"Stick to business and stick to fun," he told himself grimly, as he strode along, "and you'll worry through."

He thought of his children more than of anyone else throughout the courses of his dinner in a light, bright, well-served restaurant. George was a fine little boy, and should be done well, thoroughly well, with no expense spared; he must get to know the little chap, take him about a bit and make him interested in things worth knowing. Minna was going to be pretty, a facsimile of her mother; and the baby was a splendid little female animal. There was no doubt that he possessed three beautiful kids of whom any man might be proud.

Surely, if only for their sakes, some day she'd soften and return to him? Some evening he'd come home and find her as she used to be during the first year, sweet and eager, and shining; loving and passionate....

Osborn smoked several cigarettes over his coffee thinking of these things; he was in no hurry to see the show at the Piccadilly, and there would be plenty of time for Roselle afterwards. But he was rather lonely here by himself, and looked around somewhat wistfully at gay couples, laughing parties, all about him. There was not a woman there who could equal Marie, he said to himself; if she were only here with him, with her fresh, soft face, and her springing hair, and her round and slender figure, she'd put all this paint and powder right out of court.

But she was sitting afar off in a quiet flat, softly lighted, ineffably cosy, in the place called home, where husbands were not wanted.

He confessed to himself: "It used to be pretty beastly for her; a little delicate thing—three babies and no nurse; no help with anything. I suppose I could have done a lot, but how's one to think of these things? I suppose I've failed as a husband, but what am I to do about it now? It's all over and can't be helped."

He went to his stall at the Piccadilly, and, looking about him at other men's clothes, decided that he must have new ones. The price of an evening suit need not trouble him now. He settled down and began to enjoy the play.

Roselle was on the stage, in the beauty chorus, looking magnificent, and her eyes were sweeping the stalls. They paused here and there in their saucy habit, lingering upon more than one man with one of her tiny inscrutable smiles winging a message, but their search continued until at last she had found Osborn Kerr sitting on the lefthand side in the third row. He had scribbled on the card which accompanied his flowers, "Look for me to-night," and when her look met his, he had a sudden thrill of pleasure. Watching her eyes sweeping here and there, it had been exciting to wait for the moment when they should fall on him. After he had signalled back a discreet smile in answer, he put up his glasses and looked at her eagerly.

Her beauty returned to his senses like a familiar thing; he had admired the way her hair grew from her temples, and to-night it was dressed to show the unusual charm; her ankles had always been wonderfully slim, and to-night they looked finer than ever atop of twinkly little Court shoes in a vivid green hue; her eyes had that deep, still look which expressed her inanity, while having the result of concealing it.

During the first interval he scribbled a note to her, and sent it round with an imperative request for an answer. The note asked:

"My dear Roselle, come out to supper? And shall I wait for you at the stage door?—O.K."

And her reply, in her big, silly back-hand writing, said laconically:

"Right. I'll be out at eleven.—R.D."

Eleven found him waiting by the stage-door entrance, and she did not keep him long. Soon she came, big and brilliant, out from the gloomy gully, in the inevitable fur-coat which he remembered so well, but which had begun now to look battered, and the velvet hat shoved on cheekily, like a man's wideawake. Her eyes and her teeth acclaimed him in a kindred smile, for which he felt the warmer.

"Hallo, dear old thing!" she greeted him. "I thought you were lost."

He held her hand, smiling. "This is fine!" he said. "Where shall we go?"

"Romano's."

"Romano's let it be. I've a cab here, waiting." He handed her in, jumped in after her, and slammed the door, with a feeling that for an hour at least he had left his troubles outside.

"How are you?" he asked. "What have you been doing since I saw you last? And didn't you ever expect to see me again?"

Her eyes, in the dimness, looked very deep.

"I knew I should," she answered murmurously.

The inimitable atmosphere of Romano's loosened his tongue. After she had ordered supper, with every whit of the appetite and extravagance which he remembered as her chief characteristic, next to her beauty, and after each had been stimulated by a cocktail, he was conscious that he wanted to confide in her, not so much because she was Roselle, but because she was a woman, would look soft and listen prettily. He wanted stroking gently, patting on the back, and reassuring about himself.

The slight moodiness of his expression set her suggesting confidences. "You've got a pretty bad hump," she said caressingly. "What is it? Has the car slumped? Won't they have it? Or is it indigestion? You're not what you were when—"

She gave a quick sigh and smile, very inviting.

"When we were touring about Canada and the States together," he finished. "Well, you see; when a man has come back to all he left behind him—"

"Did you leave much behind you?"

"Why do you ask?"

"You never told me anything," she pouted. "But I'm not asking. I've no curiosity. The knots men tie themselves into—"

"You can laugh."

"You make me. Aren't men silly? Tell me about—to whom you came back."

"What does it matter?"

"It doesn't. I don't care." She drummed her fingers on the table. "All men are like cats, home by day, and tiles by night. But if you'd told me you were likely to get scolded for saying how d'you do to me, I'd have been more careful of you."

Her smile derided him. "Has someone scolded you?" she asked.

Consomme was set before them and she began to drink it with appetite, not repeating her question till it was finished.

"Well?" she said then, tilting her head inquiringly to one side.

"The fact is," he answered abruptly, "I—I've had a bad let-down."

"Financial?"

"No."

"Oh! Really!" she said pettishly.

"It doesn't matter," he remarked, rousing himself, "the thing is to make the best of life, and by Jove! I'm going to!"

"So you come and look for me?"

"Precisely," said Osborn. "You've been awf'ly decent to me, Roselle. Knowing you has meant a lot to me. I don't believe you'd let a fellow down very badly, would you?" He began to feel tender towards her, and the stupidity and avarice, which he had awhile ago begun faintly to see in her, now receded under the spell of the lights and the hour. "If no one else has cut in since I last saw you," he said, leaning towards her, "you might be kind to me again. Will you? I'm lonely. I'm simply too dreadfully lonely for anything. What are you doing this week-end?"

"Nothing," she said after a careful pause.

"Come out into the country on Saturday."

"I've a matinee."

"Of course. Sunday then? I'd bring the car round for you early, and we'd have a jolly day, get down to the sea somewhere. You'd like Brighton?"

"That's a nice run," she agreed. "Yes!"

"We could get back for dinner. Where shall we dine—Pagani's?"

She suggested, also, a supper club to which she belonged. "You'll have to belong, too," she said with enthusiasm. "It's the brightest thing in town. Will you, if I get someone to propose you?"

"Rather!"

He had felt dreadfully at a loose end before that evening, but now, this old intimacy again established, he was, in a restless sort of way, happier. As they drove home, she slid her hand into his pocket like a cunning child and said: "Osborn, I want a fiver awf'ly badly; lend me one." And it was pleasure to him to pull out a handful of money and let her pick out the gold.

"I'll pay you back quite soon," she said, lying; and he replied: "You know you won't, you naughty girl; and you know I don't want you to, either."

She kissed him good night with the facility of her type, in the taxicab as they crossed a dark corner.

"Less lonely now?" she queried.

"I don't care who denies it," said Osborn, "a man's got to have a woman in his life; he's just got to. If one drives him...."

"Poor boy!" she said in her murmurous way.

He left her at her door and kept the cab to drive him to the nearest Tube station. A strange excitement filled him as he looked ahead to the direction in which he was drifting. What did it matter, anyway? He was almost in the position of a man without ties.

"'Make your own life,'" his wife had said, "'I have all I want in mine.'"

"Well, I'll make it," said Osborn as he journeyed homewards.

The flat was alight, expecting his coming, though everyone was in bed. The fire had been made up, and his whisky decanter and soda siphon stood by a plate of sandwiches on the dining-room table. Marie was looking after him infernally, defiantly well, he thought, as he splashed whisky irritably into a tumbler. It was almost as though she were making all she did utter for her: "See how perfectly I fulfil my duties! See how comfortable you are! You've nothing whatever to grumble about. Make your own life and I'll make mine."

He drank his whisky, thinking of Roselle. "Here's to Sunday!" was his silent toast. Yet it was not she who tugged tormentingly at his heart.

But he was like a child who has been put into the corner, revengefully tearing the wallpaper.

He wanted someone to be sorry; very, very sorry.

There was dead silence in the flat. What a lonely place!

How queer life was!

He went sullenly to his room, where his son was sleeping peacefully.



CHAPTER XXV

RECOMPENSE

Osborn did not tell his wife that he was going to be away from home all Sunday. What did it matter to her? How could his plans, in any degree, be her plans, which he understood were, for the future, to be made independently of him? But though he asked himself this, he was wishing violently that she should care; he was hoarding up the announcement of his Sunday absence to spring upon her and make her blench. He hardly understood his purpose himself, so vague and racked, so resentful and remorseful were his thoughts. But that was in his heart—to surprise, alarm and worry her. If only, when he observed casually: "I shall not be in at all to-day," he could see her colour quicken and the jealous curiosity in her eyes! If only he could set her longing to cry:

"Why?"

And then he could reply: "I'm motoring," and she might ask further: "Where?"

And then he could drop out casually: "I'm running down to Brighton."

Would she inquire: "With whom?"

He rehearsed these things in spite of himself.

On Saturday he returned to lunch. It was his old way on Saturdays, and the afternoon was free. A soft November day breathed beneficently over London. In the morning, he hardly knew why, he asked the senior partner whether he could take out a car to-day as well as Sunday. He drove home to Hampstead in the blue Runaway, with its silver fittings winking in the sun, and garaged it near by.

He came in rather morosely, and was thoughtful over lunch, saying little, till at the end of the meal he lifted his eyes to his wife's tranquil face and said suddenly:

"I brought a car home. I want to take you for a run."

"And me, Daddy!" George shouted, but his father shook his head.

"No," he said doggedly, "not to-day. I just want mother."

"I'd love to come," said Marie readily.

Osborn was in a strange humour, like a fractious child, and she did more than bear with it. She ignored it altogether. As they drove out of London, the business of threading the maze of traffic kept him from talking even if he would, but when they had run into silence and the peace of the country, he was still quiet, gazing straight in front of him, his hat jammed down over his eyes and his jaw set rigid. At last he heard her voice saying:

"Isn't it lovely? I wish we had a car."

"We can have one if you like."

He drove on fast. Sometime this afternoon, when she had tasted the joy of the day and the comfort of the car, he would tell her about Sunday—no details, only the bleak blank fact:

"I shall be away all to-morrow; I'm motoring down to Brighton."

They went through Epsom and Leatherhead to more rustic villages beyond, and he pulled up at last on the summit of a great hill, fringed on either side with trees.

"This is a jolly place to stop for tea," he said, breaking his long silence. "I've got everything here."

As he pulled out a tea basket from the back of the car she watched him calmly. She still thought him excessively good-looking. In their engaged days they had often escaped into the country—but on foot—and picnicked together; each had known the other to be the most wonderful person in the world. Now that love had passed the memory was well worth keeping, and she enjoyed it quietly as she sat in the car, looking down upon the back of his head bent over his task. He sat down again, opening the basket between them, and set up the spirit stove and lighted it for her to boil the minute kettle upon it. While she did this, it was his turn to watch her; and presently from his moroseness he said in a very soft voice:

"It's like old days, isn't it?"

"Only we're more gorgeous."

"You're enjoying it?"

"Immensely. Why wouldn't you take George?"

"I didn't want him. Did you?"

"I always want him."

"We're going to stay out till long past his bedtime."

"Are we?"

"There's a moon. It's tophole for motoring. I'm—taking this car out again to-morrow."

"Are you?"

He shot a glance at her and postponed the matter. They drove on fast and far, only turning when the moon was up and stars were in the sky. They arrived again upon the summit of the great hill, the fringing trees now black in the light of fairy whiteness, before he spoke again of what filled his brain.

He drew up the car and, turning a look of inquiry upon him, she saw him bending towards her, his eyes fixed upon her face. He flung out an arm along the back of the seat, behind her.

"Marie," he said, "I want to ask you something which you can't answer."

"Why ask it, then?"

"Because I'm going to. It's this: where are we two going?"

"You're right," she said slowly, "I can't answer that."

"What's the meaning of this dreadful indifference? This extraordinary indifference?"

"It's not extraordinary; if you'd only believe me it's the indifference thousands of women feel for their husbands; only in our case special circumstances—your absence, mother's money—have made me able to realise it."

"Well, if thousands of women have this indifference, which you say isn't so very extraordinary, for their husbands, what—what's the way all these chaps win these thousands of wives back?"

"They don't."

"But I want to win you back. Here and now, humiliating as it sounds, I declare I'd follow you around on my knees if—if it meant getting you."

"It wouldn't. I'm very sorry. Do you think you love me?"

His hand dropped down heavily on her shoulder.

"Yes!"

"I wish I loved you, but I don't. You—you've tired me out. I suppose that's it."

"Very well, I'll take what you say. But I've another question. Don't you guess where all this is driving me?"

"Don't hold me like that, Osborn."

"I'll only do it a few minutes. Answer my question. What do you expect of me?"

"Absolutely nothing," she owned.

"And you don't care what I do; where I go; what happens?"

"It's curious; I don't. Once if I thought you met, looked at, spoke to, any other woman prettier or better dressed than I could be, I suffered torture. But now, I'm through with it. I'm sorry it should be so."

"But that's that," said Osborn roughly, with a brief laugh.

He pulled her to him strongly, kissing her.

"I love you, you know. But if you've no more use for me—"

"Well?"

"Don't expect too much of me, that's all."

"I have told you that I expect nothing."

"Then you ought to!" he broke out angrily.

"I thought men appreciated complaisant wives."

"Complaisant? It's callousness; don't-careness. You mean me to understand, then, that you've reckoned with everything?"

"No, I don't. I mean you to understand that I don't trouble to do any reckoning about you at all."

As she uttered the words she was conscious of the brutality of them; but she was speaking truth, representing those feelings which had taken the place of love-emotions in her heart; and what else was there to say?

"I must say," he said, "you're candid."

"I want to be. If we once thoroughly understood each other we'd shake down better and go our ways in peace. I don't want formal separation, for the children's sake."

"Formal separation? If we had that, because you refused to live with me, desertion would be constituted and I'd get the children, you know."

"I wonder," she said, starting. "I should fight."

He saw the set meditation on her face under the moonlight.

"Would there be nothing I could say?" she asked, lifting her eyes to his. "I wonder if there'd be no countercharge ingenuity could bring?"

She did not mean what occurred to him; the things in her mind were of too untechnical a nature to find a hearing in the divorce courts; but as she asked her question suddenly his heart seemed to rock and to stand still for a space, while he shifted his eyes rapidly from hers and gazed straight out over the steering-wheel, down the hill, into the blue-white moonlit distance.

Roselle!

Who would believe his innocent tale if he stood up in that sad court which recorded the most human of all frailties, and said: "We travelled together here and we travelled together there; and I defrayed these expenses and those expenses; and I've kissed her; and yes, we've certainly been alone in very compromising circumstances, but I ask you to believe that technically my marital honour is intact, and that I've been true and faithful to my wife"?

The fun and the folly which had been so worth while, so like a draught of wine on the cold journey through middle-class pauperism, now appeared stripped of their carnival trappings. It was only folly which stared back at him now, and she had become ugly; sickening and wholly undesirable. Folly was utter trash. He replied to Marie in a voice so studied as to rivet her attention, asking:

"What do you mean?"

She looked at him, and knowledge came to her, born of a swift intuition raised by his obvious difficulties. In a flash she knew; but even while she knew, she didn't care; it was lamentable, how dead she was.

"Oh," she hesitated, a faint smile crossing her lips, "I mean nothing. Please don't suppose I wish to make your private affairs mine."

So great was his want that she should feel, should ask and demand him to give up his secrets, that he was impelled to declare:

"Marie, if you were to ask me, I'd tell you everything about this last year. Every little thing. There should be nothing kept back from you."

"I don't ask, Osborn," she replied very gently.

Silence settled down upon them. They remained at the top of the great hill, each staring down it into the long space of unearthly clearness and light. Automatically he withdrew his arm from her shoulders where it had been resting heavily and dropped his hand on the steering-wheel. After awhile he said:

"By the way, I'm going out with this car to-morrow."

"So you told me," she answered.

"Had I mentioned it before?" he said thickly. "Well ... I shall be out all day."

"Thank you for telling me. It's considerate of you. We make a little difference in the catering if you're out."

He clenched his hand round the wheel.

"I'm running down to Brighton; but I shall get back to town for dinner; late motoring's pretty cold in November. I shall be dining at Pagani's—where we used to go so much, you remember."

"I remember. I hope you'll have a fine day."

He gave a savage twitch to the hand-brake, let in his clutch, and in a moment or two the car ran forward.

"It beats me," he whispered to himself. "It—just—beats—me."

His whisper was lost in the rush of the car down the hill. His wife had leaned back snugly under the fur rug and her profile in the moonlight was serene, neither happy nor unhappy, but absolutely complacent. He seemed to get a glimpse of their future, with her figure travelling away into a far distance, divergent from his.

Honeymoon / / Marie / Marie]

That was marriage.

Two strangers met each other; fused, became of one flesh and one spirit, kindled a big hearth fire called home; travelled away from each other; and two strangers died. Marriage!

The next day, Sunday, he took the Runaway out of her garage early, and drove, earlier than the hour Roselle had mentioned, to the flat which she shared with another woman swimming down the same stream as herself and catching at the same straws.

She was not dressed; when a charwoman let him in upon the Sunday morning debris of the place, Roselle's voice rang shrill and ill-tempered down the corridor.

"Osborn, that you already? I'm not dressed; I've not breakfasted; I'm not even awake. Just put your head in here and see."

Following the direction of the voice, he opened a door a few inches, and put his head round. An array of women's litter confronted him strewn on every available chair, on dressing-table and floor. The windows must have been closed, or nearly so; the blinds were down; there was a faint reek of perfume and spirits and stale cigarette smoke in the room; and in two narrow tumbled beds were two women, one whose head was still drowsy on her pillow, and Roselle, who sat up in a pale blue nightgown with a black ribbon girdled high about the waist, and her raven hair in a mop over her eyes.

"What a fug!" said Osborn.

"All right," said Roselle, "go away, then! I shall be an hour dressing. You'd better wait in the sitting-room; there's a Sunday paper there, and a fire if the woman's lighted it."

The woman was kindling the fire hastily and grumbling when he went into the sitting-room, still in its state of early morning frowsiness. The curtains had been pulled aside to let in the morning, but the windows were not yet open, and empty liqueur glasses had not been removed from the table.

"It's early for visitors," grumbled the charwoman. "I don't reckon to come till nine on a Sunday morning, and I start with the washing-up, and none of the rooms ain't done."

"I don't care a straw," said Osborn irritably, walking to a window. He flung it up and heard the drab creature behind him shudder resentfully at the inrush of raw air. He put his hands in his pockets, staring out and emitting a tuneless whistle. All was awry, unprofitable and stale as the cigarette smoke of which the place reeked.

Roselle was not an hour dressing, in spite of her threat. By eleven they were away.

* * * * *

It happened that the only woman Osborn had taken down to Brighton for the day, before he took Roselle, was Marie; and harmless as the proceeding was, it affected him for a while as any first plunge affects a man. It was like taking a first step which signified something. As they sat at lunch, he looked around him and recognised easily the types which he saw. Everybody was doing what he was doing; everybody was out for pleasure with a flavouring of risk in it. Powder and rouge and fur coats were like a uniform, so universal they were; and as he looked around and saw the army of pleasure-women whose company men purchased upon the basis on which you could purchase things at the Stores, his would-be gaiety failed him somewhat and he was a little weary.

Roselle found him dull.

They lunched, and talked, and the talk had to have a silly meretricious flavour in it which tired him further; in the afternoon they walked on the front; and they went to another hotel for tea. There was a blaring band and much noise and laughter from all the pleasure-people. The air was the air of a hothouse where strange, forced and unnatural exotics bloom to please strange, forced and unnatural tastes.

Osborn did not know why he found himself so sick, and so soon, of what, to the woman at his side, was the breath of her life; he was vexed and disappointed that to him the day was so stupid and so savourless.

If the pleasures of men failed him, what was left?

He was thinking definitely while they drove on the much-trafficked road back to more gaudy lights and noise, the lights and noise of town; and he wondered how to fill the emptiness of his heart, how to appease the restless burning of his brain, and stifle before they could cry out all the dear things his soul wanted. He looked at the woman by his side, insatiable, greedy, stupid, nothing to all appearances but a beautiful body, and he asked himself if she could do it, or if she could not. And while he knew, right down in him, that she could not fulfil a fraction of his needs, he desired so much to believe that she could, that, in spite of his weariness with this miscalled business of pleasure, he made hot love to her all the way back.

Over the dinner-table at Pagani's he advanced a farther step upon the road which he was resolved to walk with her, failing other companionship.

"Roselle," he said, deliberately, "this isn't enough. How long are you going to play about with me like a beautiful pussy cat? I've been very good, haven't I? When I think of what a good boy I've been I could laugh." He laughed deeply. "You know, I could love you a lot. Why don't you give me a trial? There isn't anyone else, is there?"

He was amazed at himself to feel jealousy hot in him as he put the question.

There was no one else at the moment; but she sat thinking and playing with the stem of her wineglass, and keeping a half-cynical, half-simpering silence. It was the veil with which she shrouded her stupidity while she debated the pros and cons with herself as deliberately as she had spoken.

"No," she said at last, with a long, meaning look which meant nothing. "No, there is no one else, Osborn." Her sigh ruffled the chiffons on her breast.

"I'm going to Paris for the firm next month; it'll only be a week-end. Come, too? I'll give you a good time."

"I'll see," she murmured, her stupidity not dense enough to give a promise thus early. A month? A long, long while, an age, in which other things might turn up.

"So'll I," he said, looking into her eyes. "I'll see that you come."

"I haven't a rag to wear."

"You'll have all Paris to choose from."

"I do want a couple of hats," she said, with the worldly yet childish naivete of her class; "I'm going to Bristol in panto—at Christmas, you know."

"I'll come down."

She was conscienceless, like the rest of her type. She knew, her observation had told her long ago, that this man had ties, domestic relations, duties; all of which mattered nothing to her. Before her wants and desires, momentary though they might be, all considerations flew like thistledown before strong wind.

A Nero among women, like the rest of her pleasure-sisters, she was planned for destruction and she went upon her way destroying. The loudest cry could not reach her, nor the greatest sorrow touch her; nor could broken hearts block the path to the most fleeting of her desires.

She cared not who wept; as she had no faith, nor power for pity, so she had no tears.

She took Osborn Kerr into her hands.

She said idly, to pass the time, but softly, just as if there was some meaning behind the question: "What made you think there was anyone else, dear?"

He looked at her and spoke rather hoarsely, under the influence of the matter in hand: "Oh well; there might have been. Roselle, do you think you can love me?"

"I could," she answered. She assimilated the details of a near-by toilette. "But—"

"Don't let's have any 'buts.'"

She had no subtlety, only the power of making what she said subtle; and she said:

"I don't know that loving is wise."

Osborn was in her hands; thrown upon her mercy; a beggar for just so much as she cared to give. He answered:

"Who cares about wisdom? It's the only thing worth doing, anyway."

Roselle began pulling her fur coat up over her arms; it was past ten o'clock; and on Sundays she went to bed early, to counteract as far as might be the results of all the late nights during the week.

"Take me home," she demanded.

In the taxicab Osborn took her into his arms and began whispering to her things to which she did not listen; had he only known it, she was extremely sleepy from the effects of all the fresh air during the day, but triumphantly he took her inertia for the surrender for which he had, so suddenly, craved.

He was begging for that promise about Paris, but she would not give it. A month? What an age it was—any good thing might happen.

She would not let him come into the flat. "I'm too sleepy," she declared. She stood before him on the inner side of her threshold, with a faint smile on her face that was as pale as magnolia flowers, and her eyelids drooping heavily; she put out a lazy hand against his chest and warded off his entry. When she sent him away, he felt on fire, from the last look of her, thus.



CHAPTER XXVI

COMPREHENSION

When Marie had waved to her husband a stereotyped good-bye, and had kissed schoolboy George a warm one, on Monday morning, when leisurely quiet had come again to the flat, and as she still lingered over her newspaper, the door bell rang and Mrs. Desmond Rokeby was admitted.

Julia—fresh, heavenly, without a frown, without a care, without a regret—blew into Number Thirty like a Christmas rose and clasped Marie in a glad embrace.

"It's early; it's shockingly early, but I came up with Desmond this morning and knowing your habits—you do still wheel your own perambulator on the Heath, don't you, at eleven-thirty?—I rushed here first."

"How splendid you look!"

"I feel splendid!" The two women stood at arm's length, eyeing each other inquisitively and frankly, and Julia's ingenuous blush was the reflection of a divine dawn.

She sat down, put her feet on the fender, loosened her furs.

"I may stay and talk?"

"May you not! Oh! I'm glad to see you—it seemed as if your honeymoon was going to last for ever."

"It's not over."

"That's what we all say."

"Don't be cynical, dear," said the new Julia.

Marie waved this away with a brief laugh. "I want all your news," she demanded. "Where are you living? What are your plans? What's the house like, and where did you get your furniture?"

"We've got a wee house, the dearest thing, near Onslow Gardens, and we've not finished furnishing yet; we're proceeding with it this afternoon. I'm lunching with Desmond, and then we're going furnishing together. Desmond loves it."

"And you—you're happy?"

"Oh, Marie! I was never so happy in my life."

The baby rose from its play at the other side of the dining-room, and, tottering to her mother, begged to be lifted upon her lap.

"I only want one of those," said Julia, regarding the mite.

"That will come," Marie replied with a forced gaiety.

"Desmond took me for a motoring honeymoon," said Julia. "As you know, we had made no plans. There wasn't time. At least, I hadn't, but it seemed he'd got them all mapped out in his head, the wicked thing! We had a simply lovely time, and coming home is lovelier. I adore pottering round a house, arranging this and that, and ordering the dinner."

"You enjoy it?"

"Why shouldn't I?"

"But you hated the domestic life; you were always up in arms at the thought of marriage; you loathed even hearing of a wedding. You used to talk of slavery ... don't you remember?"

"Ah, but—that was before I married."

"Then, what do you think now?"

"It's the only life," Julia stated with final conviction. "It's meant for us all; we were made for it; and we're never truly happy otherwise. Desmond and I have talked over all these things, and I understand a lot which I didn't understand before."

Marie stroked the baby's curly head without replying; she held its feet in her hand, and caressed them, and patted its small fat legs, and coaxed a gurgle from it. But even while the baby ravished her heart, the heart was busy with the bride before her and the bridal raptures which she had known, only to lose upon the wayside where so many bridal raptures lie dead and dying; outworn and weary. Tears to which she had long been a stranger rose in her eyes, and formed one of those big hurtful lumps in her throat, so that she would not trust her voice to Julia's ears.

That dreadful softness of longing—she had thought she would never know it again, never more be covered with it like a shore beneath the inward flow of the sea.

"Desmond wants to meet Osborn," said Julia. "He rang him up on Saturday morning, but he was engaged. Won't you and your husband come to dinner with me and my husband one evening at Onslow Gardens?"

Julia uttered the words "my husband" with a pleasure which she could not secrete from the eyes of Marie. Had she not known it, too? Had she not once delighted in saying, "My husband thinks." ... "My husband says." ... "My husband does...." simply for the crass joy of hearing the sound?

Julia went on:

"When can it be? Let's fix a date early. Do, there's a dear! There'll be a peculiar joy to Desmond and me in having in our own house Osborn and you, the very two people who always told us the truth about marriage, and urged us to go and do likewise!"

"The truth?" Marie echoed.

"How wonderful it was!" Julia said sublimely.

As Julia sat there, glowing and content, Marie recognised that she had forgotten all the sad things she had been told and that only the glory remained. Julia had harked back to that first year in which the young Kerrs had chanted together:

"Marriage is the only life."

And separately:

"A woman can be an angel."

"A man a brute? A man's a god."

Julia continued: "To-day's Monday. We're still furnishing, of course, as I told you, but that won't matter, will it? Can you both come to dinner on Thursday and see the two happiest people in the world?"

"Edifying as the sight must be—" Marie began with smiling lips. But then she put the baby down and, covering her face with her hands, cried bitterly: "Would the two happiest people in the world like to see the two miserablest people in it?"

While her face was still covered, she felt Julia's arms about her, heard her disconcerted voice begging to be told. But when at last Marie looked up, with tears salt and bitter on her cheeks, it was to reply sombrely:

"There's nothing to tell."

"What has happened?" Julia begged.

Marie said slowly, twisting her hands: "I felt, when I came home, after a joy-year which he didn't want to give me the remotest chance of sharing, that—that I could never forgive him for all those years of losing my health and looks, those years of work and worry and child-bearing; those years of quarrelling and grudging; those dead, drab, ugly, ordinary married years. And so...."

"And so, my dear?"

"And so I have not forgiven him. He killed the love in me. There is no more for him."

"If there is no more," said Julia, with a sudden instinct, "why do you cry, my dear? And why does this hurt you so?"

"To—to see you so happy," Marie whispered up to her, "to see you and Desmond as Osborn and I once were."

"And as you want to be again, my dear, if you only knew it."

"It's too late for that."

"Marie, what do you mean?"

"I told him to make his own life. I'm not a dog-in-the-manger woman, anyway. What I don't want I'll give away freely."

"What can you mean?"

"I've given him away." The knowledge that had come upon her in the car that Saturday afternoon made her voice grim. "He's gone elsewhere," she said; "I feel it; I know it. A wife can sense these things as a barometer senses rain."

"Oh, Marie!" Julia whispered, and for a while there was silence in the room, broken only by the chuckles of the baby-girl. Both women looked down, at the sound, upon the fluffy head and Julia asked, still in a bated whisper:

"What do you think you'll do?"

"Nothing," said Marie, "above all, nothing. The children will keep us under the same roof. We shall be like thousands of other married people, privately free; publicly tied up tight together in the same dear old knot."

Her brief laugh trembled.

"Marie, you know you think it is a dear old knot."

Marie did not reply. After awhile she said:

"We're not coming to dinner with you for a very long while. This morning I've come nearer hating you, Julia, than I've ever done in our lives. I want to hate you because you're so happy; because you've got the love which I want but can never have again."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Sure, my dear? Sure as the world. You can't have that kind of love without giving a return, and I've none to give. It's dead; gone; dried up. I don't know where it is. But perhaps there's a root of it left somewhere—enough to make me envy you."

Ann the maid entered to fetch the baby to be dressed for outdoors, and Julia received the hint sorrowfully.

"Isn't there anything Desmond and I could do?" she asked, as she stood up and muffled her furs about her throat.

"There's nothing anyone can do."

"I wanted to talk about a lot of things—ask you about your fortunes, and everything, darling; but this has driven it all clean out of my head."

"Our fortunes are on the upgrade, thanks, Julia. Never again will I spoil my hands and let my teeth and hair go; it's all over—that part of it."

Julia kissed Marie very tenderly, as she used to do. "I shall come again soon," she called with an anxious vivacity, as she waved her muff in a good-bye signal from a bend in the cold grey stairs.

But Marie went in again very quickly and shut the door. She stood with her hands clenched and her breast heaving, tears running unchecked down her cheeks.

She stood on tiptoe to peer into the glass over the mantel, and the storm in her face quickened the storm in her heart. Raging jealousy entered and possessed her. It whirled about like a tornado, scattering before it all that was orderly, that was lesser and weaker than itself. Marie Kerr was taken up in the grip of it, and driven along upon a headlong course which she could not pause to consider.

As she looked at herself in the glass, she cried aloud furiously: "No one shall ever take what is mine!"

Little pulses began to hammer in her, which had not so hammered since Osborn started upon his joy-year. No more could she bear contemplation of Julia and her delight. She ran along the corridor to her room, calling to the maid:

"You'll have to take baby out this morning; and do the shopping; and, oh! everything. I've got to go out, and I don't know when I'll be back."

With the door of the pink bedroom shut upon her, she dressed herself with trembling speed. Her new black velvet suit, her furs, her violets, her amethyst earrings, her silk stockings, and suede shoes and white gloves! Thank God for clothes when a woman was out upon the chase!

She whispered with an anger that was fiendish; that rose from its dust right back from the age of barbarism, and came at her call:

"No one shall take what is mine!"

She swept money lavishly into her bag; no expenses of locomotion were going to stand in her way. She flew down the cold grey stairs and out into the street. Because the Tube would be quicker than a cab, she travelled upon it; and people looked at her fevered cheeks, her shining eyes, wondering what drove this lovely woman, and upon what errand. Excitement beautified her and gave to her a transcendent quality which drew all eyes.

Uplifted as she was, yet she noticed this homage, and her woman's soul leapt, exulting. It was like applause; like a great voice encouraging, cheering her on. It gave her pride and the supreme vanity to pursue her way.

She left the Tube at Charing Cross, and drove in a taxicab to her husband's place of business. One or two urbane men, strangers to her, hurried forward as she alighted from the cab, inquiring her pleasure, and she said, smiling: "I want my husband; I'm Mrs. Kerr."

As she said "My husband," delight took her, absurdly like Julia's. She checked a laugh at it.

Osborn had gone out to lunch.

"Did they know where?"

"I heard him telephone, booking a table for two at the Royal Red," one of the men said, and bit off his words suddenly as he caught the humorous warning look of the other. The look said: "We're all the same; don't get the poor fellow into trouble."

She understood it and again checked a laugh. She thanked them, jumped into the taxicab, and as the two men hurried after her, vying with each other as to which should do her the service of closing the door, she leaned forward and said buoyantly:

"Yes, you've given my husband away badly! The table wasn't for me! Tell the driver to go to the Royal Red."

She could joke about the matter, so complete she felt her power to be. She had in her, strong and vital, an irresistible feeling of achievements to come, as if nothing in the world could defeat her purpose, nor gainsay her will; it was like an inspiration which cannot be wrong. And as she entered the restaurant, and swept her eyes over the ground floor, she found at once those whom she looked for—her husband and the other woman.

As she went forward slowly, calm now, confident and at ease, she remembered, with a rising and fierce sense of satisfaction, the raven hair, the high shoulders and white face, the attractive insolence of her rival. They had been before upon the same battle-ground; but now the battle was level; nay, it was more than level; it waxed in favour of the wife, who, with every weapon to her hand, advanced leisurely to employ them against the woman who had none save that of her stupid beauty, allied to the strategy of her greed.

Marie came right up and stood by their table before Osborn perceived her; then she smiled.

She stepped into the breach of silence promptly, with sweet speech.

"I hope," she said, "I'm not intruding? But I'm shopping, and I was told you had come here, and I wanted lunch, so I followed. Do introduce me to this lady and give me some."

He stammered, somehow:

"Miss Dates, my wife."

Marie sat down.

"Where are you?" she said, glancing at the menu. "The roast—I'll join you there. Do tell me I'm not intruding, both of you. I am conscious of this being a horrible thing to do and I want to be reassured."

"Delighted to see you," Roselle chimed glibly, sweeping the wife with a look of comprehending fury to which even her slug nature could rouse itself upon such an occasion.

"If you'd rung me up, dear," said Osborn to his wife, "I should have been charmed to take you anywhere you liked."

"And broken your appointment with me!" Roselle supplied suddenly, and the gage was down between the two women.

Roselle Dates eyed the wife warily and feared her. And the measure of her hate matched that of her fear. Leaning forward, her white chin on her white hands, she cooed across the table:

"But I'd have forgiven him, Mrs. Kerr, if it was only for the sake of the jolly time he gave me yesterday."

"At Brighton?" Marie smiled across at Osborn.

He nodded. "I told you I was going."

"Do you like the car?" Marie asked Roselle sweetly.

"She's a duck," said the other woman, her eyes snapping, "but of course yesterday wasn't my first acquaintance with her. I know her every trick well. When we were in New York people were so struck by her neatness in traffic."

Osborn started involuntarily, exclaiming as involuntarily:

"Roselle!"

"What?" she asked, turning a stare upon him.

He fidgeted uncomfortably. "Don't be an ass," he said. "Marie—"

"What, dear?" asked his wife.

Again he fidgeted. "When Miss Dates mentions being in New York—" he began.

"And Chicago and all through Canada from Montreal to the West," said Roselle, continuing upon the breakneck course she seemed to have chosen in a moment.

"She means to tell you," said Osborn doggedly, "that she was doing a concert tour which coincided almost, though not quite, with my movements, and that having met her on board, we—we did some motoring together."

Breathless, he awaited the working of the most amazing situation in which he had ever found himself, and he had not long to wait. He did not know how much his wife knew nor what might be her summing up; he did not know that during the night Roselle had slept upon the problem of himself and had concluded he was too good to lose; he did not understand in the least what motives were actuating these two women; the flaming and insolent resentment of Roselle at the other's mere presence; the calm and pretty pose of his wife. He gazed at each in embarrassed bewilderment, and Roselle, her chin still on her palms, and her eyes bright and stony, commented on his explanation. She drawled:

"Osborn, you're a liar. Your wife knows as well as I do that she could divorce you to-morrow."

"But Miss Dates would be a fool, which I am sure she is not," said the wife's pretty voice, "if she imagines I would do it."

Husband and wife looked at each other across the table, and the question in the eyes of one, the answer in the eyes of the other, were naked and unashamed. They could be read by the woman between them. And regardless of her presence, they asked and answered each other in eager words.

"Marie, do you want me?"

"Yes; I want you."

Osborn turned to Roselle Dates. He turned to her as to something tiresome, hindering the true business of the hour. "Roselle," he said crisply, "my wife wishes to lunch with me alone. Will you go; or shall we?"

"I'll go," she replied very slowly, "but I shall expect some sort of explanation."

He stood up and put on her coat and their eyes were almost level, looking right into each other's.

"An explanation? You won't get it," he whispered back.

"It's due to me. You're a rotter."

"There's nothing due to you," he replied with a sudden air of relief at the discovery.

An abounding idea of happiness to come filled him as he moved beside Roselle down the crowded restaurant. As they went he said: "It's all over; I'm a fool no longer. You understand there's only one woman in the world for me and that's my wife. And since she has some use for me again ... Good-bye!"

He held out his hand, but she refused it angrily. She stood, biting her lip, tapping her foot, her head averted, upon the kerb; her attitude of pique was amusingly familiar to him; often it had gained for her the gratification of some petulant desire; but now all that he wanted was to hurry back to the table they had left.

There were real things; and trash; well defined.

"Taxi!" he said in a ringing voice to the commissionaire.

"Where are you going, Roselle?"

"Home," she answered venomously.

He put her in, paid the driver and gave the direction. "I'm sorry you had not quite finished your lunch," he said perfunctorily, looking in.

She bit her lip and averted her head; but she was aware, in spite of her refusal to see, or hear, or speak to him, that before her cab had started he was returning back with a swift step into the restaurant.

There sat the wife who held all the cards—as wives do if they will only play them aright. She was not smiling, nor exultant, nor blatant over it, but triumph was in every line of her as she waited there, slender, lovely, and sartorially exquisite. From the tip of her shoe to the crown of her hat she was conquest.

He sat down, thinking over words to say, and she looked at him critically, yet eagerly, and waited for him to speak.

He cleared his throat.

"Marie," he said, "hang lunch—until you understand me. This has been an extraordinary quarter of an hour. I didn't know you had it in you. You women—you have me fairly beat. I just want—I hope—I long for you to believe me, when I tell you that rot she talked about divorce ... that is to say, I swear to you, that, except on circumstantial evidence, you wouldn't have the ghost of a case. But, Marie, on circumstantial evidence, I—I don't know that a judge and jury wouldn't convict me."

His wife was still looking at him critically, eagerly; and he met her eyes full, and saw, down in the depths wherein had been his delight, a great faith.

She believed him.

He tingled with joy. "I've been a fool," he weighed out slowly. "We are; and we—we want looking after, you know. We can't stand our wives forsaking us. We ask a lot of you, I suppose. Yes, it's a lot."

"Well," she murmured, "we've always got it to give. We're made that way."

"Not all of you," he denied, with a fleeting thought of Roselle.

"Tell me," Marie asked, "what were you and she talking of so earnestly when I came in? It won't matter anyway—but I'm just curious to know."

"Shall I tell you?"

"I've asked."

He answered very slowly, as if still weighing his words: "We were talking of a coming trip I have to make to Paris; I was asking her if she wouldn't come, too."

A little colour rose in his wife's face.

"I'll come instead," she said clearly.

* * * * *

Osborn Kerr let himself into No. 30, Welham Mansions, laden with packages. He knew not what thank-offerings to make to heaven, so he made them to his family. Flowers and chocolate boxes hung about him.

He whistled gaily.

Only three hours ago he had parted from her after that memorable lunch and, now, here he was again with her in the place called home.

At the sound of his key she came out of her bedroom, dressed for dinner. The flat was quiet save for homely sounds from the kitchen. Osborn took his wife in his arms and kissed her. He stated exuberantly: "I came home early; I just had to."

They went into the sitting-room hand in hand, and she sat down on the chesterfield before the fire. He did not want to sit down; he was too happy and restless and urgent. Now and again he hung over the back of the couch, to caress her, or whisper love words in her ear, and now and again he walked about touching this or that familiar object and finding new attractions in each. It was like the first coming to that flat when the very taps over the sink had been superior to all other taps under the rosy flicker of the new-kindled fire of love.

What an evening it was! He kept saying, breaking away from some other thing, to say it: "I can't think this is all true. I can't think that you are just you, and I am just I, all over again. And that we're really going to be the two happiest souls on earth!"

He came to Grannie Amber's old rosewood piano and stood touching it reverently. "There's a little thing I heard," he exclaimed suddenly, "that I'd like to sing to you. It's called 'Please,' and it's just what I'm saying to you all the time."

He sat down to vamp an odd accompaniment indifferently, but Marie was not listening for the accompaniment. It was his voice which she wanted, and gave her ears to hear; and he sang:

"Oh, Heart-of-all-the-World to me, I love you more than best; Then lie so gently in my arms And droop your head and rest. My kisses on your dark, dark hair Nor Time nor tears shall grey; But the little wandering, laughing loves They flower beside the way.

"Slender and straight you came to me, And straight the path you trod; Your faithfulness was more than faith, Like the faithfulness of God. I cannot pay you all I owe, Though what I owe I pay: But the little wandering, laughing loves They flower beside the way.

"So take my life, who gave me all, Between your so small hands, With the blind, untaught, unfaltering touch A woman understands; And save me, since I would be saved, And do not let me stray With the little wandering, laughing loves That flower beside the way."

"That is the husband's 'Please,'" said Osborn, humbly.

She stood up erect, and cried out: "No one shall take what is mine!"

The door opened, and the maid stood there, saying quietly: "Dinner is served, ma'am."

They went in hand in hand, regardless of her. They sat down and looked at each other under pink candle-shades. The golden-brown curtains were drawn evenly down the whole length of the much-windowed wall, and splashed rich colour against the prevailing cream. The wedding-present silver glittered upon the white cloth. What a dear room it was! How happily appointed and magically ordered!

He adored, across the space, the most darling woman that heaven ever spared to make joy for a mortal man. And she, returning his look with the same verdant wonder at the beauty of all things, saw before her husband and lover; he whom she had chosen to mate with; he who had taught her the beginning of joy; the finest man in the world.

THE END