thought it ought to be (at any

rate until the day should come when they must leave the tribe with a

copy of "Leaves of Grass" in their hands), they adored Katie and thought

very much less of Dickie.

Now this belly-guided preference was a thing to be checked in them; and

one day Amory had asked Katie (quite nicely and gently) whether she

would mind _not_ bringing the children things that spoiled their

appetites, not to speak of their tempers when they clamoured for these

comestibles at times when they were not to be had. Then, one afternoon

in the nursery, Amory actually had to repeat her request. Half an hour

later, when the children had been brought down into the studio for their

after-tea hour, she learned that Katie had left the house. It was Corin

himself who informed her of this.

"Auntie Katie was crying," he said. "About the vertisements," he added.

"_Ad_-vertisements, dear," Amory corrected him. "Say _ad_-vertisements,

not vertisements."

"_Ad_-vertisements," said Corin sulkily. "But--" and he cheered up

again, "--she _was_, mother."

"Nonsense," said Amory. "And you're not to say 'Auntie' to Katie. It

isn't true. Your Auntie is your father's or your mother's sister, and we

haven't any.... And now you've played enough. Say good-night, both of

you, and take Auntie Dickie's book, and ask Miss Belchamber to read you

the story of the Robin and her Darling Eggs, and then you must have your

baths and go to bed."

"I want the tale about Robin Hood, that Mr. Strong once told me," Corin

demurred.

"No, you must have the one about the dear Dickie Bird, who had a wing

shot off by a cruel man one day, and had to hide her head under the

other one, so that when her Darling Eggs were hatched out the poor

little birds were all born with crooked necks--you remember what I told

you about the fortress in a horrible War, when the poor mothers were all

so frightened that all the little boys and girls were born lame--it's

the same thing--"

"Were there guns, that went bang?" Corin demanded. He had forgotten that

the story contained this really interesting detail.

"Yes."

"Great big ones?" Corin's eyes were wide open.

"Very big. It was very cruel and anti-social."

But Corin's momentary interest waned again.--"I want Robin Hood," he

said sullenly.

"Now you're being naughty, and I shall have to send you to bed without

any nice reading at all."

"I want Robin Hood." The tone was ominous....

"And I want some chestnuts," Bonniebell chimed in, her face also

puckering....

And so Amory, who had threatened to send them bookless to bed, must keep

her word. It is very wrong to tell falsehoods to children. She dismissed

them, and they went draggingly out, their Boutet de Monvel hair and

fringed _eponge_ costumes giving them the appearance of two luckless

pawns that had been pushed off the board in some game of chess they did

not understand.

Amory thought it very foolish of Katie to take on in this way. She might

have known that her advertisements had not been refused without good

reason. Amory had fully intended to explain all about it to Katie, but

she really had had so many things to do. Nor ought it to have needed

explaining. Surely Katie could have seen for herself that Dickie's

Bookshop List, with its names of Finot and Forel and Mill and the rest,

was a distinction and an embellishment to the paper, while her own

Filbertines and Protolaxatives were a positive disfigurement. The proper

place for these was, not in the columns of the "Novum," but in the

"Please take One" box at the Eden's door.... But if Katie intended to

sulk and cry about it, well, so much the worse.... (To jump forward a

little: Katie did elect to sulk. Or rather, she did worse. She was so

ill-advised as to go behind Amory's back and to speak to Cosimo himself

about the advertisements. With that Katie's goose--or perhaps one should

say her Anserine--was cooked. Amory did not allow that kind of thing.

She certainly did not intend to explain anything after that. It was

plain as a pikestaff that Katie was jealous of Dickie. Amory was

bitterly disappointed in Katie. Of course she would not forbid her the

house; she was still free to come to The Witan whenever she liked;

but--somehow Katie only came once more. She found herself treated so

very, very kindly.... So she gulped down a sob, fondled the twins once

more, and left).

Miss Britomart Belchamber saw enough of the twins not to wish to fondle

them very much. Amory was not yet absolutely sure that she fondled

Cosimo instead, but she was welcome to do so if she could find any

satisfaction in it. Cosimo fondled the twins to a foolish extreme. Mr.

Prang could never get near enough to them to fondle them. Both Corin and

Bonniebell displayed a most powerful interest in Mr. Prang, and would

have stood stock-still gazing at him for an hour had they been

permitted; but the moment he approached them they fled bellowing.

And in addition to these various fondlings there were casual fondlings

from time to time whenever the more favoured of the "Novum's"

contributors were asked to tea.

But the Wyrons remained, so to speak, the _ex-officio_ fondlers, and

perhaps childless Laura felt a real need to fondle at her heart. It was

she who first asked Amory whether she hadn't noticed that, while Mr.

Brimby and Dickie frequently fondled the twins separately, more

frequently still they did so together.

"No!" Amory exclaimed. "I hadn't noticed!"

"Walter thinks they would be a perfect pair," Laura mused....

II

THE 'VERT

Stan saw very little in the scheme that Dorothy darkly meditated against

her aunt. He seldom saw much in Dorothy's schemes. Perhaps she did not

make quite enough fuss about them, but went on so quietly maturing them

that her income seemed to be merely something that happened in some not

fully explained but quite natural order of events. Stan thought it

rather a lucky chance that the money usually had come in when it was

wanted, that was all.

But of his own job he had quite a different conception. _That_ took

thought. This appeared plainly now that he was able to dismiss his own

past failures with a light and almost derisive laugh.

"I don't know whatever made me think there was anything in them," he

said complacently one night within about ten days of Christmas. He had

put on his slippers and his pipe, and was drowsily stretching himself

after a particularly hard "comic film" day, in the course of which he

had been required to fall through a number of ceilings, bringing the

furniture with him in his downward flight. He had come home, had had a

shampoo and a hot bath, and the last traces of the bags of flour and

the sacks of soot had disappeared. "I don't think now they'd ever have

come to very much."

"Hush a moment," said Dorothy, listening, her needle arrested half-way

through the heel of one of his socks.... "All right. I thought I heard

him--Yes?"

She could face young girls now. The third Bit had turned out to be yet

another boy.

"I mean," Stan burbled comfortably, "there wouldn't have been the money

in them I thought there would. Now take those salmon-flies, Dot. Of

course I can tie 'em in a way. But what I mean is, it's a limited

market. Not like the boot-trade, I mean, or soap, or films. Everybody

wears boots and sees films. There's more scope, more demand. But

everybody doesn't carry a salmon-rod. Comparatively few people do. And

the same with big-game shooting. Or deerstalking. Everybody can't afford

'em."

"No, dear," said Dorothy, her eyes downcast.

"Then there was Fortune and Brooks," Stan continued with a great air of

discovery. "_I_ see their game now. You see it too, don't you?--They

just wanted orders. New accounts. That's what they wanted. If I could

have put 'em on to a chap who'd have spent say five hundred a year on

Chutney and things--well, what I mean is, where would they be without

customers like that?"

"Nowhere, dear," said the dutiful Dorothy.

"Exactly. Nowhere. That's what I was leading up to. They wouldn't be

anywhere. They just wanted to be put on to these things. And it's just

struck me how _I_ should have looked, going out to dinner somewhere,

strange house very likely, and I'd said to somebody I'd perhaps met for

the first time, 'Don't think much of these salted almonds; our hostess

ought to try the F. and B. Brand, a Hundred Gold Medals, and see that

the blessed coupon isn't broken.'--Eh? See what I mean?"

"I was never very keen on the idea," Dorothy admitted gravely.

"No, and I'm blessed if I see why I was, now," Stan conceded

cheerfully....

She loved this change in him which a real job with real money had

brought about. Poor old darling, she thought, it must have been pretty

rotten for him before, borrowing half-crowns from her in the morning,

which he would spend with an affected indifference on drinks and cab

fares in the evening. And he _should_ speak with a new authority if he

wished. Not for worlds would she have smiled at His Impudence's new air

of being master in his own house. He _should_ be a Sultan if he

liked--provided he didn't want more than one wife.

Moreover, his bringing in of money had been a relief so great that even

yet she had hardly got out of the habit of reckoning on her own earnings

only. It had taken her weeks to realize that now the twopences came in

just a little more quickly than they went out, and that she could

actually afford herself the luxury of keeping Mr. Miller waiting for his

Idea, or even of not giving it to him at all. She really had no Idea to

give him. She was entirely wrapped up now in her plot against Lady

Tasker.

That plot, summarized from several conversations with Stan, was as

follows:--

"You see, there's the Brear, with all that land, Aunt Grace's very own.

The Cromwell Gardens lease is up in June, and it's all very well for

auntie to say she doesn't hate London, but she does. She spends half a

rent, with one and another of them, in travelling backwards and

forwards, and she's getting old, too.--Then there's us. We can't go on

living here, and the Tonys will be home just as Tim's leave's up, and

they're sure to leave their Bits behind. Very well. Now the Tims and the

Tonys can't afford to pay much, but they can afford something, and I

think they ought to pay. They're sure to want those boys to go into the

Army, and they'd _have_ to pay for that anyway.--So there ought to be a

properly-managed Hostel sort of place, paying its way, and a fund

accumulating, and Aunt Gracie at the head of it, poor old dear, but

somebody to do the work for her.--I don't see why we shouldn't clear out

that old billiard-table that nobody ever uses, and throw that and the

gun-room into one, and make that the schoolroom, and have a proper

person down--a sort of private preparatory school for Sandhurst and

Woolwich, and the money put by to help with the fees afterwards. It

would be much easier if we all clubbed together. And I should jolly well

make Aunt Eliza give us at least a thousand pounds--selfish old thing."

"Frightful rows there'd be," Stan usually commented, thinking less of

Dorothy's plan than of his own last trick-tumble. "Like putting brothers

into the same regiment; always a mistake. And we're all rather good at

rows you know."

"Well, they're our _own_ rows anyway. We keep 'em to ourselves. And we

_do_ all mean pretty much the same thing when all's said. I'm going to

work it all out anyway, and then tackle Aunt Grace.... _I_ shall manage

it, of course."

She did not add that her Lennards and Taskers and Woodgates would sink

their private squabbles precisely in proportion as the outside attacks

on their common belief rendered a closing-up of the ranks necessary. But

she _had_ been to The Witan and had kept her eyes open there, and knew

that there were plenty of other Witans about. If stupid Parliament, with

its votes and what not, couldn't think of anything to do about it, that

was no reason why she should not do something, and make stingy old Aunt

Eliza pay for the training of her Bits into the bargain.

She had not seen Amory since that day when the episode of the winter

woollies had made her angry, for, though Amory had called once at the

Nursing Home soon after the birth of the third Bit, Dorothy had really

not felt equal to the hair-raising tale of the twins all over again, and

had sent a message down to her by the nurse. There was this difference

between this tragic recital of Amory's and the fervour with which Ruth

Mossop always hugged to her breast the thought of the worst that could

happen--that Ruth _had_ known brutality, and so might be forgiven for

getting "a little of her own back"; but Amory had known one hardish

twelvemonths perhaps, a good many years ago and when she had been quite

able to bear it, and had since magnified that period of discomfort by a

good many diameters. Amory, Dorothy considered, didn't really know she

was born. She was unfeignedly sorry for that. Whatever measure of

contempt was in her she kept for Cosimo.

For she considered that Cosimo was at the bottom of all the trouble. If

Stan, at his most impecunious and happy-go-lucky, could still stalk

about the house saying "Dot, I won't have this," or "Look here, Dorothy,

that has got to stop," it seemed to her that Cosimo, with never a care

on his mind that was not his own manufacture, might several times have

prevented Amory from making rather a fool of herself. But it seemed to

Dorothy that kind of man was springing up all over the place nowadays.

Mr. Brimby was another of them. Dorothy had read one of Mr. Brimby's

books--"_The Source_," and hadn't liked it. She had thought it terribly

dismal. In it a pretty and rich young widow, who might almost have been

Amory herself, went slumming, and spent a lot of money in starting a

sort of Model Pawn Shop, and by and by there came a mysterious

falling-off in her income, and she went to see her lawyer about it, and

learned, of course, that her source of income was that very slum in

which she had stooped to labour so angelically.... Dorothy didn't know

very much about pawnshops, but then she didn't believe that Mr. Brimby

did either; and if her interest in them ever should become really keen,

she didn't think she should go to Oxford for information about them. And

Mr. Brimby himself seemed to feel this "crab," as Stan would have called

it, for after "_The Source_" he had written a Preface for a book by a

real and genuine tramp.... And it had been Amory who had recommended

"_The Source_" to Dorothy. She had said that it just showed, that with

vision and thought and heart and no previous experience ("no prejudice"

had been her exact words), there need be none of these dreadful grimy

establishments, with their horrible underbred assistants who refused a

poor woman half a crown on her mattress and made a joke about it, but

airy and hygienic rooms instead, with rounded corners so that the dust

could be swept away in two minutes (leaving a balance of at least

twenty-eight minutes in which the sweeper might improve himself), and

really courtly-mannered attendants, full of half crowns and pity and

Oxford voice, who would give everybody twice as much as they asked for

and a tear into the bargain.

And Amory knew just as much about real pawnshops as did Dorothy and Mr.

Brimby.

For the life of her Dorothy could not make out what all these people

were up to.

And--though this was better now that Stan was earning--the thought of

the money that was being squandered at The Witan had sometimes made her

ready to cry. For at the Nursing Home she had had one other visitor, and

this visitor had opened her eyes to the appalling rate at which Cosimo's

inheritance must be going. This visitor had been Katie Deedes. Katie

too, was an old fellow-student of Dorothy's; it had not taken Dorothy

long to see that Katie was full of a grievance; and then it had all come

out. There had been some sort of a row. It had been simply and solely

because Katie ran a Food Shop. Amory thought that _infra dig_. And just

because Katie had given the children a few chestnuts Amory had

practically said so.

"_I_ shan't go there again," Katie had said, trying on Dorothy's account

to keep down her tears. "_I_ didn't marry a man with lots of money, and

turn him round my finger, and make him write my _Life and Works_, and

then snub my old friends! And none of the people who go there are really

what she thinks they are. _She_ thinks they go to see _her_, but Mr.

Brimby only goes because Dickie does, and because he wants to sell the

'Novum' something or other, and Mr. Strong of course has to go, and Mr.

Wilkinson goes because he wants Cosimo to stop the 'Novum' and start

something else with him as editor, and Laura goes because they get

things printed about Walter's Lectures, and I don't know what those

Indians are doing there at all, and anyway _I've_ been for the last

time! I'm just as good as she is, and I should like to come and see you

instead, Dorothy, and of course I won't bring your babies chestnuts if

you don't want.... But I'm frightfully selfish; I'm tiring you out....

May an A B C girl come to see you?"

And Katie had since been. There is no social reason why the manager of a

Vegetarian Restaurant may not visit the house of a film acrobat.

As it happened, Katie came in that very night when the weary breadwinner

was painstakingly explaining to his thoughtful spouse his reasons for

doubting whether he would ever have got very rich had he remained one of

Fortune and Brooks' well-dressed drummers. Katie had a round face and

puzzled but affectionate eyes, and Stan was just beginning to school his

own eyes not to rest with too open an interest on her Greenaway frocks

and pancake hats. Katie for her part was intensely self-conscious in

Stan's presence. She felt that when he wasn't looking at her clothes he

was, expressly, _not_-looking at them, and that was worse.... But she

couldn't have worn a hobble skirt and an aigrette at the "Eden."... Stan

had told Dorothy that when he knew Katie better he intended to get out

of her the remaining gruesome and Blue-Beard's-Chamber details which the

hoof and the forequarter seemed to him to promise.

"Poor little darlings!" Dorothy exclaimed compassionately by and

by--Katie had been relating some anecdote in which Corin and Bonniebell

had played a part. "I _do_ think it's wrong to dress children

ridiculously! The other day _I_ saw a little girl--she must have been

quite six or seven--and _she'd_ knickers like a little boy, and long

golden hair all down her back! What _is_ the good of pretending that

girls are boys?"

"Awful rot," Stan remarked with a mighty stretch. "I say, I'm off to

bed; I shall be yawning in Miss Deedes' face if I don't. Is there any

arnica in the house, Dot?... Good night----"

"Good night," said Katie; and as the door closed behind the master of

the house she settled more comfortably in her chair. "Now that he's

stopped not-looking at me we can have a good talk," her gesture seemed

to say; "how _does_ he expect I can get any other clothes till I've

saved the money?"...

They did talk. They talked of the old days at the McGrath, and who'd

married who, and who hadn't married who after all, and, in this

connection, of Laura Beamish and Walter Wyron, whom they had both

known.... And it just showed how little glory and fame were really worth

in the world. For Dorothy, who had been living in London all this time,

had not heard as much as a whisper of that memorable revolt of the

Wyrons against the Marriage Service, and, though she did know vaguely

that Walter lectured, had not the ghost of an idea of what his lectures

were about. She had been too busy minding her own petty and private and

selfish affairs. Katie couldn't believe it. She thought Dorothy was

joking.

"You've never heard of Walter's Lecture on '_Heads or Tails in the

Trying Time_,' nor his '_Address on the Chromosome_'?" she gasped....

"No; do tell me. What is a Chromosome?"

"A Chromosome? Why, it's a--it's a--well, you know when you've a

cell--or a nucleus--or a gland or something--but it isn't a gland--it's

the--but you _do_ astonish me, Dorothy!"

"But surely you're joking about Walter and Laura?" Dorothy exclaimed in

her turn.

"Indeed I'm not! Why, I thought _every_body knew!..."

"(It's all right--he won't come in again). But _why_ did they pretend

not to be married?" Dorothy asked in amazement.

"I don't know--I mean I forget for the moment--it seemed perfectly clear

the way Walter explained it--you ought to go and hear him----"

"But what difference could being married--I mean not being

married--make?"

"Ah!" said Katie, with satisfaction at having found her bearings again.

"Walter's got a whole Lecture on that. It always thrills everybody.

Amory thinks it's almost his best--after the '_Synthetic Protoplasm_'

one, of course--that's admitted by everybody to be quite _the_ best!"[1]

"Proto ... but I thought those were a kind of oats!" said poor Dorothy,

utterly bewildered.

"Oats!" cried Katie in a sort of whispered shriek. "Why, it's--it's--but

I don't know even how to _begin_ to explain it! Do you mean to say you

haven't read about these things?"

"No," murmured Dorothy, abashed.

"Not Monod, nor Ellen Key, nor Sebastien Faure, nor Malom!----"

"N-o." Dorothy felt horribly ashamed of herself.

"But--but--those _lovely_ little boys of yours!----"

She gazed wide-eyed at the disconcerted Dorothy....

* * * * *

It was the humiliating truth: Dorothy had never heard of the existence

of a single one of these writers and leaders of thought. She had borne

Noel in black ignorance of what they had had to say about the Torch of

the Race, and Jackie and the third Bit for all the world as if they had

never set pen to paper. Monod had not held her hand, nor Faure been

asked for his imprimatur; Key had hymned Love superfluously, and the

Synthesists, equally superfluously, its supersession. For a moment she

anxiously hoped that it was all right, and then, as Katie went on, the

marvel of it all overwhelmed her again.

The dictum that desirable children could be born only _out_ of wedlock!

That stupendous suggestion of Walter's to millionaires who did not know

what to do with their money, that, for the improvement of the Race, they

should endow with a thousand pounds every poor little come-by-chance

that weighed eleven pounds at birth! That other proposal, that twenty

years could straightway be added to woman's life and beauty by a mere

influencing of her thoughts about the Chromosome--whatever it was!...

Poor uncultured Dorothy did not know whether she was on her head or her

heels. She had never dreamed, until Katie told her, that before marrying

Stan she ought to have gone to the insect-world, or to the world of

molluscs and crustacae, to learn how _they_ maintained the integrity of

their own highest type--whether by pulling their wings off after the

flight, or devouring their husbands, or--or--or what! She had heard of

the moral lessons that can be learned of the ant, but it had not struck

her that she and Stan might, by means of a little more study and care,

have lifted up the economy of their little flat to the level of the

marvellously-organized domesticity you see when you kick over a stone.

But Katie's hesitations and great gaps of confessed ignorance gave her

a little more courage. Katie was at pains to explain that all that she

herself knew about it all was that these things were what they _said_,

and Dorothy must go to Walter and the books for the rest.

"They're all very expensive books, and I may not really have understood

them," she said wistfully. "They must be awfully deep and so on if

they're so dear--twelve and fifteen and twenty shillings! But I did try

so hard, and sometimes it seemed quite reasonable and plain, especially

when the print was nice and big.... Close print always seems so

frightfully learned.... And I know I've explained it badly; I haven't

Walter's gift of putting things. Amory has, of course. When she and

Walter have a really good set-to it makes one feel positively _abject_

about one's ignorance. I doubt if Cosimo can always _quite_ follow them,

and I'm quite sure Mr. Strong can't--I know he's only hedging when he

says, 'Ah, yes, have you read Fabre on the Ant or Maeterlinck on the

Bee?'--and I believe he just glances at the review books that come to

the 'Novum' instead of really studying them, as Walter and Amory do. And

it's very funny about Mr. Strong," she rattled artlessly on. "Sometimes

I've thought that it isn't just that Amory doesn't know what they all go

to The Witan for, but that everybody else _does_ know. They all seem to

want it to themselves. Of course if Mr. Wilkinson wants Cosimo to stop

the 'Novum,' and to start something else for him, it's only natural that

he and Mr. Strong should be a little jealous of one another; but Dickie

and Mr. Brimby are jealous of the Wyrons, and I suppose I was jealous of

Dickie too--and everybody seems jealous of everybody, and Amory of

Cosimo, and Amory's always interfering between Britomart Belchamber and

the twins' lessons, and that _can't_ be a very good thing for

discipline, but Britomart's like me in being rather stupid, and I wish

I'd her screw--she gets nearly twice as much as I do. The only people

who don't seem jealous of anybody are those Indians. They're _always_

affable. I suppose it's rather nice for them, so far from their own

country, having a house to go to...."

But here Dorothy's humility and self-distrust ended. The moment it came

to India, she shared her aunt's deplorable narrow-mindedness and

propensity to make a virtue of her intolerance. It seemed to her that it

was one thing for the Tims and Tonys, in India, to have to employ a

native interpreter (and to be pretty severely rooked by him) when they

had their Urdu Higher Proficiency to pass, but quite another for these

same natives to come over here, and to learn our law and language, and

our excellent national professions, and our somewhat mitigated ways of

living up to them. No, she was not one whit better than her hide-bound

old aunt, and she did not intend to have too practical a brotherly love

taught at that meditated foundation at the Brear....

She became silent as she thought of that foundation again, and presently

Katie rose.

"I suppose I couldn't see him in his cot?" she said wistfully.

Dorothy smiled. Katie meant the youngest Bit.

"Well ... I'm afraid he's in _our_ room, you see ...," she said.

Katie had been thinking of The Witan. She coloured a little.

"Sorry," she murmured; and then she broke out emphatically.

"I _like_ coming to see you, Dorothy. I don't feel so--such a _fool_

when I'm with you.... And do tell me where you got that frock, and how

much it was; I _must_ have another one as soon as I can raise the money!

I do wish I could make what Britomart Belchamber makes! Two-twenty a

year! Think of that!... But of course Prince Eadmond teachers do come

expensive----"

More and more it was coming to seem to Dorothy that the whole thing was

terrifically expensive.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] I have been charged with the invention of these facetiae. Here is the

Synthetic Protoplasm idea:--

"The dream of creating offspring without the concurrence of woman has

always haunted the imagination of the human race. The miraculous

advances which the chemical synthesis has accomplished in these latter

days seem to justify the boldest hopes, but we are still far from the

creation of living protoplasm. The experiences of Loeb or of Delage are

undoubtedly very confounding. But in order to produce life these

scientists were obliged, nevertheless; to have recourse to beings

already organized. Thousands of centuries undoubtedly separate us from

any possibility of realizing the most magnificent and most disconcerting

dream ever engendered in the human brain. In the meantime, as the Torch

of Life must be transmitted to the succeeding generations, woman will

continue gloriously to fulfil her character of mother."--"Problems of

the Sexes," Jean Finot; 12_s._ 6_d._ net; p. 352.

Lightly worked up and chattily treated, this theme, as Katie said, drew

quiet smiles of appreciation from every cultured audience which Walter

addressed.

III

THE IMPERIALISTS

They were great believers in the Empire, they on the "Novum." Indeed,

they were the only true Imperialists, since they recognized that ideas,

and not actions, were by far and away the most potent instruments in the

betterment of mankind. Everybody who was anybody knew that, a mere

sporadic outbreak here and there (such as the one in Manchuria)

notwithstanding, war had been virtually impossible ever since the

publication of M. Bloch's book declaring it to be so. What, they asked,

was war, more than an unfortunate miscalculation on the part of the lamb

that happened to lie down with the lion? And what made the

miscalculation so unfortunate? Why, surely the possession by the lion of

teeth and claws. Draw his teeth and cut his claws, and the two would

slumber peacefully together. So with the British lion. He only fought

because he had things ready to fight with. Philosophically, his

aggressions were not much more than a kind of sportive manifestation of

the joy of life, that happened, rather inconsequentially, to take the

form of the joy of death. Take away the ships and guns, then, and

everything would be all right.

These views on the Real Empire were in no way incompatible with Mr.

Wilkinson's desire to see all Trade Unionists armed. For a war at home,

about shorter hours and higher wages, would at any rate be a war between

equals in race. It was wars between unequals that had made of the Old

Empire so hideous a thing. Amory herself had more than once stated this

rather well.

"I call it cowardice," she had said. "Every fine instinct in us tells us

to stick up for the weaker side. It makes my blood boil! Think of those

gentle and dusky millions, all being, to put it in a word, bullied--just

bullied! We all know the kind of man who goes abroad--the conventional

'adventurer' (I like 'adventurer!') He's just a common bully. He drinks

disgustingly, and swears, and kicks people who don't get out of his

way--but he's always careful to have a revolver in his pocket for fear

they should hit him back!... And he makes a tremendous fuss about his

white women, but when it comes to their black or brown ones ... well,

anyway, _I_ think he's a brute, and we want a better class of man than

_that_ for our readers!"

And that was briefly why, at the "Novum," they tried to reduce armaments

at home, and gave at least moral encouragement to the other side

whenever there was a dust-up abroad.

But it had been some time ago that Amory had said all this, and her

attitude since then had undergone certain changes. One of these changes

had been her acquisition of the Romantic Point of View; another had been

that suspended state of affairs between herself and Mr. Strong. The

first of these curtailed a good deal of the philosophy in which Mr.

Strong always seemed anxious to enwrap the subject (in order, as far as

Amory could see, to avoid action). It also made a little more of the

position of women, white, black or brown, and especially when rolled up

in carpets, in Imperial affairs. And the second, that hung-up relation

between Edgar Strong and herself, had left her constantly wondering what

would have happened had she taken Mr. Strong at his word and fled to

Paris with him, and exactly where they stood since she had not done so.

For naturally, things could hardly have been expected to be the same

after that. Since Edgar had ceased to come quite so frequently to The

Witan, Amory had thought the whole situation carefully over and had come

to her conclusion. Perhaps the histories of _les grandes maitresses_ and

the writings of Key had helped her; or, more likely, Key in Sweden (or

wherever it was) and herself in England had arrived at the same

conclusion by independent paths. That conclusion, stated in three words,

was the Genius of Love.

It was perfectly simple. Why had Amory Towers, the painter of that

picture ("Barrage") so enthusiastically acclaimed by the whole of

Feminist England, now for so long ceased to paint? What had become of

the Genius that had brought that picture into being? It is certain that

Genius cannot be stifled. Deny it one opportunity and it will break out

somewhere else--in another art, in politics, in leadership in one form

or another, or it may be even in crime.

Even so, Amory was conscious, her own Genius had refused to be

suppressed. It had found another outlet in politics, directed in a

recumbent attitude from a sofa.

Yet that had landed her straightway in a dilemma--the dilemma of Edgar

and the twins, of Paris on seven francs a day and the comforts Cosimo

allowed her, of a deed that was to have put even that of the Wyrons into

the shade and a mere settling down to the prospect of seeing Edgar when

it pleased him to put in an appearance.

She had not seen this protean property of Genius just at first. That

could only have been because she had not examined herself sufficiently.

She had been introspective, but not introspective enough.

And lest she should be mistaken in the mighty changes that were going on

within herself, at first she had tried the painting again. Her tubes

were dry and her brushes hard, but she had got new ones, and one after

another she had taken up her old half-finished canvases again. A single

glance at them had filled her with astonishment at the leagues of

progress, mental and emotional, that she had made since then. She had

laughed almost insultingly at those former attempts. That large canvas

on the "_Triumph of Humane Government_" was positively frigid! And Edgar

had liked it!... Well, that only showed what a power she now had over

Edgar if she only cared to use it. If he had liked that chilly piece of

classicism, he would stand dumb before the canvas that every faculty in

her was now straining to paint. She began to think that canvas out....

It must be Eastern, of course; nay, it must be The East--tremendously

voluptuous and so on. She would paint it over the "_Triumph_." It should

be bathed in a sunrise, rabidly yellow (they had no time for decaying

mellowness in those vast and kindling lands to which Amory's inner eye

was turned)--and of course there ought to be a many-breasted

what-was-her-name in it, the goddess (rather rank, perhaps, but that was

the idea, a smack at effete occidental politeness). And there ought to

be a two-breasted figure as well, perhaps with a cord or something in

her hand, hauling up the curtain of night, or at any rate showing in

some way or other that her superb beauty was actually responsible for

the yellow sunrise....

And above all, she must get _herself_ into it--the whole of herself--all

that tremendous continent that Cosimo had not had, that her children had

not had, that her former painting had left unexpressed, that politics

had not brought out of her....

The result of that experiment was remarkable. Two days later she had

thrown the painting aside again. It was a ghastly failure. But only for

a moment did that depress her; the next moment she had seen further. She

was a Genius; she knew it--felt it; she was so sure about it that she

would never have dreamed of arguing about it; she had such thoughts

sometimes.... And Genius could never be suppressed. Very well; the

Eastern canvas was a total failure; she admitted it. Ergo, her Genius

was for something else than painting.

That was all she had wanted to know.

For what, then? No doubt Edgar Strong, who had enlightened her about

herself before, would be able to enlighten her again now. And if he

would not come to see her, she must go and see him. But already she saw

the answer shining brightly ahead. She must pant, not paint; live, not

limn. Her Genius was, after all, for Love.

True, at the thought of those offices in Charing Cross Road she had an

instinctive shrinking. Their shabbiness rather took the shine out of the

voluptuousnesses she had tried, and failed, to get upon her canvas. But

perhaps there was a fitness in that too. Genius, whether in Art or in

Love, is usually poor. If she could be splendid there she could be so

anywhere. No doubt heaps and heaps of grand passions had transfigured

grimy garrets, and had made of them perfectly ripping backgrounds....

So on an afternoon in mid-January Amory put on her new velvet costume of

glaucous sea-holly blue and her new mushroom-white hat, and went down to

the "Novum's" offices in a taxi. It seemed to her that she got there

horribly quickly. Her heart was beating rapidly, and already she had

partly persuaded herself that if Edgar wasn't in it might perhaps be

just as well, as she had half-promised the twins to have tea with them

in the nursery soon, and anyway she could come again next week. Or she

might leave Edgar a note to come up to The Witan. There were familiar

and supporting influences at The Witan. But here she felt dreadfully

defenceless.... She reached her destination. Slowly she passed through

the basement-room with the sandwich-boards, ascended the dark stairs,

and walked along the upper corridor that was hung with the specimens of

poster-art.

Edgar was in. He was sitting at his roll-top desk, with his feet thrust

into the unimaginable litter of papers that covered it. He appeared to

be dozing over the "Times," and had not drunk the cup of tea that stood

at his elbow with a sodden biscuit and a couple of lumps of sugar awash

in the saucer.--Without turning his head he said "Hallo," almost as if

he expected somebody else. "Did you bring me some cigarettes in?" he

added, still not turning. And this was a relief to Amory's thumping

heart. She could begin with a little joke.

"No," she said. "I didn't know you wanted any."

There was no counterfeit about the start Mr. Strong gave. So swiftly did

he pluck his feet away from the desk that twenty sheets of paper planed

down to the floor, bringing the cup of tea with them in their fall.

But Mr. Strong paid no attention to the breakage and mess. He was on his

feet, looking at Amory. He looked, but he had never a word to say. And

she stood looking at him--charming in her glaucous blue, the glint of

rich red that peeped from under the new white hat, and her slightly

frightened smile.

"Haven't you any?" she said archly.

At that Mr. Strong found his tongue.

"Excuse me just a moment," he muttered, striding past her and picking up

something from his desk as he went. "Sit down, won't you?" Then he

opened the door by which Amory had entered, did something behind it, and

returned, closing the door again. "Only so that we shan't be disturbed,"

he said. "They go into the other office when they see the notice.--I

wasn't expecting you."

Nor did he, Amory thought, show any great joy at her appearance. On the

contrary, he had fixed a look very like a glare on her. Then he walked

to the hearth. A big fire burned there behind a wire guard, and within

the iron kerb stood the kettle he had boiled to make tea. He put his

elbows on the mantelpiece and turned his back to her. Again it was Mr.

Brimby's sorrowing Oxford attitude. Amory had moved towards his swivel

chair and had sat down. Her heart beat a little agitatedly. He

remembered!...

He spoke without any beating about the bush.--"Ought you to have done

this?" he said over his shoulder.

She fiddled with her gloves.--"To have done what?" she asked nervously.

"To have come here," came in muffled tones back. It was evident that he

was having to hold himself in.

Then suddenly he wheeled round. This time there was no doubt about

it--it was a glare, and a resolute one.

But he had not been able to think of any new line. It was the one he had

used before. He made it a little more menacing, that was all.

"I'm only flesh and blood--," he said quickly, his hands ever so

slightly clenching and unclenching and his throat apparently swallowing

something.

Her heart was beating quickly enough now.--"But--but--," she

stammered,--"if you only mean my coming here--I've been here lots of

times before----"

He wasted few words on that.

"Not since----," he rapped out. He was surveying her sternly now.

"But--but--," she faltered again, "--it's only me, Edgar--I _am_

connected with the paper, you know--that is to say my husband is----"

"That's true," he groaned.

"And--and--I should have come before--I've been intending to come--but

I've been so busy----"

But that also he brushed aside for the little it was worth. "_Must_ you

compromise yourself like this?" he demanded. "Don't you see? I'm not

made of wood, and I suppose your eyes are open too. Prang may be here at

any moment. He'll see that notice on the door, and wait ... and then

he'll see you go out. You oughtn't to have come," he continued gloomily.

"Why did you, Amory?"

Once more she quailed before the blue mica of his eye. Her words came

now a bit at a time. The victory was his.

"Only to--to see--how the paper was going on--and to--to talk things

over--," she said.

"Oh!" He nodded. "Very well."

He strode forward from the mantelpiece and approached the desk at which

she sat.

"I suppose Cosimo wants to know; very well. As a matter of fact I'm

rather glad you've come. Look here----"

He grabbed a newspaper from the desk and thrust it almost roughly into

her hands.

"Read that," he said, stabbing the paper with his finger.

The part in which he stabbed it was so unbrokenly set that it must have

struck Katie Deedes as overwhelmingly learned.--"There you are--read

that!" he ordered her.

Then, striding back to the mantelpiece, he stood watching her as if he

had paid for a seat in a playhouse and had found standing-room only.

Amory supposed that it must be something in that close and grey-looking

oblong that was at the bottom of his imperious curtness. She was sure of

this when, before she had read half a dozen lines, he cut in with a

sharp "Well? I suppose you see what it means to us?"

"Just a moment," she said bewilderedly; "you always did read quicker

than I can----"

"Quicker!--" he said. "Just run your eye down it. That ought to tell

you."

She did so, and a few capitals caught her eye.

"Do you mean this about the North-West Banks?" she asked diffidently.

"Do I mean----! Well, yes. Rather."

"I do wish you'd explain it to me. It seems rather hard."

But he did not approach and point out particular passages. Instead he

seemed to know that leaden oblong by heart. He gave a short laugh.

"Hard? It's hard enough on the depositors out there!... They've been

withdrawing again, and of course the Banks have had to realize."

"Yes, I saw that bit," said Amory.

"A forced realization," Mr. Strong continued. "Depreciation in values,

of course. And it's spreading."

It sounded to Amory rather like smallpox, but, "I suppose that's the

Monsoon?" she hazarded.

"Partly, of course. Not altogether. There's the rupee too, of course. At

present that's at about one and twopence, but then there are these

bi-metallists.... So until we know what's going to happen, it seems to

me we're bound hand and foot."

Amory was awed.--"What--what do you think will happen?" she asked.

Edgar gave a shrug.--"Well--when a Bank begins paying out in pennies

it's as well to prepare for the worst, you know."

"Are--are they doing that?" Amory asked in a whisper. "Really? And is

that the bi-metallists' doing--or is it the Home Government? Do explain

it to me so that I can visualize it. You know I always understand things

better when I can visualize them. That's because I'm an artist.--Does it

mean that there are long strings of natives, with baskets and things on

their heads to put the pennies in, all waiting at the Banks, like people

in the theatre-queues?"

"I dare say. I suppose they have to carry the pennies somehow. But I'm

afraid I can't tell you more than's in the papers."

Amory's face assumed an expression of contempt. On the papers she was

quite pat.

"The papers! And how much of the truth can we get from the capitalist

press, I should like to know! Why, it's a commonplace among us--one is

almost ashamed to say it again--that the 'Times' is always wrong! We

have _no_ Imperialist papers really; only Jingo ones. Is there _no_ way

of finding out what this--crisis--is really about?"

This was quite an easy one for Mr. Strong. Many times in the past, when

pressed thus by his proprietor's wife for small, but exact, details, he

had wished that he had known even as much about them as seemed to be

known by that smart young man who had once come to The Witan in a

morning coat and had told Edgar Strong that he didn't know what he was

talking about. But he had long since found a way out of these trifling

difficulties. Lift the issue high enough, and it is true of most things

that one man's opinion is as good as another's; and they lifted issues

quite toweringly high on the "Novum." Therefore in self-defence Mr.

Strong flapped (so to speak) his wings, gave a struggle, cleared the

earth, and was away in the empyrean of the New Imperialism.

"The 'Times' always wrong. Yes. We've got to stick firmly to that," he

said. "But don't you see, that very fact makes it in its way quite a

useful guide. It's the next best thing to being always right, like us;

we can depend on its being wrong. We've only got to contradict it, and

then ask ourselves why we do so. There's usually a reason.... So there

is in this--er--crisis. Of course you know their argument--that a lot of

these young native doctors and lawyers come over here, and stop long

enough to pick up the latest wrinkles in swindling--the civilized

improvements so to speak--and then go back and start these wildcat

schemes, Banks and so on, and there's a smash. I think that's a fair

statement of their case.--But what's ours? Why, simply that what they're

really doing is to give the Home Government a perfectly beautiful

opportunity of living up to its own humane professions.... But we know

what that means," he added sadly.

"You mean that it just shows," said Amory eagerly, "that we aren't

humane at all really? In fact, that England's a humbug?"

Mr. Strong smiled. He too, in a sense, was paying out in pennies, and so

far quite satisfactorily.

"Well ... take this very crisis," he returned. "Oughtn't there to be a

grant, without a moment's loss of time, from the Imperial Exchequer? I'm

speaking from quite the lowest point of view--the mere point of view of

expediency if you like. Very well. Suppose one or two natives _are_

scoundrels: what about it? Are matters any better because we know that?

Don't the poverty and distress exist just the same? And isn't that

precisely our opportunity, if only we had a statesman capable of seeing

it?... Look here: We've only got to go to them and say, 'We are full of

pity and help; here are a lot of--er--lakhs; lakhs of rupees; rupee one

and twopence: you may have been foolish, but it isn't for us to cast the

first stone; it's the conditions that are wrong; go and get something to

eat, and don't forget your real friends by and by.'--Isn't that just the

way to bind them to us? By their gratitude, eh? Isn't getting their

gratitude better than blowing them from the muzzles of guns, eh? And

isn't that the real Empire, of which we all dream? Eh?..."

He warmed up to it, while keeping one ear open for anybody who might

come along the passage; and when he found himself running down he

grabbed the newspaper again. He doubled it back, refolded it, and again

thrust it under Amory's nose.... There! That put it all in a nutshell,

he said! The figures spoke for themselves. The Home Government, he said,

knew all about it all the time, but of course they came from that

hopeless slough of ineptitude that humorists were pleased to call the

"governing classes," and that was why they dragged such red herrings

across the path of true progress as--well, as the Suffrage, say....

What! Hadn't Amory heard that all this agitation for the Suffrage was

secretly fomented by the Government itself? Oh, come, she must know

that! Why, of course it was! The Government knew dashed well what they

were doing, too! It was a moral certainty that there was somebody behind

the scenes actually planning half these outrages! Why? Why, simply

because it got 'em popular sympathy when a Minister had his windows

smashed or a paper of pepper thrown in his face. They were only too glad

to have pepper thrown in their faces, because everybody said what a

shame it was, and forgot all about what fools they'd been making of

themselves, and when a real--er--crisis came, like this one, people

scarcely noticed it.... But potty little intellects like Brimby's and

Wilkinson's didn't see as deep as that. It was only Edgar Strong and

Amory who saw as deep as that. That was why they, Edgar and Amory, were

where they were--leaders of thought, not subordinates....

"Just look rather carefully at those figures," he concluded....

Nevertheless, lofty as these flights were, they had a little lost their

thrill for Amory. She had heard them so very, very often. She had

trembled in the taxi in vain if _this_ was all that her stealthy coming

to the "Novum's" offices meant. Nor had she put on her new sea-holly

velvet to be told, however eloquently, that Wilkinson and Brimby were

minor lights when compared with Edgar and herself, and that the "Times"

was always wrong. Perhaps the figures that Edgar had thrust under her

nose as if he had been clapping a muzzle on her meant something to the

right person, but they meant nothing to Amory, and she didn't pretend

they did. They were man's business; woman's was "visualizing." The two

businesses, when you came to think of it, _were_ separate and distinct.

Whoever heard of a man wrapping himself up in a carpet and being

carried by Nubians into his mistress's presence? Whoever heard of a

man's face launching as much as an up-river punt, let alone fleets and

fleets of full-sized ships? And whoever heard of the compelling beauty

of a man's eyes, as he lay on a sofa with one satiny upper-arm upraised,

simply making--making--a woman come and kiss him?... It was ridiculous.

Amory saw now. Even Joan of Arc must have put on her armour, not so much

because of all the chopping and banging of maces and things (which must

have been very noisy), but more with the idea of _inspiring_.... Yes,

inspiring: that was it. There _was_ a difference. Why, even physically

women and men were not the same, and mentally they were just as

different. For example, Amory herself wouldn't have liked to blow

anybody from the mouth of a gun, but she wasn't sure sometimes that

Edgar wouldn't positively enjoy it. He had that hard eye, and square

head, and capacity for figures....

She wasn't sure that her heart didn't go out to him all the more because

of that puzzle of noughts and dots and rupees he had thrust into her

hands....

And so, as he continued (so to speak) to gain time by paying in pennies,

and to keep an ear disengaged for the passage, it came about that Edgar

Strong actually overshot himself. The more technical and masculine he

became, the more Amory felt that it was fitting and feminine in her not

to bother with these things at all, but just to go on inspiring. She

still kept her eyes bent over the column of figures, but she was

visualizing again. She was visualizing the Channel steamer, and the

Latin Quarter, and satiny upper-arms. And the taxi-tremor had

returned....

Suddenly she looked softly yet daringly up. She felt that she must be

Indian--yet not too Indian.

"And then there's suttee," she said in a low voice.

"Eh?" said Strong. He seemed to scent danger. "Abolished," he said

shortly.

But here Amory was actually able to tell Edgar Strong something. She

happened to have been reading about suttee in a feminist paper only a

day or two before. No doubt Edgar read nothing but figures and grey

oblongs.

"Oh, no," she said softly but with a knowledge of her ground. "That is,

I know it's prohibited, but there was a case only a little while ago. I

read it in the 'Vaward.' And it was awful, but splendid, too. She was a

young widow, and I'm sure she had a lovely face, because she'd such a

noble soul.--Don't you think they often go together?"

But Edgar did not reply. He had walked to a little shelf full of

reference books and books for review, and was turning over pages.

"And the whole village was there," Amory continued, "and she walked to

the pyre herself, and said good-bye to all her relatives, and then----"

Edgar shut his book with a slap.--"Abolished in 1829," he said. "It's a

criminal offence under the Code."

Amory smiled tenderly. Abolished!... Dear, fellow, to think that in such

matters he should imagine that his offences and Codes could make any

difference! Of course the "Vaward" had made a mere Suffrage argument out

of the thing, but to Amory it had just showed how cruel and magnificent

and voluptuous and grim the East could be when it really tried.... And

then all at once Amory thought, not of any particular poem she had ever

read, but what a ripping thing it would be to be able to write poetry,

and to say all those things that would have been rather silly in prose,

and to put heaps of gorgeous images in, like the many-breasted

what-was-her-name, and Thingummy--what-did-they-call-him--the god with

all those arms. And there would be carpets and things too, and limbs,

not plaster ones, but flesh and blood ones, as Edgar said his own were,

and--and--and oh, stacks of material! The rhymes might be a bit hard, of

course, and perhaps after all it might be better to leave poetry to

somebody else, and to concentrate all her energies on inspiring, as

Beatrice inspired Dante, and Laura Petrarch, and that other woman

Camoens, and Jenny Rossetti, and Vittoria Colonna Michael Angelo. She

might even inspire Edgar to write poetry. And she would be careful to

keep the verses out of Cosimo's way....

"Abolished!" she smiled in gay yet mournful mockery, and also with a

touch both of reproach and of disdain in her look.... "Oh well, I

suppose men think so...."

But at this he rounded just as suddenly on her as he had done when he

had told her that she ought not to have come to the office. Perhaps he

felt that he was losing ground again. You may be sure that Edgar Strong,

actor, had never had to work as hard for his money as he had to work

that afternoon.

"Amory!" he called imperiously. "I tell you it won't do--not at this

juncture! I'd just begun to find a kind of drug in my work; I've locked

myself up here; and now you come and undo it all again with a look! I

see we must have this out. Let me think."

He began to pace the floor.

When he did speak again, his phrases came in detached jerks. He kept

looking sharply up and then digging his chin into his red tie again.

"It was different before," he said. "It might have been all right

before. We were free then--in a way. It was different in every way....

(Mind your dress in that tea).... But we can't do anything now. Not at

present. There's this crisis. That's suddenly sprung upon us. There's

got to be somebody at the wheel--the 'Novum's' wheel, I mean. I hate

talking about my duty, but you've read the 'Times' there. The 'Times' is

always wrong, and if we desert our posts the whole game's up--U.P.

Prang's no good here. Prang can't be trusted at a pinch. And Wilkinson's

no better. Neither of 'em any good in an emergency. Weak man at bottom,

Wilkinson--the weakness of violence--effeminate, like these strong-word

poets. We can't rely on Wilkinson and Prang. And who is there left? Eh?"

But he did not wait for an answer.

"Starving thousands, and no Imperial Grant." His voice grew passionate.

"Imperial Grant must be pressed for without delay. What's to happen to

the Real Empire if you and I put our private joys first? Eh? Answer

me.... There they are, paying in pennies--and us dallying here.... No.

Dash it all, no. May be good enough for some of these tame males, but

it's a bit below a man. I won't--not now. Not at present. It would be

selfish. They've trusted me, and----," a shrug. "No. That's flat. I see

_my_ nights being spent over figures and telegrams and all that sort of

thing for some time to come.... Don't think I've forgotten. I understand

perfectly. I suppose that sooner or later it _will_ have to be the

Continent and so on--but not until this job's settled. Not till then.

Everything else--everything--has got to stand down. You do see, don't

you, Amory? I hope you do."

As he had talked there had come over Amory a sense of what his love must

be if nothing but his relentless sense of duty could frustrate it even

for a day. And that was more thrilling than all the rest put together.

It lifted their whole relation exactly where she had tried to put it

without knowing how to put it there--into the regions of the heroic. Not

that Edgar put on any frills about it. On the contrary. He was simple

and plain and straight. And how perfectly right he was! Naturally, since

the "Times" and its servile following of the capitalist Press would not

help, Edgar had to all intents and purposes the whole of India to carry

on his shoulders. It was exactly like that jolly thing of Lovelace's,

about somebody not loving somebody so much if he didn't love Honour

more. He did love her so much, and he had as much as said that there

would be plenty of time to talk about the Continent later. Besides, his

dear, rough, unaffected way of calling this heroic work his "job!" It

was just as if one of those knights of old had called slaying dragons

and delivering the oppressed his "job!"

Amory was exalted as she had never been exalted. She turned to him where

he stood on the hearth, and laved him with a fond and exultant look.

"I see," she said bravely. "I was wretchedly selfish. But remember,

won't you, when you're fighting this great battle against all those

odds, and saying all those lovely things to the Indians, and getting

their confidence, and just showing all those other people how stupid

they are, that _I_ didn't stop you, dear! I know it would be beastly of

me to stop you! I shouldn't be worthy of you.... But I think you ought

to appoint a Committee or something, and have the meetings reported in

the 'Novum,' and I'm sure Cosimo wouldn't grudge the money. Oh, how I

wish I could help!----"

But he did not say, as she had half hoped he would say, that she did

help, by inspiring. Instead, he held out his hand. As she took it in

both of hers she wondered what she ought to do with it. If it had been

his foot, and he had been the old-fashioned sort of knight, she could

have fastened a spur on it. Or she might have belted a sword about his

waist. But to have filled his fountain-pen, which was his real weapon,

would have been rather stupid.... He was leading her, ever so

sympathetically, to the door. He opened it, took from it the notice that

had kept Mr. Prang away, and stood with her on the landing.

"Good-bye," she said.

He glanced over his shoulder, and then almost hurt her hands, he gripped

them so hard.

"Good-bye," he said, his eyes looking into hers. "You _do_ understand,

don't you, Amory?"

"Yes, Edgar."

Even then he seemed loth to part from her. He accompanied her to the top

of the stairs.--"You'll let me know when you're coming again, won't

you?" he asked.

"Yes. Good-bye."

And she tore herself away.

At the first turning of the stairs Amory stood aside to allow a rather

untidy young woman to pass. This young woman had a long bare neck that

reminded Amory of an artist's model, and her hands were thrust into the

fore-pockets of a brown knitted coat. She was whistling, but she stopped

when she saw Amory.

"Do you know whether Mr. Dickinson, the poster artist, is up here?" she

asked.

"The next floor, I think," Amory replied.

"Thanks," said the girl, and passed up.

IV

THE OUTSIDERS

"No, not this week," Dorothy said. "Dot wrote a fortnight ago. This

one's from Mollie. (You remember Mollie, Katie? She came to that funny

little place we had on Cheyne Walk once, but of course she was only

about twelve then. She's nearly nineteen now, and _so_ tall! They've

just gone to Kohat).--Shall I read it, auntie?"

And she read:--

"'I'm afraid I wrote you a hatefully skimpy letter last time--,'"

h'm, we can skip that; here's where they started: "'It was the

beastliest journey that I ever made. To begin with, we were the

eighteenth tonga that day, so we got tired and wretched ponies;

we had one pair for fifteen miles and couldn't get another pair

for love or money. We left Murree at two o'clock and got to Pindi

at nine. The dust was ghastly. Mercifully Baba slept like a lump

in our arms from five till nine, so he was all right. We had from

nine till one to wait in Pindi Station, and had dinner, and Baba

had a wash and clean-up and a bottle, and we got on board the

train and off. Baba's cot, etc.; and we settled down for the

night. Nurse and Baba and Mary and I were in one carriage and

Jim next door. I slept beautifully till one o'clock, and then I

woke and stayed awake. The bumping was terrific, and it made me

so angry to look down on the others and see them fast asleep! I

had an upper berth. Baba slept from eleven-thirty till

six-thirty! So we had no trouble at all with him----'

"Well, and so they got to Kohat. (I hope this isn't boring you, Katie.)"