Henry was about to say, "Why, of course, you can get away in plenty of time!" but he checked himself and did not say it.

"Oh, that will do excellently," said Lady Cecily, all smiles again.

Then the lights of the theatre were lowered and the third act began.

4

When the play was over, they drove to Fleet Street in Lord Jasper's motor-car. Lady Cecily had suggested that they should take Gilbert to his newspaper office in order to save time, and he had consented readily enough.

"We might wait for you!..." she added, but Gilbert would not agree to this proposal. "It isn't fair to keep Jimphy from his birthday treat any longer," he said, "and I may be some time before I'm ready!"

She was sitting next to Gilbert, and Henry and Jimphy were together with their backs to the chauffeur. She did not appear to be tired nor had the sparkle of her beautiful eyes diminished. She lay against the padded back of the car and chattered in an inconsequent fashion that was oddly amusing. She did not listen to replies that were made to her questions, nor did she appear to notice that sometimes replies were not made. It seemed to Henry that she would have chattered exactly as she was now chattering if she had been alone. Neither Gilbert nor Jimphy answered her, but Henry felt that something ought to be said when she made a direct remark.

"Isn't Fleet Street funny at this time of night?" she said. "So quiet. I do hope the supper will be fit to eat. Oh, Gilbert, I wish you'd say something in your notice of Wilde's play about his insincerity. I felt all the time I was listening to the play that ... that it wasn't true!'"

Gilbert sat up straight in his seat and looked at her.

"Oh!" he exclaimed.

"Yes," she went on. "The wit seemed to be stuck on to the play ... it wasn't part of it!..."

Gilbert leant back in his seat again. "You've been talking to Henry about Wilde, haven't you?"

She laughed lightly and turned towards Henry. "Oh, of course. Mr. Quinn, I always repeat what other people say. I forget that they've said it to me and think that I've thought of it myself!"

Henry professed to be pleased that she had accepted his ideas so completely.

"But, of course," she continued, "what you said was quite true. I've always felt that there was something wrong with Wilde's plays...."

"I can't think what you all want to talk about a play for. I never see anything in 'em to talk about!" Jimphy murmured sleepily.

"Go to sleep, Jimphy, dear. Well wake you when we get to the Savoy...."

"Always ragging a chap!" Jimphy muttered, and then closed his eyes.

The car turned down one of the narrow streets that lead from Fleet Street to the Thames Embankment, and then turned again and stopped.

"Oh, is this your office, Gilbert?" Lady Cecily said. "Such an ugly, dark looking place! But I suppose it's interesting inside? Newspaper offices are supposed to be awfully interesting inside, aren't they?"

"Are they?" Gilbert replied, as he got out of the car. "I've never noticed it. Noisy holes where no one has time to think. Good-bye."

"Not 'good-bye,' Gilbert! We shall see you soon at the Savoy, shan't we?"

"Oh, yes. Yes. I'd almost forgotten that!"

The car drove off, threading the narrow steep street slowly. They could hear the deep rurr-rurr of the printing machines coming from the basements of the buildings, and now and then great patches of pallid blue light shot out of open windows. Motor-vans and horse-waggons were drawn up against the pavements in front of the office-doors, waiting for the newly-printed papers. Bundles of Daily Reflexions were already printed and were being thrown on to the cars and waggons for distribution.

"Are they printed already?" Lady Cecily said.

"Most of them were printed at nine o'clock," Henry replied. "The ha'penny illustrated papers go all over the country before the ordinary papers are printed at all!"

"How awfully clever of them!" she said.

The car turned into Fleet Street and quickly drove up to the Savoy.

"Thank God!" said Jimphy. "I shall get some fun out of my birthday now!"

"Jimphy loves his food," Lady Cecily exclaimed. "Don't you, Jimphy? Don't you love your little tum-tum?..."

They entered the hotel and found the table which had been reserved for them. There was a queer, hectic gaiety about the place, as if every one present were making a desperate effort to eat, drink and be merry. People greeted Lady Cecily as she passed them and muttered, "'loa, Jimphy!" Henry had never been to a fashionable restaurant before, and the barbaric beauty of the scene fascinated him. The women were riotously dressed, and the colours of their garments mingled and merged like the colours of a sunset. There was a constant flow of people through the room, and the chatter of animated voices and bursts of laughter and the jingling, sentimental music played by the orchestra made Jimphy forget how bored he had been at the theatre. The slightly fuddled air which he had had in the bar of St. James's had left him and he began to talk.

"Ripping woman, that!" he said to Henry, indicating a slight, dark girl who had entered the restaurant in company with a tall, flaxen-haired man. "Pretty little flapper, I call her! I like thin women, myself. Well, slender's a better word, isn't it? What you say, Cecily?"

Lady Cecily had tapped her husband's arm. "Ernest Lensley's just come in," she said. "He's with Boltt. Go and bring them both here. They can't find seats, poor dears!"

Ernest Lensley and Boltt were fashionable novelists. Lensley was an impudent-looking man with very blue eyes who had written a number of popular stories about society women who "chattered" very much in the way that Lady Cecily chattered. The heroine of his best-known book was modelled, so people said, on the wife of a Cabinet Minister, and thousands of suburban Englishwomen professed to have an intimate knowledge of the statesman's family life solely because they had read Lensley's novel. It was a flippant, vulgar book, the outcome of a flippant, vulgar mind. Boltt had a wider public than Lensley. Boltt, a tall, thin, stooping man, with peering eyes, had discovered "the human note" of which Gilbert's editor prated continually. He was a precise, priggish man, extraordinarily vain though no vainer than Lensley, who, however, had an easy manner that Boltt would never acquire. He spoke in the way in which one might expect a "reduced gentlewoman, poor dear!" to speak, and there was something about him that made a man long to kick him up a room and down a room and across a room and back again. His heroes were all big, burly, red-haired giants, who wore beards and old clothes and said "By God, yes!" when they admired the scenery, and led a vagabond life in a perfectly gentlemanly manner until they met the heroine.... His heroines constantly fell into situations which were extremely compromising in the eyes of a censorious world, but they were never completely compromised. The whole world knew, before the conclusion of the story, that the heroine had been falsely suspected. If she had spent the night in the hero's bedroom, she had done so with the best intentions, under the strictest chaperonage ... usually that of her dear, devoted old nurse, God bless her!... whose presence in the bedroom had been hidden, until the middle of the penultimate chapter, from the heroine's friends and relatives. The hero, of course, poor, manly, broken giant, had been ill, suffering from a fever, and in his delirium had called for her, discontent until she had put her cool firm hand upon his hot brow, and the doctor had said that if she would stay with him, she would save his life. So she had flung her reputation to the winds and had hurried to his bedroom.... It was pretentious, flatulent stuff, through which a thin stream of tepid lust trickled so gently that it seemed like a stream of pretty sentiment, and it was written with such cleverness that young ladies in Bath and Cheltenham and Atlantic City, U.S.A., were tricked into believing that this was Life ... Real Life....

Lensley and Boltt followed Jimphy eagerly to Lady Cecily's table. Lensley was glad to sit with her: Boltt was glad to be certain of his supper. Lensley enjoyed listening to Cecily's babble because he could always be certain of getting something out of her speech that would just fit into his next novel: Boltt liked his contiguity to members of the governing class. They completely ignored Henry after they had been introduced to him.

"Mr. Quinn is writing a novel, too!" said Lady Cecily.

"Oh, yes!" said Lensley.

"Indeed!" Boltt burbled.

Thereafter they addressed themselves exclusively to Lady Cecily and her husband. Lensley told Lady Cecily that she was to be the heroine of his next book. "I'm studying you now, dear Lady Cecily!" he said. "Jotting you down in my little book ... all your little plaguey ways and speeches!..."

"How awfully exciting!" she replied, and her eyes seemed to become brighter, and she leant towards the novelist as if she meant to reveal herself more clearly to him.

"You'll be angry with me when you see the book," he said. "Dreadfully angry. You know poor Mrs. Maldon was very hurt about 'Jennifer'!" Mrs. Maldon was the wife of the Cabinet Minister.

"I shan't mind what you say about me," Lady Cecily said, "so long as you make me the heroine of the book. What are you going to call it?..."

"The Delectable Lady!"

"How awfully nice!..."

5

Henry began to feel bored. He wished that Gilbert would come. Gilbert would soon rout this paltry little tuppenny-ha'penny Society novelist with his pretty-pretty chatter and his pretty-pretty blue eyes and his air of being a knowing dog. Lady Cecily seemed to have forgotten Henry altogether.... He turned to Lord Jasper who was trying hard not to yawn in Mr. Boltt's face. Mr. Boltt had been a surveyor at one period of his life, and his favourite theme of conversation was Renascence architecture. He was now telling Jimphy of the glories of French Cathedrals, and Jimphy, who cared even less for French Cathedrals than he cared for English ones, was wondering just how he could change the conversation to a discussion of the latest ballet at the Empire and particularly of a girl he knew who was a perfect lady and, as a matter of fact, lived with her mother. The supper party seemed likely to end dismally, and Henry, when he was not wishing that Gilbert would come, was wishing that he himself had not come. He could not understand why it was that he had so much difficulty in talking easily with strangers. Lensley was prattling as if he were determined to discharge an entire novelful of "chatter" at Lady Cecily, and Boltt's little clipped, pedantic voice recited a long rigmarole about a glorious view in France which he had lately seen while motoring in that country. Boltt admired Nature in the way in which any man of careful upbringing would admire a really nice woman....

Henry had lately reviewed a book by Boltt for a daily paper, and he had expressed scorn for it and its stuffed dummies, masquerading as men and women ... and Boltt, who took himself very seriously indeed, had written a letter of complaint to the editor of the paper. Henry wondered what Boltt would say if he knew that the review had been written by him, and an imp in him made him interrupt the long recital of the glories of France.

"The Morning Report had a good go at your last novel, Boltt!" he said.

The novelist looked reproachfully at Henry, as if he were rebuking him for indelicacy.

"I never see the Morning Report," he replied loftily.

"Oh, then, I suppose you didn't see the review. I thought you probably got clippings from a Press-cuttings agency!..."

"Yes, oh, yes, I do. I seem to remember that the Morning Report was unkind. Not quite fair, I should say!"

Lord Jasper began to take an intelligent interest in the conversation. "Have you published another book, Boltt?" he asked innocently.

"Yes ... a ... Lord Jasper ... I have!" Mr. Boltt said, and there was some sniffiness in his tones. He was accustomed to lengthy reviews on the day of publication, and it annoyed him to think that there was some one in the world, some one, too, with whom he was acquainted, who did not know that the publication of one of his books was an event.

"I can't think how you writing chaps keep it up," said Jimphy. "I couldn't write a book to save my life!..."

"No?" said Mr. Boltt, smiling in the way of one who says to himself, "God help you, my poor fellow, God help you!"

"I suppose it's all a question of knack," Jimphy continued. "You get into the way of it and you can't stop. Sometimes a tune gets into my head and I have to keep on humming it or whistling it. I'm not what you'd call a sentimental fellow at all, but that song ... you know, about the honeysuckle and the bee ... I could not get that song out of my head. I thought I should go cracked over it. Always humming it or whistling it ... and I suppose if you get an idea for a yarn into your head, Boltt, well, it's something like that!"

Lady Cecily had exhausted the "chatter" of Mr. Lensley.

"What's that!" she exclaimed.

"Lord Jasper is describing the processes of literature to me, Lady Cecily," said Mr. Boltt sarcastically. "I have been greatly interested."

The man's conceit irritated Henry and he longed to disconcert him.

"Yes," he said. "It all began by my saying something about a review of Boltt's last novel in the Morning Report! ..."

Mr. Boltt made motions with his hands. "Really," he said, "Lady Cecily isn't in the least interested in my effusions."

"Oh, but I am, Mr. Boltt," Lady Cecily interrupted. "What did the paper say? I'm sure it was very flattering!..."

"The reviewer said that the book would probably please the vicar's only daughter, but that it wouldn't impose upon her when she grew up...."

"Oh!" said Lady Cecily.

"Some rival, I'm afraid!" Mr. Boltt murmured. "Some one who dislikes me...."

"The chief complaint was that your people aren't real...." Henry continued, though Mr. Boltt frowned heavily.

"Yes. I don't think we need discuss the matter further, Mr...."

"Quinn!!" said Henry.

He felt happier now that he had pricked the egregious fellow's vanity.

"Silly of 'em to say that," said Lord Jasper. "Boltt sells a tremendous number of books, don't you, Boltt? More than Lensley does. And that shows, doesn't it? If a chap can sell as many books as Boltt sells ... well, he must be some good. I've never read any of 'em, of course, but then I'm not a chap that reads much. All the same, a chap I know says Boltt's all right, and he's a chap that knows what he's talking about. I mean to say, he's written books himself!"

Lady Cecily was no longer interested in the history of Mr. Boltt's novel. The meal was almost at an end, and Gilbert had not arrived. She glanced towards the door, looking straight over Mr. Lensley's head, and Henry could see that she was fidgeting.

"Gilbert's a long time," he said to her.

She did not answer, and before he could repeat his remark to her, Lord Jasper exclaimed, "I say, you know, we ought to be getting home, Cecily. It's getting jolly late!..."

"Let's wait a little longer," she said, "Gilbert hasn't come yet!"

"But I mean to say, this place'll be closing soon...." Mr. Boltt made a satirical remark on the ridiculously early hours at which restaurants are compelled by law to close in England. In France, he said ... but Lord Jasper did not wait to hear what is done in France.

"He won't come now," he said. "He wouldn't have time to eat any supper if he were to come ... and it's getting jolly late, and I'm jolly tired!"

He got up from the table as he spoke. "Very well," said Lady Cecily, rising too.

The others followed her example, and Boltt and Lensley prepared to escort Lady Cecily to the door, but she gave her hand to them and said "Good-night!"

"It's so nice to have seen you both," she said. "No, don't trouble. Mr. Quinn will come with me!"

Lord Jasper had gone on in front to find his car, and Lady Cecily and Henry walked down the room together until they came to the courtyard where the car was waiting for them.

"Tell Gilbert I'm angry with him," she said. "He must come and see me soon and tell me how sorry he is. You'll come, too, perhaps, Mr. Quinn!"

He found his tongue suddenly. "I will, Lady Cecily," he said. "I'll come even if he doesn't. I've enjoyed to-night tremendously...."

"Have you, Mr. Quinn?"

"Yes...."

"I say, come along," Lord Jasper shouted to them.

"Poor Jimphy's getting fractious. You can tell me how much you've enjoyed to-night when we meet again!"

He took her to the car, and watched her as she gathered her skirts about her and climbed inside.

"Can't we drop you at your house!" said Lord Jasper. "It won't be any trouble to do so!"

"No, thanks," Henry replied. "I'd rather walk home. It's such a beautiful night!"

Lord Jasper followed Lady Cecily into the car. "You're a romantic chap, Quinn!" he said, and then, as an afterthought, he added quickly, "I say, we must arrange to go to the Empire together some evening. You're the sort of chap I like...."

Lady Cecily waved her hand to him. As the car moved off he saw her beautiful face leaning against the side of the car, and he longed to take her in his arms and kiss her. Then the car turned, and drove quickly off. He stood for a moment or two looking after it, and continued to stand still even when it had swung out of the courtyard into the Strand. Then he walked slowly away from the restaurant. He had not gone very far when his arm was touched, and, turning round, he saw Gilbert.

6

"Hilloa," he said, "you're late!"

"No, I'm not," Gilbert replied.

"Yes, you are. The Jaynes have gone!"

"I saw them going. I've been here for over half-an-hour, waiting for you!"

"Over half-an-hour! What's up, Gilbert?"

Gilbert put his arm in Henry's and made him move out of the Savoy courtyard. "Come down to the Embankment," he said. "It's quieter there. I want to talk to you!"

"But hadn't we better go home? We can talk on the way. It's late...."

"No. I want to go to the Embankment. Damn it all, Quinny, it's a sentimental place for a heart-to-heart talk, isn't it?"

"You aren't drunk, Gilbert, I suppose?"

"Never so sober in my life, Quinny. Besides, I don't get drunk. People who talk about beer and whisky as much as I do, never get drunk. Come along, there's a good chap!"

"Very well ... only I'm not going to stay long. I'm no good for work the day after I've had a long night...."

"I won't keep you long. How did the supper-party go off?"

"Damnably. Two tame novelists turned up ... Boltt and Lensley!"

"Those asses!"

"Yes. Lensley 'chattered' to Lady Cecily, and Boltt bored and bored and bored.... I took him down a bit. I rubbed in the Morning Report review. The little toad could hardly sit still! Of course, he affected the superior person attitude!"

"God be merciful to him, poor little rat! He wants to be a wicked, hell-for-leather fellow, but he hasn't got the stomach for it! What did Cecily say when I didn't turn up?"

"She looked rather cross. She told me as we came away to tell you she was angry with you. You're to go and apologise to her as soon as possible!"

"Did she?"

"Yes. I say, Gilbert, why didn't you turn up?"

They had reached the Embankment, and they crossed to the riverside and leant against the parapet.

"Because I was afraid to," said Gilbert.

"Afraid to!"

"Yes. Can't you see I'm in love with her?"

"Well, I guessed as much...."

"I love her so much that she can do what she likes with me, and all she likes to do is to destroy me!"

"Destroy you!"

"Yes. If you love Cecily, she demands the whole of your life. Every bit of it. She consumes you.... Oh, I know this sounds like a penny dreadful, Quinny, but it's true. I've asked her to run away with me, but she won't come. She says she hates scandal and she likes her social position. My God, I feel sick when I see Jimphy with her ... like a damned big lobster putting his ... his claws about her. He isn't a bad fellow in his silly way, but I can't stand him as Cecily's husband!"

"I know what you mean," said Henry.

"I thought that if Cecily and I were to go away together, we could get our lives into some sort of perspective, and then I could go on with my work and have her as well, but she won't go away with me. She wants me to hang around, being her lover ... and I can't do that, Quinny. It's mean and furtive, and I hate that. You're always listening for some one coming ... a servant or the husband or some one ... and I can't stand that. If I love a woman, I love her, and I don't want to spend part of my life in pretending that I don't. I loathe myself when I have to change the talk suddenly or move away when a door opens.... Do you understand, Quinny?"

Henry nodded his head, but did not speak.

"Once when I'd been begging Cecily to go away with me, Jimphy walked into the room ... and I had to pretend to be talking about some nasturtiums that Cecily had grown. I felt like a cad. That's what's rotten about loving another man's wife. It's the treachery of the thing, the pretending.... I've often wondered why it is that love of that sort seems so romantic and splendid in books and so damnably mean when it comes into the Divorce Court ... but when I met Cecily I knew why ... it's because of the treachery and the deceit. I used to think that it was beautiful in books because artists were able to see the hidden beauty, and ugly in the Divorce Court because ordinary people only saw the surface things ... but I'm not sure now."

He stopped speaking, but Henry did not speak instead. He did not know what to say; he felt indeed that there was nothing to be said, that he must simply listen. He watched the electric signs on the other side of the river as they spelt out the virtues of Someone's Teas and Another's Whisky, and wondered how long it would be before Gilbert said something else. He was beginning to be bored by the business, and he felt sleepy. He was jealous too, when he thought that Gilbert had kissed Cecily and had been held in her beautiful arms....

"Cecily doesn't mind about the shabbiness of it," he heard Gilbert saying. "We've talked about that, and she says it doesn't matter a bit. All that matters to her is that she shan't be found out ... too publicly anyhow! She called me a prig when I said that I was afraid of tainting my work...."

"Tainting your work?"

"Yes. Perhaps it is priggish of me, but I feel that if I'm mean in one thing I may be mean in another. I'm terribly afraid of doing bad work, Quinny, and I got an idea into my head that if I let taint into my life in one place, I couldn't confine it and it would spread to other places. Do you see? If I let myself get into a rotten position with Cecily, I might write down...."

"I don't see that," said Henry. "Because you love a married woman, it doesn't follow that you'll pot-boil."

"No, perhaps not. But I was afraid of it. I suppose it was priggish of me. That wasn't the only thing, however. I knew that if I did what Cecily wanted me to do, I'd spend most of my time with her or thinking about her. I can't work if I'm doing that, for I think of her and long for her.... Oh, let's go home. It isn't fair to keep you here listening to my twaddle!"

But they did not move. They gazed down on the swiftly-flowing river, and presently they heard Big Ben striking one deep note.

"One o'clock!" said Gilbert.

"What are you going to do about it, Gilbert?" Henry asked at last.

"I'm going away from London. I've chucked my job on the Daily Echo...."

"Good Lord, man, what for?"

"Well, I'm fed-up with the English theatre to begin with, and I'm fed-up with journalism too ... and it's the only way I can get free of Cecily. I must finish the new comedy and I can't finish it if I stay in town and see Cecily. She won't let me finish it. She'll make me go here and go there with her. Shell keep me making love to her when I ought to be working. God damn women, Quinny!"

"You're excited, Gilbert!"

"Yes, I know I am. When I'm with Cecily, I'm like a jelly-fish. She sucks the brains out of me. She doesn't care whether I finish my comedy or not. She doesn't care what happens to my work so long as I hang around and love her and kiss her whenever she wants me to. My brains go to bits when I'm with her. I'm all emotion and sensation ... just like those asses Lensley and Boltt. Quinny, fancy spending your life turning out the sort of stuff those two men write. They've written about a dozen books each, and I suppose they're good for twenty or thirty more. I'd rather be a scavenger!"

They walked along the Embankment towards Waterloo Bridge.

"I'm going to Anglesey," Gilbert said. "I shall go and stay there until the end of the summer!"

"I shall miss you, Gilbert. So will Ninian and Roger!"

"I shall miss you three, but it can't be helped. I'm the sort of man who succumbs to women ... I can't help it. If they're beautiful and soft and full of love ... like Cecily ... they down me. Their femininity topples me over, and there's no work to be got out of me while I'm like that. But my work's of more consequence to me than loving and kissing, Quinny, and if I can't do it while I'm Cecily's lover, then I'll go away from her and do it!"

"What makes you think you could do it if she were to go away with you?"

"I don't know. Hope, I suppose."

They walked up Villiers Street into the Strand, and made their way towards Bloomsbury.

"I suppose," said Gilbert, "you wouldn't like to come to Anglesey too?"

Henry hesitated for a few moments. He had a vision of Lady Cecily's beautiful face leaning against the padded side of the car, and he remembered that she had smiled and waved her hand to him....

"No," he replied, "I don't think so ... not at present at any rate!" and then, added in explanation, "If I go, too, the house will be broken up. That would be a pity!"

"I forgot that," Gilbert answered. "Yes, of course!"



THE SIXTH CHAPTER

1

Gilbert did not leave London, as he had intended, for Sir Geoffrey Mundane definitely decided to produce "The Magic Casement" in succession to the play which was then being performed at his theatre. He had already discussed the caste with Gilbert, and on the morning after the scene on the Embankment, he telephoned to Gilbert, telling him that he had made engagements for the play, and would like to fix a date on which he should read the manuscript to the company. "Any day'll suit me," Gilbert had informed him, and Sir Geoffrey thereupon settled that the reading should take place two days later. "I suppose," he said, "you'd like to attend the rehearsals?" and Gilbert, forgetting his resolution to fly from Lady Cecily, said that he would. He thought that the experience would be very valuable to him. He became so excited at the prospect of seeing a play of his performed at a West End theatre that he was unable to sit still, and his language, always extravagant, became absurd. He broke every rule that Roger had invented. "It'll take all the royalties you'll receive to pay off this score!" Roger said, thrusting the fine-book before him.

"Poo!" said Gilbert. "I'll buy up the Ten Commandments with one night's royalty! Oh, it's going to be a success, I tell you. It'll run for a year ... more than that ... two years!..." He began to estimate the number of performances the play would receive. "Six evening performances and two matinees every week for fifty-two weeks! Eight times fifty-two, Roger ... you were a Second Wrangler, you ought to know that! Four hundred and sixteen! Lordy God, what a lot! And if I get ten pounds every time it's done ... Oh-h-h! Four thousand, one hundred and sixty pounds! And then there'll be American rights and provincial rights.... I'll tell you what I'll do, coves! I'll buy you all a stick of barley-sugar each, or a penn'orth of acid-drops ... which 'ud you like?..."

It was during the rehearsals of "The Magic Casement" that "Broken Spears" was published.

"It isn't as good as 'Drusilla,'" they said to Henry, when they had read it, "but it'll be more popular!"

It was. The critics who had praised "Drusilla" were not impressed by "Broken Spears," but the critics who had been indifferent to "Drusilla" praised "Broken Spears" so extravagantly that six thousand copies of it were sold in six months, apart from the copies which were sold to the lending libraries, and the sale of "Drusilla," in consequence of the success of "Broken Spears," increased from three hundred and seventy-five copies to one thousand five hundred and eighty. Mr. Quinn, in thanking Henry for a copy of it, merely said, in direct reference to the book, "I see you've been tickling the English. Don't go on doing it!" and the effect of this criticism was so stimulating that Henry destroyed the three chapters of "Turbulence" which were in manuscript and started to re-write the book. Literary agents now began to write to him, telling him how charmed they were with his work and how certain they were of their ability to increase his income considerably; and a publisher of some enterprise and resource wrote to him and said that he would like to see his third book.

"You look as if you were established, Quinny!" said Roger, and Henry blushed and murmured deprecatingly about himself.

"How's the Bar?" he said.

"Oh, it's not bad. I got a fellow off to-day who ought to have had six months hard," Roger answered. "And a new solicitor has given me a brief. We ought to ask him to dinner and feed him well. F. E. Robinson always tells his butler to bring out the second-quality wine for solicitors. Snob!"

"We seem to be getting on, don't we, coves?" Gilbert interjected. "Look at all these press-cuttings!..."

He held out a fistful of slips which had come that evening from a Press-Cutting Agency. "All about me," he said, "and the play. Mundane knows more about the preliminary puff than any one else in England. He calls me 'this talented young author from whom much may be expected.' I never thought I should get pleasure out of a trade advertisement, but I do. I'm lapping up this stuff like billy-o. I saw a poster on the side of a 'bus this afternoon, advertising 'The Magic Casement.' Mundane's name was in big letters, and you could just see mine with the naked eye. I hopped on to the 'bus and went for a fourpenny ride on it, so's I could touch the damn thing ... and I very nearly told the conductor who I was. It's no good pretending I'm not conceited. I am, and I don't care. Where's Ninian?"

"Not come in yet. How'd the rehearsals go to-day?" Roger answered.

"Better than any other day. They're beginning to feel their parts. It's about time, too. I felt sick with fright yesterday, they were so wooden. Mundane might have been the village idiot, instead of the fine actor he is ... but they're better now. Ninian's late!"

"Is he? He'll be here presently. By the way, my Cousin Rachel's coming to town to-morrow. She's been investigating something or other ... factory life, I think. I thought I'd bring her here to dinner. She may be interesting."

"Do," said Gilbert, and then, as he heard the noise of the street-door being closed, he added, "There's Ninian now!"

Ninian, on his way to his room, stopped for a moment or two, to shout at them, "I say, the mater and Mary've come up from Devon. I got a wire this afternoon. I'm not grubbing with you to-night. They want to go to a theatre, and I've got to climb into gaudy garments and go with them...."

He closed the door and ran up the stairs, but before he reached the first landing, Gilbert called after him, "I say, Ninian!"

"Yes," he answered, pausing on the stairs.

"Bring them to dinner to-morrow night. Roger's Cousin Rachel is coming, and we may as well make a party of it. Gaudy garments and liqueurs. Do you think they'll stay for the first night of my play?"

"That's one of the reasons why they've come up," Ninian answered.

2

Rachel Wynne and Mrs. Graham and Mary dined with them on the following evening, and it seemed to Henry when he saw Mary entering Ninian's sitting-room that she was a stranger to him. He had known her as a child and as a young, self-conscious girl, but this Mary was a woman. He felt shy in her presence, and when, for a few moments, he was left alone with her, he hardly knew what to say to her. They had been "Quinny" and "Mary" to each other before, but now they avoided names.... He spoke tritely about her journey to London, reminding her of the slowness of the train between Whitcombe and Salisbury, and wondered whether she liked London better than Boveyhayne. His old disability to say the things that were in his mind prevented him from re-establishing his intimacy with her. He tried to say, "Hilloa, Mary!" but could not do so, and his shyness affected her so that she stood before him, fingering her fan nervously, and answering "Yes" and "Oh, yes!" and "No" and "Oh, no!" to all that he said. He liked the sweep of her hair across her brow and the soft flush in her cheeks and the slender lines of her neck and the gleam of a gold chain that held a pendant suspended about her throat. He thought, too, that her eyes shone like lustres in the light, and suddenly, as he thought this, he felt that he could speak to her with his old freedom. He moved towards her, shaping his lips to say, "Oh, Mary, I ..." but the door opened before he could speak, and Rachel Wynne entered the room with Roger and Mrs. Graham.

"Yes, Quinny?" Mary said, saying his name quite easily now.

He laughed nervously and looked at the others. "I've forgotten what I was going to say," he said, and went forward to greet Mrs. Graham.

"My cousin, Rachel Wynne," said Roger, introducing her to him.

Rachel Wynne was a tall, thin girl, with a curious tightened look, as if she were keeping a close hold on herself. When she held out her hand to him, he had a sensation of discomfort, not because her clasp was firm, but because she seemed to be looking, not through him, but into him. He was very sensitive to the opinion of people about him, feeling very quickly the dislike of any one who did not care for him, and in a moment he knew that Rachel Wynne was antipathetic to him. Henry was always rude to people whom he disliked ... he could not be civil to them, however hard he might try to be so, but his feeling in the presence of people who disliked him, was one of powerlessness: he was tongue-tied and nervous and very dull, and his faculties seemed to shrivel up. There was a look of cold efficiency about Rachel Wynne that frightened him. She seemed to be incapable of wasting time or of waywardness. Her career at Newnham, Roger had told him, had been one of steady brilliance. "There wasn't a flicker in it," he had said to Henry. "Rachel's always well-trimmed!"

There were no ragged edges about Rachel Wynne. Her frock was neatly made, so neatly that he was unaware of it, and her hair was bound tightly to her head by a black velvet ribbon. She had a look of cold tidiness, as if she had been frozen into her shape and could not be thawed out of it; but she was not cold in spirit, as he discovered during dinner when the conversation shifted from generalities about themselves to the work she had lately been doing. They had been talking about Gilbert's play, and then Mrs. Graham had turned to Henry and told him how much she liked his novels. Her tastes were simple, and she preferred "Broken Spears" to "Drusilla." "Of course, 'Drusilla' is very clever!" she said a little deprecatingly, and then she turned to Rachel and asked her whether she had read Henry's novels.

"No," Rachel answered. "I very seldom read novels!..."

He felt contempt for her. Now he knew why he had been chilled by her presence. She belonged to that order of prigs which will not read novels, preferring instead to read "serious" books. Such a woman would treat "Tom Jones" as a frivolous book, less illuminating than some tedious biography or history book. She might even deny that it had any illumination at all.... He could not prevent a sneer from his retort to her statement that she seldom read novels.

"I suppose," he said, "you think that novels are not sufficiently serious?"

"Oh, no," she answered quickly. "I just haven't time for novel-reading!"

That seemed to him to be worse than if she had said that she preferred to read solid books. A novel, in her imagination, was a light diversion in which one only indulged in times of unusual slackness. No wonder, he thought to himself, all reformers and serious people make such a mess of the social system when they despise and ignore the principal means of knowing the human spirit.

"That's a pity," he said aloud. "I should have thought that you'd find novels useful to you in your work. I mean, there's surely more chance of understanding the people of the eighteenth century if you read Fielding's 'Tom Jones' than there is if you read Lecky's 'England in the Eighteenth Century.'"

"Is there?" said Rachel.

"Of course, there is," Gilbert hurled at her from the other side of the table. "Fielding was an artist, inspired by God, but Lecky was simply a fact-pedlar, inspired by the Board of Education. Why even that dull ass, Richardson, makes you understand more about his period than Lecky does!"

"Perhaps," said Rachel, in a tone which indicated that there was no doubt in her mind about the relative values of Lecky and Fielding. She turned to Henry. "I wish you'd write a book about the factory system," she said. "That would be worth doing!"

He disliked the suggestion that "Broken Spears" and "Drusilla" had not been worth doing, and he let his resentment of her attitude towards his work affect the tone of his voice as he answered, "I don't know anything about factories!"

"You should learn about them," she retorted.

No, he did not like this woman, aggressive and assertive. He turned to speak to Mary ... but Rachel Wynne had not finished with him.

"I've spent six months in the north of England," she said, reaching for the salted almonds. "I've seen every kind of factory, model and otherwise!"

"Oh, yes," he answered, vaguely irritated by her. He wished that she would talk to her other neighbour and leave him in peace with Mary. As an Improved Tory, he knew that he ought to get all the information about factories out of her that he could, but as Henry Quinn, he had no other desire than to be quit of her as quickly as possible.

"And I think the model factories are no better than the rotten ones," she went on.

"What's that you say?" Roger called to her from the other side of the table.

She repeated her remark. "I went over a model factory last week ... a cocoa and chocolate works ... and I'd rather be a tramp than work in it," she went on.

"But isn't it rather wonderfully organised?" Roger asked.

"Oh, yes, it's marvellously arranged. There are baths and gymnasia and continuation classes and free medical inspection and model houses and savings banks and all the rest of it ... but I'd rather be a tramp, I tell you.... You see, even with the best of employers, genuinely philanthropic people eager to deal justly with the workers who make their fortunes for them, the factory system remains a rotten one. You can't make a decent, human thing out of it because it's fundamentally vile!..."

"My dear Rachel!..." Roger began, but she would not listen to interruptions.

"They look just as pale and 'peeked' in model factories as they do in bad ones. They're cleaner, that's all. The firm sees that they wash, but it can't prevent them from becoming ill, and they're all ill. They don't look any better than the people in the bad factories. They look worse, because they're cleaner and you can see their illness more easily. But that isn't all. They have no hope of ever controlling the firm ... they'll never be allowed to own the factory ... that will always belong to the Family. The best that the clever ones can look forward to is a little managership. Most of them can't look forward to anything but being drilled and washed and medically inspected and modelly housed and morally controlled.... Oh, it isn't worth it, it isn't worth it. I'd rather be a dirty, insanitary tramp!"

A kind of moral fury possessed her, and they sat still, listening to her without interrupting her.

"I saw three girls at a machine," she went on, "and one of them did some little thing to a chocolate box and then passed it on to the second girl who did a further little thing to it and then passed it to the third girl who did another little thing to it, and then it was finished, and that was all. They do that every day, and the man who took me round told me that the firm had to catch 'em young, otherwise they can't acquire the knack of it. I saw girls putting pieces of chocolate into tinfoil so quickly that you could hardly see their movements; and they do that all day. And they have to be caught young ... before they've properly tasted life. They wouldn't do it otherwise, I suppose. That's your factory system for you! And think of the things they produce. Chocolate boxes full of sweets! There was one girl who spent the whole of her working days in pasting photographs of grinning chorus girls on to box-lids. I should go mad if I had to look at that soppy grin all day long...."

Mrs. Graham murmured gently, but her words were not audible. Rachel would not have heard them if they had been.

"Well," said Gilbert, "what do you want to do about it?"

"I'm a reactionary," Rachel answered. "I'm against all this ... this progress. We're simply eating up people's lives, and paying meanly for them. I'd destroy all these factories ... the whole lot. They aren't worth the price. And I'd go back to decent piggery. What is the good of a plate when it means that some girl has been poisoned so that it can be bought cheaply?"

"But we must have plates?" Henry said.

"Why?" she retorted.

"Well!" he rejoined, smiling at her as one smiles at a foolish child.

"Oh, I know," she went on, "you think I'm talking wildly. I've heard all about your Improved Toryism. Roger's told me about it. You all think that you are the anointed ones, and that the bulk of people are born to do what they're told. You won't have whips for your slaves ... you'll have statutes. You won't sell them ... you'll socialise them. Cogs in wheels, you'll make them! Oh, it isn't worth while living like that. You don't even let a man do a whole job ... you only let him do a part of one, and you're trying to turn him into an automaton more and more every day. He's to press a button ... and that's all. Presently, he'll be a button!..."

"My dear Rachel," Roger said, "you don't imagine, do you, that the whole world's going to turn back to ... piggery as you call it? We've spent centuries in creating this civilisation...."

"Is it worth while?" she demanded.

"Yes...."

"Prove it," she insisted.

"Well, of course, that's a job, isn't it? I can't prove it in a few minutes...."

"You can't prove it, Roger," she interrupted. "If all this civilisation were worth while, you wouldn't need to prove it: it would be obvious. We'd only have to look out of the door to see the proof."

"I don't say that the factory system is satisfactory at present. It isn't; but it can be improved...."

"No, it can't, Roger. It's unimprovable. I dare you to go to any model factory in England and study it with an honest mind and then say that it is worth while. It makes the people ill ... they get no pleasure out of their work...."

"We could shorten the hours in factories," Henry suggested.

"If you do that, you admit that the thing is rotten, and can only be endured in short shifts!" she retorted. "And who wants his hours reduced? A healthy man wants to work as long as he can stand up. I don't want my hours reduced. I'll go on working until I drop ... but I wouldn't work for two seconds if I didn't like the job!" She turned again to Henry. "Why don't you write a book exposing the factory system. It would be much more useful than all this lovey-dovey stuff. I'd give the world for a book like that ... as good as Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' or 'Dickens's 'Oliver Twist'!..."

3

Mary had not spoken at all while Rachel harangued them on the question of the factory system, but that was not surprising, for Rachel had not given any of them a chance to say more than two or three words. In Ninian's sitting-room, when Gilbert turned to her and asked her what she thought of factories, she blushed a little, conscious that they had all turned to look at her, and answered that she had never seen a factory.

"Never seen a factory!" Rachel exclaimed, and was off again in denunciation.

Henry went and sat beside Mary while Rachel told tales of sweaters that caused Mrs. Graham to cry out with pain.

"Mary!" he said to her under his breath.

"Yes, Quinny," she answered, turning towards him and speaking as softly as he had spoken.

He fumbled for words. "It's ... it's awfully nice to see you again," he said.

"It's nice to see you all again," she replied.

"You're ... you're so different," he went on.

"Am I?" She paused a moment, and then, smiling at him, said, "So are you."

"Am I very different?" he asked.

"In some ways. You're quite famous now, aren't you?"

"Famous?" he said vaguely.

"Yes. Your novels...."

He laughed. "Oh, dear no, not anything like famous!"

"Well-known, then."

"Moderately well-known. That's all. But what's the point?"

"Well, that's the point," she replied. "You were only 'Quinny' before, but now you're the moderately well-known novelist, and I'm afraid of you...."

"Don't be absurd, Mary!"

"But I am, Quinny. I read a review of one of your books in some paper, and it called you a very wise person, and said you knew a great deal about human nature or something of that sort. Well, one feels rather awful in the presence of a person like that. At least, I do!"

He felt that she was chaffing him, and he did not want to be chaffed by her. He liked the "Quinny" and "Mary" attitude, and he wished that she would forget that he had written "wise" books.

"You're making fun of me," he said.

"Oh, no, I'm not," she answered quickly. "I'm quite serious!"

He did not answer for a few moments. He could hear Rachel's passionate voice saying, "They get seven shillings a week ... in theory. There are fines ..." and he wondered why it was that she repelled him. Her sincerity was palpable ... it was clear that she was hurt by the miseries of factory girls ... but in spite of her sincerity, he felt that he could not bear to be near her. "If she'd only talk of something else," he thought ... and then returned to Mary.

"Do you remember that time at Boveyhayne?" he said.

"Which time?" she asked.

"The first time."

"Yes."

He swallowed and then went on. "Do you remember what I said to you ... on the platform at Whitcombe?"

She spoke more quickly and loudly as she answered him. "Oh, yes," she said, "we got engaged, didn't we? We were kids!..."

Mrs. Graham caught the word "engaged."

"Who's engaged?" she asked.

"No one, mother," Mary answered. "Quinny and I were talking about the time when we were engaged!..."

He felt a frightful fool. What on earth had possessed her that she should treat the matter in this fashion?

"Were you engaged, dear?" Mrs. Graham said.

"Oh, yes, mother. Don't you remember? Of course, we were kids then!..."

Why did she insist on the fact that they were "kids" then?

"I remember it," Ninian interjected. "Old Quinny was frightfully sloppy over it. Oh, I say, I met Tom Arthurs to-day. He's going to Southampton to-morrow. The Gigantic's starting on her maiden trip, and he's going over with her. I wish to goodness I could go too!"

"Why don't you?" Mrs. Graham said. It seemed to her too that if Ninian wished to do anything that was sufficient reason why he should be allowed to do it.

"I can't get away," he answered. "We're busier than we've ever been. But I'm going to Southampton to see the Gigantic start. The biggest boat in the world! My goodness! Tom's awfully excited about it. You'd think the Gigantic was his son!..."

Henry thanked heaven that at last the conversation had veered from factories and his engagement to Mary. He tried to fasten it to the Gigantic.

"What are you so busy about that you can't go with Tom?" he asked.

"Oh, heaps of things! Old Hare's keen on building a Channel Tunnel, and he's spent a good deal of time working the thing out!"

Mrs. Graham had always imagined that the proposal to build a Tunnel between France and England was a joke, and she said so.

"Good heavens, mother!" Ninian exclaimed. "Old Hare isn't a joke. The thing's as practicable as the Tuppenny Tube. People have been experimenting for half-a-century with it. Joke, indeed! They've made seven thousand soundings in forty years!..."

"Really!" said Mrs. Graham.

"And borings, too ... lots of them ... in the bed of the Channel. They've started a Tunnel, two thousand yards of it from Dover, under the sea, and there isn't a flaw in it. Hardly any water comes through, although there isn't a lining to the walls ... just the bare, grey chalk. I was awfully sick when I was told I couldn't go to Harland and Wolff's, but I don't mind now. Building a Channel Tunnel is as big a job as building the Gigantic any day, and Hare is as brainy as Tom Arthurs!"

He became oratorical about the Channel Tunnel, and he told them stories of remarkable borings on both sides of the sea.

"There's a big thick bed of grey chalk all the way from England to France," he said, "and the water simply can't get through it. They've made experimental tubes from our side and from the French side, and they let people into them, and it was all right. No mud, no water, no foul air ... perfectly sound!"

He quoted Sartiaux, the French engineer, and Sir Francis Fox, the English engineer. "They don't fool about with wildcat schemes, I can tell you. Why, Fox built the Mersey Tunnel and the Simplon Tunnel ... and the Channel Tunnel is as easy as that!"

There were to be two tubes, each capable of carrying the ordinary British railway, bored through a bed of cenomian chalk, two hundred feet thick on an average.

"We could have an extra tunnel for motor-cars, if necessary!" said Ninian. "Just think of the difference there'd be if we had the Tunnel. You could buzz from London to Paris in five or six hours without changing, and you'd never get seasick!..."

"That would be nice," said Mrs. Graham.

"And you'd be safer in the Tunnel than you'd be on the Channel. There'd be a hundred and fifty feet of watertight chalk between you and the sea!"

They argued about the Tunnel. How long would it take to construct? "Oh, six or seven years!" Ninian answered airily. "What about War? Supposing England and France went to War with each other?"

"We could flood a long section of the Tunnel from our side, and they couldn't pump the water out from theirs," he answered. "Of course, I don't know much about it, but when you get chaps like Hare and Sartiaux and Fox talking seriously about it, you listen seriously to them. Anyhow, I do. Old Hare told me yesterday I was getting on nicely!..."

Mrs. Graham was delighted. "Did he, dear?" she burbled at Ninian.

"Yes," Ninian answered, "he said I wasn't such an ass as he'd thought I was. Oh, I'm getting on all right!"

4

Henry sat back in his chair while they talked, and let his mind fill with thoughts of Mary. She was listening to Ninian, not as if she understood all that he was saying, but as if she were proud of him, and while he watched her, he felt his old affection for her surging up in his heart. He had described a young, fresh girl in "Drusilla," and he had fallen in love with his description. Now, looking at Mary, he realised that unconsciously he had drawn her portrait. "I must have been in love with her all the time," he thought, "even when I was running after Sheila Morgan!"

He looked at her so steadily that she felt his gaze, and she turned to look at him. She smiled at him as she did so, and he smiled back at her.

"Isn't it interesting to hear about the Tunnel?" she said.

"Eh?... Oh, yes! Yes. Awfully interesting...."

5

"You know," said Roger when Mrs. Graham and Mary and Rachel had gone, "we really haven't talked enough about this factory system. Rachel's wild about it, of course ... she's a girl ... but she's got more sense on her side than we have on ours. It really isn't any good ignoring it. It's too big to be overlooked. I think we ought to have a course of talks about the whole thing. We could get people to come and tell us all they know. Rachel's got a lot of information. We could pick it out of her. And then there's that woman ... what's her name ... Mc something ... who knows all about factories ... Mc Mc Mc ..."

"Mary McArthur," said Gilbert.

"Yes. That's her name. I wonder if she'd come and dine with us. You know, we haven't had any women. That's an oversight, isn't it?" He walked towards the door as he spoke. "I'm going to bed now," he said. "I've got a county court case in the morning at Croydon, and I shall have to get up early. Good-night!"

"Good-night, Roger!" they murmured sleepily.

"Oh, by the way," he added, "Rachel and I are engaged. I thought I'd tell you!"

He shut the door behind him.

6

They sat up, gaping at the closed door.

"What'd he say?" said Ninian.

"He says he's engaged to that blooming orator!" Gilbert answered.

"But, damn it, why?" said Ninian.

"And we've got the lease of this house for another two years!" Henry exclaimed. "I suppose he'll want to get married and ... all that!"

They were silent for a while, contemplating this strange disruption of their affairs.

"Of course, people do get engaged!" said Ninian, and then he relapsed into silence.

"I've been in love myself," Gilbert said, "but ... this is excessive. We ought to do something. Can't we get up a memorial or something?..."

Ninian sat upright, pointing a finger at them. "You know, chaps," he exclaimed, "Roger's ashamed of himself. He didn't tell us 'til he'd got to the door, and then he damn well hooked it!"

"He's been trapped," Gilbert said. "Females are always trapping chaps!..."

"We ought to save him from himself!" Ninian stood up as he spoke.

"But supposing he doesn't want to be saved?" Henry asked.

"We'll save him all the same," Ninian answered.

"Let's go on a deputation to him," Gilbert suggested. "We will put it reasonably to him. Well tell him that he mustn't do this thing.... Oh, Lord, coves, it's no good. This house is doomed. A female has done it!"

"If it had been you, Gilbert, or Quinny," said Ninian, "I'd have thought it was natural. You're that sort! But old Roger ... well, there's no doubt about it, God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. Let's go to bed. I'm fed-up with everything!"

7

Henry switched off the light and got into bed. He shut his eyes and tried to sleep, but sleep would not come to him. He lay blinking at the ceiling for a while, and then he got up and went into his sitting-room and got out his manuscript and began to write. He wrote steadily for half-an-hour, and then he put down his pen and read over what he had written.

"No," he said, crumpling the paper and throwing it into the wastepaper basket, "that won't do!"

He walked about the room for a few minutes, and then he went back to bed, and lay there with his hands clasped about his head.

"I don't see why I shouldn't get married myself," he said, and then he went to sleep.



THE SEVENTH CHAPTER

1

In the morning, Ninian and Roger rose early, for Ninian was going to Southampton to see the Gigantic start on her maiden voyage to America, and Roger had a case at a county court outside London. In a vague way, Ninian had intended to talk to Roger about his engagement, to reason with him, as he put it. Gilbert had pointed out that the chief employment of women is to disrupt the friendships of men. "Men," he had said to Ninian and Henry after Roger had gone to bed, "take years to make up a friendship, and then a female comes along and busts it up in a couple of weeks!" Ninian did not intend to let Miss Rachel Wynne break up their friendship, and he planned a long, comprehensive and settling conversation with Roger on the subject of females generally and of Rachel Wynne particularly. In bed, he had invented an extraordinarily convincing argument, before which Roger must collapse, but by the time he had finished shaving, the argument had vanished from his mind, and his convincing speech shrivelled into a halting, "I say, Roger, old chap, it's a bit thick, you know!" and even that ceased to exist when he saw Roger, with the Times propped against the sugar bowl, eating bacon and eggs as easily as if he had never betrothed himself to any woman.

"Hilloa, Roger!" said Ninian, sitting down at the table, and reaching for the toast.

"Hilloa, Ninian!" Roger murmured, without looking up.

Magnolia entered with Ninian's breakfast and placed it before him.

"Anything in the Times?" Ninian said, pouring out coffee.

"Usual stuff. The bacon's salt!..."

The time, Ninian thought, was hardly suitable for a few home-thrusting words on the subject of marriage, so he reminded Roger that he was going to Southampton.

"Tom Arthurs has promised to show me over as much of the Gigantic as we can manage in a couple of hours. That won't be as much as I'd like to see, but I'll try and go over her when she comes back from New York. Any mustard about?"

"You'll be back again to-night, I suppose?"

"Probably. You're right ... this bacon is salt, damn it!"

Roger rose from the table and moved to the window where he stood for a while looking out on the garden. It seemed to Ninian that in a moment or two he would speak of his engagement, and so he sat still, waiting for him to begin.

"Well," said Roger, turning away from the window and feeling for his watch, "I must be off. So long, Ninian!"

He went out of the room quickly and in a little while, Ninian heard the street door banging behind him.

"Damn," he said to himself, "I've just remembered what I was going to say to him!"

He had finished his breakfast and left the house before Gilbert and Henry came down from their rooms. Henry was too tired to talk much, and Gilbert, finding him uncommunicative, made no effort to make conversation. He picked up the Times and contented himself with the morning's news, while Henry read a letter from John Marsh which had come by the first post.

"I'm interested in your Improved Tories," he wrote, "I think the scheme is excellent. You sharpen your wits on other people's, and you keep in touch with all kinds of opinions. That's excellent! Your father, and you, too, used to say we were rather one-eyed in Dublin, and I think there's a good deal of truth in that, so I'm trying to get a group of people in Dublin to form a society somewhat similar to your Improved Tories. Did you ever meet a man called Arthur Griffiths when you were here? He is a very able, but not very sociable, man, and so people do not know him as well as they ought to ... and his tongue is like a flail ... so that most of the people who do know him, don't like him. The Nationalist M. P.'s detest him. Well, several years ago he founded a society which he called the Sinn Fein Movement, and the principle of the thing is excellent up to a point. Do you remember any of your Gaelic? Sinn Fein means 'we ourselves,' and that is the principle of the society. The object is to induce Irishmen to do for themselves, things that are done for them by Englishmen. It ought to appeal to your father. Griffiths got the idea, I think, from Hungary. We're to withdraw our representatives from the English parliament and start an Irish Government on the basis of a Grand Council of the County Councils. We're to have our own consular service, our own National Bank and Stock Exchange and Civil Service, and a mercantile marine so that we can trade direct with other countries. And we're to nationalise the railways and canals and bogs (which are to be reclaimed) and take over insurance and education and so forth. All this is to be done by the General Council of the County Councils in opposition to anything of the sort that is done by the English Government in preparation for the day when there is an Irish Government when, of course, the General Council will be merged in the Government. Oh, and we're to have Protection, too! It seems rather a lot, doesn't it? but the idea is excellent and, if modified considerably, fairly practical. Griffiths has antiquated notions of economics, however, and some of the things he says prevent me from joining him. His great idea is to attract capital to Ireland by telling capitalists how cheap Irish labour is. That seems to me to be an abominable proposal, likely to lead to something worse than Wigan and all those miserable English towns your father dislikes so heartily. And probably, of all his proposals, it is the most likely to succeed. That's why I'm opposed to him at present. I cannot bear the thought of seeing England duplicated in Ireland. But the scheme has merit, and Galway and I are plotting to capture the movement from Griffiths. We think that if we could graft the Sinn Fein on to the Gaelic League, we'd be on the way to establishing Irish independence. Our people are becoming very materialistic, and we must quicken their spirits again somehow. Douglas Hyde is the trouble, of course. He wants to keep the Gaelic League clear of politics. As if you can possibly keep politics out of anything in Ireland! We want to make every Gaelic Leaguer a conscious rebel against English beliefs and English habits. I wish you'd come over and join us. It'll be very hard, but exhilarating, work. You've no notion of how sordid and money-grubbing and English the mass of our people are becoming. It's a man's job to destroy that spirit and revive the old, careless, generous, God-loving Irish one...."

"Still harping on that old nationality," Henry thought to himself, when he had finished reading the letter.

He was in no mood for thoughts on Ireland. His mind was still full of the idea that had come into his head the previous night. Why should he not get married? The idea attracted and repelled him. It would, he thought, be very pleasant to live with ... with Mary, say ... to love her and be loved by her ... very pleasant ... but one would have to accept responsibilities, and there would probably be children. He would dislike having to leave Ninian and Roger and Gilbert, particularly Gilbert, and his share in the meetings of the Improved Tories would begin to dwindle. On the other hand, there would be Mary ... If he were to lose his friends and the careless, cultured life they led in the Bloomsbury house, he would gain Mary, and perhaps she would more than compensate for them....

Gilbert interrupted his thoughts.

"Rum go, this about Roger, isn't it?" he said.

Henry nodded his head. "I hadn't any idea of it," he replied. "I'd never even heard of her until he said she was coming to dinner!"

"I had," Gilbert said, "but I didn't think he was going to let the life force catch hold of him. Close chap, Roger! He never gives himself away ... and that's the sort that's most romantic. You and I are obviously sloppy, Quinny, but somehow we miss all the messes that reticent, close chaps like Roger fall into. You don't much like her, do you?"

"Well, I'm not what you might call smitten by her, but that's because she seems to think I'm wasting time in writing novels. She's too strenuous for me. I like women who relax sometimes. She'll orate to him every night, just as she orated to us, about people's wrongs...."

"Mind, she's clever!" said Gilbert.

"Oh, I don't deny that. That's part of my case against her. Really and truly, Gilbert, do you like clever women?"

"Really and truly, Quinny, I don't. Perhaps that's not the way to put it. I like talking to clever women, but I shouldn't like to marry one of them. I'm clever myself, and perhaps that's why. There isn't room for more than one clever person in a family, and I think a clever man should marry an intelligently stupid woman, and vice versa. You can argue with clever women, but you can't kiss them or flirt with them. All the clever ones I've ever known have had something hard in them ... like a lump of steel. Men aren't like that! They can be hard, of course, but they aren't always exhibiting their hardness. Clever women are."

Henry tossed Marsh's letter across the table to Gilbert.

"Read that," he said, "while I look through the Times!"

They both rose from the table, and sat for a while in the armchairs on either side of the fireplace.

"You know, Quinny," said Gilbert, as he took Marsh's letter out of its envelope, "I often think we're awfully young, all of us!"

"Young?"

"Yes. Immature ... and all that. We're frightfully clever, of course, but really we don't know much, and yet you're writing books and I'm writing plays and Ninian's building Tunnels and Roger's playing ducks and drakes with the law ... and not one of us is thirty yet. Lord, I wish Roger hadn't got engaged. That sort of thing makes a man think!"

He read Marsh's letter and then passed it back to Henry.

"Seems all right," he said. "It's a pity those Irish fellows haven't got a wider outlook. Sitting there fussing over their mouldy island when there's the whole world to fuss over! I must be off soon. There's a rehearsal of my play this morning...."

"I say, Gilbert," Henry interrupted, "do you think I ought to go and join this Irish Renascence business?"

"How can I tell? It probably won't amount to much. I should take an intelligent interest in it, if I were you. Perhaps you can induce Marsh to come over and talk to the Improved Tories about it. What are you doing this morning?"

"Oh, working!"

"Well, so long!"

"So long, Gilbert. You'll be back to lunch, I suppose?"

"I don't think so. The rehearsals are very long now. You see, the play's to be done on Wednesday...."

2

When Gilbert had gone, Henry, having glanced through the Times, went up to his room and began to write, but he did not continue at his manuscript for very long. The words would not roll lightly off his pen: they fell off and lay inertly about the paper. He was accustomed now to periods during which his mind seemed to have lost its power to operate, and he was not alarmed by them. He knew that it was useless to attempt to do any work that morning, so he left his room and, telling Mrs. Clutters that he would not return to lunch, went out of the house and wandered about the streets for a while without any purpose. It was not until he saw the sign on a passing motor-'bus that he decided on what he should do. "Hyde Park Corner" was on the sign, and he called to the conductor and presently mounted to the roof of the 'bus and was driven towards the Park.

"I wonder," he thought to himself, "whether I shall see Lady Cecily to-day!"

Lady Cecily had curiously disappeared from their lives. Gilbert, absorbed in the production of his play, had not spoken of her again, nor had he made any mention of his proposal to leave London and go to Anglesey. He had resigned from the staff of the Daily Echo, and, since he no longer attended first-nights at the theatre, he had not seen Lady Cecily since the night on which "The Ideal Husband" was revived. Henry had said to himself on several occasions that he would go and see Lady Cecily, but he had not done so. He did not care to go alone, and he cared less to ask Gilbert to go with him ... but to-day, as suddenly as she had quitted his thoughts, Lady Cecily came into them again, and, as he sat on top of the omnibus, he hoped that he would see her in the Park. "If not," he said to himself, "I'll call on her this afternoon!"

He descended from the 'bus at Hyde Park Corner and hastily entered the Park. He crossed to the Achilles monument and debated with himself as to whether he should sit down or walk about, and decided to sit down. If Lady Cecily were in the Park, he told himself, she would pass his chair some time during the morning. He chose a seat near the railings and sat down and waited. There was a continual flow of carriages and cars, but none of them contained Lady Cecily, and when he had been sitting for almost an hour, he told himself that he was not likely to see her that morning. He rose, as he said this to himself, and turned to walk across the grass towards Rotten Bow, and as he turned, he saw Jimphy. He was not anxious to meet Jimphy again, and he pretended not to see him, but Jimphy came up to him, smiling affably, and said "Hilloa, Quinn, old chap!" so he had to be as amiable as he could in response to the greeting.

Jimphy wanted to know why it was that he and Henry had not met again since the night that "Cecily let a chap in for a damn play," and reminded him of their engagement to visit the Empire together. "Anyhow," he said, "you can come and lunch with us. Cecily'll be glad to see you. I said I'd come home to lunch if I could find some one worth bringing with me, so that's all right!"

"How is Lady Cecily?" Henry asked, as he and Jimphy left the Park together.

"Oh, I expect she's all right," Jimphy answered. "I forgot to ask this morning, but if she'd been seedy or anything she'd have told me about it, so I suppose she's all right!"

"When's this play of Farlow's coming on?" Jimphy asked on the doorstep of his house.

"Wednesday," Henry answered.

"Cecily's made me promise to go and see it with her. What sort of a piece is it?"

They entered the house as he spoke.

"It's excellent...."

"Is it comic?"

"Well, I suppose it is. He calls it a comedy," Henry said.

"So long as there's a laugh in it, I don't mind going to see it. I can't stand these weepy bits. 'Hamlet' and that sort of stuff. Enough to give a chap the pip! Oh, here's Cecily!"

Henry turned to look up the stairs down which Lady Cecily was coming, and then he went forward to greet her.

"How nice of you," she said. "Has Gilbert come, too?"

"No," he answered, chilled by her question. "He has a rehearsal this morning!"

"Oh, yes, of course," she said. "His play! I forgot. We're going to see it on Wednesday. I hope it's good!"

"It's very good," Henry replied.

3

Jimphy left them after lunch. He was awfully sorry, old chap, to have to tear himself away and all that, but the fact was he had an appointment ... an important appointment ... and of course a chap had to keep an important appointment....

"We'll forgive you, Jimphy!" Lady Cecily said, and then he went away, begging Henry to remember that they must go to the Empire together one night.

"Well?" said Lady Cecily when her husband had gone, "how are you all getting on?"

She was reclining on a couch, with her feet resting on a cushion, and as she asked her question she pointed to another cushion lying on a chair. He fetched it and put it behind her back.

"Splendidly," he answered. "Is that right?"

She settled herself more comfortably. "Yes, thanks," she said. "I read your novel," she went on.

"Did you like it?"

"Oh, yes. Of course, I liked it. I suppose you're writing another book now!" He nodded his head, and she went on. "I wish I could write books, but of course I can't. Mr. Lensley says I live books. Isn't that nice of him? Do you put real people in your books, or do you make them all up? Do you know, I think I'll have another cigarette!"

He passed the box of cigarettes to her and held it while she made up her mind whether she would smoke an Egyptian or a Turkish. Her delicate fingers moved indecisively from the one brand to the other. "You like Turkish, don't you?" he said, wishing that he could take her slender hand in his and hold it forever.

"Choose one for me," she said, capriciously, lying back and clasping her hands about her head.

He took a cigarette from the box and offered it to her, but she did not hold out her hand to take it, and he understood that he was to place it between her lips. His fingers trembled as he did so, and he turned hurriedly to find the matches.

"Behind you," she said, and he turned and picked them up.

He lit a match and held it to her cigarette, and while he held it, her fingers touched his. She had taken hold of the cigarette to remove it from her lips.... He blew out the light and threw the match into the ash-tray, and then went and sat down in the deep chair in which he had been sitting when she asked him to get the cushion for her.

"Why didn't you call before?" she said, lazily blowing the smoke up into the air.

It was difficult to say why he had not called before, so he answered vaguely. There had been so much to do of late....

"And Gilbert? He doesn't rehearse all day long, does he?"

"No, not all day, but he's pretty tired by the time he gets home."

"Why didn't he come to the Savoy that night?" she asked.

He wished she would not talk about Gilbert. He could not tell her the real reason why Gilbert had not kept his promise to join the supper-party and he was a poor hand at inventing convincing lies.

"There was some trouble at his office, I think," he said, "and he couldn't get away until too late!..."

"He didn't write or come to see me!" she protested.

It was probable that Gilbert forgot his duty in the excitement of hearing that his play was to be produced....

"I suppose so," she said.

She talked to him about his books and about Ireland. She had been to Dublin once and had gone to the Viceregal Lodge ... Lady Dundrum had taken her to some function there ... and she was eager for the tittle-tattle of the Court. Was it true that Lord Kelpie was indifferent to his lady?... Henry knew very little of the Dublin gossip. "I haven't been there since I left Trinity," he said, in explanation, "and the only people who write to me don't take any interest in Court functions!"

He rose to go, but she asked him to stay to tea with her, and so he remained.

"I don't suppose any one will call," she said, "but in case ..."

She told a servant that she was "not at home" to any one, and Henry, wondering why she had done so, felt vaguely flattered and as vaguely nervous. Her beauty filled him with desire and apprehension and left him half eager, half afraid to be alone with her. He understood Gilbert's fear that if he yielded to Cecily, she would destroy him. There was something in this woman that overpowered the senses, that made a man as will-less as a log, and left him in the end, spent, exhausted, incapable. He saw the danger that had frightened Gilbert, but he could not make up his mind to run away from it. There was something so exquisitely sensual in her look as she lay on the couch, looking at him and chattering in the Lensley style, that he felt inclined to yield himself to her, even if in yielding he should lose everything.

"Of course," he said to himself, "this is all imagination. She doesn't want me at all ... she wants Gilbert!"

She asked for another cigarette, and he took one and placed it in her lips and lit it for her, and again his fingers touched hers, and again he trembled with unaccountable emotion. As he bent over her, holding the match to the cigarette, he felt the blood rushing to his head and for a moment or two his eyes were blurred and he could not see clearly. Then his eyes cleared and he saw that she was looking steadily at him, and he knew that she understood what was passing in his mind. He dropped the match on to the ash-tray and bent a little nearer to her. He would take her in his arms, he said to himself, and hold her tightly to him....

"Won't you sit down," she said, pointing to his chair.

He straightened himself, but did not move away. His eyes were still intent on hers, as if he could not avoid her gaze, and for a while neither of them spoke or moved. Then she smiled at him.

"You're a funny boy," she said. "Won't you sit down!" and again she pointed to the chair.

His answer was so low that he could hardly hear himself speak, and at first he thought she had not heard him. "I'd better go," he said.

"Not yet," she answered. "You needn't go yet!"

"I'd better...."

She put out her hand and made him sit down.

"There's no hurry," she said.

He leant back in his chair, resting his elbows on the arms of it and folding his fingers under his chin.

"You look frightened," she said.

"I am," he answered.

"Of me?" He nodded his head, and she laughed. "How absurd!" she said. "I'm not a bit terrifying...."

He was not trembling now. He felt quite calm, as if he had resigned himself to what must be.

"No, I ... I know you're not," he said, "only ..."

"Only what?"

"I don't know!"

She put her cigarette down and turned slightly towards him.

"Funny boy!" she said. "Funny Irish boy!"

He smiled foolishly at her, but did not answer. He knew that if he spoke at all, he would say wild things that could not be withdrawn or explained away.

"Funny scared Irish boy!" she said, and he could see the mockery in her eyes. "Such a frightened Irish boy!..."

He could hold out no longer. She had put her hand out towards him ... why he could not tell ... and impulsively he seized it and clasped it tightly in his. His grasp must have hurt her, for she cried a little and tried to withdraw her hand, but he would not let go his hold of it until, kneeling beside her, he had put his arms about her and kissed her.

"I love you," he said. "You know I love you...."

"Don't!"

"I loved you the minute I set eyes on you, and I wanted to meet you again ... and then I was jealous of Gilbert because you took so much notice of him and so little of me, and ... I love you, I love you!"

She thrust him from her. "You're hurting me," she said, and she panted as she spoke.

"I want to hurt you," he answered.

"But you mustn't...."

He did not let her finish her sentence. He pressed his lips hard on hers until his strength seemed to pass away from him. He felt in some strange way that her eyes were closed and that she was moaning....

He put his arms about her again, and drew her head gently on to his breast. "My dear," he said softly, bending over her and kissing her hair.

She lay very still in his arms, so still that he thought she had fallen asleep. Her long lashes trembled a little, and then she opened her eyes, sighing contentedly as she did so. He smiled down at her, and she smiled in response. Then she put her hand up and stroked his cheek and ruffled his hair.

"Funny Irish boy!" she said again.

4

He climbed on to a 'bus which bore him eastwards. It was impossible, in his state of exaltation, to go home and eat in the company of the others. Ninian would probably be back from Southampton, unbalanced with admiration for Tom Arthurs and the Gigantic, and then Gilbert would tell him how Sir Geoffrey Mundane had behaved during the rehearsal and how exasperating Mrs. Michael Gordon, the leading lady, had been. "She's brilliant, of course," he had said about her once, "but if I were her husband I'd beat her!" He could not endure the thought of spending the evening in the customary company of his friends. They would want to talk, they would draw him into the conversation, and he neither wished to talk nor to listen. His desire was only to remember, to go over again in his mind that long, passionate afternoon with Cecily.... So he had telephoned to Mrs. Clutters telling her that he would not be in to dinner, and then, climbing on to a 'bus, had allowed himself to be carried eastwards, not knowing or caring whither he was being carried.

He paid no heed to the other passengers on the 'bus, nor did he interest himself in the traffic of the streets. When the conductor came, demanding fares, he asked for a ticket to the terminus, but did not bother to ask where the terminus was. His mind was full of golden hair and warm, moist lips and soft, disturbing perfume and the touch of a shapely hand. Cecily had insisted on calling him "Paddy" because he was Irish and because so many Englishmen are called "Henry," and when he had left her, she had offered her lips to him and, when he had kissed her, had told him she would see him again soon. "When Gilbert's play is done," she said, and added, "Tell Gilbert I shall expect him to come and talk to me after the first act!"

He had been jealous when she said that. "You don't really care for me," he had said. "You really love Gilbert!"

"Of course I love Gilbert," she had answered, laughing at him and patting his cheek, "but I love you, too. I love lots of people! ..."

Then, ashamed of himself, he had left her. It was caddish of him to speak of Gilbert to her, for Gilbert was his friend and her lover. If one were to try and take a friend's mistress from him, one should at least be silent about it. But how could he help these outbursts of jealousy! He cared for Gilbert far more than he cared for any man ... but he could not prevent himself from raging at the thought that Gilbert had but to hold out his arms and Cecily would run to be clasped in them. "I'm a makeshift," he said to himself. "That's all!"

But even if he were only a makeshift, that was better than being shut away from her love altogether. "I daresay," he thought, "she's as fond of me as she is of any one!" and he wondered whether she really loved Gilbert. It was difficult for him to believe that she could yield so easily to him and love Gilbert deeply, and he soothed his conscience by telling himself that Cecily was one of those women who are in love with love, ready to accept kisses from any ardent youth who offers them to her. He remembered his contribution to the discussion on women and the way in which he had insisted on infinite variety of experiences. Cecily was, as a woman, what he had wished to be as a man. We had to recognise the differences of nature, he had said, but somehow he did not greatly care to see his principle put into practice by Cecily. There was something very fine and dashing and Byronic and adventurous in a man with a spacious spirit, but after all, women were women, and one did not like to think of adventuring women. He wanted to have Cecily to himself ... he did not wish to share her with Gilbert or with Jimphy or with any one, and it hardly seemed decent that Cecily should wish to spread her affections over three men. "And there may be others, too!" All this talk about sex-equality had an equitable sound ... his intellect agreed that if men were to have amorous adventures, then women should have them too; if men were to be unfaithful without reproach, then women should be equally without reproach in their infidelity ... but his instinct cried out against it. He wanted his woman to himself even though he might not keep himself for her alone.

"And that's the beginning and the end of the sex-question," he said. "We simply aren't willing to let women live on our level. In theory, the man who goes to a prostitute is as bad as she is, but in practice, we don't believe it, and women don't believe it either, and nothing will ever make us believe it. And it's the same with lovers and mistresses. It simply doesn't seem decent to a man who keeps a mistress that his wife should have a lover. You can't help having instincts!..."

5

The 'bus drove over London Bridge and presently he found himself in the railway station. It was too early yet to eat, and he made up his mind to go for a walk through Southwark. None of them had ever been in the slums. They had set their minds against suggestions that they should live in Walworth or Whitechapel or Bethnal Green in order that they might get to know something of the lives of the very poor. "That's simply slush," Gilbert had said. "We shouldn't live like them. We'd have four good meals every day and baths every morning, and we'd only feel virtuous and 'smarmy' and do-good-to-the-poor-y. My object is to get rid of slums, not to go and live in the damn things and encourage slum-owners by paying rent regularly. All those Settlement people ... really, they're doing the heroic stunt for their own ends. They'll go into parliament and say they have intimate knowledge of the way in which the poor live because they've lived with them ... and it's all my eye, that stuff!"

The notion had made a faint appeal to Henry, but he had not responded to it because of the way in which the others had sneered at it and because he liked pleasant surroundings. Once, in Dublin, he had wandered out of St. Stephens's Green and found himself in the Combe, and the sights he had witnessed there had sickened him so that he had hurried away, and always thereafter had been careful not to enter side streets with which he was not familiar. Now, he felt that he ought to see a London slum. One had to have a point of view about poor people, and it was difficult to have a point of view about people of whom one was almost totally ignorant.

He walked slowly up the Borough High Street, uncertain of himself and of the district. He would want something to eat presently, and if he were to venture too far into the slums that lay hidden behind St. George's Church and the Elephant, he might have difficulty in finding a place where he could take a meal in comfort. He stood for a few moments outside the window of a shop in which sausages and steaks and onions were being fried. There was a thick, hot, steamy odour coming from the door that filled him with nausea, and he turned to move away, but as he did so, he saw two sickly boys, half naked, standing against the window with their mouths pressed close to the glass. They were eyeing the cooking food so hungrily that he felt pity for them, and he touched one of them on the shoulder and asked him if he would like something to eat. The boy looked at him, but did not answer, and his companion came shuffling to his side and eyed him too.

"Wouldn't you like some of that ... that stuff!" Henry said, pointing to a great slab of thick pudding, padded with currants.

One of the boys nodded his head, and Henry moved towards the door of the shop, bidding them both to follow him.

"Give these youngsters some of that pudding!" he said to the man behind the counter: a fat, flaccid man with a wet, steamy brow which he periodically wiped with a grimy towel.

"'Ere!" said the man, cutting off large pieces of the pudding and passing it across the counter to the boys who took it, without speaking, and began to gnaw at it immediately.

"Wod you say for it, eih?" the man demanded.

They mumbled unintelligibly, their mouths choked with the food.

"Pore little kids, they don't know no better! Nah, then, 'op it, you two! That'll be fourpence, sir!"

Henry paid for the pudding and left the malodorous shop. The children were standing in the shadow outside, one of them eating wolfishly, while the other held the pudding in front of him, gaping at it....

"Don't you like it?" Henry said, bending down to him.

"'E can't eat it, guv'nor!" the other boy said.

"Can't eat it?"

"No, guv'nor, 'e can't. I'll 'ave to eat it for 'im...."

"But why can't you eat?" Henry asked, turning to the boy who still gaped helplessly at the pudding.

The child did not answer. He stared at the pudding, and then he stared at Henry, and as he did so, the pudding fell from his hands, and he became sick....

"'Ere, wod you chuckin' it awy for?" the other boy said, dropping quickly to the ground and picking up the pudding.

"He's ill," Henry said helplessly.

"'E's always ill," the boy answered, stuffing pieces of the recovered pudding into his mouth.

A policeman was standing at the corner, and Henry went to him and told him of the child's plight.

"Sick is 'e?" the constable exclaimed.

"Yes," Henry answered. "He looked hungry, poor little chap, and so I bought him some of the pudding they sell in that shop!"

The policeman looked at him for a few moments. "Well, of course, you meant it kindly, sir!" he said, "but if I was you I wouldn't do that again. If you'll excuse me sayin' it, sir, it was a damn silly thing to do!"

"Why?"

"Why! 'Alf the kids about 'ere is too 'ungry to eat. That kid ought to be in the 'ospital by rights. Don't never give 'em no puddin' or stuff like that, sir. Their stomachs can't stand it. Nah, then," he said to the sick child, "you 'op 'ome, young 'un. You didn't ought to be 'angin' about 'ere, you know, upsettin' the traffic an' mykin' a mess on the pyvement. Gow on! Git aht of it!"

The boys ran off, leaving Henry staring blankly after them. "'E'll be all right, sir!" said the policeman. "It's no good tryin' to do nothink for 'em. They're down, guv'nor, an' that's all about it. I seen a lot of yooman nature down about 'ere, an' you can tyke it from me, them kids is down an' they'll stay down, an' that's all you can say about it. Good-night, sir!"

"Good-night!" said Henry.

He moved away, feeling sick and miserable and angry.

"It's beastly," he said to himself. "That's what it is. Beastly!"

6

His mind was occupied by violent thoughts about the two children whom he had fed with currant pudding, and he did not observe what he was doing or where he was going. He was in a wide, dark street where there were tram-lines, but he could not remember seeing a tramcar pass by. He was tired and although he was not hungry, he was conscious of a missed meal, and he was thirsty. "I'd better turn back," he said to himself, turning as he did so. He wondered where he was, and he resolved that he would ask the first policeman he met to tell him in what part of London he now was and what was the quickest way to get out of it.

"It was silly of me to come here at all," he murmured, and then he turned quickly and stared across the street.

A woman had screamed somewhere near by ... on the other side of the street, he thought ... and as he looked, he saw figures struggling, and then they parted and one of them, a woman, ran away towards a lamppost, holding her hands before her in an appealing fashion, and crying, "Oh, don't! Don't hit me!..." The other figure was that of a man, and as the woman shrank from him, the man advanced towards her with his fist uplifted....

Henry could feel himself shrinking back into the shadow.

"He's going to hit her," he was saying to himself, and he closed his eyes, afraid lest he should see the man's fist smashing into the woman's face. He could hear a foul oath uttered by the man and the woman's scream as she retreated still further from him ... and then, trembling with fright, he ran across the street and thrust himself between them. "Oh, my God, what am I doing?" he moaned to himself as he stood in the glare of the yellow light that fell from the street lamp. He felt rather than saw that the woman had risen from the ground and run away the moment the man's attention was distracted from her, and a shudder of fear ran through him as he realised that he was alone. He could see the man's brutal face and his blazing, drink-inflamed eyes, and in the middle of his fear, he thought how ugly the man's eyebrows were ... one long, black line from eye to eye across the top of his nose. The man, his fist clenched and raised, advanced towards him. "He's going to hit me now," Henry thought. "He'll knock me down and ... and kick me!... These people always kick you!..."

He stood still waiting for the blow, mesmerised by the man's blazing eyes; but the man, though his fist was still clenched, did not strike him. He reeled up to him so closely that Henry was sickened by the smell of his drink-sodden breath. "Fight for a woman, would you?" he shouted at him. "Eih? P'tect a woman, would you?..."

Henry wanted to laugh. The man was repeating phrases from melodramas!...

"Tyke a woman's part, eih? I know you, you bloody toff! You ... you think you're a bloody 'ero, eih, p'tectin' a woman from 'er 'usband!" He pushed Henry aside, almost falling on the pavement as he did so. "I've a goo' mind to break your bloody neck for you, see, bloody toff, interferin' ... 'usband an' wife. See? Thash what I'll do!..."

He came again at Henry, but still he did not strike. He mumbled his melodramatic phrases, swaying in front of Henry, and threatening to break his neck and punch his jaw and give him a thick ear, but he did no more than that, and while he threatened, a crowd gathered out of the shadows, and a woman, with bare arms, touched Henry's arm and drew him away from the drunken man. "You 'op it, mister," she said, "or you'll get 'urt!" She pushed him out of the crowd, slapping a lad in the face who had jostled him and said, "Gawblimey, look at Percy!" and when she had got him away from them, she told him again to 'op it.

"Thank you!..." he began.

"Don't you wyste no time, mister, but 'op it quick," she interrupted, giving him a push forward.

"But I don't know where I am," he replied.

"Dunno w'ere you are!... Well, of course, you look like that! You're in Bermondsey, mister, an' if you tyke my advice you'll go 'ome an' sty 'ome. People like you didden ought to be let out alone! You go 'ome to your mother, sir! The first turnin' on the right'll bring you to the trams...."

He did as she told him, hurrying away from the dark street as quickly as he could. He was trembling. Every nerve in his body seemed to be strained, and his eyes had the tired feel they always had when he was deeply agitated.

"My God," he said, "what an ass I was to do that!"

7

Gilbert and Roger were sitting together when he got home.

"Hilloa, Quinny!" Gilbert exclaimed as he looked at Henry's white face. "What have you been up to?"

He told them of his adventure in Bermondsey.

"You do do some damn funny things, Quinny!" said Gilbert, going to the sideboard and getting out the whisky. "Here, have a drop of this stuff. You look completely pipped!"

"I don't think I should make a habit of knight-errantry, if I were you," said Roger. "Not in slums at all events!"