PART III

I

In the Hotel

Felix came quietly through the communicating door into Lilian's shuttered and close room. Between the two bedrooms was a bathroom. All the bedrooms in the hotel seemed to be designed on the same plan--too high, too long, too narrow, with the head of the bed behind the door and directly facing the window; a wardrobe, a dressing-table, a washstand, a writing-table, an easy chair (under the window), two cane chairs, a night-table, and two electric lights so devilishly arranged that they could not be persuaded to burn simultaneously; a carpet overgrown with huge, gorgeous flowers, and the walls overgrown with huge, gorgeous flowers of another but equally mirific plant. Outside the bedroom a bell rang at short intervals--all the guests in the neighbourhood performed, according to their idiosyncrasies, on the same bell--and slippered feet of servants rushing to and fro in the corridor shook the planks of Lilian's floor as they passed.

Amid the obscurity of the room Lilian's curved form, lying heaped on its side, and rather like a miniature mountain that sloped softly down towards the head and towards the feet, could be vaguely deciphered in the bed; and hillocks of attire, some pale, others coloured, some fragile and diaphanous, others resistant to the world's peering, lay dimly about on chairs and even on the writing-table. The air, exhausted by the night, had a faint and delicate odour that excited, but did not offend, Felix's nostrils.

"Is it time to get up?" Lilian murmured in the voice of a sleepy child.

"No."

Her brain slowly came to life. Flitting in and out of her happiness there were transient apprehensions--not about the morality, but about the security, of her situation. They disappeared, all except one, as soon as she looked firmly at them, because she had the most perfect confidence in Felix's good faith. The unity of the pair had begun in London, under conditions provided by Felix, who, however, did not care for them, and who had decided that he would take her away for a holiday in order that they might both reflect upon and discuss at length the best method of organizing a definite secret existence.

It was during the preliminaries to the departure that she had been specially struck by his straightforwardness. He would have no wangling with passports. She must travel as herself. She could think of no acquaintance qualified to sign the application for her passport. It was Felix's suggestion that she should go to the Putney doctor who had attended her father and mother. The pair had travelled separately on the same _train de luxe_, for which, with Felix's money, she bought her own ticket. The cost of the ticket and the general expensiveness of the purchases which Felix insisted on her making had somewhat frightened her. He reassured her by preaching the relativity of all things. "You must alter your scale--it needs only an effort of the imagination," he had said; and explained to her his financial status. She learned that he had an independent income, and his sister another though much smaller independent income, and that the typewriting business was a diversion, though a remunerative one; also that an important cash bonus just received from an insurance policy enabled him to be profuse without straining his ordinary resources.

She had trembled at the reception office of the great hotel, but Felix, laughing at her fears, accomplished all formalities for her quite openly, and indeed the discreet incuriosity of the hotel officials fully confirmed the soundness of his attitude. Ignoring the description on the passport, he had told her to sign as "Madame," and he threw out negligently that she was his cousin. This was his sole guile. Before going upstairs he had written out a telegram and shown it to her. It was to his sister, to say that he had arrived safely and sent his love. "She has to be deceived," he murmured, "but she's got to be treated decently. It was all I could do to keep her from coming to see me off at Victoria!" He smiled. Lilian was impressed. When Lilian found that Felix's bedroom stood next to her bathroom her anxieties were renewed. Felix laughed again, and rang, for the door between the bathroom and his bedroom was locked. In a few minutes a dark and stoutish chambermaid entered with a pleasant, indulgent, comprehending gravity, and unlocked the door. "What is your name?" he asked. "Jacqueline, monsieur," she replied, and cordially accepted a twenty-franc note from him. It was all so simple, so natural, so un-English, so enheartening. In two hours they had settled down. All the embarrassing preludes to the closest intimacy had been amply achieved in London.

Lilian stretched herself voluptuously, murmured with a magnificent yawn, "Ah! How I have slept!" and, slipping out of bed, padded unshod up the room to Felix, who sat passive in the easy chair. She took the bearings of his shape in the gloom, and dropped lightly on to his knees.

"What am I sitting on?" she exclaimed, startled.

"My newspapers."

Touched by the fact that he had been waiting to read his beloved papers until she should be ready to rise, she threw her arms passionately round his neck and crushed her face into his. Daily it became clearer to her that he adored her; and yet she could scarcely believe it, because she felt so young--even childish--and so crude and insipid. She determined with a whole-souled resolve that renewed itself every hour to stop at nothing to please him.

"Do I make you happy?" she whispered almost inarticulately, her lips being buried in his cheek.

"You do."

After a moment she sprang up, seized her thin, loose, buttonless dressing-gown, and having somehow got into it, opened the window and violently pushed back the shutters. Strong sunlight rushed blazing into the room like an army into a city long besieged and at last fallen. Millions of buoyant motes were revealed, and all the minutest details of the chamber. Lilian looked out. There were the shady gardens of the hotel, the white promenade with strolling visitors in pale costumes, the calm ultramarine Mediterranean, the bandstand far to the right emitting inaudible music, the yellow casino, beyond the casino the jetty with its group of white yachts, and, distant on either side, noble and jagged mountains, some of them snow-capped. Incredible! She heard Felix moving within the room, and turned her head.

"Darling, what are you doing?"

"Ringing for your coffee."

"What time is it?"

"Haven't the least."

"But your watch?"

"Haven't got it on."

"But you're all dressed."

"Haven't put my things in my pockets."

She clasped his arm and led him silently through the bathroom into his own bedroom, and up to the night-table, the drawer of which she pulled open. All his "things" were arranged carefully therein.

"Oh! Men are funny!" she laughed.

The number and the variety of the articles they carried in their innumerable pockets!

"_I_ will put your things in your pockets," she said, and began to do so.

"Wrong!" he would protest from time to time; but he would give no positive direction, and she had to discover the proper pocket by experiment. It was a most wonderful operation, and it deliciously illustrated the exotic, incomprehensible, exquisite curiousness of men. She was proud of having thought of it, and proud of the pleasure in his face. As she glanced at the watch her brow puckered.

"I shall be frightfully late!"

"It is impossible to be late where time does not exist."

"Is that Jacqueline with my coffee?" she said, listening, and ran back to her room, pulling him after her.

Yes, she admitted she was a perfect child, but she could not help it. While she drank the coffee he put on his eyeglasses and opened the newspapers, one English, one French. She went into the bathroom.

"Felix! Felix!" she called presently from the bathroom. "Bring me in that soft towel I've left on the chair by the writing-table."

Then she returned to the bedroom and did her abundant glossy chestnut hair, and by innumerable small stages dressed. He was reading his papers, but she knew that he was also watching her, and she loved him to watch her dress, from the first stage to the last. She was too young to have anything to conceal, and his pleasure, which he tried to mask, was so obvious. He dropped _The Times_ and turned to the French paper.

"Felix, do you know what?"

"What?"

"I'm frightfully ashamed of not being able to speak French. If I could only speak it a quarter as well as you do."

"That's nothing. I couldn't say two words without a Frenchman knowing instantly that I wasn't French."

"But you can talk it so quickly. Couldn't I have someone in here every morning to teach me for an hour? People do. I could get up earlier."

"Certainly not," Felix replied. "If you did you'd have something to be late for. You'd bring time into existence and spoil everything. Besides, learning French is hard work. You wouldn't learn it by instinct, as you learn clothes. And you aren't here for hard work. Learn French by all means, but not in this place. London's the place for hard work. Exercise your sense of the fitness of things, my clever girl."

She did not fully understand this philosophy, but she accepted it admiringly.

"What dress would you like me to wear, darling?" She was at the wardrobe.

"That white one."

"Then I shall have to change my stockings."

"Well, the yellow one, then. It doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters," she said with earnestness, sitting down religiously, fanatically, to change her stockings. "Don't you know that I don't want anything in the world except to please you? I only wanted to learn French so you shouldn't have to be ashamed of me."

II

The Big Yacht

After lunching to music beneath a vast parasol in the hotel garden, which looked like a tented field, they were bowed away by servitors in black and white, and bowed into the hotel by servitors in blue and gold, and bowed along the central artery of the hotel by apprentice-servitors in scarlet, and bowed out of the hotel again on to the promenade by servitors in blue and gold. It was half-past two; the glorious sun was already slipping down; they had done absolutely nothing, and yet they had not wasted a moment; and on the faces of all the many-coloured servitors there was the smiling assurance that they had been admirably exerting themselves in full correctness, and had not a moment to waste if they honestly desired to pursue idleness as idleness ought to be pursued. Indeed, the winter day was too short for the truly conscientious.

"Your little fur?" exclaimed Felix, who was wearing his overcoat; he stopped.

"But, darling, I'm far too hot as it is!"

"In an hour the day will be gone," said he, and insisted on the treachery of the climate.

He frequently insisted on the treachery of the climate. If he happened to cough ever so slightly, he would say that the entire Riviera was bad for the throat and that a sore throat was the most dangerous complaint known to man. Lilian indulgently thought him fussy about her health and his own and the awful menaces of the exquisite climate; but she did not attribute his fussiness to his age; she regarded him as merely happening to be a bit fussy on certain matters. Nor did she regret the fussiness, for it gave her new occasions to please him and (in her heart) to condescend femininely towards him.

"I shan't need it----"

"Please! I'll fetch it, and I'll carry it. No! You stay there."

"But do you know where it is, Felix?"

"I know where it is." His voice had become very firm and somewhat tyrannic.

She stood on the pavement, put up her orange sunshade, and mused contentedly upon his prodigious care for her--proof of his passionate attachment. People were passing in both directions all the time on the broad _digue_ beyond the roadway. Some strolled in complete possession of idleness; others hurried after it, with tools such as tennis rackets to help them. Nearly all, men and women, stared at her as they passed, until at length she turned round and faced the revolving door of the hotel.

"Oh! _Thank_ you, dearest; you're spoiling me horribly. Do let me take it."

"I will not. Of course I am spoiling you. That is what you're here for. Your highest duty in life is to be spoiled. Let's go on the Mole."

They set off. A dark man, overdressed in striped flannels, nearly stood still at the sight of Lilian, gazing at her as though he had paid five francs for the right to do so.

"My goodness!" she muttered. "How they do stare here!"

"Why grudge them harmless enjoyment," Felix observed. "You're giving pleasure to every man that looks at you, and envy to most of the women. You're fulfilling a very valuable function in the world, If anyone is justified in objecting, I am, and I don't object. On the contrary, I'm as proud of the staring as if I'd created you. There's nothing to beat you on this coast, with your ingenuous English style of beauty, and half the pretty women here would sell their souls to look as innocent as you _look_, believe me!"

Lilian said nothing in reply. The fact was that the man simply could not open his mouth without giving her more to think about than she could manage.

At the quay they examined all the yachts, big and little, that were moored, stern on, side by side. There were three large steam yachts, and the largest of the three, with two decks and a navigating deck, all white and gold and mahogany and bunting and flowers and fluttering awnings, overpoweringly dominated the port. Felix stopped and stared at the glinting enormity.

"Is that only a yacht?" Lilian cried. "Why! It's bigger than the Channel steamer!"

"No!" said Felix, "but she's the fourth largest yacht in the world. That's the celebrated _Qita_. Crew of eighty odd. She came in last night for stores, and she's leaving again to-night, going to Naples. And here are the stores, you may depend." A lorry loaded with cases of wine drove up.

"But it's all like a fairy tale," said Lilian.

"Yes, it is. And so are you. You see, the point is that she's just about the finest of her kind. And so are you. She costs more than you to run, of course. A machine like that can't be run on less than a thousand pounds a week. Come along. Who's staring now?"

"A thousand pounds a _week_!" Lilian murmured, aghast. Her imagination resembled that of a person who, on reaching a summit which he has taken for the top of the range, sees far higher peaks beyond. And the conviction that those distant peaks were unattainable saddened her for a moment. "It's absolutely awful."

"Why awful? If you have the finest you must pay for it. A thousand a week's nothing to that fellow. Moreover, he's a British citizen, and he did splendid service for his country in the war. Among other things, he owns two of the best brands of champagne. The War Office gave him a commission and a car; and he travelled all over Europe selling his own champagne at his own price to officers' messes. After all, officers couldn't be expected to fight without the drinks they're accustomed to, could they?"

Lilian obscurely divined irony. She often wished that she could be ironical and amusing, as Felix was; but she never could. She couldn't conceive how it was done.

They reached the Mole, which was quite deserted, being off the map of correctness, and surveyed the entire scene--ships, blue water, white hotels, casino, villas, green wooded slopes all faint in the haze, and rising sharply out of the haze the lofty line of snow. In the immediate foreground, almost under their feet, was a steel collier from the north. Along the whole length of the ship carts were drawn up and cranes were creaking, and grimy ragged men hurried sweating to drop basketfuls of coal into the carts, and full carts were always departing and empty carts always coming. The activity seemed breathless, feverish and without the possibility of end--so huge was the steamer and so small were the pair-horse carts.

Two yacht's officers passed in shiny blue with gilt buttons and facings. Growled one:

"Yes, and how the hell do they expect me to keep my ship clean with this thing between me and the weather?"

"Yes," agreed the other. "How in hell do they? Why they don't make 'em unload somewhere else beats me."

Then Felix and Lilian turned seawards and watched the everlasting patience of the fishers on the rocks below.

"Better put your fur on," said Felix suddenly.

She put it on.

Returning to the quay Lilian could not keep her eyes off the superb yacht. But in a moment she bent them suddenly and quickened her pace.

"You're feeling chilly," said Felix triumphantly. "The sun's got behind the fort."

On the lower deck of the yacht, under an awning and amid easy chairs and cushions, she had seen a tall man earnestly engaged in conversation with a young and pretty girl. She thought the man was Lord Mackworth. She felt sure it was Lord Mackworth. She wanted to turn her head and make certain, but she dared not lest he should see her. She was blushing. There was nothing whatever in the brief relations between Lord Mackworth and herself to which the slightest exception could be taken by the strictest moralist. Yet she was blushing. She blushed because of the dreams she had once had concerning him. Her old, forgotten thoughts, which nobody on earth could ever have guessed, made her into a kind of criminal. It was very strange. Perhaps also she feared a little what Lord Mackworth might think of her if he saw her in that place, in those clothes, with a man much older than herself. How inexpressibly fortunate that the yacht was leaving that night! Instead of looking over her shoulder at Lord Mackworth, she looked over her shoulder at Felix, to reassure herself about her deep fondness for him and about his reliability in even the greatest crises.

"I love him," she reflected, "because he is so marvellously clever and kind and dependable and just, and because he worships me--I don't know why."

But she was devoted to him because he had picked her out of a batch and opened her eyes to the apple on the tree and made her eat it, and because she had worked and watched and suffered for him in the office, and been cast out of the office for him, and because of a funny enigmatic look in his wrinkled eyes. She would have liked him just the same if he had been cruel and undependable and had not worshipped her. And she desired ardently to be still more and more beautiful and luxurious for him, and more and more to be stared at for him, and to render him still happier and happier. She was magnificently ready to kill him with bliss.

After several hundred yards she turned round and looked at the yacht. No figures were distinguishable now on the deck. She thought captiously:

"I wonder who that doll was and what they were talking about with their heads so close together."

III

The Casino

Lilian, in a _neglige_, was somnolently stretched out in the easy chair in her room when Felix peeped in. He looked at her enquiringly in silence for a moment, and she gave him a hazy smile.

"Oh!" he said. "Then you won't feel like going into the Casino to-night after all?"

"Nothing to stop me," she replied, with a peculiar intonation, light and yet anxious.

"Hurrah!" exclaimed Felix very gaily, almost boyishly. "Then we'll go."

The apprehension which now for two days had been eating like a furtive cancer into her mind suddenly grew and contaminated the whole of her consciousness; she could not understand his levity, for she had not concealed from him the sinister misgiving.

"Yes!" she murmured with a sort of charming and victimized protest. "That's all very well, but----" And she stopped, and the smile expired from her face.

He shrugged his shoulders, gave a short, affectionate, humouring laugh, and said with kind superiority, utterly positive:

"What have I told you? The thing's absolutely imposs!"

And just as suddenly she was quite reassured and the apprehension vanished away. It could not exist against his perfect certitude. She lit up a new smile.

"Look here," he went on, "we'll dine in the Casino if we can. Of course, every blessed table may be booked, but I'll have a try."

A quarter of an hour later, when she had begun to dress, he returned with the exciting information that, at precisely the right instant, somebody had telephoned to countermand an inside table and he had secured it.

They arrived very late in the Casino restaurant, yet more diners came after them than had come before, so that ultimately it would have been difficult to draw a straight line between dinner and supper. The stars in the arched firmament of the vast and lofty hall challenged the stars of heaven in number and splendour, and seemed to win easily. Light fell in glittering floods on the flowered tables and on the shoulders of the women. In the centre of the floor was an oblong parquet sacred to dancing. The band, in which Englishmen and varied dagoes were mingled, sat, clothed apparently in surplices, on a dais in a mighty alcove. The drummer and the banjoist each procured an unnatural union of light and sound by electric illumination of their instruments from within. The leader wore a battered opera hat, and at the end of a piece he would exclaim grimly and scornfully, "So that's that!" or, "We are the goods!" or some such phrase. Now and then the band overflowed into song, and the wild chants of the Marquesas or the Fiji Islands rang riotously through the correctness of the restaurant, and Lilian caught fragments of significant verse, such as:

"The rich get rich, And the poor get children, Ain't we got fun?"

showing that one touch of nature makes the Southern archipelago the very sister and bride of Europe.

The primary mission of the band was to induce a general exultant gaiety; and the mission was accomplished, nobody understood how. Lilian exulted in the food, the wine, the glitter, the noise, the wise, humorous face of Felix, and the glances which assailed her on every hand. All care fell away from her. She forgot the future, and the whole of her vitality concentrated itself intensely in the moment. Most of the conversation at neighbouring tables was in English, and it was all about gambling, dancing, golf, lawn-tennis, polo, cards, racing, trains de luxe, clothes, hotels, prices, and women. Even in the incomprehensible French gabble that reached her she could distinguish words like "golf," and "bridge," and "picnic."

Then four elegant, waisted young men appeared mysteriously from nowhere and approached certain tables and bowed with an assured air, and instantly four elegant young women rose up, without being asked, and the professional couples began to display to the amateurs the true art of the dance. Lilian had never seen such dancing.

"Why are they all Spanish girls?" she innocently asked, struck by the rich, dark skin of the women.

"They're no more Spanish than you are," said Felix. "You perceive that one there. She's at our hotel, on our floor, and I've seen her as blonde as a Norwegian. The dark olive is the result of strange cosmetics, and a jolly fine result, too. Nothing finer has been invented for a century. It's so perverse. Don't you like it?"

"I think it's lovely!" she agreed with enthusiasm, also with a vague envy.

Later, when the senoritas had left their partners and resumed their interrupted meals, and the parquet was empty again, she said:

"I do really think it's awful, all this! It's so expensive, everything; and it's all for pleasure. The whole town's for pleasure." In the background she had a vision of her working life, with its discipline and cast-iron hours and wristlets and fatigue and privations and penury. The click of the typewriter, the green-shaded lamps, the Tube, the cold bedroom, the washing and sewing done in the cold bedroom! The blue working frock with its pathetic red line of clumsy embroidery!

"What about Margate?" Felix demanded quietly.

She was nonplussed.

"Oh! But that's different!"

"It is. It's not half as good. You must remember there's nothing new in all this. It's been going on in the Mediterranean for thousands of years, and it's likely to go on for thousands of years more. It's what human nature is. What are you going to do about it? Would you abolish luxury and pleasure? Not you. Do you imagine that God created the shores of the Mediterranean and this climate for anything else but this? What frightens you is the tremendous organization and concentration of the affair. Nothing else. And let me tell you that this town is the most interesting town on the coast just now. The fellow that's got the new concession for the casino is a bit of a genius. He's moulding the place into something fresh. It used to be the primmest place on earth. He discovered that the English don't want to be prim any more; he showed them to themselves. Do you suppose all these women began to come here on their own? They're pawns in his great game. He brought them; but no nice-minded person asks how, nor whether they really pay for their meals or their rooms, nor how they manage to encourage big gambling in the baccarat rooms. This fellow has put the wind up to the next town up the coast: it used to be the most corrupt town in the whole of Europe, that place used to be! And now the rival genius there is introducing large families of children and nurses there in the hope of persuading the English that they prefer to be prim and domestic after all. The fact is these two geniuses are gambling against one another for far bigger stakes than any of the baccarat maniacs. It's a battle for the command of the coast. That's what it is. You don't get the hang of it all at once; but you will in time. Let's dance."

Lilian was startled by the invitation, for they had not yet danced together. She remembered how, on that night when he first talked to her about herself, he had known that she was being deprived of an evening's dancing. They stood up as the chicken was being removed. She smiled at him with fresh admiration. He had impregnated her with new ideas; he had reassured her; he had justified her enjoyment; he was amazing; he was mad about her, in his restrained style; and now he would surprisingly dance with her.

Although they took the floor early in the dance, when only two other couples had begun to dance, it was impossible for her to be nervous within his arm. Half the room gazed at her, for she had attracted attention from the first. She knew that half the room was gazing at her, and she liked it. She guessed that half the room was saying: "Look at that fresh young creature who's with that middle-aged man--she must be really very young." And she liked it. She liked to show herself with the man who was more than old enough to be her father, worn by knowledge and experience and the corrupting of the world; to contrast her untried simplicity--the bloom of the virginal scarcely gone from it--with his grey hairs and his wrinkled, disillusioned, passive eyes. She was happy in the thought that everybody knew that she must have given herself to him, and that there was something strange, sinister, and even odious in her abandonment. He had used the word "perverse." She did not wholly understand the word, but it appealed to her, and for her it expressed her mood.

She had noticed, in the room, how the women no longer unquestionably young were more consciously and carefully charming towards their men, receiving adulation but rendering it back; whereas the unquestionably young were more negligent and far more egotistic. And so she behaved like one no longer unquestionably young. She glanced up at her partner with ravishing, ecstatic smiles; she publicly adored him. And she was glad that her green and gold frock with its long arm-holes was not of the Wigmore Street cut, but quite other in origin and spirit and in its effect upon the imagination.

The dancing had by this time become general, but the olive-tinted temptresses were still prominent in the throng, and sometimes she touched them in the curves of the dance. She knew where they beat her and where she beat them. And it was vouchsafed to her from the eyes of Felix that she was lovely and marvellous. She felt intensely, inexpressibly happy, and more than happy--triumphant. Her quiet, obstinate resentment against the domestic policy of her father died out, and she forgave him as she danced. She thought with a secret sigh almost painful in its relief:

"Thank God I have fulfilled myself and succeeded not too late!"

She had premonitions of power, a foretaste of dominion. Felix was hers. She could influence him. She could re-make him. And for the thousandth time she breathed to him in her soul: "I have made you happy, but I will make you more happy--infinitely more happy. You don't know yet what I am capable of." He danced very correctly and quite nicely,--rather stiff, of course, but with a certain clever abandonment of his body to the rhythm. She thought: "With what women did he learn to dance? He must have danced a lot. Never will I ask! Never!" The fox-trot ended.

As they were crossing the floor to their table she saw Lord Mackworth dining with a man older than himself at a table near the windows. She sat down to the sweet. He had caught sight of her and was looking at her fixedly. She stared at him for a moment with the casually interested stare of non-recognition, perfectly executed.

"The yacht hasn't left, then, after all," she reflected, and to Felix: "Did that big yacht leave to-night?"

"No," said Felix. "I heard they'd changed their minds." Felix had the faculty of hearing everything.

In spite of herself Lilian was disturbed.

IV

Chemin de Fer

When Felix said that of course they must visit the baccarat rooms she vaguely acquiesced. A mood of the old apprehension had mysteriously succeeded her exultation; she wanted to exorcise it and couldn't. She would have tried to dance the gloom away, but Felix did not suggest another dance; she understood that he had danced once because it was proper for an enlightened amateur of life to forgo no sensation, and that he would not dance again unless asked. She would not ask. He had given her a cigarette and a liqueur; she had accepted a second liqueur and then declined it, afraid of it and anxious for her reputation in his eyes. There were formalities to accomplish at the entrance to the baccarat rooms--forms to be filled up and money to be paid.

"They make a small charge for emptying your pockets," said Felix. "They pretend to be rather particular about their victims."

The select rooms were crowded. Every table in the blazing interior had round it a thick ring of sitters and standers, and many people were walking to and fro, disappointed or hopeful. By tiptoeing and supporting herself on Felix's shoulder Lilian could just see the green cloth of a table, like the floor of a pit whose walls were bodies elegant in evening dress; it was littered with white, rose, and green counters, banknotes, cards, ash-trays, cigarette cases, and vanity bags. More women were seated than men. A single croupier dominated and ruled the game. Cards and counters were thrown about from side to side.

"It seems frightfully exciting," murmured Lilian, scarcely audible, into the ear of Felix.

"It is," said Felix gruffly. "It's the real thing, you know, gambling is. When people lose they lose real money, and when they win, ditto. You can genuinely ruin yourself here. There's no sham about it. You may go out without even your fare home." He offered these remarks separately, between considerable pauses.

"Is baccarat easy to learn?"

"Very. But not here--and this isn't baccarat. This is _chemin de fer_--equally easy, though. I'll get a pack of cards at the hotel and teach you. It's _chemin de fer_ at every table. I suppose that's why they call the rooms 'baccarat'?"

He was edging nearer the croupier. A stout, middle-aged woman whose flesh seemed to be insecurely and inadequately confined within frail silk rose from her chair, gathering up bag and cigarette case--all that remained to her.

"Sit down here and keep the chair for me," Felix said sharply, and pushed Lilian into the seat.

Everybody gazed at her, and her constraint showed the conviction that everybody guessed she had never sat at a gaming-table before. Felix had vanished, and she was thrown with her arresting, innocent beauty upon the envious and jealous world. He had gone to exchange notes for counters, but she did not know. After a moment that was an hour he returned and took the seat.

"You stand behind me and watch," said he. "And when you get bored walk about and see things for yourself, and when you need moral support again come and put your hand on my chair. I'll stop playing whenever you tell me." He spoke in a muttering voice, but three or four persons around could not fail to catch every word; this, however, appeared not to trouble him.

Lilian was in a state of high excitation, but she was also extremely confused, the game being a complete enigma to her. The croupier was continually raking cards to and fro and counters to and fro, continually tearing tickets out of a book, ripping them to pieces and throwing the pieces behind him, continually dropping cards into a big hole, and continually dropping counters into a little hole. An official opposite the croupier, with pockets full of counters, was continually, and with miraculous rapidity, exchanging rose counters for green and white counters for rose. The player next to Felix had a small table behind him furnished with champagne and sandwiches, which he consumed in hasty gulps and mouthfuls, as one who feels the dread hour at hand when no man may eat or drink. The players ejaculated short incomprehensible words, and at brief intervals Lilian seized a word that sounded like "baunco." She heard Felix utter the word, saw him turn up two cards, and then receive from the croupier's rake a large assortment of green and rose counters. He never looked at her to smile; she was ignored, but she guessed that he must be winning. Soon afterwards his piles of counters had strangely diminished.

The heat stifled her, and the odour of flesh and tobacco and scent nauseated. She held no key to the vast and splendid conundrum, unless by chance her fundamental commonsense was right in its casual suggestion that she was surrounded by lunatics. Yet how could persons so well-dressed, so sure of themselves, so restrained and stylish in manner, and seemingly so wealthy, be lunatics? Impossible! She grew profoundly and inexplicably sad.

At length she walked away, aimless. Felix did not notice her departure. She thought it almost certain that Lord Mackworth would be somewhere in the rooms; she desired above everything to avoid the danger incident to meeting him face to face; but she walked away. All the tables were the same as the table at which she had left Felix--crowded, entranced, self-concentrated and perfectly unintelligible; and at every table the croupier was continually dropping counters into a little hole, and tearing up tickets and throwing the fragments behind him on to the crimson carpet. The sole difference between the tables was that some held more banknotes than others. The heaps of blue thousand-franc notes piled about one table caused Lilian to halt and gaze.

"Some ready there!" said a very young man to a fierce old woman.

"Ah! But you should have seen it in the days of gold plaques before the war. You could call a hundred-franc gold piece 'ready,' then, if you like." The old woman sighed grimly.

Lilian passed on under their combined stare. She glimpsed herself in mirrors, as once she used to glimpse herself in the shop windows of Bond Street, and was satisfied with the vision. Her walk was as remarkable as her beauty. Yes, she knew how to put her feet on the ground and how to make her body float smoothly and evenly above the moving limbs. Her spirit rose as she began to suspect that no woman in the rooms was getting more notice than herself. Fancy Felix being absorbed in his gambling! She had forgotten Lord Mackworth; she had decided that he was not in the rooms; and then suddenly, sprung from nothingness like a ghost, he stood in her path between the wall and the end of a table. She was disposed to retreat; besides, his attention was fixed on the table and she might get by him unperceived. But just as she approached he turned. Although she might have ignored him, and in the circumstances was indeed entitled to do so, she did not because she could not. She blushed, only slightly, acknowledged their acquaintance with a faint smile, then stopped, but did not advance her hand to meet his.

"Ought I to have shaken hands?" she thought anxiously. All her quickly acquired worldliness of manner left her in an instant. She was the typewriting girl again, wearing the wristlets. He had all the physical splendour that she remembered, and the style, and the benignant large-hearted tolerance of an extensive sinner. As he looked at her he drew back his chin and made several chins of it in just the old way. He was enormous, superb, and perfect. And if not a boy he had real youth; once more she had to contrast his youth with Felix's specious sprightliness. She fought on behalf of Felix in her mind, and on points Felix won; but in her mind Lord Mackworth had supporters which derided all reasoning. And as she fronted him the old frightful apprehension was powerfully revived, and it seemed to be building a wall between her and the young man, and she was intensely dejected beneath the brightness of her demeanour.

"Very hot here, isn't it?" she was saying. ("A stupid typewriting girl remark," she reflected as it slipped out.)

"A great change since I was here last just before the war," said Lord Mackworth gaily.

"Warmer, do you mean?"

"No! Much more cheery now. Jollier!" He waved a hand towards the company in general.

"Oh, _that_!" said Lilian, marshalling all her forces in a determined effort to lose the typewriting girl in the woman of the world. "You mean the company." She shrugged her shoulders, borrowing some of his tolerance, "Of course, you know they've been brought here on purpose. It's all part of a great battle for the command of the coast."

The effort succeeded beyond her hopes. Lord Mackworth was clearly impressed; he put questions which Lilian answered out of the mouth of Felix. Strange that this man should be he who had inexcusably omitted to pay his trumpery bill at Clifford Street, the man through whose unconscious agency she had been unjustly cast into the street! However, the past did not in the least affect her feeling for him. What she most vividly recalled was that she had striven to serve him and had served him. He made no reference--doubtless from delicacy--to the night of their meeting; nor did he betray even the very smallest surprise at seeing her, the typewriting girl, exquisitely and expensively dressed, in the finest baccarat rooms on the Riviera. (Of course, she might be married, or have inherited a fortune--he could think as he chose.)

They went on talking and then a pause came, and Lord Mackworth said bluntly:

"I saw you from the yacht this afternoon."

"Oh! What yacht?"

"The _Qita_."

"The big one? Is it yours?"

"Oh lord, no! She belongs to my friend Macmusson--we dined together here to-night."

"It must be terribly big. I suppose you have an enormous party on board?"

"Not a bit. Only Macmusson and his three old aunts, and his niece--adopted daughter. Nobody else."

"That's the girl you were making love to," Lilian's heart accused him. "She's going to be very rich and she'll pay all your family debts. That's what it is. But what difference does it make?" her heart added, "You are you." And aloud: "I heard the yacht was leaving to-night."

"She was. But I persuaded old Macmusson to stop another day."

"Really!"

"And do you know why?"

"No."

"Because I had some hope of meeting you here to-night."

She flushed again. She saw the ante-room at Clifford Street at the moment when he came back to ask her to wake him by telephone. He must have been well aware, then, that he had made a conquest, because in the ante-room she had not been able to hide her soft emotion. From that moment he had forgotten her; yet he could not have forgotten her. Perhaps he had somehow been prevented from meeting her in the meantime. Now at the mere second sight of her he had stopped the great yacht on the chance of talking to her! He had thrown over the young rich girl at a single glimpse of Lilian as she passed! It was astounding. But in fact she was not astounded. She glanced up at him. His smooth, handsome red face was alive with admiration. And was she not really to be admired, even by the Lord Mackworths? Was she not marvellous? Did not all the company in the rooms regard her as marvellous? She thrilled to the romance of the incredible event. He was so young and big and strong and handsome; he had such prestige in her eyes. She saw visions.

But the frightful apprehension--no longer a wall, rather a cloud--swallowed up the visions and froze the thrill. Felix held her. A gust of ruthless common sense inspired her to say primly:

"It's always dangerous to give reasons for what one's done." And, nodding, she left him. Immediately afterwards she had to sit down.

V

In the Hills

When she at length returned to Felix and, squeezing through the outer rings of gladiators against chance, touched him delicately on the shoulder, he faced her with a bright youthful smile, and without any surprise--it was plain to her that he had recognized her from the light touch of her finger.

"Do you want me to stop?"

She nodded.

He gathered his counters together and rose with alacrity.

"You came in the nick of time," he said. "But, of course, you would! I've been playing wild and I've made a thousand francs into rather more than six thousand. It was the very moment to flee from the wrath that was coming. Let's run, run, to the change-desk before I change my mind and decide to begin to lose. That's the only insurance--getting rid of the counters, because when you've got rid of 'em you're too ashamed with yourself to get more."

He was quite uplifted, so gaily preoccupied with his achievement that he noticed nothing strange in her mien. She was glad that he noticed nothing; and yet also she was sorry; she would have liked him, after a single glance at her, to have said in his curt, quiet, assured manner: "What's wrong?"

She kept thinking, but not of Felix: "He must be very fickle and capricious. I'm certain he was making love to _her_. He happens to see me and off he runs after me! He can't be any good, with his debts and things. I was right to give him the bird. But he's terribly nice, and I don't care. I don't know what on earth's the matter with me. I think I must be a bit mad, and always was. If I wasn't, should I be here?"

Transiently she viewed herself as, for example, Gertie Jackson would have viewed her. And then she saw another and a worse self and viewed that other self as Lilian the staid and constant friend of Felix would naturally view such an abandoned girl. She was afraid of and disgusted by the possibilities discovered in the depths of her own mind.

At the desk the dancing girl whom Felix had indicated as inhabiting their hotel hurried up passionately and forestalled them. She threw down two green counters, as it were in anger.

"Can I play with _that_!" she exclaimed in cockney English.

The changer handed her two hundred-franc notes, which she crumpled in her hand.

"I must find a hundred thousand francs from somewhere!" she cried, departing. She was talking to herself. As she moved away a stout, oldish man with a thick lower lip, pearl studs in his shirt-front, and a gleaming white waistcoat, joined her, and they disappeared together.

Lilian stared after her in amazement. Felix's winnings suddenly seemed very insignificant. Still when he received six fine fresh thousand-franc notes, besides some small notes, in exchange for valueless discs, and handed to her one of the fine fresh notes--"That's for saving me from myself!"--she was impressed anew. A palace of magic, the baccarat rooms! The real thing, gambling!

"What do you want to do now?" he asked. "Dance? No? Well, I'll do anything you like, anything, the most absurd thing. Is that talking?"

They were moving somewhat aimlessly down the grand staircase.

"Felix, darling," she murmured, "let's go for a motor run in the hills. There's a lovely moon. I should so love it." She desired to be alone with him precisely as she had been alone with him in the taxi after their first dinner. She had a fancy for just that and nothing else. She pictured them together in the car, in the midst of gigantic nature and in the brilliant night.

"But it will be cold!" he protested.

"It wasn't cold when we came in here--it was quite warm--you said so," she replied softly. "But just as you please. I don't mind." And into the acquiescent charm of her voice she dropped one drop of angelic resentment--one single drop; not because he objected to gratifying her, but because she knew he was merely fussing himself about his throat and his health generally.

"We'll go, by all means. It won't take long," he yielded affectionately, without reserve.

She pressed his arm. She had won. He began to suspect that she was overwrought--perhaps by the first sight of the spectacle of gambling on a great scale--and he soothed her accordingly. Half a dozen automobiles were waiting and willing to take them into the hills.

Before Lilian had regained full possession of herself they were clear of the town, and continually ascending, in long curves. The night was magnificent; through the close-shut windows of the car could be seen, not the moon, which was on high, but the strong moonlight and sharp shadows, and the huge austere contours of the hills; and here and there a distant, steady domestic lamp. Lilian sat in her corner and Felix in his, and a space separated them because of the width of the car. She felt a peculiar constraint and could not reach the mood she wanted.

"Felix," she said, "you heard that girl say she must have a hundred thousand francs, how will she get it? How can she get it?"

"She'll just disappear for a day or two, and then she'll come back with it. I dare say she owes most of it already to the casino."

"But who will give it her?"

"Ah! That's her secret. There's always somebody in the background that these charmers have made themselves indispensable to. When this particular charmer tackles the particular man or men that she's indispensable to, she'll have what she needs out of them if they've got it to give. That's a certainty. If a man has hypnotized himself into the belief that a girl's body is paradise, he'll win paradise and keep paradise. He'll steal, commit murder, sell his wife and children, abandon his parents to the workhouse; there's nothing he won't do. And he'll do it even if she'll only let him kiss her feet. Of course, all men aren't like that, but there are quite a few of 'em, and these charmers always find 'em out. Trust them."

"I couldn't see that there was anything very extraordinary in her."

"Neither could I. But perhaps we're blind to what that fellow who's going to fork out the hundred thousand francs sees. I dare say if I were to dance with her I might have glimpses of his notion of her. Anyhow, you bet she's a highly finished product; she's got great gifts and great skill--must have--and she knows exactly what she's about--and she looks eighteen and isn't above twenty-five. You must remember she's on the way to being a star in the most powerful profession in the world. They've made practically all the history there is, even in the East, and they're still making it--making it this very night."

There was a considerable silence, and then Lilian shot across the seat and leaned heavily against Felix and clasped his neck.

"Darling," she said, "I know I'm going to have a baby!"

They could just see each other. Felix paused before replying.

"Very well! Very well," he said calmly. "We shall see who's right." Her thoughts concerning Lord Mackworth now seemed utterly incredible to her in their mad aberration.

The next moment the car swerved unexpectedly to the side of the mounting road and the engine stopped; the chauffeur jumped down, opened the bonnet, unstrapped one of the side lamps and peered with it into the secrets under the bonnet. Felix, loosing himself from Lilian, rapped sharply on the front window, but got no response from the bent chauffeur. Then impatiently he tried to let down the window and could not. He lifted it, shook it, rattled it, broke the fragile fastening of the strap. Suddenly the window fell with a bang into its slit, and there was a tinkling of smashed glass.

"Damn it! I ought to have opened the door, but I was afraid of too much cold."

The icy air of the hills rushed like an assassin into the interior of the car, Felix shivered, unlatched the door and got out. The chauffeur proved to be an Italian, with no more French than sufficed to take orders and receive fares and tips. He could give no intelligible explanation of the breakdown, but he smiled optimistically. The car was absolutely alone on the road, and the road was alone in the vast implacable landscape. No light anywhere, except the chilly, dazzling moon and the stars, and the glitter of a far range of god-like peaks, whence came the terrible wind. The scene and situation intimidated. The inhuman and negligent grandeur of nature was revealed. Felix returned into the car and shut the door, but could not shut out the cold. Lilian covered his chest with her warm bosom. Gently he pushed her away.

"No, no!"

"Let me, darling!"

"It's no use. I shall suffer for this."

After a few minutes the engine was throbbing again, and they had begun the descent. But no device could conjure away the ruthless night air. Back at the hotel Felix took brandy and hot water, accepted Lilian's hot water bag in addition to his own, and was in bed and thickly enveloped in no time at all. Lilian kissed him guiltily and left him. He bade her good night kindly but absently, engrossed in himself.

VI

The Benefactress

When Lilian was alone in her room she thought anxiously:

"Supposing he should want more brandy in the night--there is none!"

The travelling flask was now empty. (In the emergency, hot water from the lavatory-basin tap had been used to dilute the brandy. Felix having said impatiently that any water would do so long as it was hot--hang a few germs!) She had noticed that he would always take a little brandy if he felt unwell from whatever cause, and this habit caused her no uneasiness, for from her father she had acquired a firm belief in the restorative qualities of brandy; even her mother would say how unwise it was to "be without" brandy, and before starting for the annual domestic holiday invariably attended herself to the provision of it. The lack of brandy settled upon Lilian's mind, intensifying somehow her sense of guilt. She felt deeply the responsibilities of the situation, which became graver and graver to her--the more so as she had no real status to deal with it.

She wanted to ring the bell, but the bell was within a few yards of Felix's door--he often complained on this score--and to ring might be to wake him. Cautiously she stepped into the corridor, hoping to find Jacqueline in the service-room at the end of the shabby little side corridor where the bell and the room-indicator were. She knew the French for brandy. The main corridor stretched away with an effect of endlessness. In its whole length only two electric lights had been left to burn. Solitude and silence made it mysteriously solemn. A pair of boots, or two pairs of boots--one large, one small and dainty--here and there on a door-mat seemed inexplicably to symbolize the forlornness of humanity in the sight of the infinite. The beating of Lilian's heart attracted her attention. Not without an effort could she cross the magic and formidable corridor. The door of the service-room was locked. No hope! Even Jacqueline had a bed somewhere and was asleep in it; and brandy was as unattainable as on a coral island.

Lilian felt the rough hair-lining of pleasure. The idea of her insecurity frightened her. She perceived that a life of toil, abstinence, deprivation and cold virginity had its advantages. Of course, Felix was not going to be ill; but if he were, and if her dreadful fears about her own condition were realized--what then? What would happen? Were the moral maxims and strict practice of her parents after all horribly true? The wages of sin, and all that sort of thing ... She heard steps in the distance of the corridor. She peeped. Somebody was approaching. Had she time to cross and vanish into the shelter of her room? She hesitated. The visitant was a woman. It was the girl who in the baccarat rooms had talked of a hundred thousand francs in a cockney accent, the girl whom Felix had described as probably a rising star in the most powerful of professions. She too had a bed, and was seeking it at last.

"I expect there's no chance of getting hold of a servant to-night," said Lilian meekly, as the girl instinctively paused in passing.

The girl, staring sharply out of her artificially enlarged eyes, shrugged the shoulders of negation at Lilian's simplicity.

"Anything the matter?"

"I only wanted some brandy. My"--'husband' she meant to say, but could not frame the majestic word--"my friend's not very well. Chill. He's had a very little brandy, and might need some more in the night." She flushed.

"Come along of me. I'll let you have some." What a harsh, rasping little voice!

The benefactress's bedroom was in a state of rich disorder that astounded Lilian. The girl turned on every light in the chamber, banged the door, and pushing some clothes off a chair told Lilian to sit down. Drawers were open, cupboards were open, the wardrobe was open. Attire, boxes, bottles, parcels, candles, parasols, illustrated comic papers, novels with shiny coloured covers were strewn everywhere; and in a corner a terrific trunk stood upright. The benefactress began ferreting in drawers, and slamming them to one after another.

"I'm afraid I'm putting you to a lot of trouble," said Lilian. "You're very kind, I'm sure."

"Not a bit of it. I never _can_ find anything.... I think us girls ought to stand by each other, that's what I think. Not as we ever do!" Her voice seemed to thicken, almost to break.

Lilian felt as if the entire hotel had trembled under her feet, but she gave no sign of shock; she desired the brandy, if it was to be had. "Us girls"!

"You _are_ French, aren't you? I only ask because you speak English so well."

After a moment the girl replied, her head buried in a drawer:

"You bet I'm French. My mother sent me to a convent in London so as I could learn English properly. It was one of them boarding convents where you're free to do what you like so long as you're in by seven o'clock. They wanted a few French girls for the chorus of a revue at the Pavilion. Soon as I got in there I never went back to the convent, and I've never seen ma since, either. I was in that chorus for a year. Oh!" She produced an ingenious and costly travelling spirit-case, and then searched for the key of it.

"I wish I could speak French half as well as you speak English."

"If I had half your face and your figure I'd give all my English to anybody that cared to have it. Oh! Damn the key! Excuse me. Here you are." She offered the disengaged flask. "Now you go along and take what you want, and bring me the flask back."

She stood in front of Lilian, who rose. She was as flat as Milly Merrislate, and neither tall nor graceful. Every lineament of the pert face so heavily masked in paint and powder, every gesture, the too bright stockings, the gilded shoes, the impudent coiffure, the huge and flashy rings, the square-dialled wrist-watch--all were crudely symptomatic of an ingrained and unalterable vulgarity. Lilian was absolutely unable to understand how any man, however coarse and cynical, could find any charm of any kind in such a girl. But Lilian did not know that intense vulgarity is in itself irresistible to certain amateurs of women, and she was far too young really to appreciate the sorcery of mere lithe youthfulness.

"Why! What is it?" Lilian exclaimed, as she took the flask.

Tears were ravaging the cheeks of the benefactress.

"Oh! Damn!" The benefactress stamped her foot, and raised her thin, loose, bare shoulders. "Gambling's it. I always lose here. It's all shemmy here, and when you win at shemmy you take other people's money, not the bank's, and that puts me off like at the start. And you never win if you don't feel as if you were going to. I was at Monte Carlo last week, and you sh'd've seen me at roulette, taking the casino money. I couldn't do wrong. But I had to come back here, and there you are! Lost it all and a lot more!" She was speaking through her tears. "Cleaned out to-night! Naked! You see, it's like this. Gambling gives you an emotion. It's the only thing there is for that--I mean for me.... Did you see that fat beast speak to me to-night in the casino? Well, he said something to me and offered me ten thousand francs, and I slapped his face for him in the entrance-hall. He knew I was stony. I was a fool. Why shouldn't I have done what he wanted? What's it matter? But no! I'm like that, and I slapped his face, and I'd do it again, I would!! He's Scapini, you know, the biggest shareholder in both the big hotels here. I tore it, I did! And, would you believe, I'd no sooner got in here afterwards than the manager told me I must leave to-morrow morning. It was all over the place as quick as that! I've only got to go to Paris to get all the money I want. Yes. But I'd sell myself for a year to be able to pay my bill straight off in the morning and cheek 'em. It'll be near a thousand francs, and I haven't got ten francs, besides having the whole bally town against me." She laughed and threw her head back. "Here! You go along. Don't listen to me. It's not the first time, neither the last. Go along now."

"I'm very sorry," said Lilian. She simply could not conceive that the girl, possibly no older than herself, was standing alone and unaided against what was to her the universe. How could these girls do it? What was the quality in them that enabled them to do it?

She was in the intimidating, silent, mystery-hiding corridor again. She listened at the door, which she had left ajar, between the bathroom and Felix's bedroom. No sound! In the solacing, perfect tidiness of her room, she poured some of the brandy into a glass, and then, taking her bag, returned to the benefactress.

"Here's your flask, thank you very much!" she said. "And here's a thousand francs, if it's any use to you." She produced the note which Felix had given to her. The money was accepted, greedily.

"If you're here in a week's time, in five days, you'll have it back," said the benefactress, looking at her wrist-watch. "No! It's too late to go and play again now!" She giggled. "Tell me your name. You can trust _me_. I don't believe you're real, though! You couldn't be. There aren't such girls--anyhow at your age." She stopped, and gave a tremendous youthful sigh. "Ah!" she exclaimed, "if only I was dead. I often dream of lying in my grave--eternal peace, eternal peace! No emotions! No men! Quite still! Stretched straight out! Quiet for ever and ever! Eternal peace! D'you know I've been like that all my life? My God!"

Lilian burst into tears, agonized. The original benefactress flung herself at the other benefactress with amazing violence, and they kissed, weeping.

A quarter of an hour later the defier of Scapini murmured:

"I wish to heaven I could do something for _you_!"

Lilian answered:

"I wish you'd tell me how you stain your skin that lovely Spanish colour."

And she immediately received, not merely the instructions, but the complete materials necessary for the operation.

VII

The Doctor

When she awoke the next morning after a very few hours' sleep, she did so suddenly, to a full consciousness of her situation, and not little by little, passing by gradual stages to realization, as was her wont. She listened; no sound came through the two half-open doors. The brandy had not been needed. Perhaps he was asleep; perhaps he had had a good night and was perfectly restored. She rose, unfastened the window and very quietly pushed back the shutters. It was raining. Just as she was, her hair loose and the delicate and absurd rag of a nightdress all untied, she surveyed herself sternly in the mirror. She was well content with her beauty. Impossible to criticize it! In every way she was far more beautiful than the nameless woman whom she had befriended and who had befriended her.

Partly because she had been generous to her, she felt sympathy for the girl. The phrase "us girls" stung her still, but it was not ill meant; in fact, it was a rather natural phrase, and no doubt already her acquaintance must have perceived how wrong it was. She admired the girl for her fierce defiance and courage, and for the intense passion with which she had desired the grave. "Stretched straight out! Quiet for ever and ever!" Startling and outrageous words, in that harsh young voice; but there was something fine about them! ("I may say the same one day soon," Lilian thought solemnly.) Moreover, she understood better the power of the girl, whose kiss and clasp had communicated to her a most disconcerting physical thrill. Indeed, it seemed to her that she was on the threshold of all sorts of new comprehensions. Finally she had astonished the girl by the grand loan; she had shone; she had pleased; she had satisfied her instinct to give pleasure. She thought:

"She may be stronger than I am, and cleverer; but she is very silly and I am not. And I'm not weak either, even if some people take me for weak."

It was disturbing, though, how that phrase pricked and pricked: "Us girls." Little flames shot up from the ashes of her early and abandoned religion. "The wages of sin--the wages of sin." Was it true about the wages of sin? Was she to be punished? The great, terrible fear of conception still dominated her soul; and it grew hourly. At each disappointing dawn the torture of it increased. She saw the powders and preparations which the courtesan had given her; she recalled the minute directions for the use of them, and smiled painfully. How could the prospective mother employ such devices? Nevertheless, if she escaped, she would employ them as soon as Felix was better. She knew that Felix would delight in the perverse, provocative transformation, and she yearned to gratify him afresh in a novel manner. When the surprise came upon him he would pretend that it was nothing; but he would be delighted, he would revel in it.

Putting on her peignoir she slipped noiselessly into the other bedroom, and crept up to the bed. Needless precaution; Felix was wide awake, staring at the ceiling. Before speaking she tenderly kissed him, and kept her face for a moment on his.

"Better?"

"Had an awful night. Couldn't sleep a wink. I won't get up just yet. Order me tea instead of coffee. We'll go out after lunch, not before."

"Do you think you ought to go out, dearest?"

"Of course I ought to go out," he snapped peevishly.

"It's raining."

"Oh, well, if it's raining I dare say I shan't want to go out." He placed his hand nervously on his right breast.

"Does it hurt you?"

"Not at all. Can't I touch myself?"

She kissed him again. Then he gazed at her with love, as she moved over him to ring the bell.

"You all right?"

"Oh, splendid! I listened once or twice at the door, but as I didn't hear anything I made sure you were asleep."

She kept silence about her awful, persistent fear, knowing that any reference to it would only irritate him. He was more than ever like a child--and a captious child. She realized the attitude of his sister towards him. Thank God he was better! If he had fallen ill she would have condemned herself as a criminal for life, for her insane, selfish suggestion of an excursion to the hills at night. Not he, but she, was the child.

After his tea he did get up and dress; but he would not descend to lunch; nor eat in the bedroom. At three o'clock he said that when it rained on the Riviera the climate was the most damnable on earth, and that he preferred to be in bed. And to bed he returned. Then Lilian noticed him fingering his breast again.

"Any pain there?"

"Oh! Nothing. Nothing. Only a sort of sensation."

Soon afterwards he gave a few very faint, short, dry coughs--scarcely perceptible efforts to clear the throat. And at the same Lilian went cold. She knew that cough. She had helped to nurse her father. It was the affrighting pneumonia cough. Almost simultaneously it occurred to her that Felix was trying to hide from her a difficulty in breathing. She had not dreamed of anything so bad as pneumonia, which for her was the direst of all diseases. And she with a plan for dyeing her skin to amuse and excite him! ... She had thought of a severe chill at the worst.

She hurried downstairs to see the concierge. The lift was too slow in coming up for her; she had to run down the flights of carpeted steps one after another. The main question on her mind was: "Ought I to telegraph to his sister?" If Miss Grig arrived, what would, what could happen to herself? The concierge--a dark, haughty, long-moustached, somewhat consumptive subject--adored Lilian for her beauty, and she had rewarded his worship with exquisite smiles and tones.

"Would you like the English doctor, madam?" said he.

"_Is_ there an English doctor here?" She was immensely relieved. She would be able to talk to an English doctor, whereas a French doctor with his shrugs and science, and understanding nothing you said....

"Surely, madam! I will telephone at once, madam. He shall be here in one quarter hour. I know where he is. He is a very good doctor."

"Oh, thank you!" Concierges were marvellous persons.

As soon as she had gone again the concierge made all the pages tremble. It was the thwarted desire to kneel at Lilian's feet and kiss her divine shoes that caused him to terrorize the pages.

As for telegraphing to Miss Grig, she decided that obviously she could send no message till the doctor had examined and reported. In regard to the hotel authorities and servants she now had no shame. She alone was responsible for Felix's welfare, and she would be responsible, and they must all think what they liked about her relations with him. She did not care.

The concierge was indeed marvellous, for in less than twenty minutes there was a knock at Felix's door. Lilian opened, saw a professional face with hair half sandy, half grey, and, turning to Felix, murmured:

"It's the doctor, darling."

Felix, to whom she had audaciously said not a word about sending for a doctor, actually sat up, furious.

"I'm not going to see a doctor," he gasped. "I'm not going to see any doctor."

"Come in, doctor, please."

The moment was dramatic. Felix of course was beaten.

"You'll find me in the next room, doctor," she said, after a minute, and the doctor bowed. In another ten minutes the doctor entered her bedroom.

"It's a mild attack of pneumonia," said he, standing in front of her. "Very mild. I can see no cause for anxiety. You'd better have a nurse for the night."

"I would sooner sit up myself," Lilian answered. "I've nursed pneumonia before."

"Then have a nurse for the day," the doctor suggested. "I can get an English one from the Alexandra Hospital--a very good one. She might come in at once and stay till ten o'clock, say." Then he proceeded to the treatment, prescriptions, and so on.... An English nurse!

Lilian felt extraordinarily grateful and reassured. She knew where she was now. She was in England again.

"Ought I to telegraph home?" she asked.

"I shouldn't if I were you," the doctor replied. "Better to wait for a day or two. Telegrams are so disturbing, aren't they?"

His gentle manner was inexpressibly soothing. It was so soothing that just as he was leaving she kept him back with a gesture.

"Doctor, before you go, I wish you would do something for me." And she sat down, her face positively burning and shed tears.

In the night, as she sat with Felix, the patient's condition unquestionably improved. He even grew cheerful and laudatory.

"You're a great girl," he muttered weakly but firmly. "I know I was most absurdly cross, but I'm a rotten invalid."

She looked at him steadily, and, her secret resolve enfeebled by his surprising and ravishing appreciation, she let forth, against the dictates of discretion, the terrific fact which was overwhelming her and causing every fibre in her to creep.

"It's true what I told you."

"What?"

"You know----" (A pause.)

"How do you know it's true?"

"The doctor----"

His reception of the tidings falsified every expectation. He waited a moment, and then said calmly:

"That's all right. I'll see to that."

She did not kiss him, but, sitting on the bed, put her head beside his on the pillow. Seen close, his eyelashes appeared as big as horsehairs and transcendently masculine. She tasted the full, deep savour of life then, moveless, in an awkward posture, in the midst of the huge sleeping hotel. She had no regrets, no past, only a future.

VIII

Marriage

Lilian went to bed in the morning, not only with the assurance that Felix was in no danger, but with his words echoing in her heart: "We shall get married--here--the moment I'm fit." She was nursing his body; he was nursing her mind. He had realized at once, of course, that the situation was completely altered, and that he had now one sole duty--his duty towards her. And, moreover, he had cared for her pride--had not used the least word or even inflection to indicate that she was absolutely dependent on his good nature. The very basis of his attitude towards her was that he and she were indivisible in the matter. She rose about two o'clock, and she had scarcely got out of bed when the Irish nurse, Kate O'Connor, tapped at her door, and having received permission to enter, came in with a conspiratorial air.

"I heard you stirring. He's going on splendidly," said the glinting-eye Kate, clad from head to foot in whitest white. "But he sent me out of the room after we'd had our little talk with Dr. Samson, and the doctor stayed some while afterwards. Then there came another gentleman--French gentleman--and I was sent out again. He told me not to say anything to you, and I promised I wouldn't; but naturally I must tell you."

Lilian thanked her undisturbed, guessing that Felix was at work upon the arrangements for the marriage. In the night he had asked her: "Where were you born? What parish?" And on her inquiring why he wanted to know he had replied casually: "Oh, it's nothing. Just curiosity." But she had not been deceived. She understood him--how he loved to plan and organize their doings by himself, saying naught.

The fact was that he had been asking the doctor about local lawyers, and, having learned what he desired, he had sent for the most suitable _avoue_, and put into his hands all the business of the marriage of two British subjects in a French town. Apparently, as he had foreseen, the chief documents required were the birth certificates of himself and Lilian, and he had telegraphed for these to his own solicitor in London.

Lilian continued to receive no information concerning the progress of the formalities, and she sought for none. She lived in a state of contemplation. Her anxieties, except the vague, wonderful, and semi-mystical anxiety of far-off motherhood had been dissipated. She was uplifted; she had a magnificent sense of responsibility, which gave her a new dignity, gravity and assurance. Kate O'Connor called her "madam," and referred to her as "madam," especially when speaking to Felix. The assumption underlying the behaviour of everybody was that she was Felix's wife. As for the French lawyer, she never even saw him.

Meanwhile Felix's recovery was unexpectedly slow, and he went through several slight relapses. Now and then his voice was suddenly become hoarse and faint, and with the same suddenness it resumed the normal. At length he grew cantankerous. The two women were delighted, telling each other that this crotchetiness was a certain sign of strength. One day he got up and dressed fully and sat at the window for half an hour, returning to bed immediately afterwards. The same evening he convinced Lilian that there was no more need for her to watch through the night.

The next morning when Lilian entered his room the nurse was not there.

"I've sent her off," Felix explained. "I much prefer to have you with me than any nurse on earth." He was dressed before ten-thirty. "Now put your things on," said he.

"What for? I don't want to go out."

"We're going out together. Look what a fine day it is! We're going to be married at eleven o'clock, at the _mairie_. Now hurry up." His voice hardened into a command.

"But--but does Dr. Samson agree to you going out?" she asked, quite over-taxed.

"Samson doesn't know, as it happens; but if he did of course he'd agree."

She might have refused to go. But could she refuse to go and be married--she, the bearer of his child? She perceived that he had been too clever for her, had trapped her, in his determination to regularize her situation at the earliest possible moment. She forced a timid smile and covered him up for the journey.

The lift-boy smiled a welcome to him. The concierge was the very symbol of attentive deference, and in the carriage enveloped Lilian's feet with the rug as though they had been two precious jewels--as they were. The manager himself made a majestic appearance, and shot out congratulations like stars from a Roman candle. And the weather was supremely gorgeous.

At the _mairie_ waited the _avoue_ and his clerk, who were to act as witnesses. The _avoue_ and Felix talked to dirty and splendid officials; Felix and Lilian signed papers.

"Now _you_'ve only got one thing to do," said Felix. "When I nudge you, say, '_Oui, monsieur le maire_.'"

They were inducted into the sanctuary of celebration, and Lilian saw a fat gentleman wearing the French national flag for a waistband. It would have been very comical had it not been so impressive. The ceremony started, Lilian understanding not a word. Felix nudged her. She murmured: "_Oui, monsieur le maire_." ... The ceremony closed. Immediately afterwards Felix handed her a sort of little tract in a yellowish-brown cover.

"You're married now, and if anybody says you aren't, show 'em this."

The _avoue_ was tremendous with bows and smiles. They drove back to the hotel. They were in the bedroom. Lilian took Felix apprehensively by the shoulders.

"Oh, darling. You're sure it hasn't done you any harm?"

"And that's not quite all. There's my will," said he. "Ring the bell."

He spoke to Jacqueline, who after a few minutes brought in an English valet and an English lady's maid. Felix was set upon having his will witnessed by people with English addresses. He silently gave Lilian the will to read. He had written it himself. In three lines it bestowed upon her all that was his. Not a syllable about his sister. Well, that was quite right, because Miss Grig had means of her own. Sitting in the easy chair, with a blotting-pad on his knees, Felix signed the will. Then the valet and the lady's maid signed, with much constraint and flourish. Felix gave them fifty francs apiece, and dismissed them.

"Put that with your marriage certificate," he said to Lilian, folding up the will and offering it to her. "I think I'll get back to bed. Exhausting work, being married!" He laughed shortly. "I'm going to sleep," he said later, after he had eaten and drunk. "You be off downstairs and have your lunch."

But, of course, she could not go downstairs. She dropped into her bed, staggered by the swift evolution of her career. Staggered by it! Lo! She was a typewriting girl wearing wristlets, poor, hopeless, with no prospects. A little while, and lo! she was the wife of a rich and brilliant adorer, and an honest man in whom her trust was absolute. And she was pregnant. Strange fear invaded her mind, the ancient fear that too much happiness is a crime that destiny will punish.

IX

The Widow

"Felix seriously ill; double pneumonia; we are married.--Lilian Grig." Ten words, plus Isabel's address and her own! She wrote the telegram after several trials, in her bedroom, on half a sheet of the hotel notepaper, Kate O'Connor standing by her side, the next morning but one.

"Give it me," said the white nurse. "I'll see to it for you, Mrs. Grig, as I go home."

She looked up at the nurse, and the nurse, eyes no longer laughing, looked down at her. The nurse knew everything, and, moreover, must have assisted at scores of tragedies; yet Lilian regarded her as an innocent who understood nothing essential in life. Her comforting kiss was like the kiss of a very capable child pretending to be grown up.

Voices in the other bedroom! The doctor had arrived and was talking to the second nurse. They went in together. Felix lay a changed man, horribly aged. He was a man who had suddenly learned that in order to live it was necessary to breathe, and that breathing may be an intensely difficult operation of mechanics. His lined, wrinkled face was drawn with the awful anxieties incident to breathing, and with the acute pain in both lungs. The enemy was growing in strength and Felix was losing strength, but he could not surrender. He must continue to struggle, despite the odds, and there was no referee to stop the fight, either on the ground that it had developed into an assassination or on any other ground. The brutality had to proceed. And the sun streamed through the window; and outside, from the promenade where the idlers were strolling and the band was playing, the window looked exactly the same as all the other windows of the enormous hotel.

After an examination, Dr. Samson injected morphia. The result was almost instantaneous. The victim, freed from the anxiety of the pain, could devote the whole of his energy to breathing. He sighed, and smiled as if he had entered paradise. He gave a few short, faint coughs, like the cough of a nervous veiled woman in church, and said in a hoarse, feeble, whispering voice:

"You must understand, doctor, it was all my fault. I insisted, and what could she do?" The two nurses modestly bent their gaze.

"Yes, yes," the doctor concurred.

Felix had already made the same announcement several times.

"But I want everybody to know," he persisted.

"Yes, yes," said the doctor. "I shall give you some oxygen this morning. It will be here in a minute. That will do you a lot of good. You'll see."

Lilian was the calmest person in the room. She had decided that there was no hope, and had braced herself and become matter-of-fact. She was full of health, power, and magnificent youth, and the living seed of Felix was within her. She quietly kissed Felix on his damp cheek; no gold now glistened in his half-empty mouth. She returned to her own bedroom, and Dr. Samson followed.

"He's much worse," she said firmly to the doctor.

"He is not better," said the doctor. "But there is always hope."

She glanced sadly at the soft and mournful face of the middle-aged doctor. Nurse Kate had told her the story of the doctor, who was a widower and solitary and possibly consumptive, and on account of his lungs practised on the Riviera during the winter. The vast tragedy of the world obsessed her; there was no joy nor pleasure in the whole world, and the ceaseless activities of gaiety that wearied the hotel and the Casino and the town and the neighbouring towns seemed to her monstrous, pathetic, and more tragic even than Felix's bed.

For five days she cabled daily to Miss Grig, and got nothing in reply. Felix's strength consistently waned. And neither morphia nor oxygen could help him more than momentarily. Jacqueline, the nurses, the doctor, treated Lilian as a holy madonna. They all exclaimed at her marvellous stedfastness. The manager of the hotel paid a decorous call of inquiry--though it was apparent that he was already familiar with every detail--and he, too, treated Lilian as a holy madonna. Two days later, in the evening, just after Nurse Kate had come on duty, Felix held out his hand for his wife's hand, and, casting off his frightful physical preoccupation, said in a normal voice:

"Everything's in order. Don't be an idle woman, my poor girl."

She dropped on her knees, and throwing her arms on his body, cried:

"Darling, I've killed you!" (The thought that she had brought about his death was her continual companion.) But Felix, utterly absorbed again in the ghastly effort to breathe, had no ears for the wild outburst. In the night he died. He had written a short note to his sister before the great relapse, and since then had not even mentioned her.

X

The Wreath

Dr. Samson sat late with Lilian in her bedroom the next night. It was the middle of the night. He was taller than Felix, and not so old; his face was more flat and milder, but there was something in his expression and about the wrinkles round his eyes that reminded her of Felix, and he had attached himself to her to serve her; his mournful gaze appealed to her. It was he who had made her understand that death in a hotel devoted to gaiety was an indiscretion, a lapse from good taste that must be carefully hidden. He stood faithfully between her and the world, the captive of her beauty, wanting no reward but the satisfaction of having helped her.

Not that much help was needed. The routine of such episodes was apparently fixed. Things moved of themselves. All requirements seemed to be met automatically. There was even an English cemetery in the region. Early on the morning after the death a young woman in black had called to present the card of a great Paris shop with a branch in the town, and by the evening Lilian was dressed in black. The layer-out had arrived earlier yet than the dressmaker. Dr. Samson had interviewed the manager of the hotel. An important part of the routine was that the whole of the furniture of Felix's room should be removed, and the room refurnished at the cost of the representative of the dead. Dr. Samson settled the price. Lilian decided to give the old furniture to the Alexandra Hospital. The doctor had volunteered to finance Lilian till she should be back in London; but afterwards the equivalent of nearly four hundred pounds in French and English money was discovered in Felix's dispatch-case, the inside of which Lilian had never seen. The doctor had also sent off the telegram to the mute Miss Grig: "Felix died in the night; am returning London immediately," and got the railway ticket, and accomplished the legal formalities preliminary to the burial, and warned the English chaplain, and ordered a gravestone in a suitable design and taken Lilian's wishes as to the inscription thereon. Nothing remained to be done but wait. Lilian was quietly packing; the doctor sat watchful to assist. They both heard a noise in the next room; and at the noise Lilian was at last startled from her calm. The moment, then, had come. Dr. Samson went first. The room, which ought to have been in darkness, was lighted, and not by electricity but by two candles, one on either side of the bed.

"Who has done this?" Lilian murmured, and gave a sob.

The door into the corridor was locked; to keep it locked had been part of the unalterable routine. Therefore the candles could only have been brought by somebody on the staff of the hotel. The next instant Jacqueline entered, through the bathroom. She was weeping.

"Pardon me, madam. I couldn't go to bed. I couldn't sleep. And I thought of the candles. It was too much for me. I had to bring them. If I was wrong, pardon me.... _They_ will be here soon." She threw herself down on her knees at the foot of the bed. She had spoken in French. The doctor interpreted.

"Tell her I thank her very much," said Lilian, "and ask her to go to bed. She'll have her work to do to-morrow, poor thing!"

Jacqueline rose. Lilian took her hand and turned away.

"And this came," Jacqueline added, pointing to a package in tissue-paper that lay on a chair. "The night porter has only just brought it up, and as I was coming in with the candles...."

Lilian removed the tissue-paper and saw a magnificent wreath of lilies, far finer than anything in her experience, a wreath for an imperial monarch. In the middle was a white envelope. She opened the envelope; it contained two French bank-notes for five hundred francs each. No signature! Not a word!

"She has got her money," thought Lilian. "How?" And, placing the wreath on Felix's feet, she burst into tears.

Jacqueline had vanished. Suddenly Lilian began to stride to and fro across the room. She was full of youth and force. She was full of fury and resentment. The moving muscles of her splendid, healthy body could be discerned through her black dress. She frightened the doctor.

"Ah!" she cried, with a gesture towards the wreath, "she is the only one that understands that I don't _want_ to be comforted! Nobody else has understood. I expect she just heard that he was dead, and she doesn't know that I killed him; but she understood. _She_ understood." The doctor, quite mystified, seized her arm to soothe her, and was astonished at her strength as she shook him off. She was like a tigress. Nevertheless, she let herself be persuaded to follow him into her own room. There her eye caught the toilet preparations which the courtesan had bestowed on her.

"And she gave me these!" Lilian laughed, hesitated, and added fiercely: "I will take them back with me! I will never use them, but I will keep them for ever and ever!" And she cast them into one of the open trunks. Then she said calmly: "Of course I know it was because of the window of the car being broken, and it would have been all right if the engine hadn't stopped. But it was my silly, silly idea to go out for a drive at night.... I can't help it! I did kill him! He'd have been alive now if I hadn't behaved myself like a perfect child!"

The doctor offered no remark. She resumed all her old tranquillity, wiping her eyes carefully with a fine, tiny handkerchief that Felix had given her. The bearers arrived a quarter of an hour later--discreet, furtive and sinister. The hotel slept in its vastness. All gaiety was asleep. But even if some devoted slave of dissipation had surprised them on their way back, he could not have guessed that it was a coffin they bore. The doctor, by using his professional prestige, kept Lilian in her own room till the bearers were nearly ready to depart with more than they had brought. She went into the mortuary. The coffin was disguised. Picking up the wreath, which had been forgotten or intentionally left, she placed it upon the coffin and beneath the disguise. It lay there alone in its expensive grandeur. The bearers withdrew with their burden, tiptoeing along the dim, silent corridor lest revellers should be disturbed from well-earned, refreshing sleep and open their doors to see what was afoot in the night. The cortege was lost to view round the corner at the end of the corridor. The doctor remained a little while, and he also prepared to go. The two nurses Lilian would never see again.

"You should go to bed now and try to sleep. I'll call for you in good time to-morrow for the funeral."

Lilian shook her head.

"No, I'm going to pack his things now." She stood at the door of his room, and watched the doctor also disappear from view round the corner at the end of the corridor.