book I promised him.

"Oh, thank you, Granny!" said the boy. He held up his cheek to be kissed, received the rather forbidding looking volume that she held out, and retired soberly with it. It was called _Lives of Noted Statesmen, Condensed_. Bobby could not quite make out whether it meant that the lives or the statesmen were condensed. In any case it promised to be but a dull exchange for the adventures of Orlando. And then it was always so much jollier to be told a thing than to read it.

Lady Wychcote said affably to Amaldi:

"I shall flatter myself that if you'd known I was still here you'd have come to play for me while you were in the neighbourhood, Marchese."

"I should have been only too happy," replied he. "Perhaps you will allow me to come to-morrow?"

"What! All the way from London to call on an old woman?-- Ah, that's very charming and Italian of you, I must say...."

"I'm stopping with the Arundels just now," said Amaldi. "But I should have been delighted to come from town to play for you." Like Susan, he found something perturbing in Lady Wychcote's manner. He could not define it, but he felt uneasy. There was a something underneath that very affable tone.... He thought her singularly _antipatica_. Perhaps that was it.... Yes ... it must be that.... She was _antipatica_.

On this occasion her ladyship did not leave before Amaldi as on her last visit. She remained until he and Olive Arundel had gone. Then she said to Sophy: "By the way--could I have a few minutes alone with you?"

"Of course," said Sophy.

She thought it was to be the usual thing about Bobby's education, which Lady Wychcote did not think sufficiently strenuous and political. But her mother-in-law had quite another matter in mind.

They walked off together down one of the beech avenues, and Lady Wychcote began without preamble.

"My dear Sophy," said she, "you will probably be very angry, but I feel that I must speak. Your friendship with Mrs. Arundel doesn't at all do you justice...."

"Please don't say anything against Olive," put in Sophy quickly.

"Very well. But you know my opinion on that subject already, so after all it isn't necessary. I was thinking of her chiefly just then in connection with the Marchese Amaldi."

Sophy merely looked at her with an inquiring expression.

"I mean that it seems to me doubly unfortunate that he should be such a friend of hers also," continued Lady Wychcote.

"Please explain what you mean by 'doubly unfortunate,'" said Sophy.

"I shall--very frankly. Your position as a _divorcee_ is a very difficult one, and I think that your rather intimate friendship with the Marchese will make it still more difficult."

"You are certainly frank," said Sophy, white with anger. "But you must allow me to be the judge of my own conduct."

"The world constitutes itself judge in such cases," retorted her mother-in-law. "Now pray try to take my words as I mean them. I haven't the least desire to pry or meddle. I am merely calling your attention to what others might think if they chanced to come here twice within a week, as I've done, and each time found that young Italian with you. There would be comment--and not kindly comment either, you may be sure of that."

"Oh," exclaimed Sophy, exasperated, "what a low way of thinking most people have!"

"Yes--the average mind is not exalted in its views," assented the other calmly. "That is what I wanted to remind you of."

Sophy stood still and looked into her eyes with a proud look.

"No breath of scandal has ever touched my name," she said.

"I'm quite aware of that, my dear Sophy," replied Lady Wychcote. "My only object was to help you to prevent such a thing from ever happening."

"It's very kind of you, I'm sure," said Sophy, speaking with difficulty.

The older woman answered with considerable amiability:

"No. You don't think it kind of me. And I quite understand that you resent what you think only tiresome meddling on my part. But I meant it well. Believe me or not, as you choose. Of course, as you said, you must be the judge of your own conduct. Only"--she gave her a very shrewd look indeed--"don't forget, pray, in case a ... some ... unpleasantness should occur, that I tried to forewarn you."

Whiter than ever, Sophy said in a low voice:

"I shan't forget."

"Then that is all. I won't annoy you with the subject again."

"Thanks," said Sophy.

They walked back to the house, and Lady Wychcote commented on the charm of the old grounds, and the advantage that it was for Bobby to have such healthful surroundings, but Sophy said nothing whatever.

XLVIII

It seemed intolerable to Sophy that Lady Wychcote should have taken such a view of her friendship with Amaldi and ventured to speak with her about it. Not that for a moment she felt any anxiety in regard to what "people" might think and say. It was only by chance that Amaldi had come twice to see her within so short a time. Usually there was at least a fortnight's lapse between his visits--sometimes more. But Lady Wychcote's view of the whole matter had left a smirch on what was so clean and fine. The bright mirror of friendship had been breathed upon. The image in it was blurred by this evil breath. And though she gave no hint of what had passed, or what she was feeling, Amaldi knew quite well that something had disturbed her. He kept this knowledge to himself, however. What she did not give him freely he did not want. And alas! he wanted so much that she did not give him in any wise. His first delight in feeling that she was wholly her own again had died down. This masque of friendship, in which she was whole-souled and he half-hearted, became an anguish. He doubted his strength to keep it up. Sometimes he thought that it would be more endurable to blurt out the truth and go into banishment. He felt often that he would prefer the violent, final wound of severance to the long, eked out pain of being near her only as a friend.

Then one day in August he went to Breene, and as soon as he saw Sophy felt sure that some crisis was upon them both.

In fact she had just received the following letter from Lady Wychcote:

"My dear Sophy, you must pardon me for breaking through my resolve, this once, and alluding to a matter which I had seriously intended never mentioning to you again. Clara Knowles came to call on me to-day. As you probably know she has one of the most venomous tongues in England. She had barely said 'How d'ye do' before she flooded me with enquiries as to who was the 'foreigner that was making such running with Sophy Chesney.' (I quote her own elegant expressions.) She said that 'The Barton-Savidges' (a family also famed for scandal-mongering) 'vowed that he was always either turning in at the Breene lodge gates, or coming out of them.' Olive Arundel they said was 'gooseberry.' She asked if it were true that he was a bigamist. And whether you really belonged to a 'free love league' in the States as she had heard. I will not quote more of her disgusting jargon. I only write this much of it, that you may see my apprehensions on your behalf were not without reason." The rest of the letter was confined to inquiries about Bobby, and suggestions as to a special method of German, which had been recommended to her by an ex-Secretary of Foreign Affairs, whose grandson was, at sixteen, proficient in four modern languages, etc., etc.

This letter filled Sophy with rebellious anger, yet at the same time she realised that it had to be considered seriously. The most painful part of all was that she felt that she must speak about it to Amaldi. Despite all her natural independence, she could not defy conventionality to the extent of allowing their friendship to give rise to such odious gossip. And she thought how strange and almost tragic it was, that the only breath of scandal that had ever touched her should be caused by the one perfectly clear, passionless affection of her life.

She told him of the letter as they walked in the beech wood beyond the garden.

"It's only what we might have foreseen in this crowded, narrow-minded place!" she ended bitterly.

Amaldi, who was stripping the fronds of a dead leaf that he had picked up, kept his eyes on it. He did not say anything for a second or two, then he observed in that level, withheld voice that she knew meant intense feeling:

"I'm afraid we might have expected it in any place."

"Oh, Amaldi!--no!" she exclaimed indignantly.

"I'm afraid so," he repeated.

They were seated now on a felled log. Through the incessant quivering of the nervous leaves they could see the gleam of the pond sunk in wreaths of loose-strife--the "long purples" of Ophelia's garland. It was all white and blue with the August sky. Except for the sound of blowing leaves the wood was very still. This stillness seemed to make it all more embarrassing and hateful somehow. Sophy sat chin on hand, staring at the shining pond. Other things that must be put into words were impossible to utter just then.

Amaldi broke the silence.

"I suppose," he said in that expressionless voice, "that we shall have to stop seeing each other--for the present at least."

This was just what Sophy had shrunk from saying. She answered very dejectedly:

"I ... I suppose so. Yes ... it's the only thing to do of course." Then she broke out in her impetuous way: "Oh, how hateful and unnecessary it all is!--how humiliating--and how sad.... I _did_ think that friendship would be left me...."

There were tears in her voice. Amaldi turned suddenly and looked at her. The moment that she saw his eyes she knew what was coming.

"I've failed you, too," he said. "It isn't friendship that I feel for you...."

As her eyes fell away from his, he added passionately: "How could it be otherwise?... How could it be?..."

And all at once it was revealed to Sophy that he was right--that she had been blind and mistaken once again to an almost incredible degree. She sat dumb with pain, knowing less than ever what to say. And her pain told her that he was very, very dear to her, and yet that she recoiled from the mere idea of love more violently than ever. But there was no half way here, she must renounce him if she could not return his love.

Amaldi went on:

"It had to come. I meant to tell you. I hoped that I would be strong enough ... but I'm not. It's beyond me.... I can't endure it--this being near you ... knowing you are free ... loving you ... loving you ... having only your friendship. No man could endure it ... no real man...."

He broke off. The next instant he said, "Forgive me. It seems brutal to speak so ... so bluntly--but at least there must be truth between us."

Sophy said in a choked voice:

"If you think all the suffering is yours ... you ... you are mistaken, Amaldi."

"Forgive me...." he repeated.

"And ... and...." she stumbled on, "you speak of my being free ... but even if ... if things were ... different ... you are not free...."

"Do you mean if you ... loved me?" said Amaldi.

"Yes," she murmured, colouring deeply.

He flushed, too, then paled.

"In that case I should soon free myself," he said.

Sophy glanced up at him in amazement, then down again.

"But ... there is no divorce in Italy...." she stammered.

"An Italian can be naturalised in Switzerland and divorced there," he rejoined, steadying his voice with an effort.

All at once her face quivered, she put up her hands to hide it. Then she whispered brokenly:

"You would do _that_ for me?"

"It would be nothing ... if you loved me," he answered.

There was silence for a moment or two. Then it broke from him again.

"I couldn't go on acting to you ... lying to you...."

"Oh, I know ... I know...." she answered.

Suddenly he was on his knees beside her. He caught her hands and held them to his breast.

"Can't it ever be different?" he was stammering. "Can't it ever be different? Some time ... after years maybe?... Is there no love in you for me?... None at all?"

But as he knelt there beside her stammering with the ardour of his long suppressed love, it was Loring that Sophy thought of--Loring who had also knelt beside her in desperate appeal. She blanched with the confused, humiliating pain of it.

"Oh, don't you see ... don't you see," she pleaded. "I haven't any love to give.... How could I have?..." She drew away her hands and pressed them to her own breast. "I'm like a dead thing...." she said desperately, "dead ... cold...."

He rose and walked away from her, stood thinking for a little, then came back. Still standing, he looked down at her bent head.

"Tell me this at least," he said, "if we had met ... at first ... before things happened in both our lives ... do you think that you might have ... cared for me?"

Sophy did not answer at once. Her past was rushing before her. Then she sprang impulsively to her feet.

"Yes, Amaldi, yes...." she said. "When we were both young ... if we had met then.... Oh, how beautiful life could have been for us!"

Amaldi started forward, then drew back. His eyes confused her. She stood there, rather overwhelmed by her own outburst, looking down again now at the tip of one shoe which she moved nervously from side to side among the last year's leaves. He said in a low voice:

"That makes it easier to say 'good-by' ... and harder. I...."

He stopped short. She forced herself to ask for how long he meant to be gone.

"I think a year ... two years, perhaps, would be best," he answered heavily. The next instant he put it more lightly: "I've always wanted to travel for some years in strange lands. I might come back a more satisfactory 'friend' ... who knows?"

"Don't...." said Sophy, blind with tears now.

She could never remember clearly how they parted. He promised to write her of his plans as soon as he had decided on them. Walking back through the garden, they met Sue Pickett and Bobby. They were not alone again until he left for London.

XLIX

The next two days passed very unhappily for Sophy. She ached with the ice of her flesh and the wild flame of her spirit. Some part of her being was knitted so closely with Amaldi's, that this tearing asunder of their lives caused her anguish.

On the morning of the third day, however, something happened that gave things a sharp wrench in a new direction. Sophy had always been very indifferent about reading newspapers. So the morning papers were always laid at Susan's plate. They chanced to be breakfasting alone, and as Sue was glancing over the _Times_, she flushed suddenly and an exclamation broke from her.

"What is it?" asked Sophy, deathly afraid, she knew not of what.

It had to be told. Susan bungled it so, that Sophy caught the paper from her and read for herself. This was the item:

"A very shocking accident occurred last night in front of White's. The Marquis Amaldi, a distinguished Italian nobleman, well known here in both social and musical circles, was struck by a motor car as he was crossing the street. He was unconscious when he was taken to his lodgings, which, fortunately, are near by in Clarges Street. The friend who was with him would not allow him to be removed to an hospital. Later reports say that the Marquis has recovered consciousness but that his injuries are serious."

Sophy laid down the paper without a word, and her face terrified Susan.

"My dear ... don't go thinking the worst," she stammered. "You know how newspapers exaggerate!"

"Not in England...." said Sophy dully.

Then she caught her breath. It was as if she had shot suddenly to the surface of some black pool, and gasped in air again.

"Will you go with me to London?" she asked in that dead voice, keeping her eyes on the paper.

Susan went pale.

"Oh, child!... _Think_ a minute...." she protested.

"Well ... if I must go alone...." said Sophy, and as she spoke she got to her feet.

"No, no!--You shall never go alone, Sophy!"

"Then you'll come?"

"Yes," said Susan despairingly. She felt there was no use in arguing it, yet as she went upstairs with Sophy to change her gown, she tried once more. "Sophy, darling-- I know-- I understand how you feel," she said. "But think, dear--think what it would be if some one saw you ... there.... If it got to Lady Wychcote's ears.... Oh, child!... I'm so mortally afraid of some dreadful tragedy coming out of all this for you...."

"Don't you think the tragedy's dreadful enough as it is?" asked Sophy rather wildly. She looked for a moment as if she were about to break into crazy laughter. Then she held her face tight in both hands.

"Go and dress...." she muttered thickly after a second. "Go and order the carriage.... There's a train in twenty minutes.... It will take us more than ten minutes to drive to the station...."

The two women reached Amaldi's lodgings about eleven o'clock. His Milanese servant, Piero, opened the door. He looked grave and rather worried, but for the first time hope glimmered in Sophy when she saw his face.

"The Marchese...?" she managed to ask.

Her voice was like the shadow of a voice. Piero said that Don Giovanni was asleep under an opiate. The doctors had just gone. They did not think the injuries as serious as they had thought last night.... But Sophy was scarcely listening.

"'Don Giovanni'?" she repeated haltingly.

"_Si, Signora_ ... the brother of the Marchese. He arrived in England for a short visit only yesterday morning. Eh, Santa Maria! ... a sad visit it has proved...."

He begged the ladies to be seated while he went to tell his master of their coming.

As he left the room, Sophy turned to Susan. "Sue...." she said. "Forgive me ... but I must see him alone ... just for a few minutes. I won't be long."

"But, Sophy...."

"I won't be long, dear, I promise ... only a few minutes ... but I must.... I must see him alone ... just at first...."

She was so determined that poor Susan felt she had no choice. She went out into the hall, misery and dread in her heart--not for anything that she feared between Sophy and Amaldi--she knew them both too well for that--but lest some malevolent eyes might have seen Sophy go in ... might watch for her coming out.

Sophy had not mentioned their names, or given any cards to Piero, and he was too discreet a person to ask questions. When, therefore, he announced to Amaldi that there were visitors for him, he said merely, "_due signore_" (two ladies).

Amaldi came in to find Sophy standing alone in the middle of the room, her hands locked tight together, and her eyes fixed on the door by which he entered. The next instant he was close to her, and she was faltering out:

"I thought you were ... dead.... Then I knew...."

"What?... You knew ... what?" he said dazedly.

She kept her eyes on his--they looked scared and brave and piteous at the same time.

"That I ... cared for you ... more than I knew...."

Things went black before Amaldi for a second. He had been through a hideous night with poor Nano. He had seen him lying on the pavement drenched with blood--dead to all appearance. Then had come the long hours of waiting for the doctors' verdict. Then the shock of hope after the long vigil. Now this....

He mastered himself, thinking that he could not have taken her meaning rightly.

"It was ... like you ... to come...." he said almost stupidly. He felt stupefied, not equal to grasping the situation fitly.

But now Sophy held out her locked hands to him. Her white face flushed and quivered.

"Marco ... don't you understand?" she whispered. "I ... I want you to know ... that I...." She caught her breath. ".... It's ... it's ... love, Marco...."

A profound instinct told him not to touch her. The black mist closed down again for an instant. His bewildered, haggard face went to her heart. Close to him, trembling, her eyes still courageous and timid at the same time, she laid one hand upon his breast.

"Dearest," she said, "don't look like that ... as if you couldn't believe me ... you'll have to be very patient with me...."

She put down her forehead suddenly on the hand that still rested against his breast, and began to cry softly and restrainedly, like an overtaxed child. Then his arms went round her, but very lightly, as if she were indeed a wounded child that he was afraid of hurting.

"Forgive me.... I can't help it...." she kept murmuring. "To find you alive ... alive...."

The words choked into sobs. He stood holding her in that light, gentle embrace silently. He could not have spoken though both their lives depended on it. Presently she lifted her head from his breast and glanced up at him. His face awed her. There was a look on it that made it quite beautiful and rather strange. The look of one who sees with other than bodily vision.

When she said timidly a moment later that she must be going now, he did not try to detain her, only lifted the hand that had lain upon his breast, and held it to his lips, then to his eyes a moment.

* * * * *

In some natures tenderness springs from passion; in others passion can only flower from tenderness. Sophy was of the latter type. With all her capacity for suffering, she could never have felt the excoriating pain of the being bound by sensual fascination to another whom it knows to be despicable. This quality in the very essence of her nature was the secret of her ardent ventures in love and her equally ardent recoils from it.

But though her present love for Amaldi was all tenderness there was in it also such anguish as passion sometimes brings. Pure as it was, almost mystic in its exaltation, it yet shamed her to herself. Was she then the sort of woman who loves, and loves and loves indefinitely? She fought her way out of this doubt, only to stand confounded and miserable before the bald fact that she had had two husbands, one of whom was still living, and yet, that in a future no matter how vague and distant, she contemplated taking another. "It must be a long, long time...." she had written Amaldi after those moments in Clarges Street. "Years and years, perhaps. It isn't that I shrink from you, my dear one--oh, you know that!--but from the thought of marriage with any one. I can't help it, dearest. I told you that you would need all your patience with me---- Yes-- I shall try you sorely I'm afraid. I wonder--but no--when I think of your love for me, I feel that I have never before known real love. And see how selfish I am with you! This is your reward--a cruel egoist, who can't give you up--who can't give you herself. That is the truth, Marco. It isn't that I will not-- I _cannot_. Besides----"

Here she had laid aside her pen in despair. It was the thought of Bobby that had come to her. How tragic and ridiculous to think of giving her son two fathers besides the real father who had died when he was a baby! Yes, this thought was nothing less than hideous. The absurdity in it was grim as the _risus sardonicus_. And yet--and yet---- Like poor Desdemona she perceived here a divided duty. This duty to her son was tremendous--yet was there not also a duty towards the man who had loved her for long years, whom she had told that she loved in return? Perhaps, when Bobby had grown up---- Yes, that would make things different. But could any man be constant for all those added years--had she a right to ask such constancy? And even then--to take a third husband! The words of Christ to the woman of Samaria came back to her: ".... _Thou hast well said, I have no husband. For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast, is not thy husband._"... Five husbands or three ... what real difference was there? She felt stunned with self-abasement and misery. A voice within her kept crying: "Too late! too late!" But when she thought of her life without him it seemed vain and empty. Even the thought of her son could not fill that void.

* * * * *

Nano Amaldi's injuries proved far less serious than was at first believed. Within ten days after his accident he was able to travel, and he and Marco went together to stop with their mother on the Brenta, near Venice--where she had taken a friend's villa for the months of September and October.

From this place Amaldi wrote to Sophy, asking her if it would not be possible for her to come to Venice during the autumn. His mother longed to see her, and people could hardly talk if they met occasionally under such circumstances. He also told her in this letter that Barti, the family lawyer, had gone to Switzerland to inquire about the formalities necessary for the divorce.

Sophy had intended going to Italy in September. Now it seemed to her that there could be no objection to her choosing Venice as a stopping place. She longed to talk with the old Marchesa almost as much as she longed to see Amaldi. To talk with his mother would lift some of the load of doubt and pain from her heart, she thought.

But when she mentioned this plan to her cousin, Sue looked anxious. She was thinking of Lady Wychcote--of what she might think and say when she heard that Sophy was going to Italy. Her native shrewdness would lead her to surmise something very like the truth, Sue felt sure, while her dislike for Sophy would cause her to put the worst construction on it.

However, to her great relief, Lady Wychcote took the news of the projected trip to Venice with composure. She was even affable about it and said in a letter on the subject that she envied Sophy the pleasure of seeing Venice for the first time, and of being out of England during September. But as Susan pondered this letter afterwards, something in its very affability made her nervous. It struck her as odd that Lady Wychcote, after having called Sophy's attention so insistently to the danger of possible gossip about her and Amaldi, and now knowing that there actually had been gossip on the subject, should suddenly hear without protest of any kind that Sophy intended going to Italy. If Susan had been aware of the fact that Lady Wychcote also knew of Sophy's visit to Amaldi's lodgings, she would have returned to America rather than have gone with her to Venice.

Lady Wychcote did know of it, however, and from a sure source--from her own brother, Colonel Bollingham, a retired and grouchy old Anglo-Indian, who had always taken Sophy at his sister's valuation and had no more love for her than had her ladyship.

He had chanced to be passing on the other side of the street when Sophy and Susan got out of their cab before Amaldi's lodgings. His sister had talked with him about her fears in that regard. The accident, of which he had read that morning, caused him to put two and two together--making a round dozen, after the custom of his type of arithmetician.

"The little hussy...." he muttered, as the two figures disappeared within a house opposite. "'Clarges Street'.... So it was, b'gad!"

He posted forthwith to Dynehurst with this news. After the first start of surprise at his disclosure, her ladyship showed a calmness that quite outraged him.

"Gad!... Cissy!... You take it damn coolly, 'pon my word!" said he.

"I am thinking," replied Lady Wychcote quietly. "It requires a great deal of thought ... such a thing as you have just told me, James."

"The devil it does!" exclaimed the irascible Colonel. ".... Bundle her out on the double-quick, say I! What the deuce!... Is a woman like that to have the upbringing of your only grandson?"

His sister regarded his inflamed countenance with lenient sarcasm.

"'Bundling out' is doubtless a simple matter in the army, James," said she. "But you wouldn't find it quite so simple in this case. The Court would hardly deprive a woman of the guardianship of her child because she'd been seen to go ... _with another woman_ ... to inquire after an injured man ... ostensibly a friend ... who may or may not be her lover...."

The Colonel bumbled like an angry hornet. "Who's this other woman, anyhow?" demanded he. Then answered himself as crusty old gentlemen so often do. "In my opinion she's only a common...." The Colonel's language became very Anglo-Indian indeed.

But Lady Wychcote succeeded in calming him down and finally persuading him that her method would be the wisest and surest.

* * * * *

It was on a day all magical with shine and storm that Sophy journeyed to Venice across the Lombard plain. As they neared the sea one-half the sky was thunderous blue, one-half like golden crystal. Green marsh lands spread in gentle melancholy beneath. Suddenly two orange sails in sunlight unfurled their burning petals against the green. And these great, burning sail-petals, drifting slowly along hidden waterways across the sad, green reaches, lent a thrill as of the passionate mystery of the sea to the tranquil inland.

There was more pain than joy for Sophy in this beauty. One should first see Venice with first love in one's heart, not third love, she told herself bitterly. And she was glad that she had written Amaldi not to meet her. As much as she longed to see him, she was relieved to think that she would have some hours in which to adjust her mood to this rather overwhelming loveliness before seeing him again. As they went up the Grand Canal towards the Rio San Vio, where she had taken a flat, the Vesper bells began to ring. A feeling of sadness, almost of apprehension, stole over her. The clear, liquid voices of the bells seemed warning her of something. She began to wonder if she had been right to come to Venice....

But the next day when she saw Amaldi she was glad again. This love that he gave her was very wonderful. She remembered, wincing, how she had once longed for Loring to give her a love like that of the old Romaunts. Now this love was really hers. Yet she felt that she was cruel to accept it--taking so much yet willing to give so little; for when she saw Amaldi this first time after telling him that she cared "more than she knew"--she realised that what she offered him was indeed the shadow of a flame. And yet ... she could not give him up. This shadow was, after all, cast by a flame. But she shivered, thinking of the dreary service of patience that she demanded of him.

Amaldi on his side, however, was quite content for the present with the fact that she loved him--that this love had been strong enough to cause her to tell him of it. He had that genius of passion which knows how to wait. When the right hour struck he would wait no longer, he told himself. He did not believe for a moment that years would have to pass before Sophy would come to him as his wife. He did not wish things different. It would have repelled him if Sophy could have shown passionate feeling for him so soon after her second unhappy marriage. But some day----

Barti was still in Switzerland. There were some points that needed clearing up, he wrote, but he and the Swiss lawyer Beylan, thought that all could be arranged. He expected to come to Venice very shortly.

After she had been three days in Venice, Sophy went by gondola up the Brenta with Amaldi to see his mother, who had been confined to the house for some time by an attack of rheumatism. Sue and Bobby were with them. The boy seemed as fond of Amaldi as ever, yet every now and then when he thought that others were not noticing, he looked at the young man with a grave, pondering look. He was not jealous of him, yet as much as he liked him, he was hoping that "Mother wouldn't have him round too much." It was so jolly when he and mother went for larks quite alone.

From the moment that the Marchesa took her in her arms and kissed her as a mother kisses her daughter, a weight seemed to fall from Sophy's heart. There was something in the kiss so natural, so warm, so consoling. It said better than words could have done, "I understand. I approve. Be happy, my dear--be happy."

She held the Marchesa very tight--his mother who might some day be her mother. Tears sprang in spite of her. The Marchesa kissed away these tears.

"It will all come right, dear--_Speriamo bene_!" she murmured, smiling.

But the next day something occurred that cast a shadow over all. Susan received a cable from America telling her that her only sister had died suddenly. As this sister was a widow and left three little children Susan felt that she must go to America at once.

When Sophy returned from seeing her cousin off for Genoa, a profound, desolate sadness overcame her--a sense of apprehension. The old adage kept going through her mind: "It never rains but it pours." She could not get away from the idea that other painful things were going to happen. Besides, she loved Sue dearly, and missed her, and would miss her more and more. The thought of a paid "companion" filled her with distaste. Yet she couldn't now stay on in Venice for some weeks, as she had meant to, with only Bobby and Rosa. Harold Grey had been ill with influenza and would not join them until October; and all the more when he came would she need some woman to play propriety.

Intolerant and careless of the world's opinion as she was too apt to be, she felt that it would not do for her to remain all alone in Venice with Amaldi as her only acquaintance there. But then she felt that she _must_ stay till Barti came. She couldn't leave Marco anxious and harassed with doubt, for during the last few days she had come to the conclusion that he was far more anxious about the divorce than he would admit to her.

.... Rain was falling. With slim, grey-white rods it beat the surface of the water. She could see it rushing like a host with lances down the Grand Canal, past the palace of Don Carlos. Her heart grew heavier and heavier.

Amaldi, who had insisted on accompanying Susan to Genoa, returned two days later. Something preoccupied and sad in his manner struck Sophy.

"What is it?" she urged. "You are troubled. Tell me."

He confessed at last that he was a little worried at Barti's delay. He feared that there might be some serious doubt about the final issue of the question.

"Barti's a good soul," he ended. "Almost too soft-hearted.... I can't help feeling that he's rather shirked telling me things, perhaps ... that he's still shirking. I can't explain this delay on his part, in any other way...."

He broke off and they looked at each other rather blankly. And it was as they were silently looking at each other in that sorrowful, baffled fashion that Rosa ushered in Lady Wychcote.

As Sophy went forward to greet her, the old adage again began its thrumming in her mind: "_It never rains but it pours.... It never rains but it pours_...."

L

Had Susan been present, she would have felt very apprehensive at the pleasant, matter-of-fact way in which her ladyship greeted Amaldi. But Sophy was simple-minded enough to be greatly relieved by it. She explained about Susan--that Amaldi had just returned from seeing her off for America. Lady Wychcote seemed really shocked to hear of Miss Pickett's trouble.

"And what a loss to you, too!" she said. "I can't conceive of anything more odious than having a hireling for a companion. Of course you will have a companion...?"

"Of course!" said Sophy.

Then her ladyship explained how she came to be in Venice. Her brother, Colonel Bollingham, and his wife had persuaded her to join them at a moment's notice.

Sophy felt that now Susan was gone, she ought to ask her mother-in-law to stop with her. She did so. Lady Wychcote said thanks--but that it would hurt poor dear Mildred's feelings to be _plante_ like that.

"However," she added, "if you're going to be here longer than a week, I might take advantage of your offer. James and Mildred are going to Bordighera next week ... and I detest Bordighera...."

Sophy replied, with a hesitation in her heart which she did not think apparent in her voice but which Lady Wychcote discerned there, that she had intended stopping for at least three weeks longer--but now that Sue had gone she thought of returning to Breene in a few days.

"If you would stay with me, though," she ended, "then I shouldn't feel that I had to hurry off."

"Thanks," said Lady Wychcote. "I'll let you know later."

She left a few minutes afterwards. Amaldi left with her. He disliked her as much as Susan did, and felt that he must be very careful not to give her a wrong impression of his relations with Sophy.

Later, when Sophy came to reflect, she felt as apprehensive about her mother-in-law's sudden appearance in Venice as even Susan could have wished. She knew that unlike so many of her compatriots, Lady Wychcote did not care a fig about Italy. On the contrary, she was in the habit of extolling France as a far more delightful place in every way.

During the following week Sophy was very careful not to see Amaldi often, and went about a good deal with Lady Wychcote. Barti had not turned up yet.

The days passed in this rather dreary fashion, until the time had come for the Bollinghams to leave. They were to set off Tuesday and on Tuesday afternoon Lady Wychcote was to come to the Rio San Vio to stop with Sophy until they both returned to England.

On Sunday Barti arrived in Venice. He was a short, rotund man of about sixty, with a grizzled black beard, and the grey-blue eyes under black lashes that one sees so often in clever Lombards. He loved the "_ragazzi_ Amaldi," as he called them, as if they had been his own sons. Marco had confided to him his reasons for wishing to be divorced. He had spoken in a rather dry, curt fashion, but Barti realised fully what this passion must mean to him. Marco had always been his favourite of the two "boys," and men of the type of Marco did not change the views of a lifetime except for the most vital reasons.

As soon as Amaldi saw Barti, he knew that the lawyer had no very reassuring news to give him. They met at Barti's hotel in his bedroom so as to be quite private.

"Well?" said Amaldi.

Barti began skirting the subject from different points of view. It seemed that in Switzerland, at that date, proceedings for divorce on the ground of adultery had to be brought within six months of the knowledge of the fact. So that Amaldi would not be able to obtain divorce in respect of his wife's original misconduct with her first lover. He could, however, obtain the divorce in respect of any subsequent misconduct of hers if proceedings were instituted within six months of such misconduct becoming known to him.

Here, Amaldi, who had been very pale, flushed darkly. He parted his lips as if to speak, and the old lawyer said nervously:

"Wait ... wait just a moment, _caro mio_ ... there are ... er ... other difficulties...."

Amaldi kept silence. He sat looking out of the window, and now his face was quite impassive; but it hurt Barti to see the strained quiet of that impassive face. These "other difficulties" that he had to tell of were even more painful. He went on to state them as rapidly and clearly as he could. In any case, as they knew already, in order to qualify for a divorce in Switzerland Amaldi would have to become a Swiss citizen. To do so, he would have to get the consent of the local authority and the State authority. The first was comparatively easy, the second exceedingly difficult to obtain. As Marco might remember, a famous Italian author had attempted to divorce his wife in this way, but the Swiss Government decided that they would not let their citizenship be obtained for such an object.

Amaldi here interrupted quietly.

"Then, my dear Barti," he said, "I have only to thank you for all your trouble. I don't see that we need discuss the matter any further...."

"_Pazienza.... Pazienza!_..." murmured Barti. "On the contrary ... there are many things to consider...."

"I don't see...." Amaldi began rather vehemently.

"_Prego_ ... but _I_ see.... You must allow me," returned the other. "This is painful, I know ... for me as well as for you...." he added, with some feeling.

Amaldi said in a different tone, but without looking at him:

"Yes. I know it is. Forgive me. Go on."

Barti then said that it might be possible for the citizenship to be obtained without the disclosure of its object, though this would be extraordinarily difficult.

"In fact," he wound up, "I am afraid that in your case it would be practically impossible. The head of a noble Italian family does not apply for Swiss citizenship without some very unusual object, and in my opinion the authorities would be sure to demand for what object the Marchese Amaldi wished to become a Swiss."

Amaldi got to his feet this time.

"Then, really...." he began.

"_Caro_ Marco ... I beg of you to let me finish," pleaded Barti.

He, too, was pale by now, and he snatched off his eyeglasses, breathing nervously upon them, and squinting slightly with his short-sighted eyes, in the stress of the moment.

"Switzerland is not the only country in the world," he hurried on, polishing and repolishing the glasses as he spoke, very glad not to be able to see Amaldi's set, white face more clearly. "I have made inquiries, and it seems that in Hungary...."

"_'Hungary'!_" echoed Amaldi. He gave a short laugh. "But I beg your pardon. Go on, please...." he said gravely the next moment.

"And why not Hungary?" Barti demanded, with a show of impatience which he was far from feeling. "For my part, I think I should prefer a Hungarian citizenship. It seems that in Hungary there is a process of adoption...."

Again Amaldi echoed him.

"'Adoption'!" he exclaimed, with even more emphasis than before. "My dear Barti, excuse me--but I hadn't realised that the thing would be ridiculous as well as humiliating."

Then he checked himself, walking to and fro in the small room several times. The other sat watching him in silence.

Presently he stopped in front of Barti and looked down at him with a rather wry but affectionate smile.

"Forgive me, dear Barti," he said. "You've gone to no end of trouble for me, and I act like a bad-tempered _tousin_. Will you please go on about ... Hungary?"

Barti rushed into suggestions now. He wished, he said, with Amaldi's consent, to go forthwith to Hungary and make a thorough investigation of the legal questions involved.

"_Ma!_... Go if you think best," Amaldi said, when he had ended. Then added with irrepressible bitterness: "After all, what difference does it make to what country I sell my birthright?"

"_Caro mio ... caro mio!_..." muttered the old man, much upset.

"You understand, Barti," returned Amaldi quickly, "I am quite determined to be free if possible. I...." he hesitated, then went on emphatically: "I count it a small price to pay. What makes me bitter is that an Italian should not be able to free himself from a worthless woman in his own country. Yes, Barti, that makes me bitter, I confess."

They spoke together a few moments longer. When Amaldi left, it had been decided that Barti was to leave for Buda-Pesth that night.

LI

On the same afternoon, Amaldi sent Sophy a note, saying that he had some important things that he would like to talk over with her, and asking if she would not go with him again by gondola up the Brenta to see his mother.

"I feel," he ended, "that we could talk so much more quietly in the old garden there. Here in Venice there is always some interruption, and Lady Wychcote comes to stop with you on Tuesday. Then, too, it would be such a happiness for Baldi to see you again in this way. We could be back in Venice by six o'clock."

Sophy thought this over. She felt that she could not refuse, and yet she hesitated. But she knew that Barti had returned. She was sure that it was about the divorce that Amaldi wished to talk with her. What had Barti said? Was the divorce in Switzerland impossible, after all? And as this doubt came to her she knew for the first time how much she really loved Amaldi. The dreadful sinking of her heart when she faced the thought that he might not be able to get free made her decide at once to go with him the next day. And she would not take Bobby with her this time. He was all agog over a lesson in rowing that Lorenzo, the first gondoliere, was to give him to-morrow. She would keep him with her until she and Amaldi started at twelve o'clock; then he and Rosa could spend the afternoon with Lorenzo.

She sent word to Amaldi by the messenger who brought his note that she would be ready to go with him next day at noon.

He did not tell her of what Barti had said, and she did not ask him until they were alone in the garden of Villa Rosalia.

When he told her about the possible alternative of Hungary, she gave a cry of pain.

"I can't bear it.... I can't bear it that you should make such sacrifices!..." she stammered.

"When a man loves as I love you, there aren't any sacrifices," said Amaldi.

"Ah, don't talk that way!" she urged. "As if I didn't know what it all means to you...."

"I doubt if you know what _you_ mean to me ... quite," he answered.

The smothered passion and sorrow in his voice shook her to the heart. She tried to speak, and began to cry.

"Forgive me ... forgive me!" she sobbed. "I used to be so proud of not crying. It's the tragedy of it all.... Our love is such a tragedy!..."

Amaldi looked at her a moment, his face set. Then with a quick, almost violent, gesture he took her in his arms. "You shall not say that our love is a tragedy...." he muttered. But she sobbed on:

"It is ... it is!... Oh, why couldn't we have known each other ... from the first!..."

"But you love me ... now?"

"Oh, you know it ... you know it!..."

He put his hand up suddenly and turned her face to his. It gave him a strange thrill to feel her warm tears on his hand. He looked down into her eyes, and there was something imperious and fateful in this look.

".... _Really_ love me?" he said.

Her "Yes" came in a whisper.

He kept his eyes on hers another second, then bent his mouth almost deliberately to hers.

".... _Sei mia moglie_ ... _sei la mia vera moglie_...." (Thou art my wife ... thou art my real wife....), he kept whispering brokenly after that deep kiss. She clung to him in silence. Yes, she too felt that she belonged to him as she had never belonged to another; yet, to her, this was the supreme tragedy. With her heart at home on his--with all herself at home in him--she knew at last the love in which flesh and spirit are one essence--in which God the fire and God the fuel are one. But to know such love only after having passed through the nether fires of other loves--was not that the tragedy of tragedies? She would not have been true woman had she not felt it so, and he would not have been true man if, even in that hour, the memory of those other loves had not wrung him. But while it was the woman's way to confess this sense of tragedy, it was the man's way to deny it stoutly. So he told her over and over with passionate insistence that she had never known real love--that the great fire of his love would consume even the memory of her mistakes--that the past was nothing to him and should be nothing to her in the light of the present.

They sat there, locked in each other's arms for a long time. The sun was westering. The shadows of the cypresses lengthened along the grass until they seemed to leap softly from the river brink into the water.

* * * * *

When they went back to the villa, they found old Carletto preparing to serve tea in the columned portico. The Signora Marchesa was just about to descend, he told them. She called from above as he finished speaking:

"_He_, Carletto!... Go tell the Signora Chesney and the Marchesino that tea is ready...."

"We are here," said Amaldi, going towards the staircase. "Wait ... let me help you...."

The Marchesa was coming down very slowly, one step at a time, leaning heavily on a big, ebony cane. The rheumatism in her knee was much better, but she was still very stiff. She called out in her jolly, plucky voice as he began mounting towards her:

"But just look how cleverly I manage by myself!..."

As she said this, she planted her stick on the marble floor of the first landing. Amaldi was within a yard of her--Sophy watching from the hall below. It all happened in a second. The stick slipped ... the Marchesa, who had leaned her whole weight upon it for the next downward step, was thrown head first against the opposite wall. The sound of her bare forehead against the marble of the wall was horrible. Then Amaldi had her in his arms.... Sophy and Carletto ran wildly. It seemed as if she must be dead. They could not realise that such a crashing blow could result in anything but death.

In a few moments the whole villa was in confusion. Amaldi and his man Piero carried the Marchesa to her bedroom. Sophy directed the frightened maids what to do. Amaldi sent Piero to Cortola, the nearest town, for a doctor. All the time that Sophy was working with Amaldi over the unconscious form of his mother, a stupid voice kept dinning in her mind: "_It never rains but it pours.... It never rains but it pours_...."

It was nearly an hour before the Marchesa regained consciousness. Her mind became clear in an astonishingly short time, but she was suffering frightful pain in her head. Fortunately, almost at the moment she opened her eyes Piero came back with the doctor from Cortola. After a careful examination, he assured them that there was no concussion of the brain, and that if the Signora would remain quietly in bed for a few days, all would be well. It was nearly ten, however, before they became satisfied that her condition was not dangerous.

Sophy insisted that Amaldi should send Carletto back with her to Venice and himself remain with his mother. He would not consent to this. The physician was to spend the night at the villa. The Marchesa was sleeping quietly now under a strong sedative. Her faithful old _cameriera_ of forty years' standing was at the bedside. He was not willing for Sophy to take the journey back without him.

At half-past ten they walked once more through the old garden. The soft night was wonderful with stars. Carletto went ahead carrying a candle. His knotty fingers, through which the flame shone in gold and reddish streaks, and the silver outline of his hair, glided forward mysteriously against the purple bloom of the night. On the river bank, they saw the glow of a lantern where the gondolieri were getting things in readiness. Then the brazen beak of the gondola gleamed suddenly.

When they entered it and the gondolieri began to row, it seemed to Sophy that the quiet river, veiled in darkness like the stream of fate, was gliding with them to some appointed end. A feeling of presage welled in her. She shivered and drew closer to Amaldi.

The night was hushed and grave. The banks stole by soft with grass or the brooding dimness of foliage. The fields were quiet as sleep. Against the violet dark rose sometimes the roofs of thatched cottages and now and then a lighted window shone out--the watchful, steadfast eye of home.

The gates of the first lock opened--the gondola floated in. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, they began to sink with the ebbing water. Little by little, the trees, the houses, the tranquil fields slipped from view. Now they were in a dark well, as in a tomb together. A strip of starry sky shone above. They looked up at it without speaking. The dark lock was like their present--the strip of sky with its secret writing of stars was like the far hope that glimmered for them above the gulf of years....

The gates unclosed again; they glided out once more upon the Brenta, and more than ever it seemed to Sophy like the hidden stream of fate, bearing them to an appointed end.

LII

When they turned into the Rio San Vio, it was nearly one o'clock. Glancing up at the windows of her flat, Sophy saw that the little drawing-room was lighted. Some one came to one of the windows and looked out between the slats of the blinds as the gondola stopped before the house--Rosa, probably--poor soul, sick with anxiety!

Amaldi stepped ashore and held out his hand. They went together into the small court and began to mount the stairs leading to her flat. The stairway was enclosed and very dark. On the first landing was a window through which shone a faint gleam of starlight. He stopped and took her in his arms, but very tenderly. He felt her weariness and apprehension. His passion curbed itself to her need.

"When shall I see you again?" he whispered.

She whispered back:

"I will let you know.... I will write."

Suddenly she started. Amaldi, too, looked up at the dark stairway.

"I heard a door open.... We must go...." she murmured.

"Wait. Let me go first," he said, taking out a box of matches. "These will be better than nothing...."

He mounted slowly before her, lighting the little wax-matches as he went. It seemed to her that the stairway was endless--she was so tired! She dragged herself up, watching his face and figure spring out in the orange wax-light against the darkness, then fade again as the light died down. Now she could not see him. Then again came the spurt of bluish flame deepening to orange, and again she would see his slight, strong figure and the clear-cut mask of his face.

As they turned the last landing, and went up the flight leading direct to her apartment, they saw that the door was open and Rosa standing with a candle at the top of the stairs. She gave a cry of joy as she caught sight of Sophy--and came rushing down to meet her. Oh, the Madonna and San Guiseppe be praised! Oh, what had happened? She and Miladi had been _so_ afraid--so terribly afraid!...

As she was speaking, a tall figure appeared in the open doorway. Sophy's heart seemed to lose a beat. Lady Wychcote acknowledged Amaldi's greeting, then called to Sophy:

"Are you really unhurt?... I fancied all sorts of horrid accidents...."

Sophy answered in the natural voice that astonishes one's self at such moments:

"Yes. I'm quite all right, thanks. But there _has_ been an accident...."

"Ah.... I felt sure of it!" said Lady Wychcote.

All three entered the drawing-room. Rosa had rushed off again to tell the other servants of the Signora's safe return. Amaldi felt that he must not leave too abruptly. Lady Wychcote's unexpected presence at the flat struck him as not only unfortunate but very singular, even ominous. Why had she come, then, a day before she was expected by Sophy? One who wished to surprise another in some overt act would follow just such a course. And as he looked at the cold, composed face that now wore an expression of polite interest he felt a stir of fear. What was the real woman cogitating under that civil mask? What was her real feeling towards Sophy? Whether grief had sharpened his perceptions to an unusual acuteness, or whether to-night some unusual force went out from Lady Wychcote, it would be difficult to say--but a conviction as strong as the conviction of his own existence seized him--the conviction that this woman was Sophy's enemy--implacable, ruthless, willed to it with all her being. And as he thought of what a clever, unscrupulous tongue might make of Sophy's being with him at such an hour of night, he felt cold with dread and anger. It seemed too horrible that the cruel past should reach out to her even from the shadow of death. First the brutal son--then his mother. It was as if Cecil Chesney grasped at the issues of her life, even from the grave, through the cold will of his mother.

In the meantime, Sophy was describing the Marchesa's fall to Lady Wychcote, who listened with that expression of civil interest, and now and then an interjection of conventional regret.

The more Amaldi reflected, the more sinister the whole situation seemed to him. But he was quite powerless. He excused himself in a few moments, saying that he must get back to the villa as soon as possible. Lady Wychcote murmured some expressions of formal sympathy. Sophy gave him a cold, rather rigid, hand. Her eyes looked blank, like the eyes of a puppet.

He went out sick at heart with impotent love and wrath.

When he had gone, Lady Wychcote said to Sophy:

"You look rather ill. Don't you think you'd better have something to eat ... some wine, perhaps?"

"Thanks, no. I'll just go to bed. Sleep will be the best thing for me."

"But you don't look as if you would sleep much," returned Lady Wychcote. "You seem terribly overstrung...."

"Yes. It was a horrid thing to see!" Sophy answered. In her mind the senseless, chaunting voice had begun again: "_It never rains but it pours.... It never rains but it pours._"

Rosa came running back. She, too, pressed her mistress to eat and drink.

"No. I only want to lie down ... to be quiet, Rosa."

The kind soul, full of affectionate concern, threw an arm about her in order to sustain her better.

"Good night," Sophy then said. "I'm sorry to have to leave you at once, like this.... But I'm really worn out...."

"Just one thing before you go," returned Lady Wychcote, following as they went towards the door. "I'd like to explain my unceremonious descent on you.... James and Mildred decided to leave Venice this afternoon instead of to-morrow. So, as I knew you were expecting me to-morrow, I thought it couldn't really make any difference to you if I came a day sooner. I hope it hasn't inconvenienced you in any way...?"

"Not in the least. How could it?"

"Thanks very much. I hope you will feel rested in the morning."

"Thanks. I'm sure I shall."

Sophy moved on again. She felt that if she did not soon reach her bedroom she would drop to the floor in spite of Rosa's supporting arm.

But now Lady Wychcote was speaking again. She had followed them out into the corridor.

"Oh ... by the way ... I'm sorry to detain you, but I want to mention something about Robert...."

The spent life in Sophy leaped like flame in the draught of a suddenly opened door.

"Yes?" she said.

"The poor boy was so upset by your being so late that I promised him a trip to the glass-works to divert him."

"That was very kind of you," murmured Sophy.

Lady Wychcote continued:

"So, if you've no objection, we are to go to Murano rather early to-morrow morning.... A sort of all-day affair. We'll lunch there...."

"No, of course I don't object. I think it's very kind of you," said Sophy.

"Then ... good night," said Lady Wychcote.

Through the haze of fatigue and misery that clouded her, Sophy felt something peculiar in the tone of this "Good night." But then her ladyship's voice often took a peculiar tone in speaking to her. She was too tired to analyse this special shade of expression.

A great sigh of relief escaped her as she found herself in her own room.

"_Chut!_" whispered Rosa, smiling wisely, her finger at her lips. Then she lowered it and pointed to the bed under its tent of white mosquito netting. "_Guarda!... povero angelotto!_" (Look! ... poor little angel!), she murmured. "He wouldn't sleep till I let him come into his dear mamma's bed...."

As Sophy saw through the mist of the white curtains, the little sturdy form and dark-red curls of her son, all her being rose in a great wave of love and anguish. And borne forward as by this wave, she went and looked down on him. He lay prone, hugging his pillow to him with both arms, as if in her absence he would at least make sure of something that had been close to her. And not even on the day when he had been born to her with anguish had she felt such a throe of tenderness.

She turned away after a moment and let Rosa help her to undress; then as soon as she was alone blew out the shaded candle and stole again towards the bed.

A clear September moon had risen. It shone in upon the veiled bed and made it gleam mysteriously--made it look like a shrine. The curtains had a holy whiteness in the moonlight.

Sophy went and knelt down beside it, and as she knelt there Bobby stirred, lifted himself on his elbow.

"Mother...?" he said.

"Yes, darling. I'm here ... just saying my prayers."

He gave a little smothered whoop of joy, and scrambled to the edge of the bed, dragging up the netting that divided them. He shook the loose folds down behind her, and threw both arms around her neck, hugging her head tight against him. The warm, lovely perfume of a sleepy child enfolded her. It was like the very essence of love enfolding her.

She had to explain everything to him before he would let her go. Then he began pleading: "Don't send me back to my room _right_ away, mother.... I know it was rather girly of me to come and get in your bed like this.... But Rosa's a good old sort. She won't peach on me.... And I think it's rather natural, a chap being a bit girly about his mother when he thinks things might have happened to her, don't you?"

Sophy said that indeed she did, and that he should stay with her till morning--that it made her feel ever so much happier and safer to have him near her. Bobby snuggled down blissfully, keeping her hand in both his.

"After all," he said, "though I'm not grown, I'm the only _man_ you've got.... It's nice to have a man awfully anxious about you, ain't it, mother?"

"Ah, yes, indeed it is!" she murmured.

He was silent for a few seconds; then he said:

"I _am_ the only man you've got ... really, ain't I, mother?"

Sophy's heart stabbed. She put her other arm about him.

"Yes, Bobby--yes, darling," she said, holding him to her.

"I like awfully being your only man," he murmured. "I ... I like the 'sponsibility."

"Dear heart!..." she murmured back, her lips on his curls.

He gave another of his snuggling wriggles of content, and was silent again. She thought he was dozing off, when he said suddenly in a by-the-way tone:

"I say, mother--is Marchese Amaldi married?"

Sophy's heart stabbed again. Why did the boy ask this?

"Yes, dear. Why?" she said.

"Oh ... nothing in particlar," replied Bobby, his voice more off-hand than ever. "I just wondered...." Then he remarked, still in that casual way:

"You haven't told me yet what kept you so late, mother."

Sophy told him, and as she spoke she kept thinking: "He has been worrying about Amaldi. He has been thinking of me and him together." And this idea was full of bitter pain to her--the idea that her little son might have been troubling over the possibility of her marriage with yet another man!

And, in fact, this thought had harassed Bobby for the last two days. It had embittered even the joy of his first lesson in rowing a gondola that afternoon. When Sophy had not returned by six o'clock, as she had said that she would, dreadful surmises had taken hold of him. Perhaps she was so late because she had decided suddenly to be married to the Marchese. Perhaps she would come back with him and say: "Bobby, this is your new father." The mere idea had filled him with a blackness of resentment and jealousy. Not until Sophy had replied that Amaldi was already married had this feeling subsided, though his joy in having his mother again with him, safe and sound, all his own for the time being, had made him put it aside for the first few moments. But boyhood is terribly reserved in some things. The rack could scarcely have brought Bobby to confess his apprehensions to his mother.

Too excited to sleep, and wishing to get away from the subject of Amaldi, he began to tell her all about the projected trip to Murano.

"Do you think you'll feel well enough to come, too, mother?" he wound up.

"I'm afraid I'll be too tired, dear. But well see...."

"Of course, I wouldn't _have_ you come if you felt tired; but it won't be half so jolly without you."

"We'll see, sweetheart," Sophy repeated. "I'll surely come with you if I'm able to...."

He rushed off into an eager description of Venetian glass-blowing.

"And they make _every_ sort of thing, mother.... They even make stuff for dresses.... Oh, mother.... I'd love to buy you a spun-glass gown! 'Twould be like a sort of foggy rainbow--don't you s'pose so? I wonder if I could get glass slippers to go with it?... Wouldn't you like a glass gown, mother? You'd look just like a princess in the Arabian nights! You _must_ have one!..."

He chattered like this for some time. Then just as she thought he was falling asleep, he roused.

"I say, mother dear.... Don't let Harold Grey know I got in your bed to wait for you.... He's an awfully set chap ... he'd think me so beastly soft. You see, _his_ mother's always had his father to look after her.... So he couldn't understand how I feel about you ... being your only male relative, and all that...."

Sophy promised, kissing the red curls again for good night.

He was quiet for about five minutes; then once more he roused.

"I've just had such a stunning idea, mother," he announced. "I want us to write a book together ... when I know a bit more rhetoric, of course. But we might both be thinking up a subject. Wouldn't it be jolly to have our names printed together like that on the first page?... 'What-you-may-call-it ... by Sophy Chesney and her son Robert Cecil Chesney....'"

"That's a beautiful idea, darling; but I'm afraid your name would have to be signed Wychcote...."

"No.... I _choose_ to have it Chesney for our book. I am a Chesney, too, ain't I?"

"Yes, dear; but...."

"Just for our book, mother," he pleaded. "There they'd be--our two names--close together--long after we'd gone.... Isn't life a rummy thing, when you come to think of it, mother?"

"Yes, dear. But try to go to sleep now...."

"All right-o...."

He snuggled closer, settling himself with a deep breath of determination. But suddenly he exclaimed:

"Just _one_ thing more.... What do you think of 'Spun Glass' for the title of our book, mother?"

"Well, darling--that would depend on what the book is to be about...."

"Oh ... about life in general!..." said Bobby largely. Then with the quick drowsiness of healthy childhood he fell fast asleep before she could answer.

But Sophy lay long awake. It seemed to her that life clung about her like a strong, dark web, meshing every natural movement of her heart. The idea of thrusting another man into her son's life--another "father"--became more and more painful to her. The idea of giving up Amaldi was unendurable. The idea of his giving up his country for her sake revealed itself suddenly as a sacrifice too terrible for her to accept.

The more she struggled for some egress from the clogging meshes, the tighter they closed about her. At dawn she was still wide awake, but when Bobby and his grandmother set out for Murano at eight o'clock she was sleeping like one drugged.

LIII

She did not wake until eleven, and by the time that she was dressed it was after twelve. Recalling what Lady Wychcote had said about lunching with Bobby at Murano, she thought for a moment of going there and trying to find them in time for luncheon. Then she recoiled from the idea of being with her mother-in-law for several hours. But she was too restless to read or go out in the gondola. Rosa told her that Lady Wychcote had gone to Murano by steamer.

She decided finally that she would take a long walk among the little by-streets of Venice and have luncheon at some small _ristorante_, all alone. She went out into the soft brilliance of the September day, and the very radiance of the sunshine had a curious melancholy for her mood. It was a relief to her, after crossing the ugly iron bridge over the Grand Canal, to find herself in the shadowed by-ways. Now and then, through a gate in some wall, a plot of flowers laughed out at her, or she saw the flicker of sunlit green high above. But the shadowed water ran darkly, and the smell of the cool, dank streets was like the breath of sleeping centuries. She came to the portico of an old church, and went in. The fumes of incense brought back that day in London, so many years ago, when she had gone to see Father Raphael of the Poor. She bent her head, standing all alone in the dark, quiet church, and her heart hung leaden in her breast. Even Father Raphael could not have helped her now, she thought ... for there seemed to her no clear way of right and wrong here. All was subtle, inextricably tangled--a maze of approximations, instincts, conflicting duties, inclinations.

She roused, glanced listlessly at the paintings over the High Altar, then went out again. She stood a moment in the street before the church, considering her next move. She was now not far from the Piazza San Marco. She recalled a little place in the next Rio where she could get a simple meal, and had taken a step forward when a burst of laughter made her look round. Her heart was jumping fast--that laughter was so painfully familiar--like the whinny of a young mare in springtime. Then she saw. Three people--a man and two women--had just turned the corner, about twenty yards away, and were coming towards her. The girl who walked a yard or so in advance had burnished, ruddy hair. She swung her white _beret_ in her hand as she walked, and her blowing white serge gown moulded her handsome legs and vigorous young bust. The man's gait was rather sullen, the elder woman's frankly protesting.

"For goodness' sake, have some consideration for _me_, at least, Belinda!" she called fretfully. But in reply the girl only laughed her careless, whinnying laugh again.

Sophy had just time to spring back behind the dark columns of the porch before they could recognise her. She had been as if paralysed just at first. She squeezed in among the columns, with a feeling of sick faintness. Now they were at the church door ... they paused.

"Now here's where I balk!" rang out Belinda's voice. "No more rotten old churches in mine to-day, thank you. Come along, Morry."

"But, Belinda-- I really need to rest a moment!" protested Mrs. Horton.

"You can rest all the time you're eating your luncheon," replied her step-daughter. "Come along, Morry!"

Sophy thanked Heaven that she was not called upon to hear Morris's voice. He was evidently sulky about something. He made no reply. Mrs. Horton grumbled a little, calling Belinda "selfish." Again Belinda laughed. Then the three went on up the narrow, twisting Rio.

Sophy, trembling all through, leaned there against the columns, with eyes closed. Round and round in her mind the old adage went humming: "_It never rains but it pours.... It never rains but it pours_...."

She remembered that Loring and Belinda had been married last May. She felt ashamed and sick for herself, for them, for life, for human nature, for the whole social scheme, for civilisation.... Everything seemed to her like a sickness in that moment. This life that the world crawled with was like the swarming of maggots in a cheese.... She hated herself--she hated the existing order of things. She understood the darkest throes of pessimists and cynics in that moment. And under it all her heart burnt fiercely with the supreme pang of the proud, chaste being, who has yielded to lesser loves before the one, great, real love has been revealed.

* * * * *

Sophy went back into the church and stayed there a long time. She felt faint and ill. She was grateful for the quiet darkness in which she could sit still without attracting attention. At last she went out into the street again. When she reached the Piazza, she took a gondola and returned to the Rio San Vio. She had forgotten that she had not lunched. She looked so pale and strange that Rosa exclaimed when she saw her. She lay down on a sofa in the little sitting-room and let the kind soul bring her a cup of hot tea. This revived her a little, and by and by as she lay there she fell asleep. It was nearly six o'clock when she waked. Her eyes and the back of her head ached dully; but she felt that she must refresh herself and change her morning gown before Lady Wychcote came back with Bobby. She bathed her face and eyes, put on a tea-gown, and returned to the drawing-room to wait for them. Taking up a book, she tried to read, but found that she could not command her attention. It occurred to her that she ought to write to Amaldi, but this also she found impossible. She could not write to him on the same day that she had seen Loring for the first time since her divorce. Then suddenly memories of Cecil began to haunt her. Incidents of their early love-days together came back to her with words and looks distinct as reality itself.

She went and leaned on the little balcony. The sun had just gone down. Air and water were suffused with the afterglow. High overhead, the Venice swifts flew shrilling as with ecstasy. Their musical arabesques of flight patterned the upper blue like joy made visible. Some dementia of supernal bliss seemed to impel them. The fine, exultant, piercing notes were like showers of tiny, crystal arrows shot earthward from the heights of heaven.

Sophy stood gazing up at them, and the mystery of their joy, and of her pain, filled her with a new aching.

She leaned there until the afterglow had died away; but it was not until seven o'clock that she began to feel anxious. By the time that it was nearly eight and Lady Wychcote and Bobby had not come, she was greatly alarmed, and this alarm swept away all lesser considerations. She sent a wire to Amaldi, saying: "_Bobby and his grandmother went to Murano this morning. Expected to return at six. Not here yet. Fear some accident. Will you come and advise me._" Then she had a consultation with Lorenzo, the first gondoliere, a quiet, capable man of about forty. She thought of going herself to Murano to make inquiries, but it would take a long time by gondola. Could Lorenzo think of any way of getting there more quickly. Lorenzo said that his cousin Ippolito had a steam-launch in which he took out pleasure-parties. He might try to get that; but then he must remind the Signora that the glass-works at Murano would be closed at this hour. It would be very difficult to make inquiries. Why did not the Signora go to the Questura for aid? The police might be able to think of some way in which to get at the people of the glass-works.

An idea came to her suddenly. She wondered at herself for not thinking of it before. She would go to the hotel at which Lady Wychcote had been stopping. It was quite possible that they might know something at the office. She might even find Lady Wychcote herself. Yes--she was quite capable of doing an inconsiderate thing like this for her own convenience. She might have stopped there for tea on the way back, and, feeling tired, might have lingered to rest a while, not troubling to send Sophy word. Yes, yes. It might very well be like that. Sophy had ordered dinner for half-past eight that evening out of consideration for her mother-in-law's habits. It was now only ten minutes past eight. Lady Wychcote might consider it quite sufficient if she arrived in time for dinner.

LIV

Sophy ordered the gondola, took Rosa with her, and went to the Grand Hotel.

The head official at the bureau looked rather surprised by her questions. Lady Wychcote? No, her ladyship was not there. She had been there that morning, however. She had sent a message late the night before--after twelve o'clock, in fact--to tell them to keep her luggage at the hotel until further instructions, instead of sending it to 35 Rio San Vio next day, as she had at first ordered.

"To keep her luggage?" Sophy interrupted blankly.

"_Si, Signora._ But I was about to explain," answered the clerk. "This morning, about nine, Lady Wychcote came again with her railway tickets so that we might check her luggage straight through to Paris...."

Sophy turned white.

"You must be mistaken!..." she said.

"_Ma, no, Signora--scusi_.... I am not mistaken," said the clerk decidedly. "The tickets were through from Venice to Paris. Her ladyship wished her luggage sent by the ten-thirty train this morning. I think that she herself left by that train also. Shall I send for the head porter? He will know."

"Yes, please," Sophy managed to murmur. She sank down into the nearest chair.

The head porter came shortly. He had just returned from the station. Yes. Lady Wychcote had left that morning on the through train for Paris.

Sophy could not articulate for a moment. Then she said, her lips stiff and dry:

"Was she ... was she ... alone?"

The porter replied that Miladi had been alone when he last saw her, as she had insisted on being taken to the station an hour before the train left. But that the tickets were for herself and her maid. So that he supposed that the maid had joined her later. There happened to be no other guests leaving on the through train for Paris that morning, and as Miladi had insisted that he should not wait, he had returned to the hotel. Miladi was very positive.

"You are sure there was not a ... a little boy with her?" Sophy asked.

Yes--the porter was quite sure that there had been no little boy with Miladi.

Sophy's mind was working in terrible, clear flashes.

She turned to Rosa, who stood a little apart, rather scared, feeling that something puzzling and dreadful was in the air, but only understanding now and then a word of the English in which all were speaking.

"You said that Lady Wychcote took her maid with her this morning, didn't you?" Sophy asked.

Rosa replied that Anna had certainly started for Murano with Lady Wychcote and Bobby.

It seemed to Sophy that she saw it all now. Her mother-in-law, afraid of being traced too easily if she kept the boy with her, had left him somewhere with Anna until a few minutes before the train started. Anna was a clever, middle-aged Yorkshire woman who had been with her ladyship some twenty years. She could be trusted to hold her tongue and act intelligently in such a case. She was, oddly enough, devoted to her mistress, and would never have thought of questioning her commands, no matter how singular they might have appeared to her.

And yet--could Lady Wychcote really have dared to kidnap the boy--for it was nothing less than kidnapping if she had taken him away with her in that determined, secret fashion. But why? What excuse could she give? And had she really done it! And, if not, where was Bobby? Where was her little son at this late hour of the evening? She felt quite crazy and witless for a few moments. What to do? How to act? And time was going. If Bobby had really been stolen from her, then she must follow on the next train, if possible. But where? Where would that relentless old woman take him? If she (Sophy) went to Paris--she would have no further clue on reaching it. Lady Wychcote might go on to England; she might not. And why? Why?

Suddenly she knew. In a searing flash she knew just why it was that Lady Wychcote had taken the boy--and that she had surely taken him. She remembered that strange tone in her voice last night, when she had spoken with her after Amaldi had left. Yes--that was it! She had thought the worst of her late return in company with Amaldi. She would give that as her reason for taking away the boy--his mother's unfitness to be his guardian.

Something wild and potent sprang to life in her. She got to her feet. She looked like another woman. Now she was asking when the next through train left for Paris. At ten o'clock, they told her. It was now twenty-five minutes past nine. She might make it if she went straight to the station in the gown she wore, without stopping to get even a small travelling-bag. But no--she was not sure enough that that was the best thing to do. The through tickets that Lady Wychcote had bought to Paris might be only a blind. She must be very certain when she acted to act in the surest way. A favourite saying of Judge Macon's came into her mind. "Be sure you're right--then go ahead." Besides, Amaldi might be at the Rio San Vio by now. He would be sure to advise her in the sanest, most clear-sighted way. He was the very man to stand firm in a crisis, not to lose his head. Then, with a hot recoil of shame, she thought of what she must tell him. She had not yet taken in what all this might also mean to her and Amaldi. She could think only of Bobby, bewildered, unhappy, rushing away from her on the night express to Paris in company with the bitter old woman who had always hated her. She recalled the feeling of his strong little body as he had snuggled close to her last night. A fury of impotent love and rage shook her. The gondola seemed to crawl over the light-jewelled water of the canal, though Lorenzo and Mario were sending it along at racing speed. A gaily lighted barge filled with singers and musicians passed them.

As they turned into the little Rio, by the Palace of Don Carlos, another barge began burning Bengal lights. The dark, narrow water-way, with its crowding houses and little bridges, flared red before her as in some operatic scene. Why were things always so brutally ironical? Why should there be a festival in Venice on the night that her boy had been stolen from her?

When she reached her flat she found a wire from Amaldi, saying that he would take the train from Cortola to Venice, and be with her by ten o'clock. It was the quickest way that he could reach her. As she put down the telegram she heard his voice on the stair, speaking to Lorenzo. Then he came in alone. He took her in his arms, held her close a moment, then led her to a sofa, and sat down beside her, keeping her hands in his.

"Now tell me," he said.

She told him everything. As she spoke he kept muttering, "What infamy!... What infamy!..." He was as convinced as she was of the truth of her conjectures.

Her dark, tortured eyes made him wince with a double pain. It was only her son that she was thinking of in those moments, not of him, her lover--not of what this parting would mean to him and her. "What must I do?" she kept asking him. "What must I do next? Ought I to have tried to catch that ten o'clock train? Tell me, Marco ... for God's sake, tell me what I'd best do...."

"Wait, dearest...." he said. "Give me time to think...."

He sat frowning down at the floor for a few moments. Then he turned to her. He asked her about the Wychcotes' solicitor.

"Do you think this Mr. Surtees is really your friend?" he said when she had told him all about her relations with the old lawyer.

"Yes. I'm sure he is," she said positively. "Why?"

"Because, in that case, it seems to me that the best thing would be for you to wire him to meet you at Folkestone. You can then give him the true facts and ask his help--before trying to see Lady Wychcote."

"You think she's taken Bobby to England, Marco?-- You feel sure of that?"

"I don't think there's a doubt of it. She will go straight to Surtees with her story; of that I feel positive."

Sophy coloured painfully.

"You mean that ... that she would want him to speak to ... the trustees?" she asked in a low voice.

"Yes, I'm afraid so," he assented. What he really thought was that Lady Wychcote would want to have the matter taken at once before the Court. But he could not bring himself to tell her this. Her shamed flush had hurt him horribly. It was intolerable that this revengeful old woman should have the power to sully and cloud their relations. Then fear seized him. What if Sophy were mistaken about the solicitor? What if he were a tool of Lady Wychcote? The possibilities that this idea disclosed appalled him. He went as white as Sophy had gone red.

"What is it? What are you thinking of now, Marco?" she urged anxiously, scared by his expression.

"I was thinking how you could get to England in the shortest time," he answered. "It's very vital that you should get there as soon as possible."

"Yes, yes. By that first through train to Paris to-morrow morning."

"No. You needn't go to Paris," said Amaldi. "It will be more direct for you to go from Venice straight to Boulogne via Laon. You'll save several hours by taking that route."

"Oh--thank God!" she stammered. Then she caught up his hand to her heart. "How good you are to me! Don't think I don't realise it--your unselfishness.... You think only of me--and I can't think of anything but my boy ... of how frightened and wretched he must be.... It's not that my love for you is any less than my love for him ... but he's so little ... he's my only son ... he needs me so...."

Amaldi felt like crying out, "And do I not need you?" but he choked down this cry. What meaning had the love of lovers for Rachel mourning her children? He drew her to him and kissed her loosened hair very gently.

"This is Bobby's hour," he said. "I can wait for my hour."

He left not long after, so that the servants might have no cause to gossip. It had been decided between them that he would attend to everything for her and that she and Rosa would be ready to leave by the morning train.

"I will send men to fetch your boxes at nine," he said. "Your maid can go with them. I will take you to the station myself."

"Thank you ... thank you, dearest...." she said.

Suddenly he caught her in his arms as on the day before in the Villa garden.

"Don't forget that you are the blood of my soul...." he said in a strangled voice.

She sobbed out his name--put up her arms about his neck. He kissed her rather wildly and went without another word.

That strange phrase of his rang in her mind all night, mingled with her frantic, confused thoughts of Bobby--and anguish of dread about what Lady Wychcote might say and do before Mr. Surtees could hear the true facts.

Amaldi had spoken in Italian as he nearly always did in moments of great feeling. She could hear his choked voice saying those strange, intense words ... "_sei il sangue del anima mia_"--the blood of his soul ... she was that to him. And yet, as she lay on the bed that Bobby had shared with her only last night, she felt as if her son were the true blood of her own soul ... that if she lost him by any dreadful, unspeakable chance--her soul would bleed away ... there would be no love left in her for any one.... And she began to reproach herself bitterly through the endless, sleepless night. She had been wrapped up in her own life ... she had not thought as she should of the precious little life derived from hers.... She should have foreseen. Knowing Lady Wychcote as she knew her, she ought to have had such a possibility as this that had happened always before her.

Then again she would think of Amaldi with a throb of pain and yearning. How pale he had looked ... how worn. She could not sleep. Her head and heart both were burning. Now Loring's face came before her. It blended with Amaldi's, blurring it, blotting it out. Now it was Cecil who looked straight at her with hard, angry eyes. "Where is my son, eh?... What have you done with my son?" he seemed to say.

She rose from the bed finally, lighted a candle and began to pack her travelling bags. As soon as daylight came, she asked Rosa to make her some coffee. Then, in spite of the woman's protests, helped her with the other packing. Once when they were folding Bobby's little garments, she put down her head on Rosa's shoulder and began to sob. Then she controlled herself again. She would need all her strength for the hours and days that lay before her.

LV

Later in the morning, when she was on her way to the station alone with Amaldi, it was even worse, but she had no temptation to cry now. This new pain that had sprung suddenly to life in her had the searing quality of hot iron. She kept stealing glances at his face, as he sat beside her in the gondola looking straight ahead, his under-lids drawn slightly up. It gave him a queer, short-sighted yet uncanny look, as though he were trying to focus some apparition of the future. He was thinking:

"If she has to choose between me and her son--she will choose her son."

Sophy was thinking:

"How long will it be before I see him again?... What if I never see him again?" She felt as if some inner force were tearing her in two. She had just begun to realise that in finding Bobby again she might lose Amaldi.

She put her hand on his.

"Marco...." she whispered. Her voice was full of fear and pain.

His hand turned under hers, clasped it tight. He looked at her but said nothing.

"I'm afraid...." she whispered again. "Not only about Bobby ... about us...."

"I know," he said this time.

He tried to think of some words of comfort, but they would not come. He was obsessed by the suffocating pain of his desire to help and guard her in this dreadful crisis, and the knowledge that the only thing he could do for her was to keep away, to let her take that long, anxious journey alone. At the time when she needed him most he could do nothing. His love was powerless. It was because of his love that this dark thing had come upon her. He said at last, rather mechanically:

"When you see the solicitor, things will clear, I feel certain.... You'll write me as soon as you've seen him?"

"Yes ... yes," she answered eagerly. "And you ... you'll write to me ... every day, won't you?... That will be my only comfort ... my only...."

She choked and could not go on.

He asked her where he should address his letters, and she answered "to Breene."

"They will be forwarded to me wherever I am ... you see.... I don't know yet where I shall be ... just at first...."

Again she broke off.

They had reached the station. It was now a quarter to ten. Only fifteen minutes more and they would be parted--for how long?

But even for these fifteen minutes they could not be together. Amaldi had still to see to things--to find out whether her luggage was all on board. She watched him as he went to and fro with his light, nervous step. It was all so unreal. Even he looked unreal. She could not see his face plainly at this distance. She tried to recall it, and it frightened her when she found that she could not imagine it clearly though she had looked at it so often and so earnestly during the past hour. Would she be unable to see his face in her thought when they were really parted? Then she began to watch the station clock. Only ten minutes more now--only nine ... eight----

He came back with a _fachino_, who gathered up her bags, and went off towards the train with them. Seven minutes now....

She sprang to her feet.

"Let us walk together...." she said, "somewhere away from all these people...."

They went slowly down the long station, beside the rails over which her train would soon be rolling. Their white, drawn faces would have attracted more attention were not such faces often seen at railway stations. One or two people gave them a passing glance of curiosity. About them sounded voices and footsteps, trundling wheels, sharp whistlings, the clang of testing hammers, the stridor of escaping steam, all made harsher and more echoing by the vaulted roof and stone walls of the station.

He offered her his arm, and she clung to it faint with pain. The clattering, grinding, sibilant din added to her misery. The acrid smell of coal-smoke recalled hateful memories. She had so many things she wished to say. They jostled in her mind. She could not choose which one to say first. And with him it was much the same. Then he murmured something that she could not catch. She clutched his arm, saying, "What is it?... Tell me again.... I didn't hear."

The scream of an engine drowned her voice. They heard the guard's whistle. People were scrambling into the carriages. A fat man in plaid trousers was running ridiculously, his bag banging against his legs. People laughed. Amaldi was helping her into a carriage. The guard slammed the door. She stood at the window and reached out her hand to him. He grasped it, looking up at her in silence. Then the train began to move. He walked beside it for a little way. The rhythm of the wheels quickened. The trucks began their clangorous, jerky sing-song. The closely clasped hands were drawn apart. She felt the rushing air chill on her hand that was still warm from his. She sank back, pulling down the brown travelling veil that she had thrown back for her last look at him. With closed eyes she tried to recall his face, and, as before, in the station, it refused to come clearly to her. Mile after mile she sat there without stirring, and it seemed to her that she must have cried out with the sharp misery of it all, but for the motion of the train which seemed in some inexplicable way to dull the edge of her suffering. When the train stopped at some station she could scarcely endure the sudden stillness. Then when it rushed on again, again in that odd way, her pain became once more soothed.

But after half an hour or so this haze of stupefaction lifted, leaving her face to face with clear agony once more. It was the thought of her son that racked her now ... her little son, flesh of her flesh, heart of her heart. What must he, too, be enduring?--he who had once begged her never to leave him again, "for Jesus' sake, Amen." She could see his little, pale face upturned to the car windows at Sweet-Waters station and hear the tremble in his voice. She felt as though a knife were being turned round and round in her breast. Then black fear seized her again ... fear of what it might be in Lady Wychcote's power to do against her--what she might have done already. Would Mr. Surtees really be her friend? Would he believe her? Would all those strange men believe her story? Would she have to tell it to them face to face?-- Perhaps go into Court?

She clenched her hands in her helpless anguish until they ached and burnt.... O God!... God! Suppose that some ill had come to him. Suppose she were never to hear that eager, strong little voice again.... She stood up suddenly to her full height. People in the carriage stared at her. She dropped back again wondering if she had cried out....

About sunset the train began to mount the Gothard. Now she was in the grip of a new horror--the memory of the last time that she had taken this journey. She could see, as if it had been yesterday, Gerald Wychcote's thin, frail figure looking so much frailer than usual in its unaccustomed black--that awful, oblong black box guarded by Gaynor in the luggage van--the box in which Cecil travelled like goods on a goods train.... Now it was for Cecil's son that she was taking the dreadful journey.... Again it seemed to her that she saw his angry, hard blue eyes staring at her and heard him saying, "Where is my son, eh? What have you done with my son between you--you and your latest lover?"

She grasped her head in both hands, wondering if the wild pain in it meant brain fever....

It was drizzling next morning when they reached Boulogne, but the sea was calm. She looked hungrily at the grey curtain of mist that shut out England.

The crossing was short. And yet it seemed to her an eternity before the steamer docked at Folkestone. Had Mr. Surtees received the telegram that Amaldi had sent for her night before last? Would he be there to meet her? Her heart beat to suffocation, as she leaned over the taffrail staring down at the crowd below. Then it gave a sudden leap---- Yes--there he was. His prim, kindly old face was anxiously upturned. He was looking for her just as she was looking for him. She waved to him ... called his name. A few moments more and she was beside him. She tried to speak, but no sound came from her white lips. He hurried to tell her what he knew that she was trying to ask.

"Your son is with Lady Wychcote at Dynehurst, Mrs. Chesney," he said. "I saw her ladyship yesterday."

Sophy staggered. The old lawyer offered his arm. He looked almost as pale as she did. He wanted to fetch her a glass of brandy, but she would not have it.

"I shall be quite right ... quite right in a moment," she kept gasping. She bent her head as she walked beside him, struggling with a desire to burst into inane laughter. Hateful throes of hysteria convulsed her throat. She overcame them by a violent effort of will that left her feeling weaker than ever. She clung blindly to Mr. Surtees' arm, stumbling now and then.

"I reserved a compartment in the London train," he told her. "Do you wish your maid to go with us, or in the next compartment?"

"Not with us," murmured Sophy. "I wish to talk with you quite alone."

She regained her composure little by little, and as soon as the train was under way turned to him and said in a firm voice:

"Mr. Surtees--what did Lady Wychcote say to you about me?-- What reason did she give for abducting my son?"

The solicitor flushed and his eyes fell away from hers.

"If you will excuse me a moment, Mrs. Chesney," he answered, "there is a paper in my bag that I would like to show you. I ... a ... have embodied in writing the gist of her ladyship's ... a ... remarks."

He opened a small black bag as he spoke and took out a legal looking paper. He half unfolded it, glanced nervously at its contents, then hesitated.

"It is most painful to me to have to submit this document to you, Mrs. Chesney," he said, distress in his voice. "I beg you to believe that I have never had a more painful duty to perform."

"Thank you, Mr. Surtees," said Sophy. She changed colour cruelly, but her tone was still firm and quiet. "Let me see it, please...."

He gave her the paper, and looked away from her while she read it.

It stated that the Viscountess Wychcote alleged that her daughter-in-law, the Hon. Mrs. Cecil Chesney, widow of the late Hon. Cecil Chesney, etc., etc., was an improper person to have the care of the young peer, her son, Viscount Wychcote, as she, Viscountess Wychcote, believed that Mrs. Chesney had committed adultery with the Marchese Marco Amaldi. Then followed Lady Wychcote's reasons for so believing, and for the first time Sophy learned that Colonel Bollingham had seen her enter Amaldi's lodgings in Clarges Street the day after his supposed accident.

She sat motionless for some time after reading this accusation, then she spoke to the solicitor:

"Mr. Surtees...." she said.

He turned unhappily.

"Mr. Surtees," she repeated, looking straight into his eyes with her own so passionately intent and still, "I am going to tell you the whole truth--so help me God."

She lifted her right hand slightly as she spoke, her eyes fixed on his. He bent his head mechanically as if acknowledging her oath. Then clearly, slowly, pausing now and then to command herself, Sophy told him the whole story of Amaldi's love for her and hers for him. The old lawyer sat listening intently. After the first few moments he forgot his distressing embarrassment in the deep human interest of the story that was being unfolded before him. As Sophy drew near the end and told of the bad news that Barti had brought from Switzerland, and of how the accident to Amaldi's mother had made her so late in returning to Venice, of how she had found Lady Wychcote there a day before her intended visit, and of all that she had endured next day when she feared at first that some dreadful accident had happened to her son--as she told all this very simply, very movingly in plain, quiet words, the sedate face of Mr. Surtees grew first discomposed then rather grim.

Sophy ceased. The whispering roar of the heavy English train filled the silence for a little. Then she said:

"Do you believe me, Mr. Surtees?"

He answered gravely, even solemnly.

"I do believe you, Mrs. Chesney."

At this Sophy broke down, and hiding her face from him cried bitterly.

LVI

It was most distressing to Mr. Surtees to see this tall, dignified woman collapse into such a bitter abandonment of weeping. He had even a secret affection for Sophy after his prim fashion. As poor Bobby would have said, it made him feel "rather sick" to sit there helplessly watching her. He had an almost irresistible impulse to put his hand on her shaking shoulder and pat it gently. Only the habit of a decorous legal lifetime restrained him. He fidgeted nervously with his glasses and the paper that she had handed back to him, began to mutter such words of consolation as he could think of.

"My dear lady ... my dear lady.... Compose yourself.... We shall find a way out.... I have suggestions ... yes, suggestions...."

Sophy reached out one hand to him blindly, her face still hidden. He took it gingerly but tenderly in both his own. Nature overcame decorum.

"My poor, poor child...." he said shakily.

As a staunch Conservative and member of the church of England, he had not approved of Sophy's divorce. In theory he was much shocked by the fact that she should have contemplated a third marriage. Yet, as she herself told it, her story took quite another aspect in the old lawyer's mind--seemed, in fact, the most natural and inevitable outcome of circumstances. The circumstances he still disapproved of, while sympathising, against his judgment and much to his own astonishment, with the romance that had resulted from them. And he felt highly indignant at the course pursued by Lady Wychcote.

When Sophy was calm again, he asked leave to tell her some of the "suggestions" to which he had referred.

"Tell me first of all how to get my son again," she urged. "What must I do to get him back at once, Mr. Surtees? I will not stop at anything ... no! not at anything!" Now she was all fierce and strong with maternity again. Her eyes blazed from her swollen lids, giving her ravaged face a wild, piteous look.

"If you should insist upon regaining possession of your son by legal proceedings," answered Mr. Surtees, "you would have to apply to a Judge at Chambers for a writ of _habeas corpus_, demanding his production before the Judge and an order that he be released to you his mother and guardian. But if you will allow me, I think I can suggest a better way than taking this distressing matter before the law.... I would suggest...."

Sophy interrupted him breathlessly.

"But that paper ... the paper you showed me just now. Isn't that to be shown in Court--to a Judge!"

Mr. Surtees hastened to reassure her.

"That is not a legal document strictly speaking," he said quickly. "It is merely my memorandum of the affidavit that Lady Wychcote wishes to present--to the Court. I have taken no steps whatever as yet. I felt it necessary to delay this deplorable matter as much as possible--certainly until I had seen you, Mrs. Chesney. Now if you will allow me ... I really think that you will find my suggestions of value...."

Sophy listened in silence while he told her of the solution that had occurred to him. In the first place, that the matter should be kept out of Court, he considered vitally important, for although the application would be heard in Chambers at the first instance, either party dissatisfied with the Judge's decision might appeal and then the matter would become public. Now what he suggested was that he should accompany Mrs. Chesney to Dynehurst, and that she should demand a private interview with Lady Wychcote in his presence. After what Mrs. Chesney had confided to him, he thought there could be no doubt of a private settlement of the matter. That the mother of the Marquis Amaldi would be willing to witness in Mrs. Chesney's defence was a most important fact; also the circumstance of her having been accompanied by Miss Pickett when she went to inquire for the Marquis after his supposed accident. Then, too, the stainlessness of her reputation in the past would undoubtedly weigh considerably with the Judge in his estimate of the case. Altogether, everything pointed to the likelihood of a decision in favour of Mrs. Chesney against her ladyship, should the matter be brought to law. So that when Lady Wychcote had been made to understand this, he thought that she could scarcely refuse to deliver up Mrs. Chesney's son to her.

"You don't know her, Mr. Surtees," here broke in Sophy, white and hard. "You don't know to what lengths that woman is capable of going...."

"I am not entirely ignorant of her ladyship's ... a ... characteristics," replied her solicitor somewhat tartly. "But in this instance I think that I could present the case to her so that she would a ... see its a ... rationality."

Sophy brooded a moment. Then she said:

"And if she would not listen ... if she insisted on proceeding against me!"

"Then," replied Mr. Surtees, "she would have to state formally in her affidavit the sources of her information. An affidavit would also be forthcoming from the person or persons who could _prove_ the alleged ... a ... misconduct, or the circumstances from which the misconduct could be proved. If the Judge believed her ladyship's story he would order your son to be handed over to her. If he disbelieved it he would order him to be delivered up to you. I think there is little doubt which story he would believe, Mrs. Chesney. Besides, the abduction of a child is an utterly illegal and reprehensible act--no matter what the motive. A court of morals would look at the motive of course, and so Lady Wychcote's abduction of your son being prompted by her affection for him, would be judged differently from a like case in which base or sordid motives were the cause. But I do not think that her ladyship's act would be regarded by any Judge as other than highly reprehensible. This fact, taken with the rest, may well cause her ladyship to reconsider."

Sophy still brooded, her eyes on the streaking fields. The stilted legal phraseology seemed part of the grim unnaturalness of everything. Suddenly she flashed round on him.

"Which way can I get my boy the sooner?" she said.

"By allowing me to go with you to Dynehurst; I am convinced of it," he replied without an instant's hesitation. "Days might elapse if you took the other course."

"Very well," she said, "I will go with you--by the first train that we can take."

* * * * *

It was about nine o'clock when they reached Dynehurst station. They had to wait there half an hour for a fly. It seemed to Sophy as if this half-hour of waiting would never end. Then when they were once more on the way again, the lean hacks plodded at a snail's pace over the sodden roads. For the last twenty-four hours it had been raining heavily, now the air was moistened by a Scotch mist. Sophy sat forward on the musty seat, her hands gripped together, thinking of those other times she had driven to Dynehurst through the night--first as a bride--then as a widow, with her husband's body following in that huge, oblong black box, that now lay in the crypt of the little chapel.... When they drove past the chapel a fit of shivering seized her. She set her teeth to keep them from chattering. Now the cliff-like house loomed. She saw the files of lighted windows, but the nursery was at the back, she could not see if there were still lights in his window. Her heart began a sick throbbing. Was he asleep, her Bobby, her little son? Or did he lie awake, wretched, unhappy, wondering about it all--longing for her so that he could not sleep? She wanted to cry out to him that she was coming. She could scarcely wait for the fly to draw up at the front door. Before Mr. Surtees could assist her, she was out and up the steps. She rang twice. Rage woke in her as she stood waiting for admittance into the house where her son was shut from her as in a prison. She trembled with her pent anger more than she had trembled in passing Cecil's tomb. Then a footman opened the door. She stepped past him without a word, and ran towards the stairway.

Mr. Surtees hurried after her.

"Wait ... wait, Mrs. Chesney ... be advised ... I implore you...." he panted.

But Sophy did not even hear him. Her son ... she was going to her son ... that was all that she knew or felt in that moment.

She had not mounted five steps before she saw Lady Wychcote and Bellamy coming down.

She stopped and threw back her head with a fierce gesture.

"I've come for my son," she said, her eyes on Lady Wychcote's. "Where is my son?"

Both Lady Wychcote and Bellamy stood staring down at her without a word, and something in their faces made her suddenly shrivel with fear. She reached them in a bound or two, seized Lady Wychcote's arm, holding her as in a vice. Her wild look went from one pale face to the other.

"What's the matter? What have you done to him?" she gasped. "Where is he?"

She loosed Lady Wychcote as suddenly as she had seized her. Now her frantic, asking fingers grasped Bellamy.

"Is he ill? Is he ... dead?" she stammered.

Then with the same violent quickness she released Bellamy also before he could reply. Leaping past them, she ran towards the nursery.

Bellamy caught her up.

"Wait, Mrs. Chesney ... wait...." he implored as the old solicitor had done. "He's not in the nursery.... He is in ... in his father's room.... Wait a moment.... Let me explain ... for the boy's sake."

He had ventured to take her arm, and held her back somewhat as he hurried beside her.

"Bobby is not well...."

She stopped short--spun round in his hold.

"Is he dead? Is he dead? Is he dead?" she kept muttering like an automaton.

"No ... no. Only a bad cold ... from exposure.... Rather feverish.... You mustn't excite him, though.... Mustn't rush in on him like this.... Sit here a moment, Mrs. Chesney.... Recover yourself.... Let me explain."

Like an automaton she sat down in the hall chair that he pushed forward. He could see the beading of sweat about her eyes and lips as she looked up at him.

He galloped his explanation, bending over her, speaking in a low voice, and glancing now and then at the door of Cecil's old bedroom near which they were.

"The little chap got lost in the Park last night ... was some hours in a pelting rain ... d'you see? He's in no immediate danger ... but he has pneumonia ... is feverish. We mustn't startle or excite him--d'you see?"

She sat staring up at him out of a dead face in which the eyes looked startlingly alive. Then she rose, said in a flat, quiet voice:

"Yes ... I see. Now take me to him."

LVII

Bellamy went ahead and opened the door carefully so as to make no sound. She stood a moment on the threshold looking in. Cecil's bed faced her, and in it lay his son, propped on pillows to help his difficult breathing. His grey eyes were wide and bright and unfocused--his cheeks scarlet. On the sheet before him lay some bits of silver money and a few bank notes. He fumbled with them incessantly. He was saying in a thick quick, little voice:

"A first-class ticket.... A ticket to London.... A first-class ticket to London, please.... I have the money ... here's the money.... I have the money.... A ticket to London...."

Sophy clung to the jamb of the door. She could not move. Bellamy put his arm round her. The nurse, who had been sitting by the bed, rose and came forward.

Suddenly the boy cried out piteously: "Oh! it's getting wet ... it's melting ... my money's melting...."

The nurse flew back to him.

"No, dear, no," she reassured him. "Here's your money all nice and dry. Here's your ticket to London. You're going to London...."

"No, no! ... It's all melted ... it won't buy a ticket.... I can't find her.... I can't get to her...."

Sophy sank down by the bed, and took the hot little hand in both her own.

"I'm here, my darling.... I'm here...." she said in a voice of wonderful quiet. "You won't need to go to London to find me, dearest.... See, I'm here...."

The brilliant eyes fixed on her anxiously. ".... Mother?" ventured the perplexed voice, faintly hopeful. Then again that piteous wail broke from him. The little hand jerked in hers trying to release itself. "You're not my mother ... my mother's in Venice.... I'm going to her.... Where's my money? Where's my money?"

Sophy dropped her face upon the bedclothes. The nurse and doctor stood by in silence. Bobby fumbled with the money. He began again: "A first-class ticket, please.... A ticket to London.... A ticket to London.... I've got the money ... here's the money...."

The anguish of remorse and love were rending her, but outwardly she was as calm as the two professionals who stood and pitied her.

She looked up at last. She said to Bellamy:

"You can trust me. I am quite controlled. But...." She gasped in spite of her furious will. ".... don't let _her_ come into this room."

"No, she shall not. Don't be afraid," Bellamy said soothingly as to a child. "I will go and see to it. Nurse Fleming here will aid you in every way. Bobby likes her...." he added, then left the room.

Now the boy was turning his head from side to side on the pillow.

"It's jolly hot in here ... it's too hot ... it's too hot...." he kept muttering. Then he called out fretfully: "I'm thirsty!... I want some water!"

Nurse Fleming gave him some chilled water in a spoon. He was quiet for a second or two. Then he began again in that thick, quick little voice:

"A ticket to London, please.... A ticket to London.... I'm her only man.... She said I was.... _He_ ain't her man ... he's married.... I'm glad.... I don't want a new father.... I hate new fathers.... Mother dear, I'm your man.... Don't marry anybody.... I'm your man...."

Sophy began whispering softly, her face close to his:

"No, sweetheart. You're my only, only man.... I'm not going to marry anybody, my darling. Bobby.... Bobbikins ... it's mother talking to you ... mother.... My little man ... my only little man...."

He seemed to recognise her for an instant. "Mother!... Let's begin our book.... Once upon a time.... No, that's silly.... It was glass ... glass ... a glass book.... Put our names together ... print them.... No.... I want a ticket to London, please.... A ticket to London...."

* * * * *

In the meantime, Mr. Surtees and Bellamy were talking very seriously to Lady Wychcote. Her ladyship was badly frightened. It did not take them long to bring her to a reasonable view of the question at issue. If her grandson should die, she could not but realise that his death would be laid to her account by others, though her own angry thought insisted that his mother would be really the one to blame. Then, too, she loved the boy, as has been said, far more than she had ever loved her own sons. She quailed inwardly with pain when she thought of the shriek of terror with which Bobby had greeted her a little while ago when she had entered the room with Bellamy. "Don't let her get me!... Don't let her take away my ticket!" he had screamed. For with the strange inconsistency of delirium he had recognised his enemy at once, though his mother's presence had been unable to soothe him. Lady Wychcote had been compelled to withdraw, lest the child should go into convulsions from his frenzied fear of her.

She sat subdued though haughty while Mr. Surtees pressed home the facts that he considered would militate against her should she persist in her struggle for the sole guardianship of her grandson. Bellamy, in whom she had confided when he was called to Bobby's bedside, was strongly of the solicitor's opinion.

They both agreed in thinking that Lady Wychcote's case would be as good as lost before being presented. Besides, after laying before her every other circumstance in Sophy's favour. Mr. Surtees assured her that the Judge would be certain to demand a private interview with the boy. In that case Bobby's absolute devotion to his mother would have the greatest weight with the Court. And--her ladyship must pardon him--but after the events of the last two days, she could hardly expect that her grandson would reply as ... a ... favourably when questioned about his feeling for her.

They expatiated on the way that the boy had come to be in his present serious condition. The proud old woman sat listening with a face as grey as flint and as hard. But she was suffering as she had not suffered before in all her imperious life. Bellamy wound up by saying: "I regret having to distress you, Lady Wychcote; but the boy's condition is much more serious than I would admit to his mother. In fact he is very dangerously ill.... But even if he recovers, you would scarcely like, I presume, to have your part in the matter brought up in Court."

Lady Wychcote swayed on her chair.

"'If he recovers'...." she repeated thickly. "Is there danger ... of ... his ... dying?"

"Grave danger," said Bellamy.

Lady Wychcote fainted for the first time in her life.

* * * * *

When Bellamy thought of how poor Bobby had come to have pneumonia, he did not wonder that his grandmother should faint on hearing that he might die. It had happened in this way:

To all the boy's frantic inquiries when he found that he was on the way to England without his mother, Lady Wychcote had always answered in some such words as these: "You must trust me, my dear. You will understand some day, but now you must submit to my judgment without questioning. It is best for you and for your mother that you should come with me. I cannot tell you anything more at present. Be a good boy. After a while you will be very happy I am sure."

She told him frankly, however, that they were going to England.

When he asked if his mother knew, if she would come, too, very soon, Lady Wychcote had replied: "She will know shortly. I do not know what her plans are."

Then Bobby gave way to such rage as his grandmother had not witnessed since his father's childhood. He was like a demon. He tried to jump from the window of the carriage--fought with her and the maid till their gowns were torn and he was in a state of collapse. When he recovered from this he took refuge in utter silence. He would not eat or drink--would not move--crouched white and stony with closed eyes. When they reached Boulogne they had to get a man to carry him. But now his eyes were open. They looked fierce and animal-like. He himself looked like some savage, trapped little animal with a red mane. As he caught sight of the channel steamer and realised that he was to be carried aboard of it, he began to fight again. The man had difficulty in mastering him without hurting him. Lady Wychcote explained that the boy was temporarily insane and that she was taking him to England for treatment. Bobby shrieked: "You lie! You lie! You've stolen me! She's stolen me from my mother!"

It was the first time that the determined old lady had ever felt really afraid. She almost lost her head for a moment; but, fortunately for her, it was at this moment that Bobby collapsed again, as he had done in the railway carriage.

All the way from Dover to London he crouched again, motionless, with closed eyes. But now he was thinking--wildly yet rationally. He must escape somehow and get back to his mother. To escape he must put his grandmother off her guard. He must pretend to "be good." His pockets were full of money. He had taken from his little "bank" that morning the savings of two months. He had taken out all the money he had, because he wanted to buy his mother a glass gown if possible. There were in his pockets some English shillings and half-crowns, some silver _lire_, some five _lire_ bank notes. It seemed quite a fortune to him--certainly enough to pay his way back to Venice. But how to get away from his grandmother? The only thing to do was to pretend to "be good" and wait ... and watch his chance. Then, too, he must keep strong. Now he felt very faint and sickish from hunger. He unclosed his eyes, looked at his grandmother, and said slowly:

"I've decided to behave. I'd like something to eat, please."

Lady Wychcote could have shouted with relief and joy. She would have kissed him, but he fended her off.

"Please ... I feel rather un-affectionate," he said. Something in his voice and look put the old lady at her proper distance. She could not meet the boy's eyes comfortably.

She said with great meekness for her: "Very well, Robert. But I am pleased to see you act like a man."

Anna opened the luncheon hamper and he ate a sandwich and drank some coffee and milk. The food sickened him suddenly. He could not eat more though he tried. He then sat quietly looking out of window till they reached London. Mr. Surtees met them at the station. He looked very much surprised when he saw Bobby. Lady Wychcote made him a significant gesture, and he did not express the surprise he felt. Also he thought that the boy looked ill. Bobby walked around and slipped his hand in the old solicitor's. He and Mr. Surtees had not seen each other often but they liked each other. Bobby's brain was racing. "Shall I tell him? Shall I tell him?" he was thinking. Then something in him said, "No." That Mr. Surtees would have to do as his grandmother wished him to--at least now. Perhaps later he could see him alone. They went to Claridge's. His grandmother and Mr. Surtees were alone together for a long time. Bobby was left upstairs in another room with Anna. She tried to coax him to talk with her but he had relapsed again into resolute silence. Then his grandmother came up, and told him that they were going to Dynehurst at once, and that he should have a new pony, and any kind of dog that he liked.

He said, "Thank you," civilly, but nothing more. His face had reddened as his grandmother spoke--with pleasure she thought. Yes ... ponies and dogs were a sure way to a boy's heart. She felt quite complacent and encouraged. The boy would be easier to manage than she had dared hope, after the frightful incidents of the journey.

Bobby had flushed because when she said that they were going to Dynehurst that afternoon, the thought had leaped to him: "I can get out of the house to-night, and buy a ticket to London at the station." Once in London he thought that it would be easy to get back to Venice. Perhaps Mr. Surtees would be his friend. Yes, he had better trust Mr. Surtees. But again, no--he was not sure about that. What he was sure about was that he could get out of the house that night and find his way to the station. It did not occur to him that the station-master might be unwilling to sell him a ticket to London.

That same night--the night that Sophy spent so miserably on the express that was taking her to him--he managed to dress himself and find his way out of the huge house without rousing any one. One of the housemaids had been sent to stay in the dressing-room next his, but she was a sound, healthy sleeper, and did not hear the boy's cautious movements. He crept downstairs in his stocking-feet, boots in hand. His overcoat had been put away. He went out into the dark, chill, misty night, dressed only in thin serge. At first he could see nothing, then bit by bit the shrubbery and trees revealed themselves ink on inky-grey. The crunching of the gravel helped him to find his way. His heart thumped sickeningly but high. He was free, free! On his way back to his mother. When he had groped some fifty yards from the house, he sat down on the ground to put on his boots. As he laced them he looked wrathfully back at the black mass of the grim old house. Two lighted hall windows in the floor above, and the lighted glass above the front door, gave it the appearance of a huge staring face, with luminous mouth and eyes. It seemed glowering at him like an ogre. He scrambled up, feeling rather queer and little in the lap of the dark, empty night, then trudged sturdily on, guided by the crunching of the gravel, as he strayed to right or left.

All at once, the trees began to sigh and creak--big drops struck his face--at first spatteringly, then thicker together. Within half an hour of his leaving the house, a heavy, wind-swept rain was pelting down; ten minutes more and he was soaked to the skin.

Now it was that he began to fear for his money, which was more than half in notes. He clenched his hands tightly over as much of it as he could grasp, and plodded on determinedly. But the steady pelting of the rain bewildered him. He wandered from the driveway--tried to find it again, with hands and feet this time. Blown twigs and leaves began to strike him. He walked against a tree--clung to it a moment, panting. Then groped his way on again. But now he was hopelessly lost in the big Park. A great, soggy mass of bracken stopped him. He skirted it--walked against more trees. He would not admit in his fierce, dogged little heart that he was lost. He kept rehearsing what he would say to the station-master: "A first-class ticket to London, please. Here's the money."

For nearly three hours the boy groped and stumbled in that maze of trees through the driving rain. For some time he had been saying earnest little prayers:

"Our Father who art in heaven ... please help me to get back to my mother. Our Father ... please. Our Father ... please...."

* * * * *

When they found him he was lying unconscious on the sodden grass under an elm--both hands clenched fast upon as much of the notes and silver in his pockets as he could grasp.

When he had been put to bed, and roused at last he was delirious. He began calling frantically, "My money! my money!" They gave it to him. Then had begun that monotonous chant of: "A first-class ticket to London, please.... A ticket to London.... Here's the money.... I've got the money."

This was why Bellamy did not wonder that Lady Wychcote fainted when he told her that Bobby might die.

LVIII

And now Sophy descended into the darkness of darkness where death and remorse sit brooding together--that vasty cavern of uttermost black gloom which underlies the Valley of the Shadow. Faith does not walk there nor hope. There a thousand years seem not as a day, but a day seems as a thousand years.

As she watched beside her son, she felt a more rending anguish than when she had given him birth, for now her soul was in travail of him. She who had given him life might now have given him death. If he died it would be she who had killed him. "Happiness hunter ... happiness hunter...." her own phrase rang in her mind.

And this was what her son had come to, while she was absorbed in hunting happiness....

She would not leave him now even long enough to change her clothes. Nurse Fleming brought her some fresh linen and a dressing-gown to the bedside, and put them on her as if she had been a child. She submitted quietly. The nurse unbound her hair, brushed and plaited it, then made her take an easy chair that she rolled up.

When Bellamy entered again Sophy roused from her tranced watching long enough to ask him to get Anne Harding if it were possible. He went at once to do so.

There was no night or day to Sophy now. The grim, candle-lit hours went by monotonous as a linked chain paid out of darkness into darkness by invisible hands.

Then came intervals of horror--struggles for breath. Wild shadows on the ceiling as nurse and doctor fought together with that other Shadow.

Anne Harding came. Sophy stared at her blindly, and said: "I thought you'd come, Cecil...."

Then after many days, each as a thousand years, a voice came through the smothering blackness in her mind. It said:

"He will live.... He's past the crisis...."

The blackness closed in again.

She came to herself on the bed in Cecil's dressing-room. There was an old etching of Magdalene Tower on the wall at the bed's foot.

She thought: "What a pity to call it 'Maudlin' instead of Magdalene...." Then everything weltered in on her at once--waves, wreckage, as of a world after flood. She was on her feet. She was in the other room. Anne Harding and Bellamy had hold of her. Her head felt hollow and very light. Her voice sounded light and piping in her own ears.

"Tell ... tell...." she was saying.

Anne Harding put her finger to her lips--glanced towards a smooth white bed. There was a little round of sunlight dancing on it. "Ssssh...." whispered Anne. "He's asleep.... We mustn't wake him. You've been very ill yourself, but our little man's doing finely."

They helped her to a chair beside the bed--Cecil's old leather armchair. Anne Harding could see his huge form in it as he used to sit glowering at her between the reduced doses of morphia. It gave her an odd feeling to put Sophy in that chair, and tuck a rug about her.

They all three sat in silence watching the sleeping child.

Sophy whispered once, with her avid eyes on the little, sunken face:

"Is he really only ... asleep?"

For answer, Bellamy lifted one of Bobby's hands and laid it in hers.

"He's so sound it won't wake him," he reassured her, smiling.

And for Sophy the warmth of that little hand was as the warmth of her own soul's blood.

* * * * *

For a long, long time she sat there with inner vision fixed on the beautiful and terrible star that had risen in the dark night of her soul--the star of a destiny as stern and far more ancient than that foretold at Bethlehem: the star of primordial and eternally recurrent sacrifice ... of the crucifixion of the mother for the child. And a woman if she be so lifted up shall draw all women to her and to each other--for this is the dark yet shining law, whereby the individual's loss is the gain of the whole race.

When Bobby at last opened his eyes they rested on his mother's face. She hardly dared to breathe, it was so wonderful to see those grey eyes looking into hers with recognition. And the boy, too, was afraid to stir or speak lest his mother's face should vanish or change into some dreadful difference as it had vanished and changed in the dreams of fever. But as she knelt, holding his hand against her breast, gazing at him out of the eyes that meant all love to him--a little stiff, wistful smile parted his lips.

"Mother ... dear...." he whispered.

Then Sophy put her cheek to his. He felt the soft glow of her sheltering breast.

"Hold me fast ... don't leave me...." he murmured.

"Never, my darling ... my only man ... never, never again...."

"Our Father...." stumbled Bobby, ".... thank you ... _ever_ so much...."

Then he drowsed off again.

* * * * *

A week later Sophy was sitting beside him as usual, and again he was sleeping. It was drawing towards sunset. A lovely glow filled the sky and lighted the yellowing trees in the Park.

Bobby waked suddenly and, gazing out of the window near his bed, pleaded:

"Mother ... I _do_ so want to smell the out of doors.... Couldn't you open this window?"

Sophy called Anne Harding, who was in the next room.

"Do you think we might open it?" she asked, after telling her what Bobby wanted. "It's so mild to-day--like St. Martin's summer.... He wants it so much...."

"Of course we can," Anne answered cheerfully. "Dr. Fresh Air's the best doctor of 'em all."

She raised the sash and went back into the other room. Doctors and nurses left those two alone together as much as possible.

The mild air, sweet with fading leaves and bracken, stole softly into the room.

"How jolly...." breathed the boy. "It's like fairies touching me...."

He turned his face towards his mother.

"Come lie by me, mother ... like that night in Venice," he said.

Sophy lay down beside him and took his head upon her arm. Bobby sighed deep in the fulness of his content. "I feel so jolly safe this way," he murmured. They rested quietly in each other's arms, looking up at the soft gold of the September sky. As on that day, nearly eight years ago, when Cecil had been laid in the chapel crypt, the yellow leaves drifted down, gently turning in the delicate air. The fallowed earth gave forth a fresh, pleasant smell. From the pasture lands below came the lowing of the Wychcote herd. Now a flight of homing rooks streamed across the sky.

"Oh, how jolly ... how jolly it all is," breathed the boy. "I'm glad I didn't die.... What a jolly noise the rooks make, don't they, mother?"

"Yes, darling," she answered him.

But what she heard and saw, high, high above their clamorous winging, was the ecstatic shrilling of the Venice swifts, and their impassioned arabesques of flight like joy made visible--like a joy above, beyond--far, far removed....

THE END