"Sorry to give you so much trouble all at once," he apologised.

He lighted a pipe and sat down again by the fire, while she stood over the heaps on the table, sorting them with neat fingers that had learned a very considerable speed in such tasks, and picking out here and there a shirt or vest which needed further attention. She was white with a kind of grey whiteness like ashes, and in her heart and throat heavy weights of tears lay. She talked automatically to keep herself from exhibition of despair.

"I'll darn that; it's as good as new except for one thin patch. These shirts have lasted very well, haven't they? The colour's hardly faded at all. You ought to have had new vests, but I daresay you'll have ample opportunity for buying them. To-morrow morning I'll sponge your navy suit with ammonia. What time are you going? T-t-ten o'clock?...

"I'll sponge it before breakfast. You may want to put it on. I'm going to look for that glove you lost; it was a seven-and-sixpenny pair; we ought to find it." And things like this she continued to say to him, lest, the fantastic fancy of her grief whispered to her, he should hear her heart painfully breaking.

He answered with alacrity, the same alacrity of response which he had shown, at dinner; and he handed to her the packet of chocolates, asking jocularly: "Isn't she going to eat her sweets?"

She broke one slowly between her teeth again; it had an extraordinary bitter taste which remained in the mouth. She hated the packet of sweets for its smug, silly mission of comfort.

Comfort!

How queer women's lives were!

What did men really think regarding their wives? What did Osborn think, sitting there in his accustomed chair, with his accustomed pipe between his teeth and his new and gorgeous plans causing his eyes to shine?

She knew now the wherefore of his eyes shining. He was looking out at a wonderful adventure; at freedom.

Freedom!

What right had he to freedom?

She turned to him with a remark so abrupt that it was exclamatory:

"It will be a good holiday for you."

"Great!" he answered, his satisfaction bursting forth, "great!"

"I wish I could come with you."

"Ah," he said, "ah!..." She watched him with a knifelike keenness while he reflected, and she read the stealthy gratification of the thought he voiced next: "But you can't, old girl There are the kiddies."

"Do you suppose I don't know that?"

"Oh, well; I knew you were only joking."

Joking?

What a joke!

"I shall try to save a bit of money for the first time in my life," he said. "I'll leave you a clear two hundred for yourself and the kids—that's all right, isn't it? Two hundred, and you won't have my enormous appetite to cater for! You'll do very well, won't you, Mrs. Osborn?"

"Thank you. We shall do quite well."

"I'll arrange at the bank, and give you a chequebook."

She said next:

"A whole year! Baby'll forget you."

The remark seemed to him peculiarly womanish and silly. What on earth did it matter, anyway? But he had patience with her, knowing how sorely better men than he were tried by their wives.

"Well," he observed, "kids' memories are very short, aren't they?"

Marie went on sorting the clothes; presently she drew a chair to the table, and began to work with needle and thread, darning, tightening buttons, performing the many jobs which only a wife would find. As she sewed she glanced again and again at her husband; he had sunk deep into his chair in an abandonment of rest, his legs stretched before him, his pipe between his teeth, his shining eyes fixed upon the fire. Now and again his lips twitched to a smile over the pipe stem. He was thinking, imagining, revelling in the freedom of the approaching year. The marriage task had infinitely wearied him. For a year, with a well-lined pocket, and a first-class ticket, he was to travel away from it all. He was deeply allured, and his delight was again young and robust; he looked forward most eagerly, as a school-boy to a promising holiday.

After she had sewed awhile with a methodical tightening of all the buttons, and an unconscious tightening of her lips too, she said:

"Well, you'll come back and find us all the same."

He roused himself slightly.

"I hope so. Take care of yourselves."

She could have screamed at him.

"We shall jog along here," she said.

He looked at her abstractedly. "Take the kids to Littlehampton in the summer; give yourselves a change. Your mother'll go with you, I daresay."

"How jolly!"

He took her seriously. He seemed so densely absorbed in what was coming to him that he only just heard her reply.

He said absently: "I hope it will be; look after yourselves."

She went back, in her busy mind, to the honeymoon adventure on which they had both embarked six and a quarter years ago. Then they had gone out hand-in-hand like children into a big dark and they had found light. Now they had dropped hands; and at the first chance he ran off alone, a boy once more, hungry for thrills. A strong yearning rose in her to run after him, catch his hand again, and set out with him. But there was much in the way; the butcher and baker, speaking through her mouth, had dulled his ears to her voice; he had forgotten how to hold hands; they were out of tune. Nature had sent them, all those years ago, converging together; and married life had sent them apart again.

Married life!

She traced the pattern of it, which she saw in her mind, upon the table with her needle tip—

Honeymoon / / Marie / Marie]

It was like that.

She saw wet drops falling upon the table; they were her tears. Her husband happened to look up at the moment, and, seeing them too, looked hastily away again. He did not want to see them; there were too many tears in marriage.

But soon he would be away from marriage for a whole year.

He did not want her to cry; it was terribly irritating, and she had cried too much—not lately, but in the first years. Lately she had disciplined herself better, become more cheerful, realised, no doubt, that she was quite as well off as other men's wives, and really had nothing to weep for. But, in case those tears which had fallen should be precursors of one of the old storms, he knocked out his pipe, rose, and said:

"Well, I'll be off to bed. I shall have a lot to do to-morrow."

She answered: "Very well, dear. I shan't be long."

The door shut upon him and she was alone. She listened for the closing of the bedroom door upon him, knowing that then he would not come back, knowing that he had seen and feared her tears. Then she dropped her work, and ran over to the hearthplace, and, kneeling down by his chair still warm from the impress of his body, laid her head upon it, and cried terribly.

When she had married him she gave up her life and took his instead. If he removed it, how should she live? She had become so much a part of him that her suffering was devastating; it was physical. And now, giving rein to herself, her sex side tugged at her pitilessly. Jealousy tore through her like a hot wind. She had a dozen grey hairs, a thin throat, a tired face, rough hands, two spoiled teeth in the front upper row. That was not the worst; the gaiety of her wit had been sapped. She could not have kept two men amused at a dinner table as that raven woman in the Royal Red did had her life depended upon it. Six years ago she could. She could have had them in her white, pretty hands; but not now. Not now! Never any more!

Never had she wept as she wept now before Osborn's chair in the silent dining-room, and when it seemed as if all founts of tears had run dry, so that she was left merely sobbing without weeping, she collected herself to pray.

She prayed:

"O God, teach men! Teach Osborn. Let them know. Let them think and have pity. Make him admire me, God. Make him admire me for the children I've suffered over, even if my face is spoiled. But, God, don't let me be spoiled. Can't I recover? O God, why do You spoil women? It's not fair. Help me! Keep him from the other women—the women who are fresher and prettier than me. Help me to fight. Let me win. Keep him loving me. Keep him thinking of me every day. For Christ's sake."

And after that she prayed on in some formless way till the clock struck half-past eleven, and a rapping came upon the other side of the wall, and with it sounded Osborn's muffled voice.

He somehow guessed that she would cry a little; get things over quietly by herself. It was the best way. But it was now half-past eleven....

She rose, rapped back, and tidied her hair quickly before the round mirror over the mantelpiece. Her face was ravaged. But in the bedroom she would have to undress by a very subdued light lest she awakened the baby, so he would not see, even if he wished to see. She knew, however, that he did not wish it. After making neat piles of the scattered garments again, she raked out the fire, switched off the lights, and went quietly into the bedroom.

His voice was a little testy to conceal his apprehensions.

"I must say you haven't hurried! You haven't been making me half a dozen new shirts, have you, old girl?"

She replied in a carefully-steadied tone: "There was a good deal to do, and I wanted to finish it."

He pulled his bedclothes up higher around him. "Well, thanks awfully. Afraid I rushed you. You won't be long now, will you? I want to get to sleep, and I can't with someone moving about."

"I'll be quick. There's baby's bottle to do—it's long past time. She hasn't waked, I suppose?"

"No; hasn't made a sound."

Marie lighted the spirit stove, and put the baby's food on while she undressed. Osborn watched her apprehensively, not knowing that she knew of what he did. But she wasn't going to make a fuss.

He was very thankful for that.

Every time she turned towards him he closed his eyes quickly, fearing conversation which he need not have feared. She could not have talked to him. When the food was ready and the bottle given, she was glad to creep into her own bed, erect a similar barricade of sheet and blankets, and sink into a sort of coma of grief and depression. In a few minutes Osborn slept.

When Marie opened her eyes on the twilight of early winter morning it seemed to her that she could scarcely have had time to close them, but her bedside clock showed her, to her surprise, that she had been sleeping all night. The greatness of the shock had passed, and she had to concern herself imminently with all the bustle of Osborn's departure. As he was not going to business to-day, not going out at all, in fact, until he left gloriously, like a man of leisure, in a taxicab at ten o'clock, he did no more than unclose a sleepy eye when his wife sprang out of her bed and murmur:

"I say, old girl, you will do my packing, won't you?"

"Yes. I'm extra early, on purpose."

So in the grey dawn, Marie went about her business. She packed suit-case and kit-bag and hat-box, and placed the labels ready for Osborn to write; she dressed George and bade him help the three-year-old to dress; she brushed the rooms and lighted the fires; made the morning bottle for the baby; saw that boiling hot shaving water was ready for Osborn; gave the children their breakfast; cooked an unusually lavish one for the traveller; and had accomplished all these things by the time he was dressed and ready at nine o'clock.

He glowed with health and cheer. The creases in his brow were smoothed out; his smile was ready; his voice had its old boyish ring.

Because he was going away from them the metamorphosis occurred which rived the wife's heart afresh. He was so glad to go.

He sat down with a great appetite to breakfast, while she faced him behind the tea tray. The baby, being unable to help herself as yet, was still imprisoned in her cot in the bedroom until such time as her mother could attend to her, and on the dining-room floor George and the three-year-old, ordered to keep extremely quiet and inoffensive, played with their bricks. Now and again an erection of bricks toppled down accidentally with a shattering noise, when Osborn exclaimed: "Shut up, you kids!" and their mother implored: "Do try to keep quiet while Daddy's here."

The parents made conversation at breakfast, but not much. It was kept mainly to material things relevant to the moment, such as:

"You packed all my thin shirts, didn't you?"

"Except the striped one, which has gone too far. I'll make it up for George."

"Have you written the labels?"

"No. I didn't know where to."

"All right. I'll do 'em. It's a jolly morning for a start, isn't it?"

"Yes. I'm so glad."

"I'll write and give you an address as soon as I can. I shall be able to find out to-day about mails, I expect. Yesterday I really didn't think of inquiring. 'Sides, I hadn't time. And I can tell you, I was all up a tree with excitement."

"Of course you were. It'll be a lovely holiday for you."

"Wish you could come too. Look after yourselves, won't you?"

"Yes, thanks, dear."

"Did you tell the porter to get a taxi at ten?"

"No! George can run down and do it now. George, run down and tell the porter Daddy wants a taxi at ten sharp."

Marie rose to unlatch the front door for George and returned.

The hour went past like a wheeled thing gathering velocity down an ever steeper and steeper slope. It was extraordinary how quickly it flew, and the moment came for the good-bye. She looked at him, and her heart seemed to beat up in her throat. If only he would have thrown his arms around her and been very sorry to go! She wanted a long good-bye in the flat, where no one could see and pry upon her anguish. But he had been married for six such long years that perhaps he had forgotten the romance and passion of good-byes. He kissed George; he kissed the three-year-old; he kissed her a kiss of mere every day affection; then, taking a hand of each of the children, he said gaily:

"All come down to see Daddy start, won't you?"

The hall porter came up for the bags. Osborn helped the excited children down the long flights of grey stone stairs, and she followed. During the business of stowing the luggage on the cab, she took the children from Osborn, and, heedless of the passers-by, put up her longing face once more.

"Good-bye," she said tremulously.

He kissed her again quickly, turned away, jumped into the cab, and she saw the shining of his eyes through the window. He pulled the strap and let it down. "Be good kids," he exhorted. "Bye-bye, dear! Bye-bye, all of you! Take care of yourselves!"

He was gone.

Marie stood bareheaded in the bleak wind, holding a hand of each of her children, to watch his cab down the street. After it had disappeared she still stood there, gazing blankly at the place of its vanishing, till at last the younger child, shuddering, complained: "Mummy, I's so told."

"Are you, darling?" she said tenderly, lifting the blue mite in her arms. She carried her child up all the grey stone stairs, George following, and they re-entered the flat.

It had an air of missing someone very desolately.

Her face puckered suddenly and she was afraid she was going to cry again, before the children, but George stood in front of her, examining her minutely, and she straightened her lips.

"Mummie," said George, "you hasn't barfed poor baby."

"You come and help Mummie do it," she answered.

The procession of three went together into the bedroom, where the long-suffering baby had begun at last to protest. The rumpled beds were as she and Osborn had left them, and the room looked soiled. She inspected it for a moment before she turned to the business of bathing and dressing the baby.

Osborn's late breakfast had made her late with the housework, but it didn't matter. There was no one to work for, cook for, keep up the standard for. For a few minutes she thought thus.

George and the three-year-old gave her a great deal of help with the baby. Their little fat, loving faces turned to her in the utmost worship and faith, and they trotted about, vying with each other in bringing her this and that for the infantile toilet. And when it was accomplished, George took charge of the baby in the dining-room while his mother turned to the work which he was accustomed to seeing her do. It was as if a great gift of sympathy for his mother in her hour of need had descended into his small heart.

Marie's first task lay in the bedroom; when she had made her own bed, she turned to Osborn's, and slowly and thoughtfully, one by one, she folded up the blankets for storage in the cupboard, dropped the sheets and pillow-case into the linen-basket without replacing them, and then spread the pink quilt over the unmade bed.

It would be a year before Osborn wanted it again. A year!

A few things of his lay about the room; only a few, for all that were good enough to pack she had packed. She suddenly advanced upon these few trifles, swept them together, and pushed them out of sight in a drawer. Again she looked around. The room seemed expressive now only of her own entity; she was entirely alone in it.

She advanced to Osborn's bed again, ripped off the quilt and mattress, and bent her strength to taking apart and folding the iron bedstead. It was really a man's task, but she accomplished it, and carried it into the dressing-room, where she put it against the wall, in a corner. Again she returned to her own room and looked around. Her bed, her toilet things, everything was hers. True, the baby's cot stood there; otherwise it was a virgin room.

Anger had muffled the grief in her heart.

"Well," she said, "I have no husband."



CHAPTER XVII

REVIVAL

She began to tidy the room automatically. Through the partitioning wall she could hear George crooning like a guardian angel to his charge, and she smiled tenderly. "The darling!" she thought. His immature and uncomprehending sympathy warmed her chilled heart as nothing else could have done. She had a great new sensation of leisure; there was all day to potter about in and no one to prepare for in the evening.

Life was now timeless, without the clock of man's habits. Nothing mattered.

She sat down idly before her dressing-table and met again her sallowed face in the mirror. The sight stirred her anger vigorously once more. Wrathfully she wanted to do something—anything—and, to keep her fingers busy, pulled open one of the top drawers of the dressing-table. Confusion met her, for it was the untidy drawer beloved of woman; the drawer where ribbons and lace and scent sachets and waist-belts and flowers and face powder lay pell-mell. For a long while the drawer had not had the periodical setting straight which woman grants it, and its contents were aged, dingy and undesirable—camisole-ribbons like boot-strings, lace collars long out of fashion, a rose or two crumpled into flat and withered blobs, shapeless and faded. She touched things sorrowfully.

"My pretty things!" she thought with regret.

At what precise moment the idea came to her she did not know, but it intruded by degrees. She began to think idly of money, to turn over in her mind the exact allowance with which Osborn had left her, and she knew herself rich. Till yesterday her domestic budget, for herself, the children and Osborn, had been at the rate of about one hundred and forty pounds a year. He had to have the rest. Now she had two hundred and no man to keep. It would have taken a woman to understand why she suddenly sprang up, why her sallowed face took on a hasty colour, and with what an incredulously beating heart she hastened down the grey stone stairs to the hall-porter's box.

"Porter," she said, controlling her voice with difficulty, "I want a charwoman at once; and—and for two or three hours every morning. You could find one for me?"

Like every other block of flats, the place was infested with ladies of the charing profession, and he promised her one within half an hour. Returning to her children, she sat down at ease in the dining-room to await the woman's arrival.

When she came, it was joy to show her round; to say: "I want the bedroom and hall and kitchen done; these things washed up; and these vegetables prepared. And these things of the children's washed out, please. I shall be back before you've finished."

Then she put on the children's outdoor things, established the baby and the three-year-old at either end of the perambulator and, with George walking manfully by her side, set out upon an errand.

She was going to tell her mother of what had befallen; she hardly knew why, but the wisdom of matronly counsel and opinion, irritating as it was, had impressed her forcibly during the past years. So she and George trundled the shabby grey perambulator, Rokeby's gift, across the Heath, and along the intervening streets to Grannie Amber's.

They left the perambulator in the courtyard and made a slow journey up the stairs to her nice flat on the first floor. That flat, which had seemed so small and old-fashioned to the girl Marie, appeared as a haven of refuge and comfort to the woman. It was so warm, so quiet and still. When they arrived there, Grannie Amber was comfortably sewing by her cosy fire, while her charwoman got through the work there was to do. She was surprised and somewhat uneasy to see her daughter so early, but she bustled about to settle them comfortably, taking the baby upon her lap, and bringing out queer old games from cunning hiding-places for the others, as grannies do.

When George and the three-year-old were presumably absorbed, she lifted an anxious, cautionary eyebrow at Marie, and waited to hear the news.

"Osborn's gone away for a year, mother," Marie announced quietly.

Mrs. Amber did not reply for a few moments, but her elderly face flushed with red and her eyes with tears; she was so nonplussed that she hardly knew what to say, but at length she asked:

"What does that mean, duck?"

"He has got a splendid appointment, owing to an accident to one of the firm's travellers," said Marie steadily. "He only knew yesterday, and had to start at ten this morning, so you may guess we've been very busy. It will keep him away for a year and he's going to travel—oh! over nearly half the world, selling the new Runaway two-seater; and the salary is five hundred a year and a good commission and very generous expenses."

She was glad to have got it all out almost at a breath, without a sign of a breakdown; and the eyes of Grannie Amber, who was not meant to understand and knew better than to show she did, kindled at her daughter's courage.

"I am so sorry, duck," she murmured sympathetically. "You'll both have felt the parting very much; but it'll be a splendid holiday for Osborn; and—and I'm not sure whether it won't be a splendid holiday for you, too."

Marie met her mother's eyes with a full look.

"I am not sure, either, mother," she said quietly.

Grannie Amber looked down at the baby's small, meek, round head.

"You need a rest," she murmured, "and this money will help you, won't it, love?"

"I have two hundred a year, clear, for the children and myself."

"He might have halved it!" said Grannie, in a sudden, indignant cry.

Marie replied with a look of steel: "I don't think so at all, mother. And men always think that women ought not to have the handling of too much money, you know."

"Don't I know!" said Grannie, with unabated venom.

"Osborn has left me plenty. It's far more than I managed on before."

"I'm glad of that, duck."

"Directly Osborn had gone I suddenly thought—and I got in a charwoman. She's there now. It did seem queer."

"Oh, that's good, my love. I am glad of that. Now you'll rest yourself and get your looks back, and I shall be round a great deal to help you with the children."

"I want to ask you to do something for me to-day, mother."

"Certainly, my love. Just name it."

"I—I want a free day. To go into town and lunch and walk about by myself; no household shopping to do; no time to keep; no cooking to hurry back for...."

"What a funny idea, duck!" replied Grannie, still carefully keeping up the attitude of old dunderhead; "but I'm sure I'll be only too delighted to go back home with you, and take the children out on the Heath this afternoon. And I'll put them to bed, too. You'll help me with these very little children, won't you, Georgie?"

"'Ess, G'annie," replied George importantly.

"Mummie needn't hurry back, need she, Georgie?"

"She tan 'tay out all night," replied George, showing a generous breadth of mind.

Grannie and mother both laughed heartily.

"I'll run and put on my things at once," said Mrs. Amber, transferring the baby to Marie's lap, "and I'll go back with you now. I'm an idle old woman with nothing to do, and it will be a delight to me to take the children out."

They trundled the grey baby-carriage back across the Heath, and toiled up the stone staircase of Welham Mansions to Number Thirty. All the windows of the flat were opened; it looked almost fresh and bright once more; and a charwoman of stout build was dealing competently with the few remaining jobs. Marie paid her; instructed her to return to-morrow, and went to make herself ready for town.

She left home again at twelve-thirty, taking with her a replenished purse, and a stock of tremluous emotions. One was of dreadful solitude, a fear of loneliness, spineless and enervating; another of defiance; another of excitement; another of bravado; another almost of shame.

What should she, an old married woman with a family of three, want with a purposeless jaunt to town? Since the birth of George she had never done such a thing. She had never spent money on amusing herself, on passing an agreeable time.

It was almost as if, directly her husband, the master of her life and her children's lives, turned his back, she filled her purse from the store he had left behind him, and went off frivolling.

"I do not care!" she said to herself fearsomely. "I do not care a damn. I'm off!"

One o'clock found her in the West End, a shabby, thin-faced woman of the suburbs, rubbing shoulders with scores of other women jostling round the shop windows. All that she saw she longed for; but none of it was she foolish enough to buy. Some cold prudence, an offshoot of her curious anger of the morning which still lingered with her, restrained. Unformed, but working in her mind, was the beginning of an impression that during this coming year she had some definite course to follow, plan to make; she felt, almost heroically, as if she were going to salve herself from something she had not, till lately, before her glass, dared to define. She saw that women, caught intricately in the domestic toils, had a dreadful, hard, cunning battle to fight, and she felt as if in some way she was just beginning to fight it, but that it would tax her utmost resources. So she spent none of her money on the fashionable trifles of a moment, which she saw behind the plate-glass, but she gave herself a lunch.

Debating long where to go, she went to the Royal Red and had a little table in an obscure corner behind a pillar, where she could see, but was hardly seen, even if anyone had wanted to look at this woman, apparently just one of a thousand suburban shoppers. She lingered long at her table to get to the full the worth of her three-and-sixpence; to watch the suave, gay women pass in and out, be fed and flattered and entertained. The great furs laid across their slender shoulders, the ephemeral corsages beneath, the hint of pearls on well-massaged necks, the luring cock of a hat, the waft of a perfume that was yet hardly so crude as definite perfume, all roused her hostility, her fighting sense. Not a woman there knew what passed behind the pillar in the breast and brain of the slim, shabby woman with the big eyes and wan face; none knew how she hated and feared; none knew of her prayers; none but would have smiled to hear that she even thought of entering with them the arena of women. And had a man glanced once her way he would not have glanced twice.

All this she knew; she was setting it down definitely in her mind, like writing. When it was written she was willing to read it over and over again till she had learned it by heart.

She had eaten an ice Neapolitaine with voluptuous pleasure and, calling her waiter, ordered coffee and a cigarette.

She was not going yet.

It was a long while since she had smoked, or even thought of it; and though she really did not care very much for smoking, she chose an expensive Egyptian now with the utmost pleasure. What a sensation of leisure it gave, this loitering at will, over a cup of coffee and a cigarette! Besides, it gave her longer to watch her enemies, to learn the modes and tricks of the day.

After lunch she sauntered back into Regent Street and stopped by an American Beauty Parlour. She went in and inquired the price of a manicure. It would be one-and-sixpence. So she entered a warm wee cubicle full of beauty apparatus, sat down, and gave her right hand for the manicurist's ministrations.

The manicurist was a lithe, tall girl, with a small young, wicked face; and meekly demure. Her hair was sleeked down provocatively over her ears, in which emerald drops dangled. She was an Enemy. As she took her client's hand and dabbled the finger-tips in a tiny red bowl of orange-flower water, Marie wondered, without charity, who had given her those earrings of green fire, and why.

The girl talked sweetly, as she was taught to do. She remarked on the coldness of the day and the trials of shopping in such bleak weather; on the bustle of the shops preparing for Christmas; on the smallness of Madame's hands.

They were a charming shape, might she say? But Madame had abused them. Madame had perhaps been gardening? Gardening was becoming so fashionable, with a sweet glance at the client's ensemble. Was that the reason for those broken cuticles, those swollen fingertips and brittle nails? It was a thousand pities.

Knowing, as she spoke, the futility, the obviousness of the lie, yet somehow unable to help speaking it, Marie answered in abrupt confusion. Yes, she had been gardening; it—it was a favourite hobby nowadays; all her friends....

With that sleek face before her, those fragile fingertips handling hers, she would not for a fortune have confessed: "I spoil my hands because I spend my days between the stove and the sink; because I've cooked and swept and sewed for a man and three children; because I wash and iron." Secretly the manicurist would laugh and ridicule; in her smooth white face and twinkly eardrops was the story of what she would think of such a domestic fool; of the woman who was the slave of man and home; who had lost her looks and hope in the servitude of married poverty.

Presently the finger-nails were done; they did not look a great deal better even now, but they felt charmingly petted and soothed. Again the manicurist ran her eye over the other from head to heel, letting her glance rest at last upon her face.

"A face massage, madame?" she suggested.

Marie hesitated, and the girl added, smiling: "It would be half a crown."

"I have not time to-day, thank you," Marie said, rising. She paid for the manicure and left the warm and scented place; she had nowhere particular to go, no one to talk to, and yet she did not wish to go home so early. It would have been a tame ending to her day and, besides, she had not seen all yet. She wanted to see the lights rise and twinkle along the streets, to watch the evening life come in like a tide, wave upon wave breaking musically upon the city's shore; and to feel that even then, though six o'clock had passed, and seven, and eight, she was yet her own mistress. She was sampling sensations, not altogether new, but at any rate long forgotten. It occurred to her, as she turned out of the Beauty Shop, to go and call upon someone; but upon whom? She knew, as she asked the question of herself, that, while she had lost a score of light-hearted acquaintances upon her wedding day, she had since been too busy to make more. There were upon her limited horizon, in fact, only Julia and Rokeby. Julia, at this moment still afternoon, would be involved in much business, someone else's business which she could not put aside as if it were her own to do as she pleased with; but Rokeby called no man master.

She hardly knew why she thought of going to tell Rokeby her news, but there was a want in her, a want of a wise someone's comments, a kind someone's sympathy. She boarded a City omnibus and was carried to King William Street.

Here Desmond had his prosperous shipbroking office, and made his enviable thousands and sharpened his innately sharp brain, so well concealed below his lacklustre, almost naive, exterior.

A lift carried her up to the third floor, where she arrived before a door upon the glass panels of which were blazoned his name and profession, and pushing it open, she asked for him uncertainly. A clerk said doubtfully: "Have you come about the typist's situation?" and looked at her in a summary fashion which made her timid.

She hated this timidity which had grown upon her with the married years; a timidity based upon loss of trust in her womanly powers, loss of the natural arrogance of beauty. Holding her head very erect, she replied:

"I am a friend of Mr. Rokeby's. Will you kindly say that Mrs. Osborn Kerr has called?" Second thoughts sent her fumbling in her bag and producing a card.

"You had better send in my card," she said.

Desmond was busy with a client when the card was laid before him, but when he had glanced at it, he took it up and looked again, as if not believing his eyes. "In five minutes," he told the clerk; and, turning to the client, he clinched in that remarkably short while an arrangement which they had been discussing and quarrelling over for half an hour.

He stood up, waiting for Marie to enter. When she came, he was struck, not having seen her since the birth of the third baby, by the further alteration in her. How thin she was! And quiet! With that dullness which, in his judgment, too much domesticity always brought to women. Like most ultra-modern men, while secretly making a fetish of the softer virtues in woman, he wanted them expressed somehow in an up-to-the-minute setting. Yet he understood dimly the struggle of twentieth-century woman in trying to make herself at once as new as to-day and as old as creation.

"Well, this is nice," he said very kindly, taking her hand with deference. "I've a free hour, and lo! you come to fill it. Let me pull the visitor's chair right up to this fire, and give you a cup of tea."

His kindness and attention were all about Marie with the benevolence of a new warm garment on a cold day. She sat down in the great soft chair which he wheeled forwards for her, loosened her out-of-date fur neckwear, and looked around her with feminine interest.

"What a pretty office!" she said. "And you have flowers."

"Ladies sometimes come to tea," he replied smilingly, pressing a bell.

To the clerk he said: "Get tea from Fuller's, right away."

"I ought not to hinder you," said Marie; and, as she said it, there came to her the fragrance of the memory how in her girl days she had, in the course of her business and pleasure, hindered many men like this, and how pleased and flattered they were to be thus hindered. She wished she could feel as sure of herself and her power to charm without the least exertion as she was then. She went on: "I really hardly know why I came, but I was in town; and I thought you'd like to hear the news about Osborn. He's gone, you know; gone."

Rokeby wheeled right round to face her, in his swing chair: "I know," he nodded, "at least I know the bare bones of it. He found time to ring me up yesterday and give me an inkling. So you've really sent him off, have you?"

"Yes; this morning, at ten."

Rokeby felt for his words carefully, in view of what he saw in her face.

"It must have been a rush for both of you."

"It was. But things are better like that. There isn't so much time to think."

"No," said Rokeby.

"If I'd known he'd told you, I wouldn't have come round to hinder you this afternoon."

"Don't mention that word again, Mrs. Kerr. I'm proud and delighted. And I didn't hear much yesterday, and I want all of it. What's the whole game?"

She sat there telling him; the fire flushed her face so that its wanness disappeared; and in their wonder and bewilderment her eyes were big and solemn like a child's. But the composure to which she had won was complete.

"It will be a splendid holiday for him," she finished. "He hasn't had one since we were married. Of course, we've been nearly every year to the same rooms at Littlehampton, but with children it's different. You can hardly call it a holiday."

"You can't, I should think."

She smiled seriously and passed it by. "He was like a schoolboy let out of school," she said with a sudden jerkiness, "he was so pleased. Poor boy! I knew it must mean a lot to him not to have to worry about money any more for a whole year, and—and to get away."

"Yes," said Rokeby gravely, "yes. And how are you going to celebrate your holiday, Mrs. Kerr?"

She looked at him quickly. A smile broke round her lips. "Do you know," she dared, as if shocked at herself, "last night I was heartbroken; this morning I was bitter; this afternoon I came up to town to try to shake it off—"

"I hope you've shaken it?"

"I—I hardly know. I shall miss him so when I get back. But—but I've got a whole year. A year! But why bother you with these things? A woman would understand; Julia would."

"I suppose you're making a day of it? Going to see Miss Winter this evening perhaps, and tell her all about it?"

She scarcely noticed the eager note in his voice.

"That's an idea!" she exclaimed. "I was wondering what I'd do about this evening, and I was determined not to go home till ten o'clock. I don't know why, but if I can make myself stay right away on my own pleasure till then it will be like breaking a spell. But why I'm talking like this to you I don't know. You'll think me mad."

"No, I shan't."

An office-boy staggered in with tea, and for a while the business of it kept them lightly occupied, and talking inconsequently; but presently Rokeby went back to:

"So you are going to see Miss Winter this evening? Look here, Mrs. Kerr, Osborn would never forgive me if I let you go alone. I'll take you—yes, please. Do let me! We'll both give her a surprise."

Recovering a spark of the old audacity which her prettiness used to justify, she laughed: "No, you won't. We shall want to talk—and talk. You'd be in the way."

"I solemnly swear I won't. I'll wash up and do a lot of the jobs bachelor girls always keep for their men friends to do. I'll sit and smoke in the kitchen. Honest, I will! There, now?"

Her laughter was real and merry. "You? What's come to you?"

"I hardly know," said Rokeby quickly, in a low voice.

Marie's hand and eyes were hovering critically over the dish of cakes; youth and delicious silliness had visited her, if but for an hour, and a curious kind of champagne happiness fizzed through her. The earnestness of Desmond's sudden look passed her by; at the moment there was nothing earnest in her; she was, all so suddenly, a holiday woman out for the day. Selecting her cake, she began to eat it.

"It will be awf'ly good of you to take me there," she answered; "it will be something to write and tell Osborn about."

"Do wives have to hunt for topics for letters, as they have to hunt for suitable conversation, when husbands want it?"

"Oh! have you noticed that?"

"I've noticed my married friends seem to have very little of interest to say to each other."

"Why is it?"

"I don't know. I think they give each other all they've got in a great big lump too soon. But I don't know; how should I?"

"I wonder if I could tell you. I think it's because a man carefully robs a woman of all power to have any interest outside her home; but at the same time he votes her home interests too dull to talk about."

"Married life!" said Rokeby quizzically.

"But there are beautiful things in it; children, you know. I shouldn't have said what I did."

They let a silence elapse as if to swallow up the memory of the things Marie shouldn't have said, and after it he asked: "What time shall we go?"

At six o'clock they were speeding down Cannon Street, along the Strand, and the gaudier thoroughfares of the West, in a taxicab, to Julia's flat.

Her delight at seeing Marie was obvious, but a veil of reserve seemed to drop over her vivid, strong face when she saw who escorted her.

Rokeby would not take leave of Marie on the threshold, though; he followed her in and sat down, asking if he might stay. There was about him an air of smiling determination, and his eyes obstinately sought Julia's, which as obstinately avoided his. She began to chatter, as if to slur over a momentary confusion.

"I've only been in ten minutes, and I was going to settle down to a lonely evening. I'm awf'ly glad to have you, Marie darling. If Mr. Rokeby's going to stay he'll have to be useful. I'm afraid you find me almost deshabillee, but I'm one of these sloppy bachelors, as you know."

But Julia had a taut way of putting on even a silk kimono, and she could not have been sloppy had she tried; her lines were too fine and clean.

The two women went away to Julia's bedroom, a little box like a furnisher's model, and there Julia gleaned Marie's news. But far from giving unmitigated sympathy, she was almost crudely congratulatory.

"It's what most wives of your standing want badly. A year off. A year to go to some theatres, to find their own minds again; to look after their wardrobes, and thread all the ribbons in their cammies that they've been too busy to thread for ages. It's no good coming to me for pity. I'm not sorry for you."

"I—I'm not sure that I want you to be. I see what you mean. But—"

"But?"

"Last night, when I knew, I was just heartbroken. I don't know when I've cried as I did. For a while I thought I'd just have to die."

"You won't die. You'll renovate yourself; you'll get new feathers, like a bird in spring."

Marie looked slowly at Julia.

"I know."

Julia began to smile, first a smile of inquiry, then of delight. "'Rah! 'rah!" she screamed softly; "we'll have Marie pretty again."

Marie took off her hat and coat and began to fluff her crushed hair.

"See my grey hairs, though, Julia?"

"They're nothing."

"My teeth, of course, haven't been touched since I was married. I don't know if I'll be able to afford that, but I'll try."

"Marie," said Julia, at an inexplicable tangent, "for heaven's sake why bring Desmond Rokeby here?"

"Oh, do you mind, dear? He brought me."

"Mind!" said Julia, now inexplicably tart, "I don't mind! Why should I mind anything about him? Only—"

"Only?"

"Oh, well, it doesn't matter! Let's all be jolly, if he's got to stay."

It was one of those gay, rowdy, delightful, laughing evenings which can happen sometimes. They were all three in the minute kitchen together, Desmond taking off his coat and rolling up his sleeves to cook, and excellently he cooked, too. Julia tied an apron around him, and Marie twisted up a cook's cap from grease-proof paper, and they laughed like people who have discovered the finest jokes in the world. There was no care; there was no worry; no time-table. No Jove-like husband, no fretting, asking wife, no shades of grocers and butchers had a place there. It was a great evening. No one was married. Everyone was young. Oh! it was jolly! jolly! jolly! All one wished—if one stopped to wish at all—was that it might never end.

But the end was at 9.30, punctual to the stroke of Marie's conscience. At No. 30 Welham Mansions, Hampstead, were three little sleepers who depended upon her for all they needed in the world, and over them watched a tired old grannie who would fain go home to bed. Marie left the others suddenly, in case the strength of her resolution should fail her, crying, as she ran out:

"Now don't stop me! I'm going to put on my hat—and GO!"

Julia got up to follow her quickly, but quick as she was, Desmond was quicker. He had his back against the closed door, facing her, and he said:

"Julia! we'll stop ragging. We're alone for just two minutes. Let me ask you—"

"No!" she exclaimed rebelliously.

"Yes, I will! You couldn't get the door open if you tried. Julia, ever since I saw you I believe I've wanted you, and every time I've tried to tell you you've checked me or driven me off somehow. Yet won't you think—"

"I don't want to."

"If you'd marry me—"

"You know you don't believe in marriage any more than I do."

"Not for any fools. But we're different. Besides, you've altered me; converted me. You can do absolutely what you like with me. I'm yours. Let's—let's get married to-morrow and set an example to 'em all of what married people should be."

"Are you mad?"

"Yes, about you," Rokeby replied. He had lost his naive and lacklustre bearing, his eyes were alight and quick, and his fire warmed her as she stood before him, mutinous yet afraid.

"I shall never marry," she said defiantly.

"You will, sooner or later," said Rokeby, "and you will marry me. I'll never leave you till you've done it, and then—then I'll never leave you, either, Julia." He advanced upon her, a sudden whirlwind, before whom she cringed back with a helpless sense she had never known before. He opened his arms, enclosed her in them, and kissed her by force, while she struggled and protested furiously under his lips.

"Do you know," he asked, "I came here to-night just to kiss you. Only that! I didn't hope for any more satisfaction, but some day I shall have it. You're not what you think you are. And I'll make you very happy. As a looker-on I've seen a lot of the game called marriage, and I'd know how to make you happy. Don't you believe it?"

Released, she retreated to the other side of the room.

"I don't want to believe it; you'd better go; you've behaved disgracefully, and I don't feel in the least like forgiving you."

"Very well," said Rokeby, as Marie's footsteps sounded on the parquetry of the corridor, "I'm going, but I shall come again, and again! You won't get rid of me, I say, till you've married me. And then you'll never be rid of me."

He swung round, laughing, and opened the door for Marie.

"Now, Mrs. Kerr, I'm to see you well on your way home."

She looked from one to the other, at Julia tall and flaming, and Desmond diffusing a kind of electricity.

"I believe you two have been quarrelling; I ought not to have left you alone."

"We have been quarrelling frightfully. Miss Winter is never going to allow me here again."

"Glad you realise that," said Julia frostily.

He went out into the hall goodhumouredly to find his coat and hat, and Marie's umbrella, while the two women kissed good-bye. The fold of kimono that covered Julia's bosom heaved rapidly and her eyes were very bright. She would not offer Rokeby her hand, but went to the front door with her arm round Marie's waist.

They looked back to wave at her before they ran downstairs; she looked very tall and brilliant as she stood in her doorway, her head held high, and her mouth tightly set, and when the door had shut upon her, Marie wondered aloud:

"What can have happened to annoy her so?"

"I've done it," said Rokeby, "but don't worry over it. These things adjust themselves, and nothing matters at the moment, anyway, but seeing you safely home."

"You can't come right out to Hampstead."

"I can; and I should certainly like to, if I may. Osborn would never forgive me for leaving you at this time of night."

She thought how kind he was, and how restful. It was attractive to be looked after again, deferred to and considered. Rokeby drove her the whole way out in a taxicab and found the sincerity of her thanks, as they parted, very touching. As for Marie, not for years had she climbed all those cold stairs so buoyantly; and after her long day, as she put her latchkey in the lock, she suddenly sensed the pleasure of coming home. There was nothing to do, in a rush, when she got in; no preparations to make, or food to cook; no setting forward of work for to-morrow, for the charwoman was coming early.

A man was a man certainly, and a quality to miss, but without him there was a great still peace in the flat.

Grannie Amber, blinking drowsily, came out of the dining-room to meet her daughter.

She noted the bright eyes and cheeks, and her heart beat joyfully.

"Had a nice time, duck?"

"Lovely, mother. I lunched by myself at the Royal Red, and watched the people. Then I had my fingers manicured, and went to tell Mr. Rokeby about Osborn, and had such a nice tea in his office; he's got such a pretty office. Then he took me to Julia's flat, and we three had dinner together. Oh! we were jolly. Mr. Rokeby cooked; how we laughed! Julia made him wear one of her aprons, and I made him the sweetest cook-cap you ever saw. I don't know when I've enjoyed myself so much."

"He's a nice man," said Grannie approvingly; "I wonder if he's thinking of marrying Miss Winter?"

"Mother, your head always runs on somebody marrying somebody else."

"Well, duck, I'm an old woman, and in my long life I've noticed that they always do."

"Julia hates men."

"I don't believe it, my love."

Marie went into her dining-room and looked around it with a new sense of authority; she was now a complete law unto that room and all in it.

"I've got a cup of soup for you here, dear," said Grannie Amber, bustling to the fireplace.

"Mother, you shouldn't trouble yourself! But how nice it is!" She drank gratefully, then put the usual question with the usual anxiety:

"Babes been well? And good?"

"They've been lambs," said Grannie warmly.

"What a pity I folded up Osborn's bed, and put it in the children's room! You could have slept here to-night, mother."

"My duck, I'd rather sleep in my own bed," said the old lady, "and I'll be putting my things on, and going there now. You have the woman coming in the morning?"

"Yes—and every morning."

Mrs. Amber nodded approvingly.

"You'll be very comfortable now, love."

Then she muffled herself in her wraps and went out bravely into the cold towards the old-fashioned flat across the Heath; and Marie, undressing, went to her bed, too. How still it was! The tiny breaths of the baby scarce stirred the immediate air.

Where would Osborn be now?



CHAPTER XVIII

INTRIGUE

Osborn passed that first night at the best hotel in Liverpool. The term "expenses" provided for the best, in reason, of everything; and a good man at his job need not be afraid of making claims. Osborn was going to be a very good man at his job and, somehow, without any undue swelling of the head, he knew it. His chance had come, the big chance which had laid poor Woodall low, and sent him up, up, rejoicing. When they carried his rather goodlooking luggage—which he had bought new for his honeymoon—into a palatial bedroom of the Liverpool hotel, he experienced, only with a thousand degrees more conviction, that sense of freedom from care which his wife was even then timidly grasping, far away in London. He was provided for handsomely and agreeably for three hundred and sixty-five days.

All his liabilities were provided for, too. No unexpected call could come to him, no fingers delve into the purse that he might now keep privately to himself. He was going out into a big world where life had never taken him before, and he was going untrammeled; strong, young.

Osborn dressed for dinner that evening; he wore the links his mother-in-law had given him as a wedding present, and a shirt whose laundering had been paid for out of that omnipresent thirty-two-and-sixpence, and the jacket cut by the tailor whom he had never been able to afford since. He looked a very nice young man, fresh, broad and spruce, but not too spruce; open-browed, clear-eyed and keen. He was now at the zenith of his physical strength, in his thirty-second year, untired and still eager. As he dressed, he looked at himself in the glass as a man regards himself upon his wedding day.

He had remembered to find out about mails from Cook's and, before going in to dinner, sat down in a great lounge and scribbled a note to his wife; just this information, love, and a further injunction to take care of herself; and no more. Like other husbands who had been similarly placed domestically, he had no idea how this process of taking care was to be accomplished by a harassed and busy woman, but it was some satisfaction to express a verdant hope that it should be done.

He went in, duty done, to an aldermanic dinner. He passed a very successful evening. Actually, only on the eve of his mission, he sold a Runaway car to a fat merchant prince who dined opposite to him; or at least he went as near to the actual selling as it was possible to go in the circumstances. He recommended him to their Liverpool agent, wrote a personal letter, gave his card and received one in return, and parted from his probable client with a feeling that the transaction was going through.

He was off at daybreak next morning.

A stupendous piece of luck befell him on board. They were only two days out when he found that a well-known theatrical management was taking a play, with the entire London cast, to New York. It was only on the second day, when, looking across the dining saloon, he saw a raven head on the top of a rather full neck and high shoulders, and met the gay and luring glance which he had met once before, to his secret thrill, across the Royal Red, on the night when he dined there with his wife to celebrate her birthday.

Osborn was a free man; he had broken routine and was out adventuring; and he was goodlooking, he looked worth while. She was a rather stupid actress, with no magnetism but her looks, and no possible chance of ever in this world obtaining a bigger part than the minor one she at present had inveigled from the manager; and she liked well-set-up smart men, men who appeared as if they had money to burn. There were no obstacles placed in Osborn's way.

He was highly elated when the end of a week found him calling her familiarly "Roselle," when he could walk the deck with her after breakfast, and join her party for bridge in the afternoons, and withdraw to a warm corner of the saloon with her after dinner, there to become better acquainted. He was at last, he said to himself, loosening those domestic chains which had hobbled him, and was doing more as other men did.

She gulled him into thinking her clever; all she said and did and looked excited him; she was so different from the women whom men of his class married and with whom only they became intimate; a fellow on two hundred a year with a wife and family could not afford the society of the stage. But a fellow with three hundred a year and any commission his smartness could make, all just for mere pocket-money, was in a different boat altogether. The sums he staked at bridge with Roselle and her party on those winter afternoons in mid-Atlantic used to keep the household at No. 30, Welham Mansions for a week. Sometimes he won and sometimes he lost; but either seemed to him immaterial in this new lightness of his heart.

He was to be in New York two months, and she was to be there three months.

She used to say reckless things to him which stirred the blood. Thus: "You and I, Osborn"—he knew, of course, that familiarity with Christian names was a trait of the stage—"have met, and presently we shall part; and what was the good of meeting if this dear little friendship is just to be packed up with our luggage?"

"You can pack up mine, and I'll pack up yours," he said softly.

"That's a sweet way of putting it; you're one of those light-hearted people who don't mind saying goodbyes."

"I say, Roselle, do you?"

"Saying good-bye to fellow-souls is always sad."

On the windy deck she used to wear a dark purple velvet hat slouched down and pinned close against her darker hair. It showed up the whiteness of her face, which even the saltwinds could not whip into colour, under the coating of white cosmetic almost imperceptibly laid on. Osborn loved that hat, as he loved the graceful tilt of her skirt and the fragility of her blouses; and sometimes it occurred to him to question why men's wives couldn't wear things like that. One sunny afternoon they had, when, instead of playing bridge, they sat in a sheltered corner on deck and talked.

"Where are you putting up in New York?" she asked that afternoon.

"At the Waldorf Astoria."

"Are you really?" she said, and she thought in her shallow mind that he must be very well off indeed.

Osborn did not tell her that his firm sent him to an expensive hotel for their own ends; it was pleasant to have her thinking what she did. He asked if he might call upon her in New York; if she'd have supper with him sometimes; come for a run in his two-seater which he was taking over with him. They made a dozen plans which, after all, could not hurt Marie, and the prospects of which were charming to a degree.

They landed just before Christmas.

Osborn had written his Christmas letters to his wife and children on board, and his first errand on landing was to mail hastily-chosen gifts to them. A box of sweets for the kids, a bottle of scent for Marie, these seemed to suit the occasion quite well. He even remembered a picture-postcard view of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel to bear seasonable wishes to Grannie Amber. Then Roselle claimed him.

Osborn had a good deal of odd time to put at her disposal, and she disposed of it with no uncertain hand. His way was not so uphill as he had expected; within a week he was touching big commission, bigger than he had dreamed of, with the prospects of plenty to follow. And driving his electric-blue, silver-fitted Runaway two-seater about New York, or over to Brooklyn, he placed Roselle in her inevitable fur coat and slouched down purple velvet hat, as a splendid business asset, beside him. At least he told his conscience that a smart woman in a car is unparalleled advertisement for it and perhaps he was right; but that was not the reason for her presence there.

When they said good-bye, under the wintry trees of the remotest part of a great park, it hurt him. He set his hands suddenly on her shoulders, and looked into her eyes; and then, it being almost dusk, and no one very near, he slid an arm round her, and held her to him for one swift instant. When she let him kiss her, with a yielding as passionate as response, he was surprised at his own stupidity in not tasting such sweets before.

"I've got to go," he said. "You've been a darling, to me. I'm crazy about you; I suppose you know that?"

Her slow smile drove deep dimples into her white cheeks; she looked at him warmly; and yet, had he not been too excited to note it, with an acute appraisement. "We're to be here another month," she said, not answering his query, "leave me your address; you have mine."

"Will you write?"

"Reams. And who knows? We may meet again some day."

"That's what I feel; that we haven't met just to part. You're wonderful. You're the most wonderful woman I've ever met."

"And you—you've never told me anything about yourself, Osborn."

"There's nothing to tell."

He had Marie's last letter in his breast-pocket at that moment, and as Roselle stirred against him he heard the slight crackling of the paper. It dropped like a trickle of cold water into his excitement and desire. He took Roselle's arm lightly in his hand, and turned about.

"I must take you to tea somewhere," he said; "where shall we go?"

In a shaded tea room, full of screens, rose-lights and china tinkling, he sat looking at her. She was wonderful; with the rather high set of her shoulders, her white, full neck, the depth of her hair and eyes, her short and tenderly kept hands, she was romance. You couldn't imagine such a woman sinking into the household drudge whatever her circumstances; she stood for all that was easy and pleasant, scented and soft, in woman. Osborn felt, as many a man has done and will do again, all memories, all fidelity slipping from him, in the lure of the hour. Leaning forward, he said imperatively:

"I'll have to write every day. You'll answer me, won't you?"

"Of course I will, you exacting boy."

In a very low voice he went on:

"I want to have you all to myself till to-morrow—till I've got to leave you. It would be heaven; but—"

Roselle Dates was of that talented community of stupid women who understand and manipulate life through their super-instinct of sex merely; who know how to take all and give nothing; suckers of life and never feeders. She looked at him and sighed and smiled, and shook her head, and touching his hand, whispered:

"But that's impossible. It isn't often a woman makes a friend like you. Let it last a little longer, there's a dear boy."

"I'm sorry," said Osborn. "I suppose we're all beasts."

She sighed again. "Every inch of life is snared, for women. In a profession like mine you watch each step. My goodness, you do! Or you'd fall into one of the traps."

"Isn't it ever worth while falling in?"

She refused to answer. Becoming suddenly capricious with the caprice that is the armour of her kind, she wished to be taken home. After he had left her, he walked the streets moodily for an hour before going in himself.

He had to pack for an early start next morning. In a bedroom where a prince might have slept, he threw himself into an easychair and brooded. Roselle became more than ever desirable, as he imagined her, sitting in that shaded tea room, her fur coat opened and thrown back to show the fragile corsage underneath. She was romance; the fairy tale, which he had read and mislaid, found again. Putting his hand up, he pulled out his wife's letter, and read it again cursorily before casting it into the wastepaper basket.

How dull it was! What a lack of sparkle and spontaneity it showed! Something seemed to happen to women after marriage, making them prosaic; growing little nagging consciences in them; egging them on to a perpetual striving with things that were damned tiresome. And the letter that he would write back would be just as constrained; there would be no joy in the writing of it as there would be writing the letters that would be sent to Roselle.

* * * * *

"MY DEAR OSBORN" (Marie wrote), "Thank you for your letter. You are very good to write so regularly every mail. We are so glad to know what a successful trip you are having. We are all very well; and mother gave the children a tree for Christmas, and we hung your box of sweets and my scent on it. They couldn't think how you had managed to put them there! Thank you so much for the scent. I am having the dining-room carpet cleaned. The children send their love and so do I.—Your affectionate wife,

"MARIE."

"P.S.—Baby has cut another tooth."

"My God!" said Osborn resignedly, as he tore the letter across. "Marriage is a big mistake. To tie oneself up for life at twenty-seven...!"

* * * * *

Osborn was in Chicago, prospering exceedingly, when Roselle's second letter came.

She was in the same city!

He hurried to her without a moment's loss. She was staying at a boarding-house full of noisy young business people, among whom she was a sensation. She received Osborn in a great smudged parlour decorated with much gilt and lace curtains.

"Aren't you surprised?"

"I was never so glad."

"I expect you were. I expect you've been as glad ever so many times." She looked at him shrewdly. "I didn't tell you in New York," she said, letting her hand remain in his. They were alone in the horrible room. "But my contract was for the passage out and three months playing with Sautree; not for the passage home. You see, I wanted to get out here somehow and see what I could do. It does one good to have been in the States."

"And now—"

"I'm at a loose end."

She saw the quick flush on his face and the light in his eyes, and playfully put against his lips two fingers, which he kissed.

"Only temporarily of course. I'm going round the hotels to-day—I shall get plenty of entertaining to do. When I'm tired of this, I shall move on."

"Why not let our moving on coincide?"

It was what, vaguely, in her mind, Roselle meant to do. She wanted experience; but to gain it comfortably would need a certain amount of financing; and she thought she had tested the fairly satisfactory depth of his pockets, although he had told her nothing.

"I don't know," she reserved. "What are your movements and dates?"

He told her eagerly.

"I've always longed to tour Canada," she cried.

"Then tour it on your own. Only can't we be travelling companions? I'll see to your tickets and luggage and so on."

"And I shan't have any hotel expenses," she added, lighting a cigarette; "I shall work them off and see a profit."

Osborn's year now took on for him the aspect of the most magnificent adventure sated married man ever had.

"Fancy us two trotting about the good old earth together!"

"Don't tell your friends," she laughed.

"Trust me."

"But I don't. I don't trust any of you."

"You are a tease. Roselle, it's so tophole to see you again; let me kiss you good morning."

She took the cigarette from her mouth to return his kiss; she was bright-eyed and hilarious. She knew that he was a fool as men were, unless they were brutes; and you had to make the fools whipping-boys for the brutes. As he kissed her, she knew that she was going to use him; to take all and give nothing.

"You're the dearest boy. And how's the car?"

"She's first-rate. Want her this morning?"

"You might run me around in her; job-hunting."

Into the spring sun they drove; she had the inevitable fur coat and the hat he loved, and she looked beautiful. By the time he ranked the car outside one of Chicago's best restaurants for lunch, she had what she called a pocketful of contracts, to sing at this restaurant and that; to dance for her supper and half a guinea at a ruinous night club, for she could do everything a little. But her greatest asset was her beauty.



CHAPTER XIX

ANOTHER WOOING

Osborn's letters told Marie very little of his doings; they almost conveyed the impression, though he would have been uneasy to know it, of careful epistles penned by a bad schoolboy. His letters from Chicago might have been replicas of those from New York; from Montreal he began on the same old note, though, in answer to her request to teach a stay-at-home woman descriptive geography, he once launched forth into an elaborate account of his rail journey on the Canadian Pacific, from Montreal westwards. Marie was not disappointed in the letters; they were what she would have expected. But sometimes, as she read their terse and uninteresting sentences, their stodgy bits of information, she smiled to think how marriage changed a man.

How dull it made him!

How irritating and constrained it made him! How prosaic! How it walled-up passion, as one read how a nun who had loved too much was walled-up, in the old fierce days, with bricks and mortar!

"MY DEAR MARIE," (or sometimes "Dear Wifie"),—

"How are you all getting along? I'm in —— now, as you will see by my changed address. Business has been fairly good.... It was rather a pretty journey here; I must send George a book about the wild flowers on the prairies.... I am glad to hear you are all so comfortable. Are you going earlier to Littlehampton this year, or shall you wait till the summer as usual? Of course, when I went with you, we had to go in the summer because my turn for holidays came then; but I should think the rooms would be cheaper earlier in the year. I am rather glad you are having the carpet cleaned....

"With love to you and the children,

"YOUR AFFECTIONATE HUSBAND."

In the spring a sorrow came with a shock into Marie's even life. Grannie Amber died suddenly. In the evening she had played with the children at No. 30, and in the morning she was found in the little old-fashioned flat on the other side of the Heath, sitting in her easychair by a dead fire, with her bonnet and cloak on, just as she had sat down to rest for awhile on her return.

She left her daughter a good deal of old furniture which sold for a fair sum to dealers; and an income of two hundred and twenty pounds a year.

For a while sorrow kept Marie much to the rut in which she had moved since Osborn's departure; but the grief for a parent is so natural and inevitable a grief; it is not as the grief for a husband or a child; and when the first warm days of April came Marie took some very definite steps forward on that road where she had, last December, set her feet. It was Julia who roused her finally to the course.

Julia came and said: "Do you know, my dear, you're years younger? You're your pretty self again. And what are you going to do now that you are such a rich young woman?"

It was a week later that the capable maid was installed in the flat. She slept in a tiny room which had hitherto been relegated to boxes, but which now was furnished with one or two left-over pieces from Mrs. Amber's sale, and the hall-porter, who realised that Mrs. Osborn Kerr had inherited money, was pleased to care for the boxes. The servant brought rest and charm into that flat; and George went half-daily to a near-by school, taking himself to and fro with the utmost manfulness.

Marie paid at last those longed-for visits to the dentist.

* * * * *

Marie was having the first dinner-party for which she had not to cook herself, and the party consisted of Julia and Desmond Rokeby.

Rokeby had leapt at the invitation flatteringly; but Julia had been inscrutable in her demur, until begged in such terms as were hard to refuse.

"You're the only two people I really know intimately," Marie said; "if you refuse, you'll spoil it all. In fact I don't believe I can have a man to dinner alone without exciting Mr. and Mrs. Hall Porter."

When she uttered this little vain thing, she laughed and looked in the glass and patted her hair.

"I'll come," Julia promised.

As Marie Kerr came out of her bedroom and proceeded down the corridor to inspect the table arrangements, she was a pretty picture of all that a well-dressed, happy, healthy young woman should be. She paused by the door of the erstwhile dressing-room to look in on the two elder children, then entered the dining-room. Spotless napery and most of the wedding-present silver equipped the table, as it used to do in the early days of her marriage. Between the candlesticks were clusters of violets. A bright wood fire burned upon the hearth, but the golden-brown curtains were not yet drawn upon the evening. The golden-brown carpet, newly cleaned, was speckless again. Marie moved about, improving on the table arrangements, and the hands which touched this or that into better design were little, slim and white. The finger nails had regained their tapering prettiness. And as she smiled with pleasure, between her lips an unblemished row of teeth showed. She wore black, to her mother's memory, but her gown was the last word in cut and contour; it opened in a long V to show her plump white neck; underneath the filmy bodice a hint of mauve ribbons gleamed. In her ears slender earrings twinkled. They were amethyst, and had been her mother's. She had put them on for the first time that evening as she dressed, because, regarding herself earnestly in the glass, there had risen up over her shoulder, for no reason whatever, the sleek pale face of the manicure girl, who wore emeralds in her ears. And when she had clipped them on she was thrilled; they gave her a distinctive, a resolute charm. She could smile at herself again in that glass, at the colour and light and verve which had come back to her. The face pictured there had all the roundness, the softness and pinkiness of the face of the bride Marie, who had waked and looked therein on wonderful mornings, but it held more than the face of Marie the bride. It was strong; it had firmness and judgment and humour. It was no fool of a face. Yet, as the wisest and strongest of women can delight in vanities, so Marie delighted in the earrings which she wore to-night, as an inspiration, for the first time.

From her dining-room Marie went to the sitting-room, rosy in the light of another wood fire. Every day now she used her sitting-room. Tea was brought to her there, placed at her elbow as she sat in a cosy chair before the fire, and she drank it at leisure—while the maid gave the children their meal in the dining-room. In that chair by the fire, all the spring, Marie had read the new books, for she could afford to pay a library subscription. In that chair, as she rested, the lines had smoothed from her face, her neck had grown plump again, and the stories of modern thought, of modern love and its ways, had stimulated her brain once more to thoughts of its own. She loved the sitting-room better than she had loved it even when it was first furnished; it was now peculiarly her own. When she thought of Osborn's return, as she did now and then with a curious mixture of feelings, she knew, half-guiltily, that somehow she would grudge him a share in those pleasant evenings by the fire.

Marie sat down to wait for Julia and Desmond, and, taking up her half-finished novel, put her silk-stockinged feet on the fender, leaned back, and opened the book at the place where she had left the story. It was a love story, and as she read she thought: "How well I know this phase! and that phase!... but we will just see what happens after they're married." Her thought was not bitter, only interested and curious, because her own hurt was over, and a wisdom, a contentment, had come.

Julia and Desmond arrived together, much against Julia's will; and they all sat down in the pretty pale room, while the maid drew the curtains upon the gathering dusk and switched on the light.

They sat and talked of trivial things, waiting for the serving of dinner to be announced; and Marie remembered how often, in the past years, she had longed to sit there comfortably, thus till a well-trained servant should open the door noiselessly and say: "Dinner is served, ma'am."

Now it happened every night.

They went in to a well-ordered dinner; there was a pleasant peace and harmony in the flat; and as Rokeby looked at Marie's face, which had won back all its old prettiness, as well as attaining the strength of the woman who has suffered, he did not marvel, but he was a little sad. And he wondered slightly just what was going to happen to Osborn when he came home. But Julia, as she looked at Marie, was triumphant; she did not wonder what was going to happen to Osborn; she thought she knew. And all dinner she tried to hurl tiny defiances into Rokeby's teeth, asking with sparkling malice:

"Isn't Marie looking her own self again? Isn't it lovely to see her? Doesn't grass-widowhood suit her? Isn't it a screaming success?"

Rokeby knew what Julia meant, but his patience was invincible.

There was a piano in the flat now; it had been Grannie Amber's, and was old, but still it fulfilled its purpose of a musical instrument. It stood in the sitting-room, across one of the corners by the fire, and after dinner Marie played and Julia sang; and when she refused to sing more, it was Desmond's turn. He looked through Marie's pile of music, selected a song, and sat down to play his own accompaniment with a light and beautiful touch which came as a surprise to the listening women, who knew nothing of his drawing-room talents. He went from song to song, and all at once Marie, transferring her gaze from contemplative dreams, saw Julia's face. Julia leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, her chin in her palms, looking at the man at the piano, and in her eyes ran the old tale, and her red lips smiled and her breast heaved. But she became conscious of Marie's look, and sitting up sharply, drew, as it were, a blind down over the light.

"Julia?" Marie said to herself, all wonder, "Julia!"

She looked at Rokeby's creaseless back, at his fingers wandering over the keys, and for the first time she noticed how sensitive, how caressing the fingers were. Yet that two people in her intimate circle could contemplate that through which she herself had passed painfully, as through ordeal by fire....

It made her very kind to them both, though a small stir of queer jealousy was in her. Before hell they would know heaven. Love and marriage began with the celestial tour....

When they came out into the hall presently, to put on their outdoor wraps, she beckoned them to the door of the children's room. The baby had joined the two elder ones, and three small cots now stood in a row, closely packed. A night-light gave enough glimmer to see the warm faces lying peacefully on the three pillows. The women crept in and looked down upon a scene which will always make women's hearts sing, or ache; and Rokeby followed. To his lover's mind, never had Julia Winter appeared so adorable as when she bent low over the fat baby, and murmured to it the small feckless loving things that all women always have murmured to all the babies in the world. She touched its outflung hand delicately with a finger, and lingered there, filled with woman's world-old want. And out of the twilight Marie sent a whisper which reached them both.

"Of course, you're never going to marry, either of you. But if you ever want to, and you're hanging back, wondering, just don't wonder. Remember that the children are worth—everything."

"Thank you," Rokeby whispered fervently in her ear.

Julia said nothing, but straightened herself and passed out.

Rokeby was after her in a second to hold her coat. The way in which she turned her back on him so that he might lift it on was peculiarly ungracious.

Marie was in the background, wanting a lover again. When they had gone she drew back the curtains, threw up the windows, and leaned out into the sweet, chill spring night. She drank it and loved it, and all her being cried out for love.

But she did not want love grown old, which came in and put on its slippers, and grumped: "Can't those kids keep quiet?" if it heard the voice of the children of love, and which hid itself behind a hedge of daily paper, or flung out again from home, in the ill-tempered senility of its second childhood.

She wanted love new-grown; with a bloom upon it, fresh and young; love at its beginning, before it was ripe and over-ripe, and spoiling and falling from its tree; such a love as she imagined Julia and Desmond even then to be driving towards.

In a taxicab—for where else in all London could he be alone with her?—Rokeby was taking Julia home. She allowed it in spite of herself; yet was angry with them both for the circumstance which brought them together close, which enclosed them in a privacy which made her remember, with a vividness which disturbed her, the sensations of that first and only kiss. He was asking her again:

"Haven't you changed your mind, Julia? Can't you relent?"

"You know what I think about marrying."

"I thought I did. But to-night when I looked at you looking at those kids, I knew differently. You want to be married and have children of your own. I don't know as much about me—don't know," he said in a slight break of despair, "that I come into the picture much."

It was dark enough to hide her flush.

"When I ask 'Can't you relent'?" said Rokeby, "I ought to say instead 'Can't you confess?' That's what you don't want to do."

"If—" she began.

"Yes, dear. If?"

"If I married you—"

She paused a long while and he declared passionately: "You're afraid to risk marriage and yet you want to. You don't know what to do. You like being loved; you pretend you don't, but you do. You're feeling how sweet it all is. But you will not own it even to yourself."

And she answered: "I am afraid."

"I know you are," said Rokeby; "and so am I. Haven't you thought of that?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why, look around and see the muddle and mess most people make of the contract."

"That's what I mean."

"So do I. Why shouldn't I be afraid as much as you are? If we got married and muddled and messed things up, wouldn't it hurt me as much as you?"

"Not according to what I've seen. Most men—"

"I'm not most men. I'm just me. You're you. We're different. Besides, we've seen and thought and argued it out to ourselves as well as together. Couldn't you risk it?"

"You know what I want; complete freedom."

"Well, you should have it. And you know what I want?"

"Yes?"

"Complete freedom, too."

"Oh?" she said uncertainly, with a jealous note in her voice.

He laughed. "Couldn't I have it, then? Well, to tell you a secret, you couldn't either. But another secret is that, probably, neither of us would really want it."

"That's true. It's dreadful the way married people learn to cling to each other."

"Well, what else would you cling to?"

"I don't know."

"Well; won't you risk it?"

"I think, perhaps, I dare if you dare."

The biggest moment of Rokeby's life was when he took her, for the second time, into his arms, and felt her lips respond to his. She shut her eyes and saw again the vision of the three cots side by side in a dim room; and his eyes, on her face, saw the mother-ecstasy there. "You wonder!" he exclaimed.

"Why?"

"To give me such a fright when all the while you've been feeling this!"

It was a long drive from Hampstead, and all the time she was within his arms, and all the time he told her of all they would be to each other; of how he loved her. And at last she stood alone in her flat, with her bedroom lights switched on, looking at a radiant creature in the glass, and crying within herself:

"Is this really Julia Winter?"

Already the homelike quality of her home had vanished; the dear possession of her things had become less dear. She could think of another home, a bigger one, and a hearthplace with her husband's face opposite her own. She sat down by the dressing-table, and laid her hands idly in her lap, and thought all the rosy things that women in love do think.

She lunched the next day with Desmond as a matter of course. He called for her at her office, and drove her away possessively. There was no more solitude for her, no more proud loneliness, no more boastful independence. Already she clung and already she enjoyed it. When, over the table, he asked: "Isn't it nice being engaged?" she nodded, smiling, and answered: "I'm wondering why I haven't done it before."