CHAPTER VI

“TO TEST HER LOVE”

“Of course I know why,” reflected Letty; “but I wasn’t going to tell him.”

But it was the need to express the joyous and amazing romance of this which Sebastian had done, and the rejection of each confidant in turn as “not able to understand,” that had prompted Letty to cover so many sheets of paper with her round schoolgirlish handwriting, and to head these scrawlings with the title: “To Test Her Love,” A Story. By Lettice Johnson.

The hero of her tale, one Geoffrey Challoner of Challoner Park, becomes enamoured of Mavice, a village maiden; and is goaded by the sneers of his wicked cousin Jasper (--“You fool! she loves you only because you are the Lord Geoffrey!”--) into putting her love to the test by pretending to the discovery of hidden papers whereby Jasper (of the younger branch of the family) is proved master of Challoner Park in his stead, and he a mere pauper. Affairs at this juncture grow complicated; as Mavice, unshaken in her love for Geoffrey, is yet forced to jilt him, without giving a reason, in favour of Jasper, who most unfortunately holds in his power the honour of Cyril, Mavice’s younger brother, a weakling and a craven. With a bitter: “You were right, Jasper; and I a fool to think any girl, even the fairest, free from worldly motives!” Geoffrey departs for the populous Bush, leaving Jasper in unlawful possession of Challoner Park and Mavice’s broken heart.

Letty was now engaged in a general clearing-up and adjustment of the circumstances of her novelette. Mavice and Geoffrey must be brought together; and the heroine must have occasion to vow, with brimming eyes: “Love you though you are poor, Geoffrey?--I would love you if you came to me scorned by the whole world,--old and ugly and in rags. Geoffrey, you believe me, don’t you?” Then his great speech, beginning: “Oh, my darling, how could I ever doubt that your love would stand the test....” Letty scribbled the subsequent scene, her cheeks aflame, her fingers trembling so that it was a matter of difficulty to guide the pencil. One day, yes, one day, Sebastian would come to her, and say: “Oh, my darling, how could I ever doubt...?”

She had never before experienced the fascination of setting on paper, fragments of her own life, of glorifying characters with whom she had actually come in contact. To be sure, Luke had needed a little doctoring before he was altogether fit to take his place as Cyril Derincourt; but Sebastian accorded so perfectly with the Lord Geoffrey, that Letty was able to derive more voluptuous pleasure from the impassioned duets of her fancy, than ever from those actually enacted. Sebastian in the flesh was sometimes a little too fervent, too realistic even, for timid girlhood; or else incomprehensibly remote; but Geoffrey never by any chance made a remark that Mavice could not entirely understand. So Letty wrote with her heart, unhampered by literary standards, literary judgment; knowing naught of those over-intellectualized circles wherein Geoffrey and Mavice, Jasper and Cyril, and the alluring adventuress Esmée de Courcy (lately added), would meet with laughter and contempt. Letty wrote on, her evenings stabbed through and through by this secret excitement,--till, reading over the completed story, it struck her, with happy surprise, as not a whit less convincing or enthralling than all those other tales which had fed her imagination since flapper days: the “White Heather” Novelette Series; the “Silver Chimes” Complete Novel, published every Tuesday; the Myrtle Library; the Pink-and-Blue Boudoir Supplement; fiction in coloured paper covers, stacked, crumpled and torn, behind her bed-valance.

“I wonder,” brooded Letty, as she affixed a wobbling signature to the manuscript, “if Sebastian would be pleased to see me in print....”

To her, the be-all and end-all of literature was to “get into print”; written stuff was of absolutely no value otherwise. This secret of hers was swelling rather too big to be borne alone; Violet Baker was, under many vows, admitted to Letty’s confidence. Violet was shorthand-typist to a firm of solicitors, and volunteered to type, in her spare moments, “To Test Her Love,” which she considered a veritable masterpiece.

“What made you think of it, I don’t know?”--And on this point Letty continued to keep silence. Her sole fear was that her achievement would mysteriously rob her of feminine charm; place her in the same category as those “clever girls,” “gifted women,” “the kind men don’t like.” In which case, Letty decided, her talent should at once, definitely, and for ever, be abandoned.

Finally, after much deliberation of choice, the type-script was dispatched to the Editress of “Silver Chimes.” After a little delay, came a letter offering five guineas for full and complete rights in the fortunes of Geoffrey, Mavice, Cyril, Esmée, and Jasper.

“That means they’re going to print it!” Letty flew across the road to Violet Baker.

“Vi, they’re going to print it!”

Her tidings were not received with the acclamation she expected. “Oh, everything’s all right for you,” came muffled from the depths of a damp pocket-handkerchief.

“Toothache?” queried Letty sympathetically.

“No, Ernie.”

“Not--not dead?”

... Presently Letty, her joy somewhat damped, went tiptoeing back to Town House. It seemed appropriate to tiptoe, for though Ernie was not dead, Violet had sent him about his business. The frequent comparison between his profile and Sebastian’s, his manners and Sebastian’s, Sebastian’s ‘romantic air’--and Ernie’s, had done their fell work. And now for Letty to come rushing in with Fame in a typewritten oblong envelope, and because of it expect Violet to go capering round the dining-room,--well, it was rather too much to ask even of Real Friendship.

“You jolly well get everything,” complained Violet bitterly; “you’ve got the looks, and all the fuss made over you, and a fellow who can say all the speeches, and now you’ve got this too. And I was idiot enough to type it for you, and give old Tomkyns the page about where Jasper plots with Esmée de Courcy, instead of a letter about somebody’s insurances, and he hopping mad. You get everything.” Violet again immersed herself in the handkerchief, and Letty departed, very, very sorry, but rather resentful that having ‘everything’ she should therefore have to do without Violet. “But I understand about Ernie,” she mused, sitting down to reply to the Editress. If Sebastian had not come along, would not she, Letty, with all her advantages and prettiness, probably have drifted into a sort of engagement with Balaam Atkins? very much of the Ernie type, but older, and with slightly more jut to his jaw. And then they would all have been cosy together, and even Luke would probably not have snubbed Jinny so frequently as he did now. The advent of Sebastian had completely demoralized this corner of Turnham Green.

With an effort, Letty managed to keep the secret of her letter from the family; she wanted Sebastian to be the first to hear about it. Three days later, at tea-time, she spied him walking dejectedly up the road. She was alone in the dining-room; her mother was out, and Luke not yet home from school.

“Hurrah! we can have tea together, just us two; what a darling you are to come to-day,--and I’ve got something too frightfully exciting to tell you ... your hands are frozen; why don’t you wear gloves, you bad boy?” joyfully she welcomed him, chafed his cold fingers with her warm palms, hung about him like a solicitous kitten. But still he didn’t speak. And, just on the verge of pouring forth her great news, Letty stopped, struck by the tragedy in his face.

“Oh, what is it?” she cried piteously.

“They’ve rejected it.”

Then the pall descended upon her also. The Book. They had rejected it. There was no more to be said. And for the second time she was baffled of an elated audience for her own triumph. How dared she presume tell him of a tale accepted, when his great work had been refused.

“The beasts!” she cried, with quivering lips.

“Don’t be silly, Letty!” but whatever consolation she had attempted would have been wrong. He was in that mood. “Of course, they can’t take everything that gets offered to them. My stuff’s not good enough, that’s all. They--they wrote it wasn’t good enough,” he finished, asking again for that sympathy which he flung back when it came. He had been divided by the pride which bade him keep his shame to himself, and a childish longing for solace and encouragement and the presence of someone who believed in him. Not sure yet which need was the stronger, he announced his defeat casually, as though it hardly affected him, hotly resented Letty’s correct assumption that his world lay shattered; and then, almost boasting the humiliation, showed her a note from the publisher’s reader, who had kindly taken the trouble to point out how and why his work was not marketable, instead of merely enclosing the formal slip: “--unable to make an offer.” “You fail to convince,” was the phrase which left most sting.

“So you see I’m a failure, Letty. Not a publisher will look at the book. This fellow knows what he’s talking about.” Sebastian refused the muffins she tendered him.

“You mean--it will never get into print, you don’t think?”

“Never. But it isn’t that; it’s--Heron.”

“Your friend?” She remembered the two had been a great deal together, at the Farme.

He nodded, too full of bitterness to speak. Why was it that all his burnt-offerings, like Cain’s, were doomed to be beaten, sullen fumes, along the earth, instead of mounting in steady columns of smoke, upwards to their destination? That he might be worshipping false gods, did not for a moment present itself as a possible solution; Sebastian’s loyalty was convinced the sacrifices were at fault, not the altar. The book was Stuart’s book, for Stuart, of Stuart, to Stuart,--the whole declension. The author had sweated his share, and now the publishers withheld theirs, and all the accomplished labour was in vain. It was maddening--

“I wanted it out!” Sebastian broke out, aloud.

“He wanted it in print, of course he did,” passionately Letty shared his mutinous sorrow. And when he had gone, and she was in her room, changing into an evening blouse, she fingered the letter she had not had the courage to show him; all her joy gone from the anticipation of her story in print, since thus it would only serve to point a contrast.

“I’ve half a mind not to send it,” picking up that other letter into which was folded her eager acceptance of the five-guinea offer.

“I wish it was him instead of me,” wistfully. For one does not lightly say ‘no’ to an Editress of “Silver Chimes”; not if one is Letty Johnson.

She stood uncertain, an envelope in either hand....

“Supposing.... After all, it was his idea and not mine, about pretending to be poor, and all that.... Almost, really, it’s as if I’d stolen it. Then supposing....”

Supposing what? That she should put his name, instead of hers, to the novelette? That she should surprise him by showing him a story by Sebastian Levi, in print, as he so much wanted to be? Just to make up for that other disappointment. Well, supposing you did, Letty? Nobody need ever know that Sebastian hadn’t written it, except Violet Baker; and she could be pledged to silence.

“I will!” resolved Letty, her grey-blue eyes clouded to seriousness beneath the tumbling fringe of her hair. “I’ll go and see the Editress myself.”

This was rather a tremendous undertaking. But the notion of being in a position to offer Sebastian the very thing he deemed lost to his desire, so inflated Letty’s courage, that she hardly faltered when the next day seeking an interview with--“your _real_ friend and cousin, the Editress,” as the energetic little woman signed “Cousin Belle’s Chat with Her Girls,” which appeared every week on the last page of “Silver Chimes.”

--“You want to publish your little tale with a _nom-de-plume_? Why, certainly. We have one lady who always writes for us under the name: Joyella; and My Girls like her touch immensely.”

Letty groped in vain after some association of ideas between “Joyella” and a sale-of-underwear catalogue that she had seen in her mother’s hand that morning. Then gave up the search, and listened to what the Editress was saying in praise of “To Test Her Love.”

“We’ll have to alter it in several places, of course; you’ve had no experience, I can see that; but what we liked about your characters, Miss Johnson, was that you wrote as if you felt them. My girls always know the difference. And that’s why, when a high-class authoress comes along with her nose in the air and offers to scribble me something in her spare time, I know it will be no good. I tell her so, straight out. One can’t write for My Girls with one’s nose in the air. They recognize sincerity when they see it. You’ve got the sincere touch, Miss Johnson; My Girls are sure to take to you.” She brought forth her Girls as if they were a compact little jury; she herself the judge; and Letty, or Joyella, or the authoress writing with nose in air, the prisoners on trial.

“Now, under what name do you want us to publish?” Miss Symes drew her pencil through Lettice Johnson, and looked up from the manuscript, with an encouraging smile. Every line and angle and inflection proclaimed her as orthodox Church of England. It was rather a bad moment for Letty.

“Sebastian----” she paused. Miss Symes wrote it down. “Yes?” with pencil poised.

Almost, now, at the eleventh hour, Letty said “Lovell,” and spoilt everything....

“Sebastian Levi,” in a whisper.

“Sebastian----? I beg your pardon, I didn’t catch it?”

Desperately, Letty repeated “Levi,” in tones that nervousness had rendered far louder and more resonant than she had intended them.

Still showing her teeth, though the brightness had departed from her smile, the Editress added “Levi.” Then put down the pencil.

“Forgive me, but does that strike you as a very attractive pseudonym? Have you a special reason?”

“It was my mother’s name--before she married----.” Letty felt the eyes of My Girls, that terrible army of girls taking in “Silver Chimes” regularly every Tuesday, fixed upon her in scornful disapproval. Their imaginary stare quite obliterated all conscientious pangs concerning Mrs. Johnson, who, despite broadmindedness, might quite conceivably have resented being thus publicly branded an Israelite.

Miss Symes made an ineffectual effort to convert Letty to “Beryl Hope Feversham,” invented by herself for the next “Silver Chimes” contributor in search of a pleasant sounding _nom-de-plume_. But Letty clung to the thought of Sebastian’s ecstasy, seeing his name above the published novelette, and remained obdurate.

“To Test Her Love,” by Sebastian Levi, was to be published three weeks hence; November the twenty-second fixed as the important date.

And on Tuesday, November the twenty-second, Letty dashed down the road before breakfast, to the little newspaper shop at the corner, and bought three copies of the journal in the bright mauve cover, wreathed about with silver bells swung in diverse directions by a fantastic wind; in and out of the bells were threaded the words: “To Test Her Love,” by Sebastian Levi; in the centre of the page was inset a medallion, containing presentments of Geoffrey with blazing eyes confronting Mavice with bowed head, who was supported by a malignant Jasper; Cyril skulking on the extreme left of the picture, and Esmée de Courcy triumphant on the extreme right. Beneath this pleasing illustration stood the letter-press: “Mavice! speak! Are you indeed engaged to him, or shall I strike him down as a liar?” (see page 23).

Letty bore her treasures home, secreted in her muff; Sebastian was to be the first to see; she had arranged to meet him for a walk and tea that very afternoon. But one copy of “Silver Chimes” she slipped into an envelope, sought a name among the h’s in the telephone book, addressed the envelope to: “Stuart Heron, Esq., Heron, Heron & Carr, High Holborn,” and posted it forthwith. She knew the beautiful friendship which existed between the two men,--“like me and Violet, before she turned so horrid--oh well, I s’pose she’s miserable, and can’t help it, but still,”--knew also that when Sebastian was shown the current issue of “Silver Chimes” his first thought would be to exhibit it to Stuart, just as his first disappointment when the book was refused, was on Stuart’s account. Letty wanted to be able to state she had forestalled him--“Mr. Heron is perhaps reading it now, this very minute,--and oh, Sebastian! what do you think he’ll say?”

Her day passed in a dreamy mauve-hued blur, with a clangour of bells in the air. At four o’clock Letty donned her new winter costume of royal-blue velveteen, her golden fox-furs, and a blue plush picture-hat; and again with something tightly clasped inside her muff, almost danced out of the house into the drizzling gloam beyond. Sebastian was waiting for her where the No. 9 ’buses stop on their way to Richmond. His plan was to walk across the Park, and have a late tea at some window overlooking the pale mist-sodden river. Letty would have preferred a cosier programme; she assented, reluctantly, to the top of the ’bus, “if you promise to keep the umbrella held over my hat, Sebastian,”--but cancelled the walk across Richmond Park: “Horrid, in the dark, with the leaves all messy and slippery, and the trees like ghosts----”

--“And the world smelling damp, and reeking damp, and dripping damp, and we the only people warm in it! Why, Letty, you’d enjoy it!”

“But we shouldn’t be warm.”

“We would, if I held you close enough; Letty....”

“But my shoes!” she showed him her footgear, to prove the impossibility of his proposals. All this under the pallid stream of light from the lamp-post, at the corner where they lingered for their ’bus.

“Will I never teach you not to wear pneumonia-soles, you little vanity-child?” sighed Sebastian. But the lifted folds of the skirt had afforded a pleasant glimpse, nevertheless; and he wished he could afford the privacy of a taxi, that he might caress her rounded slenderness at will. It was noble, but inconvenient, to be forever short of cash. However, they were the only passengers on the outside of their lurching chariot; and afterwards the only two in the snug brightly lit tea-room which formed one of a labyrinthine cluster underground, each holding four rose-tiled tables, and a rose-gowned waitress. The latter took Sebastian’s order, and vanished.

“Now...” thought Letty--and produced “Silver Chimes.” Without a word of comment, so fraught was the moment with tense expectation, she pushed the copy across the table. Sebastian picked it up, wondering, and read aloud: “‘To Test Her Love,’ by _Sebastian Levi_...? Why, w-w-what on earth----?” he stammered. His eye fell on the illustration; then in silent bewilderment he flicked over a few of the pages. Letty watched him, her fingers curled tightly round the edge of the table. The lines of his mouth hardened. He spoke harshly:

“Is it a joke? Who put my name to this drivel?”

And the dancing joy in her eyes was quenched in a rush of tears. As before from anticipation, so now from disappointment, she remained mute.

“Answer me, Letty? Who put my name to this?”

“I did,” almost inaudibly.... But why was he so cross? Was it that his integrity recoiled from the notion of claiming credit for work not his own? Yes, it must be that. For the moment, she had forgotten his use of the term: drivel.

“But it _is_ yours, really and truly, Sebastian. The idea is yours, all about the Test, and pretending not to be rich, and everything. I’d never have thought of it. I only did the writing part because--because you were so busy with your book. But it’s quite, quite fair that your name should be on the cover.”

“You wrote this?”

“Yes.” A tinge of pride in her assent. Had not the Editress said the tale was good? “Yes, indeed I did. Are you surprised?”

(Or was he already beginning to think her unwomanly?)

The waitress appeared with the tea-things, which she rattled down on the table. Sebastian buried himself anew in the histories of Geoffrey and Mavice, while Letty poured out the tea, and nibbled at a cress sandwich; furtively gleaming at him from under her eyelashes.

“Aren’t you hungry, Sebastian?”

He made no reply; went on reading. He had as a boy devoured a great many “penny dreadfuls” of the blood-and-thunder type; but this was his first experience of girls’ cheap sentimental fiction. It was a revelation. Now he understood one or two curious ingredients which had hitherto always puzzled him in the composition of Letty.--But what did she mean by saying that his was the original idea of Lord Geoffrey Challoner’s utterly inane proceedings? Then, slowly, that dawned on him as well. He shoved aside “Silver Chimes,” so that it fell on the dusty floor.

“Letty, did you think it was by way of a test, a test of you, that I gave up my income?”

“Wasn’t it?”

“My God, no!”

“Then why----”

“You wouldn’t understand why,” grimly; “it won’t translate into novelette terms.”

Letty stretched out her hand for a cream-cake, pink and chocolate. It fell from her shaking fingers on to her skirt. She gazed hopelessly at the stain. It was all of a piece with this hateful afternoon, to spoil every one of her illusions, and her new costume into the bargain.

“I expect my hat’s all spotted by the rain, too,” she reflected dreamily. And he had called her story “drivel.”... With a quick spurt of anger at his lofty denunciation, Letty cried:

“The Editress said I had the sincere touch, so there!”

He saw how he had hurt her, and was sorry; but felt at the same time the futility of attempting to explain the cause of his annoyance.

“Oh, well--eat up your cakes, dear; I don’t suppose anyone who matters will ever buy this particular rag. Lord, though,” half under his breath, “if Stuart had seen it!”

“I sent him a copy this morning,” Letty threw out defiantly. She was in the naughty mood of a child, who, seeking to please most, has somehow only earned a scolding, and is in consequence rightly sore and resentful.

... In the ghastly silence which followed her announcement, another party entered the room, and noisily disposed themselves at the adjoining table. The waitress entered to take their order, and Sebastian beckoned her to bring him his bill. The homeward journey was accomplished by train, in a moist overfull compartment, where Sebastian had to give up his seat to a lady, and Letty sat huddled in a corner, frightened at the dire effect of her action, and repeating to herself again and again: “I don’t care; he’s hateful; I don’t care a bit.”

Still without a word, beyond a brief “good night,” he left her at the gate of Town House, and set out for Carlton House Terrace. He had little doubt as to what sort of a ribald reception awaited him there. Not much mercy to be expected from Stuart. All Sebastian’s most sensitive portions were already screaming and wincing in protest. He had so desired to present Stuart with a dignified bound volume, setting forth in fervent but lucid phrasing, an abstract ideal,--and now, instead, this unspeakable novelette! The incident was grotesque; it had degraded to farce all his high aspirations. It was no good shirking his visit; the matter had to be explained. Sebastian walked ever faster, in mingled exasperation and dread. Arrived at his destination, he was shown into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Heron, Stuart, Mr. Arthur Heron, and a pretty flapper in white, whom he had met once before at the house, were assembled, before dinner. Stuart was lounging in front of the fire-place, and evidently engaged in chaffing the child, when Sebastian was announced.

--“You see, Babs, by your passionate public assertions that I was your idea of a perfect gentleman, you very definitely proved yourself no lady. One isn’t passionate, in society. I really don’t know, after this, what we can do with you! what do you think, mother?... Hullo, Levi!” he bestowed on the new-comer a slow fiendish smile that confirmed Sebastian’s worst anticipations. Babs at once enlisted his sympathies in her cause:

“Mr. Levi, I heard someone, at a party, saying a horrid thing about Stuart; and of course I stuck up for him. And now he says I’ve committed a breach of etiquette, and the Queen, when she gets to hear of it, will strike my name from the presentation lists, the year after next. _Do_ say it isn’t true!”

“My dear, you really ought to be accustomed by now to your cousin’s teasing.--You’ll dine with us, of course, Mr. Levi?” Mrs. Heron extended a thin ringed hand, smiling graciously. She looked very handsome, in her low-necked black gown, and her single row of wonderful pearls.

“I’m afraid it’s impossible.” Sebastian longed for these invitations, but invariably, by some perverse twitch of the nerves, refused them when they came. He and Stuart went into the latter’s study. Conspicuous on the table lay a booklet bound in a mauve paper cover, wreathed about with silver bells.

“I haven’t quite finished your story yet,” said Stuart, caressing it lovingly; “it has made me a very happy man, Levi!”

“And me a deuced miserable one,” growled Sebastian, flinging himself into an arm-chair.

“That, my lad, is because you have caused Esmée de Courcy to appear at noon, in Regent Street, wearing a _décolletée_ toilet of yellow sequins. Such riotous rollicking literary excesses are bound to result in your present reaction of soul.”

“Oh, shut up!” miserably. Stuart was sitting on the table, the novelette on his knees. Leaning forward, Sebastian snatched it away, and flung it into the fire.

“There are thousands more on the market,” chortled Stuart; “I intend to forward a copy to Magdalen; for an original exploit of one of Oxford’s sons, I think it deserves to stand in the College chronicles.”

Sebastian writhed. “Don’t be indecent, Heron,” in a feeble appeal to the other’s better nature. An appeal totally unfruitful of results.

“Surely, Levi, you didn’t send me your masterpiece in the erroneous supposition that I would take it up tenderly and treat it with care?”

“I didn’t send it to you at all.”

“No, I guessed you hadn’t sufficient guts for that! Whom have I to thank, then, for my moments of rich ripe pleasure?”

“Letty.”

“God bless Letty. Did she write it, by the way?”

“You--you _didn’t_ think I wrote it, did you? Heron, you didn’t?” Sebastian’s dark mournful eyes implored satisfaction on this one point, at least.

“As a matter of fact, it’s not at all unlike your style.”

“What the Hell do you mean by that?” Sebastian sprang to his feet, knocking his shins against the brass coal-box. “My book----”

--“Is no book, any more than Letty’s maiden effort is a book. They’re both--what shall I call ’em?--Gory Exhibitions!” And having his victim completely down and at his mercy, Stuart proceeded forthwith to pummel him; showing thereby--despite Babs’ defence--a most lamentable lack of all gentlemanly instincts. But he had not forgiven his disciple for butchering his ideas; nor for sickening him with his own creed, as had been the case ever since Sebastian’s over-enthusiastic conversion.

--“You both write in blood, instead of in ink; upon my word, your style is like a pirate’s oath. No attempt at restraint or form. Form’s everything--colour nothing. One should write from the vantage-point of a god,--at least of a judge; aloof, impersonal, detached. But you take a bath every time, in what you’re pleased to call your inspiration: wallow, and splash, and breathe heavily, and yelp in your ecstasies, and wriggle in your agonies, all over the pages. I even suspect you of putting things down for the ‘sheer joy’ of unburdening yourself. And there we have the greatest evil. A book should be thought, crystallized into truth, hard as rock, stripped of all extraneous fungus, and with some clear purpose to serve in publication, whether of good or evil. But if you must have your attacks of luxurious hysteria,--for Heaven’s sake, man, keep ’em private. Suppress them. Suppress the ‘Sprawls of Sebastian’--‘Sebastian Spills Himself,’ as the stuff shouts to be called.”

“You needn’t worry any further,” Sebastian said, with very stiff lips, and a weary battered bewilderment as to what he had done, that ever since a certain night of August he should be exposed to these onslaughts; “because the book’s been refused.”

“Excellent!”

“And it was for you--not at all for the ‘sheer joy of unburdening,’--just for you....” But Sebastian kept these reflections to himself. And Stuart continued consolingly:

“But Letty’s story is no better than yours, for all that; it’s equally highly coloured and shapeless, but in a more marketable key.”

“Thank you.”

“Dear old man, don’t gaze at me as if I had you on the rack. I’m trying to help you. I suppose you’ve behaved like a brute to the little girl, over this business?”

“I’m going to break with her, that’s all!” suddenly Sebastian recovered from the temporary paralysis of speech, and, striding about the room, vehemently poured forth his determination: “Yes, I am. We’re not made for each other. She doesn’t understand--anything. And I get hopeless over stupidity; it numbs me. She shouldn’t have done this thing and even now she can’t see why. She doesn’t see why I gave up living at home--nor why the book meant so much to me. It won’t do--it would never do--it must end now, now!... I’m like you, Heron, I must be free of everything, especially of love, the warm, clinging, hampering fingers of love; I’m growing more and more like you----”

“Nonsense; you can’t possibly grow like me, because I’m not there; not permanently. You can grow like your father, or the Albert Memorial, anything fixed and solid,--but you can’t grow like the spot where I stood a minute ago before I began to run.”

“I’m going to break with Letty,” Sebastian repeated doggedly.

“And you think you’re doing a fine thing by it?” Stuart twisted round on the table, and scornfully eyed his young prototype. “It’s rather easy, isn’t it, to break off with love because just at this moment you happen to be fed up with it. There’s no merit in that,--merely self-indulgence again. But try breaking-off with love when you want it most, when it’s fairest, most devilishly alive. Try breaking off, not because you’re annoyed with the girl, childishly pettishly annoyed,--but for the sake of keeping love unsated, and the memory of love like a sword-blade. Break off with love, because self-denial maintaineth the soul lean, and whetteth desire, and--oh, because if you can do that, and also guard your tongue from overmuch cursing when directly afterwards a smug couple dog your footsteps wherever you walk, and perform for your benefit,--then there’s very little else can affect you, ever. You’re master, then. At the height is the time to break with any credit, my lad, not half-way down the slope.”

Sebastian broke in: “But that’s cruel--inhuman--as a god might behave. No man alive would do it.” His heart was beating thickly; he could not tell why.

“Think not?” Stuart rose, stood against the chimney-piece, dropping the ash of his cigarette into the fire. And he said slowly: “I never told you about Peter, did I?”...

* * * * *

Sebastian stormed out of the room, down the stairs, into the hall. The dinner-gong was drowning the house in sound. The postman had just thundered at the door. Sebastian wanted to get away--away from this new brutality of idea which terrified him because he knew it would ultimately overtake him. It was revolting ... revolting, he repeated, smashing behind him the iron gates of the drive,--this deliberate murder of love to which Stuart had just confessed. Revolting in the same way as would have been the sight of a monk engaged in self-laceration. There was nothing splendid about it,--no, nothing at all! between clenched teeth Sebastian thus informed the wet glittering pavements.

And he was going back to Letty, straight back, driven by the fear of what he might have been induced to do to her ... if he were not quite determined to the contrary.

Back to Letty. The Johnsons’ maid, opening the door to him, said: “Miss Letty’s just going to bed, sir, she’s not very well.”--And there she was, on the stairs, dragging her feet a little, as if tired out.

“Letty!”

She came down to him then, and laid her arms against his breast; and he bowed his head on to the soft warm skin of them, murmuring that he was sorry--so sorry----

“I hoped you’d be pleased, Sebastian. I thought you wanted to get into print. I did so hope you’d be pleased.”

“I’m a beast, Letty.--No, don’t move, darling--not for a minute--let me go on telling you--I’m a surly ungrateful brute ... but I love you----”

She raised her lips for his kiss.

* * * * *

Stuart, following Sebastian’s headlong rush from the room, reached the hall just as the heavy oak doors crashed behind his impetuous young devot. Shrugging his shoulders, the master of the house turned to enter the dining-room; the butler waylaid him, offering a letter on a silver tray:

“The post has just come in, sir.”

It seemed to Stuart that once before he had stood, as he stood now, with the echoes of the dinner-gong still vibrating through the hall, and in his hand an envelope, addressed in just this same thin pointed writing.... He drew forth the white and silver of a wedding invitation:

“Madame Marcel des Essarts requests the pleasure of Mr. Stuart Heron’s company at the marriage of her granddaughter Merle with Jean Raoul Théodore, Comte de Cler, at St. George’s, Hanover Square, and afterwards at 63 Lancaster Gate.”

--So Merle was to be married. He had almost forgotten Merle; that exquisite little lady whom for a while he and Peter had taught to become a child and a pirate and a romp; whom they had crinkled out of serene composure into delicious laughter; whom they had dragged from an atmosphere of hothouse vigilance into the keen airs and fleet sweet liberty. Stuart speculated as to whether, after this lapse of time, aught remained in Merle of his influence. One spot rubbed forever bare of the polish, perhaps; one nerve that would always be restless; one memory that could just occasionally sting her from content. He would go to Merle’s wedding, if only to see what sort of a fellow was this Jean Raoul Théodore, Comte de Cler.--“Sure to be a stumor ...” it was a queer thing, but Stuart suspected most men to be stumors, who gathered up his litter of orange-peel.

“I wonder if I did her any good?”...

Mrs. Heron came out of the drawing-room, her hand on Arthur Heron’s arm; Babs following.

“Just think, Stuart: Merle des Essarts is going to be married.” They passed into the dining-room. “I’ve just had the invitation. I believe that Madame des Essarts and I are not on particularly good terms; she neither came to my last big At Home, nor answered the card, nor called afterwards. However.... This Comte de Cler is a most distinguished man. A diplomat. I know him slightly. Much older than the girl, of course; but such charming manners. Isn’t it suitable?”

She asked the question rather anxiously, not quite sure if the son of the house of Heron had not once himself deigned to cast an eye towards la maison des Essarts.

“Merle would be a delightful acquisition in the highest ambassadorial circles,” Stuart assented warmly.

But he still suspected Jean de Cler of being a stumor.