"I was anxious to have a chat with you about that book, and that article of yours in the Zeit Geist, Holland," said the bishop. "I wish you had written neither."

"Litera scripta manet," said George, with a smile.

One may quote Latin in conversation with a bishop without being thought a prig. In a letter to the Times and in conversation with a bishop are the only two occasions in these unclassical days when one may safely quote Latin or Greek.

"That's the worst of it," said the prelate, with a shake of his head that was Early Norman. "Yes, you see a book isn't like a sermon. People don't remember a man's sermons against him nowadays; they do his books, however."

"I am quite ready to accept the conditions of modern life, my lord," said George.

"I was anxious to give you my opinion as early as possible," resumed the bishop, "and that is, that what you have just published—the book and the Zeit Geist article—reflect—yes, in no inconsiderable measure—what I have long thought."

"I am flattered, indeed, my lord."

"You need not be, Holland. I believe that there are a large number of thinking men in the Church who are trying to solve the problem with which you have so daringly grappled—the problem of how to induce intellectual men and women to attend the services of the church. I'm afraid that there is a great deal of truth in what you say about the Church herself bearing responsibility for the existence of this problem."

"There is no setting aside that fact, my lord."

"Alas! that short-sighted policy has been the Church's greatest enemy from the earliest period. You remember what St. Augustine says? Ah, never mind just now. About your book—that's the matter before us just now. I must say that I don't consider the present time the most suitable for the issue of that book, or that article in the Zeit Geist. You meant them to be startling. Well, they are startling. There are some complaints—nervous complaints—that require to be startled out of the system; that's a phrase of Sir Richard's. He made use of it in regard to my neuralgia. 'We must surprise it out of the system,' said he, 'with a large dose of quinine.' The phrase seemed to me to be a very striking one. But the Church is not neurotic. You cannot apply the surprise method to her system with any chance of success. That is wherein the publication of your article seems to me to be—shall we call it premature? It is calculated to startle; but you cannot startle people into going to church, my dear Holland, and that is, of course, the only object you hope to achieve. Your book and your article were written with the sole object of bringing intelligent people to church. But it occurs to me, and I think it will occur to you also, that if the article be taken seriously,—and it is meant to be taken seriously,—it may be the means of keeping people away from the Church rather than bringing them to church. It may even be the means of alienating from that fond, if somewhat foolish old mother of ours, many of her children who are already attached to her. I trust I don't speak harshly."

"Your lordship speaks most kindly; but the truth—"

"Should be spoken as gently as possible when it is calculated to wound, Holland; that is why I trust I am speaking gently now. Ah, Holland! there are the little children to be considered as well as the Scribes and Pharisees. There are weaker brethren. You have heard of the necessity for considering the weaker brethren."

"I seem to have heard of nothing else since I entered the Church; all the brethren are the weaker brethren."

"They are; I am one of the weaker brethren myself. It is all a question of comparison. I don't say that your article is likely to have the effect of causing me to join the band of non-church-goers. I don't at this moment believe that it will drive me to golf instead of Gospel; but I honestly do believe that it is calculated to do that to hundreds of persons who just now require but the smallest grain of argument to turn the balance of their minds in favor of golf. Your aim was not in that direction, I'm sure, Holland."

"My aim was to speak the truth, my lord."

"In order to achieve a noble object—the gathering of the stragglers into the fold."

"That was my motive, my lord."

"You announce boldly that this old mother of ours is in a moribund condition, in order that you may gather in as many of her scattered children as possible to stand at her bedside? Ah, my dear Holland! the moribund brings together the wolves and the vultures and all unclean, hungry things to try and get a mouthful off those prostrate limbs of hers—a mouthful while her flesh is still warm. I tell you this—I who have from time to time during the last fifty years heard the howl of the hyena, seen the talons of the vulture at the door of her chamber. They fancied that the end could not be far off, that no more strength was left in that aged body that lay prone for the moment. But I have heard the howling wane into the distance and get lost in the outer darkness when the old Church roused herself and went forth to face the snarling teeth—the eager talons. There is life in this mighty old mother of ours still. New life comes to her, not as it did to the fabled hero of old, by contact with the earth, but by communing with heaven. The bark of the wolf, the snarl of the hyena, may be heard in the debate which the Government have encouraged in the House of Commons on the Church. Philistia rejoices. Let the movers in this obscene tumult look to themselves. Have they the confidence of the people even as the Church has that confidence? Let them put it to the test. I tell you, George Holland, the desert and the ditch, whose vomit those men are who now move against us in Parliament, shall receive them once more before many months have passed. The Church on whom they hoped to prey shall witness their dispersal, never again to return. I know the signs. I know what the present silence throughout the country means. The champion of God and the Church has drawn his breath for the conflict. His teeth are set—his weapon is in his hand—you will see the result within a year. We shall have a government in power, a government whose power will not be dependent on the faddists and the self-seekers—the ignorant, the blatant bellowers of pitiful platitudes, the platform loafers who call themselves labor-leaders, but whom the real laborers repudiate. Mark my words, their doom is sealed; back to the desert and the ditch! My dear Holland, pardon this digression. I feel that I need say nothing more to you than I have already said. The surprise system of therapeutics is not suited to the existing ailments of the Church. Caution is what is needed if you would not defeat your own worthy object, which, I know, is to give fresh vitality to the Church."

"That is certainly my object, my lord; only let me say that—"

"My dear Holland, I will not let you say anything. I asked you to come here this morning in order that you might hear me. That is all that is necessary for the present. Perhaps, upon some future occasion, I may have the privilege of hearing you in a discourse of some greater length than that which I have just inflicted upon you. I have given you my candid opinion of your writings, and you know that is the opinion of a man who has but one object in life—you know that it is the opinion of an old man who has seen the beginning and the end of many movements in society and in the Church, and who has learned that the Church, for all her decrepitude, is yet the most stable thing that the world has seen. I have to thank you for coming to me, Holland."

"Your lordship has spoken to me with the greatest kindness," said George Holland, as his spiritual father offered him his hand.

In a few minutes he was in his hansom once more.



CHAPTER XXIX.

I KNOW THAT IT DOESN'T MATTER MUCH TO GOD WHAT A MAN THINKS ABOUT HIMSELF OR HIS SOUL.

For the next hour and a half the Rev. George Holland had an opportunity of considering his position as a clergyman of the Church of England, and as one whose chief desire was to advance the interests of the Church. His bishop had assumed that he had been single-minded in his aims—that his sole object in writing that book and that paper had been to cure the complaint from which the old Church was suffering. His lordship had done him justice where Phyllis had done him a gross injustice. What would Phyllis have said he wondered, if she had heard that concession, made not under pressure, but voluntarily by probably the highest authority in the world, to his, George Holland's, singleness of aim?

But it was so like a girl to jump at conclusions—to assume that he had been actuated by vanity in all that he had just done; that he was desirous only of getting people to talk about him—being regardless whether they spoke well of him or ill. He only wished that she could have heard the bishop. He felt as a man feels whose character has just been cleared in a court of law from an aspersion that has rested on it for some time. He wondered if that truly noble man whom he was privileged to call his Father in God, would have any objection to give him a testimonial to the effect that in his opinion,—the opinion of his Father in God,—there was no foundation for the accusation against him and his singleness of aim.

But the bishop knew that it was not vanity which had urged him to write what he had written. The bishop understood men.

He was right; the bishop understood men so well as to be able to produce in a few words upon the man who had just visited the palace, the impression that he believed that that man had been impelled by a strong sense of duty without a touch of vanity. He understood man so well as to cause that same visitor of his to make a resolution never again to publish anything in the same strain as the Zeit Geist article, without first consulting with the bishop. George Holland had pulled the bell at the palace gates with the hand of a Luther; but he had left the presence of the bishop with the step of a Francis of Assisi. He felt that anyone who would voluntarily give pain to so gentle a man as the bishop could only be a brute. He even felt that the bishop had shown himself to be his, George Holland's superior in judgment and in the methods which he employed. The bishop was not an overrated man.

For a full hour in the silence and solitude of the reading room of his club he reflected upon the excellence of the bishop, and it was with a sign of regret that he rose to keep his other appointment. He would have liked to continue for another hour or two doing justice to that good man out of whose presence he had come.

Mr. Linton's office was not quite in the City. Twenty minutes drive brought George Holland into the private room of Ella Linton's husband.

"It is very good of you to come to me, Mr. Holland," said Stephen. "There seems to be a general idea that a clergyman should be at the beck and call of everyone who has a whim to—what do they call it in Ireland—to make his soul? That has never been my opinion; I have never given any trouble to a clergyman since I was at school."

"It is the privilege of a minister to be a servant," said the Rev. George Holland.

"We were taught that at school—in connection with the Latin verb ministro," said Mr. Linton. "Well, Mr. Holland, I am glad that you take such a view of your calling, for I am anxious that you should do me a great service."

He paused.

George Holland bent his head. He wondered if Mr. Linton wished to intrust him with the duty of observing his wife.

"The fact is, Mr. Holland," resumed Stephen Linton, "I have read your book and your paper in that review. The way you deal with a difficult question has filled me with admiration. You will, I need scarcely say, be outside the Church before long."

"I cannot allow you to assume that, Mr. Linton," said George gravely. "I should be sorry to leave the Church. I cannot see that my leaving it is the logical sequence of anything that I have yet written. My aim is, as doubtless you have perceived, to bring about such reasonable and, after all, not radical changes in the Church system as shall make her in the future a more potent agency for good than she has ever yet been, splendid though her services to humanity have been."

"Still you will find yourself outside the walls of your Church, Mr. Holland. And you will probably adopt the course which other sons of the Church have thought necessary to pursue when the stubborn old thing refused to be reformed."

"If you suggest that I shall become a Dissenter, Mr. Linton—"

"I suggest nothing of the sort, though you dissent already from a good many of the fundamental practices of the Church, if I may be permitted the expression. Now, I should like to make a provision for your future, Mr. Holland."

"My dear sir, such a proposition seems to me to be a most extraordinary one. I hope you will not think me rude in saying so much. I have not suggested, Mr. Linton, as other clergymen might, that you mean an affront to me, but I don't think that anything would be gained by prolonging—"

"Permit me to continue, and perhaps you may get a glimmer of gain. Mr. Holland, I am what people usually term a doomed man. So far as I can gather I have only about six months longer to live."

"Merciful Heaven!"

"Perhaps it is merciful on the part of Heaven to destroy a man when he has reached the age of forty. We'll not go into that question just now. I was warned by a doctor two years ago that I had not long to live. It appears that my heart was never really a heart—that is to say, it may have had its affections, its emotions, its passions, but pneumatically it is a failure; it was never a blood-pump. Six months ago I was examined by the greatest authority in Europe, and he pronounced my doom. Three days ago I went to the leading specialist in London, and he told me I might with care live six months longer."

"My dear Mr. Linton, with what words can I express to you my deep feeling for you?"

George Holland spoke after a prolonged pause, during which he stared at the white-faced man before him. A smile was upon that white face. George was deeply affected. He seemed to have stepped out of a world of visions—a world that had a visionary Church, visionary preachers, visionary doctrines—all unsubstantial as words, which are but breath—into a world of realities—such realities as life and death and——Ah, there were no other realities in existence but the two: life and death.

And Mr. Linton continued smiling.

"You may gather that I wrote to you in order that you may help me to make my soul. What a capital phrase! I didn't do that, Mr. Holland. I have never been sanguine about man and his soul. I know that it doesn't matter much to God what a man thinks about himself or his soul. It really doesn't matter much whether he believes or not that he has a soul: God is the Principle of Right—the Fountain of Justice, and I'm willing to trust myself to God."

"That is true religion, Mr. Linton," said the clergyman.

"But I agree with those people who think that the world cannot get on without a Church. Now, I am sanguine enough to believe that a Church founded on your ideas of what is orthodox would be the means of doing a great deal of good. It would do a great deal of good to my wife, to start with. She does not know that she is so soon to be a widow. Were she to know, the last months of my life would be miserable to both of us. I have noticed with some pain, or should I say amusement? perhaps that word would be the better—I have noticed, I say, that her life is one of complete aimlessness, and that, therefore, she is tempted to think too much about herself. She is also tempted to have longings for—well, for temptation. Ah, she is a woman and temptation is in the way of women. Qui parle d'amour, fait l'amour: temptation comes to the woman who thinks about being tempted. Now, I want to give her something to think about that shall lead her out of the thoughts of temptation which I suppose come naturally to a daughter of Eve—the first woman who thought about temptation and was therefore tempted. My wife is a perfectly good woman, and you will be surprised to find out when I am dead how fond of me she was—she will be the most surprised of all. But she is a woman. If she were not so much of a woman I don't suppose I should ever have cared so much for her as I do. I cared so much for her, Mr. Holland, that I remained away from her in Paris for three months so that I might school myself to my fate, making no sign that would lead her to suspect the truth. Why should she have six months' additional misery? I have strayed. The Church. I want to give my wife an aim in life; to make her feel that she is doing something worthy—to keep her from thinking of less worthy things. Now, I think you will agree with me that there is nothing women are really so fond of as a Church of some sort. To be devout is as much a part of a woman's disposition as to love—the passion of devoutness sometimes takes the place of the passion of love in her nature. Now, I want to give her this idea of a Church to work out when I am dead. I want you to carry out as joint trustee with her your theories in regard to the ritual, the art, the sermon; and for this purpose I should of course provide an ample endowment—say three or four thousand a year; anything you may suggest: I shall leave a great deal of money behind me."

"Your project startles me, Mr. Linton," said George Holland. "It startles me as greatly as the first revelation you made to me did. They may be mistaken—the doctors; I have known cases where the highest authorities were ludicrously in error. Let us hope that."

"Well, we may hope; I may live long enough to lay the foundation stone of the Church myself. But I am most anxious that you should give the whole matter your earnest attention."

"I am quite dazed. Do you suggest that I should leave the Church of England?"

"By no means. That is a question which I leave entirely to your own decision. My own idea is that you would like a free hand. You will have to leave the Church sooner or later. A man with your advanced ideas cannot regulate your pace to that of an old woman. In twenty years the Church will think precisely as you think to-day. That is the way with the Church. It opposes everything in the way of an innovation. You stated the case very fairly in your paper. The Church opposes every discovery and every new thing as long as possible. It then only accepts grudgingly what all civilization has accepted cordially. Oh, yes, you'll find it impossible to remain in the Church, Mr. Holland. 'Crabbed age and youth,' you know."

"I should part from the Church with the greatest reluctance, Mr. Linton."

"Then don't part from it, only don't place yourself in its power. Don't be beholden to it for your income. Don't go to the heads of the Church for orders. Be your own master and in plain words, run the concern on your own lines. The widow of the founder will have no power to interfere with you in the matter of such arrangements."

"I shall have to give the matter a good deal of thought. I should naturally have to reform a good deal of the ritual."

"Naturally. The existing ritual is only a compromise. And as for the hymns which are sung, why is it necessary for them to be doggerel before they are devotional?"

"The hymns are for the most part doggerel. We should have a first-rate choir and anthems—not necessarily taken from the Bible. Why should not Shakspere be sung in churches—Shakspere's divine poetry instead of the nonsense-rhymes that people call hymns? Shakspere and Milton; Shelley I would not debar; Wordsworth's sonnets. But the scheme will require a great deal of thought."

"A great deal; that is why I leave it in your hands. You are a thinking man—you are not afraid of tradition."

"Tradition—tradition! the ruts made in the road by the vehicles that have passed over it in years gone by!"

"The road to the Church is sadly in need of macadamizing, Mr. Holland—or, better still, asphalting. Make a bicycle road of it, and you are all right. Now, come with me to my club and have lunch. We'll talk no more just now about this matter."

They went out together.



CHAPTER XXX.

THERE IS NO ONE I LIKE BETTER THAN PHYLLIS.

Phyllis Ayrton had spent a considerable time pondering over that problem of how best to save a man and a woman from destruction—social, perhaps; eternal, for certain. She felt that it had been laid upon her to save them both, and she remembered the case of one Jonah, a prophet, who, in endeavoring to escape from the disagreeable duty with which he had been intrusted, had had an experience that was practically unique, even among prophets. She would not try to evade her responsibility in this matter.

A few days after Herbert Courtland had witnessed by the side of Ella the representation of "Carmen," he had met Phyllis at an At Home. He had seen her in the distance through a vista of crowded rooms, and had crushed his way to her side. He could scarcely fail to see the little light that came to her face as she put out her hand to him, nor could her companion of the moment—he was one of the coming men in science, consequently like most coming men, he had been forced into a prominent place in the drawing room—fail to perceive that his farewell moment with that pretty Miss Ayrton had come. She practically turned her back upon him when Herbert Courtland came up.

For some moments they chatted together, and then it occurred to him that she might like some iced coffee. His surmise proved correct, and as there was at that moment a stream of people endeavoring to avoid the entertainment of the high-class pianoforte player which was threatened in a neighboring apartment, Phyllis and her companion had no trouble in slipping aside from the panic-stricken people into the tea room.

It was a sultry day, and the French windows of the room were open. It was Phyllis who discovered that there was a narrow veranda, with iron-work covered with creepers, running halfway round the house from window to window; and when he suggested to her that they might drink their coffee on this veranda, she hailed the suggestion as a very happy one. How did it come that none of the rest of the people had thought of that? she wondered.

In another instant they were standing together at the space between the windows outside, the long-leaved creepers mingling with the decorations of her hat, and making a very effective background for his well-shaped head.

For the next half-hour people were intermittently coming to one of the windows, putting their heads out and then turning away, the girls with gentle little pursings of the mouth and other forms that the sneer feminine assumes; the men with winks and an occasional chuckle, suggestive of an exchange of confidence too deep for words.

One woman had poked her head out—it was gray at the roots and golden at the tips—and asked her companion in a voice that had a large circumference where was Mrs. Linton.

Now, Herbert Courtland had not lived so long far from the busy haunts of men (white) as to be utterly ignorant of the fact that no young woman but one who is disposed to be quite friendly with a man, would adopt such a suggestion as he had made to her, and spend half an hour drinking half a cup of iced coffee by his side in that particular place. The particular place might have accommodated six persons; but he knew, and he knew that she knew also, that it was one of the unwritten laws of good society that such particular places are overcrowded if occupied by three persons. It was on this account the old men and maidens and the young men and matrons—that is how they pair themselves nowadays—had avoided the veranda so carefully, refusing to contribute to its congestion as a place of resort.

Herbert Courtland could not but feel that Phyllis intended to be friendly with him—even at the risk of being within audible distance of the strong man who was fighting a duel a outrance with a grand piano; and as he desired to be on friendly terms with a girl in whom he was greatly interested, he was very much pleased to find her showing no disposition to return to the tea room, or any other room, until quite half an hour had gone by very pleasantly. And then she did so with a start: the start of a girl who suddenly remembers a duty—and regrets it.

That had pleased him greatly; he felt it to be rather a triumph for him that by his side she had not only forgotten her duty but was glad she had forgotten it.

"Oh, yes!" she said, in answer to his question, "I have two other places to go to. I'm so sorry."

"Sorry that you remembered them?" he had suggested.

She shook her head smiling.

"What would happen if—I had continued forgetting them?" she asked.

"That is the most interesting question I have heard in some time. Why not try to continue forgetting them?"

"I'm too great a coward," she replied, putting out her hand to him, for now her victoria had drawn up and the footman was standing ready to open the door.

"Good-by," said he.

"Oh, no! only au revoir," she murmured.

"With all my heart—au revoir at The Mooring," said he.

That au revoir had reference to the circumstance that they were to be fellow-guests at Mrs. Linton's house at Hurley-on-Thames, known as The Mooring. Phyllis had told him that she was about to pay that visit, and when he said:

"Why, I am going as well," she had raised her eyes to his face, an unmistakable look of pleasure on her own, as she cried:

"I am so glad! When do you go?"

"On Thursday."

"I go on Tuesday—two days sooner."

The tone in which she spoke made him feel that she had said:

"What on earth shall I do during those dreary two days?" or else he had become singularly conceited.

But even if she had actually said those words they would not have made him feel unduly vain. He reflected upon the fact which he had more than once previously noticed—namely, that the girl, though wise as became a daughter of a Member of Parliament to be (considering that she had to prevent, or do her best to prevent, her father from making a fool of himself), was in many respects as innocent and as natural as a girl should be. She had only spoken naturally when she had said that she was glad he was to be of the riverside party—when she had implied by her tone that she was sorry that two whole days were bound to pass before he should arrive.

What was there in all that she had said, to make such a man as he vain—in all that she had implied? If she had been six years old instead of twenty-three, she would probably have told him that she loved him. The innocence of the child would have made her outspoken; but would his vanity have been fostered by the confession? It was the charming naturalness of the girl that had caused her to speak out what it was but natural she should feel. She and he had liked each other from the first, and it was quite natural that she should be glad to see him at Hurley.

That was what he thought as he strolled to his rooms preparatory to dressing for some function of the night. He flattered himself that he was able to look at any situation straight in the face, so to speak. He flattered himself that he was not a man to be led away by vanity. He was, as a rule, on very good terms with himself, but he was rather inclined to undervalue than overestimate the distinction which he enjoyed among his fellow-men. And the result of his due consideration of his last meeting with Phyllis was to make him feel that he had never met a girl who was quite so nice; but he also felt that, if he were to assume from the gladness which she had manifested not merely at being with him that day, but at the prospect of meeting him up the river, that he had made an impression upon her heart, he would be assuming too much.

But all the same, he could not help wishing that Ella had asked him to go to The Mooring on Tuesday rather than Thursday; and he felt when Tuesday arrived that the hot and dusty town with its ceaseless roll of gloomy festivities contained nothing for him that he would not willingly part withal in exchange for an hour or two beside the still waters of the Thames in the neighborhood of Hurley.

Stephen Linton had bought The Mooring when his wife had taken a fancy to it the previous year, when she had had an attack of that river fever which sooner or later takes hold upon Londoners, making them ready to sell all their possessions and encamp on the banks of the Thames. It had been a great delight to her to furnish that lovely old house according to her taste, making each room a picture of consistency in decoration and furniture, and it had been a great delight to her to watch the garden being laid out after the most perfect eighteenth-century pattern, with its green terraces and clipped hedges. She had gone so far as to live in the house for close upon a whole fortnight the previous autumn. Since that time the caretaker had found it a trifle too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer, he had complained to Mrs. Linton. But she knew that there is no pleasing caretakers; she had not been put out of favor with the place; she hoped to spend at least a week under its roof before the end of the season, and perhaps another week before starting for Scotland in the autumn.

She suddenly came to the conclusion one day that her husband was not looking well—a conclusion which was certainly well founded. She declared that a few days up the river was precisely what would restore him to robust health. (But here it is to be feared her judgment was in error.) He had been thinking too much about the new development of the mine and the property surrounding it at Taragonda Creek. What did his receiving a couple of hundred thousand pounds matter if his health were jeopardized, she inquired of him one day, wearing the anxious face of the Good Wife.

He had smiled that curious smile of his,—it was becoming more curious every day,—and had said:

"What, indeed!"

"Up the river we shall go, and I'll get Phyllis to come with us to amuse you—you know that you like Phyllis," his wife cried.

"There is no one I like better than Phyllis," he had said.

And so the matter had been settled.

But during the day or two that followed this settlement, Ella came upon several of her friends who she found were looking a trifle fagged through the pressure of the season, and she promptly invited them to The Mooring, so that she had a party of close upon a dozen persons coming to her house—some for a day, some for as long as three days, commencing with the Tuesday when she and Phyllis went off together. Mr. Linton had promised to join the party toward the end of the week.

And that was how it came about that Herbert Courtland found himself daily admiring the cleverness of Phyllis Ayrton when she had the punt pole in her hands. He also admired the gradual tinting of her fair face, through the becoming exertion of taking the punt up the lovely backwater or on to the placid reaches beyond. Sometimes the punt contained three or four of the party in addition to Herbert, but twice he was alone with her, and shared his admiration of her with no one.



CHAPTER XXXI.

YOU MAY TRUST MR. COURTLAND.

Mrs. Linton was greatly amused—she certainly was surprised. The surprises were natural, but the amusement was not quite logical. It was, however, quite natural that her guests—two of them excepted—should be amused when they observed her surprise.

Could anything be funnier, one of these guests asked another in a whisper, than Mrs. Linton's chagrin on finding that her own particular Sir Lancelot had discovered an Elaine for himself?

Of course the guest who was so questioned agreed that nothing could possibly be funnier; and they both laughed in unison. If people cannot derive innocent fun from watching the disappointment of their hostess, in what direction may the elements of mirth be found?

It was agreed that Mrs. Linton had invited Herbert Courtland up the river for her own special entertainment—that she had expected him to punt her up the river highways and the backwater by-ways, while Phyllis Ayrton and the rest of her guests looked after themselves, or looked after Mrs. Linton's husband; but it appeared that Herbert Courtland had not been consulted on this subject, the result being that Mrs. Linton's arrangements had been thrown into confusion.

The consensus of opinion among the guests was to the effect that Mrs. Linton's arrangements had been thrown very much awry indeed. But then the guests were amused, and as it is getting more and more difficult every year to amuse one's guests, especially those forming a house-party at a season when nothing lends itself to laughter, Mrs. Linton would have had every reason to congratulate herself upon the success of her party, had she been made aware of the innocent mirth which prevailed for some days among her guests.

She would possibly have been greatly diverted also at the overshrewdness of her guests, who were, of course, quite ignorant of the conversation regarding Phyllis Ayrton which had immediately preceded her invitation to Herbert to spend a few days on the river.

But though Ella had undoubtedly given Herbert to understand that she was anxious to have him at The Mooring while Phyllis was there, in order that he might have an opportunity of seeing more of her, and to obtain his agreement that her theory that the man who truly loves a woman should be ready to marry that woman's dearest friend, still it must be confessed that she was surprised to observe the course adopted by both Phyllis and Herbert. She had expected that all her tact and diplomacy would be required in order to bring the young people—with all the arrogance of the wife of twenty-six years of age she alluded to a girl of twenty-three and a man of thirty-two as the young people—together.

She had had visions of sitting in the stern of an out-rigger built for two, remonstrating with Herbert—he would of course be at the oars—for choosing to paddle her up the river while he allowed some of the other men to carry off Phyllis in, say, the Canadian canoe. A picture had come before her of the aggrieved expression upon the face of Herbert when she would insist on his going out by the side of Phyllis to feed the peacocks on the terraces in the twilight; and she had more than once seemed to hear his sigh of resignation as she, with a firmness which she would take pains to develop, pleaded a headache so that he and Phyllis might play a game of billiards together.

She soon found out that her imagination had not been prophetic. Immediately after drinking tea—it was a few minutes past six—on the evening of the arrival of Herbert, she went out of doors to find him and give him a lecture on the need there was for him to refrain from waiting about the garden far from the other guests until she, Ella, could go on the river with him for a quiet drift before dinner; the other guests would certainly think him worse than rude, she was ready to explain. The explanation was not needed; she learned that Mr. Courtland had just taken Miss Ayrton out in one of the punts.

Of course she was pleased—after an hour by the side of her husband to perceive that Herbert had lost no time in making an effort to prove to her how amply he recognized her object in asking him to The Mooring. But at the same time, if pleased, she was also surprised. At any rate, she would take good care that he did not lapse in his attentions to Phyllis; as she knew lovers are but too apt to lapse, especially when they begin well. She would, for instance, send him from her side in the garden after dinner, to walk with Phyllis up to the woods where a nightingale was said to be in the habit of singing when the lovely summer twilight had waned into the lovely summer night. With the nightingale's song in their ears, two ordinary young persons with no preconceived theories on the subject of love, have been known, she was well aware, to become lovers of the most aggressive type. Yes, she had great hopes of the nightingale.

So, apparently, had Herbert Courtland.

After dinner there was smoking in the garden, some feeding of the peacocks on the terraces, while the blackbirds uttered protests against such an absorption by foreign immigrants of the bread that was baked for native consumption. Then there was some talk of the nightingale. One man suggested that it was a nightingale attached to a music box which the enterprise of a local inn had hired for the summer months, sending a man to wind it up every night for the attraction of visitors. Then it was that Mr. Courtland said he knew a spot where a nightingale had been in the habit of singing long ago, when his explorations of the Thames River had preceded those of the Fly River. He found three persons who expressed their willingness to accept his guidance on the spot, if it were not too far away. One of these was Phyllis, the other two were notorious lovers. Off they started without hats or caps.

This Ella heard when she returned to the garden, whence she had been called away for ten minutes to interview a man who had an electric launch for sale.

The news, communicated to her by her husband in answer to her inquiry, had surprised her. That was why she had given a little laugh with a tone of derision in it when she had said:

"A nightingale! How lovely! I hope they may find it. It shouldn't prove so arduous as the quest of the meteor-bird. I do hope that those children will not catch cold. It is a trifle imprudent."

"Imprudent?"

"Going off that way with nothing on their heads."

"Or in them. Happy children!" cried a moralizing novelist, who was smoking an extremely good cigar—it had not come from his own tobacconist.

"We can't all be novel-writers," said one of the women.

"Thank the Lord!" said one of the men, with genuine piety.

In three-quarters of an hour the members of the quest party returned. They had been fully rewarded for their trouble; they had been listening to the nightingale for nearly twenty minutes, they said; it had been very lovely, they agreed, without a single dissentient voice. It probably was; at any rate they were very silent for the rest of the night.

"You have begun well," said Ella to Herbert, when they found themselves together in the drawing room, later on, shortly before midnight. Someone was playing on the piano, so that the general conversation and yawning were not interfered with. "You have begun well. You will soon get to know her if your others days here are like to-day. That nightingale! Oh, yes, you will soon get to know her."

He shook his head.

"I doubt it," said he, in a low tone. His eyes were turned in the direction of Phyllis. She was on a seat at an open window, the twilight of moonlight and lamplight glimmering about her hair. "I doubt it. It takes a man such as I am a long time to know such a girl as Phyllis Ayrton."

That was a saying which had a certain amount of irritation for Ella. He had never said anything in the past about her, Ella, being beyond the knowledge of ordinary men.

"That's a very good beginning," said she, with a little laugh that meant much. "But don't despair. After all, girls are pretty much alike. I was a girl once—it seems a long time ago. I thought then that I knew a great deal about men. Alas! all that I have learned since is simply that they know a great deal about me. Am I different from other women, I wonder? Am I more shallow—more transparent? Was I ever an enigma to you, Bertie?"

"You were always a woman," he said. "That is why——"

"That is why——"

"That is why I am here to-night. If you were not a true woman I should be far away."

"You are far away—from me, Bertie."

"No, no! I am only beginning to appreciate you—to understand you."

"I am to be understood through the medium of Phyllis Ayrton? Isn't that like looking at happiness through another's eyes?"

He did not appear to catch her meaning at once. He looked at her and then his eyes went across the room to Phyllis. At the same instant the performance on the piano ceased. Everyone said "Thanks, awfully good," and there were some audible yawns.

There was a brandy and soda yearning in the men's eyes.

"We'll get off to bed; someone may begin to play something else," whispered the hostess to one of her lady guests.

The men looked as if they had heard the suggestion and heartily approved of it.

The next evening Ella was fortunate enough to get beside Herbert once again—she had scarcely had an opportunity of exchanging a word with him all day. He had been with Phyllis alone in the Canadian canoe. It only held two comfortably, otherwise——But no one had volunteered to put its capacity to the test. Ella had gone in one of the punts with four or five of her guests; but the punt never overtook the canoe. It was those of the guests who had been in the punt that afterward said it was very funny to observe the chagrin of Queen Guinevere when she found that her Sir Lancelot had discovered an Elaine.

"You have had a delightful day, I'm sure," said Ella. She had found him at the bottom of the garden just before dinner. It was not for her he was loitering there.

"Delightful? Perhaps. I shall know more about it ten years hence," he replied.

"You are almost gruff as well as unintelligible," said she.

"I beg your pardon," he cried. "Pray forgive me, Ella."

"I'll forgive your gruffness if you make yourself intelligible," said she. "You frighten me. Ten years hence? What has happened to-day?"

"Oh, nothing whatever has happened! and as for ten years hence—well, in ten years hence I shall be looking back to this day either as one of the happiest of my life, or as Francesca looked back upon her tempo felice."

"Oh, now that you get into a foreign language you are quite intelligible. You have not spoken?"

"Spoken? I? To her—to her? I have not spoken. I don't believe that I shall ever have the courage to speak to her in the sense you mean."

Ella smiled as she settled a rose on the bodice of her evening dress—its red petals were reposing in that little interspace that dimpled the soft shell-pink of her bosom. The man before her had once kissed her.

She smiled, as she knew that he was watching her. She wondered if he had forgotten that kiss.

"Why should you lose courage at this juncture?" she asked. "She hasn't, up to the present, shown any very marked antipathy to you, so far as I can see. She is certainly not wanting in courage, if you are."

"Ella," he cried, but in a low voice, "Ella, when I look at her, when I think of her, I feel inclined to throw my bag into a trap and get back to town—get back to New Guinea with as little delay as possible."

"You would run away?" said she, still smiling. She had begun to work with the rose in her bosom once more. "You would run away? Well, you ran away once before, you know."

She could not altogether keep the sneer out of her voice; she could not quite deprive her words of their sting. They sounded to her own ears like the hiss of a lash in the air. She was amazed at the amount of bitterness in her voice—amazed and ashamed.

He stood before her, silently looking at her. There was no reproach in his eyes.

"Oh, Bertie, Bertie, forgive me!" she said, laying her hand on his arm. "Forgive me; I don't know what I am saying."

There was some piteousness in her voice and eyes. She was appealing to him for pity, but he did not know it. Every man thinks that the world was made for himself alone, and he goes tramping about it, quite careless as to where he plants his heavy feet. When occasionally he gets a thorn in one of his feet, he feels quite aggrieved. He never stops to think of all the things his foot crushes quite casually.

Herbert Courtland had no capacity for knowing how the woman before him was suffering. He should have known, from the words he had just heard her speak. He should have known that they had been wrung from her. He did not know, however; he was not thinking of her.

"Bertie," she said again, "Bertie, you are not angry? I did not know what I was saying."

"You are a woman," he said gently, and it was just by reason of this gentleness that there seemed to be a reproach in his voice. He reproached her for being a woman.

"I am a woman—just as other women, just as other women." Her voice sounded like a moan. "I thought myself different, stronger—perhaps worse than other women. I was wrong. Oh, Bertie! cannot you see that she loves you as I loved you long ago—oh, so long ago? And someone has said that there is no past tense in love! No, no! she does not love you as I loved you—guiltily; no, her love is the love that purifies, that exalts. She loves you, and she waits for you to tell her that you love her. You love her, Bertie?"

There was a long pause before he said:

"Do I?"

"Do you not?"

"God knows."

And it was at this point that Phyllis came up. Was there no expression of suspicion on her face as she looked at them standing together?

If there was, they failed to notice it.

"I came out to get a rose," she said. "How quickly you dressed, Ella! Ah, you have got your rose—a beauty! Your gardener is generous; he actually allows you to pluck your own roses."

"Mr. Courtland will choose one for you," said Ella. "You may trust Mr. Courtland."

"To choose me a rose? Well, on that recommendation, Mr. Courtland, I think I may safely place myself in your hands. I will accept a rose of your choosing."

And she did.



CHAPTER XXXII.

LET THEM BOTH GO TOGETHER TO PERDITION.

There could be no doubt whatever that, after all, he had not proposed to her.

That was what Herbert Courtland's fellow-guests said when they learned that he had left for London by an early train on Monday morning.

And the way she had thrown herself at his head, too!

Of course she pretended not to feel his departure any more than the rest of the party; and equally as a matter of course, Mrs. Linton protested that Mr. Courtland had disappointed her.

And perhaps he had, too, some of the guests whispered to one another.

Mr. Linton shrugged his shoulders and remarked that business was business.

Everyone agreed with the general accuracy of this assertion, but it was not one that required much boldness to make, and what it had to do with Mr. Courtland's hurried departure no one seemed quite able to perceive.

The general idea that had prevailed at The Mooring on the subject of Mr. Courtland was that he would remain at the house after all the other guests—Miss Ayrton only excepted—had left.

During Monday several were to return to town, and the remainder on Tuesday, including Miss Ayrton. She required to do so to be in time for a grand function at which Royalty was to be present on that night. Mrs. Linton herself meant to return on Wednesday afternoon.

It was late on Sunday night when Herbert had gone to Ella's side and told her that he found it necessary to leave for town early in the morning instead of waiting until Tuesday evening.

"Good Heavens!" she cried; "what is the meaning of this? What will people say? You do not mean to tell me that she—she——Oh, no; that would be impossible!"

"Nothing is impossible," said he. "Nothing—not even my running away."

"You have told her——"

"I have told her nothing. I am not sure that I have anything to tell her. I am going away to make sure."

"Oh! very well. But I must say that I think you are wrong—quite wrong. There is that Mr. Holland; he is coming into greater prominence than ever since that article of his appeared in the Zeit Geist. Stephen says he will certainly have to leave the Church."

"What has Mr. Holland got to say to——"

"More than meets the eye. You must remember that three months ago she was engaged to marry him. Now, though I don't mean to say that she ever truly loved him, yet there is no smoke without fire; it is very often that two persons who have become engaged to be married love each other. Now, if Phyllis ever had a tender feeling for Mr. Holland, and only threw him over because his theories are not those of Philistia, in the midst of which she had always lived, that feeling is certain to become tenderer if he is about to be made a martyr of. Would you like to see her thrown away upon George Holland?"

Herbert looked at the woman who could thus plead the cause—if that was not too strong a phrase—of the girl whom he had come to love. He felt that he was only beginning to know something about woman and her nature.

"I must go," he said. "I must go. I am not sure of myself."

"You had best make sure of her, and then you will become sure of yourself," said Ella.

"That would be to do her an injustice. No. I feel that I must go," he cried.

And go he did.

Those of the guests who remained during Monday did their best to find out how Phyllis was disposed to regard his departure; and there was a consensus of opinion among them that she seemed greatly mortified, though she made a splendid fight, trying to appear utterly indifferent.

There was, however, no ignoring the circumstance that Ella was elated at his departure; some of her guests even went so far as to suggest that she had accelerated his departure, giving him to understand that, however a young woman might throw herself at his head,—and didn't Phyllis just throw herself at his head?—he had no right to give her all his attention; a hostess has a right to claim some of his spare moments.

It was not until Tuesday, when Mr. Linton had left for London, and Phyllis was alone with Ella for an hour before lunch, that the latter endeavored to find out what she thought of Herbert Courtland.

"Has Stephen been speaking to you about George Holland?" she inquired. She thought that the best way to lead Phyllis to talk about Herbert would be by beginning to talk about George Holland.

"Oh, yes!" said Phyllis. "He appears to be greatly interested in Mr. Holland. He thinks that he must leave the Church."

"That would be very sad," remarked Ella. "It would seem very like persecution, would it not?"

"I cannot see that there would be any injustice in the matter," said Phyllis. "If a man chooses to write such things as he has written, he must take the consequences. I, for my part, intend keeping away from the church as long as Mr. Holland remains in the pulpit."

She did not think it necessary to refer to the remarks made by Mr. Holland upon the occasion of his last visit to her, though these words might not be without interest to Ella.

"But it seems hard, doesn't it, to deprive a man of his profession simply because he holds certain views on what is, after all, an abstract subject—the patriarchs, or the prophets and things of that sort?" said Ella.

"Lady Earlscourt said that he should be forgiven, because he really didn't hold the views which he had preached," laughed Phyllis. "She also said that he should not be regarded as an atheist, because he believed not only in one God, but in two."

"I wonder how many Herbert Courtland believes in," said Ella. "You told me he talked to you on that topic the first night you met. Was it about God you and he have been talking lately?"

"I'm afraid it was not."

"Oh! you found a more interesting topic, and one of more importance to two people in the bloom of youth?"

"Ella!"

"Oh, my dear, I don't mean anything dreadful. Only, you know as well as I do that a healthy man and a healthy woman will never talk, when they are alone together, about God, when they can talk about each other. I think Herbert Courtland is about the healthiest man I know, and I'm sure that you are the healthiest girl. You and he are most sympathetic companions. You are not at all stupidly coy, my sweet maiden."

"I like Mr. Courtland, and why should I be coy?"

"Why, indeed? I wonder what the people who have just left us will say about it?"

"About it? About what!"

"You coyness—or absence of coyness. Will they say that you threw yourself at his head?"

(As a matter of fact, as is already known, that is just what the majority of the guests did say about her.)

Phyllis reddened and seemed—for a moment or two—almost angry. Then she made a little gesture, expressive of indifference, as she cried:

"After all, what does it matter what they said? I don't care about them. It is for you I care, Ella—you, only you."

"Heavens! how seriously you say that!" cried Ella. "There's no cause for seriousness, I hope, even if you do care a great deal for me, which I know you do. If you said so much to a man,—say, Herbert Courtland,—it would be quite another matter. There would be sufficient cause for seriousness then. But you didn't say so much to him. He ran away before you could say it."

"Oh, Ella! please don't talk in that way. It is not like yourself to talk in that way."

"How do you know what is like myself and what is not? You have only seen one side of me, and I don't think that you have understood even what you have seen. Great Heavens! how could I expect that you should. Not until within a few months ago had I myself any idea that my nature was made up of more than one element. Do you fancy now that you will always be in the future as you have been in the past? The same placid, sweet English girl, with serious thoughts at times about your own soul and other people's souls? a maiden living with her feet only touching the common clay of this earth? Wait until your hour comes—your hour of love; your hour of fate; your hour of self-abandonment, and pray to your God that you may come through it as well as I came through mine."

"Ella, dearest Ella!"

"You know nothing of that hour—that terrible hour! Wait until it comes to you before you think a word of evil against any woman that lives in the world. Wait until your hour of jealousy comes—wait until you find that your hair is turning gray. The most tragical moment in a woman's life is when she finds that the gray hairs will not be kept back. That is the time when she thinks of Heaven most seriously. I have not yet found a single gray hair in my head, but I have suffered all else; and I have been an astonishment to myself—as I have been to you more than once before now, and as I certainly am to you at the present moment."

She had spoken at first with quivering lips, her fingers interlaced, her eyes flashing. She had sprung from her seat and had begun to pace the room just as she had paced Phyllis' drawing room on that night when she had missed the performance of "Romeo and Juliet," but she ended with a laugh, which was meant to make a mock of the seriousness of her impassioned words, but which only had the effect of emphasizing her passion in the ears of the girl.

While she was still lying back, laughing, in the chair into which she had thrown herself once more, Phyllis went to her and knelt at her feet, taking her hands just as Herbert had taken her hands in the evening when he had knelt at her feet in her own house after the little dinner at Mr. Ayrton's.

"Ella, Ella," she whispered, "I also am a woman. Oh, my dearest! I think that I can understand something of your heart. I know a little. Oh, Ella, Ella! I would do anything in the world to help you—anything—anything!"

"Would you?" cried the woman. "Would you do anything? Would you give up Herbert Courtland in order to help me?"

She had grasped Phyllis by the wrists and had bent her own head forward until her face was within an inch of Phyllis'. Their breaths mingled. Their faces were too close to admit of either of them seeing the expression that was in the eyes of the other.

"Dearest Ella, you will not break my heart!" said the girl piteously.

"Will you give him up for your love of me?" the woman cried again, and Phyllis felt her hands tighten upon her wrists.

"I will forget that you have said such words," said the girl.

The woman flung away her hands after retaining them for a few moments in silence, and then throwing herself back in her chair, laughed loud and long.

Phyllis rose to her feet.

"You poor dear!" cried Ella. "It was a shame—a shame to play such a jest upon you! But I felt in a tragic mood, and the line between comedy and tragedy is a very fine one. Forgive my little freak, dear; and let us be human beings once more, living in a world that cannot be taken so seriously. Don't go by the evening train, Phyllis; stay all night with me. I have so much to say to you. I want to talk to you. How can you leave me here all alone?"

Phyllis could have told her that how she could leave her all alone was because Herbert Courtland had left for London on the previous day. She did not make an explanation to her on this basis, however; she merely said that it would interfere with her plans to remain longer at The Moorings. She had to attend that great function with her father that night.

Ella called her very unkind, but showed no desire to revert to the topic upon which they had been conversing, when she had thought fit to ask her that jocular question which Phyllis had said she would forget.

But Phyllis did not keep her word. On the contrary she thought of nothing else but that question all the time she was in the railway carriage going to Paddington.

It was a terrible question in Phyllis' eyes for a woman with a husband to put to her girl-friend.

More than once during the week Phyllis had been led to ask herself if she was quite certain that her terrible surmise regarding the influence which dominated Ella's recent actions was true. Now and again she felt an impulse to fall upon her knees and pray, as she had once before prayed, that the sin of that horrible suspicion might be forgiven her. How could it be possible, she thought, that Ella should forget all that a true woman should ever remember!

But now—now, as she sat in the train on her way back to London, there was no room left in her mind for doubt on this matter. The tragic earnestness with which Ella had asked her that question, tightening her fingers upon her wrists? "Will you give up Herbert Courtland in order to help me?"—the passionate whisper, the quivering lips—all told her with overwhelming force that what she had surmised was the truth.

She felt that Ella had confessed to her that her infatuation—Phyllis called it infatuation—had not passed away, though she had been strong enough upon that night, when her husband had so suddenly returned, to fly from its consequences. No, her infatuation had not died.

But Herbert Courtland—what of him? He had also had strength—once. Would he have strength again? He had told her, while they were together in one of the boats drifting down the placid river, that he believed in the influence which a woman could exercise upon a man's life being capable of changing his nature so completely as if a miracle had been formed upon him. She had not had the courage to ask him if he had any particular instance in his mind that impressed this belief upon him.

Had he been led to cast that infatuation—if he had ever been subjected to it—behind him, by reason of her influence over him since she had repeated to him the pathetic words of Mrs. Haddon, and he had gone straight aboard the yacht on that strange cruise?

She could scarcely doubt that he was ready to acknowledge how great had been her influence upon his life. He had shown her in countless ways that she had accomplished all that she had sought to achieve. She had had no need to throw herself at his head—the phrase which Ella suggested her fellow-guests would probably employ in referring to the relative positions of Phyllis and Herbert. No, she had ever found him by her side, and it did not need her to exercise much cleverness to keep him there.

But then, why had he so suddenly hurried away from that pleasant life beside the still waters?

This was the question which was on her mind as the train ran into the station at Paddington. She got out of the carriage, and while her maid went to look after the luggage, she glanced down the platform for the footman. He came up to her in a moment and took her dressing-bag and jewel-case.

"The brougham is here, I suppose?" she said, as she walked down the platform.

It was at the entrance to the station, he told her.

She paused for a moment, and glanced back to see if there had been much luggage in the train which she had left—if her maid would be likely to be kept waiting for long. At that instant a porter, with a portmanteau on his shoulder and a Gladstone bag in his hand, hurrying up by the side of the train which was ready to depart from the next platform, shouted to a group of Eton boys who were blocking the way:

"By your leave, gents!"

She started and took a step to one side, and that instant was sufficient to make her aware of the fact that the portmanteau carried by the porter to the train which was about to leave for Maidenhead was Herbert Courtland's. There was no mistaking it. It bore on one end his initials and his private sign.

She took a few steps nearer the train by which she had come, and followed the porter with her eyes.

He put the portmanteau into the luggage van, and then returned with the Gladstone bag to the side of a compartment. She saw him place it in the network, and touch his cap as he received his douceur from the passenger who sat at the door with an evening paper in his hand.

She saw that that passenger was Herbert Courtland.

She told the footman who stood beside her to take her bag and case to the brougham and then return to help her maid with the rest of the luggage. He followed her down the platform.

In a short time she was being driven home, her maid following with the luggage in another vehicle.

She did not begin to change her traveling dress immediately on retiring to her room. She did not even take off her hat. She stood at the window looking out over a scene very different from that which had been before her eyes every day during the previous week. After a quarter of an hour's listlessness at the window, she spent another quarter of an hour sitting motionless in a chair. Then she rose and looked at herself in a mirror that showed her herself from head to foot. She examined her feet with curious deliberation, and then looked with a critical side glance at the reflection of her face. (She could not fail to have noticed that it was unusually pale.) She removed her hat, surveyed herself once more, then, turning away with an exclamation of impatience, she crumpled up her hat with both her hands and flung it, just as a wicked child would have flung it, across the room.

"Let them both go together to perdition—to perdition—to perdition!" she said with a bitterness that had never previously been in her voice. "Let them go together. I have done my best for them—for her—for her. I give them up now for evermore."

After a minute or two of statuesque passion she went across the room and picked up her bruised hat. She looked at it, turning it round in her hands. Then she dropped it suddenly, and flung herself upon the sofa, crying out in a whirlwind of tears:

"Oh, Ella, Ella, I would have saved you—I meant to save you, indeed! I would have done everything to save you—everything!"



CHAPTER XXXIII.

I WONDER IF I EVER LOVED YOU UNTIL THIS MOMENT.

It was a rather tedious evening for Ella Linton after Phyllis had taken her departure. Why on earth, she asked herself, had she been such a fool as to lay out her plans to have this lonely evening? Then she remembered that two of her guests had meant to stay until Wednesday morning, but had received a letter necessitating their departure for town on Monday night. But this fact should not have condemned her to a solitary evening, Ella reflected. She should have been thoughtful enough to change her own plans to correspond with the change in the plans of her guests. A nice, quiet, contemplative evening beside the still waters may suit the requirements of some temperaments, but it was not just what Ella regarded as most satisfying to her mood of the hour. It was a long time since she had spent a lonely evening, and although she had now rather more food for contemplation than at any other period of her life, she did not feel contemplative.

Then it suddenly occurred to her to ask herself why, after all, should she be condemned to a contemplative evening? What was there to hinder her taking a train to town after she had dined? Once in town she knew that all prospect of contemplation would be at an end.

She rang her bell and told her maid that she had changed her mind in regard to staying another night at The Mooring; she would leave after dinner; wasn't there a train about nine from Maidenhead?

It was when she was about to go down to dinner that she heard the sound of wheels upon the gravel walk. Was it possible that her newly made plans might also be deranged? Was this a fresh visitor arriving by a fly from Maidenhead—she saw that the vehicle was a fly.

There was no one in the room to hear the cry of delight that she gave when she saw Herbert at the porch of the house, the driver having deposited his portmanteau and Gladstone bag at his feet.

He had returned to her—he, whom she fancied to be far away; he who had forsaken her, as she thought, as she feared, as she (at times) hoped, forever. He had returned to her. There was no one now to stand between them. He was all her own.

She flung off the dress which she was wearing,—it was her plainest evening gown,—and had actually got on another, a lovely one that she had never yet worn, before her maid arrived at her dressing room.

"Louise," she said, "send a message downstairs to show Mr. Courtland to his room, and mention that he will dine with me. Come back at once. I have got so far in my dressing without you; I can't go much further, however."

In a quarter of an hour she was surveying herself in her mirror just as Phyllis had been doing an hour sooner; only on her face was a very different expression from that which Phyllis had worn. Her eyes were brilliant as they never had been before, except once; her face was not pale, but full of soft color, as if she were standing beneath the shadow of a mighty rose-leaf with the sunlight above. Her neck and arms were of the same delicate tinge. Her smile she gave as she surveyed herself was a smile of triumph, very different from the expression on poor Phyllis' features as she flung her hat across the room.

"Mine, mine, mine!" she whispered, nodding with a smile at the lovely thing so full of warm life that faced her with a smile. "He is mine—he has come back to me, I will keep him. I shall be able to keep him, I think."

She had scarcely entered the drawing room before he was beside her, and he had scarcely entered before a servant announced that dinner was served. They were seated at the dinner table before they had exchanged half a dozen words—before she had time to ask him why he had returned.

And at the table, with a servant at each end, what could they say?

Well, she gave in detail, with the accuracy of a railway time-table, the hours of the departure of the various guests, down to the last departed guest, who chanced to be Miss Ayrton. Yes, she was obliged to go up to town to be present at that important function which was to be given in the presence of Royalty, though, she, Mrs. Linton, was convinced that Phyllis would much prefer remaining in the midst of that exquisite quietude which seemed to be found only up the river. She had wanted her dear Phyllis to stay until the morrow, but poor Phyllis' sense of duty had been, as unfortunately it always was, too great for her inclination.

"Unfortunately?" said Herbert.

"Did I say unfortunately?" she cried. "How funny! I meant of course, unfortunately for her friends—for myself in this particular case. But, after all, we had a delightful week together. It has done us all good—even you."

"Why the 'even'?" he asked, with a laugh.

"Oh, well, because you are not expected to feel the fatigues of a London season. And then you must remember that you had a yachting cruise which must have done you a world of good," she added, with a smile born of the mood which was on her—a mood of joy and laughter and daring. She felt that she could say anything she pleased to say to him now; she could have referred with a laugh to his running away on that strange cruise of his.

"Yes," he said, "it did me a great deal of good."

He spoke slowly, and her quick ear detected a tone of gravity in his voice. What could he mean? Oh, yes.

"I hope that that last phase of the mine will soon be settled," said she. "It was that which curtailed your cruise, you will remember."

"I certainly do remember."

"I hope the business will soon be settled one way or another. I don't think this running to Paris so frequently is good for Stephen. Haven't you noticed how poorly he has been looking of late?"

"He didn't seem to me to be particularly robust. But I think that he pulled himself together while he was here. Oh, yes! another week will see us free from this business."

"And with an extra million or so in your pockets."

"Well, something in that way."

That was how they talked while the servants were present—about business and money and matters that may be discussed in the presence of servants.

Then they went together into the drawing room. It was not yet dark enough for the candles to be lighted. The exquisite summer twilight was hanging over the river and the banks opposite, wooded from the water's edge to the summit. It was the hour of delicate blue touched with pink about the borders. The hour of purple and silver stars had not yet come.

She threw open one of the windows on its hinges, and in a moment the room was flooded with the perfume of the roses of the garden. She stood in the opening of the window and seemed to drink in the garden scents before they floated into the room. Then from some secret nestling place in the dark depths of the clipped hedge there came the even-song of a blackbird. It was replied to from the distance; and the silence that followed only seemed to be silence. It was a silence made vocal by the bending of a thousand notes—all musical. The blackbirds, the thrushes, the robins made up a chorus of harmony as soothing to the soul as silence. Then came the cooings of the wood pigeons. The occasional shriek of a peacock was the only note out of harmony with the feeling breathed by the twilight.

She stood at the open window, her back turned to him, for some time. He felt slightly embarrassed. Her attitude somehow suggested to him an imprisonment; he was captured; she was standing between him and the open air; she was barring his passage.

Suddenly she turned. With her movement there seemed to float into the room a great breath of rose-scent. It was only that the light showed him more clearly at that moment the glowing whiteness of her neck and shoulders and arms.

"Why have you come back?" she cried, almost piteously.

"Surely you know why, Ella," said he.

"I know nothing: a man is one thing one day and quite the opposite the next day. How can I know anything of what is in your mind to-day—in your heart to-day?"

"I came back thinking to find her here still—I fancied that you said she would stay until you were returning to-morrow."

"You came back for her?"

"I came back to see her—I find that I cannot live without seeing her."

"You have only found that out since you left here yesterday morning?"

"Only since I left here. I told you that I was not sure of myself. That is why I went away."

"You went away to make sure of yourself, and now you return to make sure of her?"

"Ah, if I could but think that! If I could only be as sure of her as I am of myself. But what am I that I should dare to hope? Oh, she is above all womankind—a crown of girlhood! What am I that I should ask to wear this crown of girlhood?"

"You are a king of men, Bertie. Only for the king of men is such a crown."

She laughed as she stood looking at him as she leaned against the half open door of the window, one hand being on the framework above her head.

"Ella, you know her!" he cried, facing her. She began to swing gently to the extent of an inch or two, still leaning on the edge of the hinged window. She was looking at him through half-closed, curious eyes. "Ella, you know her—she has always been your friend; tell me if I should speak to her or if I should go back to the work that I have begun in New Guinea."

"Would you be guided by me, Bertie?" she asked, suddenly ceasing her movement with the window and going very close to him indeed—so close that he could feel the gracious warmth of her face and bare neck and shoulders. "Would you be guided by me, I wonder?"

"Have I not been guided by you up to the present, Ella?" said he. "Should I be here to-night if it were not for your goodness? I laughed some time ago—how long ago it seems!—when you told me—you said it was your dearest wish—I did not then believe it possible——"

"And do you fancy that I believed it possible?" she asked, with some sadness in her voice.

"Great Heavens! Ella, do you mean to tell me that you——Oh, no, it is impossible! You knew me."

"I fancied that I knew you, Bertie. I fancied that I knew myself."

"Ella, Ella, for God's sake don't let us drift again. Have you no recollection of that terrible time through which we both passed—that ordeal by fire. Ella, we were plucked from the fire—she plucked us from the very fire of hell itself—oh, don't let us drift in that direction again!"

He had walked away from her. He was beginning to recall too vividly the old days, under the influence of her gracious presence so close to him—not so close as it had been, but still close enough to bring back old memories.

"Come here and stand beside me, Bertie," said she.

After a moment's hesitation he went to her, slowly, not with the rapture of a lover—not with the old passion trembling in his hands, on his lips.

He went to her.

She put her hands behind her and looked at him in the face for a long time. The even-songs of the birds mixed with the scent of the roses; the blue shadow of the twilight was darkening over the trees at the foot of her garden.

"Do you remember the oleanders?" she said. "I never breathe in such a twilight as this without seeing before me the oleanders outlined against its blue. It was very sweet at that old place on the Arno."

"Ella, Ella—for God's sake——"

"You told me that terrible secret of your life—that you loved me. I wonder if I knew what it meant, Bertie? I told you that I loved you: that was more terrible still. I wonder if you knew what that meant, Bertie?"

He did not speak.

The bird's songs outside were becoming softer and more intermittent.

She gave a sudden cry as if stung with pain, and started away from the window. She threw herself down on the couch, burying her face in the pillows—he could see through the dim room the whiteness of her arms. She was breathing convulsively; but she was not sobbing.

He remained beside the open window. He, too, was not breathing so regularly as he had breathed a short time before.

He heard the sigh that came from her as she raised her head from the pillow.

Then she said:

"I wonder if you ever really loved me, Bertie."

"Oh, my God!"

"I wonder if you ever loved me; and I wonder if I ever loved you until this moment."

There was a silence. Outside there was a little whisper of moving wings, but no voice of bird.

There was a silence, and out of it a low voice cried softly, softly:

"Bertie, Bertie, my love, come to me."

He took a step toward her, a second step—and then he stood, rigid, breathless, for he heard another soft voice that said:

"His honor is the honor of his mother and his sister, upon which no stain must come."

He heard that voice, and with a cry he covered his face with his hands, and turning, fled through the open window into the garden.



She lay there on her couch, that lovely white creature who had been saved so as by fire. There are two fires: the one is the fire that consumes the heart until all that is left of it is the dust of ashes; the other is the fire that purifies the soul even unto its salvation; and yet both fires burn alike, so that men and women know not which is burning within them.

Did she know that she was saved so as by fire?

She laughed as though he could still hear her; but after her laugh there came a few moments of overwhelming bitterness that sent her on her knees by the side of the couch in self-abasement.

"Kill me—kill me, O God!" she wailed. "Kill me, for I am not fit to live!"

But she was spared.

After a time she found strength to rise. She seemed surprised to find that the room was in darkness. She struck a light, and in a few minutes a dozen candles were flaring round the walls; and then she went mechanically to close the window. One side she had just fastened when it seemed to her that she heard the sound of voices approaching. She listened, her head bent forward through the side of the window that remained unclosed.

Yes, their voices were sounding clearly through the still night—his voice and—what trick was being played upon her by her hearing? Phyllis' voice? How could it be Phyllis' voice? Phyllis had returned to London. Oh, it was some trick! Her nerves were playing some trick upon her—they were out of order, they were beyond her control. Phyllis' voice——Great Heavens! it was Phyllis herself who was walking through the garden by his side!

Ella stood at the open side of the window staring out at them. They stood at the foot of the half dozen steps that lead up to the window. Phyllis laughed,—was there a trace of mockery in her laugh?—but he was silent.

"I don't wonder at your fancying that I am a ghost, Ella," cried the girl. "I feel that I deserve to be treated as discourteously as most poor ghosts are treated when they visit their friends. You never yet heard of a ghost being asked to stay to dinner, did you, Mr. Courtland? But a ghost may fairly claim to be asked to enter the house of her dearest friend, especially after a double railway journey."

Ella had not moved from her place at the open space of the window while Phyllis was speaking, but the moment that the girl's laugh sounded, she too laughed. She ran down the steps and put her arms about Phyllis, kissing her on the face.

"This is more than the most exacting of ghosts could reasonable look for," cried Phyllis. "Oh, Ella! I'm so glad that I followed my own impulse and came back to you. I thought you were here all alone—how could I know that Mr. Courtland would return in the meantime to complete his visit?—and when I looked out on the dust and the smoke of the town and thought of this—this—this exquisite stillness,—you can just hear the water of the weir,—this garden, this scent of roses, but chiefly when I thought of you sitting in your loneliness——Well, is it any wonder that I am here now?—you implored of me to stay, you know, Ella."

"It is no wonder indeed, being what you are—a good angel, my good angel, Phyllis," cried the woman. "Oh, dearest, you are welcome! Why did you leave me Phyllis? Why did you leave me? Oh, the good angels can never be trusted. You should not have left me to myself, dear. I am only a woman. Ah, you don't yet know what a woman is. That is the worst of angels and men; they don't know what a woman is. Come into the house, Phyllis. Come in, Herbert. How did you manage to meet?"

"You know I went out to the garden——" said the man.

"Yes; I knew that—you left me alone," said the woman, and she gave a laugh.

"I strolled from the garden to the road—I had to ask the people at the Old Bell to keep a room for me, of course."

"Of course."

"And just outside the inn I came face to face with Miss Ayrton's fly. Miss Ayrton was good enough to get out and walk with me, sending the fly on with her maid. I told the man to wait in order to take my portmanteau to the inn. It must be at the hall door now. We entered by the garden gate."

"Nothing could be simpler," said Ella. They had by this time walked up the steps into the drawing room. "Nothing could be simpler." Then she turned to Phyllis. "But how did you contrive to evade the great function to-night?"

"Papa did not feel very well," said Phyllis, "and I know that he was only too glad of an excuse to stay at home."

"And you forsook your sick father to come to me? Oh, my dear Phyllis, what have you done?"

"If you ask me in confidence I should say that papa is not quite so ill as to stand in need of a nurse," she whispered. "Oh, no! Make your mind easy. I have neglected no duty in coming to you."

"Except your duty to yourself; you could not have had time to take any dinner at home. I shall have you a servants' hall supper in ten minutes."

"Please get nothing for me. I had a capital sort of dinner at home. But I should dearly like a cup of tea."

"It will be ready for you the moment you return from taking off your hat. I'll go up with you to your room; Mr. Courtland knows that even I make myself at home in this house. He will pardon us."

"I mustn't keep the fly waiting for my portmanteau," said Mr. Courtland. "If you will allow me, I shall look to it now, and say good-night."

"What! Oh, you mustn't think of running off in this way," said Ella. "What reason had you for returning at all if you run off at this hour?"

"It is getting quite late. I mustn't keep the good people of the Old Bell up on my account," said he. "Besides, a man represents a certain inharmonious element upon such an occasion as this. Miss Ayrton returned expecting to be with you alone. I know the disabilities of a man quite well. Yes, I must say good-night."

"Nonsense! Pray talk to him, Phyllis," cried Ella. "You may make him amenable to reason."

But Phyllis stood mute with her hand on the handle of the door; she only smiled, and there is neither reason nor argument in a smile.

"Good-night!" said he.

"Oh, well, if you really have nothing to say to either of us,—to either Phyllis or me,—you had better go, I suppose," said Ella, giving him her hand, but she did not look at him in the face while his hand was touching hers.