dim. At length Grace could stand her misery no longer; she went to the

library, where she knew he was alone, and softly opened the door. He sat at the table with Blue-Books and paper spread in front of him, striving industriously to fit himself for the duties which he took so seriously; but he did not read: he rested his face on his hands, staring straight in front of him. He started when his wife entered, and looked at her with harassed eyes.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Paul, but we can’t go on much longer in this way. I want to know what you’re going to do.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I wish to do my duty.”

“I suppose you’re going to divorce me.”

He gave a groan, and pushing back his chair, stood up.

“Oh, Grace, Grace, why did you do it? You know how I worshipped you; I would have given my life to save you a moment’s uneasiness. I trusted you with all my soul.”

“Yes, I know all that, I’ve repeated it to myself a thousand times.”

He looked at her so helplessly that she could not restrain her pity.

“Would you like me to go away? Your mother can easily come down to you, and you can talk it over with her.”

“You know what she’d advise me to do,” he cried.

“Yes.”

“D’you _want_ me to divorce you?”

She gave him a look of utter agony, but would not allow the gathering tears to fall from her eyes; with fierce self-reproach, she wished to excite in him no atom of commiseration. He glanced away, with a certain shame of his next question.

“D’you still care for—Reggie Bassett?”

“No,” she cried exultantly; “I loathe and detest and despise him. I know he’s not worth a quarter of you.”

He threw up his hands helplessly.

“Oh God! I wish I knew what to do. At first I could have killed you, and now—I feel we can’t go on as we are, ought to do something; I can’t forget the whole thing. I ought to hate you, but I can’t; notwithstanding everything, I love you still. If you go, I think I shall die.”

She looked at him thoughtfully, divining in some measure the emotions which tore him in sundry directions. It seemed due to his honour that he should divorce the errant wife, and yet he had not the heart to do it; anger and shame were banished by utter sorrow; and then, he could not bear the scandal and the public disgrace. Paul Castillyon was a man of old-fashioned ideas, and it seemed to him proper for a gentleman to keep his name out of the newspapers. Nor did he like the modern notion that the wronged husband cuts a somewhat heroic figure; he remembered vividly his disgust when a member of his club, divorcing his wife, had sought in the smoking-room to excite sympathy by narration of the lady’s infidelities. He was proud of his name, and could not bear that it should be covered with ridicule; the very thought shamed him, so that he could scarcely face his wife.

“I leave myself entirely in your hands,” she said at length. “I will do whatever you wish.”

“Can’t you give me a little more time to think it over? I don’t want to do anything hastily.”

“I think we’d better decide at once. It’ll be much better for you to settle it; you’re making yourself ill. I can’t bear to see you so awfully unhappy.”

“Don’t think about me; think about yourself. What will you do if——” He stopped, unable to continue.

“If you divorce me?”

“No, I can’t do that,” he cried quickly. “I dare say I’m a doting, weak fool, and you’ll despise me even more than you do; but I can’t lose you altogether. Oh, Grace, you don’t want me to divorce you?”

She shook her head.

“It would be very generous if you could spare me that. Will you be satisfied if I go and live abroad? I promise that you’ll have no cause to blame me again. We need tell people nothing; they’ll think it’s a sort of amicable separation.”

“I dare say that would be the best thing,” he said quietly.

“Then, good-bye.”

She stretched out her hand to him, and the tears in her eyes made everything dim about her. He took it silently.

“I want to tell you once more, Paul, how bitterly I regret all the unhappiness I’ve caused you. I was never a good wife to you. I hope with all my heart that you’ll be happier now.”

“How can I be happy, Grace? You were all my happiness. I can’t help it; all these days I’ve fought against it, I’ve done all I could, but still even now—now that I know you’ve never cared for me at all, and the rest—I love you with all my heart.”

The tears ran down her wasted, colourless cheeks, and for awhile she could not speak. She withdrew her hand, and stood in front of him with head bent down.

“I don’t ask you to believe me, Paul. I’ve lied to you and betrayed you, and you have the right to take my words as worthless. But I should like to tell you this before I go: I do love you now honestly. During these last months of wretchedness I’ve understood how kind and good you were, and I’ve been awfully touched by your great love for me; you made me utterly ashamed of myself. Oh, I’ve been worthless and selfish; I’ve sacrificed you blindly to all my whims, I’ve never tried to make you happy; but if I’m less of a cad than I was, it’s because of you. And the other day, when you gave that man his gun, I was so proud of you, and I felt such a poor mean creature I could have fallen on my knees before you and kissed your hands.”

She took her handkerchief and dried her eyes; then, forcing a smile, for one moment she flashed at him a gay look such as she had been accustomed to give.

“Don’t think too badly of me, will you?”

“Oh, Grace, Grace,” he cried, “I can’t bear it! Don’t go. I want you so badly. Let us try again.”

The colour rushed to her face, and she went to him quickly.

“Paul, d’you think you ever can forgive me? I tell you I love you as I never loved you before.”

“Let us try.”

He opened his arms, and with a cry of joy she flung herself into them; she lifted her lips to him, and when he kissed her she pressed more closely to him.

“My darling husband,” she whispered.

“Oh, Grace, let us thank God for His mercy to us.”

X

The summer passed, and Miss Ley went her way as usual, going industriously, with the vivacity of a young girl, to the various entertainments offered by the season. She had a knack for extracting amusement from functions which others found entirely tedious, and with sprightly, good-natured malice related her adventures conscientiously to the faithful Frank.

He, of course, remained in London, but once a fortnight went to see Herbert Field at Tercanbury. His visits, though himself knew they were useless, were of singular consolation to the Deanery household; his kindly humour and his sympathy had so endeared him that all looked forward with the keenest pleasure to his arrival; and he had a way of arousing confidence so that even Bella felt nothing more could be done for her husband than Frank did. On reaching home from Paris, they had settled down very quietly, and though at first the Dean felt some uneasiness in Herbert’s presence, this was soon replaced by a very touching affection; he learnt to admire the unflinching spirit with which the youth looked forward to inevitable death, the courage with which he bore pain. When the weather grew warmer, Herbert lay all day in the garden, rejoicing in the green leaves and the flowers and the singing of the birds; and forsaking his erudite studies, the Dean sat with him, talking of ancient authors or of the roses he loved so well. They played chess interminably, and Bella loved to watch them, the sun, broken into patches of green and yellow by the leaves, colouring them softly; it amused her to see the little smile of triumph with which her father looked up when he made a move to puzzle his opponent, and the boyish laugh of Herbert when he found a way out of the difficulty. They both seemed her children, and she could not tell which was dearer to her.

But cruelly the disease progressed, and at length Herbert was confined to bed; a terrible hæmorrhage exhausted him, so that Frank could not conceal from Bella his fear that at length the end was coming.

“For months he’s been hanging on a thread, and the thread is breaking. I’m afraid you must prepare yourself for the worst.”

“D’you mean it can only be a question of weeks?” she asked with agony.

He hesitated for a while, but decided it was better to tell her the truth.

“I think it’s only a question of days.”

She looked at him steadily, but her face by now was so trained to self-command that no expression of horror or of pain disturbed its steadfast gravity.

“Can nothing be done at all?” she asked.

“Nothing. I can be of no more use to you; but if it will comfort you at all, you’d better wire for me if he has another hæmorrhage.”

“It will be the last?”

“Yes.”

When she went back to Herbert he smiled so brightly that it seemed impossible Frank’s gloomy judgment could be true.

“Well, what does he say?”

“He says you keep your strength wonderfully,” she answered, smiling. “I hope soon you’ll be able to get up again.”

“I feel as well as possible. In another fortnight we can go to the seaside.”

Each knew that the other hid his real thought, but neither had the heart to put aside the false hopes with which they had so long tried to reassure themselves. Yet to Bella the strain was growing unendurable, and she besought Miss Ley to come and stay with them. Her father was grown so fond of Herbert that she dared not tell him the truth, and desired Miss Ley to distract his attention. She could not unaided continue much longer her own cheerfulness, and only the presence of someone else might make it possible to preserve a certain sober hilarity. Miss Ley consented, and forthwith arrived; but perceiving that it was her part to add some gaiety to that last act of life, she felt it a little gruesome; it was as though she were invited to some grim festival to watch the poor boy die. However, with unusual energy she exerted herself to amuse the Dean, and having an idea that her powers of conversation were not altogether contemptible, took pains to be at her best; it did Herbert infinite good to hear her talk with the old man, bantering him gently, playing about his words with the agility of a light-winged butterfly, propounding hazardous theories which she defended with all possible ingenuity. The Dean took pleasure in the contest, and opposed her with all the resources of his learning and his common-sense; with questions apparently guileless, he strove to lure her to self-contradiction, but when he managed this it profited him little, for she would extricate herself with a verbal quip, a prance, a flourish, and a caper; or else, since the only importance lay in the æsthetic value of a phrase, assert her utter indifference to the matter of the argument. To prove a commonplace, she would utter paradox after paradox—to make the fantastic obvious, would argue with the staid logic of Euclid.

“Man has four passions,” she said—“love, power, food, and rhetoric; but rhetoric is the only one that is proof against satiety, ennui, and dyspepsia.”

A fortnight passed, and one morning Herbert Field, alone with Bella, had another attack of hæmorrhage, so that for awhile she thought him dying. He fainted from exhaustion, and in terror she sent for the local doctor. Presently he was brought round to consciousness, but it was obvious that the end had come; from this final attack he could never rally. Yet it seemed impossible that human skill should have no further power; surely there must be some last desperate remedy for which the moment was now at hand, and Bella asked Miss Ley whether Frank might be sent for.

“Anyhow, we shall never trouble him again,” she said.

“You don’t know Frank,” answered Miss Ley. “Of course he’ll come at once.”

A telegram was despatched, and within four hours Frank arrived, only to see that Herbert’s condition was hopeless. He hovered between life and death, kept alive by constant stimulants, and they could do nothing but sit and wait. When Bella repeated to her father, from whom so far as possible she had hidden her husband’s desperate state, that the boy could scarcely outlast the night, he looked down for a moment, then turned to Frank.

“Is he strong enough for me to administer the Holy Sacrament?”

“Does he want it?”

“I think so. I have talked to him before, and he told me that he wished to take it before he died.”

“Very well.”

Bella went to prepare her husband, and the Dean assumed the garments of his office. Frank also went into the bedroom to be at hand if needed, and stood by the window apart from those three who performed the sacred mystery; it seemed to him as though the Dean were invested strangely with a greater, more benignant dignity. A certain majesty had descended upon the minister of God, and while he read the prayers a light shone on his face like, that on the face of a pictured saint.

_“Verily, verily I say unto you. He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.”_

Bella knelt at the bedside, and Herbert Field, emaciated and extraordinarily weak, his sombre eyes shining unnaturally from his white and wasted face, listened attentively. There was no fear now, but only resignation and hope; it could be seen that with all his heart he believed those promises of life everlasting and of pardon for sins past; and Frank, storm-tossed on the sea of doubt, envied that undisturbed assurance.

_“The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life: Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on Him in thy heart by faith and thanksgiving.”_

The dying man took the bread and wine which should mystically prepare the Christian soul for her journey to the life beyond, and they seemed to give a peace ineffable; the tortured body was marvellously eased, and a new serenity descended upon the mind.

The Dean read the last solemn lines of the service, and rising from his knees, kissed the boy’s forehead. Herbert was too weak to speak, but the faintest shadow of a smile crossed his lips. Presently he dozed quietly. It was late in the afternoon now, and Frank suggested that he should take the Dean into the fresh air.

“There is no immediate danger, is there?” asked the old man.

“I don’t think so. He will probably live till the morning.”

They went out from the Deanery garden into the precincts. There was a large patch of green upon which boys of Regis School played cricket at nets, but they were away for the holidays, and only the cawing rooks, flying heavily about the elm-trees, disturbed the stillness. On one side was the cathedral, adorably gray in the rosy light of evening, and the stately magnificence of the central tower rose towards heaven like a strong man’s ideal turned to stone. All round were the houses of the Canons. The day had been hot and cloudless, but now a very light breeze fanned the cheeks of those two slowly sauntering. It was a spot which breathed a peace so exquisite that Frank wished dreamily his life had been cast in such pleasant ways. At intervals the cathedral bells rang out the quarters. Neither spoke, but they walked till the setting sun warned them that it grew late. When they returned to the house Miss Ley said that Herbert was awake, asking for the Dean; she proposed they should eat something, and then go to his room. He seemed slightly better, that she asked Frank if any hope remained.

“None. It can only be a question of a few hours more or less.”

When they went into the bedroom, Herbert greeted the with a smile, for his mind at the end seemed to regain a greater lucidity. Bella turned to them.

“Father, Herbert would like you to read to him.”

“I was going to suggest it,” answered the Dean.

The night was fallen, and all the stars shone out with a vehement splendour; through the casements, wide open, entered the fresh odours of the garden, suave and unwearied. Frank sat in a window, his face in shadow, so that none could see, and watched the lad lying so still that one might have thought him dead already. Then Bella so arranged the lamp that the Dean might be able to read; and when he sat down the light fell on his face wonderfully, and it seemed transparent as alabaster.

“What shall I read, Herbert?”

“I don’t mind,” the boy whispered.

The Dean took the Bible which lay at his hand, and thoughtfully turned the pages; but a strange idea came to him, and he put it down. The perfume of the night, of the leaves and of the roses, the savour of the dew, filled that room with a subtle delicacy, as though some light spirit of a poet’s fancy had taken possession of it; and by instinct he felt that the boy, who through life had loved so passionately the world’s sensuous beauty, must desire other words than those of Hebrew prophets. His great love and sympathy lifted him from the common level of his calling to a plane of higher charity, and the knowledge came what reading would give Herbert the most delectable comfort; bending forward, he whispered to Bella, who gave a look of utter astonishment, but none the less rose to do his bidding. She brought him a small book bound in blue cloth, and slowly he began to read.

_“Courting Amaryllis with song I go, while my she-goats feed on the hill, and Tityrus herds them. Ah, Tityrus, my dearly beloved, feed thou the goats, and to the well-side lead them, Tityrus. . . .”_

Miss Ley looked up with amazement, and even at that moment could not suppress an inward ironical laughter, for she recognised an idyl of Theocritus. Very gravely, dwelling on the pictures called up to his mind stored with classical learning, the good Dean read through the charming dialogue recounting preciously, with the elaborate simplicity of a decadent age, the amours of Sicilian shepherds. Herbert listened with quiet satisfaction, a happy smile set lightly on his pallid lips; and he too, his imagination curiously quickened by approaching death, saw the shady groves and babbling streams of Sicily, heard the piping of love-lorn goatherds, the coy responses of fair maids refusing the kisses so sweet to give only that surrender at length might be the more complete. Even in the translation a breath of pure poetry was there, and the spirit was preserved of a life consciously free from the artifice of civilization, wherein sunshine and shade, spring and summer, the perfume of flowers, offered satisfying delights.

The Dean finished, and closed the book; and silence fell upon them all, and they sat through the night. The words whereto they had listened seemed to have left with them a singular tranquillity, so that all the stress and passion of the world were banished; and even to Bella, though her husband lay a-dying, there came a strange sense of gratitude for the fulness and the beauty of life. The hours passed marked by the deep-tongued chiming of the cathedral bells; every quarter they pealed their warning, ominous, yet not terrifying, and to all it seemed that the parting soul waited only for the day to take her flight.

The silence was extraordinary, more lovely than sweet music; it seemed a living thing that filled the chamber of death with peace unspeakable; and the night was dark, for the stars now were vanished before the full moon, but the goddess spared the room her frigid brilliancy, and left the garden tenebrous. No breath of wind touched the trees, and not a rustle of leaves disturbed the stilly calm; the muteness of the sleeping town seemed all about them, so profound that one felt some spirit had descended thereon, throwing over all things, to emphasize the wakefulness of those who watched, a shroud of death. Then a sound stole through the air, so gradual and delicate a sound that none could tell how it began; one might have thought it born miraculously of the very silence; it was a silvery, tenuous note that travelled through the stillness like light through air, and all at once, with a suddenness that startled, broke into passionate, vehement song. It was the nightingale. The placid night rang like a sounding-board, and each breath of air took up the tremulous magic; the bird sang in a hawthorn-tree below the window, and its rapture rang through the garden, rang into the large room to the ears of the dying youth. He started from his sleep, and it seemed as though he were called back from death. None stirred, all fascinated and imprisoned by that miracle of song. Passion and anguish and exultation, rising and falling in perpetual harmony, sometimes the beauty was hardly sufferable, (as though was reached at length the heart’s limit of endurance,) so that one could have cried out with the sorrow of it. The music was poured upon the listening air,—trembling and throbbing with pain; joyous, triumphant, and conscious of might; it hesitated like a lover who knows that his love is hopeless; it was like the voice of a dying child lamenting the loveliness it would never know; it was the mocking laughter of a courtesan for whose sake a man has died; it wept and prayed, and gloried in the joy of living; it was all sweetness and tenderness, offering pardon for sins past, and charity and peace and the rest that ever endures; it exulted in the sweet scents of the earth, the multicoloured flowers, the gentle airs, the dew, and the white beam of the moon. Inhuman, ecstatic, defiant, the nightingale warbled, drunk with the beauty that issued from his throat. To Herbert, curiously alert, all his senses gathered to one last effort of appreciation, it recalled the land which he had never seen: Hellas—Hellas with its olive-gardens and its purling streams, its gray rocks all rosy in the setting sun, and its sacred groves, its blithe airs and its sonorous speech. Passed through his mind Philomel chanting for ever her distress, and Pan the happy shepherd, and the fauns and the flying nymphs; all the lovely things whereof he had read and dreamed appeared before him in one last passionate vision of a glory that was long since set. At that moment he was happy to die, for the world had given him much, and he had been spared the disillusion of old age. But to Frank the nightingale sang of other things—of the birth which follows ever on the heel of death, of life ever new and desirable, of the wonder of the teeming earth and the endless cycle of events. Men came and went, and the world turned on; the individual was naught, but the race continued its blind journey toward the greater nothingness; the trees shed their leaves and the flowers drooped and withered, but the spring brought new buds; hopes were dead before the desired came about; love perished, the love that seemed immortal; one thing succeeded another restlessly, and the universe was ever fresh and wonderful. He, too, was thankful for his life. And then, suddenly, in the very midst of his song, when he seemed to gather his heart for a final burst of infinite melody, the nightingale ceased, and through all the garden passed a shudder, as though the trees and the flowers and the taciturn birds of the day were distraught because they awoke suddenly to common life. For an instant the night quivered still with the memory of those heavenly notes, and then, more profoundly, the silence returned. Herbert gave a low sob, and Bella went to him quickly; she bent down to hear what he said.

“I’m so glad,” he whispered—“I’m so glad.”

Again the cathedral bells rang out, and the watchers counted the deliberate striking of the hour. They sat in silence. And then the darkness was insensibly diminished; as yet there was no light, but they felt the dawn was at hand. A chilliness came into the room, the greater cold of the departing night, and the velvet obscurity took on a subtle hue of amethyst. A faint sound came from the bed, and the Dean went over and listened; the end was very nearly come. He knelt down, and in a low voice began to repeat the prayers for the dying.

_“Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of great men made perfect, after they are delivered from their earthly prisons: We humbly commend the soul of this Thy servant, our dear brother, into Thy hands, most humbly beseeching Thee that it may be precious in Thy sight. Wash it, we pray Thee, in the blood of that Immaculate Lamb, that was slain to take away the sins of the world; that whatsoever defilements it may have contracted in the midst of this miserable world, through the lusts of the flesh or the wiles of Satan, being purged and done away, it may be presented pure and without spot before Thee.”_

Miss Ley stood up and touched Frank’s arm.

“Come,” she whispered; “you and I can do no more good. Let us leave them.”

He rose silently, and following her, they stole very gently from the room.

I want to walk in the garden,” she said, her voice trembling. But once in the open air, her nerves, taut till then by a great effort of will, gave way on a sudden, and the strong, collected woman burst into a flood of tears. Sinking on a bench, she hid her face and wept uncontrollably. “Oh, it’s too awful,” she cried. “It seems so horribly stupid that people should ever die.”

Frank looked at her gravely, and in a reflective fashion filled his pipe.

“I’m afraid you’re rather upset; you’d better let me write you out a little prescription in the morning.”

“Don’t be a drivelling idiot,” she cried. “What do you think I want with your foolish bromides!”

He did not answer, but deliberately lit his pipe; and though Miss Ley knew it not, his words had the calming effect he foresaw. She brushed away the tears and took his arm. They walked up and down the lawn slowly; but Miss Ley, unused to give way to her emotions, was shaken still, and he felt her trembling.

“It’s just at such times as these that you and I are so utterly helpless. When people’s hearts are breaking for a word of consolation, when they’re sick with fear because of the unknown, we can only shrug our shoulders and tell them that we know nothing. It’s too awful to think that we shall never see again those we have loved so deeply; it’s too awful to think that nothing awaits us but cold extinction. I try to put death from my thoughts—I wish never to think of it; but it’s hateful, hateful. Each year I grow older I’m more passionately attached to life. After all, even if the beliefs of men are childish and untrue, isn’t it better to keep them? Surely superstition is a small price to pay for that wonderful support at the last hour, when all else fades to insignificance. How can people have the heart to rob the simple-minded of that great comfort?”

“But don’t you think most of us would give our very souls to believe? Of course we need it, and sometimes so intensely that we can hardly help praying to a God we know is not there. It’s very hard to stand alone and look forward—without hope.”

They wandered still, and the birds began to sing blithely; Nature awoke from her sleep, slowly, with languid movements. The night was gone, and yet the day was not come. The trees and the flowers stood out with a certain ghostly dimness, and the air in those first moments of dawn was fresh and keen: all things were swathed in a strange violet light that seemed to give new contours and new hues. There was a curious self-consciousness about the morning, and the leaves rustled like animate beings; the sky was very pale, cloudless, gray, and amethystine; and then suddenly a ray of yellow light shot right across it, and the sun rose.

“D’you know,” said Frank, “it seems to me that just as there is an instinct for life there must be an instinct for death also; some very old persons, here and there, long for the release, just as the majority long for existence. Perhaps in the future this will be more common; and just as certain insects, having done their life’s work, die willingly, without regret, from sheer cessation of the wish to live, so it may happen that men, too, will develop some such feeling. And then death will have no terrors, for we shall come to it as joyfully as after a hard day we go to our sleep.”

“And meanwhile?” asked Miss Ley, with a painful smile.

“Meanwhile we must have courage. In our sane moments we devise a certain scheme of life, and we must keep to it in the hour of trouble. I will try to live my life so that when the end comes I can look back without regret, and forward without fear.”

But now the sun flooded the garden with its magnificence, and there was a beauty in the morning that told more eloquently than human words the good lesson that life is to the living and the world is full of joy. Still the birds sang their merry songs—throstle and merle, and finch and twittering sparrow—and the flowers defiant, squandered their perfume. There were roses everywhere, and side by side were the buds and the full-blown blossoms and the dead, drooping splendours of yesterday; the great old trees of the Deanery garden were fresh and verdant as though they had not bloomed and faded for a hundred years; the very air was jocund and gay, and it was a delight merely to stand still and breathe.

But while they walked Miss Ley gave a cry, and leaving Frank’s arm, stepped forward; for Bella was seated on a bench under a tree, with the sun shining full on her face; she stared in front of her with wide-open eyes, unblinded by the brilliance, and the lines of care were suddenly gone from her face. Her expression was radiant, so that for a moment she was a beautiful woman.

“Bella, what is it?” cried Miss Ley. “Bella!”

She lowered her eyes and passed her hand over them, for now they were dazzled with shining gold. An ecstatic smile broke upon her lips.

“He died when the sun came into the room; a bridge of gold was set for him, and he passed painlessly into the open.”

“Oh, my poor child!”

Bella shook her head and smiled again.

“I’m not sorry; I’m glad that his suffering is over. He died so gently that at first I didn’t know it. I could hardly believe he was not asleep. I told father. And then I saw a lovely butterfly—a golden butterfly such as I’ve never seen before—hover slowly about the room. I couldn’t help looking at it, for it seemed to know its way, and then it came into the sunbeam and floated out along it—floated into the blue sky; and then I lost it.”

A week later Miss Ley was in London, where she meant to stay through August, partly because it bored her to decide where to spend that holiday season, partly because Mrs. Barlow-Bassett had been forced to go to a private hospital for an operation; but still more because Frank’s presence gave her the certainty that she would have someone to talk to whenever she liked. That month vastly amused her, for London gained then somewhat the air of a foreign capital, and since few of her acquaintance remained, she felt free to do whatever she chose without risk of being thought wilfully eccentric. Miss Ley dined with Frank in shabby little restaurants in Soho, where neither the linen nor the frequenters were of a spotless character; but it entertained her much to watch bearded Frenchmen languishing away from their native land, and to overhear the voluble confidences of ladies whose position in society was scarcely acknowledged. They went together to music-halls over the river or drove on the tops of ’buses, and discussed interminably the weather and eternity, the meaning of life, the foibles of their friends, Shakespeare, and the _Bilharzia hæmatobi_.

Miss Ley had left Bella and the Dean at Tercanbury. The widow never for a moment lost her grave serenity. She attended the burying of her husband with dry eyes, absently as though it were a formal ceremony that had no particular meaning to her; and the Dean, who could not understand her point of view, was dismayed, for he was broken down with grief, and it was his daughter who sought to console him. She repeated that Herbert was there among them now; and the furniture of the house, the roses of the garden, the blue of the sky, gained a curious significance, since he seemed to be in all things, partaking of their comfortable beauty, and adding to theirs a more subtle loveliness.

Soon Miss Ley received from her friend a letter, enclosing one from Herbert, scribbled in pencil but a few days before his death. She said:

_“This is apparently for you, and though it is the last thing he ever wrote, I feel that you should have it. It seems to refer to a conversation that you had with him, and I am glad to have found it. My father keeps well, and I also. Sometimes I can scarcely realize that Herbert is dead, he seems so near tome. I thought I could not live without him, but I am singularly content, and I know that soon we shall be united, and then for ever.”_

The letter was as follows:

“DEAR MISS LEY, “You wanted to ask me a question the other day, and were afraid, in case you pained me; but I guessed it, and would have answered very willingly. Did you not wish to know whether, notwithstanding poverty and illness and frustrated hopes and the prospect of death, I was glad to have lived? Yes, notwithstanding everything. Except that I must leave Bella, I am not sorry to die, for I know at last well enough that I should never have been a great poet; and Bella will join me soon. I have loved the world passionately, and I thank God for all the beautiful things I have seen. I thank God for the green meadows round Tercanbury, and the elm-trees, and the gray monotonous sea. I thank Him for the loveliness of the cathedral on rainy afternoons in winter, and for the jewelled glass of its painted windows, and for the great clouds that sway across the sky. I thank God for the scented flowers and the carolling birds, for the sunshine and the spring breezes, and the people who have loved me. Oh yes, I am glad to have lived; and if I had to go through it all again, with the sorrows and disappointments and the sickness, I would take it willingly, for to me at least the delight of life has been greater than the pain. I am very ready to pay the price, and I would wish to die with a prayer of thanksgiving on my lips.”

The letter broke off thus abruptly, as though he had meant to say much more, but wanted opportunity. Miss Ley read the letter to Frank when next he came.

“Do you notice,” she asked, “that every one of the things he speaks of appeals to the senses? Yet the only point upon which philosophers and divines agree is that this is the lower part of us, and must be resolutely curbed. They put the intellect on an altogether higher plane.”

“They lie in their throats. And you can prove that really they believe nothing of the kind by comparing the concern with which they treat their stomachs, and the negligence with which they use their minds. To make their food digestible, nourishing, and wholesome, enormous trouble is taken, but they will stuff into their heads any garbage they come across. When you contrast the heedlessness with which people choose their books from Mudie’s, and the care with which they order their dinner, you can be sure, whatever their protestations, that they lay vastly more store on their bellies than on their intellects.”

“I rather wish I’d said that,” murmured Miss Ley reflectively.

“I have no doubt you will,” he returned.

XI

Mrs. Barlow-Bassett, who cultivated the fashion with the assiduity of a woman not too well assured of her position in society, was preparing to spend August in Homburg, when a sudden illness prostrated her, and it was found that an immediate operation was needful. She went into a private hospital with the presentiment that she would never recover, and her chief sorrow was that she must leave Reggie, so ill-prepared for the mundane struggle, to go his way alone just when a mother’s loving care was most needed for his guidance. Her heart ached to keep him continually by her side, but she had trained herself to sacrifice every amiable tenderness, and when he told her of an arrangement to read in the country with his tutor, would not hear of its being disturbed. Her possible demise made it all the more necessary that he should be standing on his own feet as a professional man, and resolutely she crushed, not only her natural inclinations, but also all evidence of anxiety for her own condition; she made light of the approaching ordeal, so that his attention should be in no way diverted from his work. Reggie promised to write every day, and went so far (a trait which touched her deeply) as to insist on remaining in London till after her operation; he would not be able to see her, but at least could inquire how she had borne it. Mrs. Barlow-Bassett drove to Wimpole Street with her son, and bade him a very tender farewell; at the end, just before he left, her courage partly failed, and she could not prevent a cry of distress.

“And if something happens, Reggie, and I don’t recover, you will be a good boy, won’t you? You will be honest and straightforward and loyal?”

“What do _you_ think?” answered Reggie.

She folded him in her arms, and with a firmness not becoming her appearance, fashioned somewhat in the grand style, let him go with dry eyes and with smiling lips. But Mrs. Bassett had exaggerated a little the perils of her condition; she bore the operation admirably, and after the first two days proceeded without interruption to complete recovery. Reggie wrote with considerable regularity from Brighton, where it appeared the tutor had established himself for the summer, and gave his mother accounts of the work he did; he went into considerable detail, and, indeed, seemed so industrious that Mrs. Bassett was minded to remonstrate with his tutor. After all, it was holiday time, and scarcely fair that Reggie’s goodwill should be thus taken advantage of. Towards the end of the month she was well enough to move back to her own house, and the morning after her return came downstairs in a very contented frame of mind, rejoicing in her new health and in the splendid summer weather. Carelessly she opened her _Morning Post_, and as usual ran her eye down the announcements of birth, death, and marriage. Suddenly it caught her own name, and she read the following intelligence:

BARLOW-BASSETT—HIGGINS,—On the 30th ult., at St. George’s, Hanover Square, W., Reginald, only son of the late Frederick Barlow-Bassett, to Annie (Lauria Galbraith), second daughter of Jonathan Higgins, of Wimbledon.

For a moment Mrs. Bassett did not understand, and she read the paragraph twice, hopelessly mystified, before she realized that it announced to the world in general the marriage of her son. The date of the occurrence was the day after her operation, and on that very morning Reggie had called at Wimpole Street to inquire after her. The butler was still in the room, and helplessly Mrs. Bassett handed him the paper.

“D’you know what this means?” she asked.

“No, madam.”

Her first thought was that it must be a practical joke; and then, what was the meaning of that second name in parentheses—Lauria Galbraith? She rang for the servant, and told him at once to send a wire, which she directed to Reggie at Brighton, asking for an explanation of the extraordinary announcement; after breakfast she telegraphed to her solicitor and to the tutor’s London address. The tutor’s reply came first, to the effect that he had not seen Reggie since July; and in answer to her second question, he added that himself had been in London all the summer. At length Mrs. Bassett began to understand that something awful had happened. She went into Reggie’s room, and coming upon a locked drawer, had it broken open; she found in it a writing-case, and with horror and indignation turned out a motley collection of bills, pawn-tickets, and letters. She examined them all carefully, and first discovered that accounts for which she had given money were unpaid, and that others, enormous to her economical view, existed of which she knew nothing; then from the pawntickets she learned that Reggie had pledged his father’s watch, all his own trinkets, a dressing-case she had given him, and numberless other things. For an instant she hesitated at the letters, but only for an instant; it seemed her right now to know the worst, and little by little it dawned upon her that hitherto she had lived in a strange fool’s paradise. First there came epistles from duns, polite, supplicatory, menacing; then a couple of writs, smacking inexperienced eye of prison bars and unimagined penalties; letters from women in various writings, most of them ill-spelt, and the cheap stationery betrayed the sender’s rank. With frowning brow she read them, horrified and aghast; some were full of love, others of anger, but all pointed distinctly to Reggie’s polygamous tendency. At length came a bundle whereof the paper was quite different—thick, expensive, scented; and though not at once recognising the hand when she opened the first, Mrs. Bassett cried out; on the left side, at the top, in little letters of gold, surrounded by a scroll, was the name _Grace_, and though there was no address she knew that they were from Mrs. Castillyon. She read them all, and her dismay tamed to abject shame and anger. It appeared that this woman had given Reggie cheques and bank-notes. One letter said, “_I hope you can change the cheque_”; another, “_So sorry you’re hard up; here’s a fiver to go on with_”; a third, “_What a pig-dog your mother is to be so mean! What on earth does she spend her money on?_” At first they were with passion, but soon began to complain of unkindness or cruelty, and one letter after another was filled with bitter reproaches.

Mrs. Bassett took the whole contents of the writing-case, and locked them in her own cabinet, then hurried to Reggie’s tutor. Here she discovered that what she already suspected was true. She went home again, and called the upper servants. It humiliated her enormously that she must catechize them on the conduct of her son, but now she had no scruples. At first they would say nothing, but by dint of promise and threat she extracted the full story of how Reggie had lived during the last two years. At length, as a final blow, came an epistle from Reggie himself.

“371, Vauxhall Bridge Road.

“MY DEAR MATER, “You will have seen in this morning’s _Post_ that I was married at the end of last month to Miss Higgins, professionally known as Lauria Galbraith, and we are now staying at the above address. I am sure you will like Lauria, who is the best woman in the world, and has saved me from going to the dogs. You might let us have a line to say when we can come and see you. Lauria is most anxious to make your acquaintance, I should tell you that I have decided to chuck the Bar, and I am going on the stage. Lauria and I have got an engagement for the autumn tour of _The Knave of Hearts_, and we have come up to town for rehearsals. I am sure this will meet with your approval, because law is a rotten profession, awfully overcrowded, and as Lauria says, on the stage there is always room for talent. I know I shall get on, and Lauria and I hope in a few years to run our own company. I am working very hard, for although I’m only walking on in this drama, (I wouldn’t have accepted the offer, only Lauria has a ripping part, and, of course, as I hadn’t been on the stage before, I had to take what I could get,) I am learning _Hamlet_. Lauria and I think of giving some recitations of that and _Romeo and Juliet_ in town next spring.

“Your affectionate son, “REGGIE.

“P.S.—You needn’t worry about the money, because on the stage I can earn far more than I ever should have done at the Bar. An actor-manager simply makes thousands.”

Mrs. Bassett burst into tears, for she had never imagined that Reggie could be so callous, so inanely flippant; but rage succeeded all other emotions in her breast, and she wrote angrily, telling her son never again to show his face at her house, or the servants would throw him into the street—telling him that no farthing of her money should ever be his; then silence seemed more dignified, and she determined merely to leave unanswered that impudent letter. But it was necessary to express her indignation to someone, and she sent an urgent note to Miss Ley, begging her at once to come.

When the good lady, obedient to the summons, arrived, she found Mrs. Bassett in a very hysterical condition, walking up and down the room excitedly; and in the disorder of her majestic manner she reminded her somewhat of a middle-aged bacchante.

“Thank God you’ve come!” she cried. “Reggie’s married an actress, and I’ve disinherited him. I won’t ever see him again, and for all I care he may starve.”

Miss Ley made no movement of surprise, merely noting the fact that herself was a woman of prevision. All she had expected was come about.

“I’ve been utterly deceived in him. He’s not passed a single examination, and the servants have told me that he often came home at night tipsy. He’s lied to me systematically; he’s deceived me in every possible way; and all the time I flattered myself he was a good, honest boy, he’s been leading the life of a rip and a libertine.”

Her words were interrupted by a fit of crying, while Miss Ley watched her reflectively. Presently Mrs. Bassett recovered herself.

“I confess the marriage surprises me,” murmured Miss Ley. “Your daughter-in-law must be a woman of character and tact, Emily; but all the rest has been known to your friends for the last year.”

“D’you mean to say you knew he was a drunken sot, and little better than a thief and a liar?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought you’d find out quite soon enough; and really, Emily, you’re such a fool you would probably have only made things worse.”

Mrs. Bassett was too much crushed to resent this plain speech.

“But you don’t know everything. I’ve found a lot of letters from women. It’s they who’ve led him astray. And d’you know whose are the worst?”

“Mrs. Castillyon’s?”

“Did you know that, too? Did everyone know my shame, and that my boy was being ruined, and did no one warn me? But I’m going to pay her out. I shall send every one to her husband. It’s she who’s done the mischief.”

She took from a drawer the bundle of letters, and excitedly gave them to Miss Ley.

“Is this all?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Miss Ley had with her a black satin bag, in which she kept her handkerchief and her purse, and swiftly opening it, she put the letters in.

“What are you doing?”

“My dear, don’t be a fool! You’re not going to send these letters to anyone, and as soon as I get home I mean to burn them. Reggie was a dissolute rip before ever he met Grace Castillyon, and the only woman who ruined him is—yourself! You were very angry when I told you once that the greatest misfortune which could befall a man was to have a really affectionate mother, but I assure you, except for your bad influence, Reggie would have been no worse a boy than any other.”

Mrs. Bassett turned livid.

“I think you must be mad, Mary. I’ve done all I could by example and precept to make him a gentleman. I’ve devoted my life to his education, and I’ve sacrificed myself to him absolutely from the day he was born. I can honestly say that I’ve been a good mother.”

“Pardon me,” answered Miss Ley coolly, “you’ve been a very bad mother, a very selfish mother, and you’ve systematically sacrificed him to your own whims and fancies.”

“How can you talk to me like that when I want sympathy and help? Haven’t you any pity for me?”

“None! All that has happened you’ve brought entirely on yourself. You made him a liar by compelling him to tell you his most private affairs, you drove him to deception by expecting from him an impossible purity, you warned him of temptation so as to make it doubly attractive. You never let him have a free will or a natural instinct, but insisted on his acting and feeling like a middle-aged and rather ill-educated woman. You thwarted all inclinations, and forced upon him yours. Good heavens! you couldn’t have been more selfish, cruel, and exacting if you’d detested the boy!”

Mrs. Bassett stared at her, overwhelmed.

“But I only asked common honesty and truthfulness, I only wanted to keep him from spot and stain, and I only expected the morality which religion and everything else enforces upon us.”

“You starved his instincts—the natural desire of a boy for gaiety and amusement, the natural craving of youth for love. You applied to him the standards of a woman of fifty. A wise mother lets her son go his own way, and shuts her eyes to youthful peccadillos; but you made all these peccadillos into deadly sins. After all, moralists talk a deal of nonsense about the frailty of mankind. When you come to close quarters with vice, it’s not really so desperately wicked as all that. A man may be a very good fellow though he does sit up late and occasionally drink more than is discreet, gamble a little and philander with ladies of doubtful fame. All these things are part of human nature, when youth and hot blood are joined together, and for some of them foreign nations, wiser than ourselves, have made provision.”

“I wish I’d never had a son!” cried Mrs. Bassett. “How much luckier you are than I!”

Miss Ley got up, and a curious expression came over her face.

“Oh, my dear, don’t say that! I tell you, that even though I know Reggie to be idle and selfish and dissolute, I would give all I have in the world if he were only mine. There’s not a soul on this wide earth that cares for me—except Frank, because I amuse him—and I’m so dreadfully lonely. I’m growing old. Often I feel so old I wonder how I can continue to live, and I want someone so badly to whom it’s not a matter of absolute indifference if I’m well or ill, dead or alive. Oh, my dear, thank God for your son!”

“I can’t now I know he’s wicked and vicious.”

“But what is vice, and what is wickedness? Are you sure we know? I suppose I have been a virtuous woman. I’ve done nobody any harm; I’ve helped a good many; I’ve done the usual moral things that women do; and when anything was possible that I particularly wanted, I’ve withstood because it was ingrained in me that nice things were naughty. But sometimes I think I’ve wasted my life, and I dare say I should be a better woman if I hadn’t been so virtuous. When I look back now it’s not the temptations I fell to that I regret, but the temptations I resisted. I’m an old woman, and I’ve never known love, and I’m childless and forsaken. Oh, Emily, if I had my time over again I promise you I wouldn’t be so virtuous. I would take all the good that life offered, without thinking too much of propriety. And above all things I would have a child.”

“Mary, what are you saying?”

Miss Ley shrugged her shoulders, and was silent; her voice was broken, and she could not trust herself to speak. But Mrs. Bassett’s thoughts went back to the injury which Reggie had done her, and she gave Miss Ley his letter to read.

“There’s not a word of regret in it. He seems to have no shame and no conscience. He was married on the very day of my operation, when I might have died any moment. He must be absolutely heartless.”

“D’you know what I would do if I were you?” asked Miss Ley, pleased to get away from her own emotions. “I would go to him, and ask forgiveness for all the harm you’ve done him.”

“I? Mary, you must be mad! What need have I for forgiveness?”

“Think it over. I have an idea that presently it will occur to you that you never gave the boy a chance. I’m not sure whether you don’t owe him a good deal of reparation; anyhow, you can’t undo the marriage, and it’s just possible it may be the saving of him.”

“You’re not going to ask me to receive an actress as my daughter-in-law?”

“Fiddledidee! She’ll make your son a much better wife than a duchess.”

When Mrs. Barlow-Bassett showed her friend Reggie’s letter. Miss Ley carefully noted the address, and next day, in the afternoon, proceeded to call upon the new-married couple. They lived in a somewhat shabby lodging-house in the Vauxhall Bridge Road—that long, sordid street—and Miss Ley was shown into an attic which served as sitting-room. It was barely fitted with tawdry furniture, much the worse for wear, but to give a homelike air photographs were pinned on the wall, each with a sprawling flourish for a signature, of persons connected with the stage, but unknown to fame. When Miss Ley entered, Reggie, dressed in a suit of somewhat pronounced pattern, with a Homburg tweed hat on his head, was reading the _Era_, while his wife stood in front of the glass doing her hair. Notwithstanding the late hour, she still wore a dressing-gown of red satin, covered with inexpensive lace, which was certainly neither very new nor very clean. Miss Ley’s appearance caused some embarrassment, and it was not without awkwardness that Reggie made the necessary introduction.

“Excuse me being in such a state,” said Mrs. Reggie, gathering up her hairpins, “but I was just going to dress.”

She was a little woman, plainly older than her husband, and to Miss Ley’s astonishment, by no means pretty; her eyes were handsome, used with full knowledge of their power, and her black hair very fine; but chiefly noticeable was a singular determination of manner, a shrewishness about the mouth, which suggested that if she did not get her own way someone would suffer. She looked rather suspiciously at Miss Ley, but treated her with sufficient cordiality to indicate a readiness to be friendly if the visitor did not prove hostile.

“I only heard you were married yesterday,” Miss Ley hastened to say as affably as possible, “and I was anxious to make your wife’s acquaintance, Reggie.”

“You’ve not come from the mater?” he asked.

“No.”

“I suppose she’s in a hell of a wax.”

“Reggie, don’t swear; I don’t like it,” said his wife.

Miss Ley shrugged her shoulders and smiled vaguely. Since she was not offered a chair, she looked round for the most comfortable, and sat down. Mrs. Reggie glanced uncertainly from her husband to Miss Ley, and then at her own disarranged dress, hesitating whether to leave the pair alone or to sacrifice her appearance.

“I am untidy,” she said.

“Good heavens! it’s so refreshing to find someone who doesn’t dress till late in the day. When I take off my dressing-gown I put on invariably a sense of responsibility. Do sit down and tell me all about your plans.”

Miss Ley had the art of putting people at their ease, and the bride succumbed at once to the elder woman’s quiet but authoritative way. She glanced at her husband.

“Reggie, take off your hat,” she said peremptorily.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot.”

When he removed this headgear Miss Ley noticed that his hair was very long, worn with a dramatic flamboyance. His speech was deliberate, with a certain declamatory enunciation which vastly amused his old friend; his nails were none too clean, and his boots needed polish.

“What does the mater think of my going on the stage?” he asked, passing his hand with a fine gesture through his raven locks. “It’s the best thing I could do, isn’t it, Lauria? I feel that I’ve found my vocation. Nature intended me for an actor. It’s the only thing I’m fit for—an artistic career. Tell my mother that I will sacrifice everything to my art. I hope you’ll come and see me play.”

“It will give me great pleasure.”

“Not in this piece. I only—walk on, don’t you know. But in the spring Lauria and I are going to give a series of recitations.”

He rose to his feet, and standing in front of the fireplace, stretched out one dramatic hand.

“‘To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?’”

He bellowed the words at the top of his voice, uttering each syllable with profound and dramatic emphasis.

“By Jove!” he said, “what a part! They don’t write parts like that now. An actor has no chance in a modern play, where there’s not a speech more than two lines long.”

Miss Ley looked at him with astonishment, for it had never occurred to her that such a development could possibly be his; then, glancing quickly at Lauria, she fancied that a slight ironical smile trembled on her lips.

“I tell you,” said Reggie, beating his chest, “I feel that I shall be a great actor. If I can only get my chance, I shall just stagger creation. I must go and see Basil Kent, and ask him to write a play for us, Lauria.”

“And are you going to stagger creation too?” asked Miss Ley, blandly turning to Mrs. Reggie.

The young woman restrained her merriment no longer, but burst into such a hearty peal of laughter that Miss Ley began to like her.

“Will you stay to tea, Miss Ley?”

“Certainly; that is why I came.”

“That’s fine. I’ll make you some tea in less than no time. Reggie, take the can, and go out and get half a pint of milk.”

“Yes, my dear,” he replied obediently, putting on his tweed hat with a rakish swagger, and taking from a table littered with papers, articles of apparel, and domestic utensils a small milk-can.

“How much money have you got in your pocket?”

He pulled out some coppers and one silver coin.

“One and sevenpence halfpenny.”

“Then, you’ll have one and sixpence halfpenny when you come home. You can buy a packet of straighters for threepence, and mind you’ re back in ten minutes.”

“Yes, dear.”

He walked out meekly, and closed the door behind him. Mrs. Reggie went to the door and looked out.

“His mother brought him up very badly,” she explained, “and he’s not above listening at keyholes.”

Miss Ley, shaking with inward laughter, had listened to the scene with amazement. Lauria continued her apologetic explanations.

“You know, I have to keep a sharp eye on his money because he’s rather inclined to tipple. I’ve got him out of it, but I’m always afraid he’ll drop into a pub if I don’t look out. His mother must be about the biggest fool you’ve met, isn’t she?”

Mrs. Reggie glanced at a box of cigarettes, and the other, noticing the yellow on her forefinger, concluded she was an eager smoker; it was easy to put her in comfort.

“Would you give me a cigarette?”

“Oh, d’you smoke?” cried Lauria, with a bright look of pleasure. “I was simply dying for a fag, but I didn’t want to shock you.”

They lit up, and Miss Ley drew towards her another chair.

“D’you mind if I put my feet up? I always think that only quadrupeds should keep their longer extremities constantly dangling.”

With a faint smile, she essayed to make smoke-rings.

“You’re all right,” said Lauria, with a little nod. “I’m glad you came. I wanted to have a talk with someone who knew Reggie’s mother. I suppose she’s in a fury. I wanted him to tell her beforehand, but he didn’t dare. Besides, he never does a thing straightforwardly if he can do it crooked. And as for lying—well, he’s worse than a woman. You can tell his mother it’ll take me all my time to make a gentleman of her son.”

Miss Ley smiled dryly.

“I have seldom seen a newly-married woman so keenly alive to the defects of her husband’s character.”

“Reggie’s not a bad boy really,” answered his wife, shrugging her shoulders, “but he wants licking into shape.”

“I wonder why you married him?” asked the other, reflectively, knocking off the ash of her cigarette.

Lauria looked at her sharply, hesitating, then made up her mind to speak openly.

“You seem a good sort and a woman of the world; and, after all, I’m married, and you’ll just have to make the best of me. Reggie’s good-looking, isn’t he?” She glanced at a photograph which stood on the chimneypiece. “And I like him. You know, I’ve been on the stage eight years; I went on when I was sixteen. How much does that make me!”

“Twenty-seven, I should say,” answered Miss Ley with deliberation.

Lauria smiled good-naturedly.

“Nasty people say I’m twenty-eight; but, anyhow, I’m sick to death of the stage, and I want to get off it.”

“I thought you were going to play Juliet to Reggie’s Romeo.”

“Yes, I can see myself! For one thing, I’m quite sure Reggie can’t act for nuts, and when they start they all want to play Hamlet. Why, I never knew a super who carried a banner in a panto who didn’t think that if he got his opportunity he’d be another Irving. Oh, I’ve heard it so often! Every girl I know has come to me and said: “Lauria, I feel I’ve got it in me, and I only want a chance.” I’m sick of the whole thing. I don’t want to go traipsing about the province’s, working like a nigger all the week, and travelling on Sundays, living in dingy apartments, and all the rest of it. I just let Reggie gas away, and it keeps him out of mischief to learn plays. I thought it would take his mother three months to come round, and by that time he’ll be sick of it. I like Reggie, and when I’ve had him in hand for a few months I shall make a decent boy of him; but I don’t pretend for a moment I’d have married him if I hadn’t known that his mother had money.”

“You’re a wise woman. In the first place, I can’t think how you got him to marry at all. I never thought he’d do it.”

“My dear Miss Ley, I thought you were a woman of the world. Don’t you know that if a girl of my age makes up her mind to marry a man, he must be awfully cute to save himself?”

“I confess I had often suspected it,” smiled Miss Ley.

“Of course, you have to choose your man. I saw Reggie was gone on me, and I led him a dance. You know, we’ve got a reputation for being wrong uns on the stage, but that’s all rot. We’re no worse than anyone else, only we’ve got more temptation, and when anything happens the papers take it up just because we’re professional. But I’ve known how to take care of myself, and I just let Reggie understand that I wasn’t going to be made a fool of. I played up to him for a fortnight, and then told him I wouldn’t see him any more, and by that time he was fairly stage-struck, and so he asked me to marry him.”

“It sounds very simple. And how did you manage to tame him?”

“I just let him see that if he wanted to have a decent time he’d got to be nice to me, and he very soon tumbled to it. You wouldn’t think it, but I’ve got a nasty temper when I’m roused. He looks up to me like anything, and he knows I don’t mean to stand any nonsense. Oh, he’ll be all right in six months.”

“And what do you want me to tell his mother?”

“Just tell her not to interfere. We’re all right with regard to money, and when she calms down she can make us an allowance. Six hundred a year will do, and we’ll take a house at Bournemouth. I don’t want to live in London till I’m sure of Reggie.”

“Very well,” answered Miss Ley. “I’ll say that, and I’ll say besides that she ought to thank her stars Reggie has found a decent woman. I have no doubt in a little while you’ll make him into quite a respectable member of society.”

“Here he comes with the milk!”

Reggie entered, and together they began to make tea. When Miss Ley departed Lauria sent him downstairs to show her out.

“Ain’t she a ripper?” he exclaimed. “And I tell you what, Miss Ley, she’s a real good sort. Tell the mater that she’s not beneath me at all.”

“Beneath you! My dear boy, she’s worth six of you. And I dare say under her charge you’ll turn into a very passable imitation of a gentleman, after all.”

Reggie looked at her with tragic countenance, flung back his head, and pressed both hands to his manly bosom.

“‘_Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!_’” he cried.

“For goodness’ sake, hold your tongue!” she interrupted quickly.

She gave him her hand, and while pressing it he leaned forward confidentially and exclaimed:

“‘I’ll have grounds More relative than this. The play’s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.’”

XII

Meanwhile things with Basil and Jenny had gone from bad to worse. There had been no power in their reconciliation to pacify the Fates, and presently another violent quarrel proved that under no circumstances could they live without discord. Basil, training his tongue to silence whatever the provocation, maintained over himself the most careful restraint; but it was very irksome, and in his breast there arose gradually a blind and angry hatred for Jenny because she made him suffer such unspeakable torture. They had so fallen out of sympathy that he never realized how ardent her love for him still was, and that she tormented him only on this account. So passed the summer, for Basil, crippled with debts, felt bound to remain in chambers through the vacation on the chance of picking up a stray brief which no one else was on hand to take.

A profound depression settled upon him, and he brooded hopelessly over the future. What had it to offer but a continuance of this unceasing pain? He looked into the years dragging out their weary length, and it seemed to him impossible to live under such conditions. Only his passion for Hilda Murray supported him, for therein he seemed to find strength to face the world, and at the same time resignation. He had learnt to ask for little from the gods, and was content to love without hope of reward. He was immensely grateful for her friendship, and felt that she understood and sympathized with his distress. Mrs. Murray spent the summer abroad, but wrote often, and her letters made him happy for days. In his solitary walks he analyzed his feelings endlessly, telling himself that they were very pure; and just because he thought of her so much it seemed to him that he grew better and simpler. In October she returned, and two days later Basil called upon her, but was grievously disappointed to find Mr. Farley already on the scene. Basil detested the Vicar of _All Souls_, detecting in him a rival who lay under no such disadvantage as himself. Mr. Farley was still a handsome man, with the air and presence of a person of importance. His conversation smacked of the diner-out who could discuss urbanely all the topics used at the tables of the cultured. He was diverting and easy, knowing well the discreet thing to say; and about his manner towards Mrs. Murray was a subtle but significant flattery. Basil was hugely annoyed by the familiarity with which he used the woman whom himself could only treat quite formally. They appeared to have little understandings which made him furiously jealous. Hilda had busied herself in certain charitable concerns of the Vicar of _All Souls_, and with much laughter they discussed the various amusing things to which these had given rise.

Basil went home sullen and resentful, thinking through the whole evening of Hilda, whom he had left with Mr. Farley, and when he went to bed gained no repose. He heard the hours strike one after the other, and turned from side to side restlessly, striving to get a little sleep; his love now was uncontrollable, and he was mad with grief and pain. He tried not to think of Hilda, but each subject he forced upon his brain gave way to her image, and in hopeless woe he asked himself how he could bear with life. He tried to reason, saying that this height of passion could only be temporary, and in a very few months he would look upon the present madness with scorn; he tried to soothe his aching heart by turning his emotion to literary uses, and set himself to describe his agony in words, as though he were going to write it in a novel. But nothing served. When the clock struck five he was thankful that only three hours remained before he could reasonably get up. He thought to read, but had not the heart to do anything which should disturb the bitter-sweet of his contemplation. Next morning at breakfast Jenny noticed that his eyes were heavy with want of rest, his mouth drawn and haggard, and with jealous intuition guessed the cause. She sought to make him angry, and the opportunity coming, made some spiteful remark; but he was listless; he looked up wearily, too exhausted to reply. They ate breakfast in silence, and then with heavy heart he set out for his daily work.

So things continued through the autumn, and with November the winter set in cold, dark, and wet. Coming home in the evenings, Basil’s heart sank when he entered the street in which was his house; he felt sick with the sordid regularity of all those little dwellings exactly like one another. Miss Ley, perhaps ironically, had once remarked that life in a suburb must be quite idyllic; and Basil laughed savagely when he thought that only the milk-cart and the barrel-organ disturbed the romantic seclusion. He loathed his neighbours, with whom he knew Jenny discussed him, and shuddered with horror at their narrow lives, from which was excluded firmly all that made existence comely and urbane.

It was inevitable that quarrels should occur between the pair, notwithstanding Basil’s determination to avoid friction, and of late these on both sides were grown more bitter. On a certain occasion, taking up his letters, noticed that one had already been opened, and then somewhat clumsily fastened down; he glanced at Jenny, who was watching him, but she quickly dropped her eyes. Her suspicions had been aroused evidently because of the pink paper; _Private_ was written above the address, and on the back was a golden initial. It was merely an offer from a money-lender to accommodate him with any sum between five pounds and five thousand, and he could not help a little laugh of scorn because Jenny, on steaming it open, had found nothing but an impudent circular: when she heard this she coloured furiously. She waited for him to speak, but he, only wondering why she had not the sense altogether to suppress that communication, said nothing. In a minute or two he gathered up his correspondence, and taking some paper, walked towards the door.

“Where are you going?” she asked abruptly, “Can’t you write in here?”

“Certainly, if it pleases you, but I have some rather bothering letters, and I want to be perfectly quiet.”

She flung aside the work on which she was engaged, and faced him angrily, stung to the quick by the indifference of his tone and manner.

“I suppose you have no objection to my talking to you when I want to say something? You seem to think only fit to see after the house and mend your clothes, after that I can go and sit in the kitchen with the servant.”

“D’you think it’s worth while making a scene? We seem to have said all this before so many times.”

“I want to have it out.”

“We’ve been having it out twice a week for the last six months,” he answered, bored to extinction, “and we’ve never got anywhere yet.”

“Am I your wife or not, Basil?”

“You have your marriage lines carefully locked up to prove it.” He looked at her reflectively, putting back the letters in his desk. “They say the first year of marriage is he worst; ours has been bad enough, in all conscience, hasn’t it?”

“I suppose you think it’s my fault?”

She spoke aggressively, with a sort of brutal sneer, but somehow it seemed no longer to affect him; he was able in a manner to look on this scene with a curious detachment, as though he were a spectator at a theatre watching players acting their parts.

“After all, I tried my best to make you happy.”

“Well, you haven’t succeeded very well. Did you think I was likely to be happy when you left me alone all day and half the night for the swell friends for whom I’m not good enough?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“You know very well that I scarcely ever see any of my old friends.”

“Except Mrs. Murray, eh?” she interrupted.

“I’ve seen Mrs. Murray a dozen times in the last year.”

“Oh, you needn’t tell me that; I know it. She’s a lady, isn’t she?”

Basil stared coolly at his wife; though asking himself why that name had occurred to her, it never dawned on him that she could suspect how violent was his passion. But he meant to ignore the charge.

“My work takes me away from you,” he said. “Think how bored you’d be if I were always here.”

“A precious lot of good your work does,” she cried scornfully. “You can’t earn enough money to keep us out of debt.”

“We are in debt, but we share that very respectable condition with half the nobility and gentry in the kingdom.”

“All the neighbours know that we’ve got bills with the tradesmen.”

Basil flushed and tightened his lips.

“I’m sorry that you shouldn’t have made so good a bargain as you expected when you married me,” he replied acidly.

“I wonder what you do succeed in. Your book was very successful, wasn’t it? You thought you were going to set the Thames on fire, and it fell flat, flat, flat!”

“That is a fate which has befallen better books than mine,” he answered, with a laugh.

“It deserved it.”

“I didn’t expect you to appreciate it. Unfortunately, it’s not given to all of us to write about wicked earls and beautiful duchesses.”

“The papers praised it, didn’t they?”

“The unanimity of their blame was the only thing that consoled me. I often wonder if the reviewer who abuses you realizes what pleasure he causes to the wife of your bosom.”

It was Basil’s apparent indifference to her taunts, his disdain and bitter sarcasm, that made Jenny lose all restraint. Often she could not see the point of his replies, but vaguely felt that he laughed at her; and then her passionate wrath knew no limits.

“Oh, I’ve learnt to know you so well since the baby died,” she said, clenching her hands. “You’ve got no cause to set yourself up on a pedestal. I know what you are now; I was such a fool as to think you a hero. You’re merely a failure. In everything you try you’re a miserable failure.”

He faced her steadily, but a look of complete despair came into his eyes, for she had voiced with sufficient emphasis the thought which for so many months had wormed its way into his soul, destroying all his energy; he saw the future like a man condemned to death, for whom the beauty of life is only bitterness.

“Perhaps you’re right, Jenny,” he replied’ “I dare say I’m only a rotten failure.”

He walked up and down the room, reflecting bitterly, and then stared out of the window at the even row of houses, somehow more sordid than ever in the dim light of gas-jets. He shuddered when he looked round this parlour, so common, so uninteresting; and like a sudden rush of water overwhelming, came the recollection of all the misery he had suffered within those four walls. Jenny had again taken up her sewing, and was hemming dusters; he sat down beside her.

“Look here, Jenny, I want to have a rather serious talk with you. I should like you to listen quietly for a few minutes, and I want to put away all passion and temper, so that we may discuss the matter quite reasonably. We don’t seem able to get on very well, and I see no chance of things going any better. You’re unhappy, and I’m afraid I’m not very happy, either; I don’t want to seem selfish, but I can’t do any work or anything while this sort of thing continues. And I feel that all these quarrels are so awfully degrading. Don’t you think it would be better for both of us if we lived apart for a bit? Perhaps later on we might try again.”

While he spoke Jenny had watched with startled eyes, but, though vaguely alarmed, did not till quite the end understand to what his words tended. Then she could scarcely answer.

“D’you mean to say you want to separate? And what’ll you do?”

“I should go abroad for awhile.”

“With Mrs. Murray?” she cried excitedly. “Is that it! You want to go away with her. You’re sick of me. You’ve had all you want out of me, and now I can go. The fine lady comes along, and you send me away like a housemaid. D’you think I can’t see that you’re in love with her? You’d sacrifice me without a thought to save her a moment’s unpleasantness. And because you love her you hate me.”

“How can you talk such nonsense! You’ve got no right to say things like that.”

“Haven’t I? I suppose I must shut my eyes and say nothing. You’re in love with her. D’you think I’ve not seen it in these months? That’s why you want to leave me.”

“It’s impossible for us to live together,” he answered desperately. “We shall never agree, and we shall never be happy. For God’s sake, let us separate and have done with it.”

Basil was standing up now, and Jenny went up to him, close, so that they stood face to face.

“Look here, Basil: will you swear that you’re not in love with that woman?”

“Certainly,” he answered scornfully.

“It’s a lie. . . . And she’s just as much in love with you as you are with her.”

“What d’you mean by that?” he cried, the blood running to his head and his heart beating painfully. He seized her wrists. “What d’you mean, Jenny?”

“D’you think I haven’t got eyes in my head? I saw it that day she came here. D’you suppose she came to see me? She despises me because I’m not a lady. She came here to please you; she was polite to me to please you; she asked me to go and see her to please you.”

“It’s absurd. Of course she came. She was an old friend of mine.”

“I know that sort of friend. D’you think I didn’t see the way she looked at you, and how she followed you with her eyes? She simply hung on every word you said. When you smiled she smiled; when you laughed she laughed. Oh, I should think she was in love with you; I know what love is, and I felt it. And when she looked at me, I knew she hated me because I’d robbed her of you.”

“Oh, what a dog’s life it is we lead!” he cried, unable to contain himself. “We’ve both been utterly wretched, and it can’t go on. I do my best to hold myself in, but sometimes I feel it’s impossible. I shall be led to saying things that we shall both regret. For Heaven’s sake, let us part.”

“No. I won’t consent.”

“We can’t go on having these awful quarrels. It was a horrible mistake that we ever married. You must see that as well as I. We’re utterly unsuited to one another, and the baby’s death removed the only necessity that held us together.”

“You talk as if we only remained together because it I was convenient.”

“Let me go, Jenny; I can’t stand it any more,” he cried passionately. “I feel as if I shall go mad.” He stretched out his hands, appealing. “I did my best for you a year ago. I gave you all I had to give; it was little enough, in all conscience. Now I ask you to give me back my freedom.”

She was perfectly distracted; it had never occurred to her for a moment that things would go so far.

“You only think of yourself!” she exclaimed. “What’s to become of me?”

“You’ll be much happier,” he answered eagerly, thinking she would yield. “It’s the best thing for both of us.”

“But I love you, Basil.”

“You!” He stared at her with dismay and consternation. “Why, you’ve tortured me for six mouths beyond all endurance. You’ve made all my days a burden to me. You’ve made my life a perfect hell.”

She stared at him, sheer panic in her eyes; each word was like a death-blow, and she gasped and shuddered. Like a hunted thing, she looked this way and that for means of escape, but nothing offered; and then, groping strangely, seeking to hide herself, she staggered to the door.

“Give me time to think it over,” she said hoarsely.

Next morning at breakfast Basil, with elaborate politeness, spoke of trivial things, but Jenny noticed that he kept his eyes averted, and it cut her to the quick because he used her as he might a chance acquaintance. It seemed then that even stony silence would have been more easy to endure. Rising from the table, he asked whether she had considered his proposal.

“No; I didn’t think you really meant it.”

He shrugged his shoulders, and did not answer. He made ready to go out, and she watched him with trembling heart, hoping with most sickening anguish that he would say one kind word to her before he left.

“You’re going very early this morning,” she remarked.

“I’ve got to devil a case at eleven, and I want to see someone before I go into court.”

“Who?”

He coloured and looked away.

“My solicitor.”

This time it was she who kept silence; but when he went out into the street she watched him from the window, carefully, so that he should not see her if he looked up. But he never turned back. He walked slowly with bowed shoulders, as though he were very tired; then she gave way to her bitter sorrow and wept uncontrollably. She did not know what to do, and more than ever before needed advice. On a sudden she made up her mind to see Frank Hurrell; for during the summer he had come fairly often to Barnes, and she had been always grateful for his sober kindness; him at least she could trust, and unlike the others, he would not scorn her because she was of mean birth. Part of her difficulties arose from the fact that of late she had grown quite out of sympathy with her own people, seeing things from a different standpoint, so that it impossible to appeal to their sympathy; she was a stranger to all the world, disaccustomed now to her own class, and still outside that into which she had married. Desperately she fancied that the very universe stood against her, and it appeared vaguely that she struggled like a drowning man against the overwhelming waters of humanity.

Jenny hurriedly dressed, and took the train to Waterloo. She did not know at what time Frank went out, and was terrified at the thought of missing him. But her training prevented her from taking a cab, and she got into a ’bus. It seemed to crawl along, and the minutes were hours; each stoppage drove her to such a pitch of nervous exasperation that she could scarcely sit still, and only persuaded herself with difficulty that, however slowly it went, the omnibus must go faster than she could walk. Arrived at length, Jenny to her great relief found that Frank was in, but he was so obviously surprised to see her that for a moment, disconcerted, she knew not how to explain her visit.

“May I speak to you for a few minutes? I won’t keep you long.”

“By all means. Where is Basil?”

He made her sit down, and tried to take from her the umbrella which she held firmly; but she refused to be parted from it, and sat on the edge of the chair, ill at ease, with the awkward formality of a person unused to drawing-rooms. To Frank, seeking to make her comfortable, she seemed like a housekeeper applying for a situation.

“Can I trust you?” she broke out abruptly, with an effort “I’m in awful trouble. You’re a good sort, and you’ve never looked down on me because I was a barmaid. Tell me I can trust you. There’s no one I can speak to, and I feel if I don’t speak I shall go off my head.”

“But, good heavens! what’s the matter?”

“Everything’s the matter. He wants to separate. He’s gone to his solicitor to-day. He’s going to turn me out in the street like a servant; and I shall kill myself—I tell you I’ll kill myself.” She wrung her hands, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. “Before you we’ve always kept up appearances, because he was ashamed to let you see how he regrets having married me.”

Frank knew well enough that for some months things had not gone very smoothly with the pair, but it had never occurred to him that they were come to such a pass. He did not know what to say nor how to reassure her.

“It’s nonsense. It can only be a little passing quarrel. After all, you must expect to have those.”

“No, it isn’t. I shouldn’t mind if I thought he loved me, but he doesn’t. He calls it a dog’s life, and he’s right.” She hesitated, but only for an instant. “Will you tell me the truth if I ask you something—on your honour?”

“Of course.”

“Is there anything between Basil and Mrs. Murray?”

“No, certainly not!” he cried emphatically. “How can such an idea have come to you!”

“You wouldn’t tell me if there was,” she answered distractedly; and now the words, which before had come so hardly, poured out in a disordered torrent. “You’re all against me because I’m not a lady. . . . Oh, I’m so unhappy! I tell you he’s in love with Mrs. Murray. The other day he was going to dine there, and you should have seen him! He was so restless he couldn’t sit still; he looked at his watch every minute. His eyes simply glittered with excitement, and I could almost hear his heart beating. He was there twice last week, and twice the week before.”

“How d’you know?”

“Because I followed him. If I’m not ladylike enough for him, I needn’t play the lady there. You’re shocked now, I suppose?”

“I wouldn’t presume to judge you,” he answered quietly.

“He never loved me,” she went on, feverish and overwrought. “He married me because he thought it was his duty. And then, when the baby died—he thought I’d entrapped him.”

“He didn’t say so.”

“No,” she shouted hysterically, “he never says anything; but I saw it in his eyes.” She clasped her hands passionately, rocking to and fro. “Oh, you don’t know what our life is. For days he never says a word except to answer my questions. And the silence simply drives me mad. I shouldn’t mind if he blackguarded me; I’d rather he hit me than simply look and look. I could see he was keeping himself in, and I knew it was getting towards the end.”

“I’m very sorry,” said Frank helplessly.

Even to himself the words sounded formal and insincere, and Jenny broke out vehemently.

“Oh, don’t you pity me, too. I’ve had a great deal too much pity; I don’t want it. Basil married me from pity. Oh, God, I wish he hadn’t! I can’t stand the unhappiness.”

“You know, Jenny, he’s a man of honour, and he’d never do anything that wasn’t straight.”

“Oh, I know he’s a man of honour,” she cried bitterly. “I wish he had a little less of it; one doesn’t want a lot at fine sentiments in married life—they don’t work.” She stood up and beat her breast. “Oh, why couldn’t I fall in love with a man of my own class? I should have been so much happier. I used to be so proud that Basil wasn’t a clerk or something in the City. He’s right—we shall never be happy. It isn’t a matter of yesterday, or to-day, or to-morrow. I can’t alter myself. He knew I wasn’t a lady when he married me. My father had to bring up five children on two-ten a week. You can’t expect a man to send his daughters to a boarding-school at Brighton on that, and have them finished in Paris. . . . He doesn’t say a word when I do something or say something a lady wouldn’t, but he purses up his lips and looks. Then I get so mad I do things just to aggravate him. Sometimes I try to be vulgar. One learns a good deal in a bar in the City, and I know so well the things that’ll make Basil curl up. I want to get a bit of revenge out of him sometimes, and I know exactly where he’s raw and where I can hurt him. You should see the way he looks when I don’t eat properly, or call a man a Johnny.”

“It opens up endless possibilities of domestic unhappiness,” answered Frank dryly.

“Oh, I know it isn’t fair to him, but I lose my head. I can’t always be refined. Sometimes I can’t help breaking out; I feel I must let myself go.”

Her cheeks were flaming, and she breathed rapidly. Never before had she disclosed her heart so completely to anyone, and Frank, watching her keenly, could not understand this curious mingling of love and hate.

“Why don’t you separate, then?” he asked.

“Because I love him.” Her voice, hard and metallic before, grew suddenly so tender that the change was extraordinary; the bitterness went out of her face. “Oh, you don’t know how I love him! I’d do anything to make him happy; I’d give my life if he wanted it. Oh, I can’t say it, but when I think of him my heart burns so that sometimes I can hardly breathe. I can never show him that he’s all in the world to me; I try to make him love me, and I only make him hate me. What can I do to show him? Ah, if he only knew, I’m sure he’d not regret that he married me. I feel—I feel as if my heart was full of music, and yet something prevents me from ever bringing it out.”

For awhile they sat in silence.

“What is it you wish me to do?” asked Frank at last.

“I want you to tell him I love him. I can’t; I always make a mess of it. Tell him he’s all in the world to me, and I _will_ try to be a good wife to him. Ask him not to leave me, and say that I mean everything for the best.” She paused and dried her eyes. “And couldn’t you go to Mrs. Murray and tell her? Ask her to have mercy on me. Perhaps she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Ask her not to take him away from me.”

She seized his hands in appeal, and he had no power to resist.

“I’ll do my best. Don’t be too downhearted. I’m sure it’ll all come right and you’ll be very happy again.”

She tried to smile through her tears and to thank him, but her voice refused to help her, and she could only press his hands. With a sudden impulse she bent down and kissed them; then quickly, leaving him strangely moved, went out.

XIII

Jenny had not given Frank a very easy task, and when she was gone he cursed her irritably—her father, mother, husband, and all her stock. He knew Mrs. Murray fairly well, had treated her in illness, and also gone somewhat frequently to the house in Charles Street; but, for all that it was awkward to attack her on a subject of so personal a nature, and he was aware that he lay himself open to an unpleasant rebuke. He shrugged his shoulders, making up his mind to call on her that afternoon and say his say.

“She can snub me till she’s blue in the face,” he muttered.

Ignorant of what was in store, Hilda Murray, coming in from luncheon, went into her drawing-room, and since the day was wet and dismal, ordered the curtains, to be drawn, the lights to be turned on. She relished enormously the warm and comfortable cosiness of that room, furnished pleasantly, with a good deal of taste, if without marked originality; there were dozens of such apartments in Mayfair, with the same roomy, chintz-covered chairs, Chippendale tables and marquetry cabinets, with the same pictures on the walls. Wealth was there without ostentation, art without eccentricity; and Mr. Farley, the Vicar of _All Souls_, who came early, recognised with sleek content that a woman who dwelt in such a room must possess a due sense of the proprieties and a gratifying belief in the importance of the London clergy. Meeting her for the first time a year before in Old Queen Street, the amiable parson had quickly grown intimate with Hilda. The robust common-sense of Protestantism has made it lawful for the clerical bosom to be affected in due measure by the charms of fair women, and the Vicar of _All Souls_ had ever looked upon a good marriage as the culmination of his parochial activities. Hilda was handsome, rich, and sufficiently well born to be the equal of a minister of Christ who stayed with Duchesses for three days at a time; nor could he think she was quite indifferent to his attentions. Mr. Farley determined to abandon the imperfect state of single blessedness, falling like a ripe apple at the feet of this comely and opulent widow; and as Othello, making love to Desdemona, poured into her astonished ears brave tales of pillage and assault, of hairbreadth ’scapes and enterprises perilous, the Rev. Collinson Farley spoke of charities and sales of work, encounters with churchwardens, and the regeneration of charwomen. Hilda took great interest in _All Souls_, and willingly presented the church with an entire set of hassocks, so that, as the Vicar said, the pious should have no excuse for not kneeling at their prayers; somewhat later she consented to take a stall at a bazaar for getting a new organ; and then, the Rubicon of philanthropy once crossed, her efforts were untiring. These things brought them constantly together and afforded endless matter for conversation; but Mr. Farley flattered himself he was a brilliant talker, and it would have been contrary to all his principles to allow their intercourse to be confined to affairs of business. The claims of culture were not forgotten. He lent Hilda books, and went with her to picture-galleries and to exhibitions; sometimes they read Tennyson together, at others visited the theatre and discussed the moral aspects of the English drama; on fine mornings they frequently studied the Italian masters in Trafalgar Square or the Elgin marbles at the British Museum. Mr. Farley had a vast fund of information, and could give historic details or piquant anecdotes about every work of art; and Hilda, with a woman’s passion for being lectured, found him in consequence an entertaining and instructive friend. But it had never occurred to her that any warmer feeling agitated the heart which lay beneath his immaculate silk waistcoat, and it was not without alarm that now she found the conversation verging to topics that before they had never touched upon. Mr. Farley had at length made up his mind, and since he was not a man to hesitate from feelings of diffidence, went straight to the point.

“Mrs. Murray,” he said, “I have a matter of some importance which I desire to impart to you.”

“More charities, Mr. Farley?” she cried. “You’ll ruin me.”

“You are a veritable angel of mercy, and your purse is ever open to the needs of the parish; but on this occasion it is of a more personal matter that I desire to speak.” He stood up and went to the fireplace, against which he stood so that no heat should enter the room at all. “I feel it my duty to preface the question I am about to ask by some account of my position and of my circumstances. I think it better to run the risk of being slightly tedious than to fail to make myself perfectly clear.”

Certainly Hilda could not help seeing to what his words tended, and after the first moment of consternation was seized with an almost irresistible desire to laugh. Perhaps because her love for Basil was so great, she had never dreamed that another man could desire her; and Mr. Farley in this connection had not for a moment occupied her thoughts. When she looked at him now, well dressed, his gray hair carefully done, his hands manicured, with his easy assurance and his inclination to obesity, the Vicar of _All Souls_ seemed a profoundly ridiculous object. Gravely, with deliberation, he set out the advantages of his state, and not without decorum explained that he was no penniless fortune-hunter. It was a fair exchange that he offered, and many women would have been grateful, Hilda knew she should stop him, but had not the readiness; nor was she without a malicious desire to know in what precise terms he would make the proposal. He paused abruptly, smiled, and stepped forward.

“Mrs. Murray, I have the honour to ask you to be my wife.”

Now she was confronted by the necessity to answer, and with all her heart wished she had possessed strength of mind to prevent the man from going so far.

“I’m sure I feel enormously flattered,” she replied awkwardly. “It never struck me that you—cared for me in that way.”

He put out a deprecating hand,

“I don’t want an immediate answer, Mrs. Murray. It’s a matter that requires grave consideration, and we’re neither of us children to plunge into marriage recklessly. It’s a great responsibility that we are proposing to take on ourselves, but I should like you to reflect on the real good that you could do as my wife. Do you remember that beautiful passage in Tennyson: ‘And hand in hand we will go towards higher things’?”

The door opened, and the Vicar of _All Souls_ was able to conceal his annoyance only because he was a very polite man; but Hilda, enormously relieved, turned to Frank Hurrell, the incoming visitor, with the greatest cordiality. Frank had been to Basil’s chambers, but not finding him, was come to Charles Street resolved, whatever the cost, to speak with Mrs. Murray about Jenny. It looked, however, as though the opportunity would not present itself, for other callers appeared, and the conversation became general. In a little while Basil was announced, and Frank saw Mrs. Murray’s hurried, anxious glance. With one sweep of her eyes she took in his whole person, his harassed air, his stem pallor and deep depression. She spoke laughingly, but he scarcely smiled, gazing at her with such an expression of anguish that her heart was horribly troubled. It was very painful to see his utter wretchedness. At length Frank found himself with Hilda out of earshot of the others.

“Basil looks very ill, doesn’t he? His wife came to see me this morning. I dare say you remember that he was married about a year ago.”

Mrs. Murray coloured, and stared at Frank with cold suspicion. She tightened her lips, wondering what he had in mind.

“I went down to see her,” she answered frigidly. “She seemed to me vulgar and pretentious. I’m afraid I can take no great interest in her.”

“She loves Basil with all her heart, and she’s desperately unhappy.” He looked steadily at Mrs. Murray, and dropped his voice, so that it seemed no sound issued from his mouth; but Hilda heard every word so emphatically that it struck her heart as though with a hammer. “She asked me to give you a message. She knows that Basil—loves you, and she begs you to have mercy on her.”

For a moment Hilda could not reply.

“Don’t you think it’s rather impertinent of you to say such things to me?” she returned, uttering the words disjointedly, as though she forced them out one by one.

“Excessively,” he answered. “And I wouldn’t have ventured only she told me her love was like music in her heart, and something prevented it from ever coming out. It seemed to me that for a rather stupid, narrow, common woman to have got hold of a thought like that she must have gone through a perfect hell of suffering. And I was sorry.”

“And d’you think I’ve not suffered?”

Hilda could not preserve that mask of cold decorum. The question thrilled from her, and she had no power to leave it unasked.

“Are you very fond of him?”

“No, I’m not fond of him. I worship the very ground he treads on.”

Frank held out his hand to say good-bye.

“Then you must do as you think fit. You’re playing the most dangerous game in the world; you’re playing with human hearts. . . . Forgive me for what I’ve said.”

“I’m very glad—for now I know better what to do. I’d forgotten his wife.”

Frank went away, and presently Mr. Farley, despairing to stay the others out, rose also. Shaking hands with Hilda, he asked when he might come again. In the agitation of her talk with Frank she had completely forgotten his proposal; but now, with a sudden passion for self-sacrifice, it seemed neither grotesque nor impossible. Indeed, if she accepted, it would solve many difficulties, and she determined not to put aside the offer, as at first she intended, but to think it over. At least, she must do nothing rashly.

“I will write to you to-morrow,” she answered gravely,

He smiled and pressed her hand affectionately, already with somewhat the fervour of an accepted lover. Mrs. Murray was left alone with Basil. He turned over the pages of a book, and the trivial action, indicating to her excited temper a callousness which was not his, filled her with anger, so that for an instant, on account of all the pain he caused her, she hated him furiously.

“Is that a very interesting work?” she asked coldly.

He flung it aside with impatience.

“I thought that man was never going. It makes me angry each time I see him here. Are you very much attached to him?”

“What an extraordinary question!” she answered coolly. “I wonder why on earth you ask it?”

“Because I love you,” he burst out impulsively, “and I hate anyone else to be with you.”

She stared at him with the utmost calm, and some icy power seized her, so that she felt absolutely no emotion.

“It may interest you to know that Mr. Farley has asked me to marry him.”

“And what are you going to say?”

His face had suddenly fallen ashen gray, and his voice was hoarse.

“I don’t know—perhaps yes.”

“I thought you loved me, Hilda.”

“It’s because I love you that I shall marry Mr. Farley.”

He sprang forward passionately and seized her hands.

“Oh, but you can’t, Hilda. It’s absurd. You don’t know what you’re doing. Oh, don’t do that, for God’s sake! You’ll make both of us utterly miserable. Hilda. I love you; I can’t live without you. You don’t know how unhappy I’ve been. For months I’ve dreaded going home. When I saw my house as I walked along, I almost turned sick. You don’t know how fervently I wished that I’d got killed in the war. I can’t go on.”

“But you must,” she said; “it’s your duty.”

“Oh, I think I’ve had enough of duty and honour. I’ve used up all my principles in the last year. I know I brought the whole thing on myself. I was weak and stupid, and I must take the consequences. But I haven’t the strength; I don’t love—my wife.”

“Then, don’t let her ever find it out. Be kind to her, and gentle, and forbearing.”

“I can’t be kind and gentle and forbearing day after day for weeks and months and years. And the worst of it is there’s no hope for me. I’ve tried honestly to make the best of things, but it’s no good. We’re too different, and it’s impossible that we should continue to live together. Everything she says, everything she does, jars upon me so frightfully. A man, when he marries a woman like that, thinks he’s going to lift her up to his own station. The fool! It’s she who drags him down to hers.”

She walked from end to end of the room distracted, and mingled feelings tore her breast. She knew how overwhelming was her own love, and knew that his was no less; she could not bear to think that he was unhappy. She stopped, and looked at him with tear-filled eyes.

“If it weren’t for you I couldn’t have lived,” he was saying, and his voice played upon her heart-strings as though they were some strange living instrument. “It was only by seeing you that I gathered courage to go on with it. And each time I came here I loved you more passionately.”

“Why did you come?” she whispered.

“I couldn’t help it. I knew it was poison, but I loved the poison. I would give my whole soul for one look of your eyes.”

It was the first time he had said such things to her, and they were very, very sweet; but she tried to be strong.

“If you care for me at all, do your duty like a brave man, and let me respect you. You’re only making our friendship impossible. Don’t you see that you’re preventing me from ever having you here again?”

“I can’t help it. Even if I see you never again, I must tell you now that I love you. For months it’s been burning my tongue, and I’ve scarcely known sometimes how to prevent myself. I made you suffer, I was blind; but I love you with all my heart, Hilda. I can’t live without you.”

He stepped forward, but quickly, with a cry of anguish, she sprang back.

“For God’s sake, don’t say such things! I can’t bear them. Don’t you see how weak I am? Have mercy on me.”

“You don’t love me.”

“You know I love you,” she cried vehemently, angrily; “but because of my great love I beseech you to do your duty.”

“My duty is to be happy. Let us go where we can love one another—away from England, to some place where love isn’t sinful and ugly.”

“Oh, Basil,” she cried earnestly, stronger now because she had thrown herself on his charity; “oh, Basil, let us try to walk straight. Think of your wife, who loves you also—as much as I do. You’re all in the world to her; you can’t treat her so shamefully.”

She sank in a chair and dried her eyes. Her agony had calmed the man’s ardent passion, and it wrung his heart that she should weep.

“Don’t cry, Hilda; I can’t bear it.”

He was standing over her, and very gently she took his hand.

“Don’t you understand that we could never respect ourselves again if we did that poor creature such a fearful wrong? She would always be between us with her tears and her sorrows. I tell you I couldn’t bear it. Have mercy on me—if you love me at all.”

He did not answer, and very brokenly she went on.

“I know it’s better to do our duty. For my sake, dearest, go back to your wife, and don’t let her ever know that you love me. It’s because we’re stronger than she that we must sacrifice ourselves.”

“A profound discouragement seized him, and silence fell upon them both. At last he released her hand.

“I don’t know any longer what’s right and what’s wrong. It all seems confused. It’s very hard.”

“It’s just as hard for me, Basil.”

“Good-bye, then,” he said broken-heartedly. “I dare say you’re right, and perhaps I should only make you very unhappy.”

“Good-bye, my dearest.”

She got up and gave him both her hands, and he bent down and kissed them. She could hardly stand the pain, and when he turned away and walked towards the door all resolution left her. She could not bear him to go—at all events, not thus coldly, not yet. She thought that perhaps this was the last time she would ever see him, and her passion, so long restrained, rose up and overpowered her, and it seemed that nothing mattered but love.

“Don’t go, Basil,” she cried. “Don’t go!”

With a cry of joy he turned, and she found herself in his arms; he kissed her violently, he kissed her mouth and her eyes and her hair; and she wept with the extremity of her desire. She cared now for nothing. All might go, and the very heavens fall; nothing in the world signified but this divine madness.

“Oh, I can’t bear it,” she moaned. “I won’t lose you. Basil, say you love me.”

“Yes, yes: I love you with all my heart and soul.”

He sought her lips again, and she nearly fainted with the rapture; she yielded herself to his strong, encircling arms, and felt that there she could happily die.

“Oh, Basil, I want your love—I want your love badly.”

“Now nothing can separate us. You belong to me for ever.”

He passed his hands over her face, and his eyes were flaming. She exulted in his ardent passion, proud that a man on her account should be thus frenzied.

“Say again that you love me,” she whispered.

“Oh, Hilda, Hilda, at last! We’ll go to a land where the whole earth speaks only of love, and where only love and youth and beauty matter.”

“Let’s go where we can be together always. We have so short a time; let’s snatch all the happiness we can.”

He kissed her again, and in her ecstasy she burst into tears. They talked madly of their love and past anguish, making venturesome plans for the future, forgetting all but the passion that devoured them. At that moment only the present existed, and they wondered how it had been possible to live so long apart. She pressed his hands joyfully when he said that nothing now could separate them, for they belonged to one another for ever and always; and it signified not if they lost their souls, for they gained the whole world. But suddenly Hilda sprang up.

“Take care! There’s somebody coming.”

And the words were scarcely out of her mouth when the butler came in, followed immediately by Jenny. Basil gave a cry of surprise. The servant closed the door, and for one moment, embarrassed, Hilda did not know what to say. Basil recovered himself first.

“I think you know my wife, Mrs. Murray.”

“Oh yes, I know her; you needn’t introduce me,” Jenny burst out with a loud and angry voice. She went up quickly to Hilda. “I’ve come for my husband.”

“Jenny, what are you saying?” cried Basil, foreseeing a hideous scene. He turned to Hilda. “Would you mind leaving us alone?”

“No, I want to speak to you,” interrupted Jenny. “I don’t want any of your society shams. I’ve come here to speak out. I’ve caught you at last. You’re trying to get my husband from me.”

“Be quiet, Jenny. Are you mad? For God’s sake, leave us, Mrs. Murray; shell insult you.”

“You think of her—you don’t think of me. You don’t care how much I suffer.”

Basil took his wife’s arm, trying to get her away, but vehemently she shook him off. And Hilda stood before her pale and conscience-stricken; that sudden irruption showed her the sordid ugliness of what she had meant to do, and she was horrified. She motioned to Basil that he was to allow his wife to say what she would.

“You’re stealing my husband from me!” exclaimed Jenny threateningly. “Oh, you. . . .” She was at a loss for words violent enough, and she trembled with impotent rage. “You wicked woman!”

Hilda forced herself to speak.

“I don’t want to make you unhappy, Mrs. Kent. If you like, I’ll promise never to see your husband again.”

“Much good your promises will do me. I wouldn’t believe a word you said. I know what society ladies are. We know all about them in the City.”

Basil stepped forward, and again begged Hilda to leave them. He opened the door, and his glance was so appealing that she could not stay; but though keeping her eyes averted, she felt that his besought her not to be angry for the hateful, odious scene to which she had been exposed.

“She’s frightened of me,” Jenny hissed savagely. “She daren’t stand up to me.”

He closed the door, and then turned to his wife. He was pale with rage, but she heeded not.

“What d’you mean by coming here and behaving like this?” he said violently. “You had no right to come at all. What d’you want?”

“I want you. D’you think I didn’t guess what was going on? I’ve been waiting here for hours. I saw people come in, and I saw them go out, and at last I knew you were alone with her.”

“How did you know?”

“I gave the butler a sovereign, and he told me.”

An icy shiver of disgust passed through Basil, and she laughed bitterly when she saw his profound scorn. Then she caught sight of a photograph of Basil which stood on a table near the window, and before he could prevent her, seized it and flung it on the floor, and viciously dug her heel into it.

“She’s got no right to have your photo here. Oh, I hate her, I hate her!”

“You drive me perfectly mad. For God’s sake go.”

“I shan’t go till you come with me.”

He watched her for a moment, trying to command the hatred, the passionate vindictive hatred, which now welled up uncontrollably within him. He strode up to her and seized her arm.

“Look here, until to-day I swear to you before God that I’ve never done anything or said anything that you couldn’t have known. I’ve tried to do my duty, and I’ve done my best to make you happy. I’ve struggled with all my might to love you. And now I don’t wish to deceive you. It’s best that you should know exactly what has happened. This afternoon I told Hilda that I loved her. . . . And she loves me, too.”

Jenny gave a cry of rage, and impulsively with her umbrella gave him a swinging blow on the face. He snatched it from her, and in blind anger broke it across his knee and threw it aside.

“You’ve brought it on yourself,” he said. “You made me too unhappy,”

He looked at Jenny as he might at some strange woman whom he saw for the first time. She stood before him, panting and bewildered, trying to control herself.

“And now it’s the end,” he went on coldly. “The life we led was impossible. I tried to do something that was beyond my power. I’m going away. I can’t and I won’t live with you any longer.”

“Basil, you don’t mean that,” she cried, feeling suddenly that he spoke in deadly earnest. Before she had fancied that he threatened only what he did not mean to perform. “You’ve got me to count with. I won’t let you go.”

“What more d’you want?” he asked bitterly. “Isn’t it enough that you’ve ruined my whole life?”

“You don’t love me?”

“I never loved you.”

“Why did you marry me?”

“Because you made me.”

“You never loved me?” she repeated, entirely crushed now, trembling and faint with fear. “Even at the beginning?”

“Never. It’s too late now to keep it in. I must tell you and have done with it. You’ve been having it out for months—now it’s my turn.”

“But I love you, Basil,” she cried passionately, going to him to put her arms round his neck. “I’ll make you love me.”

But he shrank away.

“For God’s sake, don’t touch me! . . . Oh, Jenny, let us finish with it. I’m very sorry. I don’t wish to be unkind to you, but you must have seen that—that I didn’t care for you. What’s the good of going on hum-bugging and pretending and making ourselves utterly miserable?”

She faced him, humbled, shaken with sobs which she would not allow to come, and stared at Basil with eyes preternaturally large.”

“Yes, I’ve seen it,” she cried hoarsely. “But I wouldn’t believe it. When I’ve put my hand on your shoulder I’ve seen that you could hardly help shuddering; and sometimes when I’ve kissed you I’ve seen you put out all your strength to prevent yourself from pushing me away.”

After all, he was tender-hearted, and now that his first anger was gone could not help being touched by the dreadful anguish of her tone.

“Jenny, I can’t help it if I don’t love you. I can’t help it if I—if I love someone else.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked, dazed and cowed.

“I’m going away.”

“Where?”

“God knows!”

They stood for a while in silence, while Jenny sought to collect and order her thoughts, which throbbed horribly in her brain, like raving maniacs dancing some tumultuous, distracted measure. The butler came in softly and handed a note to Basil, saying that Mrs. Murray had ordered him to bring it. Basil did not open this till the servant was gone, and then, having read, gave it without a word to Jenny.

“You may tell your wife that I’ve made up my mind to marry Mr. Farley, I will never see you again.—H. M.”

“What does it mean?” asked Jenny.

“Isn’t it clear? Someone has asked her to marry him, and she means to accept.”

“But you said she loved you.”

He shrugged his shoulders and did not answer. Then a ray of hope shot through Jenny’s heart, and with outstretched hands, tenderly, anxiously, she went to him.

“Oh, Basil, if it’s true, give me another chance. She doesn’t love you as I love you. I’ve been selfish and quarrelsome and exacting, but I’ve always loved you. Oh, don’t leave me, Basil. Let me try once more if I can’t make you care for me.”

“I’m very sorry,” he returned, looking down. “It’s too late.”

“Oh God! what shall I do?” she cried. “And even though she’s going to marry somebody else, you care for her better than anyone else in the world?”

He nodded.

“And even if she does marry that other man, she’ll love you still. There’s no room for me between you, and I can go away like a discharged servant. Oh God, oh God! what have I done to deserve it?”

“I’m very sorry to make you so unhappy,” he whispered, deeply moved by her utter misery.

“Oh, don’t pity me! D’you think I want your pity now?”

“You’d better come away, Jenny,” he said gently.

“No. You’ve told me you don’t want me any more. I shall go my own way.”

He looked at her, hesitating, and shrugged his shoulders.

“Then good-bye.”

He went out, and Jenny followed him with her eyes. At first she could hardly believe that he was gone. It seemed that he must turn back and take her in his arms; it seemed that he must come up the stairs again and say that he loved her still. But he did not come, and from the window she watched him walk down the street.

“He’s so glad to go,” she whispered.

Then, heart-broken, she sank to the door, and burying her face in her hands, broke into a passion of tears.

XIV

But presently she got up and walked downstairs. She let herself out quietly into the street. Though much exhausted, Jenny’s instinctive economy prevented her from taking a cab, and with heavy steps she set out on foot to Waterloo. The night was cold and dark, and the November drizzle soaked her clothes, but in extreme distress of mind she noticed nothing. She went, staring straight in front of her, a set despair upon her face, and her eyes saw neither houses nor people: she walked through the crowd of Piccadilly as though through an empty street. Muffled, with umbrellas up, folk hurried to their homes, or, notwithstanding the inclement weather, aimlessly sauntered. Sometimes she sobbed brokenly, and then on a sudden scalding, painful tears ran down her cheeks. The way seemed endless, and her strength rapidly failed; her limbs, heavier than lead, ached terribly; but she would not drive, for the pain of motion was less than the pain of immobility. She crossed Westminster Bridge, and at length, scarcely realizing it, found herself at Waterloo. In so dazed a manner that the porter thought she had been drinking, Jenny asked when there would be a train, and sat down to wait. The glitter of electricity difficultly pierced the humid night, and the spaces of the station in that uncertain light seemed vast and cavernous. It was a mysterious place, sordid and horrible, which stretched weirdly to an infinite distance: people came and went, porters passed with luggage, trains arrived and departed; and the whole scene impressed itself on her tortured brain with a hideous, cruel intensity.

Having reached Barnes at length, Jenny felt no relief, but if possible, a greater wretchedness, for she remembered how often in summer, under soft blue skies, she had wandered across the common, clinging to Basil’s arm; and now it was dark and ugly, and the broom, all charred and bedraggled, even under cover of night had a dismal, squalid look. She came to the little pokey villa, let herself in, and went upstairs, vaguely hoping that Basil, after all, had come back, for it seemed impossible that she would never see him again. But he was nowhere. Now her agony grew too great for tears, and she walked through the house like one demented, mechanically setting straight things which were not in their usual place. In her bedroom she looked in the glass, comparing herself with Mrs. Murray, and noted with a certain bitter pride the splendour of her hair, the brilliancy of her eyes, the dazzling perfection of her skin: notwithstanding all she had gone through, Jenny was conscious of a beauty greater than Mrs. Murray’s. She was younger, too, and when she recalled the admiration which in the old days at the _Golden Crown_ had been hers, could not understand how it was that with Basil she was so powerless. Other men had cared for her passionately, other men had been willing humbly to do her bidding; some, devouring her with their eyes, had trembled when they touched her hand; others turned pale with desire when she smiled upon them. Her beauty had been dinned into her ears, and Basil alone was insensible to it. Then, confusedly, with somewhat of that puritanic instinct which is ever in English blood, Jenny asked herself how she had merited such bitter punishment. She had done her best: she had been a good and faithful wife to Basil, and sought in every way to please him; and yet he loathed her. It seemed that God Almighty was against her, and she stood helpless before a vindictive power.

Still hoping against hope, she waited, and knowing at what hour each train was due, spent in agonised expectation the time which must elapse between its arrival and the walk of a passenger from station to house. The evening passed, and one train came after another, but Basil never; and then the last train was gone, and despair seized her, for he would not come that night. She understood that this was really the end, and abandoned utterly that shred of hope which alone had upborne her. She saw again the look of hatred with which he had flung at her the bitter words of scorn; his passion, long pent up, burst forth in that moment of uncontrollable irritation, and when she thought of it she quailed still. With all her heart Jenny wished she had closed her eyes to his doings, for now she would be thankful to keep him even without his love; she would have given worlds not to have forced from him the avowal of his passion for Mrs. Murray; the suspicion which had tortured her before was infinitely preferable to this horrible certainty. She would have borne anything rather than lose him altogether; she would have been grateful even for a look now and then; but never to see him at all! She would far sooner die.

Her heart gave a sudden throb. She would far sooner die. . . . That was the solution of it all. It was impossible to live with this aching pain; the unhappiness was too frightful—how much better it would be to be dead, to feel nothing!

“They’ve got no room for me,” she repeated. “I’m only in the way.”

Perhaps by dying she would do Basil a last service, and he might be sorry for her. He might regret what he had said, and wish he had been kinder and more forbearing. Living, she knew it was impossible to regain his love, but who could tell what miracle her death might work? The temptation seized her, and possessed her, and mastered her. A great excitement filled the wretched woman, and gathering together the remains of her strength, without hesitation, she got up, put on her hat, and went out. She went swiftly, upborne strangely by this resolve which attracted her with an intense fascination, for she expected peace from all trouble and safety from this anguish which rent her heart as no physical pain had ever done. She came to the river which flowed silent and dark in the dark and silent night, with heavy flood, menacing and chill; but in her it inspired no terror: if her heart beat quickly, it was with fearful joy because she was about to end her torment. She was glad that the night was sombre, and thanked God for the rain that kept loiterers away. She walked along the tow-path to a place she knew—the year before a woman had there thrown herself in because it was deep and the bank shelved suddenly, and Jenny had often passed the spot with a little shudder: once, half laughing, she said she was walking over her grave. A man came towards her, and she hid in the shadow of the wall, so that he went by without noticing that anyone was there; the trees in the garden above dripped heavily. She came to the spot she sought, and looked about to see that none was near; she took off her hat and laid it on the ground under the wall, so that it should get as little wet as possible; then, without hesitation, went to the river-bank. She felt no fear at all. For one moment she looked at the torpid, unmerciful water, and then boldly flung herself in.

Basil, on leaving Mrs. Murray’s, went to Harley Street, but finding Frank out, proceeded to his club, where he spent the evening in morose despair, heart-rent because Hilda had signified her intention to marry the Vicar of _All Souls_, and repentant already of the pain he had caused his wife. At first he meant to pass the night in town, but the more he thought of it, the more necessary it seemed to return to Barnes; for though fully minded to part from Jenny, on account of all that had gone before, he could not part in anger. But he felt it impossible to see her again immediately, and determined to get home so late that she would be in bed. There was in him an absolute impossibility of sleep, and he so dreaded the long wakefulness that, thinking to tire himself out, he set out to walk. It was nearly two when he came to his little house in River Gardens, and when he turned to enter Basil was much surprised to see a policeman ringing the bell.

“What d’you want, constable?” he asked.

“Are you Mr. Basil Kent? Will you come down to the station? There’s been an accident to your wife.”

Basil gave a cry, and with horror already upon him, asked the man what he meant. But the policeman simply repeated that he was to come at once, and together with haste they strode off. An inspector broke the news to him.

“You’re wanted to identify your wife. A man saw her walk along the tow-path and throw herself in. She was drowned before help could be got.”

Unable to understand the full meaning of those words, Basil stared stupidly, aghast and terror-struck. He opened his mouth to speak, but only gasped unintelligibly. He looked from one to another of those men, who watched him with indifference. The whole room turned round, and he could not see; he felt horribly faint, and then it seemed as though someone cruelly tore apart the sutures of his skull. He stretched out his hands aimlessly, and the inspector, understanding, led him to where Jenny lay. A doctor was still with her, but it seemed all efforts to restore life had been stopped.

“This is the husband,” said Basil’s guide.

“We could do nothing,” murmured the doctor. “She was quite dead when she was got out.”

Basil looked at her and hid his face. He felt inclined suddenly to scream at the top of his voice. It seemed too ghastly, too impossible.

“D’you know at all why she did it?” asked the doctor.

Basil did not answer, but gazed distraught at the closed eyes and the lovely hair disarranged and soaking wet.

“Oh, God! what shall I do? Can nothing be done at all?”

The doctor looked at him, and told a constable to bring some brandy; but Basil pushed it aside with distaste.

“What do you want me to do now?”

“You’d better go home. I’ll walk along with you,” said the doctor.

Basil stared at him with abject fear, and his eyes had an inhuman blackness, shining horribly out of the death-pale face.

“Go home? Can’t I stay here?”

The other took his arm and led him away. There was not far to go, and at the door the doctor asked if he could manage by himself.

“Yes. I shall be all right. Don’t trouble.”

He let himself in and went upstairs, and somehow a terror had seized him, so that when he stumbled against a chair he cried out in sheer fright. He sat down trying to gather his thoughts, but his mind seethed, so that he feared he would go mad, and ever there continued that appalling torture in his head which seemed to combine the two agonies of physical and of mental pain. Then there fell upon his consciousness the scene at the police-station, which before had been confused and dim. Now strangely, with keen minuteness, he saw each detail—the bare stone walls of the mortuary, the glaring light with its violent shadows, the countenances of those men in uniform, (every feature, the play of expression, was immensely distinct,) and the body! That sight tore into the inmost recesses of his soul, so that he nearly fainted with horror and with remorse. He groaned in his anguish. He never knew it was possible to suffer so dreadfully.

“Oh, if she’d only waited a little longer! If I’d only come back sooner, I might have saved her.”

With the same unnatural clearness he remembered the events of the afternoon, and he was absolutely aghast at his own cruelty. He repeated his words and hers, and saw the pitiful look on her face when she begged him to give her one more chance. Her voice trembled still in his ears, and the dreadful pain of her eyes daunted him. It was his fault, all his fault.

“I killed her as surely as though I’d strangled her with my own hands.”

His imagination violently excited, he saw the scene at the riverside, the dread of the murky heavy stream, the pitiless cold of it. He heard the splash and the scream of terror. He saw the struggle as the desire of life grew for one moment all-powerful. His head reeled with the woman’s agony of fear as the water seized on her, and he felt the horrible choking, the vain effort for breath. He burst into hysterical tears.

Then he remembered the love which she had lavished upon him, and his own ingratitude. He could only reproach himself bitterly because he had never really tried to make the best of things. The first obstacles had discouraged him, so that he forgot his duty. She had surrendered herself trustfully, and he had given sorrow instead of the happiness for which she was so brightly born, a dreadful death instead of the life which for his sake she loved so wonderfully. And at last it seemed that he could not go on living, for he despised himself. He could not look forward to the coming day and the day after. His life was finished now, finished in misery and utter despair. How could he continue, with the recollection of those reproachful eyes searing his very soul, so that he felt he could never sleep again? And the desire came strongly upon him to finish with existence as she had finished, thus offering in some sort reparation for her death, and at the same time gaining the peace for which she had given so much. A hideous fascination urged him, so that like a man hypnotized he went downstairs, out into the street, along the tow-path, and stood at the very place where Jenny had thrown herself in. He knew it well. And notwithstanding the darkness of the night, he could see that something had happened there; the bank was beaten and trodden down. But looking at the water, he shuddered with dismay. It was too bitterly cold, and he could not bear the long agony of drowning. Yet she had done it so easily. It appeared that she flung herself in quite boldly, without hesitating for a moment. Sick with terror, loathing himself for this cowardice, Basil turned away and walked quickly from that dreadful spot. Presently he broke into a run, and reached home trembling in every limb. That way, at all events, he could not face death.

But still he felt it impossible to continue with life, and he took from the drawer of his writing-desk a revolver, and loaded it. It needed but a slight pressure of the trigger, and there would be an end to the intolerable shame, to the remorse, and to all his difficulties. He stared at the little weapon, so daintily fashioned, and fingered it curiously, as though he were bewitched, but then, with vehement passion, flung it from him. He could not finish with the life which, after all, he loved still, and he shuddered with horror of himself because he was afraid. Tet he knew that the pain of a wound was small. During the war he had been hurt, and at the moment scarcely felt the tearing, burning bullet. The clock struck three. He did not know how to bear the rest of that unendurable night. Nearly five hours must pass before it was light, and the darkness terrified him. He tried to read, but his brain was in such a turmoil that he could make no sense of the words. He lay down on the sofa and closed his eyes to sleep, but then with vivid and ghastly distinctness saw Jenny’s pale face, her clenched hands and dripping hair. The silence of that room was inhuman. His eye caught some work of Jenny’s on a little table, left carelessly when she went out, and he appeared to see her, seated, as was her habit, over her sewing. His anguish was insufferable, and springing up, he took his hat and went out. He must have someone with whom to speak, someone to whom he could tell his bitter, bitter sorrow. He forgot the hour, and walked rapidly towards Hammersmith. The road was very lonely, so dark in that cold, starless night that he could not see a step before him; and never a human soul passed by, so that he might have traversed desert places. At length, crossing the bridge, he came to houses. He walked on pavements, and the recollection of the crowds which in the daytime thronged those streets eased him a little of that panic fear which drove him on. His steps, which had been directed without aim, now more consciously took him to Frank. From someone he must get help and advice how to bear himself. In his exhaustion he went more slowly, and the way seemed endless. There were signs at last that the City was awaking. Now and again a cart trundled heavily by with produce for Covent Garden; here and there a milk-shop blazed with light. His heart went out to those early toilers whose busy activity seemed to unite him once more with human kind. He stood for a moment in front of a butcher’s, where brawny fellows, silhouetted by the flaring gas, scrubbed the floor lustily.

At last—it seemed hours since he left Barnes—Basil found himself in Harley Street, and staggered up the steps. He rang the night-bell and waited. No answer came, and with anguish it crossed his mind that Frank might have been called out. Where could he go, for he was exhausted and faint, so that he could not walk another step? Since midnight he had trudged a good sixteen miles. He rang again, and presently heard a sound. The electric light was put on in the hall, and the door opened.

“Frank, Frank, for God’s sake, take me in! I feel as if I were dying.”

With amazement Frank saw his friend, dishevelled, without a great-coat, wet, splashed with mud; his face was ghastly pale, drawn and affrighted, and his eyes stared with the unnatural fixedness of a maniac. He asked no questions, but took Basil’s arm and led him into the room. Then the remains of his strength gave way, and sinking into a chair, he fainted.

“Idiot!” muttered Frank.

He seized him by the scruff of the neck and bent his head firmly till he forced it between the knees; and presently Basil regained consciousness.

“Keep your head down till I get you some brandy.”

Frank was not a man to be disconcerted by an unexpected occurrence, and methodically poured out a sufficient quantity of neat spirit which he made Basil drink. He told him to sit still for a moment and hold his tongue; then took his own pipe, filled and lit it, sat down quietly, wrapping himself up as best he could, and began to smoke. The nonchalance of his movements had a marvellous effect on Basil, for it was impossible to remain in that strained atmosphere of unearthliness when Frank, apparently not in the least surprised by his strange irruption, went about things in so stolid and unemotional a way. This unconcern exerted a kind of hypnotic influence, so that he felt oddly relieved. At last the doctor turned to him.

“I think you’d better take those things off. I can let you have some pyjamas.”

The sound of his voice suddenly called Basil back to the horrible events of his life, and with staring eyes and hoarse voice, cut by little gasps of anguish, he poured out incoherently the whole dreadful story. And then, breaking down again, he hid his face and sobbed.

“Oh, I can’t bear it—I can’t bear it!”

Frank looked at him thoughtfully, wondering what he had better do.

“I tried to kill myself in the night.”

“D’you think that would have done anyone much good?’

“I despise myself. I feel I haven’t the right to live; but I hadn’t the pluck to do it. People say it’s cowardly to destroy one’s self: they don’t know what courage it wants. I couldn’t face the pain. And yet she did it so easily—she just walked along the tow-path and threw herself in. And then, I don’t know what’s on the other side. After all, it may be true that there’s a cruel avenging God who will punish us to all eternity if we break His laws.”

“I wouldn’t high-falute if I were you, Basil. Supposing you came into the next room and went to bed. You’d be all the better for a few hours’ sleep.”

“D’you think I could sleep?” cried Basil.

“Come on,” said Frank, taking his arm.

He led him into the bedroom, and, Basil unresisting, took off his clothes and made him lie down. Then he got his hypodermic syringe.

“Now give me your arm and stop still. I’m only going to prick you—it won’t hurt.”

He injected a little morphia, and after a while had the satisfaction of seeing Basil fall comfortably asleep.

Frank put away his syringe with a meditative smile.

“It’s rather funny,” he muttered, “that the most tempestuous and tragic of human emotions are no match against a full dose of _morphinæ hydrochlor_.”

That tiny instrument could allay the troubled mind; grief and remorse lost their vehemence under its action, the pangs of conscience were stilled, and pain, the great enemy of man, was effectually vanquished. It emphasized the fact that the finest-strung emotions of the human race depended on the matter which fools have stigmatized as gross. Frank, in one wide-embracing curse, expressed his whole-hearted abhorrence of dualists, spiritualists, Christian Scientists, quacks, and popularizers of science; then, enveloped in a rug, settled down comfortably in an armchair to await the tardy dawn.

Two hours later he found himself at Barnes, gathering at the police-station more precise details of Jenny’s tragic death than Basil had been able to give him. Frank told the inspector that Kent was in a condition of absolute collapse and able personally to attend to nothing, then gave his own address, and placed himself for all needful business at the disposal of the authorities. He discovered that the inquest would probably be held two days later, and guaranteed that Basil would then be well enough to attend. After this he went to the house and found the servant amazed because neither master nor mistress had slept in bed, told her what had happened, and then wrote to James Bush some account of the facts. He promised the maid to return next morning, and went back to Harley Street.

Basil was up, but terribly depressed. All day he would not speak, and Frank could only divine the frightful agony he suffered. He went over in his mind eternally that scene with Hilda and his bitter words to his wife; and always he saw her in two ways: appealing for one last chance, and then—dead. Sometimes he felt he could scream with anguish when he recalled those passionate words of his to Hilda, for it seemed that final surrender was the cause of the whole catastrophe.

Next day, when Frank was about to go out, he turned to Basil, who was looking moodily into the fire.

“I’m going to Barnes, old chap. Is there anything you want?”

Basil began to tremble violently, and his pallor grew still more ghastly.

“What about the inquest? Have I got to go through that?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“And the whole story will come out. They’ll know it was my fault, and I shall never be able to hold up my head again. Oh, Frank, is there no way out of it?”

Frank shook his head, and Basil’s mouth was drawn to an expression of hopeless despair. He said nothing more till the other was on the point of leaving the room; then he jumped up.

“Frank, there’s one thing you must do for me. I suppose you think me a cad and a brute. Heaven knows I despise myself as much as anyone else can do—but because we’ve been friends for such ages do one thing more for me. I don’t know what Jenny said to her people, and they’ll welcome a chance of hitting me now I’m down—Mrs. Murray’s name must be kept out of it at any cost.”

Frank stopped and meditated for a moment.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he replied.

On his way to Waterloo the doctor went round to Old Queen Street and found Miss Ley breakfasting.

“How is Basil this morning?” she asked’

“Poor devil! he’s in rather a bad way. I scarcely know what to do with him. I think as soon as the inquest is over he’d better go abroad.”

“Why don’t you let him stay here till then? I’ll feed him up.”

“You’d only fuss. He’s much better by himself. He’ll just brood over it till his mind is exhausted, and then things will get better,”

Miss Ley smiled at the scorn with which he refused her suggestion, and waited for him to go on.

“Look here, I want you to lend me some money. Will you pay two hundred and fifty pounds into my bank this morning?”

“Of course I will,” she answered, delighted to be asked.

She went to her desk to get a cheque-book, while Frank looked at her with a little smile.

“Don’t you want to know what it’s for?”

“Not unless you wish to tell me.”

“You brick!”

He shook her hand warmly, and glancing at his watch, bolted off to Waterloo. When he arrived at River Gardens, Fanny, the servant, who opened the door, told him that James Bush was waiting to see him. She said he had been telling her all he meant to do to ruin Basil, and had been through the house to find papers and letters. Frank congratulated himself on the caution with which he had locked up everything. He walked upstairs softly, and opening the door, found James trying various keys on the writing-table. He started away when Frank entered, but quickly recovered his coolness.

“Why are all these drawers locked up?” he asked impudently.

“Presumably so that curious persons should not examine their contents,” answered Frank, with great amiability.

“Where’s that man? He’s murdered my sister. He’s a blackguard and a murderer, and I’ll tell him so to his face.”

“I was hoping to find you here, Mr. Bush. I wanted to have a talk with you. Won’t you sit down?”

“No, I won’t sit down,” he answered aggressively. “This ain’t the ’ouse that a gentleman would sit down in. I’ll be even with ’im yet. I’ll tell the jury a pretty story. He deserves to be strung up, he does.”

Frank looked sharply at the auctioneer’s clerk, noting the keen suspicious eyes, the thin lips, and the expression of low cunning. Wishing to prevent a scandalous scene at the inquest, for Basil was ill enough and wretched enough without having to submit to cross-examination on his domestic affairs, Frank thought it would not be difficult to bring James Bush to the frame of mind he desired; but the distaste with which this person inspired him led the doctor to use a very brutal frankness. He felt with such a man it was better not to mince matters, and unnecessary to clothe his meaning with flattering euphemisms.

“What d’you think you’ll get out of making a row at the inquiry?” he said, looking fixedly into the other’s eyes.

“Oh, you’ve thought of that, ’ave you? Did Master Basil send you to get round me? It won’t work, young feller, I mean to make it as ’ot for Basil as I can. I’ve ’ad something to put up with, I ’ave. He’s simply treated me like dirt. I wasn’t good enough for ’im, if you please.”

He hissed the words with the utmost malevolence, and it was possible to imagine that he cared little for his sister’s death, except that it gave opportunity for paying off the score which had so long rankled with him.

“Supposing you sat down quietly and listened to me without interruption for five minutes.”

“You’re trying to bamboozle me, but you won’t. I can see through you as if you was a pane of glass. You people in the West End—you think you know everything!”

Frank waited calmly till James Bush held his offensive tongue.

“What d’you think the furniture of this house is worth?” he asked deliberately.

The question surprised James, but in a moment he replied.

“It’s a very different thing what a thing’s worth and what it’ll fetch. If it was sold by a man as knew his business, it might fetch—a hundred pounds.”

“Basil thought of giving it to your mother and sister—on the condition, of course, that nothing is said at the inquest.”

James burst into a shout of ironical laughter.

“You make me laugh. D’you think you can gag me by giving a houseful of furniture to my mother and sister?”

“I had no such exalted opinion of your disinterestedness,” smiled Frank icily. “I come to you now. It appears that you owe Basil a good deal of money. Can you pay it?”

“No.”

“Also it appears there was some difficulty with your accounts in your last place,”

“That’s a lie,” James interrupted hotly.

“Possibly,” retorted Frank, with the utmost calm. “I merely mention it to suggest to your acute intelligence that we could make it uncommonly nasty for you if you made a fuss. If dirty linen is going to be washed in public, there’s generally a good deal to be said on both sides.”

“I don’t care,” cried the other vindictively; “I mean to get my own back. If I can get my knife into that man, I’ll take the consequences.”

“I understand it is your intention to unfold to a delighted jury the whole story of Basil’s married life.” Frank paused and looked at the other. “I’ll give you fifty pounds to hold your tongue.”

The offer was made cynically, and James actually coloured. He jumped up indignantly, and went over to Frank, who remained seated, watching with somewhat amused indifference.

“Are you trying to bribe me? I would ’ave you know that I’m a gentleman; and, what’s more, I’m an Englishman, and I’m proud of it. I’ve never ’ad anyone try and bribe me before.”

“Otherwise you would doubtless have accepted,” murmured Frank gently.

The doctor’s coolness greatly disconcerted the little clerk. He felt vaguely that high-flown protestations were absurd, for Frank had somehow taken his measure so accurately that it was no use to make any false pretences.

“Come, come, Mr. Bush, don’t be ridiculous. The money will doubtless be very useful to you, and you’re far too clever to allow private considerations to have any effect on you where business is concerned.”

“What d’you think fifty pounds is to me?” cried James, a little uncertainly.

“You must have mistaken me,” said Frank, after a quick look. “The sum I mentioned was a hundred and fifty.”

“Oh!” He coloured again, and a curious look came over his face. “That’s a very different pair of shoes.”

“Well?”

Frank observed the struggle in the man’s mind, and it interested him to see some glimmering of shame. James hesitated, and then forced himself to speak; but it was not with his usual self-assurance—it was almost in a whisper.

“Look ’ere, make it two ’undred and I’ll say done.”

“No,” answered Frank firmly. “You can take one fifty or go to the devil.”

James made no reply, but seeing that he agreed, Frank took a cheque from his pocket, wrote it out at the desk, and handed it.

“I’ll give you fifty now, and the rest after the inquest.”

James nodded, but did not answer. He was curiously humbled. He looked at the door, and then glanced at Frank, who understood.

“There’s nothing you need stay for. If you’re wanted for anything, I’ll let you know.”

“Well, so long.”

James Bush walked out with somewhat the air of a whipped cur. In a moment the servant passed through the room.

“Has Mr. Bush gone?” asked Frank.

“Yes. And good riddance to bad rubbish.”

Frank looked at her reflectively.

“Ah, Fanny, if there were no rogues in the world, life would really be too difficult for honest men.”

XV

Six months went by, and again the gracious airs of summer blew into Miss Ley’s dining-room in Old Queen Street. She sat at luncheon with Mrs. Castillyon wonderfully rejuvenated by a winter in the East; for Paul, characteristically anxious to combine self-improvement with pleasure, had suggested that they should mark their reconciliation by a journey to India, where they might enjoy a second, pleasanter honeymoon, and he at the same time study various questions which would be to him of much political value. Mrs. Castillyon, in a summer frock, had all her old daintiness of a figurine in Dresden china, and her former vivacity was more charming by reason of an added tenderness. She emphasized her change of mind by allowing her hair to regain its natural colour.

“D’you like it, Mary?” she asked. “Paul says it makes me look ten years younger. And I’ve stopped slapping up.”

“Entirely?” asked Miss Ley, with a smile.

“Of course, I powder a little, but that doesn’t count; and you know, I never use a puff now—only a leather. You can’t think how we enjoyed ourselves in India, and Paul’s a perfect duck. He’s been quite awfully good to me. I’m simply devoted to him, and I think we shall get a baronetcy at the next Birthday honours.”

“The reward of virtue.”

Mrs. Castillyon coloured and laughed.

“You know, I’m afraid I shall become a most awful prig, but the fact is it’s so comfortable to be good and to have nothing to reproach one’s self with.... Now tell me about everyone. Where did you pass the winter?”

“I went to Italy as usual, and my cousin Algernon with his daughter spent a month with me at Christmas.”

“Was she awfully cut up at the death of her husband?”

There was really a note of genuine sympathy in Mrs. Castillyon’s voice, so that Miss Ley realized how sincere was the change in her.

“She bore it very wonderfully, and I think she’s curiously happy; she tells me that she feels constantly the presence of Herbert.” Miss Ley paused. “Bella has collected her husband’s verses and wishes to publish them, and she’s written a very touching account of his life and death by way of preface.”

“Are they any good?”

“No; that’s just the tragedy of the whole thing. I never knew a man whose nature was so entirely poetical, and yet he never wrote a line which is other than mediocre. If he’d only written his own feelings, his little hopes and disappointments, he might have done something good; but he’s only produced pale imitations of Swinburne and Tennyson and Shelley. I can’t understand how Herbert Field, who was so simple and upright, should never have turned out a single stanza which wasn’t stilted and forced. I think in his heart he felt that he hadn’t the gift of literary expression, which has nothing to do with high ideals, personal sincerity, or the seven deadly virtues, for he was not sorry to die. He only lived to be a great poet, and before the end realized that he would never have become one.”

Miss Ley saw already the pretty little book which Bella would publish at her own expense, the neat type and wide margin, the dainty binding; she saw the scornful neglect of reviewers, and the pile of copies which eventually Bella would take back and give one by one as presents to her friends, who would thank her warmly, but never trouble to read ten lines.

“And what has happened to Reggie Bassett?” asked Grace suddenly.

Miss Ley gave her a quick glance, but the steadiness of Mrs. Castillyon’s eyes told her that she asked the question indifferently, perhaps to show how entirely her infatuation was overcome.

“You heard that he married?”

“I saw it in the _Morning Post_.”

“His mother was very indignant, and for three months refused to speak to him. But at last I was able to tell her that an heir was expected; so she made up her mind to swallow her pride, and became reconciled with her daughter-in-law, who is a very nice, sensible woman.”

“Pretty?” asked Grace.

“Not at all, but eminently capable. Already she has made Reggie into quite a decent member of society. Mrs. Bassett has now gone down to Bournemouth, where the young folks have taken a house, to be at hand when the baby appears.”

“It’s reassuring to think that the ancient race of the Barlow-Bassetts will not be extinguished,” murmured Grace, ironically. “I gathered that your young friend was settling down because one day he returned every penny I had—lent him.”

“And what did you do with it?” asked Miss Ley.

Grace flushed and smiled whimsically.

“Well, it happened to reach me just before our wedding-day so I spent it all in a gorgeous pearl pin for Paul. He was simply delighted.”

Mrs. Castillyon got up, and, when she was gone, Miss Ley took a letter that had come before luncheon, but which her guest’s arrival had prevented her from opening. It was from Basil, who had spent the whole winter on Miss Ley’s recommendation in Seville. She opened it curiously, for it was the first time he had written to her since, after the inquest, he left England.

“MY DEAR MISS LEY, Don’t think me ungrateful if I have left you without news of me, but at first I felt I could not write to people in England. Whenever I thought of them everything came back, and it was only by a desperate effort that I could forget. For some time it seemed to me that I could never face the world again, and I was tormented by self-reproach; I vowed to give up my whole life to the expression of my deep regret, and fancied I could never again have a peaceful moment or anything approaching happiness. But presently I was ashamed to find that I began to regain my old temper; I caught myself at times laughing contentedly, amused and full of spirits; and I upbraided myself bitterly because only a few weeks after the poor girl’s death I could actually be entertained by trivial things. And then I don’t know what came over me, for I could not help the thought that my prison door was opened; though I called myself brutal and callous, deep down in my soul arose the idea that the Fates had given me another chance. The slate was wiped clean, and I could start fresh. I pretended even to myself that I wanted to die, but it was sheer hypocrisy—I wanted to live and to take life by both hands and enjoy it. I have such a desire for happiness, such an eager yearning for life in its fulness and glory. I made a ghastly mistake, and I suffered for it: Heaven knows how terribly I suffered and how hard I tried to make the best of it. And perhaps it wasn’t all my fault—even to you I feel ashamed of saying this; I ought to go on posing decently to the end—in this world, we’re made to act and think things because others have thought them good; we never have a chance of going our own way; we’re bound down by the prejudices and the morals of all and sundry. For God’s sake let us be free. Let us do this and that because we want to and because we must, not because other people think we ought. And d’you know the worst of the whole thing? If I’d acted like a blackguard and let Jenny go to the dogs, I should have remained happy and contented and prosperous, and she, I daresay, wouldn’t have died. It’s because I tried to do my duty that all this misery came about. The world held up an ideal, and I thought they meant one to act up to it; it never occurred to me that they would only sneer. “Don’t think too badly of me because I say these things; they have come to me here, and it was you who sent me to Seville; you must have known what effect it would have on my mind, tortured and sick. It is a land of freedom, and at last I have become conscious of my youth. How can I forget the delight of wandering in the Sierpes, released from all imprisoning ties, watching the various movements as though it were a stage-play, yet half afraid that a falling curtain would bring back the unendurable reality. The songs, the dances, the happy idleness of orange-gardens by the Guadalquivir, the gay turbulence of Seville by night: I could not long resist it, and at last forgot everything but that time was short and the world was to the living. “By the time you get this letter I shall be on my way home.

“Yours ever, “BASIL KENT.”

Miss Ley read this letter with a smile and gave a little sigh.

“I suppose at that age one can afford to have no very conspicuous sense of humour,” she murmured.

But she sent Basil a telegram asking him to stay, with the result that three days later the young man arrived, very brown after his winter in the sunshine, healthy, and better-looking than ever. Miss Ley had invited Frank to meet him at dinner, and the pair of them, with the cold unconcern of anatomists, observed what changes the intervening time had wrought on the impressionable nature. Basil was in high spirits, delighted to come back to his friends; but a discreet soberness, underlying his vivacity, suggested a more composed temperament. What he had gone through had given him perhaps a solid store of experience on which he could rest himself. He was less emotional and more mature. Miss Ley summed up her impressions next time she was alone with Frank.

“Every Englishman has a churchwarden shut away in his bosom, an old man of the sea whom it is next to impossible to shake off. Sometimes you think he’s asleep or dead, but he’s wonderfully tenacious of life, and sooner or later you find him enthroned in full possession of the soul.”

“I don’t know what you mean by the word _soul_,” interrupted Frank, “but if you do, pray go on.”

“The churchwarden is waking up in Basil, and I feel sure he will have a very successful career. But I shall warn him not to let that ecclesiastical functionary get the upper hand.”

Miss Ley waited for Basil to speak of Mrs. Murray, but after two days her patience was exhausted, and she attacked him point-blank. At the mention of the name his cheeks flamed.

“I daren’t go and see her. After what happened, I can never see her again. I am steeling myself to forget.”

“And are you succeeding?” she asked, dryly.

“No, no—I shall never succeed. I’m more desperately in love with her than ever I was. But I couldn’t marry her now. The recollection of poor Jenny would be continually between us, for it was we, Hilda and I, who drove her to her death.”

“Don’t be a melodramatic idiot,” answered Miss Ley, sharply. “You talk like the persecuted hero of a penny novelette. Hilda’s very fond of you, and she has the feminine common sense which alone counterbalances in the world the romantic folly of men. What on earth do you imagine is the use of making yourselves wretched so that you may cut a picturesque figure? I should have thought you were cured of heroics. You wrote and told me that the world was for the living—an idea which has truth rather than novelty to recommend it—and do you think there is any sense in posturing absurdly to impress an inattentive gallery?”

“How do I know that Hilda cares for me still? She may hate me because I brought on her humiliation and shame.”

“If I were you I’d go and ask her,” laughed Miss Ley. “And go with good heart, for she cared for you for your physical attractiveness rather than for your character. And that, I may tell you, whatever moralists say, is infinitely more reliable; since you may easily be mistaken in a person’s character, but his good looks are obvious and visible. You’re handsomer than ever you were.”

When Basil set out to call on Mrs. Murray, Miss Ley amused herself with conjecturing ironically the scene of their meeting. With curling lips she noted in her mind’s eye the embarrassed handshake, the trivial conversation, the disconcerting silence, and without sympathy imagined the gradual warmth and the passionate declaration that followed. She moralized.

“A common mistake of writers is to make their characters in moments of great emotion express themselves with good taste. Nothing could be more false, for, at such times, people, however refined, use precisely the terms of the _Family Herald_. The utterance of violent passion is never artistic, but trite, ridiculous, and grotesque, vulgar often and silly.” Miss Ley smiled. “Probably novelists alone make love in a truly romantic manner, but then it’s ten to one they’re quoting from some unpublished work, or are listening intently to themselves in admiration of their glowing and polished phraseology.”

At all events, the interview between Hilda and Basil was eminently satisfactory, as may be seen by the following letter which some days later the young man received:

“MON CHER ENFANT, It is with the greatest surprise and delight that I read in this morning’s _Post_ of your engagement to Mrs. Murray. You have fallen on your feet, _mon ami_, and I congratulate you. Don’t you remember that Becky Sharp said she could be very good on five thousand a year, and the longer I live the more convinced I am that this is a _vraie vérité_. With a house in Charles Street and _le reste_, you will find the world a very different place to live in. You will grow more human, dress better, and be less censorious. Do come to luncheon to-morrow, and bring Mrs. Murray. There will be a few people, and I hope it will be amusing—one o’clock. I’m afraid it’s an extraordinary hour to lunch, but I’m going to be received into the Catholic Church in the morning, and we’re all coming on here afterward. I mean to assume the names of the two saints whose example has most assisted me in my conversion, and henceforth shall sign myself,

“Your affectionate mother, “MARGUERITE ELIZABETH CLAIRE VIZARD.

“P. S.—The Duke of St. Olpherts is going to be my sponsor.”

A month later, Hilda Murray and Basil were married in _All Souls_ by the Rev. Collinson Farley. Miss Ley gave away the bride, and in the church besides were only the verger and Frank Hurrell. Afterwards in the vestry Miss Ley shook the Vicar’s hand.

“I think it went off very nicely. It was charming of you to offer to marry them.”

“The bride is a very dear friend of mine. I was anxious to give her this proof of my goodwill at the beginning of her new life.” He paused and smiled benignly, so that Miss Ley, who knew something of his old attachment to Hilda, wondered at his good spirits. She had never seen him more trim and imposing; he looked already every inch a Bishop. “Shall I tell you a great secret?” he added blandly. “I am about to contract an alliance with Florence, Lady Newhaven. We shall be married at the end of the season.”

“My dear Mr. Farley, I congratulate you with all my heart. I see already these shapely calves encased in the gaiters episcopal.”

Mr. Farley smiled pleasantly, for he made a practice of appreciating the jests of elderly maiden ladies with ample means, and he could boast that to his sense of humour was due the luxurious appointing of his church; for no place of worship in the West End had more beautiful altar-cloths, handsomer ornaments, nowhere could be seen smarter hassocks for the knees of the devout or hymn-books in a more excellent state of preservation.

The newly married couple meant to spend their honeymoon on the river, and having lunched in Charles Street, started immediately.

“I’m thankful they don’t want us to see them off at Paddington,” said Frank, when he walked with Miss Ley towards the park.

“Why are you in such an abominable temper?” she asked, smiling. “During luncheon I was twice on the point of reminding you that marriage is an event at which a certain degree of hilarity is not indecorous.”

Frank did not answer, and now they turned in at one of the Park gates. In that gay June weather the place was crowded; though the hour was early still, motors tore along with hurried panting, carriages passed tranquil and dignified; the well-dressed London throng sat about idly on chairs, or lounged up and down looking at their neighbours, talking light-heartedly of the topics of the hour. Frank’s eyes travelled over them slowly, and shuddering a little, his brow grew strangely dark.

“During that ceremony and afterwards I could think of nothing but Jenny. It’s only eighteen months since I signed my name for Basil’s first marriage in a dingy registry office. You don’t know how beautiful the girl was on that day, full of love and gratitude and happiness. She looked forward to the future with such eager longing! And now she’s rotting underground, and the woman she hated and the man she adored are married, and they haven’t a thought for all her misery. I hated Basil in his new frock-coat, and Hilda Murray, and you. I can’t imagine why a sensible woman like you should overdress ridiculously for such a function.”

Miss Ley, conscious of the entire success of her costume, could afford to smile at this.

“I have observed that, whenever you’re out of humour with yourself, you insult me,” she murmured.

Frank went on, his face hard and set, his dark eyes glowering fiercely.

“It all seemed so useless. It seemed that the wretched girl had to undergo such frightful torture merely to bring these two commonplace creatures together. They must have no imagination, or no shame—how could they marry with that unhappy death between them? For, after all, it was they who killed her. And d’you think Basil is grateful because Jenny gave him her youth and her love, her wonderful beauty and at last her life? He doesn’t think of her. And you, too, because she was a barmaid are convinced that it’s a very good thing she’s out of the way. The only excuse I can see for them is that they’re blind instruments of fate: Nature was working through them, obscurely, working to join them together for her own purposes, and because Jenny came between she crushed her ruthlessly.”

“I can find a better excuse for them than that,” answered Miss Ley, looking gravely at Frank. “I forgive them because they’re human and weak. The longer I live, the more I am overwhelmed by the utter, utter weakness of men; they do try to do their duty, they do their best honestly, they seek straight ways, but they’re dreadfully weak. And so I think one ought to be sorry for them and make all possible allowances. I’m afraid it sounds rather idiotic, but I find the words now most frequently on my lips are: ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do.’”

They walked silently, and after a while Frank stopped on a sudden and faced Miss Ley. He pulled out his watch.

“It’s quite early yet, and we have the afternoon before us. Will you come with me to the cemetery where Jenny is buried?”

“Why not let the dead lie? Let us think of life rather than of death.”

Frank shook his head.

“I must go. I couldn’t rest otherwise. I can’t bear that on this day she should be entirely forgotten.”

“Very well. I will come with you.”

They turned round and came out of the Park. Frank hailed a cab, and they started. They passed the pompous mansions of the great, sedate and magnificent, and driving north, traversed long streets of smaller dwellings, dingy and gray notwithstanding the brightness of the sky; they went on, it seemed, interminably, and each street strangely, awfully, resembled its predecessor. They came to roads where each house was separate and had its garden, and there were trees and flowers. They were the habitations of merchants and stockbrokers, and had a trim, respectable look, self-satisfied and smug; but these they left behind for more crowded parts. And now it seemed a different London, more vivacious, more noisy. The way was thronged with trams and ’buses, and there were coster-barrows along the pavements; the shops were gaudy and cheap, and the houses mean. They drove through slums, with children playing merrily on the curb and women in dirty aprons, blowzy and dishevelled, lounging about their doorsteps. At length they reached a broad straight road, white and dusty and unshaded, and knew their destination was at hand, for occasionally they passed a shop where gravestones were made; and an empty hearse trundled by, the mutes huddled on the box, laughing loudly, smoking after the fatigue of their accustomed work. The cemetery came in sight, and they stopped at iron gates and walked in. It was a vast place, crowded with every imaginable kind of funeral ornament, which glistened white and cold in the sun. It was hideous, vulgar, and sordid, and one shuddered to think of the rude material minds of those who could bury folk they loved in that restless ground wherein was neither peace nor silence. They might prate of the soul’s immortality, but surely in their hearts they looked upon the dead as common clay, or they would never have borne that they should lie till the Day of Judgment in that unhallowed spot. There was about it a gross, business-like air that was infinitely depressing. Frank and Miss Ley walked through, passing a knot of persons, black-robed, about an open grave, where a curate uttered hastily, with the boredom of long habit, the most solemn words that man has ever penned:

“_Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay._”

Miss Ley, pale of face, took Frank’s arm and hurried on. Here and there dead flowers were piled upon new graves; here and there the earth was but freshly turned. They came at last to where Jenny lay, an oblong stone of granite whereon was cut a simple cross; and Frank gave a sudden cry, for it was covered at that moment, so that only the cross was outlined, with red roses. For a while they stared in silence, amazed.

“They’re quite fresh,” said Miss Ley. “They were put here this morning.” She turned to Frank and looked at him slowly. “You said they’d forgotten, and they came on their wedding-day and laid roses on her grave.”

“D’you think she came, too?”

“I’m sure of it. Ah, Frank, I think one should forgive them a good deal for that. I told you that they did strive to do right, and if they fell it was only because they were human and very weak. Don’t you think it’s better for us to be charitable? I wonder if we should have surmounted any better than they did their great difficulties and their great temptations?”

Frank made no reply, and for a long time they contemplated those rich red roses and thought of Hilda’s tender hands laying them gently on the poor woman’s cold gravestone.

“You’re right,” he said at last. “I can forgive them a good deal because they had this thought. I hope they will be very happy.”

“I think it’s a good omen.” She laid her hand on Frank’s arm. “And now let us go away, for we are living, and the dead have nothing to say to us. You brought me here, and now I want to take you on farther—to show you something more.”

He did not understand, but followed obediently till they came to the cab; Miss Ley told the driver to go straight on, away from London, till she bade him stop. And then, leaving behind them that sad place of death, they came suddenly into the open. The highway had the pleasant brown hardness of a country road, and it was bordered by a hawthorn hedge. Green fields stretched widely on either side, and they might have been a hundred miles from London town. Miss Ley stopped the cab, and told the man to wait whilst she and her friend walked on.

“Don’t look back,” she said to Frank, “only look forward. Look at the trees and the meadows.”

The sky was singularly blue, and the dulcet breeze bore gracious odours of the country. There was a suave limpidity of the air which chased away all ugly thoughts. Both of them, walking quickly, breathed with wide lungs, inspiring eagerly the radiance of that summer afternoon. On a turn of the road Miss Ley gave a quick cry of delight, for she saw the hedge suddenly ablaze with wild roses.

“Have you a knife?” she said. “Do cut some.”

And she stood while he gathered a great bunch of the simple fresh flowers. He gave them to her, and she held them with both hands.

“I love them because they’re the same roses as grow in Rome from the sarcophagi in the gardens. They grow out of those old coffins to show us that life always triumphs over death. What do I care for illness and old age and disease! The world may be full of misery and disillusion, it may not give a tithe of what we ask; it may offer hatred instead of love—disappointment, wretchedness, triviality, and heaven knows what; but there is one thing that compensates for all the rest, that takes away the merry-go-round from a sordid show, and gives it a meaning, a solemnity, and a magnificence which make it worth while to live. And for that one thing all we suffer is richly overpaid.”

“And what the dickens is that?” asked Frank, smiling.

Miss Ley looked at him with laughing eyes, holding out the roses, her cheeks flushed.

“Why, beauty, you dolt!” she cried gaily. “Beauty.”

THE END