The world at large, conceiving that the last word had been said and the last scene in which it was interested played, had soon turned its curious eyes away from Quisante's sick bed, leaving only the gaze of the smaller circle personally concerned in the dull and long-drawn-out ending of a piece once so full of dramatic incident. But the world found itself wrong, and all the eyes spun round in amazed staring when the sick man leapt from his bed and declared that he was himself again. The news came in paragraphs, to the effect that after another week's rest Mr. Quisante, whose health had made a rapid and great improvement, hoped to return to his Parliamentary duties and to fulfil the more urgent of his public engagements. Here was matter enough for surprise, but it was needful to add the fast-following well-authenticated stories of how the doctors had protested, how Sir Rufus Beaming had washed his hands of the case, and how Dr. Claud Manton had addressed an energetic warning to Lady May Quisante. This last item came home most closely to the general feeling, and the general voice asked what Lady May was thinking of. There was warrant for the question in the wondering despair of Lady Mildmay and the sad embarrassment of debonair Sir Winterton. The Mildmays knew all about it, the whole thing had happened in their house; but Sir Winterton, challenged with the story about Sir Rufus, could only hum and ha, and Lady Mildmay had not denied the interview between Quisante's wife and the energetic Dr. Manton. What was the meaning of it? And, once again, what was Lady May Quisante thinking of? Was she blind, was she careless? Or were the doctors idiots? The world, conscious of its own physical frailty, shrank from the last question and confined its serious attention to the two preceding ones. "Does she want to kill him?" asked the honest graspers of the obvious. "Does she think him above all laws?" was the question of those who wished to be more subtle. At least she was a puzzle. All agreed on that.

Lady Richard discountenanced all speculation and all questionings. For her part she did her duty, mentioning to Mrs. Baxter that this was what she meant to do and that, whatever happened, she intended to be able, salva conscientia, to tell herself that she had done it; Mrs. Baxter approved, saying that this was what the second Mrs. Greening had done when her husband's sister's daughter, a very emancipated young woman as it seemed, had incomprehensibly flirted with the auctioneer's apprentice and had scouted Mrs. Greening's control; Mrs. Greening had told the girl's mother and sent the girl home, second class, under the care of the guard. Similarly then Lady Richard, without embarking on any consideration of ultimate problems, wrote to May, suggesting that Mr. Quisante wanted rest and putting Ashwood at her disposal for so long as she and her husband might be pleased to occupy it. "If they don't choose to go, it's not my fault," said Lady Richard with the sigh which declares that every reasonable requirement of conscience has been fulfilled. Happy lady, to be able to repose in this conviction by the simple expedient of lending a house not otherwise required at the moment! So kind are we to our own actions that Lady Richard felt meritorious.

They chose to go, and went unaccompanied save by their baby girl and Aunt Maria—this last a strange addition made at Quisante's own request. He had not been wont to show such a desire for the old lady's society when there was nothing to be gained by seeking it; nor had it seemed to May altogether certain that Miss Quisante would come. Yet she came with ardent eagerness and her nephew was plainly glad to have her. It took May a little while to understand why, but soon she saw the reason. Aunt Maria was deep in the conspiracy, or the infatuation, or whatever it was to be called; she flattered Quisante's hope of life, she applauded his defiance of the inevitable; she hung on him more and more, herself forgetting and making him forget the peril of the way he trod. He wanted to be told that he was right, and he wanted an applauding audience. In both ways Aunt Maria satisfied him. She would talk of the present as though it were no more than a passing interruption of a long career, of the future as though it stretched in assured leisure through years of great achievement, of his life and his life's work as though both were in his own hand and subject to nothing save his own will and power. She was to him the readiest echo of the world's wonder and applause, the readiest assurance that his great effort was not going unrecognised. Hence he would have her with him, though there seemed no more love and no more tenderness between them than when in old days they had quarrelled and he had grumbled and she had flung him her money with a bitter jeer. But she lived in him and could think of him only as living, and through her he could cheat himself into an assurance that indeed he could live and work.

Then Aunt Maria was very bad for him. That could not be denied, but something more nearly touching herself pressed on May Quisante. She had seen the Mildmays' painful puzzle; she had listened to Dr. Claud Manton's energetic warning; it was before her, no less than before the patient, that Sir Rufus had washed his hands. She was not ignorant of the questions the world asked. She was not careless, nor was she any longer the dupe of her old delusion that such a man as Quisante could not die. Her eye for truth had conquered; now she believed that, if he persisted in his rebellion, he must surely die; unless all medical knowledge went for nothing, he would surely die, and die not after long years of lingering, but soon, perhaps very soon. A moment of excitement, say one of the moments that she had loved so much, might kill him; so Claud Manton said. A life of excitement would surely and early do the work. And why was he rebellious? She accused himself, she accused Aunt Maria, she accused the foolishly wondering, foolishly chattering world; and in every accusation there was some justice. Was there enough to acquit the other defendant who stood arraigned? To that she dared not answer "Yes," because of the fear which was in her that the strongest amongst all the various impulses driving him to his defiance was in the end to be found in his relations to her, in the attitude of his own wife towards him. Ashwood was full of associations; there was Duty Hill, where he had risen to his greatest and thereby won her; there was the tree beneath which she had sat with Marchmont on the evening when the knowledge of her husband's worst side had been driven like a sharp knife into her very heart. But more vivid than these memories now was the recollection of that first evening when she had seen him sitting alone, nobody's friend, and had determined to be human towards him and to treat him in a human way. There had been the true beginning of her great experiment. Now she told herself that she had failed in it, had never been human to him, and had never treated him in a human way, had not been what a man's wife should be, had stood always outside, a follower, an admirer, a critic, an accuser, never simply the woman who was his wife. His fault or hers, or that of both—it seemed to matter little. The experiment had been hers; and because she had made it and failed, it seemed to her that he was braving death. Had she been different, perhaps he would not have rebelled and could have lived the quiet life with her. It needed little more to make her tell herself that she drove him to his death, that she was with the enemy, with the chattering world and with poor deluded old Aunt Maria; she was of the conspirators; she egged him on to brave his doom.

In darker vein still ran her musings sometimes, when there came over her that haunting self-distrust; the fear that she was juggling with herself, shutting her eyes to the sin of her own heart, and, in spite of all her protestations, was really inspired by a secret hope too black and treacherous to put in words. However passionately she repudiated it, it still cried mockingly, "I am here!" It asked if her prayers for her husband's life were sincere, if her care for him were more than a due paid to decency, if the doom were in truth a thing she dreaded, and not a deliverance which convention alone forbade her openly to desire. Plainly, plainly—did she wish the doom to fall, did she wish him dead, was the rebellion that threatened death the course which the secret craving of her heart urged him to take? To do everything for him was not enough, if the doubt still lurked that her heart was not in the doing. For now she could no more ask coolly what she wished; the thing had come too near; it was odious to have a thought except of saving him by all means and at every cost; it was intolerable not to know at least that no part of the impulse which drove him to his rebellion lay at her door, not to feel at least that she had nothing but dread and horror for the threatened doom. She had no love for him; it came home to her now with a strange new sense of self-condemnation; she had married him for her own pleasure, because he interested her and made life seem dull without him. She pleaded no more that he had killed her love; it had never been there to kill. Had she left him to find a woman who loved him in and for himself, not for his doings, not for the interest of him, that woman might now be winning him by love from the open jaws of death.

Yet again laughter, obstinate and irrepressible, shot often in a jarring streak of inharmonious colour across the sombre fabric of her thoughts. He was not only mad, not only splendid—he seemed both to her—he was absurd too at moments, often when he was with Aunt Maria. Letters came in great numbers, from political followers, from women prominent in society, from constituents, from old Foster and Japhet Williams at Henstead, even from puissant Lady Castlefort; they wondered, applauded, implored, flattered, in every key of that sweet instrument called praise. Quisante read them out, pluming and preening his feathers, strutting about, crowing. He would repeat the passages he liked, asking his wife's approbation; that he must have, it seemed. She gave it with what heartiness she could, and laughed only in her sleeve. Surely a man facing death could have forgotten all this? Not Alexander Quisante. He could die, and die bravely; but the world must stand by his bedside. So till the end, whenever that most uncertainly dated end might come, the old mixture promised to go on, the great and small, the mean and grand, the call for tears and throbs of the heart alternating with the obstinate curling or curving of lips swift to respond to the vision of the contemptible or the ludicrous.

But she had her appeal to make, the one thing, it seemed, she could do to put herself at all in the right, the offer she must make, and try to make with a sincerity which should rise unimpaired from the conflicts of her heart. She had caught at coming to Ashwood because she thought she could make it best there, not indeed in the room where she had lied for him, nor by the tree where she had turned to Marchmont in a pang of wild regret, but there, on Duty Hill, where he had won her, had touched his highest, and had seemed a conqueror. She took him there, climbing with him very slowly, very gently; there she made him sit and sat by him. Again it was a quiet evening, and still the valley stretched below; nothing changed here made all the changes of her life seem half unreal. Here she told him he must live, he must be docile and must live.

"You may get strong again, but for the time you must do as the doctors say. You ought to; for the little girl's sake, if for nothing else, you ought to. You know you're risking another seizure now, and you know what that might mean."

His eyes were fixed keenly on her, though he lay back motionless in weariness.

"You ought to live for your daughter." She paused a minute and added, "And some day we might have a son, and you'd live again in him; we both should; we should feel that we were doing—that you were doing—everything he did. I think your son would be a great man, and I should be proud to be his mother. Isn't the hope of that worth something?"

He was silent, watching her closely still.

"I know what you think of me," she continued. "You think an active life essential to me, that I can't do without it. God knows I loved all you did, I loved your triumphs, I loved to hear you speak and see them listen. You know I loved all that, loved it too much perhaps. But I'll do without it. I'm your wife, your fate's mine. It'll be the braver thing for you to face it, really; I'm ready to face it with you."

Still he would only look at her.

"We know what we both are," she went on with a little smile. "We're not Mildmays, you and I. But let's try. I must tell you. I can't bear to think that it's partly at least because of me that you won't try, that if I were a different sort of woman it might be much easier for you to try. If it's that at all, imagine what I should feel if—if anything happened such as the doctors are afraid of."

"I've chosen my course. I believe the doctors are all wrong."

"Do you really believe that?" she asked quickly.

He shrugged his shoulders, seeming to say that he would not discuss it. "A great many considerations influence me," he said with a touch of pompousness.

"Am I one of them?" she persisted. "Because I don't want to be. I'm ready to share your life, whatever it is."

"Are you?" he asked, with something of the same malicious smile that he was wont to bestow on Aunt Maria. "Do you think you could share my life? Do you think you have?"

"I know what you mean," she said, flushing a little. "I daresay I've been hard and—and didn't take the pains to understand, and was uncharitable perhaps. Anyhow there'll be no opportunity for any more—any more misunderstandings of that sort."

"No; the understanding's clear enough now," said he.

She looked at him almost despairingly; he seemed so strangely hostile, so bitterly sensitive to her judgment of him.

"You think me," he went on, with his persistent eyes unwaveringly set on her, "a not over-honest mountebank; that's what you and your friends think me."

"Oh, I wish I'd never tried to talk to you about it!" she cried. "You take hold of some hasty mood or look of mine and treat it as if it were everything. You know it isn't."

"It's there, though."

"It never need be, never, never."

"You'll forget it all when we're settled down at—where was it?—Torquay or somewhere—in our villa, like two old tabby-cats sitting in the sun? No time to think it all over then? No, only all the hours of every day!" He paused and then added in a low hard voice, "I'm damned if I'll do it. I may have to die, but I'll die standing." His eyes gleamed now, and for the first time they turned from her and roamed over the prospect that lay below Duty Hill. But they were back on her face soon.

"No, no," she implored. "Not because of me, for heaven's sake, not because of me!"

"Because of it all. Yes, and because of you too. You don't love me, you never have." He leant towards her. "But I love you," he said, "yes, as I loved you when I asked you to be my wife on this hill where we are. Then don't you understand? I won't go and live that old cat's life with you." He laid his hand on hers. "Your eyes shall still sparkle for me, your breath shall still come quick for me, your heart beat for me; or I'll have no more of it at all."

The touch of rhetoric, so characteristic of him, so unlike anything that Marchmont or Dick Benyon would have used in such a case, did not displease her then. And it hit the truth as his penetration was wont to hit it. That was what he wanted, that was what she could and should and must give, or he would have nothing from her. Here was the truth; but the truth was what she had struggled so hard to deny and feared so terribly to find true. He was not indeed led by a sense of obligation towards her; the need was for himself. It was not that he felt in her a right to call on him for exertions or for a performance of his side of the bargain; it was that he could not bear to lose his tribute from her. But still she stood self-condemned. Again the thought came—with a woman who loved him there might have been another tribute that she could have paid and he been content to levy. He would have believed such a woman if she told him that he would be as much to her, and she as much absorbed in him, in the villa at Torquay as ever in the great world; and perhaps—oh, only perhaps, it is true—he would have made shift with that and fed his appetite on the homage of one, since his wretched body denied him the rows on rows of applauding spectators that he loved. But from his wife's lips he would not accept any such assurance, and from her no such homage could be hoped for to solace him.

Then the strange creature began to talk to her, not of what he had done, nor even of what he had hoped to do, but of what he meant and was going to do; how he would grow greater and richer, of schemes in politics and in business, of the fervour and devotion of the fighting men behind him and how they were sick of the old gang and would have no leader but Alexander Quisante; of the prosperity of the Alethea, how the shares rose, how big orders came in, how utterly poor old Maturin had blundered. He spoke like a strong man with a wealth of years and store-houses of force, who sees life stretched long before him, material to be shaped by his hand and forced into what he will make it. He talked low and fast, his eyes again roaming over the prospect; the evening fell while he still talked. Almost it seemed then that the doctors were wrong, that his courage was no folly, that indeed he would not die. O for the faith to believe that! For his spell was on her again now, and now she would not have him die. Once again he had his desire; once more her heart beat and her eyes gleamed for him. But then it came on her, with a sudden fierce light of conviction, that all this was hollow, useless, vain, that the sentence was written and the doom pronounced. No pleading however eloquent could alter it. Quisante was stopped in mid-career by a short sharp sob that escaped from his wife's lips. He turned and looked at her, breaking off the sentence that he had begun. She met his glance with a frightened look in her eyes.

"What's the matter?" he asked slowly, rather resentfully.

"Nothing, nothing," she stammered. "I—I was excited by what you were saying." She tried to laugh. "I'm emotional, you know, and you can always rouse my emotions."

"Was it that?" For a moment longer he sat upright, looking hard at her; then his body relaxed, and he lay back, his lower lip dropping and his eyes half closed. An expression of great weariness and despair came over him. He had read the meaning of her sob; and now he hid his face in his hands. His pretences failed him, and he was assailed by the bitterness of truth and of death.

She rose, saying, "It's late, we must go in; you'll be over-tired."

After an instant Quisante rose slowly and falteringly; he laid his arm in hers, and they stood side by side, gazing down into the valley. This hill had come to mean much in their lives, and somehow now they seemed to be saying good-bye to it.

"I could never forget this hill," she said, "any more than I could forget you. You told me just now that I didn't love you. Well, as you mean it, perhaps not. But you've been almost everything in the world to me. Everything in the world isn't all good, but it's—everything." She turned to him suddenly and kissed him on the cheek. "Lean on me as we go down the hill," she said. There was pity and tenderness in the words and the tone. But Quisante drew his arm sharply away and braced his body to uprightness.

"I'm not tired. I can go quite well by myself. You look more tired than I do," he said. "Come, we shall be late," and he set off down the hill at a brisk pace.

Her appeal then had failed; this last little incident told her that with unpitying plainness. If he had yielded for a moment before the face of reality, he soon recovered himself, turned away from the sight, and went back to his masquerading. She lacked the power to lead him from it, and again she feared that she lacked the power because her will was not sincere and single. Now they must go on to that uncertain end, he playing his part before the world, before her and Aunt Maria, she looking on, sometimes in admiration, sometimes in contempt, always in fear of the moment when the actor's speeches would be suddenly cut short and the curtain, falling on the interrupted scene, hide him for ever from the audience whom he had made wondering applauding partners in his counterfeit. The last of his life was to be like the rest of it, with the same elements of tragedy and of farce, of what attracted and of what revolted, of the great and the little. It was to be like in another way too; it was to be lived alone, without any true companion for his soul, without the love that he had not asked except of one, and, asking of that one, had not obtained. As the days went on, the fascination of the spectacle she watched grew on her; it was more poignant now than in the former time, and it filled all her life. Thus in some sort Alexander Quisante had his way; his hold on her was not relaxed, his dominion over her not abrogated, to the end of his life he would be what she told him he had been—almost everything. When the end came, what would he be? The question crossed her thoughts, but found no answer; some day it would fall to be answered. Now she could only watch and wait, half persuaded that the pretence was no pretence, yet always dreading the summons of reality to end the play. So the world asked in vain what May Quisante was thinking of, whether she wanted to kill him, or whether she thought him above all laws. A puzzle to the world and a puzzle to her friends, she waited for the falling of the blow which Quisante daily challenged.

Sir Rufus Beaming met Dr. Claud Manton at the Athenaeum and showed him a newspaper paragraph.

"To address a great meeting at Henstead!" said Manton, raising his brows and shaping his lips for a whistle. "'From his own and neighbouring constituencies.'"

"He might just as well take chloroform comfortably by his fireside," said Sir Rufus. "It would be a little quicker, perhaps, but not a bit more sure."

And again they washed their hands of the whole affair very solemnly.



CHAPTER XIX.

DEATH DEFIED.

Constantine Blair, no less active and soon little less serene in opposition than in power, felt himself more than justified in all that he had ever said about Weston Marchmont when he received an intimation of Marchmont's intention to apply for the Chiltern Hundreds. Yet he was aghast at this voluntary retirement into the wilderness of private life, a life without bustle, without gossip, without that sense of being intimate with the march of affairs and behind the scenes of the national theatre. There were reasons assigned, of course. One was that Marchmont found himself ("I'll bet he does!" groaned Constantine with anticipatory resignation) more in agreement with the other side than with his own on an important question of foreign politics then to the front. But this state of matters had ceased to be unusual with him and hardly in itself accounted for the step he was now taking. The care of his estate was the second reason, properly dismissed as plainly frivolous. In the end of the letter more sincerity peeped out, as the writer lapsed from formality into friendship. "I know I shall surprise many people and grieve some, but I'm sick of the thing. I can't endure the perpetual haggling between what I ought to do and what I'm expected to do; the compromises that result satisfy me as little as anybody. In fine, my dear Constantine, I'm going back to my pictures, my books, my hills, and my friends." Constantine read with a genuine sorrow and criticised with a contemptuous sniff. Pictures, books—and hills! Hills! It was insulting his intelligence. And though friends were all very well, yet where was the use of them if a man deprived himself of all the sources of entertaining conversation? But there was nothing to be done—except to tell Lady Castlefort a day before the rest of the world knew. Constantine held her favour on that tenure. She showed no surprise.

"A loss to the country, but not to us," she said.

"Just what I think," agreed Constantine, with a revival of cheerfulness.

"If I hadn't known him since he was so high, I'd wish he had the what-do-you-call-it seizures instead of the other man."

"But Quisante's not going, he means to hold on," said Constantine. "I'm glad of it. Henstead's very shaky. But we shall hold Marchmont's seat all right. We're going to put up Dick Benyon."

"He's safe enough, he won't worry you," said Lady Castlefort. "You'll have to fight Henstead before long, all the same. The man'll die, you know."

"Think so?" asked Constantine uneasily.

"And he will be a loss—a loss to us, whatever one may think about the country." Constantine looked troubled. "Oh, it's not your business to think about the country—or mine either, thank goodness," she added rather irritably. She was more distressed about Weston Marchmont than she chose to tell; and it was impossible not to be annoyed at the perversity. Of the two men whom she had singled out for greatness one might go on but would not, the other asked nothing but to be allowed to go on, and found refusal at the hands of fate. There was another thing in her thoughts too. She had a strong belief in hostesses, natural to her, perhaps not unreasonable. In either of two events she had foreseen an ideal hostess for the party in the woman she still thought of as May Gaston. There was no need to detail the two events; suffice it to say that, whichever of them now happened, it appeared that May Gaston would not be able to figure as a great hostess; at least there would have to rise for her some star not yet visible in the heavens.

Marchmont and May had neither met nor written to one another since their talk under the tree at Ashwood. He had not doubted that she would understand silence and like silence best; from him any word seemed impossible. But on the day when his determination was made public he received a summons from her and at once obeyed it. He found her alone, though she told him that she expected Quisante back from the City in a little while.

"He wants to see you," she said. "I don't know why, unless it's just as a curiosity." She smiled for a moment. "I'm sorry you find you can't stand it," she went on.

"You understand? You've been in that state of mind or pretty near it, I know."

"Yes, pretty near at times, but I'm not as honest as you. I may see all you see, but I should always go on." She glanced at him. "I'm more like my husband than I'm like you," she ended.

"I don't believe that," he said gravely.

"I know you don't, but it's true. I daresay you never will understand it, because of the other May Gaston you've made for yourself. But it's true. And you know what he is. He's ready to give body and soul—Oh, I'm not just using a phrase—body and soul to keep the things that you've given up for your hills. How scornful your hills made Constantine Blair!"

"Are you importing metaphorical meanings into my hills?" he asked, sitting down near her.

"Yes," she answered. "Mr. Blair didn't, but I do."

"Perhaps it was rather a silly thing to say."

"No, I don't think so."

"I mean to Constantine."

"Oh, well then, perhaps it was," she admitted, smiling. "But that's all consistent, isn't it? You couldn't trim your sails to suit the breeze even in a letter like that."

"Are you rebuking me? Are you contemptuous? What are you?" He leant back and looked at her, smiling.

"If my husband would do what you've done, he might live," she said.

Marchmont nodded gravely; it was easy to see the odd way in which his action fitted into the drama of her life.

"But we've no hills," she went on. "You leave London—all London means—to wander on hills, high glorious hills; he'd leave it for a villa, a small villa at a seaside place."

"Metaphors again?"

"It comes easier to talk in them sometimes. And I—I'm of my husband's way of thinking."

"I don't believe it," he said again, but looking at her now with a little touch of doubt.

"You'll never come back, will you?" she asked.

"Never," said he with a quiet certainty.

She rose with a restless sigh and walked to the fireplace.

"I couldn't," he went on. "I'm not fit for it; that's the end of the matter. Use your own term of abuse. I shall hear plenty of them."

"I don't want to abuse you," she said. She walked quickly over to him, gave him her hand for a moment, and then returned to her place. "But it makes me feel rather strange to you." She looked full at him with a plain distress in her eyes, and her voice shook a little. "I'm coming to feel more strange towards you," she went on. "I thought we had got nearer at Ashwood, we did for the moment. But now I'm farther off again."

"I would have you always very near," he said in low tones, his eyes saying more than his lips.

"I know. And perhaps you've had thoughts——" She paused before she added, "Alexander's quite set on his course, nothing will stop him—except the thing that I expect to stop him. You know what I mean?"

Marchmont nodded again.

"And he's doing it a good deal because of me. I wonder if you understand that?"

"I don't know that I do."

"No; he knows more of me than you do."

She became silent, and he, watching her, was silent too. What was this strangeness of which she spoke? He felt it too but without understanding it. It caused in him a vague discomfort, an apprehension that some obstacle was between them, something more than any external hindrance, a thing which might perhaps remain though all external hindrance were removed. Her last words both puzzled and wounded him with their implication of a deeper sympathy between Quisante and herself than existed or could exist between her and him. That he did not understand, and could not without giving up his own idea of her, the May Gaston which, as she said, he had made for himself. Was his image gone indeed? Had Alexander Quisante's chisel altered the features beyond recognition and till true identity was gone? Yet Alexander Quisante was the man who had put on her the shame for which she had sobbed under the tree on that evening at Ashwood. Before such a seeming contradiction his penetration stood baffled. She had said then that her present life would, she supposed, go on right to the end, and had said it as though the prospect were unendurable; now a new and to him unnatural resignation seemed to have come upon her, just when her present life had shown that it was not likely to go on right to the end.

"I've prayed my husband to give up," she said, "I don't beg you not to give up. To begin with, you wouldn't listen to me any more than he did. And then, I suppose, you're right for yourself."

"You're about the only person who'll say so."

"I daresay. I've learnt about you in learning about myself. And I can feel it just as you do—Oh, how intolerably strongly sometimes!" She added with a smile, "We've only just missed suiting one another," and then, "Yes, but we have missed, you know."

"I don't believe it," he persisted, struggling to throw off the new doubt she was thrusting into his mind. His thought was that, once she got free of her husband, she would indeed be his. That he must hold to. It was Quisante, not she herself, who made her now feel strange to him; and Quisante's spell was not to last; her quiet certitude that her husband's days were numbered carried conviction to him also. "But I won't talk any more about it now," he said.

"No, it seems inhuman," she agreed. "I spend all my days cheating myself into a hope that he'll get better. I know you don't like him, but if you lived with him as I do, you'd come to hope as I do. Yes, in spite of all you know about us; and you know more than anybody alive. I've not been so—so disloyal—to anybody else." She smiled as she quoted the word against him.

"One must admire him," said Marchmont.

May Quisante laughed at his tone almost scornfully. "The way you say that shows how little you understand," she exclaimed. "It's not a bit like that." She took a step nearer to him. "When it comes," she said slowly, "I shan't shed a single tear, but I shall feel that my life's over. He'll have had it all."

"God forbid you should feel anything like that," he said, looking up at her.

She laughed again, asking bitterly, "Does God forbid what Alexander wants—except one thing? And what I tell you is what he would want. He would want to have had it all."

He raised his hand in protest.

"You're right; we won't talk any more," she said. "But don't think that it's all only because I'm overwrought, or something feminine of that kind. It's the truth. When it comes, Aunt Maria'll die and I shall live; but the difference won't be as great as it sounds."

This time he was about to speak, but she stopped him, saying, "No, no more now. Tell me about Dick Benyon. He's to have your seat, isn't he?"

"Yes, I'm gathered to my fathers, and Dick reigns in my stead."

"You're sorry?" she asked, forgetting Dick and coming back again to the man before her.

"Yes; but I accept the inevitable and contrive to be quite cheerful about it."

"We don't do either of those things. Hark, I hear my husband's step."

Quisante ran quickly up the stairs and burst into the room. His face was alight with animation, and before greeting Marchmont he cried, "I've carried it, I've brought them round. We attack all along the line, and I open the ball at Henstead next week! They'll be out in six months, and I shall——" Suddenly he paused. "They'll be out in six months," he said again.

Marchmont rose and shook hands, "It doesn't matter to me now if they are," he said, laughing. "Blair's troubles and mine are both over now."

"I know," nodded Quisante. "Well, I suppose you know best. But hasn't May been trying to convert you?"

"No, I haven't tried to convert him," she said. "I'm not going to try to convert people any more."

After this she fell into silence, listening and watching while the two men talked. Talk between them could never be intimate and could hardly be even easy, but they interested one another to-day. On Quisante's face especially there was a look of searching, of wonder, of a kind of protest. Once he flung himself back and stared at his guest with a fixity of gaze painful to see. But he said nothing of what was passing in his mind. At last Marchmont turned to May again.

"I shall hear of you at Henstead," he said. "I'm going to pay the Mildmays a visit. I suppose, as you're on the war-path, you won't come over?"

"I might," she said, "if we were there long enough. I expect Alexander mustn't. Friendship with the enemy is not always appreciated."

"Oh, I might go," Quisante remarked. "The Alethea's an admirable excuse." He spoke with a laugh but then, glancing at his wife, saw her face flush. He turned to Marchmont and found him rising to his feet. Much puzzled, Quisante looked again from one to the other, noting the sudden constraint that had fallen on them. What had he said? What was there in the mention of the Alethea to disturb a conversation so harmonious? That there was something his quick wit told him in a moment. While Marchmont said good-bye to May he stood by, frowning a little, and then escorted his guest downstairs. While he was away his wife stood quite still in the middle of the room, a little flushed and breathing rather quickly.

Quisante came back, sat down, and took up a newspaper. May sat in her usual chair, doing nothing. Presently he asked, "Did I say anything wrong?"

"No. But I'd rather you didn't talk about the Alethea when Mr. Marchmont is with us." He looked up in, surprise. "It embarrasses me—and him too."

"Embarrasses you? Why should it?"

"There's no use in my telling you."

"I can't see why it should embarrass you. Pray tell me."

She sat silent for a moment or two. "It's no good," she said, looking over to him with a forlorn smile. He moved his hand impatiently. "Very well. At dinner at Ashwood, on the night you were taken ill, somebody talked about the Alethea and said Professor Maturin had told him there was a fatal defect in it. He hadn't seen the prospectus. And I——" She paused a moment. "I had to back up your version." Again she broke off for a moment. "And after dinner Mr. Marchmont talked to me; and I cried about it. So, you see, references are embarrassing."

After a pause of a minute or two Quisante said, "Cried about it? About what?"

She raised her eyes, looked at him a moment, and said simply, "About having to tell a lie to them." And she added with a sudden quiver in her voice, "I've known them all my life."

"Maturin was quite wrong. There's absolutely no doubt about that now."

"Was he?" she asked listlessly.

"What did you say?"

"That he'd expressed a favourable opinion about it to you. I kept to the prospectus. Oh, there's no use talking. It's only with Mr. Marchmont that it matters. I can't keep it up before him, because he found me crying, you know."

"Crying!" murmured Quisante. "Crying!" She nodded at him, with the same faint smile on her lips. The silence seemed very long as she looked at him and he gazed straight before him, the forgotten paper falling with a rustle from his knees on to the floor.

"You never told me," he said at last.

"Why should I? What was the good of telling you?"

"It was on the night of my—when I was taken ill?"

"Yes. The telegram came later in the evening. Don't bother about it now, Alexander."

"Did you hope it meant I was dead?"

For a moment she sat still; then she sprang up, ran across the room, and fell on her knees before him, grasping his arms in her hands. "No, no, no, I didn't. Indeed, indeed, I didn't."

He sat still in her clasp, looking intently in her face. His was hard and sneering.

"Yes, you did. You wished me dead. By God, you wish me dead now. Well, you can wait a little. I shall be dead soon." With a sudden rough movement he freed himself from her hands and pushed her away. "I suppose wives often wish their husbands dead, but they don't tell them so quite so plainly."

"It's not true, I've never told you so."

"Oh, I'm not a fool. I don't need to have it spelt out for me in syllables."

She rose slowly to her feet, and, turning, went back to her own chair. Quisante sat where he was, quite motionless. She could not endure to look at him and, rising, went and stood by the window, looking out on the river she loved. This moment was in strange contrast with their talk on Duty Hill; the two together summed up her married life and the nature of the man she had married. But it was not true that she wished him dead; not true now, at all events, even though the charge he brought against her of its having been so once might have some truth in it. For if ever that thought had crept into her mind as a dreaded shameful wish, it was when she seemed able to look forward to a new life. It seemed to her now that no new life was possible; that impression had grown and grown while she talked with Weston Marchmont, and it pressed upon her now with the weight of conviction.

She heard her husband get up and go out of the room; his steps sounded going upstairs, in the direction of his study. She went and drew the chair up to the hearthrug, and sat down, resting her elbows on the arms and holding her head between her hands. It was very wanton that a chance allusion of his should have brought about this scene between them. Perhaps she could have put him off with excuses, but that had not occurred to her. The scene had told her nothing new, but it had torn away the last of the veil from before his eyes. He had known that she disapproved, he had even braved her disapproval when he could not hoodwink or evade it. It was a little strange that he should be moved to such a transport of bitterness by hearing that she had cried over telling a lie for him. Yet that was it; she was sure that he had not cared whether Marchmont saw her crying or not. The tears themselves made him think that she had wished him dead, yes, that she still wished him dead.

He must not die thinking that. She started across the room towards the door, at a quick step; it was in her mind to follow him and tell him again that it was not true, that he would ruin and empty her life if he died, that there was no man in the world who could be what he was to her. But her impulse failed her; he would sneer again. There was one thing that would drive away his sneer if she said it and got him to believe it—that she loved him as he loved her. Well, she couldn't tell him that, and he would not believe her if she did. She stopped and returned to her chair. She leant back now, resting her head on the cushion. The afternoon grew old, and a gleam of sinking sun, escaping from the grey red-edged clouds that hung over the river, troubled her eyes; she closed them and reclined in stillness. She felt very tired, worn out with the stress of it, with the conflict and the strain. Strange notions, half fancies, half dreams, began to flit through her mind. She saw the end come in many ways, now while they were alone together, now in some public place, even in the House, or while he addressed his shareholders. She seemed to hear the buzz of talk that followed the event, the wonder at him, the blame of her; she saw poor old Aunt Maria's trembling hands and hopeless face. Presently, as she fell into an unquiet drowsiness, she seemed to see even beyond the end, as though the end were no end and he were with her still, his spirit being about her, enveloping her, still wrapping her round so that the rest of the world was kept away and she was still with him, though she could not see him nor hear his voice. For her alone he existed now. Soon the rest who had wondered and praised and blamed and gossipped forgot about him; they had no more attention to give him, no more flattery, no more allegiance. For them he had ceased to exist. Only for her he went on existing still, nay, it seemed that it was through her that he clung to the life he had loved, and was even now not dead because he lived in and through her. And sometimes—she shivered in her broken sleep, for she had not the love which would have made the dream all joy—he became more than a spirit or an impalpable presence; he was again almost corporeal, almost to be felt and touched, almost a living man. Shrinking and fearing, yet she was glad; she welcomed his exemption from the grave and abetted him in his rebellion against death; and for her that restless spirit almost clothed itself again in flesh.

She sat up with a great start and a low cry. Her hand had been hanging over the arm of the chair, it had grown cold; now it was held in another cold hand, and it was raised. Awake but thinking she still dreamed, she waited in mingled fear and anticipation. Cold lips pressed her hand. She dreamed then, and in her dream he came from the grave to kiss her hand. He came not only back to the world where he had triumphed, he came also to the woman he had loved, who had not loved him. Again the kiss came cold on her hand. She fell back with a sudden sob, not knowing whether terror or repulsion or joy, held greater, sway in her. The kisses covered her hand. Ah, the marvel! They grew living, they were warm now and passionate. This was not a dead man's kiss. With a second cry she turned her head. Quisante himself knelt by her, kissing her hand. His eyes rose to hers, and she cried, "It is you! You're not dead! Thank God, thank God!"

His eyes were gleaming in the strong excitement of his heart; he knew how he had found her.

"No, not dead, not dead yet," he said. "But by heaven, when I am dead, I won't leave you. I can't leave you. As I kiss your hand now, so will I kiss it always, and with my soul I will worship you. But neither now nor then will I kiss your lips."

"You won't kiss my lips?"

"No. They have lied for me; I won't stain them any more."

For a moment she looked at him. Then she caught her hand away and flung her arms round his neck. She kissed him on his lips, crying, "For good or evil, for good or evil, but always, always, always!" Then she drew away, and, with her arms still round his neck, she broke into her low laugh: "Oh, but how like you to make that little speech about my lips!"



CHAPTER XX.

THE QUIET LIFE TO-MORROW.

Old Miss Quisante was not as sympathetic as might have been wished. She acquiesced indeed (as who would not?) in the new programme of at least a year's complete rest; she offered to find funds—happily it was not necessary, since the sale of some Alethea shares at a handsome premium supplied them; she admitted that May had done her duty in persuading her husband to yield a limited obedience to his doctors' orders. But she looked disappointed, uninterested, dull; she awoke only for a sparkle of malice, when she remarked how happy they would be together in the country, with nothing to disturb them, nothing but just their two selves.

"Not as unhappy as you think," said May, smiling.

"All nonsense, I call it," pursued the old lady. "Sandro knew best; now you've put notions into his head. Oh, I daresay you were bound to, my dear."

"How can you be so blind?" murmured May. Aunt Maria shook her head derisively; she was not blind, it was the wife and the doctors who were blind. "You're not to say that sort of thing to Alexander," May went on imperiously. Aunt Maria put her head on one side and smiled sardonically.

"You used to agree with me," she said. "Has the Mildmay woman been here again?"

"No; she's at home. We shall see her perhaps at Henstead."

"Henstead! What are you going there for?"

"And you said you knew Alexander!" laughed May. "You don't suppose he's going into retirement without a display of fireworks? The Henstead speech is to be made. Then we put up the shutters—for a year at least, as I say."

"That's something. Is he interested in it?"

"Oh, yes, working all day. But he's wonderfully well. I've never seen him better." She hesitated and laughed a little. "How shall we ever stick to our year?" she asked. "He means it now and I mean it. But——"

"You won't do it," said Aunt Maria emphatically. "Nobody could keep Sandro quiet for a year!"

"Don't tell me that. We're going to try."

"Oh, I won't interfere, my dear. Try away. After all he'll be young still, and they won't forget him in a year. Or if they do, he'll soon make them remember him again."

The buoyant confidence was hard to resist. It seemed to grow greater in face of all reason, and more and more to fill the old woman's mind as she herself descended towards the grave which she scorned as a possibility for Sandro. For now she was very small and frail, thin and yellow; she too, like her nephew, seemed to hold on to life rather because she chose of her arbitrary will, than thanks to any physical justification that she could adduce. Could Quisante not only make himself live but make Aunt Maria live too? Full of the influence of that last great moment, May, laughing at herself, yet hesitated to answer "No." But the year was to be tried, lest, if die he must, he should die to please her or thinking that she wanted him to die. He did not think now that she wanted that; she was happier with him than she had ever been before. She had found a new indulgence for him, even for what she had hated in him. Justice would have turned to harshness, clearness of vision to a Pharisaic strictness, had she not found indulgence for the man who had crept back to kiss her hand. She was very indulgent towards him, and he seemed happy, save that now and then he looked at her wistfully, and began to fall into the way of reminding her of past occasions when he had shone and she admired, asking whether she remembered this and that. He dropped hints too that the Henstead speech was to be memorable. She was a little afraid that already he was feeling indulgence insufficient and mere kindness, or indeed mere affection, not the great thing that he asked of her, just as peace and quiet, or pictures, books, and hills, were not the things that he asked of life. If this were so, the compromise she had brought him to consent to was precarious; it was, as she had hinted to Aunt Maria, doubtful whether they could stick to their year.

There was another question in her mind, not less persistent, not less troubling. Perhaps the greater harmony between them, which had induced and enabled her to obtain that consent from him, was as precarious as the compromise itself; it too was liable to be overthrown by a return of Quisante's old self, or at least of that side of him which was for the time hidden. The temptation to work would overthrow the compromise, the temptation to win might again produce action in him and impose action on her which would bring death to their newly-achieved harmony, even as exertion would to his worn-out body.

The great speech, the last speech, was to be on Wednesday. They arrived in Henstead on Tuesday morning and were plunged at once into a turmoil of business. There was a luncheon, a deputation, a meeting of the party association; Japhet Williams had half a dozen difficulties, and old Foster as many bits of shrewd counsel. Over all and through all was the air of congratulation, of relief from the fear of losing Quisante, of enthusiastic applause for his magnificently courageous struggle against illness and its triumphant issue. When May hinted at a period of rest—the full extent of it was not disclosed—Foster nodded tolerantly, Japhet said times were critical, and the rest declared that they would not flog a willing horse, but knew that Mr. Quisante would do his duty. Unquestionably Henstead's effect was bad, both for the compromise and for Quisante. Minute by minute May saw how the old fascination grew on him, how more and more he forgot that this was to be the last effort, that it was an end, not a beginning. He gave pledges of action, he would not positively decline engagements, he talked as though he would be in his place in Parliament throughout the session. While doing all this he avoided meeting her eye; he would have found nothing worse than pity touched with amusement. But he kept declaring to her, when they had a chance of being alone, that he was loyal to their compact. "Though it's pretty hard," he added with a renewal of his bitterness against the fate that constrained him.

"We ought never to have come," she said. "It makes it worse. I wish we hadn't."

"Wait till you've heard me to-morrow night," he whispered, pressing her hand and looking into her eyes with the glee of anticipated triumph.

He was going to make a great speech, she knew that very well; there were all the signs about him, the glee, the pride, the occasional absence of mind, the frequent appeal for sympathy, the need of a confidence to answer and confirm his own. Such a mood, in spite of its element of childishness, was yet a good one with him. It raised him above pettiness and made him impatient of old Foster's cunning little devices for capturing an enemy or confirming the allegiance of a doubtful friend. He had for the time forgotten himself in his work, the position in what he meant to do with it; he would have delivered that speech now if the price had been the loss of his seat; whatever the price was, that speech now would have its way, all of it, whole and unimpaired, even the passage on which Foster was consulted with the result that its suppression was declared imperative in view of Japhet Williams' feelings. "Damn Japhet Williams," said Quisante with a laugh, and Quisante's wife found herself wishing that he would "damn" a few more men and things. It was just the habit that he wanted, just the thing that Marchmont and Dick Benyon and men like them had. Oh, if he could win and keep it!

"He must consider local feeling," said old Foster, pinching a fat chin in fear and doubt.

"No, he needn't, no, he needn't now," she cried. "He'll carry it with him, whatever he does now. Don't you see? He can take them all with him now. Wait till you've heard him to-morrow night!"

Here was happiness for her and for him, but where else? Not in the compromise, not in the year of quiet. It seemed to be for this that they had come together, in this that they could help one another, feel with one another, be really at one. And this could not be. The tears stood in May Quisante's eyes as she turned away from the pleasant shrewd old schemer; his picture should stand no more on the mantelpiece. But now it seemed again strange and incredible that this, the great career, could not be; Aunt Maria's was the creed for a time like this.

The great night came, and a great crowd in the Corn Exchange. Old Foster was in the chair and the place seemed full of familiar faces; the butcher who was troubled about slaughter-houses sat side by side with the man who was uneasy about his deceased wife's sister; Japhet Williams was on the platform and his men sat in close ranks at the back of the hall, they and Dunn's contingent hard-by smoking their pipes as the custom was at Henstead. There were other faces, not so usual; for far away, in a purposely chosen obscurity, May saw Weston Marchmont and the Dean of St. Neot's. The Mildmays themselves could not be present, but these two had come over from Moors End and sat there now, the Dean beaming in anticipation of a treat, Marchmont with a rather supercilious smile and an air of weariness. May could not catch their eyes but she felt glad to have them there; it was always pleasant to her that her friends should see Quisante when he was at his best, and he was going to be at his best to-night.

"We are rejoiced to welcome our Member back among us in good health and strength again," old Foster began, quite in the Aunt Maria style, and he went on to describe the grief caused by Quisante's illness and the joy now felt at the prospect of his being able to render services to his Queen, his country, and his constituency no less long than valuable and brilliant. Quisante listened with a smile, gently tapping the table with his fingers. May turned from him to seek again her friends' faces in the hall; this time she met their gaze; they were both looking at her with pitying eyes; the instant they saw her glance, they avoided it. What did that mean? It meant that they were not of Aunt Maria's party. The kindly compassionate look of those two men went to her heart; it brought back reality and pierced through the pretence, the grand pretence, which everybody, herself included, had been weaving. An impulse of fear laid hold of her; involuntarily she put out her hand towards Foster who had just finished his speech and was sitting down. She meant to tell him to stop the meeting, to send the people home, to help her to persuade Quisante to go back to the hotel and not to speak. Foster looked round to see what she wanted, but at the moment Quisante was already on his feet. "It's nothing," May whispered, withdrawing her hand. It was too late now, the thing must go forward now, whatever the end of it might be, whatever the friendly pity of those eyes might seem to say. To-morrow quiet would begin; but she had a new, strange, intense terror of to-night. This feeling lasted through the early part of Quisante's speech, when he was still in a quiet vein and showed some signs of physical weakness. But as he went on it vanished and in its place came the old faith and the old illusion. For he gathered force, he put out his strength, he exhaled vitality. Again she sought her friends' faces and marked with joy and triumph that their eyes were now set on the speaker and their attention held firmly, as the fine resonant voice filled the building and seemed to resent the confinement of its walls, or even more when a whisper, heard only by a miracle as she thought, thrilled even the most distant listener. The speech was being all that it had been going to be, his confidence and hers were to be justified. The pronouncement that the country waited for was coming, the fighting men were to get the lead they wanted, the attack was sounded, the battle was being opened to the sound of a trumpet-call. May leant forward, listening. A period reached its close, and applause delayed the beginning of the next. Quisante glanced round and saw his wife; their eyes met; a slow smile came on his lips, a smile of great delight. Once more her heart beat and her eyes gleamed for him, once more she would be no man's if she could not be his. His air was gay and his face joyful as, the next minute, he threw himself into a flood of eloquence where indignation mingled with ridicule; he made men doubt whether they must laugh or fight. Now he had all that he desired, men hung on his words, and she sat by, and saw, and felt, and shared.

At the next pause, when the cheering again imposed a momentary silence, the Dean turned to Marchmont, raising his hands and dropping them again.

"Yes, he can do it," said Marchmont in a curious tone; envy and scorn and admiration all seemed to find expression.

"Look at her!" whispered the Dean, but this time Marchmont made no answer. He had been looking at her, and knew now why she had tied her life to Alexander Quisante's.

"If I could do it like that I couldn't stop doing it," said the Dean.

"He never will as long as he lives," answered Marchmont with a shrug of his shoulders.

"But he won't live?" whispered the Dean. "You mean that?"

The applause ended; there was no need for Marchmont to answer, even if he could have found an answer. Quisante took up his work again. He was near the end now, an hour and a quarter had passed. May's eyes never left him; he was going to get through, she thought, and she had no thought now of the compromise or the year of quiet, no thought except of his triumph that to-morrow would ring through the land. He paused an instant, whether in faltering or for effect she could not tell, and then began his peroration. It was short, but he gave every word slowly, apart, as it were in a place of its own, in the sure and superb confidence that every word had its own office, its own weight, and its own effect. But before he ended there came one interruption. Suddenly, as though moved by an impulse foreign to himself, old Foster pushed back his chair and rose to his feet; after an instant the whole audience imitated him. Quisante paused and looked round; again he smiled; then, taking a step forward to clear himself of those who surrounded him, he went on. Thus he ended his speech, he standing, to men and women one and all standing about and before him.

"I never saw such a thing," whispered the Dean of St. Neot's. But his words were lost in the cheers, and Weston Marchmont's "Bravo" rang out so loud that May Quisante heard it on the platform and bent forward to kiss her hand to him.

In the tea-room, to which all the important persons withdrew after the meeting, festivity reigned. Quisante was surrounded by admirers, busy listening to compliments and congratulations, and receiving the advice of the local wise men. May did not attempt to get near him, but surrendered herself to a like process. Old Foster came up to her and shook hands, saying, "I'm proud to have had a hand in making Mr. Quisante member for Henstead. You were right too; he can say what he likes now."

Then came Japhet Williams' thin voice. "I hope it won't be many days before Mr. Quisante tells the House of Commons what he's told us to-night."

Should she say that he would not tell anything to the House of Commons for many days, probably not ever, that his voice would not be heard there? They would not believe her, she hardly would believe herself. In that hour illness and retirement seemed dim and distant, unreal and a little ludicrous. She abandoned herself to the temptation pressed upon her and talked as though her husband were to lead all through the campaign that he had opened.

"I never saw him looking better in my life," said Foster.

As he spoke a short thick-set man with grey hair pushed by him. Old Foster caught him by the wrist, crying with a laugh, "Why, Doctor, what are you doing here? You're one of the enemy!"

"I came to hear the speech."

"A good'un, eh?"

"Never mind the speech. Take me over to Mr. Quisante—now, directly."

"What for?"

"He must go home."

"Go home? Nonsense. He's all right."

Dr. Tillman wrenched his hand away, shook his head scornfully, and started across the room toward where Quisante was. May laid her hand on old Foster's arm.

"What did he say? Does he think my husband ill?"

"I don't know. It's all nonsense."

Another voice broke in.

"A triumph, Lady May, a triumph indeed!"

She turned to find the Dean and Marchmont close behind her, and the Dean holding out his hand as he spoke.

"Yes, yes," she said hurriedly and uncomfortably. "It was fine, wasn't it?"

"It was magnificent," said Marchmont.

"Thanks, thanks." Her tone was still hurried, absent, ungracious. The two looked at her in surprise. Where was the radiance of triumph that had lit up her face as she signalled to them from the platform? They had expected to find her full of the speech and had been prepared to give her joy by the warmth and sincerity of their praise.

"What's the matter?" whispered Marchmont.

"Do you see that short man, the one with grey hair, trying to get near Alexander It's the doctor—Dr. Tillman. He can't get near Alexander."

"What does he want?"

"I don't know. He thinks he ought to go home. He thinks—Ah, now he's getting to him! Look! He's speaking to him now!"

They saw the doctor come up to Quisante and Quisante smile as he waited for the visitor to introduce himself. The doctor began to speak quickly and energetically. "Oh, thank you very much, but I'm all right," came suddenly in loud clear tones from Quisante. The doctor spoke again. Quisante shook his head, laughing merrily. Marchmont looked at May; her eyes were on her husband and they were full of fear. "I'd forgotten," he heard her murmur. She turned to him with an imploring air. "He won't listen," she said.

A burst of laughter came from Quisante's group; he had made some joke and they all applauded him. Tillman stood for a moment longer before him, then gave a queer jerk of his head, and turned sharp round on his heel. He came back towards where she stood. She took a step forward and thus crossed his path, Marchmont and the Dean standing on either side of her.

"You remember me, Dr. Tillman?" she asked. "I'm Mr. Quisante's wife, you know."

He stood still, looking at her angrily from under his bushy eyebrows.

"Take him home then," he said sharply. "It was madness to let him come here at all. You're flying in the face of the advice you've had. Oh, I know about it. Let me tell you, you're very lucky to have got through so far."

"We—we're through all right now," she said.

"Are you? I hope so. The man's in a high state of excitement now, and high states of excitement aren't good for him." He paused and added impatiently, "Have you no influence over him? Can none of you do anything with him?"

"He won't like it if I go to him," May whispered.

"I'll go," said the Dean, stepping forward.

"Yes," said Tillman, "go and tell him Lady May Quisante wants him."

The Dean started off on his errand. The doctor's manner grew a little gentler.

"You couldn't be expected to know," he said. "But in a thing like this you mustn't think he's all right because he looks all right. He'll look his best just at the time when there's most—well, when he isn't. I hope he's going to keep quiet after this?"

"Yes, yes. At least we've arranged that. Weston, do go and bring him to me."

"Look, he's coming now with the Dean."

Quisante's group opened, and he began to move towards them. But at every step somebody stopped him, to shake hands and to say a few words of thanks or praise. The Dean kept urging him on gently, but he would not be hurried.

"Now take him straight home," said Tillman. "Good-night." And hardly waiting for May's bow he turned away and disappeared among the throng that was making for the door.

Quisante, at last escaping from his admirers, came up to his wife. His eyes were very bright, and he ran to her, holding out both his hands. She put hers in his and said, "We must go home. You'll be worn out."

"Worn out? Not I! But you look worn out. Come along. Ah, Marchmont, this is a compliment indeed."

They were almost alone in the room now. May took her husband's arm and they walked thus together.

"Are you pleased?" he whispered.

"Am I pleased!" she said with the laugh he knew and an upward glance of her eyes. Quisante himself laughed and drew himself to his full height, carrying his head defiantly. For though he sought and loved to please all, it was pleasing her that had been foremost in his mind that night. He had remembered the boast he made on Duty Hill; now it was justified, and he had once again tasted his sweetest pleasure.

They had to wait in an ante-room while their carriage was sent for. Here the Dean and Marchmont joined them again. They were there when old Foster rushed in in great excitement.

"The whole town's in the square," he cried. "There's never been anything like it in Henstead. You'll say just a word to them from the steps, sir? Only a word! They're all waiting there for you. You'll say just a word? I'll be back in an instant." And he bustled out again.

Quisante walked across to a window that opened on to the Market Square. He looked out, then turned and beckoned to his wife. The whole town seemed to be in the square, as Foster said, and the people caught sight of him as he stood in the window with the lighted room behind him. They broke into loud cheering. Quisante bowed to them. Then a sudden short shiver seemed to run through him; he put his hand first to his side, then to his head.

"I feel queer" he said to his wife. "I think I—I won't—I won't speak any more. I feel so—so queer." Her eyes were fixed on him now, and his on hers. He smiled and tapped his forehead lightly with his hand. "It's nothing," he said. "You were pleased, weren't you, to-night?" Again he put his hands in hers. She found no word to say and they stood like this for a moment. The cheers ceased, the crowd outside was puzzled. Marchmont jumped up from his chair and walked forward hastily.

"Anything wrong?" he asked.

Neither heeded him. May's eyes were set in terror on her husband's face; for now she was holding him up by the power of her hands gripped in his; without them he would fall. Nay, he would fall now!

He spoke in a low thick voice. "It's come," he said, "it's come." And he sank back into Weston Marchmont's arms, his wife letting go his hands and standing rigid.

Old Foster ran in again, calling, "Are you ready, sir?" He found his answer. Alexander Quisante would speak no more in Henstead. He was leaning against Marchmont, breathing heavily and with sore difficulty. May went to him; she was very white and very calm; she took his hand and kissed it.

"I—I—I spoke well?" he muttered. "Didn't I?"

"Very very finely, Alexander."

"They were—were all wrong in saying I couldn't do it," he murmured. He shivered again and then was still. The Dean had brought a chair and they put him in it. But he moved no more. May looked at old Foster who stood by, his face wrung with helpless distress and consternation.

"We've killed him among us, I and you and the people out there," she said.



CHAPTER XXI.

A RELICT.

"Yes, I asked her," said Weston Marchmont, "but—Well, I don't think she'd mind you reading her letter, and I should rather like you to." He flung it across the table to Dick Benyon. "I half see what she means," said he, lighting a cigarette.

Dick took the letter with an impatient frown. "I don't," he said, as he settled himself to read it.

"My dear Friend, I have thought it over, many times, in many different moods, and in all of them I have always wanted to do what you ask. Not for your sake, not because you ask me, but for my own. I think I should be very happy, and as you know I have never yet been very happy. I wasn't while my husband was alive. Imagine my finding side by side in his desk the doctor's letter saying it was certain death to go to Henstead and that report of Professor Maturin's which he suppressed and told me had been destroyed. That brought him back to me just as he was. With you I think I should be happy. I should never be afraid, I should never be ashamed. What fear and what shame I used to feel! I write very openly to you about myself and about him; if I were answering as you wish, I would not say a word against him. But I can't. That's just the feeling. You tell me I am free, that two years have gone by, that I might find a new life for myself, that you love me. I know it all, but except the last none of it sounds true. You know that once I thought about being free and that then you were in my thoughts. Who should be, if you were not? Except him and you I have never thought of any man. And I want to come to you now. He is too strong for me. Is it really two years ago? Surely not! I seem still to hear his speech, and still to see him fall into your arms. I should always hear him, and always see that. I'm afraid you won't understand me, least of all when I say I don't feel sure that I want him back. That would mean the fear and the shame again. But he was so marvellous. How right he was! They followed the lead he gave them at Henstead; and even you, dear recluse, know that there was a change of Government last year. And I am quite rich out of the Alethea. For he was right and the poor Professor, who was supposed to know all about it, was absolutely, utterly, hopelessly wrong. And the Crusade's come to nothing, and—and so on.

I wish I was convincing you; but I never did. You didn't understand why I married him, why in face of everything I behaved pretty well to him, why his death left everything blank to me. Nobody quite understood, except old Aunt Maria who just quietly died as soon as he was gone. And you'll understand me no better now. I resent the way the world forgets him. There seems nothing of him left. My little girl is all Gaston; she lives with Gastons, she has the Gaston face and the Gaston ways. She's not a bit Quisante; she's nothing of him, nothing that he has left behind. If we'd had a son, a boy like him, I might feel differently. But, as it is, what's left? Only me. I am left, and I am not altogether a Gaston now, though it's the Gaston and nothing else that you like. No, I'm not all Gaston now. I've become Quisante in part—not in every way, or I shouldn't have felt as I did when I found the Professor's report. But he has laid hold of me, and he doesn't let go. I can't help thinking that he needn't have died except on my account. You feel sore that I don't love you, not as you want me to. He was sore too because I didn't love him; and since he couldn't make me love him, he had to make me wonder at him; he was doing that when he died. So I feel that I can't do anything to blot him out, and that I must stay Quisante, somebody bearing his name, representing him, keeping him in a way alive, being still his and not anybody else's.

For I still feel his and I still feel him alive. You can love people, and then forget them, and love somebody else; or love somebody else without forgetting. Love is simple and gentle and, I suppose, gives way. Alexander doesn't give way. I shall hurt you now, I'm afraid, but I must say it. After him there can be no other man for me. I think I'm sorry I ever married him, for I could have loved somebody else and yet looked on at him. Or couldn't I? You'll say I couldn't. Anyhow, as it is, I've come too near to him, seen too much of him, become too much a part of him. You might think me mad if I told you he often seemed to be with me and that I'm not frightened, but admire and laugh as I used; I needn't fear any more. So it is; and since it is so, how can I come to you? What is it they call widows on tombstones and in the Times? Relicts, isn't it? I'm literally his relict, something he's left behind. As I say, the only thing. He can't come back for me, I suppose. But I feel as if he'd pick me up somewhere some time, and we should begin over again, and go on together. Where to I don't know. I never knew where he would end by taking me to. And you, dear friend, mustn't make his relict your wife. It's not right for you, it wouldn't be right for me. We should pretend that nothing had happened, that I'd made a mistake, that it was luckily and happily over, and that I was doing now what I ought to have done in the beginning. All that's quite false. I suppose everybody has one great thing to do in life, one thing that determines what they're to be and how they're to end. I did my great thing, for good or evil, when I became his wife. I can't undo it or go back on it, I can't become what I was before I did it. I can't be now what you think me and wish me to be. His stamp is on me.

I write very sadly; for I didn't love him. And now I can love nobody. I shall never quite know what that means. Or is it possible that I loved him without knowing it, and hated him sometimes just because of that? I mean, felt so terribly the times when he was—well, what you know he was sometimes. I find no answer to that. It never was what I thought love meant, what they tell you it means. But if love can mean sinking yourself in another person, living in and through him, meaning him when you say life, then I did love him. At any rate, whatever it was, there it is. Yet I'm not very unhappy. I have a feeling—it will seem strange to you, like all my feelings—that I have had a great share in something great, that without me he wouldn't have been what he was, that I gave as well as took, and brought my part into the common stock. We did odd things, he and I in our partnership, things never to be told. My poor cheeks burn still, and you remember that I cried. But we did great things too, he and I, and at the end we were for a little while together in heart. It wouldn't have lasted? Perhaps not. As it was it lasted long enough—till 'it came', as he said, and he died asking me to tell him that he had spoken well. I'm very glad he knew that I thought he had spoken well.

So out of this rambling letter comes the end of it. Be kind to me, be my friend, and be somebody else's lover, dear Weston. For I am spoilt for you. 'Her mad folly'—that was what you thought it. Well, it isn't ended, not even death has ended it. He reaches me still from where he is—Ah, and what is he doing? I can't think of him doing nothing. Shall I hear of all he's done some day? Will he tell me himself, and watch my lips and my eyes as I listen to him? I don't know. These are dreams, and perhaps I wouldn't have them come true; for he might do dreadful things again. But I can't marry you. For to me he is not dead, he lives still, and I am his. I can as little say whether I like it as I could while he was here. But now, as then, it is so; whether I like it is little; it is what has come to me, my lot, my place, my fate, the end of me, the first and last word about me. And—yes—I am content to have it so. He loved me very much, and he was a very great man. You'll wonder again, but I'm a proud woman among women, Weston dear. Goodbye."

Dick Benyon laid down the letter, and pushed it back to Weston Marchmont.

"Yes, I see," said he.



TURNBULL AND SPEARS. PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.