Chapter 7

I

London in mid-May, slogging at its pleasures under the pale sun, might read one morning of an affray in Yorkshire, of a magistrate assaulted, or undergardener in arms, and forget it in half-an-hour; but to Sanchia, unaccustomed to cower, some such chance paragraph seemed one spot the more upon her vesture, which contact with the Fulham Road had smirched already. She had never taken cover before--and how could one be in such a place but to hide in it? With contracted brows and bosom oppressed, she watched the drifting millions go by, and her heart sank. Was she become as one of these? Is not to be ashamed to be shameful? And had she not been put to shame? If she was to hold up the head and feel the mouth of the winged steed that she rode, she must stable him elsewhere.

She wished to forget Wanless. Let it be as if it was not, and had never been. But she found that Glyde and his outrageous act made that not possible. They brought her down to London's level--her in her white robe out of stainless air; here she was still, as Glyde had made her there, just a woman for men to quarrel over, or a bone for dogs. Her heart surged hot against Wanless; she could not, if she would, forget it--least of all in the Fulham Road.

She felt spotted in Mrs. Benson's spotless dwelling--largely because it was Mrs. Benson's, partly because a smell of fried herrings drifted in daily from the street. She felt herself the chosen of a servant, one for whom a clown had held battle; and then she found herself resenting the phrases, growing hot over them. A servant--Mrs. Benson, that staunch protectress! A clown--Struan--his thin frame throbbing with fire, and his eyes of a hawk in a cage, farset, communing with invisible things! Why, when he was rapt in his work he never saw her at all. She was a speck at his feet! He had sent her away once. “I'm busy,” he had said, without looking at her; and she had gone away on tiptoe. These things vexed her to remember, and she felt that Mrs. Benson's dwelling could not be hers.

Mrs. Benson, too, it must be owned, had an incumbrance, which she kept as far as might be in the lower regions of her house, but which was now and again encountered on the stair--a shambling son, one Joe, mostly in shirt--sleeves, distilling familiarity and beer from every pore. He was a ne'er-do-well, whom it was his mother's cross and crown to keep in complete idleness. He cast dreadful looks, as of an equal in snugness, a fellow-minion, at the chiselled profile of our goddess, and was not long before he tried for a full-faced effect. Sanchia's eyes of clear amaze should have cut him down, but they did not. His “Morning, Miss,” was daily reminder of a shared clay. Sanchia made herself inaccessible, and Mrs. Benson agonised.

To apologise for her son had been as futile as to make excuses for death; but she tried it. “You'll overlook the partiality of a mother, Miss Percival? What am I to do? It's not that I want him to lap syrup from a spoon--far from that. Idleness leads to impiety, and impiety anywhere, from Tattersal's to the public, we all know. But think of what stings me. I can't abide the thought that here am I, large Mrs. Benson, with money to spare, turning my back upon my fatherless child. Yet nothing short of that will do it.” Sanchia readily excused her; and then she turned her own back upon the Fulham Road. Pimlico found her a lodging, at the gates of whose dingy mysteries were parks, Westminster, the sky and the river, eternal things, making for tranquillity.

It had been her first impulse, the moment she reached London, to go to her father, with whom alone she had corresponded during her years of exile. There was Vicky Sinclair, to be sure, her sister next in age; but Vicky was married to a man she knew nothing of, and she found herself shy. Fought for! Blared across London in a paragraph--championed by a clown! How was she to meet a Captain Sinclair? Her father, surely, was different. She never doubted his love, nor that he would take her to his heart if she asked to go there. But could she? It would have to be done by stealth; she must go to the city, to his office--for her mother ruled in Great Cumberland Place, and she could not go there. She hated secrets, and couldn't pose as a culprit; so she delayed and delayed. It was a comfort to her to know that he was at hand: meantime, she sought about for scope to spread her wings.

For a fortnight she drank of the gales of liberty, filled her bosom with beauty, and let art smooth out her brows. She listened to music, looked at pictures, renewed her reader's ticket, and spent whole days browsing under the Bloomsbury dome. Climbing the heights, she planned out schemes of work, felt her critical faculties renewed, studied men and women, and found her old pleasure in quiet chuckling over their shifts. But she had to chuckle alone, for she never spoke to a soul. For a fortnight or so all went well--and then, quite suddenly, without any warning, going, as it were, to the fountain for water, she found there was no bottom to her cruse. She went to bed sanguine, she awoke morose. She saw the day with jaundiced eyes, scorned herself, cried “Liver!” and took medicine. She was glued to her books all day, returned late to her lodging, and found herself in tears. She discovered a tenderness, a yearning; she lay awake dreaming of her childhood, of her girlhood, of Vicky, of her father's knee, of Senhouse, her dear, preposterous friend, whose grey eyes quizzed while they loved her. Golden days with him--golden nights when she dreamed over his eager, profuse, interminable letters! All these sweet, seemly things were dead! Ah, no, not that, else must she die. She cried softly, and stretched out her arms in the dark to the gentle ghosts that peopled it. Then, being practical in grain, she jumped up, lit candles, and wrote deliberately to each of her sisters--finally, after much biting of the pen, to her father. Before her mood could cool she dressed hastily, slipped out, and posted her letters. Coming back to bed, she paused in the act to enter it--one knee upon it. Wide-eyed she wondered why she had not written to Senhouse. To him, of all people in the world, first of all! And his answer--a certainty. Hot came the reply to her question, and smote her in the face. Never to him again--never. There are certain things no woman can bring herself to do. The more she has need of a man the less possible is it to tell him so. She sighed as she got into her bed, and her eyes were very kind.

Of the five fair daughters of Thomas Welbore Percival, East India Merchant in The Poultry, Philippa, the eldest, the trenchant and clear-sighted, lived in Bryanston Square, mother of three children. Her husband, Mr. Tompsett-King, was a solicitor, but he was much more than that, An elderly, quiet gentleman, who talked in a whisper, and seemed to walk in one too, he presided over more than one learned Society, and spoke at Congresses on non-controversial topics. A sound churchman, he deplored Romish advance on the one hand and easy divorce on the other. The salvation of human society lay, he held, within these limits. Distrust the emotions; submit all things to reason-love of God and love of women. On these terms he prospered like his father before him. It all seemed very simple to him. The handsome Philippa respected him, obeyed him particularly, and never differed from him in opinion. But she coloured every compliance with his decrees with an idiosyncrasy so marked as to make them seem her own. Where he held that Rome pandered to the emotions, she laughed it to scorn as a forcing--house of spiritual foppery; where he saw in divorce a treason to the law of contract, she said that it tempted women to fall. Is it not easy enough to sin? Must we legalise it? Why put a tax upon marriage? Mr. Tompsett-King deprecated all dottings of iotas; when Philippa stormed at society he hummed a sad little tune. Before he left for Bedford Row he patted her shoulder and said, “Gently does it.” Some such scene must ensue upon the prodigal's letter.

Hawise, Lady Pinwell, next in age to Philippa, lived in the country. Her husband was a baronet, and a handsome blond. A pretty, apple-cheeked, round-eyed girl, very much of a kitten, she was now grown plump, sleek, rather slow to move, and many times a mother. She deferred to her husband in all things, and by his wish received her parents on a formal visit once a year. She saw very little of her sisters, and as for Sanchia--the thing was not to be heard of, not even mentioned to Sir George. As, in fact, she burned the child's letter before she left her bedroom, she does not come into the tale at all.

But the pensive Melusine, three years younger than Philippa, seven older than Sanchia, may be reckoned with. She was also married, to a Mr. Gerald Scales, the son of a baronet. He was not, however, to inherit the title, for he had a brother, Sir Matthew, and frequent nephews. But his means were ample for his rank and discreet amusements, and went further and did more for him than prolific Sir Matthew's; for Melusine gave him no sons. His circle of being, in and through which trailed with charming languor his wife, was of more dappled sheen and of ampler circumference than that of Bryanston Square. Having its centre in Kensington Gore, it reached to Ranelagh on one side, to Maidenhead on the other. There was a riverside villa down there, where Mrs. Scales gave parties in the summertime and was punted about by flushed gentlemen in pink shirts. She was the tallest of the five sisters, and the most graceful; near-sighted enough for lorgnettes, an elegant young woman. She had an instinct for attitudes, turns of the head, which were useful in _tete-a-tete_ conversations. Mentally, she was not strong, and perhaps her manner was too elaborate: she draped herself when she sat down as if her skirts were window-curtains. Toy Pomeranians were a hobby of hers, and the early Florentine masters. She could read off the names of the saints in a sacred conversation as easily as you or I a row of actresses in a photograph shop. Mrs. Jameson's books were at her fingers' ends. Her mother favoured her more than any of her children, and was often at her house on visits. Gerald Scales called her the Dowager, and pleased her vastly. He himself was Tubby to his friends.

Vicky, a year older than Sanchia, had married a Captain Sinclair, who was stationed at Aldershot. She had been the romp of former days and, when the storm had burst, hotly on the culprit's side. But Vicky had been flighty, and marriage changes one. Sanchia's eyes grew wistful as she sat, her letters on the wing, and thought of Vicky.

Her first response was from Melusine, in a telegram from Taplow which read, “Darling, alas!” and no more. Her comment was shrewd: “Mamma is there”--and she was right. Then came her father's letter, to pluck at her heart-strings. He invited her to the Poultry at “any hour of the day--and the sooner the better;” but was clear that she could not visit Great Cumberland Place without writing to Mamma. “Doing the civil” was his jocular way of putting it--one of Papa's little ways when he meant more. She knew that he was right, and postponed the fond man and his injunction. His love might be taken for granted by a favourite child. Just now it was her sisters' judgment she craved.

Philippa wrote with her accustomed steel. It might have been a bayonet: yet she meant to be kind.

BRYANSTON SQUARE, _Thursday._

My Dear Sanchia,--I may as well say at once that I am not surprised to hear from you; in fact, I have been expecting some such letter as yours ever since I read in the _Times_ of Claire Ingram's death. Poor unhappy woman, it was time! Some of the Pierpoints (the Godfrey P's) are intimate friends of ours: we dined there last week; no party--just ourselves--and heard all about it. I learned that Mr. Ingram had gone abroad, but imagine that he will be in London before the end of the season. Have you written to Mamma? If not, _pray do so_. I assure you that it will be taken as it is meant. Nothing but good can come of it. Of that I am sure.

Now, as to your proposals. I think I will ask you to come to me _here_. I am very busy, with calls a thousand ways. I really have no afternoons free for as far forward as I can see--except Sundays, which I devote entirely to Tertius and religion. No woman ought to separate the two--love of God, love of husband in God. Sooner or later, all women learn it. Then the mornings are naturally occupied with the house and the children. They have Miss Meadows; but she is young and absurdly inconsequent. I don't see how you can expect a girl in her teens to work miracles. In fact, I don't want her to, and am at hand to see that she doesn't.

I have spoken to Tertius, and you must forgive me for saying that we both think, under the circumstances, it would look, and be, better in every way if you came here, in the first instance. Without discussing what is done, and (I pray) done with, you will see, I think, that for me _to seek you out_ would be, to say the least of it, unusual. You left our father's house for reasons of your own; I had left it to be married to Tertius. Forgiveness, if you wish it from me, is yours: countenance of the step you took--never. You will not ask it. So come here any morning that suits you, and I shall be pleased. You will find me ready to do everything I can, to put you on your proper footing in the sphere to which you were born.--Believe me, my dear Sanchia, your affectionate sister, PHILIPPA TOMPSETT-KING.

_P. S._--The Church's arms are very wide. One cannot be too thankful, as things have turned out, that Claire Ingram never sued for divorce. God is most merciful.

There was some knitting of brows over this, and some chuckling. Comedy is the Art of the Chuckle; but it is very seldom that one of the persons in the play can practise that which delights us. Sanchia was such a person. She could detach herself from herself, see her own floutings and thwackings, and be amused. At the same time her reply to Philippa was curt.

“You,” she wrote, “are busy, and I am not. I will come to you one of these fine mornings, and must trust to Miss Meadows' sense of fitness not to work miracles that day.”

A day or two later came a telegram from Vicky Sinclair. “Just got your letter. Coming at twelve. Vicky.” Sanchia glowed. “Just like her, the darling.” Philippa's astringent proposal was put aside.

At twelve thirty-five there lit from a hansom an eager and pretty little lady, all in gauzy tissues and lace scarf, who knocked at the door like a postman and flew up the stair into Sanchia's arms. “Oh, Sancie, Sancie, how sweet of you to write! Now we are all going to be happy again forever after. Oh, and here's Cuthbert--I forgot.” In the doorway stood the erect form, and smiled the bronzed face of Captain Sinclair of the Greys. His “How d'ye do, Miss Sanchia!” was accompanied by a look of such curious enquiry that Sanchia gave him two fingers, said, “Quite well, thank you,” and no more. Much more had been expected, and the Captain was somewhat taken aback. He had been ready to welcome the prodigal and admire her too. What's more, he had already very much admired her. To have one's generous motions damped by a coolness of that sort is sickening. But there it was: what could one say? what could one do? He went to the window and stood there, whistling in a whisper until his wife dismissed him. To the Cavalry Club stalked he, working himself into virtuous heat. There, at luncheon with a friend, he expatiated, which was unwise and unmannerly at once. But his own wrongs swallowed up his wife's rights.

“I'll be damned, Jack,” he took up his parable, “I'll be damned if ever I do a woman a good turn any more. Never, never again. Gel I know--relative of mine she is, by marriage--goes a purler with a chap. Knew something of the chap too--so did you, I expect. Not a bad chap, by any means, barring this sort of thing. Well, now she's in town--all over--settled down, y'know. Writes to my wife. Well, I thought it was no good bein' stiff in these things. Against the spirit of the age--what? So I said we'd do the handsome thing and go up. We both wanted a spell of easy--so it was handy. Besides, I wanted to see the gel. I own to that. And there's no doubt she's a clinker; quiet, you know, and steady; looks right at you, far in; sees the lot at a glance. Palish gel, not too big; but well set up. Square shoulders--deep-chested gel. That sort.” He stared at the table-cloth hard.

“I was taken by her, mightily taken. So when she and my wife had done kissin', I put in my little oar. 'How d'ye do, Miss--' I won't mention names, though upon my dick I don't know why I should be squeamish. But there it was; and I'd have kissed her, as you do kiss your wife's--well, cousin, let's say--if you want to. Bless you, not a bit of it. Proud as pepper. Gives me a finger. 'Quite well,' says she. 'Quite well, thank you--' and drops me. Drops _me_! Good Lord!”

He drank deeply of beer. “Well now, I tell you, that's the last time, absolutely the last time I do the civil thing to--well, to that sort, if she's my wife's grandmother.” He stared out of window, mist over his blue eyes. “They're all for marrying her now. It seems it can be done. Chap's to be screwed up. Then she'll be patronising me, you'll see. Because I was decently civil--that was as far as I was prepared to go; bare civility--and two fingers for it--'Quite well, thank you!' Oh, damn it. Waiter--more beer.”

II

Vicky was enchanting; for half-an-hour Sanchia was at the top of bliss. To be petted and diminutived by a butterfly--it was like that; for though the child was a year older than she, six years of marriage had made a baby of her. Her audacities of old had become artless prattle, her sallies were skips in the air. Yet to be purred over by a kitten was pure joy. “You darling!' You darling little Sancie! You beautiful, pale, Madame-de-Watte-ville kind of person! Oh, my treasure--and I thought I should never see you again!” So she cooed while she cuddled, Sanchia, for her part, saying little, but kissing much. Her lips were famished; but Vicky's must be free for moments if her words were to be intelligible. During such times she stroked or patted the prodigal, and let her browse on her cheeks.

By-and-by, raptures subsiding, the pair settled down for talk, and the discrepancies which eight years had made began to show up, like rocks and boulders in a strand left bare by the ebb. Grotesque the shapes of some of them, comical others; but wrecks and dead things come to light at low water--spectral matter, squalid, rueful matter. And there are chasms set yawning, too, which you cannot bridge. Sanchia was to be lacerated.

No doubt it was laughable at first, as _naivete_ is. “Cuthbert was very funny about it”--for instance. “He was awfully anxious to see you, you know--you had never met, I think?--and yet not quite liking it. He said it was a great risk; he seemed to think I ought not to be there. He takes great care of me, the darling. And there was little Dickie, you see. Sancie! he can just walk--a kind of totter from my knees to Cuthbert's--and then so proud of himself! Cuthbert said that my duty was to Dickie; but I told him that I meant to come.”

Yes, it was comical. “Did Captain Sinclair think I should give him a complaint?” Sanchia was smiling, with eyes and mouth; but the smile was fixed.

Vicky hugged her. “You dear one! prettiness is your complaint. I should like him to have some of that.” She held her at arms' length, looked and glowed, and kissed. She took a serious tone, for the matter was serious. “You know, Sancie, you're the only beauty in our family, the only real beauty. Philippa's awfully handsome, I know, and greatly admired--and I've always said that Melot was _lovely_. There are those three sorts of women, you know. Philippa's handsome, Melot's lovely, and you're beautiful. Then there's prettiness. I know I'm rather pretty: everybody says so. Besides, there's Cuthbert. Oh, you can always tell! For one thing--he's so fussy about my clothes--you've no idea.” She preened herself, like a pigeon in the sun, before she returned to her praises. “But you! You're quite different. You're like a goddess.” She touched her curiously. “Yes, I thought so. Exactly like a goddess.” She sighed. “I can't think how you do it. Swedish exercises? I know it's wonderful what they do for you--_in no time_. But you have to think about them all the while, and I think of Cuthbert--and Dickie--and the horses--and, oh, all sorts of things! Those sort, I mean,--nice things.” She pondered Sanchia's godhead, shaking her pretty draperies out, then recalled herself. “Oh, yes, about coming here. Of course I knew that Mamma would make a fuss--but I had determined long ago, before I dreamed that it would ever happen, not to tell _her_ a word. It was only Cuthbert who made me feel--well, _serious_. He is so wise, such a man of the world! But I told him that I meant to come whatever he could say--and afterwards it turned out that he wanted to come too. He was really quite keen. Wasn't that sweet of him? You would adore Cuthbert if you knew him as well as I do. But, of course, that's absurd.” She suddenly became intense. “Sancie!” she said, then stopped and peered.

“Yes?” It was a sobered goddess who waited for close quarters. Vicky put her question, but peered no more.

“I wish you would tell me one thing, which--has always puzzled me. But don't, if you would rather not. How did you--I simply can't understand it--how did you ever--? I suppose you loved him very much?”

Sanchia was in a hard stare. “Yes,” she said slowly, “I suppose I did.” Vicky's head darted back.

“Ah! But now you don't a bit. I knew you didn't! Sancie, that's what I can't understand. Because, you know, when you're married you do. You always love the same person. You must--you can't help it. He's so natural; he knows things that you know. He knows--everything. Oh, Sancie, I can't talk about it, but you understand, don't you?”

Poor Sancie nodded, not able to look up. Alas for her secrets, offered, taken, and forgotten! But Vicky's vivacious fingers groped in her empty cupboard. “And then, as well as that, you _ought_ to love him. You see, you've promised; it's all been made so sacred. You never forget it--the clergyman, and the altar, and the hymns. You're all in white--veiled. And you kneel there--before the altar--and he holds your hand. And the ring, oh, Sancie, the feeling of the ring!” She opened her little hand and looked down at the smoothed gold, coiled below the diamonds and pearls. “You never forget the first feel of that. It means--everything!” She blushed, and said, in a hushed sort of way, “It meant--Dickie, to me.”

Sanchia drooped and bled. Vicky, deep in her holy joys, was remorseless. Even when she turned once more to her sister's affairs her consolation made wounds.

“Cuthbert said that it would come all right now--now that Mrs. Ingram-the wife--was--That's rather horrible. Even you must feel that. Instead of being sorry that his wife is dead, one has to be awfully glad. I suppose you felt that at once; and of course _he_ did. Poor woman! I wonder if she was buried in her ring.” She eyed her own. “No one would dare take it off. I made Cuthbert promise me this morning. But--of course people do marry again, and it will be practically the same as that.” She reflected. “Yes, practically, it will, but--oh, it's very extraordinary! You've had all your fun of engagement and all that, long ago.” She looked down deeply at her hand; and then she gazed at her sister. “And, oh, Sancie, you've had your honeymoon!” Before the deadly simplicity of that last stroke Sanchia fell, and lay quivering. She could not ask for mercy, she could explain, extenuate, nothing. Huddled she lay. At this aching moment the one thing that the world held worth her having seemed to be the approbation of this butterfly child. For Vicky's happiness was specific. Nuptial bliss lay, as it were, crystallised within it. There are moments in one's life when love itself seems lust, and safety the only holy thing. Vicky, tearing at her heart, had turned her head.

Vicky once gone, with promise of frequent intercourse by letter and otherwise, it was to Philippa's fine house and respectable man-servant she next surrendered herself. The meeting was cool, but not intolerable to a goddess sore from Vicky's whip. Philippa could ply a longer lash, but not by the same right, nor with the same passion to drive it home. Sanchia's eyes met hers upon the level; and if the elder had a firmly modelled chin, so had the younger sister. Her strength, too, lay, as it always had, in saying little, whereas Philippa's _forte_ was dialogue. But it needs two for that. After the first greeting there came a pause, in which the embarrassment, upon the whole, was Mrs. Tompsett-King's.

The trenchant lady had had her sailing orders, and was going to follow them. Mr. Tompsett-King had told her that Sanchia must be led, not driven, into Ingram's arms. “Assume the best of her, my dear friend,” he had said, “if you wish to get the best out of her. Take right intentions for granted. It is very seldom that a woman can resist that kind of flattery. So far as I can read your sister's mind, she has suffered from your mother's abrupt methods. I beg of you not to repeat them. Nothing but mischief could come of it.” When Mr. Tompsett-King called her his dear friend, she knew that he was serious.

But Sanchia's mood had not been reckoned with: Philippa was not Vicky. In the old days, in a wonderfully harmonious household, there had been a latent rivalry between her and all her juniors. The greatest trouble had been with Sanchia, the deliberate. And so it was now that when the elder warmed to her task of making bad best, she was suddenly chilled by that old pondering and weighing which had always offended her. Sanchia replied to her assumptions and suppositions by saying simply that she didn't know where Mr. Ingram was, and that he was no better informed of her than she of him. But surely--Philippa raised her brows--but surely she knew when he was coming to London? Sanchia's head-shake shocked her. There was but one conclusion to be drawn from it.

“There's been a quarrel,” then said she.

“No,” Sanchia answered--as if thinking it out--“no, I shouldn't say that. I should say, a difference of opinion.”

“My dear,” said Philippa--and the phrase with her was one of reproof--“on essentials there can have been none. He will wait a year, of course. Under the circumstances, a full year. But--”

Sanchia had replied, “I don't know what he means to do. I have left Wanless.”

“Oh, of course, of course. But--I was going to say--I fully expect that he has written to Mamma.” Sanchia's eyebrows and her, “I should think that unlikely. Why should he write to Mamma?” frightened Philippa, while to Mr. Tompsett-King's mind they were clear gain. It was necessary, after it, to get on to surer ground. The interview terminated by an understanding that Sanchia should write to her mother.

Philippa took her husband to dine in Great Cumberland Place that night; and there, he with Mr. Percival, she with the lady, obtained the terms of a settlement. Sanchia was to be allowed a hundred a year--for the present. (Mr. Percival intended privately to make it two.) Everything was to be assumed in her favour; but she was not to be asked to meet company. Neither Mrs. Percival nor Philippa could be brought to that, and Mr. Percival, so far as he was concerned, had no desire for any sort of company but hers. He was one of those men made rosy-gilled for happiness. Good fellowship, the domestic affections--if they were not there, they must appear to be. His friends of the city were always on his lips--Old Tom Peters--Old Jack Summers--Old Bob--Old Dick. Good fellows every one. All the pet names in the family had been his. To him belonged Pippa and Sancie, Melot and Vicky. “My girls,” or “My rascals,” he used to call them to Tom Peters or Jack Summers, and bring them home jerky little tin pedestrians from the city, or emus pulling little carts; or (later on) bowls of goldfish or violet nosegays from Covent Garden. If he had a nearer passion, it was to stand well with all the world. That's two passions, however, to his score; and the struggle between them, in Sanchia's case, had taken him as near tragedy as the easy man could go. Heaven be praised, the good times were come again. Now he was all for the return of the prodigal, without conditions--“and no questions asked,” as he put it.

But in this he could not get his dear desire. Philippa's sense of justice was inflamed, as well as her moral sense. What! you eat a cake, and then, instead of sitting down to your plain bread and butter--away you flounce, and get ready to eat another cake! That's dead against the proverb, that's monstrous, that's offensive. “Mamma, mamma,” Philippa had protested, “you can never have her back to flourish her sin in all our faces.”

“Thank you, Philippa, for reminding me, however gratuitously, of my duties to society,” had been Mrs. Percival's acknowledgment. She liked sin as little as Philippa, but she liked being lectured a great deal less. Poor Mr. Percival had pulled his whiskers throughout the debate, and now sighed as he bit them. His girl was to be denied him--but he could give her two hundred a year, and go to see her often. That was comfort.

And then the meeting took place. First with Mamma, who had never liked her, and was now a little afraid of what she might do. For Philippa had made it quite plain that if Sanchia was not humoured, she would have nothing to say to Ingram. “She's exhausted her criminal passion--that's what it comes to,” was Philippa's judgment. “Now she will have to be cajoled.” So Mrs. Percival was cowed into civility.

The pair conversed, rather painfully, for perhaps an hour. They had tea. All the effort to talk was made by Sanchia, who broached the children--Philippa's three, Vicky's one--and got nothing but perfunctory enthusiasm in reply. Mrs. Percival was far too sincerely interested in herself to care for children. The sons-in-law proved a better subject. Here she could point a moral inwards. She extolled them highly--never was woman so blessed in her daughters' husbands. Mr. Tompsett-King--“Tertius, the soul of honour: the most delicate-minded man I have ever known. And sensitive to a fault! I assure you--” Captain Sinclair was “our gallant Cuthbert,” or “my soldier son.” “Sweet little Vicky's knight! chivalry lives again in him. It has been the greatest blessing in my days of trouble to be sure of the ideal happiness of those two young lives. Ah! one does have one's consolations.”

Such eulogium seemed to leave little to be said for Melusine and her prize; and yet it was certain that Mrs. Percival favoured Gerald Scales above the others. A lift of the voice was observable--“Gerald, who, naturally, is quite at home at Marlborough House...” “Gerald, with that charming old-world courtesy of his...” “Dear Lady Scales told me that of her two sons, Gerald should have been the baronet. Poor Sir Matthew suffers from hay-fever to that extent.... But Gerald is a splendid young man. Darling Melot is, I need not tell you, fully appreciated at Winkley.” This was the seat of Sir Matthew, in Essex.

Sanchia, for her part, having regained the throne of her serenity--from which Vicky had toppled her of late--by means of Philippa, was able to contemplate this singular parent of hers with the interest due to a curious object, and some internal amusement. She was too far removed from her to be moved, too much estranged to be hurt. She wondered at herself for feeling so little of what, in the days of babyhood, she had firmly held to be the devout opinion. She found that, from a child, she had always judged her mother, and was sure now that her mother knew it. She remembered how hopeless she had always known it to be, to explain any attitude of mind she may have exhibited and been blamed for. So now, though it was abundantly clear to her what was hoped of her, and though she could see perfectly well that the chance of her doing it was so risky that she must be handled like a heavy fish on a light line, she made no effort whatever to show why what was to be hoped for was absurdly impossible. She watched her mother sail about it and about in ever narrowing circles, heard herself commended for her promptitude in leaving Wanless, answered enquiries as to Ingram's behaviour under what Mrs. Percival otiosely called “his bereavement,” echoed speculations at to his whereabouts--played, in short, vacantly an empty part, and kept her mother upon tenterhooks. She gained civil entreaty this way.

But her father's bustling entry changed all this. She had not known of herself how susceptible she still was. Vicky had made her cower; but her father made her cry.

He affected a bluff ease in his manner of greeting her. “Well, Sancie, well, my dear, well, well”--and then he cleared his throat; but he did not dare to look at her. Sancie answered him by jumping into his arms, and upset him altogether. “Oh, my girl, my girl--my little Sancie--” and then the pair of them mingled tears, while Mrs. Percival, who thought this exhibition out of place “under the circumstances,” and not in the best possible taste, tapped her foot on the carpet, and wished that Philippa had been here.

But, once they were beyond a certain flood mark, as she know by long acquaintance, Mr. Percival's emotions must be given play. She retired, therefore, and left the clinging pair. Directly she was gone, the good gentleman's embrace of his child grew straighter, and his kisses of her brows and hair more ardent. He humbled himself before her, thanked her for coming back to him. “My darling, it was fine of you to come! 'Pon my soul, it was fine!”

“No, darling, no,” she protested, smiling sadly at his fondness.

“I always loved you, my child! My Sancie--you know that of your old father, hey?” He pinched her cheek before he kissed it again. “'Pon my life, it cut me down like a frost to do--what was done.”

“I know, I know,” Sanchia murmured, and then begged him not to speak of it.

“Ah, but I must, you know,” he vowed. “What! A damned unnatural father!...” And then he held her closely, while he whispered his anxiety. “Sancie--tell me, my lamb--put my mind at rest. He--that fellow--that Ingram--he was good to you, hey? He didn't--hey?”

She vowed in her turn. “Oh, yes, dearest, yes. Of course he was. I was very happy, except for--what couldn't be helped, you know.”

“Yes, yes--it couldn't be helped. I know that you felt that. I was bound--for the others, don't you see?--sake of example. That sort of thing, don't you see?” He shook his head. “We can't have that, you know. It don't do--in the long run. Very irregular, hey? And your mother, you know--she takes these things to heart. Goes too far, _I_ say. Sometimes goes a little to extremes, you know.” He grew quite scared as he recalled the scene. “I shall never forget”--shuddering, he clasped her close. “My darling girl, let's be happy again! It shall be right as--well, as rain, you know--now. We'll have you with a child on your knee in no time,--hey?” He seemed to think that marriage alone could work this boon. Again--as before with Vicky--Sanchia had not the heart to gainsay him. She allowed him to speculate as he would; and her mother, returning, found the pair, one on the other's knee, with the future cut and dried.

But Sanchia rose at her entry.

“Dearest, I must go now,” she told him, “but I'll see you again very soon.”

He urged her to stay and dine. “We're quite alone, you know! No ceremony with our child, hey!”

But she smilingly refused. “No, darling, I won't stop now. I'll come again--” her mother's stretched lips, stomaching what she could not sanction, stood, as it were, before the home doors.

He looked wistfully at her--aware, he too, of the sentries at the gate. “You might--we are pretty lonely here, we old people--I should have said you might come back--there's your old room, you know--eating its head off, hey?”

Sanchia kissed him. “Darling--we'll see. We'll talk about it soon. But I must go now--to my books. I'm working very hard, at my Italian. I've forgotten--lots.”

He had to let her go--but, manlike, he must relieve himself in a man's way. He drew her into his study, bade her “see what she should see.” He went to his desk and sat to his cheque-book. He returned with the slip wet in his hand. “There, my child, there. That will keep the wolf from the door, I hope. For a day or two, you know.” She read, “Miss Sanchia Percival--two hundred pounds sterling.” It brought the tears to her eyes again. It was so exactly like him.

“You darling--how ridiculous of you--but how sweet!”

He glowed under her praises. “Plenty more where that came from, Sancie,”--then piously added, “Thank God, of course.”

Sanchia, in the hall, turned to her mother. “Good-bye, mother,” she said, and held her hand out. Her mother took it, drew her in, and kissed her forehead. “Good-bye, my child”; she could not, for her life, be more cordial than that. The offence itself seemed a pinprick beside the rankle of the wound to her pride. This child had set up for herself, and was now returned--without extenuation, without plea for mercy. Mrs. Percival was one of those people who cannot be happy unless their right to rule be unquestioned. Had the girl humbled herself to the dust, grovelled at her feet, she would have taken her to her breast. But Sanchia stood upright, and Mrs. Percival felt the frost gripe at her heart. It must be so.

Her father went with her to the door--his arm about her waist. “Come soon,” he pleaded, and when she promised, whispered in her ear--“Come to The Poultry, if you'd rather: I'm always there--as you know. Come, and we'll lunch together. You'll be like a nosegay in the dusty old place.”

“Yes, yes, I shall come--often,” she told him, and nestled to his side. Then she put up her cheek for his kiss. “Good-night, Papa dear,” He wept over her, and let her go. Then he returned to his hearth and his wife. In his now exalted mood he was really master of both, and Mrs. Percival knew it. “You gave her the money, I suppose?” she said; and he, “Yes, my dear, I gave her two hundred pounds.” He had doubled the sum agreed, but Mrs. Percival let it pass.

III

Upon this footing her affairs now stood; she was to be one of the family, with two hundred pounds a year to her credit, the run of her teeth in the house, and (by a secret arrangement) as often in her father's company as she could find time to be. Meantime, by her own deliberate choice, she maintained her lodging in Pimlico, and read at the Museum most days of the week. She prepared herself to be happy, and under a buoyant impulse, due to the softening of her affections, wrote to her friend Mr. Chevenix, and asked him to come to see her. That he briskly did.

She received him cordially. It was good to see the cheerful youth again, and to be able to rejoice in the man of the world he affected to be. A man of the world--throned, at it were, upon the brows of a suckling.

Wisdom was justified of her child. “So you cut it? Thought you would. Wanless Hall is all very well in its little way--when the rainbows are jumping, what? D'you remember that fish? And old Devereux--_Salmo deverox_? My certy, what a lady! But Nevile--” he shook his head. “No, no. Some devil had entered into him: he was a gloomy kind of tyrant. I don't know, by the way, what's happened to him. Travelling, or something, I fancy. He was always a rolling stone, as you know. But he'll come round, you'll see. Oh, Lord, yes. He'll sulk out his devil--and be the first to apologise. Well--never mind old Nevile. You'll see, one of these days. Now, I say, what are you doing with yourself up here? Any good?”

She named her Italian studies, and made him open his eyes.

“Italian? _Tante grazie_, and all that! But that don't take you very far, you know. Your teeth will crack a tougher nut. Now, I'll tell you what you do. You come and see my old Aunt Wenman--”

She was highly amused. “Why should I see your old Aunt Wenman? Does she know Italian?”

“Italian! God bless you, if she knows English, it's as much as she does. Learnt the Catechism once, I s'pose. She's a good old sort--Lady Maria Wenman, widow of my old Uncle Charles, and my mother's sister at that. She'll take to you--she'll take to you.”

“I don't see--” said Sanchia, puzzled. The youth explained.

“Well, you see--you'll forgive me, I know--it's _tone_ you want just now. She'll give you that. She's something to pull against. You get your back up against her, and hang on. That's the ticket. She's a good soul, is Aunt Maria--lots of tone--gives parties to all and sundry. You meet some rare fish in those waters--Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics. They'll amuse you--give you bones to pick. I don't get on with 'em myself--too simple, I am, you know. They talk their politics, or domestic afflictions, and I feel so delicate I don't know what to do. There was one chap I remember--Golowicz his name was--big, red-whiskered, conspiracy chap ... told me all about his mother--tears running down his cheeks. I didn't know her from Adam, you know, but still--Oh, you'll like Aunt Wenman. She'll want you to live with her, and you might do much worse.” Sanchia listened, smiled, and pondered. It was not her way to be disposed of so simply.

What was impressive to her about this conversation was the real reticence underlying the chatter of her friend. She could feel his conviction of her want of tone; she was convinced of it herself. Her purpose in life seemed gone. Once it had been love, next it had been the ordering of affairs. The second had been so absorbing that she had not missed the first; indeed, she had believed it there until the very end, when she had called it up, and had no answer. But now--what aim had she, in this lonely, empty life she was leading, whose hours were so many that she had to fill them up with Italian got out of books? Without knowing it, it was life she wanted, not books. She with her brains, vitality, beauty, and charm had been growing in these graces unawares, flowering in secret at Wanless under her aprons, behind her account-books and garden gloves. Now that all these swaddling bands were stripped off her, behold her, armed at all points for the lists. So Chevenix had beheld her, it seems. Let her see the world, approve her mettle, run her career. Chevenix, watching her, judged in those pondering eyes, in that half-smile which had charmed him before, a kind of quivering expectancy new to her. He judged her tempted, and renewed his suggestions on a later day.

“What you want,” he then told her, “is to try a fall or two with the world. You've been too snug, you know--too long under glass. You left the school-room to go to Wanless--and where were you there? Under cover. You want the sun, the wind, and the rain; you want to know what these things feel like--and how the rest of us take 'em. And you want to be seen, if you let me say that. We all like being looked at, I believe. I know that I do, when I'm quite sure about my hat. Now you won't get much of that in a Warwick Street two-pair front, let me tell you--no, nor in your B 17, or whatever your seat is, at the Museum. You're a star--you're to shine. Well, give 'em a turn in Charles Street. I'll fix it up for you. I wish you'd think it over.”

She gave him grateful looks, but said little. Nevertheless, he went away encouraged. A week or so later she found a card upon her table: that of a Mrs. John Chevenix.

“That's my sister-in-law,” the friendly youth presently told her. “That's Mrs. John. You go and see her. She's a good sort of woman. You'll meet Aunt Wenman there. I thought it all out, and that's the way to get at it. She'll jump at you, in my opinion. She loves orphans. Collects 'em. You go!”

She was due in the city on a visit to her father, was, in fact, dressed for it in her best white frock, roses in her hat. She promised to think of it--and of course would return Mrs. John's call. The amiable Chevenix accompanied her as far eastward as it was possible for him to go. He went, indeed, farther, and in full view of Saint Paul's decided upon a visit to that sanctuary. You never know your luck, he said. He might meet Senhouse there. He had been hunting the recessed philosopher high and low.

“Great sport if we met him now--you, who look like lunching at the Savoy or somewhere, and he like a fakir! What should you do? Fall in his arms?” Sanchia had mist over the eyes.

“I believe I should,” she admitted. “I should love to see him again.”

“He'll turn up at Aunt Wenman's, I'll bet you,” Chevenix felt sure. “She rakes 'em in--all sorts. Do you think about her, now, there's a dear. You won't be able to stick it at home, you know.”

“I am sure that I shan't go home,” Sanchia said. “And I _am_ thinking about your aunt.”

“Right,” cried Chevenix, and briskly mounted the steps of the cathedral.

Mr. Percival had provided a tea for her which had the appearance of a banquet. The table seemed sunk in flowers; a great urn held the tea. There were buns in pyramids, snow-mantled cakes, apricot jam, strawberries, clotted cream. Nothing was too good for his beloved, as he cried aloud when he saw her, fresh and glowing in her lace frock and flower-wreathed hat.

“My girl--and upon my soul, a picture!”

She blushed at his praises, and came within kissing distance. “You make a school-treat of me, dearest. You mustn't be wicked with your money, or I shan't come any more to see you. I won't be spoiled.”

“No, my dear, no--and you can't be,” he assured her. “Good Lord, my child, you're the only one I've got left. All my birds flown but you! And I had five of the sweetest, sauciest, happiest girls in England once upon a time.... Now, come you and pour out a cup of tea for your foolish old father. We're snug here--hey? Better than Great Cumberland--hey? You monkey!” He pinched her ear--and felt that they shared a secret.

She caught his happiness, and bathed in his praises, feeling as it were the sun upon her cheeks. How she loved to be loved! How she loved to be praised for her good looks! The world had grown suddenly kind again; the world was good. There, ahead of her, stood Mrs. John Chevenix and a friendly Lady Maria, beckoning her to London delights, a friendly world of admiring eyes. She was to be looked at--she was to listen--and be heard. Her heart beat, eyes shone starry. Life, which had seemed behind her, now danced before, a gay procession. She told her father what seemed to be in the wind. He listened and stared.

“Lady Maria, hey! We _are_ going up in the world. The peerage! Charles Street, Berkeley Square! I remember young Chevenix: he had swell connections--yes, yes. How things come about. This will please your mother, my dear. She sets a store by such things.” Their eyes met, and she nodded.

“Yes, I thought of that. But what do _you_ feel about it, Papa? You see--I couldn't very well come back to Great Cumberland Place.”

He did see that, poor man. “No, chick, no. That wouldn't work out--that sum. You and your mother never did add up very well--No, no. Much as I should have liked it. But Charles Street? Hum. I'm a plain man, you see, a plain, old comfortable merchant--and the older I grow, the more comfortable I get, I believe. Now, I don't see myself in Berkeley Square, making a bow to Lady Maria. My poor old back's too stiff for that. But if you're contented--if you're to have your deserts--for you're a little beauty, my love, and there's no mistake about it--why, what can I say? And I know you won't forget Papa in The Poultry--hey?”

She held him her hand across the tea-cups, smiling with her eyes. “Do you really think I shall?”

He caught fast to the little hand. “No, child, no! Though, mind you, I deserve it. When I think that I let you be packed out of my house--neck and crop--to the devil, for aught I knew--I grow cold. My dear, it's taken me suddenly at night--when I've been wakeful--and I've groaned in my agony. It don't do to think of--hideous! Women make fools of us men, and knaves as well. But there! You know your mother's way. I mustn't speak against her, of course. No, no. She's a good woman.” He looked as if he tried hard to believe it.

Sanchia, her hand still held, had grown serious. “Papa,” she said, “I want you to understand me altogether. I should do it again, I believe, if I really loved somebody.”

He looked at her anxiously, then away from her, while he patted her caught hand. “Yes, my dear, yes. I understand that you feel like that. It's queer--to me, you know. I don't pretend to see it as you do. But I trust you. I know you're a good girl. Only--it's not the old-fashioned way; and your mother--”

“Mamma,”' she said, “is different. She thinks I'm wicked; you think I'm good. I don't know what I am--I don't understand myself at all; but I'm quite sure that I should do it again, if it had to be done.” Her eyes grew large with the certainty of her argument. She had a divine seriousness, a rapt look, as of one inspired from within. “I don't see how you can help it, if you see quite clearly that the person needs you. It seems disloyalty. It seems making too much of yourself--as if what happened to that part of you mattered! And it seems making too little of yourself, too--as if you shrank, as if you were afraid of vile people. One can't afford to be afraid--for the sake of such a small thing.”

Mr. Percival, nodding, patting her hand, put in a gentle remonstrance. “I shouldn't say that, Sancie, I shouldn't indeed. It used to be considered everything in the world, to a woman.”

She mused, then decided. “No. I can't understand that. It's not everything in the world. It's almost nothing compared to other things--like freedom. To me the only thing that seems to matter is one's mind. Freedom for that! You can give up anything else. But that you must have--if you are to live at all.”

He made a loyal effort to follow her thought, but it led him into dismal regions where he found himself unnerved. “I don't know, upon my soul, where you get these notions of yours, my dear. I don't indeed. Not from me, I believe.”

She smiled gently at him, but with a wistful tinge, as if she felt her isolation. “I don't know, either--but there they are. I always know what I've got to do. I see it, or feel it, ahead of me. There's a path that way, a path the other. I see the fork, and have to follow one of them. I always know which.”

That was equally beyond him. He left it, and returned to a more practical puzzlement. “But when--when you make up your mind about--_him_, you know? I wish you would tell me.”

“I'll tell you everything I can, dearest, of course.”

“Well, now, your freedom, you know. Your freedom of mind. Now, you gave him your freedom, didn't you! And your mind too? Didn't you, now?”

She had to consider that, and he watched her with anxiety. But she looked him fairly in the face with her answer, so that he read the truth in her eyes. “No,” she told him. “No. He never had that, luckily for me. I always knew what I had to do before he did. I could always see where he was right and I was wrong--or the other way about. I don't think I could ever give up my judgment. At least--” She had to think again; and again she answered him, but with heightened colour. “If I did--it would be a different sort of person altogether. Quite a different person.”

His face fell. This didn't sound like marriage-bells. “Oh, my dear!” he said ruefully. “You don't mean to tell me--”

She jumped up and hugged him. “You darling old thing, of course not.” But she kept her face buried in his whiskers. “If I ever did that--give up my mind, I mean--I believe I should be happier.”

Mr. Percival had no doubt about that. He had old-fashioned opinions.

IV

Mrs. John Chevenix, a young and lively woman with ash-coloured hair, audacious nose, and a clear complexion, was devoted to her husband's family, and especially tender to our young friend and Sanchia's, with whom she had a strong alliance. Her husband had a sense of humour, which he indulged for the most part in silence. He spoke rarely, swallowed his laughter, and yet was good company. You felt his sympathy, found yourself depending on it. You gauged his relish by a twinkle, by a deeper shade of purple in his cheeks, by a twitching ear. The Stock Exchange gave him a sufficiency, and his wife, with her taste for dinner-parties, saw to it that it gave him no more. “Let's bleed old John,” was Bill Chevenix's pleasant way of suggesting an escapade which might run into hundreds. “It will do him good,” Mrs. John used to agree; and John Chevenix would chuckle internally, and say, “Go it, you two.” On these terms they were all very happy.

Bill Chevenix had told his sister-in-law as much about Sanchia as he thought fitting. To begin with, he took all responsibility upon himself for the opening scene of her wild adventure. He had introduced “the chap” into the Percival household, and it was he, too, who had _not_ introduced the fact of his unhappy marriage. “Took it all for granted--thought they knew it--forgot they didn't belong to that gang--your gang, my gang, Nevile's gang. Rotten of me, my dear, but there you are.” Mrs. John understood him to feel more contrite than he appeared. And next he lauded Sanchia, after his own manner. As thus: “A queer young fish. You can't judge her by the rules of the game. She shows her strength by breaking 'em. She'd break anything and anybody. Oh, she's as deep as the Dogger. But mighty pleasant with it, you know, Fine, quiet style of her own. And a beauty. My word, but she's like a rose.” Then his eyes met hers confidentially. A wink passed. “No. We're great friends. That's all there is to it, on my honour. But you can't leave a girl like that stranded, can you now? Especially when you've run her aground yourself--in a way. So I thought of old Aunt Wenman in a minute. In fact, I've seen her about it, and, by George, she hit on a phrase in a trice. 'Unfortunate attachment.' She's perfectly happy with that, and rather keen. Now all you have to do is to give a party, and I'll ask Sancie.”

Mrs. John thought that was too casual. “You mustn't treat her like a dancing man,” she told him. “I shall call on her, and you can tell her I'm coming. We'll do the thing in form.”

All this had been done, and the call returned. Sanchia's still serenity, seen through the rosy mist of her momentary confusion, pleased Mrs. John. The invitation was made and accepted in parting.

“Do come. We shan't have many people, you know; but I won't let you be dull. And Bill will be there, of course--and you rather like Bill--and a queer old Aunt of ours who knows everybody. So I hope you won't mind.”

“I'm sure I shan't,” Sanchia said, and then they shook hands.

Bill Chevenix, who had been present, waved himself away from the doorstep. “By-by, my dear,” he said. “You've done bravely by me. Isn't she splendid?”

“I like her,” said Mrs. John. “But she's rather unapproachable.”

Bill chuckled. “That's her little way. She don't kiss easily.”

Mrs. John said that he ought to know.

The party was anything but dull. Lady Maria dined with seven other people, the best that could be mustered on short notice--and Sanchia came in at ten o'clock, when the drawing-room was full. She came with an elderly friend, a Mrs. Quantock, whose acquaintance she had made in an omnibus, and renewed at the British Museum. Mrs. Quantock was an authoress by profession, a poetess by temperament. Her emotions, not always under control, consorted oddly with her broad and placid face. She knew Lady Maria Wenman, and it was she who actually performed the introduction, Mrs. John being fast at her stair-head.

“I particularly want you to know my dear friend--Miss Sanchia Percival--Lady Maria Wenman. A great heart, Lady Maria, in a frame of steel.”

“Oh, indeed,” said Lady Maria. Then, “Come and sit with me, my dear; I've heard about you. But I hope you've left your steels at home.”

“If I had a trumpet,” said good Mrs. Quantock, “instead of a penny whistle, all the world should hear what I think of Sanchia.”

“Then it's a very good thing you haven't,” said Lady Maria. “The less young ladies are trumpeted in public the better!”

Sanchia, during this interchange, had stood smiling and self-possessed; but she was a little fluttered, and looked none the worse for that. Without a word she obeyed the twinkling and puckered old lady, sat by her on the sofa and awaited, her hands folded in her lap, what might be in store for her. She liked the looks of Lady Maria, and had no disrelish for her sharp tongue, nor fear of what might fall to her share when Mrs. Quantock took herself off. She liked the little, deep-set, dark grey eyes, the beaked nose, like the prow of a trireme, and the drawn-in mouth, which seemed to be victim of the astringencies it was driven to utter. And then she liked the signs of race, the disregard of opinion, the keen look which lit on a man or woman and saw him negligible and left him in the road. She had herself an artist's eye for style, and saw in Lady Maria the grand manner. The praise or blame of such as she would be worth having; awaiting either, she felt herself braced. She could envisage the past, collect it, display it in her lap without fear. “Here's my life's work, so far as it has gone. Now beat me, if you will; I'm not afraid of honest blows.” She knew there would be no sham outcries from this high-looking old dame.

Lady Maria Wenman was rich, imperious, whimsical, and afraid only of boredom. By birth a daughter of Lord Starcross, by fate the widow of a judge, she was strongly of opinion that she could do as she pleased. It was not so clear to her that other people could also; but the reason of that was that other people, not immediately about her, were not themselves clear. She once said of a prime minister, “My dear, he seemed to me a very good sort of man”; and that was her attitude all the world over towards those not connected with her by blood or the affections. Marks of race she had, but not pride of it. She was her own fountain of honour, and were you omnibus-tout or commander-in-chief, if she liked you you were in being, if not, you didn't exist. One consequence of this was that she hated nobody, and was offended at nothing. The vices or crimes of a non-existent world were mere shadows, naturally; those of her circle of cognizance she had a way, very much her own, of accounting for. A trick of hers, which had become inveterate, was to explain states of being by phrases. These not only explained, they seemed to condone; and to her there's no doubt, they accounted for everything. Mr. William Chevenix, aware of her foible, did not scruple to turn it to his ends when putting before her Sanchia's case. “You see, Aunt, one rather admires her loyalty to the chap. He was precious miserable, and she pitied him. Well, we know what comes of that, don't we? It turns to liking, and gratitude, and all those swimmy feelings; and then they swim together, all in a flux, eh? And there you are.” To which, when Lady Maria had nodded her head of kindly vulture sagely, and mused aloud, “I see; an unfortunate attachment. Very common, I believe, and quite sad,” he knew that he had scored a point. When she had added, “We must do what we can, of course; I'll see her; I've nobody with me just now,” he presumed that he had won the rubber.

Apart from the comfortable _cliche_ in which she was seen enfolded, Sanchia pleased the eye. Her father, in league with her throughout, had “stood” her a frock, the cunningest that Madame Freluche could supply, and would have added pearls for her hair and neck if she had not tenderly refused them. She took his counsels in the general--that she was to show them what was what, “for the honour of the Percival girls”--and her own for the particular; would have no ornaments at all. By an entirely right instinct she chose to wear black. It set her off as dazzlingly fair, as more delicate than she was. Her eyes, from her pale brows and faintly tinted cheeks, gleamed intensely, burningly blue. Her strength appeared in her shut lips and firm chin--subtle, and, as Mrs. Quantock said, like that of steel wire.

She did not talk much, but what she said was simple and direct. She seemed to be reticent about herself, not by any means from shame, but because her acts and intentions appeared too obvious to be worth rehearsing. Once or twice her laugh, low and musical, showed that she relished a joke. Lady Maria occasionally made jokes. Here was a girl who understood them.

To the old gentlewoman, who never beat about bushes, but mostly walked through them, Sanchia's bluntness made immediate appeal. Her reply, for instance, to the enquiry, What had induced her to go on with the affair, was a counter-question. “What else could I do?” she had asked, with pencilled brows arched. “I thought it made no difference. I wanted to, you see. What you do is nothing compared with what you want to do.”

“Then why do it, my dear?” said Lady Maria. Sanchia did not blink the answer, “Nevile wanted me. He was very unhappy.”

“Well,” said the old woman, “what is he now?” This time Sanchia did not reply.

Lady Maria drew her lips in until her mouth looked like a dimple in her face. “Oho! That's it, is it? He's neglected you, and now you don't care?”

“I care for some things very much,” said Sanchia. “I want to please Papa, and Vicky, my sister, you know--and I think I want to put myself right with the world. But--”

“But you don't care two pins about him?”

Sanchia shook her head sadly. Her brows were arched to her hair. “No,” she said, “I don't care one pin.”

Lady Maria was no fool. She saw exactly what was going to happen, and no reason why she should not declare it. She had formed already a high enough opinion of Sanchia--which is to say no more than that she liked her--to be sure that it would not influence her conduct. “I'll tell you what the end of this will be,” she said. “You'll have him on the floor, kissing your toes. He'll be mad to have you--and you'll marry him. Then he'll be your slave for life. And they tell me that's the happiest state a woman can live in. I have some reason for believing it. I and the judge got along admirably, though the poor man might have bored me to extinction. Oh, you'll do very well. But don't make him jealous.”

Sanchia considered this. “I don't think he would be jealous,” she decided; “but we are rather premature, aren't we?” And then she related, as if they were an anecdote, the circumstances of her departure from Wanless.

Lady Maria listened carefully, nodding a dispassionate head at details which would have raised Philippa's hair, and depilated Mrs. Percival. “I think he's a human being, if you'll allow me to say so,” was the conclusion she came to. “It was no affair of the gardener's that I can see; and to be battered in your own drive by your own servant, even you must allow to be provoking.”

“Oh,” Sanchia assured her, “I didn't at all mind his being vexed. But he accused me of--all sorts of things.”

“Of course he did, my dear,” cried Lady Maria. “He was in a towering rage. How was he to know that you hadn't egged on the gardener?”

“By what he knew of me already,” said Sanchia with spirit. Lady Maria twinkled; but her scrutiny was keen. “I don't think you have explained the gardener,” she told her. Sanchia blushed.

“He's a boy,” was her suggestion: but Lady Maria's comment on that was, “And a bruiser it seems.”

Sanchia smiled gently. “Poor Struan! He was very difficult. He made me furiously angry. What he did was outrageous. But I am sure he is a genius.”

“What!” cried her ladyship. “A genius at gardening? or at thrashing gentlemen?”

Sanchia said simply, “It's extraordinary what he can do with plants. He's certainly a genius there. He's like a plant himself. He never goes to bed, but walks about the garden all night, talking to them.”

“Like a burglar,” said Lady Maria. “Pray, what does he talk to them about? Growing?”

“Sometimes, I think. I don't know what he says to them. But he talks about all sorts of things.”

“You, for instance?” Lady Maria asked, suddenly; and Sanchia blushed again, and presently looked at Lady Maria. “He's always nice to me,” she said, mildly.

“I think,” her ladyship resumed, “I think I like to think of him best in prison;” and then washed him out of her memory as she faced more serious topics.

“It will be much better for you to come to me,” she told Sanchia. “I'm an old woman, and an old tyrant, I daresay, but I'm somebody, you know. And I'm pretty lonely, and happen to want company just now. It will be good that you have a foothold to your name when your Nevile Ingram comes after you. I shall bring him to reason quicker than most people, I don't doubt. Your quarrel is absurd; you can't afford to quarrel with your bread and cheese. You've your father, you'll say; but my answer is that it's not very decent to live upon your father when you've got yourself kicked out of his house. I quite see your point of view, mind you. These things will happen, and in theory you're perfectly in the right. It's your practice that won't do. All for love and the world well lost--very fine indeed. But so long as we're in the world, you see, we _can't_ lose it. There it is. Now you've had your kisses, and can afford to settle down; but you must do it in the world's way if you want peace and quietness; and I'm very ready to help you. Really, I don't see anything better for you--short of your own home.”

“I shall never go there again,” Sanchia told her, directly.

“Very right, my dear,” said the old lady. “Then you had better come to me.”

Sanchia said, “I should like that,” and Lady Maria, taking her by the chin, patted her cheek.

“And so should I, my dear,” she said--and the thing was as good as settled.

Mrs. John, released from her stair-head, came up presently; Bill Chevenix was with her. “Dear Aunt Wenman,” she said, “I haven't had a word with you since you came; but I'm sure you've been happy.”

“Miss Sanchia and I have been swearing eternal friendship,” said Lady Maria.

“Exchanging drops of blood, eh, Aunt?” chirped the cheerful youth. “Nothing like it.”

“I have no blood to spare, William,” she replied, “and if I had, Miss Sanchia has too much. Now you can take her away while I talk to Helen. Good-by, my dear,” she bade Sanchia.

“Good-by, Lady Maria,” the girl replied, with deeply sincere eyes. “You've been very kind to me.”

“Fiddlesticks,” said Lady Maria. “I like you. Now run away, the pair of you.”

“Right, Aunt,” said Chevenix, and crooked his arm.

After a decent interval, in which we may suppose formal visits exchanged between Charles Street and Great Cumberland Place, Sanchia set up her rest in the former mansion. The time was full June.

V

The string of episodes which discovered before the autumn was over the heart of Mr. Cyrus Worthington at her feet hardly deserves record in her history but for the fillip which it gave to her spirits. Tribute is tribute, and Mr. Worthington was a warrantable gentleman. The tarnish she had discerned upon her armour, the foxmarks upon her fair page, dispersed under his ardent breath; she realised herself desirable and loveworthy; she arose from the thicket in which she cowered with the light of triumph prophetic in her eyes, the flush of victory after victory prophetic in her cheeks. Therefore Mr. Worthington's career in the Charles Street lists shall be chronicled.

He was a portly widower, a banker, a father, who made his bow to Lady Maria some three times a year when he dined in Charles Street. In return, he received her ladyship once during a summer at his mansion of Fallowlea, Walton-on-Thames. On such occasions the Misses Worthington and their cousins, the Pascoe girls, who lived at Esher, would enact a pastoral play in the shrubberies with various entangled curates, with young Sam Worthington from Oxford and friends of his. Mr. Worthington himself, master of the difficult art of declining verse as if it were bad prose, rehearsed the Prologue and Epilogue in a master's gown and mortarboard, which he would retain for the rest of the afternoon. It was in that guise that, his caution deserting him, he allowed himself to dwell upon Sanchia's beauty.

Lady Maria had taken her down to Walton in mid-July; she had chanced to meet Melusine there, and the two had embraced as sisters should. It is to be owned that her adoption by Charles Street had restored her credit with her family more certainly than any white sheet and taper which she could have supported would have done. Her mother was highly gratified, though she affected a shrug when good Mr. Percival, in the simplicity of his heart, overflowed with the joy of it. “Sancie in Berkeley Square--where Lord Rosebery lives: think of that, my dear!” And Mrs. Percival, who knew where Lord Rosebery lived as well as anybody, would reply, “These things will be balanced hereafter. Neither you nor I, Welbore, are assessing angels, I believe. I pray to God that she has made her peace with our Church.”

“Chapel Royal,” said Mr. Percival, “will be her ladyship's ticket--or St. James's, Piccadilly. They tell me that the great world go there now in the evenings, dressed for dinner.” Privately he vowed that, should his Sancie be one of those immaculate worshippers, she should not fail in toilet. And he had not missed the point so far as you might think. Philippa Tompsett-King, who had been present when these things were discussing, had lifted an inflamed face over the dinner-table. “I only know,” she had said, “that I would rather live in Bloomsbury than have her conscience. Cynicism has always seemed to me the sin against the Holy Ghost.” But Melusine Scales, the gentle creature, had written meekly of her joy; and Vicky Sinclair said to her husband, the captain--“Sancie always tumbles on her feet. She always did--like a sweet cat.” Shrewd and affectionate at once, she alone had discerned the god's prerogative immanent in the youngest daughter of Thomas Welbore Percival.

But the picture of Sanchia and Melusine, two fair girls, standing together embraced under the cedarn shade had smitten deep into the well-cased heart of Cyrus Worthington. He had come upon them at a pretty moment, when Melusine, the willowy and tall, having opened her arms to the dear truant, one arm still about her, with her free hand touched her cheek that lips might meet lips. “Darling, I'm so glad--so very glad,” she was whispering, and Sanchia, with the same light laughing in her eyes, “Dear old Melot--how sweet you are to me.” Mr. Worthington pushed back his mortarboard and revealed the crimson chevron which it had bitten into his bald brow. “A charming scene--two charming young ladies! Mrs. Gerald Scales and her sister, I think. Lady Maria's adoption--charming, charming!” A right instinct sent him tiptoe over his lawn, another made him doff his mortarboard.

“Mrs. Scales, we begin. The hunt is up. Poesy calls, 'Follow, follow, follow!' Your sister, I think?”

Sanchia played the rogue. “Oh, Mr. Worthington, have you forgotten already? Lady Maria explained me half-an-hour-ago. Must Melusine introduce me again?”

“Not for the world, Miss Percival, not for the world!” the banker protested. “I was in a sense explaining myself. Pray, do not suppose that I forget either you or my manners so completely. No, no. But I am a little near-sighted, I fear; there is a little difficulty of focussing; nothing organic, no loss of function.” He cleared his throat, and to give himself assurance, jingled half-crowns with his plunged hand. “No loss of function whatever.” He took the thing a little more seriously than he need, was in danger of labouring it. Melusine turned the talk. He invited them to the play, as “master of the revels,” and walked between them, looking a very decent figure of a don on a college lawn, substantial, serene, and with an air of displaying his possessions: _“Parva sed apta mihi; Deus nobis haec otia fecit!”_ He still possessed the rags of his Latin. “This little bay-tree will interest you, Miss Percival. It was planted many years ago by the late Lord Meeke--the uncle of the present peer. We had had some business relations; they were happily cemented into something more intimate by this little fellow.” He touched it tenderly. “A sturdy growth! Like my affection for my noble but departed friend. Dear me! _Labuntur anni_, indeed!” His fig tree, which some one else had planted, his laburnum--a slip from one at Rickmansworth, the seat of the late Lord Mayor Burgess--a catalpa seedling from Panshanger, which the late Lady Cowper did him the honour to present with her own hands: as Sanchia said afterwards to Melot, his garden was rather like a cemetery of dead friendships....

Then they sat to witness the revels. Sanchia's fancy, uplifted by her contentment, played with the play, and suggested flights undreamed of for many a year. She sat by Melusine and her husband, and Mr. Worthington watched her in the long intervals of his duty. Charming indeed, and most high-bred: now where did old Welbore Percival, whom he met daily in Throgmorton Street, fetch up such a strain of blood? His wife, too, Kitty Blount, as she had been--what had Kitty Blount been but a high-coloured, bouncing romp of a girl when they had all been paddling together at Broadstairs? Extraordinary! And now here was one of his girls sister-in-law of a county baronet--none of your city knights, mind you--and the other, with the lift of a princess and the clear sight which is hers by title. Extraordinary!

And there was another thing: where had old Welbore and Kitty Blount kept her all this time? And why wasn't she married, a girl like that? She came next to Mrs. Scales, he supposed. Well, but there was another, younger still, married only the other day--to an army man. He remembered Welbore chirping about it at a Board meeting. What was that in the Bible--what was it? Ha!--“But thou hast kept the good wine until now.” By George, he must remember that for old Welbore. And now he came to think of it, old Jack Etherington had come in one morning full of Percival's daughter--“A lovely gal”--he had said, that old Jack--“colour of a Mildred Grant--quiet as the truth.”

Such were the ruminations of Cyrus Worthington at his own garden-party, and he pursued them at favoured moments--with his glass of port at dessert, with his last cigar, with his whisky night-cap. In the city next day he rallied Thomas Welbore, who betrayed unlimited relish for the diversion; and within a few days more he left a card in Charles Street and took a late train to Walton-on-Thames. Asked in due course to dinner, he handed Sanchia to the table, and spent the evening by her side. He begged her better acquaintance with his daughters, made the most of that which he had with Melusine Scales, and ended a successful adventure by winning Lady Maria's acceptance “for herself and her young friend,” of a banquet at the Cooper's Company of which he was warden. The occasion was a great one-a foreign potentate, the Prime Minister, Lord Mayor, and Sheriffs. The Coopers were to distinguish themselves, or be extinguished. He could promise them of the best. Sanchia, new to courtship, was quietly elated, and her amusement did nothing to diminish her elation. She had never been wooed before: there had been nothing of the kind in those shuddering days when she and Ingram, trembling in each other's sight, had mutely cried across the waste of London for balm upon their wounds. The flattery of attentions had never been hers, nor the high credit of admiration so respectful as the good merchant's. He esteemed her the fairest and holiest of women, was as timid as a boy in her company, gasped like a fish and grew unmannerly hot; but I defy a young woman to be anything but gratified. Miranda shunned Caliban; but had she not rather he had been there to be shunned?

Thus, under Lady Maria's watchful eye, the thing proceeded, and Mr. Worthington, within an ace of committing himself, scared his family. The climax was reached at Kissingen, whither the infatuated gentleman had followed his charmer.

She was very kind to him, but perfectly clear that she could not, and would not, make him the happiest of men. She said that she was flattered, which I believe to have been true, though he deprecated the phrase. “My dear young lady--ha! I must really be allowed--I assure you that you overwhelm me. Flattered--oh, Lord!” He limped the conclusion, and left for England that night.

She felt the thing to have been rather ridiculous, and yet she was pleased. She was gently elated, and had a kindly eye for herself as she dressed before her glass. Power lay with her; she could choose and weigh, accept or refuse. She was loveworthy yet. In spite of her disaster, a man had sought her. Others would do that same, moved by what had moved him. Shining eyes, body's form, softness, roundness--she had hardly thought of these things before, nor looked at them with an eye to their value. Mr. Worthington's ardent glances had illuminated her own, and by-and-by she found, oddly enough, that they threw a backward beam, and illuminated others. She found herself smiling tenderly as she thought of Jack Senhouse, and repeating some of that poetry which he had literally poured into her lap. It was so long ago! But when she remembered how much it had puzzled her, she now found that she was not puzzled by it at all.

Your eyes are twin mountain lakes, and the lashes of them Like the swishing sedge That hideth the water's edge....

Were her eyes, then, so fair! Mr. Worthington had found them so. Others would--others had.

“Thy face drinketh the light,”--he had written that of her--and now she knew that he had believed it. Had Nevile felt these things? Could Nevile--as she knew him? Her lip curved back. If she could not think of herself without thinking of Nevile--who wanted to mangle her--better take the veil.

But she felt the strange reality behind that wild and adoring passion of Jack Senhouse's, which had made him so incalculable a mixture. He advised her, and adored, he received her confidences, and emptied verses out of his heart into her lap. And she had had nothing to give him, who had given her all! All indeed; for now she saw that he had loved her beyond measure, reason, or stint.

There had been that last of his letters--a despairing cry from Chanctonbury, written when she was Nevile's shadow, and he hers. She felt stabbed to the heart to remember how perfunctorily she had read that. How did it go? What had he said? She could not recall the words, but their sense beat upon her. Oh, he had set her too high! He had called her Artemis--the chaste, the bright. Artemis the Bright had been one of his names for her--and Queen Mab another. He had set her too high! And how far had she fallen? She bowed her burning head, and even as she did so, remembered another phrase of his, sent with flowers--a line from the Anthology, begging her to grant his rose “the grace of a fair breast.” No longer fair, no longer fair--except to Nevile, who craved it--and to a Mr. Worthington.

The bravest gentleman, a poet, a thinker, a man like a beacon-fire, had loved her and cried her aloud as a goddess out of his reach. “Farewell, Sanchia, too dear for my possessing!” She had the words. And she had passed him by for Nevile, who made her a housekeeper, and loved her when he wanted solace. What more had Jack said? What, indeed, had he not said? That her life was like the scent of bean-flowers over a hedgerow--a fragrance caught in passing by wayfarers, whereby men and women might thank God for a fair sight who had chanced upon her in the street. Praise indeed! But he had loved her, and saw her so--and all that was gone for ever. He had left her because he dared not do otherwise, and now he was happy without her. Her new-found elation was like to die in self-pity. It required more than the complacency inspired by Mr. Worthington to clear her eyes.

Thus were the flowers laid up for her by an honest merchant changed for a wreath of rue as he was reminded of his better--his better and (she thought) hers, alas! A wave of desire to catch back at far-off things played her a trick. She found herself yearning for her childhood, found herself crying for her innocence, for the sweet scent of opening life. Even as she longed and strained, she knew herself vain. But the temptation for the semblance of what was gone was strong and took a subtle form. If she could not have the thing, she would have the thing's name; if she could not be innocent again, she would ape innocency. Prodigal of Pity as she has been, she could say to Senhouse's ghost, I am no more worthy of thee; and from that to being worthy was but a short step. The rest of her sojourn abroad was preparation for what was to be done on her return home.

Her treasure lay hidden there, in a desk in her room: three portly packets of letters, tied with ribbon, and labelled “Jack to Me.” Stained and yellow, she now turned over the pages, and inhaled the faint, sweet scent of them--a scent as of lavender and tears. Her eyes filled, her heart beat; but she read on and on. Impossible praises! Love beyond reason, without bounds--immeasurable homage! Did any man ever--save Dante--love a woman so greatly, set her so high? So presently she was caught up into a kind of heaven of wonder, and spent a night with the past.... From that she arose clear-eyed to meet the future. If she had been so loved, so served by man so generous and so fine, the rest of her life might well be spent in testimony. Her single aim now should be to recover herself, to be what he had once seen her. And for all this high remembrance and high hope--thanks to Mr. Cyrus Worthington!

Lady Maria, as the weeks went by, watched her carefully, and marked the change. Sanchia was very subdued, and now went to church. This to the old lady, who did not, was remarkable. She was not aware, naturally, of a passage in a letter which pictured her in church--with her “dear obsequious head, bowed in a fair place to a fair emblem.” She could not have understood, if she had had it explained, that the girl, conscious of her stiff neck, was teaching herself obsequiousness for the sake of him who had seen her so and found her dear. None of these things were for Lady Maria's comprehension; but she reflected aloud upon church-going, and got her young friend to explanations.

“Yes,” Sanchia said, “I do go to church. For a long time, you see, I couldn't--but now I feel that I can. We were all brought up to go to church.”

“So was I,” said Lady Maria, “and that, I take it, is why I don't go now. I was taught to take it as physic.”

Sanchia's explanation, which she yielded on pressure, of why she had stopped, was very artless. “I wanted to do something that they thought wicked, but which I thought quite good. If I went to confession, I should have been told that I was wicked. So I couldn't go. It was a difference of opinion, you see.”

“Beg pardon,” said Lady Maria, “but I don't see. What you mean is that, if you'd told your priest you were going off with Ingram, he'd have said, Don't, and put you under the necessity of disobeying him.” She owned to it. And then she owned to something more. If the difficult choice came before her again, she would think twice. “I can't see, even now, that I was wrong in what I did. I am sure it must be right, somehow, to follow your own conscience. But I do see that it's a pity to break rules. Yes, I see that.”

“I didn't suppose myself religious,” Lady Maria had replied, “but if that is what your religion tells you, I agree with it. It's common sense. What's a heart or two compared with peace and quietness? And how, pray, is a child of eighteen to know what her conscience is worth?”

“It is all she has to go upon,” said Sanchia; but the old lady retorted, “Nothing of the kind. She's got the experience of all Nature behind her, from the poultry-yard to the House of Lords. You'll find that the Ten Commandments are rigidly enforced among the cocks and hens. If a member of the zenana breaks bounds there, she rues it. How else do you suppose this world is to be peopled? Read the history of marriage, my dear. You'll find that the more primitive your man the more complicated his marriage laws. Why, bless my soul, I don't need the Church to tell me that I mustn't run away with a married man. I can learn that from the pigeons in the piazza at Venice. But I suppose I'm an old pagan. Now, you run away to your priest and make a clean breast of it.”

Perhaps Lady Maria was fanciful, but she put down this return to the Church's knees to the fact that Mr. Worthington had gone upon his. “The child finds that she's a valuable article,” she said to herself; “so she locks herself up in the cupboard, like the best china.” Sanchia's resolution persisted, and enthusiasm followed its growth. She frequented the churches early in the mornings, and one fine day presented herself in the vestry of one of them. Upon her knees, but with unbent head and eyes fixed steadily to the grille, she rehearsed her tale from the beginning, neither faltering nor losing countenance. What followed upon that was not communicated to her protectress, nor do I care to pry. I imagine that she had always said her prayers, but that now she was answering them.

That is, when one thinks upon it, the first office of prayer.

VI

Lady Maria Wenman grew to be extremely fond of Sanchia, really as fond of her as she was capable of becoming of anybody. She had been good to travel with, and was good to live with. She found her so reasonable, she said. One could discuss anything without shocking her, or without fear of being made uncomfortable by seeing her discomfort. Lady Maria, in fact, being entirely without prejudice, experienced the little luxury of being able to express herself without trampling.

On her side also, Sanchia sincerely liked her old protectress, and found Charles Street agree with her. There was a primordial air about it, which made habits seem like laws of Nature; an absence of fuss which soothed her nerves, and did much better than slay her monsters for her, when it exposed them for no monsters at all, but simple, everyday, rather tiresome concomitants of our makeshift existence.

“You will, of course, marry Nevile Ingram,”--thus Lady Maria disposed of the most dread of all monsters--“because it is, on the whole, more agreeable to avoid scandal, and because it is certainly more decent to pay one's bills. Long credit is a mistake; but you found it a convenience, I suppose; and now you are in funds, you will, of course, get out of debt. If only that you may run into it again at need, you will draw a cheque. Now, you had eight years of it at Wanless, you tell me? Very well, my dear, that must be written off Society's books. Meanwhile, the more you see of amusing, emancipated people like Alexis Morosine the better.”

This man was understood to be a Pole in exile, though his title to that distinction could only have been on the side of the distaff, since his father's descent from a ducal family of Venice was not denied; but neither nationality nor expatriation was very obvious upon him. At first sight you would have supposed him a sallow Englishman, spare of flesh and too narrow in the chest; you might have put down his dead complexion and his leanness to India or Jamaica, and been inclined to attribute his dry cynicism to the same superfervent experience. But presently you would be alive to his hungry mind, to his hungry, raging air, his restless habit and large way of looking at circumstance--as if by no possibility could it be any concern of his. And then the trick he had of considering our people as Europeans, of dividing the races of the world by continents rather than kingdoms; and that other of judging all cases, including yours and his own, upon their merits--such traits, to an experienced mind, would have established him for a foreigner, one of a people who had had too much elbowing for breath to have time or space for prejudice or minute classification. Superficially, to be sure, he was English enough--from his speech to his tailoring; and his phlegm (of which we boast) was unassailable. Nobody knew much of his history; Bill Chevenix used to say that he was born whole, and thirty, out of an egg dropped upon our coasts by a migratory roc; that he stepped out, exquisitely dressed, and ordered a whisky and Apollinaris at the nearest buffet. This, said Chevenix, was his ordinary breakfast. When Sanchia objected that he might have stepped out in the afternoon, he replied that it also formed his usual tea, and, so far as he knew, was the staple of all his meals. “And cigarettes,” he added. “But he would have had those with him. I bet you what you like he came out smoking.”

It was certain that he had been to Eton and to Oxford, and was member of two good clubs. He was extremely rich, and he was by profession, said Chevenix, a prince. He had no territory, and was not apparently scheming to get any, either of his own or other people's. Nobody at the Foreign Office believed that he corresponded with any intransigent; he used to go there often and exchange urbane gossip with under-secretaries. He lodged in Duke Street, gave dinner-parties at the Bachelors, had a large visiting-list, and was, as they say, always “about.” One saw him everywhere--in the city, in Mayfair drawing-rooms, at Kensington tea-parties, and at Lambeth Palace. Chevenix swore that he had met him at a Church Congress--and the only answer to that was that if Chevenix had truly been there to see, Morosine might well have been there to be seen. But this catholicity of experience was characteristic of the man; his attraction to the nice observer lay precisely in that, that he was a nomad, unappeased and unappeasable, ranging hungrily. There was a probability, too, that below a surface exquisitely calm there lurked corrosive tooth and claw. Here are sufficient elements of danger to draw any woman; so Sanchia found herself presently drawn.

He came to Charles Street one evening late in November, to what Lady Maria called a little party. There was an autumn session that year, and London full. To her little party, then, came a solid wedge of three hundred people into rooms capable of holding with comfort fifty.

Chevenix was by Sanchia's side at the top of the stair, chatting pleasantly about every new-comer, when he suddenly stopped. “Hulloa,” he said, “here's Morosine, as smooth as a glass stiletto. He'll amuse you. I'll introduce him.”

Sanchia followed the leading of his eyes. She saw a tall and slim young man, inordinately thin, slightly bald, with a moustache like a rake, and heavy-browed, mournful eyes, pushing his way slowly upstairs. Without effort, his hands behind his back, working from the shoulders, he made room for himself, but so quietly that nobody seemed to observe how aggressively he was at it. Occasionally some ousted dowager turned redly upon him, or it might be some pushing gentleman smothered an oath as he faced the attack. But Morosine's mournful eyes gazed calmly their fill, seemed to be communing beyond the surging guests, beyond the wall, with the eternal stars, and, without faltering, the narrow frame glided forward into the space which indignation had cleared. Sanchia, above him, and out of the game, was highly amused.

“He's very selfish, your friend. He takes care of himself; but no one seems to know it.”

Chevenix chuckled. “That's the beauty of Alexis. But, as he asks, whom else should he take care of? It's not queer if the Poles have learned that lesson.”

“Oh,” said Sanchia. “Is he a Pole?” Jack Senhouse had been in Poland.

“Half of him is hungry Pole. The other part is bad Italian--pampered Italian, fed for generations on oil and polenta. He's always dining out, but he eats nothing because the Pole is feeding on the Venetian all day.” Then he told her about the miraculous birth, the whisky and Apollinaris, and concluded, “Oh, he'll amuse you vastly. Stay where you are. I'll net him at the top.”

Presently after she saw the process. It consisted in violent effort on Chevenix's part, languid attention from the other. Morosine dreamed over the speaker as if he were a lost soul. Then, his consideration being caught, he looked about him, and presently fixed upon her his melancholy eyes. She felt a little shiver, the sensation of goose-flesh in the spine--not unpleasantly. It was as if a light wind had ruffled her blood. Shortly afterwards Morosine was bowing before her. In this, perhaps, he betrayed himself; his hat covered his heart, he inclined from the hips, and his head bent with his body. An Englishman bows with the head only, and does not nowadays carry his hat upstairs.

He began to talk quietly and at once, and maintained a perfectly even flow of comment, reflection, anecdote, reminiscence, and sudden, flashing turns of inference. He seemed always to be searching after general principles, cosmic laws, and to be always jumping at them, testing them, finding them not comprehensive enough, and letting them drift behind him as he pursued his search. She remarked on this afterwards to Lady Maria, who said that principles were the last thing to interest Morosine. He had none! at all, said Lady Maria, unless his own immediate gratification was a principle; and perhaps with men you might almost say that it was.

Chevenix remained, chuckling and interjecting here and there an exclamation, just (as he told her later) to “start the chap on his meander,” and presently betook himself elsewhere. It was then to be observed that Morosine allowed himself to drift into the discussion of matters not usually subjects of ordinary conversation; but he did so without consciousness, and therefore without offence. Sanchia neither disapproved nor felt uncomfortable. They were, moreover, interesting, and rather material.

It began with Poland, a country which, the less it existed politically, he said, was the better to live in, and be of. We live by our emotions, the beasts by their appetites--a material distinction. Now, the condition of the Poles was perfectly adapted to the quickening of the emotional parts. Shorten time, you make love a precious ecstasy; restrict liberty, freedom is a lust--none the worse for being lawful. No Pole knows how long he may have to live: Russia or phthisis will have him late or soon. What he pursues, then, must be fleeting--imagine with what rapture he takes it to his breast! with what frenzy he guards it, never knowing when it will be required of him again. Feverish? (This was upon a remark from her.) Yes, and why not? Are not dreams more vivid than waking life? Can you gallop your material horse as your courser of the mind? Better to burn than to rust. That's the secret of life--which all the laws of bureaucrats are directed to destroy. The establishments want to see us as fixed as themselves. They are tentacled, stationary creatures, feeding at ease. They would have us handy of access, falsely secure, so that they can fasten on us one by one and suck our juices. But the world is changing, thrones and churches are slackening in their hold. Men are discovering how short a time they have to live, and that eternity is more than questionable. A mild Epicureanism is gaining ground. Instincts founded on the patriarchal system must give way to that. “Have you ever considered,” he asked abruptly, “that the flocks and herds of the Semitic patriarch are the sole cause of the moral code which we still profess? Thou shalt not steal. Why not? Because you injure the patriarch. Not murder? You might attack one of his family. You have the habit in England of tracing prejudices to the Feudal System: believe me, there is hardly anything in Europe so modern. I should date at 4000 B.C. nearly all our present conventions, from the British Sunday to the law of conspiracy. So long as you say that property is sacred, you uplift the Patriarch and lose sight of the man.”

Sanchia, reminded of Senhouse--a Senhouse with his tongue dipped in vinegar--objected that society may have demanded some of these laws in defiance of the engrossing patriarch; but Morosine shook his head. “Society is the patriarch's weapon. Society is a syndicate of patriarchs who cannot live unless all men are enslaved. Man is not by nature gregarious; he's solitary, like all the nobler beasts. Wolves and dogs hunt in herds, but not the great cats; oxen and buffaloes, but not elephants; rooks, but not eagles; bream, never salmon. And the time is not so very far when man will discover why it is that he is herded and marshalled hither and thither by police, legislatures, and monstrous assemblies called armies or fleets. He has but to know it to abolish these things; they fade like dreams in the morning. But hitherto everything has been banded to make his sleep secure--his religion, his cupidity, his timidity, his affections. Religion tells him it is wrong to love without the Church; patriotism, that it is glorious to bleed in making other men bleed; timidity, that property keeps the wolf from the door; appetite, that under cover of the law you may devour your neighbour and fear no indigestion. Finally, there are the affections of a man which have been so guided that they see the aged more venerable than the young, the old thing more sacred than the new 'Woodman, spare that tree,' they cry: 'it dates from at least 2000 B.C.' Because old wine is good, they argue, old laws must needs be. As well might a man say, Because I relish old wine, I will love only old women. And so we go on!” He shrugged and broke off--to talk shrewdly of books. They got to Leopardi, from him to Dante; he heard of her studies at the British Museum, and hoped he might meet her there. She reads there often? Mostly in the afternoons? The light was bad: he usually devoted his mornings to what work he had there. He was studying Persian, he said, but fitfully, as the mood took him.

So far he had scarcely looked at her, but had talked out his monologue as if he had been alone, clasping one thin ankle, staring wide-eyed over the heads of guests, occasionally, when he was vehement, throwing his head up, shooting his words at the ceiling as if they had been Greek fire. Now, as he got up to leave her, his eyes dwelt earnestly on her. “It will be a pleasure, to which I shall aspire--that of meeting you again. There or elsewhere.”

She thanked him as she gave him her hand. Excitement made her eyes bright, mantled her cheeks. She felt that she was communing with Senhouse at third hand.

“Then--it is understood--we meet again,” he concluded. He bowed over her hand, on a second thought kissed her fingers, then left her immediately and went downstairs. He paid no farewell to Lady Maria; was ascertained to have left the house at once.

VII

Morosine had been called emancipated by Lady Maria, who after a week or so found it proper to explain that he was by no means so free from chains as he appeared. Sanchia, she thought, was seeing a good deal of him. “He's the victim, like the rest of us, of his constitution. His, as you may see, is deplorable. Weak heart, they say--but it may be lungs. I never heard of a Pole who could live in any climate, least of any his own. As for his mind, that follows his wasted body; it's hectic. He affects a detachment which he will never have. It's a pose. He is exceedingly sentimental, has an imagination which--if you could follow it--might alarm you. I have no doubt at all but that, in imagination, he has you safe in some island of Cythera or another, and has slain every other male inhabitant of it lest some one of them should happen to look at your footprints in the sand. Jealous! He would sicken at the word--not because he would be ashamed, but because it would conjure up the vision of some satyr-shape, and haunt him day and night. He has no need to study Persian poetry, I assure you. He has rose-gardens enough and to spare; for, if you are inclined to be flattered at my suggestion of Cythera, I hasten to assure you that yours is not the only island of his dominion. Bless you, he'll have an archipelago. But I have no fear for you; you can afford a sentimental education.”

Sanchia did not tell her old friend how far that education was proceeding--not because she was afraid, still less because she was ashamed, but in obedience to her nature, which was extremely reserved. She spoke of herself and her affairs with difficulty--never unless she was forced. But it had become a custom just now--in the dull days on either side of Christmas--to look for Morosine in the reading-room about noon, to stroll the galleries for half-an-hour, to receive and to agree to a lightly-offered proposition that they should lunch together, and (it might well be) to accept his escort homewards. This, I say, had become the rule of three days in the week, more or less. And it's not to be supposed that so clear-sighted a young lady could see so much of so keen-sighted a man without a good deal of self-communing.

Her capacity for silent meditation, during which she would sit before her fire, gazing far, smiling at her thoughts, into the glowing coals, had never left her. But there was a slight difference to be noted. She could not think of Ingram--the past, the present, or any future Ingram--without contraction of the brows. Smooth-browed she thought of Morosine.

He interested her greatly; she was conscious of anxiety to learn his opinion, of a wave of warm feeling when she awaited it. She credited him with insight, had a notion, for instance, that she could discuss her own affairs without any preliminary apology. He took so much for granted--surely he would take her youth into full account. She had never said to him a word of herself as yet; but there had been times when she had felt near it--had seen herself rowing a boat, as it were, within range of a weir, been conscious of effort to keep a straight course, and of the fruitlessness of effort. There had been moments when she had been tempted to throw down her oars with a sigh--by no means of despair. Morosine seemed to her so extraordinarily reasonable, so ready, with well-known laws, to account for unheard of vagaries, that it would have been real luxury to her to find herself and her escapade the mere creatures of some such law. To be discovered normal: what a relief from strain!

Lady Maria, it seems, charged him with Oriental aptitudes. Sanchia gave that judgment careful attention, studied her friend in the light of it, weighed every word of his to her, watched him closely in company when he could not be aware of it. She decided against the opinion. His manners with women were his manners with men, those of urbane indifference to sex. To sex! To much more than that. He was, in fact, outwardly polite to the point of formality; but his attitude of mind towards the person he happened to be with seemed to her--when she examined it closely--to be sublimely insulting. No created thing, with the passions and affections common to his kind, ought to take up such a position with his fellow-creature--that which says, “I infer your existence from my sensations: apart from them, I cannot bring myself to believe in it.” She was aware that he must needs regard her from this stand-point, and the knowledge piqued her. If she did not exist for him, why did he seek her out? If she did, why did he pretend she did not? Or was Lady Maria right? Were his sensations awake, and had they fired his imagination, to carry her to Cythera, and keep her hidden there? These questions amused her, and she made no attempt to answer them. Amusement might cease that way: she indulged herself and left her questions open. One thing may be added. Morosine no longer reminded her of Senhouse. Quite otherwise--for of Senhouse just now she dared not think.

Her friend Bill Chevenix gave her no warnings. Even when she sounded for them, he gave none. “I like Alexis,” he said once. “He's not so original as he makes out, but there's enough to give him a relish. A handy chap, too, in a dozen ways--he'll model you in wax, or draw you in pastels, or sing about you on the guitar, or whistle you off on the piano; but he's not strong, isn't Alexis. The one thing he can do--no, there are two. He can ride anything, and he can use a revolver. I saw him empty the ten of hearts once: very pretty. I dare say, if he was put to it, he could use an iron to some purpose; but we don't stick each other here, so he'd be out of practice. I rather wish we did, you know. It's far more gentlemanly than laying for a chap outside his club with a hunting-crop, and getting summoned for assault at Vine Street. Not a bit more vicious, barring the Ten Commandments.”

“Prince Morosine doesn't believe in them,” Sanchia said. “He's vowed to abolish them.”

“So he may tell you, my dear. Don't you believe it. So long as they are good form they will be Alexis' form. He'd sooner die than covet his neighbour's wife.” She reserved this for consideration. Meantime, she saw more of Morosine than of any other man, and got through January very well by his help.

She particularly liked his company in galleries, because, though he never allowed himself raptures--of which she, too, was incapable--he was always seeking the roots of rapture. Sanchia had a fund of enthusiasm for art all the richer, perhaps, for being denied expression. It was comfortable to have that securely based.

“Do you ever consider,” he asked her once, when they stood before the great group of the Pediment, “why it is that these things are so beautiful; why, although they are bare of colour and all that stands for life to us in art, they are more than life? It's because they point to a state of being exquisitely conform to the laws of being. Such a perfect conformity soothes us into believing that while we witness it we are of it--ourselves conforming. These splendid creatures here, so superbly static--idle, you might say (only they wouldn't understand you), indulging their strength--are strong and able precisely because they have submitted themselves---”

“Unlike the Poles?” She reminded him of their first conversation, and saw that he remembered it. He bowed to her.

“Let me finish. These existences, emanations, essences, what you will, are submiss, not to man, but to Nature. They are as passive as Earth herself, and as immune. They derive their strength from her. That's our only reasonable service.” Whether he intended it or not, the effect of this kind of talk was to make her view submission to the world's voice as a reasonable service.

It was not so odd as it may seem that her intimates had always been men. That reticence of hers which repelled her own sex was precisely that in her which attracted, by provoking, the other. After her dumb childhood, to which she never looked back, came her opening girlhood, and on the threshold of that stood Jack Senhouse, the loyal servitor, the one man who had loved her without an ounce of self-seeking. Then came Nevile Ingram, and swallowed her up for a while, and when he had tired of her she was once more without a friend. To Chevenix afterwards, rather than to Mrs. Devereux, she had struggled to utter herself. That cry of distress, “he wants me, to ravage me,” would never have been made by her to a woman. She would have died of it sooner. And now came the Pole, Morosine, and by taking for granted (as even Lady Maria could not have done) much that could not have been explained, put her at her ease. She found him a Jack without the spirit--without the divine spark. She could never have loved him, though she liked him well, and she had no idea that he thought of nothing but the greatness of his reward when, after patient toiling, she might fall into his arms. Every nerve in her body was now strung up to obedience to Jack's idea of her. She saw, as clearly as if it was printed, her fate before her. She was to put herself under the law. Jack should not have loved in vain her “dear obsequious head.” Nevile would come back and require her. For Jack's sake, who had seen her too noble to be touched by sin, she would dip herself deep in sin.

Morosine, who frankly desired her to be the wife of a man she did not love in order that she might the more easily find consolation in himself afterwards, had the wit to see that she needed some of his sophistry, though not enough to know exactly why. It was perfectly true. Her churchgoing was an ointment. It could soothe but not heal her. Sanchia had a mind. To do wrong by the world because it had seemed right to her was not to be remedied by doing a right by it now, which to her reasoning would glare before her as a monstrous sin. She forgot that Senhouse had also taught her that the great sin of all was insincerity. She could not have afforded to remember that. All her present desire was to be, as nearly as she might, what she had been when Jack had seen her first, what he had found excellent in her and love-worthy--pious, bowing her head in a fair place, obsequious, obedient to the law. He had loved her, of course, whatever she did--outraging the law as well as keeping it, loving Nevile, letting himself go away. She could not remember that. He had loved her meek; she would be meek. That was what her heart told her; and Morosine, to serve his own ends, lulled her head with his sophisticated anodynes, and sent her brain to sleep.

That he should know her story, as he obviously did, was not so disconcerting to her as it would have been to most young women. Taciturn as she was, it was not by reason of timidity, but rather that her own motives seemed too clear to her to be worth stating. She was, perhaps, rather given to assume her prerogative right to be different. Her first thought, therefore, was that she was saved the trouble of explaining herself, and her second that it was satisfactory to have a friend who understood her without explanations.

As for Morosine, he may or may not have felt that he had broken the ice; he pushed forward, at any rate, as if he had clear water in front of him. Sanchia felt, when she next met him, that their acquaintance had entered on a new phase.

Then suddenly, before she knew where she was, her fate was upon her.

It was in the Park on a fine Sunday forenoon in February. She was with Lady Maria, and had met with Melusine and Gerald Scales. Morosine also, seeing her and meeting her eyes, instantly left his companion and came to greet her, hat in hand. He addressed himself to her exclusively, having saluted Lady Maria; but she named her sister, and he saluted her too. Gerald Scales, bronzed, plump, and very full in the eye, having looked the newcomer over, decided against him, and gave him a shoulder. “Foreign beggar,” was the conclusion he came to, which does credit to his perspicacity, because the Pole had a very English appearance, and Scales himself the look of a Jew.

When they turned to walk, Morosine took the side next Sanchia, and though he talked to both ladies, so contrived that she should read more in what he said than her sister. He did it deftly, but continuously. Sanchia was entertained, slightly excited, and ended by taking part in the game of skill. It is impossible to say by how much this sort of thing increased the intimacy already established between the pair. It was by so much, at least, that when Melusine joined her husband, by dropping behind and waiting for him to come up with, the old lady, it came as no sort of shock to Sanchia that he took up the talk where he had ended it in the gallery.

“You have been to church, I see. But you are not a Christian?” He did not look at her.

Nor did she turn her head to reply. “I don't know. Nominally, at least; fitfully, at the most.”

“That must be the outside of it,” he continued. “The thing is the antithesis of the Hellenic ideal--which is yours. Your seemingly passive martyr is really in an ecstasy. He aims at outraging Nature; begins by despising and ends by dreading it. Nature, however, has ways of revenging herself.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Sanchia soberly.

They walked on together, she by this time very much absorbed. She was not conscious of the shifting crowd, the lifting of hats, the chatter, the yapping dogs that ran in and out of women's skirts.

Presently he spoke again. “You believe that you failed?”

Her voice came low. “I know that I failed.”

Then he looked at her, and spoke with vehemence. “And what is that to you? What is, failure in such a cause, to such as you?” But she could not meet his face, kept hers rigidly to the front.

“The cause,” Morosine told her, “is everything, the aim, the loyalty, the great surrender. Beside this failure is nothing at all. Do you say that the sapling fails that springs out of a cleft rock and towers--seeking, as we all seek, the sun, the light in heaven? A gale gathers it up and tears it out: over it goes, and lies shattered. Is that failure? How can it be when nothing dies?”

Sanchia, very pale, turned her face to his at last. Her mouth was drawn down at the corners, to the tragic droop. She almost whispered the words, “Something did die.”

His intuition worked like a woman's, in flashes. He knew immediately what she meant.

“I know, I know,” he said. “You were mistaken. But you never faltered. You followed a call.”

“You tell me,” she said, “that there was none.”

“I do.”

“But,” she argued, “that with which I began failed me. I was entirely certain, at the time; I could not possibly have hesitated. And then--it died.” Her eyes loomed large. “It is quite dead now, and I feel that I have betrayed myself--broken faith with myself.”

He shook his head. “You could not break faith; you are the soul of truth.”

This praise she accepted. “I don't tell lies, I hope--and I don't shirk things. But you see that I can stultify my own acts. I believed, and acted on my belief; and then I ceased to believe, and acted on that. I cannot trust myself--I ought to be ashamed to say so, and I hope I am.”

Morosine met her eyes again, and held them. “I can never believe that you would fail. I tell you that you have not failed. It is that you have been failed. You cannot give if what you give is not taken. Failed--you! Ah, no, you have succeeded, I think.”

She bent her brows as she faced resolutely forward. “I must take the consequences of what I have done. I see that.”

“Ah,” said Morosine, “that is a question of courage. Courage you have.”

“I need it,” she said in a hush, and stopped dead. Ingram stood before her, and took off his hat.

“Well, Sanchia,” he said, “here I am.”

VIII

The scattered party was suddenly strung to tensity; Morosine drew himself up, stiff as steel, but stood his ground. Here was the man he had waited for, who was necessary to him. Lady Maria, blinking her little black eyes, Melusine, with hers in a blur of mist, Gerald Scales, level and impassive, joined the other three.

Ingram, with a stretched smile, was volubly explaining. “I've been in London a week--to-day's the first glimpse of the sun I've had. I do think they might make better arrangements for a man home from Africa. I met your mother last night at a play. She told me that I might see you here.” He turned, without effrontery, to greet Melusine. “Ages since we have met. Ah, Scales, how are you?”

The tall Melusine stooped her head; Scales nodded, then, by an afterthought, shook hands. “I'm very fit, thanks,” he said. “Been travelling?”

Sanchia sought the side of Lady Maria, to whom she named Ingram. His exaggerated bow was accepted. “So you've arrived, I see,” said Lady Maria.

“One does, you know.” Ingram shrugged at the inevitable. “All roads lead to Rome.”

“Most roads lead to Lady Maria,” Morosine said to Sanchia, who replied from her heart, “I'm very glad that mine did.” Moved either by loyalty to his friendship, or touched by his recent words, she then brought him bodily into play. “Mr. Nevile Ingram; Prince Morosine.”

The two men inclined; Morosine lifted his hat, Ingram touched his brim.

Ingram, whom Morosine judged as a hard worker just now, supported his part with great gallantry. If he was naked to all these people who knew him, he appeared quite unashamed. Morosine, watching him carefully, believed that he had devoted a night's vigil to getting word perfect. He described Khartoum with vivacity--the English drill sergeant reigning over mudheaps, flies, and prowling dogs; getting up cricket-matches for the edification of contemptuous blacks. “They judge us, those fellows, you know. They are measuring us with their glazed eyes. The cud they chew has gall in it. I don't suppose anything offends them more deeply than our idiotic games. Is there a more frivolous race in the world than ours?”

Lady Maria suggested that the Boers might ask that question; Morosine that the Germans might answer it. Sanchia standing between these two, faced by Ingram, kept silent. She was conscious of being closely under observation. Morosine did not once lose sight of her. Whatever he said was addressed to her. Once, when she looked at him, she saw the gleam of knowledge in his eyes. He and Ingram never spoke to each other directly; indirectly Morosine capped whatever Ingram said. It was these two who maintained the talk through her sensitive frame.

Melusine and her husband exchanged glances--she in obedience to his fidgety heels. He had dug a hole in the gravel deep enough to bury a kitten. Her curtsey--it was almost that--to Lady Maria was very pretty. She drew in her suffering sister, almost embraced her. “Dearest, dearest!” she whispered. Sanchia, who was very pale, made no answer, and hardly returned the salute.

“Insufferable beggar,” was Gerald Scales' outburst. “I could have shot him at sight. But you women will go through with it, I suppose.”

“Oh, Gerald,” faltered Melusine, “it's dreadful--but what can she do?”

“Pon my soul, I'd take Morosov--the Polish party--what's-his-name--first. I would indeed--on the whole.”

There was nothing to say. Melusine knew that could not be.

Lady Maria, however, who never made a fuss over spilt milk, lost no time in ladling up what might be possible. She asked Ingram to luncheon, and was accepted with a cheerful, “Thanks, most happy.” It may have been malice which turned her to Morosine with the question. “And you? Will you join us?”

Morosine promptly excused himself. He had guests, and must consider them. He took ceremonious leave. “You remember, I hope, that I am to see you on Thursday, Lady Maria. And Miss Percival?” He looked to Sanchia, who did not turn him her eyes.

“Perfectly,” said her ladyship. “What's your hour?”

“We will dine at half-past eight.” He named the restaurant. He turned to pay his farewells to Sanchia. She looked him No, being unable to speak to him. Her eyes, deep lakes of woe, were crying to him. His answered.

He held out his hand and received hers. “Thursday,” he repeated, and left her with her fate.

Lady Maria, at luncheon, made what she called the best of a bad business. She treated Ingram to a brisk curiosity. “So you're a wanderer, I hear--like the Gay Cavalier of my childhood. Your mother may have heard the song. Mine sang it. I believe that that kind of thing was considered heroic in her day; in ours, heroism is more difficult, and much more dull. You might try heroism, Mr. Ingram.”

“I might, no doubt,” Ingram said. “Hitherto, I've preferred to travel. But I'm home for good now, so far as I can see.”

“We all hope so,” said Lady Maria. “But that remains to be seen.”

“Of course it does,” said Ingram blandly, and turned to Sanchia. “I thought your mother looking very well. Your father wasn't there. I saw Philippa, by the way; but I suppose she didn't remember me. That was her husband with her, I take it. Stiff old boy.” So he went on, letting bygones be bygones. It was after luncheon that her ordeal came.

Lady Maria having departed for her siesta, he came instantly to Sanchia with his hand out for her. “Sancie, I couldn't talk before all those people. You must forgive me, my dear. You are too good a sort--you must forgive me.”

He had to wait; but slowly she lifted her hand and let him take it. “I have forgiven you,” she said. He stroked her arm.

“That's nice of you--that's like you. I know that I behaved like a brute. I was awfully cut up about it afterwards--but, as you know, I had great provocation.”

“Not from me, I think.” Her eyes were upon him now.

“No, no,” he admitted; “certainly not from you; but--well, perhaps I may say that I had some ground for thinking that you--possibly--No, I don't think I ought to say that. At any rate, I thought then that I had. As for that young friend of yours--but he's nothing. It's you I want to make my peace with.”

“It's not difficult,” she said. “I tell you that I don't bear any malice. I bore none at the time. I wanted to go.”

He let her hand slide from his, and plunged his own into his pockets. “I know you did; I felt that at the time. That hurt me a good bit. I had come to rely upon you so much--oh, for every mortal thing. I expect the whole place has gone to the devil now. You had your hand on the tiller, by Jove! You kept a straight course, You see, I'd got into the way of thinking we were--married, don't you know, and all that---”

“I think you had, indeed,” she said. He saw her wry smile.

“I know what you mean by that. You mean, if that's marriage--many thanks! Well, my dear, all I can say is, you were absolutely wrong. It was _not_ marriage--it never had been, and you know it couldn't have been. But if it had been, Sancie, you'd have been as right as rain. You know you would. Your own place--everything to your hand--Society--all that kind of thing. Why, you'd never have thought it amiss in me to go off tiger-shooting for a bit. You'd have had your whack of travelling, playing the grass widow; you'd have entertained, had all sorts of little games--and both of us been all the better. No! But it was just because our relationship was so infernally irregular that you felt those separations--took them, if I may say it, so hard. Depend upon it, that was it.”

Her lip curled back, though she said nothing. She wondered if he had always been quite so fatuous as this, quite so sublimely unhumorous. If he had, what under heaven had she been about? That she could have believed this smug cockscomb to have loved her--to have been capable of anything but hunger and thirst for her--incredible! It made her out precisely as fatuous as he. And yet she said nothing. With the likes of him nothing seemed worth doing except to forget him.

And she was to marry him, to live in his house, to see him daily--ah, and more than that; and yet she said nothing of what her curled back lip expressed. She was in the presence of her fate, and, as ever, was dumb before it. To make him shrivel under scorn, to wind her tongue about him like a whip till he writhed; to play the honest woman and tell him quietly that she did not love and had nothing more to say to him; or to ask him urgently for release--she did none of these things: none of them entered her head. She had never shirked the apportioning of the Weaving Women. Destiny was unquestionable. She felt that she abhorred Ingram. What she was to suffer from him she knew but too well. And yet she knew also that she was going to marry him, to be neglected by him, put to scorn, betrayed. All these things she would undergo, because they could not be avoided. She was bound as well as gagged. Her destiny was before her, as her character was within. The one had begotten the other. She had sowed, and now she was to reap. Her stony mind contemplated the harvest, and saw that it was just.

Therefore she said nothing, but stood with her foot on the fender, shading her face from the fire with her thin hand. In this attitude, though able to see sideways what was coming upon her, she stood nerveless to his approach. “Sancie, my own Sancie,” he said, and put his arm about her, and drew her bodily to his side. She stiffened, but allowed it.

“Dearest girl, tell me that you forgive me--tell me that. I am wretched without you--I can't go on like this. It's not good for me; my health suffers. Darling Sancie, forgive poor old Nevile. He was once your boy--you loved him so much. For the sake of old times, Sancie, my dear.”

She could only say, “I have forgiven you--you know that. I have told you so.” He pressed her closely to him, feeling his urgent need to make the most of what she had to give him. Her apathy struck him mortally chill; he wooed her the more desperately.

Holding her to his heart--an inanimate burden--he kissed her cold lips, her eyelids, her hair; called her by names whose use she had long forgotten, whose revival caused her pain like nausea. If he could have known it, this was the last way to win her. It was like pressing upon a queasy invalid the sweets which had made him sick. But he, remembering their ancient potency, seeing himself the triumphant wielder of charms, felt secure in them still; therefore she was his darling, his hardy little lover, his Queen of Love, his saucy Sancie, his lass. On fire himself by his own blowing, at last he fell upon his knees and clasped hers: “Dearest, most beautiful, my own, I love you more than ever. Comfort me, be my salvation--I pray that I may be worth your while. Marry me, Sancie, and save my soul alive.”

Honestly, for the moment, he believed himself irresistible, and so far succeeded with her that her disgust hid itself in a cloud of pity. She felt pity for a man abject at her feet, and could speak more kindly to him.

But she could not bring herself to touch him. Looking down at him there, her eyes were softer and her lips took a gentler curve. “You mustn't be down there,” she said. “I don't like to see you there--and can't talk to you till you get up. Let's sit down and talk--if you will.” He rose obediently and stood with heaving chest, while she drew a chair to the fire and seated herself. Then he took to the hearthrug, and possessed himself of her hand.

“What a cold hand, my dear! Oh, Sancie, how I could have warmed you once! Is that never to be again? Don't tell me so, for God's sake.”

“Oh, how can I tell!” cried she. “Surely you can understand me better than that? Do you ask me to forget everything that has has happened in eight years?”

“I asked you to forgive me, my dear.”

“And I have forgiven.”

“But do you store these things up against me? That's not too generous, is it?”

“I don't store anything,” she assured him; “but it wouldn't be honest of me to pretend I am what I was--once. I was a child then, and now I'm a woman. You have made me that. I am what you made me.”

He stared into the fire, dropped her hand, which she instantly hid under the other.

“You mean to tell me, then,” he said, “that I have made you cease to care?”

She tried to soften the verdict. “You seemed to me not to care very much yourself. You left me for a year together--”

“Once, my dear. I left you for one year.”

“One whole year, you know,” she replied, “and for other times too.”

“I never ceased to love you,” he vowed. “You must be aware how much I depended upon you. You were always with me.”

She could have laughed at him. “I don't pretend to the same state of mind. During those absences of yours I learned to be happy alone--and I was happy, too.”

This seemed horrible to him. “I could not have believed it of you,” he said, aghast. “You must have changed indeed.”

“I have changed,” she owned. He started to his knees and clasped her.

“Beloved, I can change you again--I am the man who had your heart. I must do it--it's my right as well as my duty. Trust me again, my own; give me your dear hand again--and you shall see. If you are changed for the worse, I am changed for the better. You have redeemed me. What is it they say in the Bible? By your stripes I am healed. Yes, yes--that's precisely it. Kiss me, my own girl; kiss me.” His eyes implored: she stooped her sad head that he might kiss her. He strained upwards and held her until she broke away with a sob. “Oh, leave me, leave me for a little while,” she prayed him brokenly. “I can't talk any more now; I assure you I can't.”

He begged her pardon for his vehemence. “I'm pretty bad myself, you know. This kind of thing plays the deuce with a man's heart.”

She could thank him with a woman's for this naive assurance. “I don't doubt you for a moment,” she said. “You have been rather eloquent.”

“Eloquent, my dear!” He raised his eyebrows. “You might spare me congratulations upon my eloquence. I don't deserve very much, perhaps--though God knows I tried to make you comfortable; but perhaps I deserve credit for sincerity.”

She was not to be drawn that way. “I don't doubt your sincerity in the least,” she said. “But I wish you to allow for mine. I am changed, and have told you so.”

“I can see that you are. Heaven knows that. Perhaps I deserve it: I don't know. It's hardly for me to talk about my own points, is it? Criticism, from whichever side it comes, does seem to me out of place in a love-scene. And you found me eloquent in spite of it! Surely I may congratulate myself upon that.”

She looked at him standing before her, his arms folded; she showed him a face too dreary to be moved by sarcasm. “You may congratulate yourself on lots of things, I'm sure.”

Annoyance began to prick him; he showed spirit. “You are tired--and I may have tired you. I won't do that any longer. I think I'll go, if you'll excuse me to your Lady Maria. Sensible lady, that. She goes to sleep....” He took a turn over the room, then came back and stood over her. “I have not had my answer yet. I'll come for it in a few days' time. May I hope you'll have it for me--say, to-day week?”

“What is the question I have to answer?” She looked up for it, though she knew what it was to be quite well.

“Do you wish it repeated?” He was perfectly cool by now. “I'll put it categorically. I have wronged you, and wish to repair my fault: will you allow it? I love you more than before: will you permit me to prove it? I believe that I can make you happy: may I try?”

She had scarcely listened, and when she answered him, did not lift her head. “I can't answer you now, Nevile. Don't ask me.”

“I have not asked you. I have simply put my questions fairly. I will come for my answer next Sunday afternoon. Good-bye, Sanchia.”

He held out his hand and received hers, which he kissed. Then he turned and left her alone.

* * * * *

“I should swallow him, if I were you,” was Lady Maria's spoken reflection upon what her young friend was able to tell her. “I should swallow him like a pill. You won't taste him much, and he'll do you worlds of good. The world? I'm not talking of the world. I never do. He'll put you right with yourself. That's much more to the point. He's in love with you, I believe. From what you tell me, that's new. You suppose that he was in love with you before. I do not. He was in love with himself, as you presented him. Most men are. Now you are to occupy that exceedingly comfortable position of a woman out of love with her husband, extravagantly beloved by him. Next to being a man's mistress there's no surer ground for you than that, with respectability added, mind you. No mean addition. Take my advice, my dear, and you won't regret it.”

But Sanchia knew at the bottom of her heart that Ingram was not in love with her. He wanted her restored to his collection.

IX

On the Monday morning, after a night of broken sleep, she received a letter from her mother.

“MY DEAR CHILD,” Mrs. Percival wrote, “I met Nevile Ingram, _quite unexpectedly,_ on Saturday evening. Yesterday he called here, after he had seen you in the house where you choose to remain. Our interview was naturally distressing, and I should be glad to feel sure that you could spare me a _third_. I need not remind you of the first.

“But I feel bound to own, from what I could learn from him of his _discussion_ (as I must call it) with you, that I am most uneasy. If I were to say _unhappy_, tho' it would be less than the truth, you might accuse me of exaggeration. That I could not bear. Therefore, let 'uneasy' be the word. Is it possible, I ask myself, that my youngest child--my latest-born--can find it in her heart to _torture_ the already agonised heart of her mother? I put the question to you, Sanchia, for I am incapable myself of finding the answer. I blush to write it--but such is the terrible fact. I can only beg you to put me out of suspense as gently as may be. I am growing old. There are limits to what a grey-haired mother's heart can bear.

“Mr. Ingram's proposals towards a settlement of the untold _ruin_ he has wrought in a once smiling and contented household were (I must say) liberal. That they were all that they should be, I must not declare--for how could that ever be? He put himself, however, and his extremely handsome fortune unreservedly in my hands and those of your father, who was not present at our interview. He was _resting,_ I believe--his own phrase. Philippa came in to tea, with her trusty, honourable Tertius, and was more than gracious to N. You know her way. She _stoops_ more charmingly than any woman I have ever met. Her manners, certainly, are to be copied.

“His position in the county--I return to Nevile--I need not dwell upon. It may be _brilliant._ A Justice of the Peace at thirty-two! I leave you to imagine what he might become, building upon that, if he were blessed with the loving companionship of a _tender, chaste and Xtian wife._ Such an one could guide him into Green Pastures--and such an one only. Secure in the gratitude of his inferiors, the respect of his peers, reconciled to the Altar, and his God, one sees before Nevile the upright, prosperous, honoured career of an English Gentleman. There is no higher, I believe. But it is clear to all of those who truly love you, my child, that you only can ensure him these advantages. He is sincerely penitent now--of that I am sure. Who can tell, however, what relapse there may be unless he is taken in hand?

“You have been his curse, but may be his Blessing. You have my prayers.

“I beg my compliments to Lady Maria Wenman if she condescends to recognise the existence of--Your affect. Mother,

“CATHERINE WELBORE PERCIVAL.”

“_P.S._--Nevile assures me that his cousin, the Bishop, would perform the rite. This would be a _great thing_. One must think of N's position in the county.”

“Venus, wounded in the side ...” is the opening line of an old poem of Senhouse's, one of those “Greek Idylls” with which he made his bow to the world--old placid stories illuminated by modern romantic fancy; nursery-rhyme versions, we may call them, of the myths. “Venus, wounded in the side,” recounts how the Dame, struck by a shaft of her son's, ran moaning from one ally to another seeking Pity, the only balm that could assuage her wound. To the new lover, to the old, to the fresh-wedded, to the long-mated: from one to the other she ran--hand clapt to throbbing heart. None could help her. “Pity! What's that?” cried the first. “I triumph: rejoice with me. Is she not like the sun in a valley?” The second cursed her for a procuress. The bride stirred in her sleep, and whispered, “Kiss me again, Beloved.” As for the fourth, he said, “All my Pity was for myself. It is gone; now I am frost-bound.” Venus wept: Adonis healed the wound.

Sanchia, reading long afterwards, saw in it a parallel to her case, when she, stricken deep, ran about London ways for a soothing lotion. She saw herself trapped; felt the steel bite to the bone. Tears might have helped her, but she had none: pray she could not, nor crave mercy. It was not Ingram who held her caged, but Destiny; and there's no war with him.

She thought of Vicky, of Melusine. Their kisses would have been sweet, but she knew what they would say. Melusine's sideways head, her sighed, “Dearest, how sad! But life is so serious, isn't it?” She saw the gleam in Vicky's eyes, and heard her “Dear old Sancie, how splendid! Now you'll be all right.” Then she would clasp her round the neck and whisper in her ear, “Do make me an aunt--I shall adore your baby. Quick, darling!” She turned her back on Kensington and Camberley, and went into the City, to The Poultry, with her griefs.

Poor Mr. Percival's rosy gills and white whiskers, his invariable, “Well, Sancie--well, my dear, well, well--” called her home. She ran forward, clung to him, and lay a while in his arms, short-breathing, breathless for the advent of peace. To his, “What is it, my love? Tell your old father all about it,” she could only murmur, “Oh, dearest, what shall I do?” He urged her again to tell him what the matter was--“What has hurt you? Who has dared to hurt my darling? Show me that scoundrel--” but she was luxuriating in new comfort and would say nothing. Into her false peace she snuggled and lay still; and the honest man, loving her to be there, let her be.

Presently she opened her weary eyes, looked up, and smiled, then snuggled again. He led her to his office chair, and took her on his knee. “Lie here, my bird, make your pillow of my shoulder. That's more comfortable, I hope. Why, Sancie, you've not been here, in my arms, since you hurt your foot at Sidmouth deuce knows how long ago--and I kissed it well! Do you remember that? Ah, but I do. I'm a foolish old chap, with nothing else to think about but my girls. And you're the only one left--the only one, Sancie. And I always loved you best--and behaved as if you were the worst--God forgive me!” She put her hand up and touched his cheek. “Hush, dearest. We don't talk about that.”

“No, no, my darling--that's over, thank God. You have forgiven me, I know--my great-hearted Sancie. Now, if you feel stronger, tell me all your troubles.” She murmured what follows.

“He came to see me. Nevile came.”

“I know, my love. Your mother told me.”

“She wrote to me. Rather a dreadful letter. She's on his side--she talks about his position in the county.”

“I daresay, I daresay. But you know, your mother thinks a great deal of that kind of thing. She says we owe a deal to our station, you know. There's something in it, my dear. I'm bound to say that.”

“Papa, he--wants me again. He thinks he does.”

“Oh, my dear, there's no doubt about that--none at all. He proposes--well, it's _carte blanche_; there's no other word for it. A blank cheque, you know. We must do Master Nevile justice. It is the least he can do; but he does it.”

“What am I to do, Papa?” The poor gentleman looked rather blank.

“Do, my dear? Do?” He puzzled; then, as the light broke on him, could not help showing his dismay. “Why, you don't mean to say--Oh, my child, is that what you mean?”

She clung to him convulsively, buried her face.

“God help us all!” His thought, his pity, his love whirled him hither and thither. He shivered in the blast. “'Pon my soul, I don't know how we shall break it to your mother. I don't, indeed.” He stared miserably, then caught her to him. “It breaks my heart to see you like this--my child; it cuts me to the heart. Sancie, what are we to do?”

She sat up and brushed her dry eyes with her handkerchief. “I know. There's nothing to do. It's my fate.”

This was rather shocking to old Mr. Percival, who shared the common opinion of matrimony, that it should be marked by champagne at luncheons. It was a signal for rejoicing--therefore you must rejoice. White stood for a wedding all the world over, black for a funeral. To go scowling to church, or tearless to the cemetery, was to fail in duty.

“We mustn't look at it like that, my darling. I don't think we ought, indeed. Fate, you know! That's a gloomy view of an affair of the sort. I don't pretend to understand you, quite, my love. You see, a year or two ago, you would have asked nothing better--and now you call it fate. Oh, my dear--”

She could not have hoped that he would understand, and yet she felt more like crying than at any time yet. “My heart is cold,” she said. “It's dead, I think.”

He echoed her, whispering, “Not dead, Sancie, not dead, my child. Numbed. He'll warm it asleep, he'll kiss it awake. He loves you.”

She moaned as she shook her head. “No, no. He wants me--that's all.”

“Well, my dear,” pleaded good Mr. Percival, “and so he may. We do want what we love, don't we now? He's come to his senses by this time, found out the need of you. And I don't wonder at it. You're a beautiful girl, my dear--you're the pick of my bevy. But I must bring back the roses to those cheeks--Mildred Grant, eh? Jack Etherington used to call you that: he was a great rose-fancier--old Jack. Do you remember our tea-party last summer? And how happy we were? Let's be happy again, my lamb! Come, my child, can't you squeeze me out one little smile? You'll make the sun shine in this foggy old den of mine.” He pinched her cheek, peered for the dimple which a smile must bring; then he drew her closer to him and whispered his darling thought: “Shall I tell you something, Sancie? What your old dad prays for when he's by himself? I want another grandchild, my dear--one I can spoil. I ought to be a happy man with what I've got--I know that. But you were always the pet, my love; you know you were--until, until--ah, Sancie! And one of yours! Aren't you going to indulge your old father? He's only got a few years left, mind you. Don't want any more. To see his darling happy, smiling down on her baby--bless me, I'm getting foolish.” He blinked his bravest, but had to wipe his glasses. She rewarded him with a kiss, and did not leave till she could leave him at ease.

X

Sanchia, after many nights' stony vigil, decided that she must fight her beasts by herself. She was going to make her parents and sisters happy; she was going through with her bargain; but there was no need to tell them any more about it. In her hard mood she told herself that that was the only wear. If she should be wept over, she might well recant. When the fatal word was once spoken, she would write to her mother--that was all that she could do. For the same reason--that she dreaded a tender moment--she did not go to church with her griefs. The Gods there were too human--the Man of Sorrows, the Mother with the swords in her bosom. It was Destiny that had her by the heel. As ye sow, ye shall reap. Vaster gods, heartless, blind, immortal shapes, figuring the everlasting hills, were her need. She was going to her fate, because the Fates called her. There's no war with them.

There had been one who would have had it all out of her in a trice. But he was remote, a part of her childhood. She hardly called him to mind at this hour. It was dangerous work to think of him, she knew--and her old fortitude stood by her, which said, Turn your mind resolutely away from that which may influence your judgment. Senhouse was not a stoic; he was an epicurean, she now considered. She wanted something flintier than Senhouse. He might have tried to dissuade her; but her mind was now made up. She intended to marry Nevile.

She breakfasted alone, and immediately afterwards went upstairs to write her agreement. The thing was to be gone through with, and the sooner the better.

“MY DEAR NEVILE,” she wrote, “if it can ever be right to marry without love, it must be in my case. I don't blame you in the least for what happened. It was as much my doing as yours--and I still think that I was right. And now I think that it is right to fulfil one's bargain--as it would have been if I had married you. If I had been married to you, I should not have left you unless you told me to go, and I don't think that I ought to now. If you really wish it, you shall marry me when you please, and I will do my duty by you always. Whatever arrangements you make will suit me quite well; but the less fuss we make the better. I am sure that you will think so too. Don't come to see me for a few days if you don't mind. I want to think.--Yours affectionately, SANCHIA.”

It was not a very gracious letter, it must be owned. So young and so untender! One would have said that the man must be a courageous lover who would take marriage on such terms; but either Ingram was very much in love, or honestly hoped to be loved again. I incline to the opinion of Bill Chevenix, to whom he showed it. “Nevile, old chap,” he said, “you take her on any terms. You've no idea how set up you'll feel by everybody saying you've done the square thing. I tell you frankly that she's too good for you. Look how she's shaped in Charles Street! As if she'd been born to it. And never once--never once--allowed to anybody that she's been in the wrong. Not to a soul. And neither you nor I believe that she has--nor did old Dosshouse, or whatever his name was.” Ingram knew quite well to whom he so airily referred.

“I shall have landed that chap once for all, anyhow,” he said.

“Landed him!” cried the other. “Why, bless you, didn't you know? He landed himself two years after you did. He's married.”

“Married, is he?” Ingram asked, not thinking of Senhouse in particular. “Who did he marry?”

“He married a rather pretty woman, a widow, a Mrs. Germain.”

Ingram looked sharply up. “I'll take my oath he didn't. I met her the other day. She's Mrs. Duplessis.”

Chevenix stared at him. “Why, I know the chap. Where did you meet her? Where do they live?” he asked his friend.

But Ingram had other things to think of, and returned to his letter. “I shall take this as she means it, Bill. She wants me to go slow--I can take a hint. She shall have her head. When I get her down to Wanless we shall be all right. The place isn't fit to live in now, you know. I was up there last week--and found everything going to pot. Not a horse fit to ride--not a sound one amongst 'em. Plantations all to pieces--gardens--tenants in arrears--oh, beastly! She'll have it all to rights in no time, and she'll simply revel in it. She'll come round--you leave that to me. If _I_ can't get a girl round I ought to.”

Chevenix listened, and judged. He knew his Ingram pretty well, and took his confidence, like his confidences, for what they were worth. “Where did you say that the Duplessis lived?”

“I think she's in a hotel. It might be Brown's. I believe it _is_ Brown's. What d'you want her for?”

“Think she knows some of my people,” said Chevenix, and presently took himself out of the Coffee Tree Club.

But Sanchia, her day's work done, went--not to church, but to Bloomsbury. Entering the portals of the Museum, she swam to the portico, full of her cares. But smoothly, swiftly, she went, with that even, gliding gait peculiar to her kind, which has precisely the effect of a swan breasting the stream. Past the door, she turned to the left, not glancing at the aligned Caesars, scarcely bowing to Demeter of the remote gaze. In that long gallery, where the Caryatid thrusts her bosom that her neck may be the prouder to the weight, she saw the objects of her present pilgrimage--beaten, blind, and dumb, immovable as the eternal hills, the Attic Fates; and before them at gaze, his arms folded over his narrow chest, Morosine the Pole.

Whether she had sought him here or not, she did not falter in her advance. Smoothly, swiftly, and silently she came to him and stood by his side. He turned his head, looked sharply at her pale face and sad eyes, then resumed his meditation before the Three. Neither of them had a care to speak.

Presently Morosine said, “I knew that you would be here.” He kept his face towards the mystery, and so did she when she echoed him. “Did you know that? You know me, I think.”

“I believe that I do. You have come here for strength. You will get it.”

Ruefully enough she answered, “I wish I could believe that.”

“You have it in you already. These great ladies will call it out. I wish you had been here, say, the day before yesterday. They might have helped you.”

“But they did help me,” she said. “They were with me. I remembered what we had talked about before them.”

He nodded his head. “I had intended that you should. I was rightly inspired.”

“Without them,” she went on, “I don't know what I should have done. It seems absurd to say so, but--”

He interrupted. “It's not absurd at all--to you and me. If it's absurd, then Art is pastry-cook-stuff: sugar and white-of-egg. The man who fashioned these things had walked with God. Here are his secrets, revealed to you and me.”

She followed her own thoughts, not his. “I came to--day because I have made up my mind. I wanted them to confirm me--to say that I was right. If you weren't here, I should go up to them and whisper to them, as I've seen women do to the Madonna abroad. I should tell them everything.”

He looked at her keenly. “Do it now. I'll leave you.”

She smiled faintly. “No, don't leave me. I couldn't do it now. But I meant to when I came in.”

“You didn't think that I might be here?” He watched her.

“No. I remember that you said we were to meet on Thursday. And I have a great deal to think of; I'm in great trouble.”

“I know you are,” he said. “I fear to be impertinent; but if I can help you---”

She gave him a grateful look. Her trouble was very real, and made almost a child of her. “I should value your advice. It would help me to have it--even if it couldn't change my intentions.”

“You shall have it, assuredly,” he said. “Shall we find a seat?”

“No, no. I would rather stop where we are. Perhaps they'll hear us.” They looked at each other and smiled at a shared sentiment.

“Tell me, then,” he said.

“He wants me to marry him,” she said hurriedly, “and I think that I must. All my people wish it, and my friends--I mean those who have known me for a long time. I don't mind very much about most of them; but one of my sisters--Vicky--who was always my closest friend, expects it--and it would break my father's heart if I did not do it. The others don't count; but those two do. And there are other things--one other person who would think I am doing right.”

“Would you”--Morosine spoke slowly, addressing the statues--“would you consider the possibility of marrying any one else?”

She spoke as one in a trance. “No--I couldn't--I shouldn't dare. Besides, there is no possibility--there would be Papa and Vicky again. That would never satisfy them. And then I feel that it's my punishment--if I deserve punishment, as they all imply that I do. At any rate, it's part of my bargain. I began this thing, and I must go on with it, at all costs to myself. I mustn't think of myself in it at all. I'm only part of the world's plan; but I happen to know that I am; and so I must go where I am called to go. I must follow my Destiny, just as I did at first. That time I followed it against everybody's opinion; this time I must follow against my own will. Don't you agree with me?”

Morosine reflected in silence. Then he said, “Yes, I agree with you. I recommend you to follow your determination.”

Her eyes looked blankly at him; for the first moment he thought her disappointed, but he corrected his impression in the second.

“I'm glad you agree with me,” she said. “I should have been disappointed if you hadn't.”

He smiled. “You are stronger than you think. You can suffice to yourself. But I hope that I shall never disappoint you.”

“I have no fear of that,” she said, young again and confident. She thanked the Immortal Three with her eyes, and turning to Morosine, asked him, “Shall we go?” They went together. Passing the Demeter of Cnidos, her swinging hand touched his. He held his breath. Her face, sharply in profile, was as pure and pale as a silver coin. Her breast held her secret. To her own heart she voiced the cry, “Have I done well, dear one? Have I done well? Do you approve of me? Do you?” It may be that Senhouse heard her in his Wiltshire hills.

XI

Nevile Ingram was capable of fine ideas, we have seen, and could sometimes carry them out. He had had a moment of generosity, with Sanchia's letter in his hand, and held in the main to his expressed intentions. When he went to see her, at the end of three rigorous days, he behaved like a gentleman. She entered the room where he awaited her, pale for his embrace: he came to meet her, put his hand upon her shoulder, and, stooping, kissed her lightly. “My dear,” he said, “I'll deserve you yet;” and he really meant it. She was touched, and quite kind to him. He exhibited his version of her surrender.

“We're friends, eh? We know each other of old, have no surprises, and can take raptures for granted. That's your notion, I fancy? It's not mine, but I'll be thankful for what you give me, and it shall be my fault if you find me backward when you're ready. Bygones are bygones, then? We make a new start?”

She sat staidly under his gaze, not aware at the moment that his steel-blue eyes searched her avidly for a hint of more than he stated. “So far as I am concerned--certainly,” she said. “I shall never unlock any cupboards.”

“Better to burn the contents, perhaps,” he laughed. “I tell you fairly, I had rather they were cleared out. Now, I'll confess to anything you please to ask me. That's a firm offer.” He would probably have done it, but she told him that she had no questions to put. “Very well, my dear,” he said. “Have it as you will. It's sublime of you--but it's not love. If you don't want to know it's because you don't care.”

“No, indeed,” she sighed, with such conviction that he was stung.

“Hang it all, Sancie,” he cried, “you can't have known me for eight years without feeling something.” She looked up at him, and he saw that her eyes were full.

“Oh, Nevile,” she said, with a quivering lip, “don't let us look back. Indeed, I can't do it now.” He put his arm round her and, drawing her closer, kissed her forehead. “My pretty one, we won't. I had much rather look forward. The future is to be my affair--if the past was yours.” Then he went away, and she saw nothing of him for two days. On the second of them he dined with Lady Maria, and met some of the Percivals--the father and mother, the Sinclairs, and Mr. Tompsett-King. (Philippa had declined to come.) He behaved with great discretion, and so continued. After a week or ten days of courtship, she could hardly believe that their relations had ever been interrupted. His reliance upon her was absolute, his confidence no less so. He babbled of himself and his concerns in the old vein of mocking soliloquy, careless whether she heard him or not. Now that he had her promise, he seemed in no hurry for possession. His kisses were fraternal, his embraces confined to a hand on her shoulder, an arm lightly about her waist. She was inordinately thankful to him, and by a queer freak of the mind, poured all her gratitude into Senhouse. She told herself that but for him she would never have brought herself to her duty; but for him, therefore, would never have discovered how little she had to fear. Here was a crown for her “dear obsequious head”: shutting her eyes tightly, she thought that she could feel his fingers putting it on, smoothing out her hair so that the circlet should fit closely. Night after night she knelt to receive it. It came as a result of prayer.

The marriage-announcement, got into the paper by Mrs. Percival, was accepted for what it was worth. It was partly the price of her crown. A few letters from old friends were formally answered. Sanchia had never been a free writer; nobody but Senhouse had found her letters eloquent--he only had been able to feel the throb beneath the stiff lines. Her handwriting, round and firm, had for him a provocative quality; it stung his imagination. He used to sing her “divine frugality of utterance,” and protest that it was all of a piece with the rest of her life. No one, he had told her once, but a sculptor could embody her in Art--her chill perfection, her severity and definite outline. A poet might not dare, for he would have to be greater than love itself, greater than the love which inspired him, able to put it down below him, and stand remote from it, and regard it as a speck in the landscape.

Your sober thought, and your pride To nurse the passion you hold and hide

he had written of her in his day. That austere concealment of her heart, which so impassioned him, chilled enthusiasm in all others of her acquaintance. So her letters were few, and now she was thankful enough. She herself wrote to nobody, and never spoke of her future unless she was compelled to answer questions.

Once a day, however, she took out a writing-block, and traced upon it the words, “My dear Jack, I think I ought to tell you--” or a similar exordium. She got no further. How could she tell him that without telling him more? And how tell him more when, of her own accord, she had sent him about his business, and set her approval upon his marriage, or what must be considered his marriage? An instinct forbade her. She didn't reason with it: her reason was paralysed. “It's part of the price. It's what he would have praised me for”--and she flew to her text.

“_A great power is in your thin sweet hands, my sweet; you are in the way of being a great artist._” She looked at her hands, and loved them for his sake who had loved them so well. Her “thin sweet hands!” Could one write so of her hands and not love them well?

But the power, the power that she had! Hear her rhapsodist. _“If you can so work upon your delicate surface as to mould it close to your noble soul; if in the gallery of the world you can unveil yourself for a thousand pair of eyes to see, and praise God for the right to see--why, what an artist you are, and what an audience you have! ... Like a whiff of thyme on a grassy down, like the breath of violets from a bank, or of bean-flower blown across a dusty hedge, some gentle exhalation of your soul sighed through your body will hint to the passion-driven wretch things innocent and quiet. The blue beam of your steadfast eyes may turn his own to heaven; a chance-caught, low, sweet tone of your voice may check clamour; an answer may turn his wrath.... You can be picture, form, poem, symphony in one.... Think of it, Sanchia, before you turn away. Think well whether upon that exquisite medium you cannot express your best.”_

She found herself trembling--in these days she easily trembled--as she re-read these words. That such a power should indeed be hers--and how could she fail to believe it?--was inspiration enough to send her to the fire. She read no more, but used to sit shivering, thrilling through every fibre of her body, with the strength of such splendid praise. For whatever might be her fate, splendid it was to have been so loved, so seen, and so praised. It was well for Ingram that she read her old love-letters--and extremely unfortunate for the writer of them, who anguished for her now in his desert place. Odd situation! that the love-letters of one man should reconcile her to the arms of another.

From Torquay, where she spent the Easter holidays with her father, the two alone and happily together, she wrote two or three times to Nevile. He was at Wanless, professedly getting some order into things there, and protesting to her by every word he sent her upon the need there was of her hand upon affairs. There was not a word of love used between the pair. All the love-making, indeed, was done by Senhouse, whose master-stroke was called for by and by.

Towards the end of April she was alone in Charles Street, preparing the house for Lady Maria's return from Rome. Ingram was still at Wanless, grumbling through his duties of magistrate, landlord, and county gentleman. “They seem to think up here that a fellow has nothing to do but 'take the chair,'” he wrote. “I can tell you I'm pretty sick of it, and fancy that they will be before long. I'm an awkward customer when I'm bored--as I am now, damnably.” She sent him matter-of-fact replies, and wrote principally of the weather.

The Pole continued his discreet and temperate wooing after the plan he had formulated. He strove to interest her perpetually, never left her without having, as he taught himself to believe, impressed himself anew upon her imagination. Watching her as a cat a mouse, he learned to read her by signs so slight that no one who had not the intuition of a woman could have seen them at all. Unfortunately for him, he misinterpreted what he read. The slap-dash Ingram thought all was well; Chevenix, the more observant, thought there was a bare chance; Morosine alone could see how her quivering soul was being bruised, and if he thought that she looked to him for balm, he may be excused. She was drowning, she held out her hands. To whom, but to him upon the bank? How should he know what shadow stood behind him, with praise in his dim eyes for a “dear obsequious head”?

Playing deputy to Senhouse, little as he guessed it, he devoted himself to bracing her for the match, having made up his mind that there was no other way of making her happiness his own. His mistress she might be, his wife never. As he read her, she would keep the letter of the law--since the law required it of her. The rest, he flattered himself, might be left to time and him. His present aim was to interest and stimulate her, without alarming.

He counted greatly upon some sudden emotional stimulus, which would cause her to fall to him; and one came, though it had no such effect.

The opera of _Tristan and Isolde,_ to which she was taken by Lady Maria--where she sat in his box, by his side, absorbed in the most sensuous expression of the love-malady that has ever tormented its way out of a poet's heart--had been a real test of his restraint. He had not once met her eyes--though hers, craving sympathy at any hand, had sought his often; he had not once permitted himself to gaze upon her beauty, though it was her beauty, so carven, so purely Greek, which had drawn him to her from the first. While the great music went sobbing and chiding through her frame, like wounded nightingales, he had sat in the dark, with his arms folded, never looking at her fully, nor seeking to win a glance from her soul to his own. That it stirred her to the deeps he knew. He could watch sideways, listen sideways, both hear and see that she was rapt. Her quick-heaving breast, the whistle of her short breath, the strained line of her head and shoulder--all this he marked and stored without a sign. Even when, on going out, he had been conscious of her overcharged heart, of her breast full of emotion; even when she had told him under her breath that she was happier, though he shivered, he drew away. He had nodded quickly, smiled, blinked his eyes. “I was sure of that,” was all he allowed himself in the way of intimacy.

Swift, fire-consumed, intensely sensitive, subtle-minded, this was a man who relished suggestions more than things. He had far rather deal mentally with the lovely image of Sanchia, as he saw it, than actually with the breathing, palpitating flesh. To picture her longing, straining, trembling--to keep her always so, always holding out her arms, never obtaining what she sought: his bliss lay in that. He knew himself, after much experience of the sort; he had missed so often by blundering in, that now he dared not risk a wreck. Here at last, he told himself, was perfection: let him look to it that he kept it at its perfect poise. He must poise himself to do that, balance himself upon a knife-edge. Little of an ascetic as he was by temper, he could train himself to the last ounce if the prize were worth it. And it was. Never had musician had instrument more sensitive to play upon. It seemed to him worthy of a lifetime of preparation to have her for one moment of time throbbing in his arms.

So Morosine went into the palaestrum, and fasted with prayer. His _sangfroid_ through _Tristan,_ and the going out with all its cry ringing in him, and in her, surprised even himself, who knew himself well. “My friend,” he thought, as he stalked to his club, “you have done well.”

But he had not reckoned with the flinty core which lay beneath her fair and delicate seeming. Her frugality of utterance, which charmed and chained him, really implied no reserve. She did not speak, because she had nothing to say, did not reveal herself, because she knew of no mystery. She was at once very simple and very practical; she had healthy tastes which she desired to gratify, and a deliberate mind which instructed her how far she might do so. Once in her life those had played her false, when they told her that the pity she had for Ingram was love, and the need he had for possession of her was her own need to give it him. She had been bitterly mistaken, and was now so weary with herself that she seemed to have no desire in the world but that of sleep. Tristan and Isolde, drowning soul and body in music which made love, and love which was the heart of music, were not to be thought of on this side of the grave. The Fates had a sterner way for her. She was never to empty herself in a kiss or to watch out the stars with Jack Senhouse. Homing in the carriage with Lady Maria, she denied him, like Peter his Lord. “I know not the man.” Vaguely dreaming at her open window, under the fire-fretted roof of that May night, she suddenly thought of him again--nay, knew him bodily there, alone with her under the sky--and for the first time in her life felt his eyes upon her, seeking of her what he had never dared to seek, and then his arms about her, touching her as assuredly he had never dreamed to do. She had denied him once too often, it seems. Here was a sudden attack, a trick of the sprites. She held her breath, she trembled, her breast heaved, she shut her eyes, and her lips relaxed their hold of each other. “Not yet, my blessed one, not yet!” and “Come, Rose of the World!” Thus they murmured to each other and strove. An expectancy, the shiver and thrill of it, possessed her; she seemed to feel the touch of a beloved hand, which drew her, trembling and panting, closer and closer to some high experience of which she had never dreamed before, to the expression of inexpressible things, to a giving of the utmost, to a wild strife of emulation which of them two should give the most. The dark was all about them like a bed--and closer he drew her, and closer yet. For one wild moment that endured--O heaven, they two in love under the stars! He was of the Open Country--as free as the wind. Thus he would love her, if he ever loved. Tristan's crying would be his--and Isolde's whimper of hurt would be her answer. Thus, if ever, she might be loved. And then, if ever in this world, peace!

Shivering still, with the sense of an arm still about her, of wild breath beating on her cheek, she looked wonderfully out at the stars which had seen her possessing. They burned steadily in their violet hold--a million kindly eyes welcoming her to the Open Country. The great town lay so still below that but for the glare behind the houses, which told her that it lived, she might have thought herself enfolded in the hills. So sure she was that she had been wedded, she glanced swiftly up and down the street, lest one chance passenger should have seen her naked soul. So a young girl, kissed by her lover, will search the emptiness in fear. Not a soul could be seen; Charles Street under its lamplight showed like a broad white ribbon curving towards the Square, towards the Park. To her heart she whispered, “Dearest, you may love me--we are alone under the stars”--and then shut her eyes fast, and with parted lips breathed quick and short.

Out of the night, out of an empty street, a voice came up, “He loves you--none so well. He lies out on the down in a white robe. He watches for you and waits. I have seen him, talked with him of you. Can you refuse such love as his? Goddess though you are, you will get no higher love.”

The voice was very real. She knew it well. From the close arms that held her, she answered it. “Oh, Struan, I know! I knew before you told me. It's wonderful. Love is a wonderful thing.”

“It's all we have in the world. I am here to tell you that he waits for you. Good-night.”

“Good-night, Struan,” she said. “I'm quite happy now.”

She remembered afterwards, with a shock of dismay at her selfishness, that she had never asked Struan of his welfare.

* * * * *

She came to herself with a shudder and envisaged her circumstance. She had had “a rare vision,” like Bottom the weaver--and that was all. Jack Senhouse had never loved her so. To him she had been Artemis, the cold goddess, or Queen Mab, whom no man might take. He had said so often--and had looked it whenever she was near him. Meantime, she was to be married--and _Tristan_ was unprofitable provender. It had given her an indigestion of the mind. She would go to bed.

That she deliberately did--with one ceremony, characteristic of her frugality. She opened a locked drawer, and looked at its contents. There lay three goodly piles of letters, tied with blue ribbon. Each packet was labelled “Jack to Me,” and dated with beginning and ending. She contented herself with looking at them, smiling wisely and thoughtfully as she did so. Then, like a child, not trusting to her eyes alone, she looked at them with her fingers; touched them delicately in turn, with a caress. Immediately afterwards she locked them up; and turned to her disrobing. She slept quietly, and went about her affairs of the morrow with a calmness that surprised her.

At a later day, in a conversation which Morosine had with her, he permitted himself a reference to the Museum. “You go no more? They've done their work--the Three?”

She smiled upon him, looking up from a little blue-covered book which lay half-cut upon her lap. It had arrived by the post that morning without message, or even inscription. But it was dedicated, she observed, “To the Fairest,” and had smiled wisely to herself, observing it. A finger in the book, she answered Morosine. “Yes, they've done their work. I'm much happier now. I've thrown up my arms, you see. I'm drowning.” She suddenly blushed, to remember her dream; and he perceived it.

“Drowning?” he asked.

“Drifting with the tide,” she explained. “And I like it.”

It was on his tongue to refer to _Tristan_, but--such was her hardihood--she saved him the trouble. “I was fearfully excited with the opera. During the performance, and after it.”

His heart beat high. “You were not more so than I was,” he said, looking at her. “I thought of things possible and impossible. I had a vision.”

So had she had a vision, whose force was such that she could not continue to talk of such things. She had flashed her eyes upon him vividly for a moment, but was compelled to turn them away. He read in them a wild surmise; he thought that she understood him and was perturbed--perturbed, but not displeased. The bustling entry of Chevenix, unannounced, prevented him from pursuing his campaign.

Chevenix was gay. “Hulloa, Sancie--this is ripping. I say, I have something frightfully interesting to tell you.” Then he saw Morosine. “Hulloa, Alexis, is that you? Now we'll sit each other out, and Sancie won't have her news.”

“But I hope I shall,” she cried. “I haven't got a secret in the world. Don't go, Prince, please. Mr. Chevenix shall tell you the news too. I haven't the faintest idea.”

“It's something you want to know very badly. At least, I should think you did. It's not Nevile's address.” She took him gaily.

“I don't want to know that at all, if it's a new one. I have three already.”

“Perhaps,” said Morosine, with a friendly look, “it's to cancel some of them.”

She held up a book. “Is that what you mean? Do look. _Songs,_ by S. Glyde. Did you mean to tell me of that?”

Chevenix stared. “The poet Glyde? No. By Jove, though, not a bad shot. I referred, my dear, to the poet Senhouse.”

She received that full in the face. She paled, then coloured. Her heart leaped, then stood still. She spelt with her blue eyes, “Tell me.”

Chevenix peered at her. “Thought I should fetch you, my dear. The poet Senhouse is run to ground, and I'm going to see him. That's all.”

It was plain to Morosine that she was very much concerned with this intelligence. She simply sat there, staring at Chevenix, shaking, moving her white lips. She was as white as chalk and her eyes burned black in her face. What on earth--who on earth--? He couldn't for the life of him make it out. He had never heard of the man. It was a shock to him to discover--so soon we flatter ourselves--that Sanchia had any reserve of confidence. He had felt so sure of her!

“Another new poet?” he asked her. She recovered herself, shook her head.

“He's not new--to me. He's the greatest friend I ever had.” That was all she could say. She turned to Chevenix, her desire fainting in her eyes. “You're going to see him? Oh, take me with you!”

“Right,” said Chevenix.