Martin's lips curled.

"Purple just here," he said.

Thyme's cheeks were crimson.

At the end of the little street he stopped before a shop.

"Come on," he said, "you'll see the sort of place where they buy their grub."

In the doorway were standing a thin brown spaniel, a small fair woman with a high, bald forehead, from which the hair was gleaned into curlpapers, and a little girl with some affection of the skin.

Nodding coolly, Martin motioned them aside. The shop was ten feet square; its counters, running parallel to two of the walls, were covered with plates of cake, sausages, old ham-bones, peppermint sweets, and household soap; there was also bread, margarine, suet in bowls, sugar, bloaters—many bloaters—Captain's biscuits, and other things besides. Two or three dead rabbits hung against the wall. All was uncovered, so that what flies there were sat feeding socialistically. Behind the counter a girl of seventeen was serving a thin-faced woman with portions of a cheese which she was holding down with her strong, dirty hand, while she sawed it with a knife. On the counter, next the cheese, sat a quiet-looking cat.

They all glanced round at the two young people, who stood and waited.

"Finish what you're at," said Martin, "then give me three pennyworth of bull's-eyes."

The girl, with a violent effort, finished severing the cheese. The thin-faced woman took it, and, coughing above it, went away. The girl, who could not take her eyes off Thyme, now served them with three pennyworth of bull's-eyes, which she took out with her fingers, for they had stuck. Putting them in a screw of newspaper, she handed them to Martin. The young man, who had been observing negligently, touched Thyme's elbow. She, who had stood with eyes cast down, now turned. They went out, Martin handing the bull's-eyes to the little girl with an affection of the skin.

The street now ended in a wide road formed of little low houses.

"Black," said Martin, "here; all down this road-casual labour, criminals, loafers, drunkards, consumps. Look at the faces!"

Thyme raised her eyes obediently. In this main thoroughfare it was not as in the by-street, and only dull or sullen glances, or none at all, were bent on her. Some of the houses had ragged plants on the window-sills; in one window a canary was singing. Then, at a bend, they came into a blacker reach of human river. Here were outbuildings, houses with broken windows, houses with windows boarded up, fried-fish shops, low public-houses, houses without doors. There were more men here than women, and those men were wheeling barrows full of rags and bottles, or not even full of rags and bottles; or they were standing by the public-houses gossiping or quarrelling in groups of three or four; or very slowly walking in the gutters, or on the pavements, as though trying to remember if they were alive. Then suddenly some young man with gaunt violence in his face would pass, pushing his barrow desperately, striding fiercely by. And every now and then, from a fried-fish or hardware shop, would come out a man in a dirty apron to take the sun and contemplate the scene, not finding in it, seemingly, anything that in any way depressed his spirit. Amongst the constant, crawling, shifting stream of passengers were seen women carrying food wrapped up in newspaper, or with bundles beneath their shawls. The faces of these women were generally either very red and coarse or of a sort of bluish-white; they wore the expression of such as know themselves to be existing in the way that Providence has arranged they should exist. No surprise, revolt, dismay, or shame was ever to be seen on those faces; in place of these emotions a drab and brutish acquiescence or mechanical coarse jocularity. To pass like this about their business was their occupation each morning of the year; it was needful to accept it. Not having any hope of ever, being different, not being able to imagine any other life, they were not so wasteful of their strength as to attempt either to hope or to imagine. Here and there, too, very slowly passed old men and women, crawling along, like winter bees who, in some strange and evil moment, had forgotten to die in the sunlight of their toil, and, too old to be of use, had been chivied forth from their hive to perish slowly in the cold twilight of their days.

Down the centre of the street Thyme saw a brewer's dray creeping its way due south under the sun. Three horses drew it, with braided tails and beribboned manes, the brass glittering on their harness. High up, like a god, sat the drayman, his little slits of eyes above huge red cheeks fixed immovably on his horses' crests. Behind him, with slow, unceasing crunch, the dray rolled, piled up with hogsheads, whereon the drayman's mate lay sleeping. Like the slumbrous image of some mighty unrelenting Power, it passed, proud that its monstrous bulk contained all the joy and blessing those shadows on the pavement had ever known.

The two young people emerged on to the high road running east and west.

"Cross here," said Martin, "and cut down into Kensington. Nothing more of interest now till we get to Hound Street. Purceys and Purceys all round about this part."

Thyme shook herself.

"O Martin, let's go down a road where there's some air. I feel so dirty." She put her hand up to her chest.

"There's one here," said Martin.

They turned to the left into a road that had many trees. Now that she could breathe and look about her, Thyme once more held her head erect and began to swing her arms.

"Martin, something must be done!"

The young doctor did not reply; his face still wore its pale, sarcastic, observant look. He gave her arm a squeeze with a half-contemptuous smile.



CHAPTER XV

SECOND PILGRIMAGE TO HOUND STREET

Arriving in Hound Street, Martin Stone and his companion went straight up to Mrs. Hughs' front room. They found her doing the week's washing, and hanging out before a scanty fire part of the little that the week had been suffered to soil. Her arms were bare, her face and eyes red; the steam of soapsuds had congealed on them.

Attached to the bolster by a towel, under his father's bayonet and the oleograph depicting the Nativity, sat the baby. In the air there was the scent of him, of walls, and washing, and red herrings. The two young people took their seat on the window-sill.

"May we open the window, Mrs. Hughs?" said Thyme. "Or will it hurt the baby?"

"No, miss."

"What's the matter with your wrists?" asked Martin.

The seamstress, muffing her arms with the garment she was dipping in soapy water, did not answer.

"Don't do that. Let me have a look."

Mrs. Hughs held out her arms; the wrists were swollen and discoloured.

"The brute!" cried Thyme.

The young doctor muttered: "Done last night. Got any arnica?"

"No, Sir."

"Of course not." He laid a sixpence on the sill. "Get some and rub it in. Mind you don't break the skin."

Thyme suddenly burst out: "Why don't you leave him, Mrs. Hughs? Why do you live with a brute like that?"

Martin frowned.

"Any particular row," he said, "or only just the ordinary?"

Mrs. Hughs turned her face to the scanty fire. Her shoulders heaved spasmodically.

Thus passed three minutes, then she again began rubbing the soapy garment.

"If you don't mind, I'll smoke," said Martin. "What's your baby's name? Bill? Here, Bill!" He placed his little finger in the baby's hand. "Feeding him yourself?"

"Yes, sir."

"What's his number?"

"I've lost three, sir; there's only his brother Stanley now."

"One a year?"

"No, Sir. I missed two years in the war, of course."

"Hughs wounded out there?"

"Yes, sir—in the head."

"Ah! And fever?"

"Yes, Sir."

Martin tapped his pipe against his forehead. "Least drop of liquor goes to it, I suppose?"

Mrs. Hughs paused in the dipping of a cloth; her tear-stained face expressed resentment, as though she had detected an attempt to find excuses for her husband.

"He didn't ought to treat me as he does," she said.

All three now stood round the bed, over which the baby presided with solemn gaze.

Thyme said: "I wouldn't care what he did, Mrs. Hughs; I wouldn't stay another day if I were you. It's your duty as a woman."

To hear her duty as a woman Mrs. Hughs turned; slow vindictiveness gathered on her thin face.

"Yes, miss?" she said. "I don't know what to do.

"Take the children and go. What's the good of waiting? We'll give you money if you haven't got enough."

But Mrs. Hughs did not answer.

"Well?" said Martin, blowing out a cloud of smoke.

Thyme burst out again: "Just go, the very minute your little boy comes back from school. Hughs 'll never find you. It 'll serve him right. No woman ought to put up with what you have; it's simply weakness, Mrs. Hughs."

As though that word had forced its way into her very heart and set the blood free suddenly, Mrs. Hughs' face turned the colour of tomatoes. She poured forth words:

"And leave him to that young girl—and leave him to his wickedness! After I've been his wife eight years and borne him five! after I've done what I have for him! I never want no better husband than what he used to be, till she came with her pale face and her prinky manners, and—and her mouth that you can tell she's bad by. Let her keep to her profession—sitting naked's what she's fit for—coming here to decent folk—-" And holding out her wrists to Thyme, who had shrunk back, she cried: "He's never struck me before. I got these all because of her new clothes!"

Hearing his mother speak with such strange passion, the baby howled. Mrs. Hughs stopped, and took him up. Pressing him close to her thin bosom, she looked above his little dingy head at the two young people.

"I got my wrists like this last night, wrestling with him. He swore he'd go and leave me, but I held him, I did. And don't you ever think that I'll let him go to that young girl—not if he kills me first!"

With those words the passion in her face died down. She was again a meek, mute woman.

During this outbreak, Thyme, shrinking, stood by the doorway with lowered eyes. She now looked up at Martin, clearly asking him to come away. The latter had kept his gaze fixed on Mrs. Hughs, smoking silently. He took his pipe out of his mouth, and pointed with it at the baby.

"This gentleman," he said, "can't stand too much of that."

In silence all three bent their eyes on the baby. His little fists, and nose, and forehead, even his little naked, crinkled feet, were thrust with all his feeble strength against his mother's bosom, as though he were striving to creep into some hole away from life. There was a sort of dumb despair in that tiny pushing of his way back to the place whence he had come. His head, covered with dingy down, quivered with his effort to escape. He had been alive so little; that little had sufficed. Martin put his pipe back into his mouth.

"This won't do, you know," he said. "He can't stand it. And look here! If you stop feeding him, I wouldn't give that for him tomorrow!" He held up the circle of his thumb and finger. "You're the best judge of what sort of chance you've got of going on in your present state of mind!" Then, motioning to Thyme, he went down the stairs.



CHAPTER XVI

BENEATH THE ELMS

Spring was in the hearts of men, and their tall companions, trees. Their troubles, the stiflings of each other's growth, and all such things, seemed of little moment. Spring had them by the throat. It turned old men round, and made them stare at women younger than themselves. It made young men and women walking side by side touch each other, and every bird on the branches tune his pipe. Flying sunlight speckled the fluttered leaves, and gushed the cheeks of crippled boys who limped into the Gardens, till their pale Cockney faces shone with a strange glow.

In the Broad Walk, beneath those dangerous trees, the elms, people sat and took the sun—cheek by jowl, generals and nursemaids, parsons and the unemployed. Above, in that Spring wind, the elm-tree boughs were swaying, rustling, creaking ever so gently, carrying on the innumerable talk of trees—their sapient, wordless conversation over the affairs of men. It was pleasant, too, to see and hear the myriad movement of the million little separate leaves, each shaped differently, flighting never twice alike, yet all obedient to the single spirit of their tree.

Thyme and Martin were sitting on a seat beneath the largest of all the elms. Their manner lacked the unconcern and dignity of the moment, when, two hours before, they had started forth on their discovery from the other end of the Broad Walk. Martin spoke:

"It's given you the hump! First sight of blood, and you're like all the rest of them!"

"I'm not, Martin. How perfectly beastly of you!"

"Oh yes, you are. There's plenty of aestheticism about you and your people—plenty of good intentions—but not an ounce of real business!"

"Don't abuse my people; they're just as kind as you!"

"Oh, they're kind enough, and they can see what's wrong. It's not that which stops them. But your dad's a regular official. He's got so much sense of what he ought not to do that he never does anything; Just as Hilary's got so much consciousness of what he ought to do that he never does anything. You went to that woman's this morning with your ideas of helping her all cut and dried, and now that you find the facts aren't what you thought, you're stumped!"

"One can't believe anything they say. That's what I hate. I thought Hughs simply knocked her about. I didn't know it was her jealousy—"

"Of course you didn't. Do you imagine those people give anything away to our sort unless they're forced? They know better."

"Well, I hate the whole thing—it's all so sordid!"

"O Lord!"

"Well, it is! I don't feel that I want to help a woman who can say and feel such horrid things, or the girl, or any of them."

"Who cares what they say or feel? that's not the point. It's simply a case of common sense: Your people put that girl there, and they must get her to clear out again sharp. It's just a question of what's healthy."

"Well, I know it's not healthy for me to have anything to do with, and I won't! I don't believe you can help people unless they want to be helped."

Martin whistled.

"You're rather a brute, I think," said Thyme.

"A brute, not rather a brute. That's all the difference."

"For the worse!"

"I don't think so, Thyme!"

There was no answer.

"Look at me."

Very slowly Thyme turned her eyes.

"Well?"

"Are you one of us, or are you not?"

"Of course I am."

"You're not!"

"I am."

"Well, don't let's fight about it. Give me your hand."

He dropped his hand on hers. Her face had flushed rose colour. Suddenly she freed herself. "Here's Uncle Hilary!"

It was indeed Hilary, with Miranda, trotting in advance. His hands were crossed behind him, his face bent towards the ground. The two young people on the bench sat looking at him.

"Buried in self-contemplation," murmured Martin; "that's the way he always walks. I shall tell him about this!"

The colour of Thyme's face deepened from rose to crimson.

"No!"

"Why not?"

"Well—those new—-" She could not bring out that word "clothes." It would have given her thoughts away.

Hilary seemed making for their seat, but Miranda, aware of Martin, stopped. "A man of action!" she appeared to say. "The one who pulls my ears." And turning, as though unconscious, she endeavoured to lead Hilary away. Her master, however, had already seen his niece. He came and sat down on the bench beside her.

"We wanted you!" said Martin, eyeing him slowly, as a young dog will eye another of a different age and breed. "Thyme and I have been to see the Hughs in Hound Street. Things are blowing up for a mess. You, or whoever put the girl there, ought to get her away again as quick as possible."

Hilary seemed at once to withdraw into himself.

"Well," he said, "let us hear all about it."

"The woman's jealous of her: that's all the trouble!"

"Oh!" said Hilary; "that's all the trouble?"

Thyme murmured: "I don't see a bit why Uncle Hilary should bother. If they will be so horrid—I didn't think the poor were like that. I didn't think they had it in them. I'm sure the girl isn't worth it, or the woman either!"

"I didn't say they were," growled Martin. "It's a question of what's healthy."

Hilary looked from one of his young companions to the other.

"I see," he said. "I thought perhaps the matter was more delicate."

Martin's lip curled.'

"Ah, your precious delicacy! What's the good of that? What did it ever do? It's the curse that you're all suffering from. Why don't you act? You could think about it afterwards."

A flush came into Hilary's sallow cheeks.

"Do you never think before you act, Martin?"

Martin got up and stood looking down on Hilary.

"Look here!" he said; "I don't go in for your subtleties. I use my eyes and nose. I can see that the woman will never be able to go on feeding the baby in the neurotic state she's in. It's a matter of health for both of them."

"Is everything a matter of health with you?"

"It is. Take any subject that you like. Take the poor themselves —what's wanted? Health. Nothing on earth but health! The discoveries and inventions of the last century have knocked the floor out of the old order; we've got to put a new one in, and we're going to put it in, too—the floor of health. The crowd doesn't yet see what it wants, but they're looking for it, and when we show it them they'll catch on fast enough."

"But who are 'you'?" murmured Hilary.

"Who are we? I'll tell you one thing. While all the reformers are pecking at each other we shall quietly come along and swallow up the lot. We've simply grasped this elementary fact, that theories are no basis for reform. We go on the evidence of our eyes and noses; what we see and smell is wrong we correct by practical and scientific means."

"Will you apply that to human nature?"

"It's human nature to want health."

"I wonder! It doesn't look much like it at present."

"Take the case of this woman."

"Yes," said Hilary, "take her case. You can't make this too clear to me, Martin."

"She's no use—poor sort altogether. The man's no use. A man who's been wounded in the head, and isn't a teetotaller, is done for. The girl's no use—regular pleasure-loving type!"

Thyme flushed crimson, and, seeing that flood of colour in his niece's face, Hilary bit his lips.

"The only things worth considering are the children. There's this baby-well, as I said, the important thing is that the mother should be able to look after it properly. Get hold of that, and let the other facts go hang."

"Forgive me, but my difficulty is to isolate this question of the baby's health from all the other circumstances of the case."

Martin grinned.

"And you'll make that an excuse, I'm certain, for doing nothing."

Thyme slipped her hand into Hilary's.

"You are a brute, Martin," she-murmured.

The young man turned on her a look that said: 'It's no use calling me a brute; I'm proud of being one. Besides, you know you don't dislike it.'

"It's better to be a brute than an amateur," he said.

Thyme, pressing close to Hilary, as though he needed her protection, cried out:

"Martin, you really are a Goth!"

Hilary was still smiling, but his face quivered.

"Not at all," he said. "Martin's powers of diagnosis do him credit."

And, raising his hat, he walked away.

The two young people, both on their feet now, looked after him. Martin's face was a queer study of contemptuous compunction; Thyme's was startled, softened, almost tearful.

"It won't do him any harm," muttered the young man. "It'll shake him up."

Thyme flashed a vicious look at him.

"I hate you sometimes," she said. "You're so coarse-grained—your skin's just like leather."

Martin's hand descended on her wrist.

"And yours," he said, "is tissue-paper. You're all the same, you amateurs."

"I'd rather be an amateur than a—than a bounder!"

Martin made a queer movement of his jaw, then smiled. That smile seemed to madden Thyme. She wrenched her wrist away and darted after Hilary.

Martin impassively looked after her. Taking out his pipe, he filled it with tobacco, slowly pressing the golden threads down into the bowl with his little finger.



CHAPTER XVII

TWO BROTHERS

If has been said that Stephen Dallison, when unable to get his golf on Saturdays, went to his club, and read reviews. The two forms of exercise, in fact, were very similar: in playing golf you went round and round; in reading reviews you did the same, for in course of time you were assured of coming to articles that, nullified articles already read. In both forms of sport the balance was preserved which keeps a man both sound and young.

And to be both sound and young was to Stephen an everyday necessity. He was essentially a Cambridge man, springy and undemonstrative, with just that air of taking a continual pinch of really perfect snuff. Underneath this manner he was a good worker, a good husband, a good father, and nothing could be urged against him except his regularity and the fact that he was never in the wrong. Where he worked, and indeed in other places, many men were like him. In one respect he resembled them, perhaps, too much—he disliked leaving the ground unless he knew precisely where he was coming down again.

He and Cecilia had "got on" from the first. They had both desired to have one child—no more; they had both desired to keep up with the times—no more; they now both considered Hilary's position awkward—no more; and when Cecilia, in the special Jacobean bed, and taking care to let him have his sleep out first, had told him of this matter of the Hughs, they had both turned it over very carefully, lying on their backs, and speaking in grave tones. Stephen was of opinion that poor old Hilary must look out what he was doing. Beyond this he did not go, keeping even from his wife the more unpleasant of what seemed to him the possibilities.

Then, in the words she had used to Hilary, Cecilia spoke:

"It's so sordid, Stephen."

He looked at her, and almost with one accord they both said:

"But it's all nonsense!"

These speeches, so simultaneous, stimulated them to a robuster view. What was this affair, if real, but the sort of episode that they read of in their papers? What was it, if true, but a duplicate of some bit of fiction or drama which they daily saw described by that word "sordid"? Cecilia, indeed, had used this word instinctively. It had come into her mind at once. The whole affair disturbed her ideals of virtue and good taste—that particular mental atmosphere mysteriously, inevitably woven round the soul by the conditions of special breeding and special life. If, then, this affair were real it was sordid, and if it were sordid it was repellent to suppose that her family could be mixed up in it; but her people were mixed up in it, therefore it must be—nonsense!

So the matter rested until Thyme came back from her visit to her grandfather, and told them of the little model's new and pretty clothes. When she detailed this news they were all sitting at dinner, over the ordering of which Cecilia's loyalty had been taxed till her little headache came, so that there might be nothing too conventional to over-nourish Stephen or so essentially aesthetic as not to nourish him at all. The man servant being in the room, they neither of them raised their eyes. But when he was gone to fetch the bird, each found the other looking furtively across the table. By some queer misfortune the word "sordid" had leaped into their minds again. Who had given her those clothes? But feeling that it was sordid to pursue this thought, they looked away, and, eating hastily, began pursuing it. Being man and woman, they naturally took a different line of chase, Cecilia hunting in one grove and Stephen in another.

Thus ran Stephen's pack of meditations:

'If old Hilary has been giving her money and clothes and that sort of thing, he's either a greater duffer than I took him for, or there's something in it. B.'s got herself to thank, but that won't help to keep Hughs quiet. He wants money, I expect. Oh, damn!'

Cecilia's pack ran other ways:

'I know the girl can't have bought those things out of her proper earnings. I believe she's a really bad lot. I don't like to think it, but it must be so. Hilary can't have been so stupid after what I said to him. If she really is bad, it simplifies things very much; but Hilary is just the sort of man who will never believe it. Oh dear!'

It was, to be quite fair, immensely difficult for Stephen and his wife—or any of their class and circle—in spite of genuinely good intentions, to really feel the existence of their "shadows," except in so far as they saw them on the pavements. They knew that these people lived, because they saw them, but they did not feel it—with such extraordinary care had the web of social life been spun. They were, and were bound to be, as utterly divorced from understanding of, or faith in, all that shadowy life, as those "shadows" in their by-streets were from knowledge or belief that gentlefolk really existed except in so far as they had money from them.

Stephen and Cecilia, and their thousands, knew these "shadows" as "the people," knew them as slums, as districts, as sweated industries, of different sorts of workers, knew them in the capacity of persons performing odd jobs for them; but as human beings possessing the same faculties and passions with themselves, they did not, could not, know them. The reason, the long reason, extending back through generations, was so plain, so very simple, that it was never mentioned—in their heart of hearts, where there was no room for cant, they knew it to be just a little matter of the senses. They knew that, whatever they might say, whatever money they might give, or time devote, their hearts could never open, unless—unless they closed their ears, and eyes, and noses. This little fact, more potent than all the teaching of philosophers, than every Act of Parliament, and all the sermons ever preached, reigned paramount, supreme. It divided class from class, man from his shadow—as the Great Underlying Law had set dark apart from light.

On this little fact, too gross to mention, they and their kind had in secret built and built, till it was not too much to say that laws, worship, trade, and every art were based on it, if not in theory, then in fact. For it must not be thought that those eyes were dull or that nose plain—no, no, those eyes could put two and two together; that nose, of myriad fancy, could imagine countless things unsmelled which must lie behind a state of life not quite its own. It could create, as from the scent of an old slipper dogs create their masters.

So Stephen and Cecilia sat, and their butler brought in the bird. It was a nice one, nourished down in Surrey, and as he cut it into portions the butler's soul turned sick within him—not because he wanted some himself, or was a vegetarian, or for any sort of principle, but because he was by natural gifts an engineer, and deadly tired of cutting up and handing birds to other people and watching while they ate them. Without a glimmer of expression on his face he put the portions down before the persons who, having paid him to do so, could not tell his thoughts.

That same night, after working at a Report on the present Laws of Bankruptcy, which he was then drawing up, Stephen entered the joint apartment with excessive caution, having first made all his dispositions, and, stealing to the bed, slipped into it. He lay there, offering himself congratulations that he had not awakened Cecilia, and Cecilia, who was wide awake, knew by his unwonted carefulness that he had come to some conclusion which he did not wish to impart to her. Devoured, therefore, by disquiet, she lay sleepless till the clock struck two.

The conclusion to which Stephen had come was this: Having twice gone through the facts—Hilary's corporeal separation from Bianca (communicated to him by Cecilia), cause unknowable; Hilary's interest in the little model, cause unknown; her known poverty; her employment by Mr. Stone; her tenancy of Mrs. Hughs' room; the latter's outburst to Cecilia; Hughs' threat; and, finally, the girl's pretty clothes—he had summed it up as just a common "plant," to which his brother's possibly innocent, but in any case imprudent, conduct had laid him open. It was a man's affair. He resolutely tried to look on the whole thing as unworthy of attention, to feel that nothing would occur. He failed dismally, for three reasons. First, his inherent love of regularity, of having everything in proper order; secondly, his ingrained mistrust of and aversion from Bianca; thirdly, his unavowed conviction, for all his wish to be sympathetic to them, that the lower classes always wanted something out of you. It was a question of how much they would want, and whether it were wise to give them anything. He decided that it would not be wise at all. What then? Impossible to say. It worried him. He had a natural horror of any sort of scandal, and he was very fond of Hilary. If only he knew the attitude Bianca would take up! He could not even guess it.

Thus, on that Saturday afternoon, the 4th of May, he felt for once such a positive aversion from the reading of reviews, as men will feel from their usual occupations when their nerves have been disturbed. He stayed late at Chambers, and came straight home outside an omnibus.

The tide of life was flowing in the town. The streets were awash with wave on wave of humanity, sucked into a thousand crossing currents. Here men and women were streaming out from the meeting of a religious congress, there streaming in at the gates of some social function; like bright water confined within long shelves of rock and dyed with myriad scales of shifting colour, they thronged Rotten Row, and along the closed shop-fronts were woven into an inextricable network of little human runlets. And everywhere amongst this sea of men and women could be seen their shadows, meandering like streaks of grey slime stirred up from the lower depths by some huge, never-ceasing finger. The innumerable roar of that human sea climbed out above the roofs and trees, and somewhere in illimitable space blended, and slowly reached the meeting-point of sound and silence—that Heart where Life, leaving its little forms and barriers, clasps Death, and from that clasp springs forth new-formed, within new barriers.

Above this crowd of his fellow-creatures, Stephen drove, and the same Spring wind which had made the elm-trees talk, whispered to him, and tried to tell him of the million flowers it had fertilised, the million leaves uncurled, the million ripples it had awakened on the sea, of the million flying shadows flung by it across the Downs, and how into men's hearts its scent had driven a million longings and sweet pains.

It was but moderately successful, for Stephen, like all men of culture and neat habits, took Nature only at those moments when he had gone out to take her, and of her wild heart he had a secret fear.

On his own doorstep he encountered Hilary coming out.

"I ran across Thyme and Martin in the Gardens," the latter said. "Thyme brought me back to lunch, and here I've been ever since."

"Did she bring our young Sanitist in too?" asked Stephen dubiously.

"No," said Hilary.

"Good! That young man gets on my nerves." Taking his elder brother by the arm, he added: "Will you come in again, old boy, or shall we go for a stroll?"

"A stroll," said Hilary.

Though different enough, perhaps because they were so different, these two brothers had the real affection for each other which depends on something deeper and more elementary than a similarity of sentiments, and is permanent because unconnected with the reasoning powers.

It depended on the countless times they had kissed and wrestled as tiny boys, slept in small beds alongside, refused-to "tell" about each other, and even now and then taken up the burden of each other's peccadilloes. They might get irritated or tired of being in each other's company, but it would have been impossible for either to have been disloyal to the other in any circumstances, because of that traditional loyalty which went back to their cribs.

Preceded by Miranda, they walked along the flower walk towards the Park, talking of indifferent things, though in his heart each knew well enough what was in the other's.

Stephen broke through the hedge.

"Cis has been telling me," he said, "that this man Hughs is making trouble of some sort."

Hilary nodded.

Stephen glanced a little anxiously at his brother's face; it struck him as looking different, neither so gentle nor so impersonal as usual.

"He's a ruffian, isn't he?"

"I can't tell you," Hilary answered. "Probably not."

"He must be, old chap," murmured Stephen. Then, with a friendly pressure of his brother's arm, he added: "Look here, old boy, can I be of any use?"

"In what?" asked Hilary.

Stephen took a hasty mental view of his position; he had been in danger of letting Hilary see that he suspected him. Frowning slightly, and with some colour in his clean-shaven face, he said:

"Of course, there's nothing in it."

"In what?" said Hilary again.

"In what this ruffian says."

"No," said Hilary, "there's nothing in it, though what there may be if people give me credit for what there isn't, is another thing."

Stephen digested this remark, which hurt him. He saw that his suspicions had been fathomed, and this injured his opinion of his own diplomacy.

"You mustn't lose your head, old man," he said at last.

They were crossing the bridge over the Serpentine. On the bright waters, below, young clerks were sculling their inamoratas up and down; the ripples set free by their oars gleamed beneath the sun, and ducks swam lazily along the banks. Hilary leaned over.

"Look here, Stephen, I take an interest in this child—she's a helpless sort of little creature, and she seems to have put herself under my protection. I can't help that. But that's all. Do you understand?"

This speech produced a queer turmoil in Stephen, as though his brother had accused him of a petty view of things. Feeling that he must justify himself somehow, he began:

"Oh, of course I understand, old boy! But don't think, anyway, that I should care a damn—I mean as far as I'm concerned—even if you had gone as far as ever you liked, considering what you have to put up with. What I'm thinking of is the general situation."

By this clear statement of his point of view Stephen felt he had put things back on a broad basis, and recovered his position as a man of liberal thought. He too leaned over, looking at the ducks. There was a silence. Then Hilary said:

"If Bianca won't get that child into some fresh place, I shall."

Stephen looked at his brother in surprise, amounting almost to dismay; he had spoken with such unwonted resolution.

"My dear old chap," he said, "I wouldn't go to B. Women are so funny."

Hilary smiled. Stephen took this for a sign of restored impersonality.

"I'll tell you exactly how the thing appeals to me. It'll be much better for you to chuck it altogether. Let Cis see to it!"

Hilary's eyes became bright with angry humour.

"Many thanks," he said, "but this is entirely our affair."

Stephen answered hastily:

"That's exactly what makes it difficult for you to look at it all round. That fellow Hughs could make himself quite nasty. I wouldn't give him any sort of chance. I mean to say—giving the girl clothes and that kind of thing—-"

"I see," said Hilary.

"You know, old man," Stephen went on hastily, "I don't think you'll get Bianca to look at things in your light. If you were on—on terms, of course it would be different. I mean the girl, you know, is rather attractive in her way."

Hilary roused himself from contemplation of the ducks, and they moved on towards the Powder Magazine. Stephen carefully abstained from looking at his brother; the respect he had for Hilary—result, perhaps, of the latter's seniority, perhaps of the feeling that Hilary knew more of him than he of Hilary—was beginning to assert itself in a way he did not like. With every word, too, of this talk, the ground, instead of growing firmer, felt less and less secure. Hilary spoke:

"You mistrust my powers of action?"

"No, no," said Stephen. "I don't want you to act at all."

Hilary laughed. Hearing that rather bitter laugh, Stephen felt a little ache about his heart.

"Come, old boy," he said, "we can trust each other, anyway."

Hilary gave his brother's arm a squeeze.

Moved by that pressure, Stephen spoke:

"I hate you to be worried over such a rotten business."

The whizz of a motor-car rapidly approaching them became a sort of roar, and out of it a voice shouted: "How are you?" A hand was seen to rise in salute. It was Mr. Purcey driving his A.i. Damyer back to Wimbledon. Before him in the sunlight a little shadow fled; behind him the reek of petrol seemed to darken the road.

"There's a symbol for you," muttered Hilary.

"How do you mean?" said Stephen dryly. The word "symbol" was distasteful to him.

"The machine in the middle moving on its business; shadows like you and me skipping in front; oil and used-up stuff dropping behind. Society-body, beak, and bones."

Stephen took time to answer. "That's rather far-fetched," he said. "You mean these Hughs and people are the droppings?"

"Quite so," was Hilary's sardonic answer. "There's the body of that fellow and his car between our sort and them—and no getting over it, Stevie."

"Well, who wants to? If you're thinking of our old friend's Fraternity, I'm not taking any." And Stephen suddenly added: "Look here, I believe this affair is all 'a plant.'"

"You see that Powder Magazine?" said Hilary. "Well, this business that you call a 'plant' is more like that. I don't want to alarm you, but I think you as well as our young friend Martin, are inclined to underrate the emotional capacity of human nature."

Disquietude broke up the customary mask on Stephen's face: "I don't understand," he stammered.

"Well, we're none of us machines, not even amateurs like me—not even under-dogs like Hughs. I fancy you may find a certain warmth, not to say violence, about this business. I tell you frankly that I don't live in married celibacy quite with impunity. I can't answer for anything, in fact. You had better stand clear, Stephen—that's all."

Stephen marked his thin hands quivering, and this alarmed him as nothing else had done.

They walked on beside the water. Stephen spoke quietly, looking at the ground. "How can I stand clear, old man, if you are going to get into a mess? That's impossible."

He saw at once that this shot, which indeed was from his heart, had gone right home to Hilary's. He sought within him how to deepen the impression.

"You mean a lot to us," he said. "Cis and Thyme would feel it awfully if you and B.—-" He stopped.

Hilary was looking at him; that faintly smiling glance, searching him through and through, suddenly made Stephen feel inferior. He had been detected trying to extract capital from the effect of his little piece of brotherly love. He was irritated at his brother's insight.

"I have no right to give advice, I suppose," he said; "but in my opinion you should drop it—drop it dead. The girl is not worth your looking after. Turn her over to that Society—Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace's thing whatever it's called."

At a sound as of mirth Stephen, who was not accustomed to hear his brother laugh, looked round.

"Martin," said Hilary, "also wants the case to be treated on strictly hygienic grounds."

Nettled by this, Stephen answered:

"Don't confound me with our young Sanitist, please; I simply think there are probably a hundred things you don't know about the girl which ought to be cleared up."

"And then?"

"Then," said Stephen, "they could—er—deal with her accordingly."

Hilary shrank so palpably at this remark that he added rather hastily:

"You call that cold-blooded, I suppose; but I think, you know, old chap, that you're too sensitive."

Hilary stopped rather abruptly.

"If you don't mind, Stevie," he said, "we'll part here. I want to think it over." So saying, he turned back, and sat down on a seat that faced the sun.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE PERFECT DOG

Hilary sat long in the sun, watching the pale bright waters and many well-bred ducks circling about the shrubs, searching with their round, bright eyes for worms. Between the bench where he was sitting and the spiked iron railings people passed continually—men, women, children of all kinds. Every now and then a duck would stop and cast her knowing glance at these creatures, as though comparing the condition of their forms and plumage with her own. 'If I had had the breeding of you,' she seemed to say, 'I could have made a better fist of it than that. A worse-looking lot of ducks, take you all round. I never wish to see!' And with a quick but heavy movement of her shoulders, she would turn away and join her fellows.

Hilary, however, got small distraction from the ducks. The situation gradually developing was something of a dilemma to a man better acquainted with ideas than facts, with the trimming of words than with the shaping of events. He turned a queer, perplexed, almost quizzical eye on it. Stephen had irritated him profoundly. He had such a way of pettifying things! Yet, in truth, the affair would seem ridiculous enough to an ordinary observer. What would a man of sound common sense, like Mr. Purcey, think of it? Why not, as Stephen had suggested, drop it? Here, however, Hilary approached the marshy ground of feeling.

To give up befriending a helpless girl the moment he found himself personally menaced was exceedingly distasteful. But would she be friendless? Were there not, in Stephen's words, a hundred things he did not know about her? Had she not other resources? Had she not a story? But here, too, he was hampered by his delicacy: one did not pry into the private lives of others!

The matter, too, was hopelessly complicated by the domestic troubles of the Hughs family. No conscientious man—and whatever Hilary lacked, no one ever accused him of a lack of conscience—could put aside that aspect of the case.

Wandering among these reflections were his thoughts about Bianca. She was his wife. However he might feel towards her now, whatever their relations, he must not put her in a false position. Far from wishing to hurt her, he desired to preserve her, and everyone, from trouble and annoyance. He had told Stephen that his interest in the girl was purely protective. But since the night when, leaning out into the moonlight, he heard the waggons coming in to Covent Garden Market, a strange feeling had possessed him—the sensation of a man who lies, with a touch of fever on him, listening to the thrum of distant music—sensuous, not unpleasurable.

Those who saw him sitting there so quietly, with his face resting on his hand, imagined, no doubt, that he was wrestling with some deep, abstract proposition, some great thought to be given to mankind; for there was that about Hilary which forced everyone to connect him instantly with the humaner arts.

The sun began to leave the long pale waters.

A nursemaid and two children came and sat down beside him. Then it was that, underneath his seat, Miranda found what she had been looking for all her life. It had no smell, made no movement, was pale-grey in colour, like herself. It had no hair that she could find; its tail was like her own; it took no liberties, was silent, had no passions, committed her to nothing. Standing a few inches from its head, closer than she had ever been of her free will to any dog, she smelt its smellessness with a long, delicious snuffling, wrinkling up the skin on her forehead, and through her upturned eyes her little moonlight soul looked forth. 'How unlike you are,' she seemed to say, 'to all the other dogs I know! I would love to live with you. Shall I ever find a dog like you again? "The latest-sterilised cloth—see white label underneath: 4s. 3d.!"' Suddenly she slithered out her slender grey-pink tongue and licked its nose. The creature moved a little way and stopped. Miranda saw that it had wheels. She lay down close to it, for she knew it was the perfect dog.

Hilary watched the little moonlight lady lying vigilant, affectionate, beside this perfect dog, who could not hurt her. She panted slightly, and her tongue showed between her lips. Presently behind his seat he saw another idyll. A thin white spaniel had come running up. She lay down in the grass quite close, and three other dogs who followed, sat and looked at her. A poor, dirty little thing she was, who seemed as if she had not seen a home for days. Her tongue lolled out, she panted piteously, and had no collar. Every now and then she turned her eyes, but though they were so tired and desperate, there was a gleam in them. 'For all its thirst and hunger and exhaustion, this is life!' they seemed to say. The three dogs, panting too, and watching till it should be her pleasure to begin to run again, seemed with their moist, loving eyes to echo: 'This is life!'

Because of this idyll, people near were moving on.

And suddenly the thin white spaniel rose, and, like a little harried ghost, slipped on amongst the trees, and the three dogs followed her.



CHAPTER XIX

BIANCA

In her studio that afternoon Blanca stood before her picture of the little model—the figure with parted pale-red lips and haunting, pale-blue eyes, gazing out of shadow into lamplight.

She was frowning, as though resentful of a piece of work which had the power to kill her other pictures. What force had moved her to paint like that? What had she felt while the girl was standing before her, still as some pale flower placed in a cup of water? Not love—there was no love in the presentment of that twilight figure; not hate—there was no hate in the painting of her dim appeal. Yet in the picture of this shadow girl, between the gloom and glimmer, was visible a spirit, driving the artist on to create that which had the power to haunt the mind.

Blanca turned away and went up to a portrait of her husband, painted ten years before. She looked from one picture to the other, with eyes as hard and stabbing as the points of daggers.

In the more poignant relationships of human life there is a point beyond which men and women do not quite truthfully analyse their feelings—they feel too much. It was Blanca's fortune, too, to be endowed to excess with that quality which, of all others, most obscures the real significance of human issues. Her pride had kept her back from Hilary, till she had felt herself a failure. Her pride had so revolted at that failure that she had led the way to utter estrangement. Her pride had forced her to the attitude of one who says "Live your own life; I should be ashamed to let you see that I care what happens between us." Her pride had concealed from her the fact that beneath her veil of mocking liberality there was an essential woman tenacious of her dues, avid of affection and esteem. Her pride prevented the world from guessing that there was anything amiss. Her pride even prevented Hilary from really knowing what had spoiled his married life—this ungovernable itch to be appreciated, governed by ungovernable pride. Hundreds of times he had been baffled by the hedge round that disharmonic nature. With each failure something had shrivelled in him, till the very roots of his affection had dried up. She had worn out a man who, to judge from his actions and appearance, was naturally long-suffering to a fault. Beneath all manner of kindness and consideration for each other—for their good taste, at all events, had never given way—this tragedy of a woman, who wanted to be loved, slowly killing the power of loving her in the man, had gone on year after year. It had ceased to be tragedy, as far as Hilary was concerned; the nerve of his love for her was quite dead, slowly frozen out of him. It was still active tragedy with Bianca, the nerve of whose jealous desire for his appreciation was not dead. Her instinct, too, ironically informed her that, had he been a man with some brutality, a man who had set himself to ride and master her, instead of one too delicate, he might have trampled down the hedge. This gave her a secret grudge against him, a feeling that it was not she who was to blame.

Pride was Bianca's fate, her flavour, and her charm. Like a shadowy hill-side behind glamorous bars of waning sunlight, she was enveloped in smiling pride—mysterious; one thinks, even to herself. This pride of hers took part even in her many generous impulses, kind actions which she did rather secretly and scoffed at herself for doing. She scoffed at herself continually, even for putting on dresses of colours which Hilary was fond of. She would not admit her longing to attract him.

Standing between those two pictures, pressing her mahl-stick against her bosom, she suggested somewhat the image of an Italian saint forcing the dagger of martyrdom into her heart.

That other person, who had once brought the thought of Italy into Cecilia's mind—the man Hughs—had been for the last eight hours or so walking the streets, placing in a cart the refuses of Life; nor had he at all suggested the aspect of one tortured by the passions of love and hate: For the first two hours he had led the horse without expression of any sort on his dark face, his neat soldier's figure garbed in the costume which had made "Westminister" describe him as a "dreadful foreign-lookin' man." Now and then he had spoken to the horse; save for those speeches, of no great importance, he had been silent. For the next two hours, following the cart, he had used a shovel, and still his square, short face, with little black moustache and still blacker eyes, had given no sign of conflict in his breast. So he had passed the day. Apart from the fact, indeed, that men of any kind are not too given to expose private passions to public gaze, the circumstances of a life devoted from the age of twenty onwards to the service of his country, first as a soldier, now in the more defensive part of Vestry scavenger, had given him a kind of gravity. Life had cloaked him with passivity—the normal look of men whose bread and cheese depends on their not caring much for anything. Had Hughs allowed his inclinations play, or sought to express himself, he could hardly have been a private soldier; still less, on his retirement from that office with an honourable wound, would he have been selected out of many others as a Vestry scavenger. For such an occupation as the lifting from the streets of the refuses of Life—a calling greatly sought after, and, indeed, one of the few open to a man who had served his country—charm of manner, individuality, or the engaging quality of self-expression, were perhaps out of place.

He had never been trained in the voicing of his thoughts, and, ever since he had been wounded, felt at times a kind of desperate looseness in his head. It was not, therefore, remarkable that he should be liable to misconstruction, more especially by those who had nothing in common with him, except that somewhat negligible factor, common humanity. The Dallisons had misconstrued him as much as, but no more than, he had misconstrued them when, as "Westminister" had informed Hilary, he "went on against the gentry." He was, in fact, a ragged screen, a broken vessel, that let light through its holes. A glass or two of beer, the fumes of which his wounded head no longer dominated, and he at once became "dreadful foreign." Unfortunately, it was his custom, on finishing his work, to call at the "Green Glory." On this particular afternoon the glass had become three, and in sallying forth he had felt a confused sense of duty urging him to visit the house where this girl for whom he had conceived his strange infatuation "carried on her games." The "no-tale-bearing" tradition of a soldier fought hard with this sense of duty; his feelings were mixed when he rang the bell and asked for Mrs. Dallison. Habit, however, masked his face, and he stood before her at "attention," his black eyes lowered, clutching his peaked cap.

Blanca noted curiously the scar on the left side of his cropped black head.

Whatever Hughs had to say was not said easily.

"I've come," he began at last in a dogged voice, "to let you know. I never wanted to come into this house. I never wanted to see no one."

Blanca could see his lips and eyelids quivering in a way strangely out of keeping with his general stolidity.

"My wife has told you tales of me, I suppose. She's told you I knock her about, I daresay. I don't care what she tells you or any o' the people that she works for. But this I'll say: I never touched her but she touched me first. Look here! that's marks of hers!" and, drawing up his sleeve he showed a scratch on his sinewy tattooed forearm. "I've not come here about her; that's no business of anyone's."

Bianca turned towards her pictures. "Well?" she said, "but what have you come about, please? You see I'm busy."

Hughs' face changed. Its stolidity vanished, the eyes became as quick, passionate, and leaping as a dark torrent. He was more violently alive than she had ever seen a man. Had it been a woman she would have felt—as Cecilia had felt with Mrs. Hughs—the indecency, the impudence of this exhibition; but from that male violence the feminine in her derived a certain satisfaction. So in Spring, when all seems lowering and grey, the hedges and trees suddenly flare out against the purple clouds, their twigs all in flame. The next moment that white glare is gone, the clouds are no longer purple, fiery light no longer quivers and leaps along the hedgerows. The passion in Hughs' face was gone as soon. Bianca felt a sense of disappointment, as though she could have wished her life held a little more of that. He stole a glance at her out of his dark eyes, which, when narrowed, had a velvety look, like the body of a wild bee, then jerked his thumb at the picture of the little model.

"It's about her I come to speak."

Blanca faced him frigidly.

"I have not the slightest wish to hear."

Hughs looked round, as though to find something that would help him to proceed; his eyes lighted on Hilary's portrait.

"Ah! I'd put the two together if I was you," he said.

Blanca walked past him to the door.

"Either you or I must leave the room."

The man's face was neither sullen now nor passionate, but simply miserable.

"Look here, lady," he said, "don't take it hard o' me coming here. I'm not out to do you a harm. I've got a wife of my own, and Gawd knows I've enough to put up with from her about this girl. I'll be going in the water one of these days. It's him giving her them clothes that set me coming here."

Blanca opened the door. "Please go," she said.

"I'll go quiet enough," he muttered, and, hanging his head, walked out.

Having seen him through the side door out into the street, Blanca went back to where she had been standing before he came. She found some difficulty in swallowing; for once there was no armour on her face. She stood there a long time without moving, then put the pictures back into their places and went down the little passage to the house. Listening outside her father's door, she turned the handle quietly and went in.

Mr. Stone, holding some sheets of paper out before him, was dictating to the little model, who was writing laboriously with her face close above her arm. She stopped at Blanca's entrance. Mr. Stone did not stop, but, holding up his other hand, said:

"I will take you through the last three pages again. Follow!"

Blanca sat down at the window.

Her father's voice, so thin and slow, with each syllable disjointed from the other, rose like monotony itself.

"'There were tra-cea-able indeed, in those days, certain rudi-men-tary at-tempts to f-u-s-e the classes....'"

It went on unwavering, neither rising high nor falling low, as though the reader knew he had yet far to go, like a runner that brings great news across mountains, plains, and rivers.

To Blanca that thin voice might have been the customary sighing of the wind, her attention was so fast fixed on the girl, who sat following the words down the pages with her pen's point.

Mr. Stone paused.

"Have you got the word 'insane'?" he asked.

The little model raised her face. "Yes, Mr. Stone."

"Strike it out."

With his eyes fixed on the trees he stood breathing audibly. The little model moved her fingers, freeing them from cramp. Blanca's curious, smiling scrutiny never left her, as though trying to fix an indelible image on her mind. There was something terrifying in that stare, cruel to herself, cruel to the girl.

"The precise word," said Mr. Stone, "eludes me. Leave a blank. Follow!... 'Neither that sweet fraternal interest of man in man, nor a curiosity in phenomena merely as phenomena....'" His voice pursued its tenuous path through spaces, frozen by the calm eternal presence of his beloved idea, which, like a golden moon, far and cold, presided glamorously above the thin track of words. And still the girl's pen-point traced his utterance across the pages: Mr. Stone paused again, and looking at his daughter as though surprised to see her sitting there, asked:

"Do you wish to speak to me, my dear?"

Blanca shook her head.

"Follow!" said Mr. Stone.

But the little model's glance had stolen round to meet the scrutiny fixed on her.

A look passed across her face which seemed to say: 'What have I done to you, that you should stare at me like this?'

Furtive and fascinated, her eyes remained fixed on Bianca, while her hand moved, mechanically ticking the paragraphs. That silent duel of eyes went on—the woman's fixed, cruel, smiling; the girl's uncertain, resentful. Neither of them heard a word that Mr. Stone was reading. They treated it as, from the beginning, Life has treated Philosophy—and to the end will treat it.

Mr. Stone paused again, seeming to weigh his last sentences.

"That, I think," he murmured to himself, "is true." And suddenly he addressed his daughter. "Do you agree with me, my dear?"

He was evidently waiting with anxiety for her answer, and the little silver hairs that straggled on his lean throat beneath his beard were clearly visible.

"Yes, Father, I agree."

"Ah!" said Mr. Stone, "I am glad that you confirm me. I was anxious. Follow!"

Bianca rose. Burning spots of colour had settled in her cheeks. She went towards the door, and the little model pursued her figure with a long look, cringing, mutinous, and wistful.



CHAPTER XX

THE HUSBAND AND THE WIFE

It was past six o'clock when Hilary at length reached home, preceded a little by Miranda, who almost felt within her the desire to eat. The lilac bushes, not yet in flower, were giving forth spicy fragrance. The sun still netted their top boughs, as with golden silk, and a blackbird, seated on a low branch of the acacia-tree, was summoning the evening. Mr. Stone, accompanied by the little model, dressed in her new clothes, was coming down the path. They were evidently going for a walk, for Mr. Stone wore his hat, old and soft and black, with a strong green tinge, and carried a paper parcel, which leaked crumbs of bread at every step.

The girl grew very red. She held her head down, as though afraid of Hilary's inspection of her new clothes. At the gate she suddenly looked up. His face said: 'Yes, you look very nice!' And into her eyes a look leaped such as one may see in dogs' eyes lifted in adoration to their masters' faces. Manifestly disconcerted, Hilary turned to Mr. Stone. The old man was standing very still; a thought had evidently struck him. "I have not, I think," he said, "given enough consideration to the question whether force is absolutely, or only relatively, evil. If I saw a man ill-treat a cat, should I be justified in striking him?"

Accustomed to such divagations, Hilary answered: "I don't know whether you would be justifed, but I believe that you would strike him."

"I am not sure," said Mr. Stone. "We are going to feed the birds."

The little model took the paper bag. "It's all dropping out," she said. From across the road she turned her head....'Won't you come, too?' she seemed to say.

But Hilary passed rather hastily into the garden and shut the gate behind him. He sat in his study, with Miranda near him, for fully an hour, without doing anything whatever, sunk in a strange, half-pleasurable torpor. At this hour he should have been working at his book; and the fact that his idleness did not trouble him might well have given him uneasiness. Many thoughts passed through his mind, imaginings of things he had thought left behind forever—sensations and longings which to the normal eye of middle age are but dried forms hung in the museum of memory. They started up at the whip of the still-living youth, the lost wildness at the heart of every man. Like the reviving flame of half-spent fires, longing for discovery leaped and flickered in Hilary—to find out once again what things were like before he went down the hill of age.

No trivial ghost was beckoning him; it was the ghost, with unseen face and rosy finger, which comes to men when youth has gone.

Miranda, hearing him so silent, rose. At this hour it was her master's habit to scratch paper. She, who seldom scratched anything, because it was not delicate, felt dimly that this was what he should be doing. She held up a slim foot and touched his knee. Receiving no discouragement, she delicately sprang into his lap, and, forgetting for once her modesty, placed her arms on his chest, and licked his face all over.

It was while receiving this embrace that Hilary saw Mr. Stone and the little model returning across the garden. The old man was walking very rapidly, holding out the fragment of a broken stick. He was extremely pink.

Hilary went to meet them.

"What's the matter, sir?" he said.

"I cut him over the legs," said Mr. Stone. "I do not regret it"; and he walked on to his room.

Hilary turned to the little model.

"It was a little dog. The man kicked it, and Mr. Stone hit him. He broke his stick. There were several men; they threatened us." She looked up at Hilary. "I-I was frightened. Oh! Mr. Dallison, isn't he funny?"

"All heroes are funny," murmured Hilary.

"He wanted to hit them again, after his stick was broken. Then a policeman came, and they all ran away."

"That was quite as it should be," said Hilary. "And what did you do?"

Perceiving that she had not as yet made much effect, the little model cast down her eyes.

"I shouldn't have been frightened if you had been there!"

"Heavens!" muttered Hilary. "Mr. Stone is far more valiant than I."

"I don't think he is," she replied stubbornly, and again looked up at him.

"Well, good-night!" said Hilary hastily. "You must run off...."

That same evening, driving with his wife back from a long, dull dinner, Hilary began:

"I've something to say to you."

An ironic "Yes?" came from the other corner of the cab.

"There is some trouble with the little model."

"Really!"

"This man Hughs has become infatuated with her. He has even said, I believe, that he was coming to see you."

"What about?"

"Me."

"And what is he going to say about you?"

"I don't know; some vulgar gossip—nothing true."

There was a silence, and in the darkness Hilary moistened his dry lips.

Bianca spoke: "May I ask how you knew of this?"

"Cecilia told me."

A curious noise, like a little strangled laugh, fell on Hilary's ears.

"I am very sorry," he muttered.

Presently Bianca said:

"It was good of you to tell me, considering that we go our own ways. What made you?"

"I thought it right."

"And—of course, the man might have come to me!"

"That you need not have said."

"One does not always say what one ought."

"I have made the child a present of some clothes which she badly needed. So far as I know, that's all I've done!"

"Of course!"

This wonderful "of course" acted on Hilary like a tonic. He said dryly:

"What do you wish me to do?"

"I?" No gust of the east wind, making the young leaves curl and shiver, the gas jets flare and die down in their lamps, could so have nipped the flower of amity. Through Hilary's mind flashed Stephen's almost imploring words: "Oh, I wouldn't go to her! Women are so funny!"

He looked round. A blue gauze scarf was wrapped over his wife's dark head. There, in her corner, as far away from him as she could get, she was smiling. For a moment Hilary had the sensation of being stiffed by fold on fold of that blue gauze scarf, as if he were doomed to drive for ever, suffocated, by the side of this woman who had killed his love for her.

"You will do what you like, of course," she said suddenly.

A desire to laugh seized Hilary. "What do you wish me to do?" "You will do what you like, of course!" Could civilised restraint and tolerance go further?

"B." he said, with an effort, "the wife is jealous. We put the girl into that house—we ought to get her out."

Blanca's reply came slowly.

"From the first," she said, "the girl has been your property; do what you like with her. I shall not meddle."

"I am not in the habit of regarding people as my property."

"No need to tell me that—I have known you twenty years."

Doors sometimes slam in the minds of the mildest and most restrained of men.

"Oh, very well! I have told you; you can see Hughs when he comes—or not, as you like."

"I have seen him."

Hilary smiled.

"Well, was his story very terrible?"

"He told me no story."

"How was that?"

Blanca suddenly sat forward, and threw back the blue scarf, as though she, too, were stifling. In her flushed face her eyes were bright as stars; her lips quivered.

"Is it likely," she said, "that I should listen? That's enough, please, of these people."

Hilary bowed. The cab, bearing them fast home, turned into the last short cut. This narrow street was full of men and women circling round barrows and lighted booths. The sound of coarse talk and laughter floated out into air thick with the reek of paraffin and the scent of frying fish. In every couple of those men and women Hilary seemed to see the Hughs, that other married couple, going home to wedded happiness above the little model's head. The cab turned out of the gay alley.

"Enough, please, of these people!"

That same night, past one o'clock, he was roused from sleep by hearing bolts drawn back. He got up, hastened to the window, and looked out. At first he could distinguish nothing. The moonless night; like a dark bird, had nested in the garden; the sighing of the lilac bushes was the only sound. Then, dimly, just below him, on the steps of the front door, he saw a figure standing.

"Who is that?" he called.

The figure did not move.

"Who are you?" said Hilary again.

The figure raised its face, and by the gleam of his white beard Hilary knew that it was Mr. Stone.

"What is it, sir?" he said. "Can I do anything?"

"No," answered Mr. Stone. "I am listening to the wind. It has visited everyone to-night." And lifting his hand, he pointed out into the darkness.



CHAPTER XXI

A DAY OF REST

Cecilia's house in the Old Square was steeped from roof to basement in the peculiar atmosphere brought by Sunday to houses whose inmates have no need of religion or of rest.

Neither she nor Stephen had been to church since Thyme was christened; they did not expect to go again till she was married, and they felt that even to go on these occasions was against their principles; but for the sake of other people's feelings they had made the sacrifice, and they meant to make it once more, when the time came. Each Sunday, therefore, everything tried to happen exactly as it happened on every other day, with indifferent success. This was because, for all Cecilia's resolutions, a joint of beef and Yorkshire pudding would appear on the luncheon-table, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Stone—who came when he remembered that it was Sunday—did not devour the higher mammals. Every week, when it appeared, Cecilia, who for some reason carved on Sundays, regarded it with a frown. Next week she would really discontinue it; but when next week came, there it was, with its complexion that reminded her so uncomfortably of cabmen. And she would partake of it with unexpected heartiness. Something very old and deep, some horrible whole-hearted appetite, derived, no doubt, from Mr. Justice Carfax, rose at that hour precisely every week to master her. Having given Thyme the second helping which she invariably took, Cecilia, who detested carving, would look over the fearful joint at a piece of glass procured by her in Venice, and at the daffodils standing upright in it, apparently without support. Had it not been for this joint of beef, which had made itself smelt all the morning, and would make itself felt all the afternoon, it need never have come into her mind at all that it was Sunday—and she would cut herself another slice.

To have told Cecilia that there was still a strain of the Puritan in her would have been to occasion her some uneasiness, and provoked a strenuous denial; yet her way of observing Sunday furnished indubitable evidence of this singular fact. She did more that day than any other. For, in the morning she invariably "cleared off" her correspondence; at lunch she carved the beef; after lunch she cleared off the novel or book on social questions she was reading; went to a concert, clearing off a call on the way back; and on first Sundays—a great bore—stayed at home to clear off the friends who came to visit her. In the evening she went to some play or other, produced by Societies for the benefit of persons compelled, like her, to keep a Sunday with which they felt no sympathy.

On this particular "first Sunday," having made the circuit of her drawing-room, which extended the whole breadth of her house, and through long, low windows cut into leaded panes, looked out both back and front, she took up Mr. Balladyce's latest book. She sat, with her paper-knife pressed against the tiny hollow in her flushed cheek, and pretty little bits of lace and real old jewellery nestling close to her. And while she turned the pages of Mr. Balladyce's book Thyme sat opposite in a bright blue frock, and turned the pages of Darwin's work on earthworms.

Regarding her "little daughter," who was so much more solid than herself, Cecilia's face wore a very sweet, faintly surprised expression.

'My kitten is a bonny thing,' it seemed to say. 'It is queer that I should have a thing so large.'

Outside in the Square Gardens a shower, the sunlight, and blossoms, were entangled. It was the time of year when all the world had kittens; young things were everywhere—soft, sweet, uncouth. Cecilia felt this in her heart. It brought depth into her bright, quick eyes. What a secret satisfaction it was that she had once so far committed herself as to have borne a child! What a queer vague feeling she sometimes experienced in the Spring—almost amounting to a desire to bear another! So one may mark the warm eye of a staid mare, following with her gaze the first strayings of her foal. 'I must get used to it,' she seems to say. 'I certainly do miss the little creature, though I used to threaten her with my hoofs, to show I couldn't be bullied by anything of that age. And there she goes! Ah, well!'

Remembering suddenly, however, that she was sitting there to clear off Mr. Balladyce, because it was so necessary to keep up with what he wrote, Cecilia dropped her gaze to the page before her; and instantly, by uncomfortable chance, not the choice pastures of Mr. Balladyce appeared, where women might browse at leisure, but a vision of the little model. She had not thought of her for quite an hour; she had tired herself out with thinking-not, indeed, of her, but of all that hinged on her, ever since Stephen had spoken of his talk with Hilary. Things Hilary had said seemed to Cecilia's delicate and rather timid soul so ominous, so unlike himself. Was there really going to be complete disruption between him and Bianca—worse, an ugly scandal? She, who knew her sister better, perhaps, than anyone, remembered from schoolroom days Bianca's moody violence when anything had occurred to wound her—remembered, too, the long fits of brooding that followed. This affair, which she had tried to persuade herself was exaggerated, loomed up larger than ever. It was not an isolated squib; it was a lighted match held to a train of gunpowder. This girl of the people, coming from who knew where, destined for who knew what—this young, not very beautiful, not even clever child, with nothing but a sort of queer haunting naivete' to give her charm—might even be a finger used by Fate! Cecilia sat very still before that sudden vision of the girl. There was no staid mare to guard that foal with the dark devotion of her eye. There was no wise whinnying to answer back those tiny whinnies; no long look round to watch the little creature nodding to sleep on its thin trembling legs in the hot sunlight; no ears to prick up and hoofs to stamp at the approach of other living things. These thoughts passed through Cecilia's mind and were gone, being too far and pale to stay. Turning the page which she had not been reading, she heaved a sigh. Thyme sighed also.

"These worms are fearfully interesting," she said. "Is anybody coming in this afternoon?"

"Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace was going to bring a young man in, a Signor Pozzi-Egregio Pozzi, or some such name. She says he is the coming pianist." Cecilia's face was spiced with faint amusement. Some strain of her breeding (the Carfax strain, no doubt) still heard such names and greeted such proclivities with an inclination to derision.

Thyme snatched up her book. "Well," she said, "I shall be in the attic. If anyone interesting comes you might send up to me."

She stood, luxuriously stretching, and turning slowly round in a streak of sunlight so as to bathe her body in it. Then, with a long soft yawn, she flung up her chin till the sun streamed on her face. Her eyelashes rested on cheeks already faintly browned; her lips were parted; little shivers of delight ran down her; her chestnut hair glowed, burnished by the kisses of the sun.

'Ah!' Cecilia thought, 'if that other girl were like this, now, I could understand well enough!'

"Oh, Lord!" said Thyme, "there they are!" She flew towards the door.

"My dear," murmured Cecilia, "if you must go, do please tell Father."

A minute later Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace came in, followed by a young man with an interesting, pale face and a crop of dusky hair.

Let us consider for a minute the not infrequent case of a youth cursed with an Italian mother and a father of the name of Potts, who had baptised him William. Had he emanated from the lower classes, he might with impunity have ground an organ under the name of Bill; but springing from the bourgeoisie, and playing Chopin at the age of four, his friends had been confronted with a problem of no mean difficulty. Heaven, on the threshold of his career, had intervened to solve it. Hovering, as it were, with one leg raised before the gladiatorial arena of musical London, where all were waiting to turn their thumbs down on the figure of the native Potts, he had received a letter from his mother's birthplace. It was inscribed: "Egregio Signor Pozzi." He was saved. By the simple inversion of the first two words, the substitution of z's for t's, without so fortunately making any difference in the sound, and the retention of that i, all London knew him now to be the rising pianist.

He was a quiet, well-mannered youth, invaluable just then to Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, a woman never happy unless slightly leading a genius in strings.

Cecilia, while engaging them to right and left in her half-sympathetic, faintly mocking way—as if doubting whether they really wanted to see her or she them—heard a word of fear.

"Mr. Purcey."

'Oh Heaven!' she thought.

Mr. Purcey, whose A.i. Damyer could be heard outside, advanced in his direct and simple way.

"I thought I'd give my car a run," he said. "How's your sister?" And seeing Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, he added: "How do you do? We met the other day."

"We did," said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, whose little eyes were sparkling. "We talked about the poor, do you remember?"

Mr. Purcey, a sensitive man if you could get through his skin, gave her a shrewd look. 'I don't quite cotton to this woman,' he seemed saying; 'there's a laugh about her I don't like.'

"Ah! yes—you were tellin' me about them."

"Oh, Mr. Purcey, but you had heard of them, you remember!"

Mr. Purcey made a movement of his face which caused it to seem all jaw. It was a sort of unconscious declaration of a somewhat formidable character. So one may see bulldogs, those amiable animals, suddenly disclose their tenacity.

"It's rather a blue subject," he said bluntly.

Something in Cecilia fluttered at those words. It was like the saying of a healthy man looking at a box of pills which he did not mean to open. Why could not she and Stephen keep that lid on, too? And at this moment, to her deep astonishment, Stephen entered. She had sent for him, it is true, but had never expected he would come.

His entrance, indeed, requires explanation.

Feeling, as he said, a little "off colour," Stephen had not gone to Richmond to play golf. He had spent the day instead in the company of his pipe and those ancient coins, of which he had the best collection of any man he had ever met. His thoughts had wandered from them, more than he thought proper, to Hilary and that girl. He had felt from the beginning that he was so much more the man to deal with an affair like this than poor old Hilary. When, therefore, Thyme put her head into his study and said, "Father, Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace!" he had first thought, 'That busybody!' and then, 'I wonder—perhaps I'd better go and see if I can get anything out of her.'

In considering Stephen's attitude towards a woman so firmly embedded in the various social movements of the day, it must be remembered that he represented that large class of men who, unhappily too cultivated to put aside, like Mr. Purcey, all blue subjects, or deny the need for movements to make them less blue, still could not move, for fear of being out of order. He was also temperamentally distrustful of anything too feminine; and Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace was undoubtedly extremely feminine. Her merit, in his eyes, consisted of her attachment to Societies. So long as mankind worked through Societies, Stephen, who knew the power of rules and minute books, did not despair of too little progress being made. He sat down beside her, and turned the conversation on her chief work—"the Maids in Peril."

Searching his face with those eyes so like little black bees sipping honey from all the flowers that grew, Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace said:

"Why don't you get your wife to take an interest in our work?"

To Stephen this question was naturally both unexpected and annoying, one's wife being the last person he wished to interest in other people's movements. He kept his head.

"Ah well!" he said, "we haven't all got a talent for that sort of thing."

The voice of Mr. Purcey travelled suddenly across the room.

"Do tell me! How do you go to work to worm things out of them?"

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, prone to laughter, bubbled.

"Oh, that is such a delicious expression, Mr. Purcey! I almost think we ought to use it in our Report. Thank you!"

Mr. Purcey bowed. "Not at all!" he said.

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace turned again to Stephen.

"We have our trained inquirers. That is the advantage of Societies such as ours; so that we don't personally have the unpleasantness. Some cases do baffle everybody. It's such very delicate work."

"You sometimes find you let in a rotter?" said Mr. Purcey, "or, I should say, a rotter lets you in! Ha, ha!"

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace's eyes flew deliciously down his figure.

"Not often," she said; and turning rather markedly once more to Stephen: "Have you any special case that you are interested in, Mr. Dallison?"

Stephen consulted Cecilia with one of those masculine half-glances so discreet that Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace intercepted it without looking up. She found it rather harder to catch Cecilia's reply, but she caught it before Stephen did. It was, 'You'd better wait, perhaps,' conveyed by a tiny raising of the left eyebrow and a slight movement to the right of the lower lip. Putting two and two together, she felt within her bones that they were thinking of the little model. And she remembered the interesting moment in the omnibus when that attractive-looking man had got out so hastily.

There was no danger whatever from Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace feeling anything. The circle in which she moved did not now talk scandal, or, indeed, allude to matters of that sort without deep sympathy; and in the second place she was really far too good a fellow, with far too dear a love of life, to interfere with anybody else's love of it. At the same time it was interesting.

"That little model, now," she said, "what about her?"

"Is that the girl I saw?" broke in Mr. Purcey, with his accustomed shrewdness.

Stephen gave him the look with which he was accustomed to curdle the blood of persons who gave evidence before Commissions.

'This fellow is impossible,' he thought.

The little black bees flying below Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace's dark hair, done in the Early Italian fashion, tranquilly sucked honey from Stephen's face.

"She seemed to me," she answered, "such a very likely type."

"Ah!" murmured Stephen, "there would be, I suppose, a danger—-" And he looked angrily at Cecilia.

Without ceasing to converse with Mr. Purcey and Signor Egregio Pozzi, she moved her left eye upwards. Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace understood this to mean: 'Be frank, and guarded!' Stephen, however, interpreted it otherwise. To him it signified: 'What the deuce do you look at me for?' And he felt justly hurt. He therefore said abruptly:

"What would you do in a case like that?"

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, sliding her face sideways, with a really charming little smile, asked softly:

"In a case like what?"

And her little eyes fled to Thyme, who had slipped into the room, and was whispering to her mother.

Cecilia rose.

"You know my daughter," she said. "Will you excuse me just a minute? I'm so very sorry." She glided towards the door, and threw a flying look back. It was one of those social moments precious to those who are escaping them.

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace was smiling, Stephen frowning at his boots; Mr. Purcey stared admiringly at Thyme, and Thyme, sitting very upright, was calmly regarding the unfortunate Egregio Pozzi, who apparently could not bring himself to speak.

When Cecilia found herself outside, she stood still a moment to compose her nerves. Thyme had told her that Hilary was in the dining-room, and wanted specially to see her.

As in most women of her class and bringing-up, Cecilia's qualities of reticence and subtlety, the delicate treading of her spirit, were seen to advantage in a situation such as this. Unlike Stephen, who had shown at once that he had something on his mind, she received Hilary with that exact shade of friendly, intimate, yet cool affection long established by her as the proper manner towards her husband's brother. It was not quite sisterly, but it was very nearly so. It seemed to say: 'We understand each other as far as it is right and fitting that we should; we even sympathise with the difficulties we have each of us experienced in marrying the other's sister or brother, as the case may be. We know the worst. And we like to see each other, too, because there are bars between us, which make it almost piquant.'

Giving him her soft little hand, she began at once to talk of things farthest from her heart. She saw that she was deceiving Hilary, and this feather in the cap of her subtlety gave her pleasure. But her nerves fluttered at once when he said: "I want to speak to you, Cis. You know that Stephen and I had a talk yesterday, I suppose?"

Cecilia nodded.

"I have spoken to B.!"

"Oh!" Cecilia murmured. She longed to ask what Bianca had said, but did not dare, for Hilary had his armour on, the retired, ironical look he always wore when any subject was broached for which he was too sensitive.

She waited.

"The whole thing is distasteful to me," he said; "but I must do something for this child. I can't leave her completely in the lurch."

Cecilia had an inspiration.

"Hilary," she said softly, "Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace is in the drawing-room. She was just speaking of the girl to Stephen. Won't you come in, and arrange with her quietly?"

Hilary looked at his sister-in-law for a moment without speaking, then said:

"I draw the line there. No, thank you. I'll see this through myself."

Cecilia fluttered out:

"Oh, but, Hilary, what do you mean?"

"I am going to put an end to it."

It needed all Cecilia's subtlety to hide her consternation. End to what? Did he mean that he and B. were going to separate?

"I won't have all this vulgar gossip about the poor girl. I shall go and find another room for her."

Cecilia sighed with relief.

"Would you-would you like me to come too, Hilary?"

"It's very good of you," said Hilary dryly. "My actions appear to rouse suspicions."

Cecilia blushed.

"Oh, that's absurd! Still, no one could think anything if I come with you. Hilary, have you thought that if she continues coming to Father—-"

"I shall tell her that she mustn't!"

Cecilia's heart gave two thumps, the first with pleasure, the second with sympathy.

"It will be horrid for you," she said. "You hate doing anything of that sort."

Hilary nodded.

"But I'm afraid it's the only way," went on Cecilia, rather hastily. "And, of course, it will be no good saying anything to Father; one must simply let him suppose that she has got tired of it."

Again Hilary nodded.

"He will think it very funny,", murmured Cecilia pensively. "Oh, and have you thought that taking her away from where she is will only make those people talk the more?"

Hilary shrugged his shoulders.

"It may make that man furious," Cecilia added.

"It will."

"Oh, but then, of course, if you don't see her afterwards, they will have no—no excuse at all."

"I shall not see her afterwards," said Hilary, "if I can avoid it."

Cecilia looked at him.

"It's very sweet of you, Hilary."

"What is sweet?" asked Hilary stonily.

"Why, to take all this trouble. Is it really necessary for you to do anything?" But looking in his face, she went on hastily: "Yes, yes, it's best. Let's go at once. Oh, those people in the drawing-room! Do wait ten minutes."

A little later, running up to put her hat on, she wondered why it was that Hilary always made her want to comfort him. Stephen never affected her like this.

Having little or no notion where to go, they walked in the direction of Bayswater. To place the Park between Hound Street and the little model was the first essential. On arriving at the other side of the Broad Walk, they made instinctively away from every sight of green. In a long, grey street of dismally respectable appearance they found what they were looking for, a bed-sitting room furnished, advertised on a card in the window. The door was opened by the landlady, a tall woman of narrow build, with a West-Country accent, and a rather hungry sweetness running through her hardness. They stood talking with her in a passage, whose oilcloth of variegated pattern emitted a faint odour. The staircase could be seen climbing steeply up past walls covered with a shining paper cut by narrow red lines into small yellow squares. An almanack, of so floral a design that nobody would surely want to steal it, hung on the wall; below it was an umbrella stand without umbrellas. The dim little passage led past two grimly closed doors painted rusty red to two half-open doors with dull glass in their panels. Outside, in the street from which they had mounted by stone steps, a shower of sleet had begun to fall. Hilary shut the door, but the cold spirit of that shower had already slipped into the bleak, narrow house.

"This is the apartment, m'm," said the landlady, opening the first of the rusty-coloured doors. The room, which had a paper of blue roses on a yellow ground, was separated from another room by double doors.

"I let the rooms together sometimes, but just now that room's taken—a young gentleman in the City; that's why I'm able to let this cheap."

Cecilia looked at Hilary. "I hardly think—-"

The landlady quickly turned the handles of the doors, showing that they would not open.

"I keep the key," she said. "There's a bolt on both sides."

Reassured, Cecilia walked round the room as far as this was possible, for it was practically all furniture. There was the same little wrinkle across her nose as across Thyme's nose when she spoke of Hound Street. Suddenly she caught sight of Hilary. He was standing with his back against the door. On his face was a strange and bitter look, such as a man might have on seeing the face of Ugliness herself, feeling that she was not only without him, but within—a universal spirit; the look of a man who had thought that he was chivalrous, and found that he was not; of a leader about to give an order that he would not himself have executed.

Seeing that look, Cecilia said with some haste:

"It's all very nice and clean; it will do very well, I think. Seven shillings a week, I believe you said. We will take it for a fortnight, at all events."

The first glimmer of a smile appeared on the landlady's grim face, with its hungry eyes, sweetened by patience.

"When would she be coming in?" she asked.

"When do you think, Hilary?"

"I don't know," muttered Hilary. "The sooner the better—if it must be. To-morrow, or the day after."

And with one look at the bed, covered by a piece of cheap red-and-yellow tasselled tapestry, he went out into the street. The shower was over, but the house faced north, and no sun was shining on it.



CHAPTER XXII

HILARY PUTS AN END TO IT

Like flies caught among the impalpable and smoky threads of cobwebs, so men struggle in the webs of their own natures, giving here a start, there a pitiful small jerking, long sustained, and failing into stillness. Enmeshed they were born, enmeshed they die, fighting according to their strength to the end; to fight in the hope of freedom, their joy; to die, not knowing they are beaten, their reward. Nothing, too, is more to be remarked than the manner in which Life devises for each man the particular dilemmas most suited to his nature; that which to the man of gross, decided, or fanatic turn of mind appears a simple sum, to the man of delicate and speculative temper seems to have no answer.

So it was with Hilary in that special web wherein his spirit struggled, sunrise unto sunset, and by moonlight afterward. Inclination, and the circumstances of a life which had never forced him to grips with either men or women, had detached him from the necessity for giving or taking orders. He had almost lost the faculty. Life had been a picture with blurred outlines melting into a softly shaded whole. Not for years had anything seemed to him quite a case for "Yes" or "No." It had been his creed, his delight, his business, too, to try and put himself in everybody's place, so that now there were but few places where he did not, speculatively speaking, feel at home.

Putting himself into the little model's place gave him but small delight. Making due allowance for the sentiment men naturally import into their appreciation of the lives of women, his conception of her place was doubtless not so very wrong.

Here was a child, barely twenty years of age, country bred, neither a lady nor quite a working-girl, without a home or relatives, according to her own account—at all events, without those who were disposed to help her—without apparently any sort of friend; helpless by nature, and whose profession required a more than common wariness—this girl he was proposing to set quite adrift again by cutting through the single slender rope which tethered her. It was like digging up a little rose-tree planted with one's own hands in some poor shelter, just when it had taken root, and setting it where the full winds would beat against it. To do so brusque and, as it seemed to Hilary, so inhumane a thing was foreign to his nature. There was also the little matter of that touch of fever—the distant music he had been hearing since the waggons came in to Covent Garden.

With a feeling that was almost misery, therefore, he waited for her on Monday afternoon, walking to and fro in his study, where all the walls were white, and all the woodwork coloured like the leaf of a cigar; where the books were that colour too, in Hilary's special deerskin binding; where there were no flowers nor any sunlight coming through the windows, but plenty of sheets of paper—a room which youth seemed to have left for ever, the room of middle age!