Chevenix listened, and judged. He knew his Ingram pretty well, and took his confidence, like his confidences, for what they were worth. "Where did you say that the Duplessis lived?"

"I think she's in a hotel. It might be Brown's. I believe it is Brown's. What d'you want her for?"

"Think she knows some of my people," said Chevenix, and presently took himself out of the Coffee Tree Club.

But Sanchia, her day's work done, went—not to church, but to Bloomsbury. Entering the portals of the Museum, she swam to the portico, full of her cares. But smoothly, swiftly, she went, with that even, gliding gait peculiar to her kind, which has precisely the effect of a swan breasting the stream. Past the door, she turned to the left, not glancing at the aligned Caesars, scarcely bowing to Demeter of the remote gaze. In that long gallery, where the Caryatid thrusts her bosom that her neck may be the prouder to the weight, she saw the objects of her present pilgrimage— beaten, blind, and dumb, immovable as the eternal hills, the Attic Fates; and before them at gaze, his arms folded over his narrow chest, Morosine the Pole.

Whether she had sought him here or not, she did not falter in her advance. Smoothly, swiftly, and silently she came to him and stood by his side. He turned his head, looked sharply at her pale face and sad eyes, then resumed his meditation before the Three. Neither of them had a care to speak.

Presently Morosine said, "I knew that you would be here." He kept his face towards the mystery, and so did she when she echoed him. "Did you know that? You know me, I think."

"I believe that I do. You have come here for strength. You will get it."

Ruefully enough she answered, "I wish I could believe that."

"You have it in you already. These great ladies will call it out. I wish you had been here, say, the day before yesterday. They might have helped you."

"But they did help me," she said. "They were with me. I remembered what we had talked about before them."

He nodded his head. "I had intended that you should. I was rightly inspired."

"Without them," she went on, "I don't know what I should have done. It seems absurd to say so, but—"

He interrupted. "It's not absurd at all—to you and me. If it's absurd, then Art is pastry-cook-stuff: sugar and white-of-egg. The man who fashioned these things had walked with God. Here are his secrets, revealed to you and me."

She followed her own thoughts, not his. "I came to—day because I have made up my mind. I wanted them to confirm me—to say that I was right. If you weren't here, I should go up to them and whisper to them, as I've seen women do to the Madonna abroad. I should tell them everything."

He looked at her keenly. "Do it now. I'll leave you."

She smiled faintly. "No, don't leave me. I couldn't do it now. But I meant to when I came in."

"You didn't think that I might be here?" He watched her.

"No. I remember that you said we were to meet on Thursday. And I have a great deal to think of; I'm in great trouble."

"I know you are," he said. "I fear to be impertinent; but if I can help you—-"

She gave him a grateful look. Her trouble was very real, and made almost a child of her. "I should value your advice. It would help me to have it— even if it couldn't change my intentions."

"You shall have it, assuredly," he said. "Shall we find a seat?"

"No, no. I would rather stop where we are. Perhaps they'll hear us." They looked at each other and smiled at a shared sentiment.

"Tell me, then," he said.

"He wants me to marry him," she said hurriedly, "and I think that I must. All my people wish it, and my friends—I mean those who have known me for a long time. I don't mind very much about most of them; but one of my sisters—Vicky—who was always my closest friend, expects it—and it would break my father's heart if I did not do it. The others don't count; but those two do. And there are other things—one other person who would think I am doing right."

"Would you"—Morosine spoke slowly, addressing the statues—"would you consider the possibility of marrying any one else?"

She spoke as one in a trance. "No—I couldn't—I shouldn't dare. Besides, there is no possibility—there would be Papa and Vicky again. That would never satisfy them. And then I feel that it's my punishment—if I deserve punishment, as they all imply that I do. At any rate, it's part of my bargain. I began this thing, and I must go on with it, at all costs to myself. I mustn't think of myself in it at all. I'm only part of the world's plan; but I happen to know that I am; and so I must go where I am called to go. I must follow my Destiny, just as I did at first. That time I followed it against everybody's opinion; this time I must follow against my own will. Don't you agree with me?"

Morosine reflected in silence. Then he said, "Yes, I agree with you. I recommend you to follow your determination."

Her eyes looked blankly at him; for the first moment he thought her disappointed, but he corrected his impression in the second.

"I'm glad you agree with me," she said. "I should have been disappointed if you hadn't."

He smiled. "You are stronger than you think. You can suffice to yourself. But I hope that I shall never disappoint you."

"I have no fear of that," she said, young again and confident. She thanked the Immortal Three with her eyes, and turning to Morosine, asked him, "Shall we go?" They went together. Passing the Demeter of Cnidos, her swinging hand touched his. He held his breath. Her face, sharply in profile, was as pure and pale as a silver coin. Her breast held her secret. To her own heart she voiced the cry, "Have I done well, dear one? Have I done well? Do you approve of me? Do you?" It may be that Senhouse heard her in his Wiltshire hills.



XI

Nevile Ingram was capable of fine ideas, we have seen, and could sometimes carry them out. He had had a moment of generosity, with Sanchia's letter in his hand, and held in the main to his expressed intentions. When he went to see her, at the end of three rigorous days, he behaved like a gentleman. She entered the room where he awaited her, pale for his embrace: he came to meet her, put his hand upon her shoulder, and, stooping, kissed her lightly. "My dear," he said, "I'll deserve you yet;" and he really meant it. She was touched, and quite kind to him. He exhibited his version of her surrender.

"We're friends, eh? We know each other of old, have no surprises, and can take raptures for granted. That's your notion, I fancy? It's not mine, but I'll be thankful for what you give me, and it shall be my fault if you find me backward when you're ready. Bygones are bygones, then? We make a new start?"

She sat staidly under his gaze, not aware at the moment that his steel- blue eyes searched her avidly for a hint of more than he stated. "So far as I am concerned—certainly," she said. "I shall never unlock any cupboards."

"Better to burn the contents, perhaps," he laughed. "I tell you fairly, I had rather they were cleared out. Now, I'll confess to anything you please to ask me. That's a firm offer." He would probably have done it, but she told him that she had no questions to put. "Very well, my dear," he said. "Have it as you will. It's sublime of you—but it's not love. If you don't want to know it's because you don't care."

"No, indeed," she sighed, with such conviction that he was stung.

"Hang it all, Sancie," he cried, "you can't have known me for eight years without feeling something." She looked up at him, and he saw that her eyes were full.

"Oh, Nevile," she said, with a quivering lip, "don't let us look back. Indeed, I can't do it now." He put his arm round her and, drawing her closer, kissed her forehead. "My pretty one, we won't. I had much rather look forward. The future is to be my affair—if the past was yours." Then he went away, and she saw nothing of him for two days. On the second of them he dined with Lady Maria, and met some of the Percivals—the father and mother, the Sinclairs, and Mr. Tompsett-King. (Philippa had declined to come.) He behaved with great discretion, and so continued. After a week or ten days of courtship, she could hardly believe that their relations had ever been interrupted. His reliance upon her was absolute, his confidence no less so. He babbled of himself and his concerns in the old vein of mocking soliloquy, careless whether she heard him or not. Now that he had her promise, he seemed in no hurry for possession. His kisses were fraternal, his embraces confined to a hand on her shoulder, an arm lightly about her waist. She was inordinately thankful to him, and by a queer freak of the mind, poured all her gratitude into Senhouse. She told herself that but for him she would never have brought herself to her duty; but for him, therefore, would never have discovered how little she had to fear. Here was a crown for her "dear obsequious head": shutting her eyes tightly, she thought that she could feel his fingers putting it on, smoothing out her hair so that the circlet should fit closely. Night after night she knelt to receive it. It came as a result of prayer.

The marriage-announcement, got into the paper by Mrs. Percival, was accepted for what it was worth. It was partly the price of her crown. A few letters from old friends were formally answered. Sanchia had never been a free writer; nobody but Senhouse had found her letters eloquent—he only had been able to feel the throb beneath the stiff lines. Her handwriting, round and firm, had for him a provocative quality; it stung his imagination. He used to sing her "divine frugality of utterance," and protest that it was all of a piece with the rest of her life. No one, he had told her once, but a sculptor could embody her in Art—her chill perfection, her severity and definite outline. A poet might not dare, for he would have to be greater than love itself, greater than the love which inspired him, able to put it down below him, and stand remote from it, and regard it as a speck in the landscape.

Your sober thought, and your pride To nurse the passion you hold and hide

he had written of her in his day. That austere concealment of her heart, which so impassioned him, chilled enthusiasm in all others of her acquaintance. So her letters were few, and now she was thankful enough. She herself wrote to nobody, and never spoke of her future unless she was compelled to answer questions.

Once a day, however, she took out a writing-block, and traced upon it the words, "My dear Jack, I think I ought to tell you—" or a similar exordium. She got no further. How could she tell him that without telling him more? And how tell him more when, of her own accord, she had sent him about his business, and set her approval upon his marriage, or what must be considered his marriage? An instinct forbade her. She didn't reason with it: her reason was paralysed. "It's part of the price. It's what he would have praised me for"—and she flew to her text.

"A great power is in your thin sweet hands, my sweet; you are in the way of being a great artist." She looked at her hands, and loved them for his sake who had loved them so well. Her "thin sweet hands!" Could one write so of her hands and not love them well?

But the power, the power that she had! Hear her rhapsodist. "If you can so work upon your delicate surface as to mould it close to your noble soul; if in the gallery of the world you can unveil yourself for a thousand pair of eyes to see, and praise God for the right to see—why, what an artist you are, and what an audience you have! ... Like a whiff of thyme on a grassy down, like the breath of violets from a bank, or of bean-flower blown across a dusty hedge, some gentle exhalation of your soul sighed through your body will hint to the passion-driven wretch things innocent and quiet. The blue beam of your steadfast eyes may turn his own to heaven; a chance-caught, low, sweet tone of your voice may check clamour; an answer may turn his wrath.... You can be picture, form, poem, symphony in one.... Think of it, Sanchia, before you turn away. Think well whether upon that exquisite medium you cannot express your best."

She found herself trembling—in these days she easily trembled—as she re- read these words. That such a power should indeed be hers—and how could she fail to believe it?—was inspiration enough to send her to the fire. She read no more, but used to sit shivering, thrilling through every fibre of her body, with the strength of such splendid praise. For whatever might be her fate, splendid it was to have been so loved, so seen, and so praised. It was well for Ingram that she read her old love-letters—and extremely unfortunate for the writer of them, who anguished for her now in his desert place. Odd situation! that the love-letters of one man should reconcile her to the arms of another.

From Torquay, where she spent the Easter holidays with her father, the two alone and happily together, she wrote two or three times to Nevile. He was at Wanless, professedly getting some order into things there, and protesting to her by every word he sent her upon the need there was of her hand upon affairs. There was not a word of love used between the pair. All the love-making, indeed, was done by Senhouse, whose master-stroke was called for by and by.

Towards the end of April she was alone in Charles Street, preparing the house for Lady Maria's return from Rome. Ingram was still at Wanless, grumbling through his duties of magistrate, landlord, and county gentleman. "They seem to think up here that a fellow has nothing to do but 'take the chair,'" he wrote. "I can tell you I'm pretty sick of it, and fancy that they will be before long. I'm an awkward customer when I'm bored—as I am now, damnably." She sent him matter-of-fact replies, and wrote principally of the weather.

The Pole continued his discreet and temperate wooing after the plan he had formulated. He strove to interest her perpetually, never left her without having, as he taught himself to believe, impressed himself anew upon her imagination. Watching her as a cat a mouse, he learned to read her by signs so slight that no one who had not the intuition of a woman could have seen them at all. Unfortunately for him, he misinterpreted what he read. The slap-dash Ingram thought all was well; Chevenix, the more observant, thought there was a bare chance; Morosine alone could see how her quivering soul was being bruised, and if he thought that she looked to him for balm, he may be excused. She was drowning, she held out her hands. To whom, but to him upon the bank? How should he know what shadow stood behind him, with praise in his dim eyes for a "dear obsequious head"?

Playing deputy to Senhouse, little as he guessed it, he devoted himself to bracing her for the match, having made up his mind that there was no other way of making her happiness his own. His mistress she might be, his wife never. As he read her, she would keep the letter of the law—since the law required it of her. The rest, he flattered himself, might be left to time and him. His present aim was to interest and stimulate her, without alarming.

He counted greatly upon some sudden emotional stimulus, which would cause her to fall to him; and one came, though it had no such effect.

The opera of Tristan and Isolde, to which she was taken by Lady Maria— where she sat in his box, by his side, absorbed in the most sensuous expression of the love-malady that has ever tormented its way out of a poet's heart—had been a real test of his restraint. He had not once met her eyes—though hers, craving sympathy at any hand, had sought his often; he had not once permitted himself to gaze upon her beauty, though it was her beauty, so carven, so purely Greek, which had drawn him to her from the first. While the great music went sobbing and chiding through her frame, like wounded nightingales, he had sat in the dark, with his arms folded, never looking at her fully, nor seeking to win a glance from her soul to his own. That it stirred her to the deeps he knew. He could watch sideways, listen sideways, both hear and see that she was rapt. Her quick- heaving breast, the whistle of her short breath, the strained line of her head and shoulder—all this he marked and stored without a sign. Even when, on going out, he had been conscious of her overcharged heart, of her breast full of emotion; even when she had told him under her breath that she was happier, though he shivered, he drew away. He had nodded quickly, smiled, blinked his eyes. "I was sure of that," was all he allowed himself in the way of intimacy.

Swift, fire-consumed, intensely sensitive, subtle-minded, this was a man who relished suggestions more than things. He had far rather deal mentally with the lovely image of Sanchia, as he saw it, than actually with the breathing, palpitating flesh. To picture her longing, straining, trembling—to keep her always so, always holding out her arms, never obtaining what she sought: his bliss lay in that. He knew himself, after much experience of the sort; he had missed so often by blundering in, that now he dared not risk a wreck. Here at last, he told himself, was perfection: let him look to it that he kept it at its perfect poise. He must poise himself to do that, balance himself upon a knife-edge. Little of an ascetic as he was by temper, he could train himself to the last ounce if the prize were worth it. And it was. Never had musician had instrument more sensitive to play upon. It seemed to him worthy of a lifetime of preparation to have her for one moment of time throbbing in his arms.



So Morosine went into the palaestrum, and fasted with prayer. His sangfroid through Tristan, and the going out with all its cry ringing in him, and in her, surprised even himself, who knew himself well. "My friend," he thought, as he stalked to his club, "you have done well."

But he had not reckoned with the flinty core which lay beneath her fair and delicate seeming. Her frugality of utterance, which charmed and chained him, really implied no reserve. She did not speak, because she had nothing to say, did not reveal herself, because she knew of no mystery. She was at once very simple and very practical; she had healthy tastes which she desired to gratify, and a deliberate mind which instructed her how far she might do so. Once in her life those had played her false, when they told her that the pity she had for Ingram was love, and the need he had for possession of her was her own need to give it him. She had been bitterly mistaken, and was now so weary with herself that she seemed to have no desire in the world but that of sleep. Tristan and Isolde, drowning soul and body in music which made love, and love which was the heart of music, were not to be thought of on this side of the grave. The Fates had a sterner way for her. She was never to empty herself in a kiss or to watch out the stars with Jack Senhouse. Homing in the carriage with Lady Maria, she denied him, like Peter his Lord. "I know not the man." Vaguely dreaming at her open window, under the fire-fretted roof of that May night, she suddenly thought of him again—nay, knew him bodily there, alone with her under the sky—and for the first time in her life felt his eyes upon her, seeking of her what he had never dared to seek, and then his arms about her, touching her as assuredly he had never dreamed to do. She had denied him once too often, it seems. Here was a sudden attack, a trick of the sprites. She held her breath, she trembled, her breast heaved, she shut her eyes, and her lips relaxed their hold of each other. "Not yet, my blessed one, not yet!" and "Come, Rose of the World!" Thus they murmured to each other and strove. An expectancy, the shiver and thrill of it, possessed her; she seemed to feel the touch of a beloved hand, which drew her, trembling and panting, closer and closer to some high experience of which she had never dreamed before, to the expression of inexpressible things, to a giving of the utmost, to a wild strife of emulation which of them two should give the most. The dark was all about them like a bed—and closer he drew her, and closer yet. For one wild moment that endured—O heaven, they two in love under the stars! He was of the Open Country—as free as the wind. Thus he would love her, if he ever loved. Tristan's crying would be his—and Isolde's whimper of hurt would be her answer. Thus, if ever, she might be loved. And then, if ever in this world, peace!

Shivering still, with the sense of an arm still about her, of wild breath beating on her cheek, she looked wonderfully out at the stars which had seen her possessing. They burned steadily in their violet hold—a million kindly eyes welcoming her to the Open Country. The great town lay so still below that but for the glare behind the houses, which told her that it lived, she might have thought herself enfolded in the hills. So sure she was that she had been wedded, she glanced swiftly up and down the street, lest one chance passenger should have seen her naked soul. So a young girl, kissed by her lover, will search the emptiness in fear. Not a soul could be seen; Charles Street under its lamplight showed like a broad white ribbon curving towards the Square, towards the Park. To her heart she whispered, "Dearest, you may love me—we are alone under the stars"— and then shut her eyes fast, and with parted lips breathed quick and short.

Out of the night, out of an empty street, a voice came up, "He loves you— none so well. He lies out on the down in a white robe. He watches for you and waits. I have seen him, talked with him of you. Can you refuse such love as his? Goddess though you are, you will get no higher love."

The voice was very real. She knew it well. From the close arms that held her, she answered it. "Oh, Struan, I know! I knew before you told me. It's wonderful. Love is a wonderful thing."

"It's all we have in the world. I am here to tell you that he waits for you. Good-night."

"Good-night, Struan," she said. "I'm quite happy now."

She remembered afterwards, with a shock of dismay at her selfishness, that she had never asked Struan of his welfare.

* * * * *

She came to herself with a shudder and envisaged her circumstance. She had had "a rare vision," like Bottom the weaver—and that was all. Jack Senhouse had never loved her so. To him she had been Artemis, the cold goddess, or Queen Mab, whom no man might take. He had said so often—and had looked it whenever she was near him. Meantime, she was to be married— and Tristan was unprofitable provender. It had given her an indigestion of the mind. She would go to bed.

That she deliberately did—with one ceremony, characteristic of her frugality. She opened a locked drawer, and looked at its contents. There lay three goodly piles of letters, tied with blue ribbon. Each packet was labelled "Jack to Me," and dated with beginning and ending. She contented herself with looking at them, smiling wisely and thoughtfully as she did so. Then, like a child, not trusting to her eyes alone, she looked at them with her fingers; touched them delicately in turn, with a caress. Immediately afterwards she locked them up; and turned to her disrobing. She slept quietly, and went about her affairs of the morrow with a calmness that surprised her.

At a later day, in a conversation which Morosine had with her, he permitted himself a reference to the Museum. "You go no more? They've done their work—the Three?"

She smiled upon him, looking up from a little blue-covered book which lay half-cut upon her lap. It had arrived by the post that morning without message, or even inscription. But it was dedicated, she observed, "To the Fairest," and had smiled wisely to herself, observing it. A finger in the book, she answered Morosine. "Yes, they've done their work. I'm much happier now. I've thrown up my arms, you see. I'm drowning." She suddenly blushed, to remember her dream; and he perceived it.

"Drowning?" he asked.

"Drifting with the tide," she explained. "And I like it."

It was on his tongue to refer to Tristan, but—such was her hardihood— she saved him the trouble. "I was fearfully excited with the opera. During the performance, and after it."

His heart beat high. "You were not more so than I was," he said, looking at her. "I thought of things possible and impossible. I had a vision."

So had she had a vision, whose force was such that she could not continue to talk of such things. She had flashed her eyes upon him vividly for a moment, but was compelled to turn them away. He read in them a wild surmise; he thought that she understood him and was perturbed—perturbed, but not displeased. The bustling entry of Chevenix, unannounced, prevented him from pursuing his campaign.

Chevenix was gay. "Hulloa, Sancie—this is ripping. I say, I have something frightfully interesting to tell you." Then he saw Morosine. "Hulloa, Alexis, is that you? Now we'll sit each other out, and Sancie won't have her news."

"But I hope I shall," she cried. "I haven't got a secret in the world. Don't go, Prince, please. Mr. Chevenix shall tell you the news too. I haven't the faintest idea."

"It's something you want to know very badly. At least, I should think you did. It's not Nevile's address." She took him gaily.

"I don't want to know that at all, if it's a new one. I have three already."

"Perhaps," said Morosine, with a friendly look, "it's to cancel some of them."

She held up a book. "Is that what you mean? Do look. Songs, by S. Glyde. Did you mean to tell me of that?"

Chevenix stared. "The poet Glyde? No. By Jove, though, not a bad shot. I referred, my dear, to the poet Senhouse."

She received that full in the face. She paled, then coloured. Her heart leaped, then stood still. She spelt with her blue eyes, "Tell me."

Chevenix peered at her. "Thought I should fetch you, my dear. The poet Senhouse is run to ground, and I'm going to see him. That's all."

It was plain to Morosine that she was very much concerned with this intelligence. She simply sat there, staring at Chevenix, shaking, moving her white lips. She was as white as chalk and her eyes burned black in her face. What on earth—who on earth—? He couldn't for the life of him make it out. He had never heard of the man. It was a shock to him to discover— so soon we flatter ourselves—that Sanchia had any reserve of confidence. He had felt so sure of her!

"Another new poet?" he asked her. She recovered herself, shook her head.

"He's not new—to me. He's the greatest friend I ever had." That was all she could say. She turned to Chevenix, her desire fainting in her eyes. "You're going to see him? Oh, take me with you!"

"Right," said Chevenix.



BOOK V

OF THE NATURE OF AN EPILOGUE, DEALING WITH DESPOINA



I

Her spirits on the rebound, her courage waving in her face, like the flag on a citadel, she hesitated at nothing. On Chevenix's suggestion that they must "play the game with Nevile," she told her betrothed what she proposed to do. He had raised his eyebrows, but said, "Why not?"

"I thought you didn't love each other," had been her answer, and he had responded:

"Well, I have no reason to dislike him. In fact, he gave you to me, if you remember." He chuckled over the memory. "When the thing between us was at its reddest heat, your man came pelting up to me. He had seen you, it appears, and nothing would stop him. I never told you this tale, but you may as well have it now. The man's a lunatic, you know. What do you think he wanted? How do you think he put it? As thus: 'I loathe you, my dear man'—I'm giving you the substance—'You stand for everything I'm vowed to destroy; but I hope you'll marry her, and tie her to you for life.' That was his little plan. As you know, I couldn't oblige him. He thought I could!"

She had been staring out of the window while he harangued from the hearthrug, his favourite post in a room. At this time she had no eyes but for the Open Country, or what of it could be seen over the chimney-pots. But at those last words she did turn and look at him! "Why did he think you could?"

It was for Ingram then to stare. "Why did he think so? My dear, I'll tell you why no sane man would have thought so, if you insist. He thought that as I had lived alone ever since Claire bolted, I could get a divorce. That's what he thought."

Sanchia pondered his reply, facing the window again. Ingram fidgeted, with his hands in his pockets. "Men don't live like that," he said. Sanchia did not move. More as if it were to satisfy herself than to credit him, she said, to the window and street beyond it, "I wonder that he didn't remember that you would never drag any one into notoriety whom you had once—loved." Ingram grinned.

"As your man Glyde tried to drag you, my dear! Well, that's one way of accounting for old Senhouse, certainly. I don't know that that would have stood in the light, after the way she behaved. Notoriety! She managed that for herself."

"Then—" she began, but did not finish. She stopped, looked sharply about her, out of window, across the room, seemed to be listening to something, or for something. Then she said, "I see." For the rest of the evening she was very quiet, burning in a hidden fire.

Here was Saturday, and to-morrow she should see him again—the man who had loved her so much that he had never kissed her. Love such as that, rendered in kisses, was unthinkable. She knew that she must not think of it, though she could not help her dreams. But there was no fear. The man who had not dared to kiss her when he might should find that she was worthy of such high honour.

Through the strings blew the wind from the south-west. "I love him—I shall see him to-morrow—I shall never tell him so—but he will read it in my eyes. He never kissed me when he might—he will not do it now when he must not. I am a fool, a fool, a fool! Thank God, I am a fool again!"



II

"I fancy," said Chevenix, as they breasted the down, "that to the candid observer we present a very pretty sight. He's not here, but I wish he were. A free-moving young lady—this is my idea—a Diana of the Uplands— wasn't there a picture of the name?—going to see an emancipated party of the Open Road, with a chain round her heart, in the custody of a gentleman-friend."

She took him on his own terms. "Explain your idea. What, for instance, is in the gentleman-friend's custody? The chain or the heart? Because, I assure you—"

"A truce," said Chevenix, "to your assurances. What I mean is this. It's jolly decent of Nevile to let you off. I don't know how he can bear you out of his sight after the way he's behaved."

She was in high spirits. She laughed at the vision of Nevile, deeply contrite and afraid that she would find him out. "I don't think Nevile cares much, whatever I may do." But Chevenix shook his head.

"You never know where to have Nevile. What says the Primer? Timeo Danaos—don't you know?"

She pleaded, Might they not forget Nevile out here in the open? "Do you know," she asked him, "that I haven't been out like this—"

"On the loose, eh?" he interposed. She nodded.

"Yes, like this—free to do as I like—the world before me—" She fronted the blue valley for a moment, and then turned to the wind—"and the wind in my face, ever since I left Wanless?" Then she reflected with wide and wondering eyes. "And before that—long before. I haven't been free, you know, ever since I knew Nevile. Oh!"—and she inhaled the spirit of the hour—"Oh, I could fall down and hug the earth. Don't you love the thymy smell? I don't know why, but it always makes me think of poetry—and that." She lifted her rapt face to where, like a fountain of sound, a lark flooded the blue. "To lift up, and up, and up, to be so lovely because one was so glad! Nobody could do that!—except Jack," she added half in a whisper.

"That old chap's not a man," said Chevenix, "he's a spirit."

"They used to call him the Faun, at Bill Hill, where I first met him," she said. "I fancy now that I never knew him at all. But he knew all about me. That's why I'm so happy. Nobody has ever known me since—and it's such a bore to have to explain yourself. Other people seem to think I am extraordinary. I'm not at all—I'm the most ordinary person in the world. But he liked me like that."

Chevenix, watching her, said, "He'll like you like this, I expect. May I tell you that you're a heady compound? Do be quiet. Remember that I'm holding the chain. I won't swear to every link." She laughed, and pressed forward, the wind kissing her eyes.

They reached the racecourse, and had, behind them and before, two valleys. Their road lay now due west, keeping the ridge—a broad grass track belted rarely by woods on the north, but open on the south to hill and vale in diversity of sun and shade, a billowy sea of grass where no sign of man was to be seen. Sanchia's heart was so light she scarcely touched the ground. She swam the air, not flew. Chevenix pounded in her wake.

"You know," he told her by and by, "he's alone here? A solitary figure? Doing the hermit? Crying in the Wilderness?"

She had guessed, but not known that. Caution set a guard upon her eyes and tongue. "Do you mean—that he's always alone?"

"Bless you, yes. His lady couldn't stick it. She fled. But she's quite fond of him—in her way. I found out his address from her. She was quite glad I was going to see him. But she never goes herself, I believe. She's married. Other views altogether, she has. Or he has—her husband, you know. It was a rum business altogether, her taking up with old Senhouse. I could have told her what would come of that, if she'd asked me. No malice, you know—now. They're good friends. Write to each other. As a fact, she's married. She was a widow. She married a man I know, a chap in the House, name of Duplessis. Sulky chap, but able. Keeps her in order. Old Senhouse will speak about it—you see if he don't."

She was full of thought over these sayings. What had he been about when he mated with a woman of this sort? "A man don't live like that," had been Nevile's explanation of part of his own history. Was this the meaning of her friend's vagary? Would he tell her? She would never ask him, but would give worlds to know.

Presently, and quite suddenly, as they pushed their way, now in silence broken only by Chevenix's cheerful whistling, upon that backbone of a broad hill-country—quite suddenly her heart leaped, and then stood fast. "Look, look!" she said softly. "There's Jack, close to us!" In a sheltered hollow some hundred feet below the level at which they were, a hooded figure in pure white was startlingly splashed upon the grey-brown of the dry hills. The peak of a cowl shot straight above his head, and the curtains of it covered his face. He sat, squatting upon the turf, with a lifted hand admonishing. About him, with cocked ears, and quick side- glances, were some six or seven hares, some reared upon their haunches, some, with sleek heads, intent upon the herbage, one lopping here and there in quest, but none out of range of a quick hand. Above his head, high in the blue, birds were wheeling, now up, now down. Peewits tumbling heavily, pigeons with beating wings, sailing jackdaws—higher yet, serene in rarity, a brown kestrel oared the sky.

Sanchia's soft eyes gleamed with wet. "Saint Francis and the hares! Oh, dearest, have I never known you?"

"What a chance for a rifleman!" said Chevenix. "That beats the cocks."

They stood intent for a while, not daring to disturb the mystery enacting. Chevenix whispered, "He's giving 'em church, to-day being Sunday," while Sanchia, breathless, said, "Hush! hush!" and felt the tears fret a way down her cheeks. Presently she put both hands to her breast and fell upon her knees. Chevenix, not insensible to her emotion, lit a pipe. Thus he broke the spell.

"Go to him, please. Tell him that I'm here," she bade him, and then turned away and sat waiting upon a clump of heather. She sat, as not daring to look up, until she heard his soft tread on the turf. Then she lifted to him her wet and rueful eyes.

His long strides brought him close in a second. He was changed. Leaner, browner, older than she had known him. And he wore a strange Eastern garment, a hooded white robe, short-sleeved and buttonless, made of coarse woollen cloth. He had thrown the hood back, and it sat upon his shoulders like a huge rolling collar. Yes, he was changed; there was mystery upon him, which sat broodingly on his brows. But his eyes were the same—bright as a bird's, frosty-kind as a spring morning which stings while it kisses you. "Queen Mab!" he said. "You!" and held out both his hands. It was evident that neither of them could speak. She rose; but there was no touching of the hands.

"And Peachblossom, attendant sprite," cried the resourceful Chevenix, following him up. "Don't forget him."

"Puck, I think," said Senhouse. "Robin Goodfellow." He had recovered himself in that breathing-space. "How splendid of you both. Come and see my ship. I'm in moorings now, you know. I've cut piracy."

"And preach to the hares," said Chevenix. "We saw you at it. What does his lordship say?"

"His lordship, who, in spite of that, is an excellent man, likes it. His lordship was pleased to catch me, as you did, at it, and to suggest that he should bring out a party of her ladyship's friend to see me perform. I told him that I was his hireling, no doubt, but that my friends here were amateurs who didn't care to say their prayers in public. His lordship begged pardon, and I bet you he's a gentleman. Nearly everybody is, when you come to know him."

Chevenix revelled in him. "Still the complete moralist, old Jack!" he cheered. "I'll back you for a bushel of nuts to have it out with Charon as you ferry across. And here, for want of us, you turn to the hares! Sancie, you and I must get season tickets to Sarum, or he'll forget his tongue."

Sanchia, overcome by shyness, had nothing to do with this brisk interchange. She walked between the contestants like a child out with her betters. Senhouse led them down the scarped side of a hill into his own valley; rounding a bluff, they suddenly came upon his terraces and creeper-covered hut. The place was a blaze of field flowers; each terrace a thick carpet of colour. In front of them the valley wound softly to the south, and melted into the folds of the hills; to the right, upon a wooded slope, in glades between the trees, goats were at pasture.

"Goats! Robinson Crusoe!" Chevenix pointed them out. "Dic mihi, Damoeta, cuium pecus? an Meliboei? Are they yours, Senhouse?"

"I drink them, and make cheese. I learned how to do it at Udine ages ago. You shall have some."

Sanchia saw them. The sun gleamed upon fawn and white, and made black shine like jet. Deep in the thickets they heard the bell of one, cropping musically.

Senhouse led them to his verandah, which was shadowed from the heat, made them sit on mats, and served them with milk and bread in wooden bowls and trenchers. He was barefooted, which Sanchia, must by all means be—for the day: divining her, as he only could, he knelt without invitation and untied her shoes. "Stockings too, I'll bet you!" was what Chevenix thought; but he was wrong. Senhouse went into his cabin, and returned with sandals. Sanchia had taken off her own stockings. They were sandals to fit her. "I made them for Mary," he explained; "but she preferred boots." "Most of 'em do," Chevenix said, "in their hearts," and Senhouse quietly rejoined, "So I've found out."

Chevenix, the tactful, withdrew himself after a civil interval. He said that he should go goat-stalking, and, instead, went for a ramble, well out of sight. Then he found a place after his mind, smoked his pipe, and had a nap.

The pair, left to themselves, resumed with hardly an effort their ancient footing.

He said, after looking long upon her, "You are changed, Queen Mab; you are graver and quieter—but you are yourself, I see."

"I am not changed really," she said. "I love all the things I did. But sometimes one doesn't know it."

He did not appear to heed her, occupied in his gentle scanning of her. "You are, I suppose, more beautiful than you were—I was prepared for that. You have been very much with me of late."

Her excitement grew suddenly quick. "Have I? It's very odd, but—"

"It's not at all odd," he said. "Nothing is. I will tell you what happens. After I go to bed—which is always lateish—I feel you come down the slope. I am not surprised—I wasn't the first time. You come in a blue gown, with bare feet. I can't see anything of you as you come but gleaming ivory—an oval, which is your face—two bars for your arms—two shafts,— and your feet. Your hair is loose all about your shoulders, and close about your face. It makes the oval longer and narrower than I see it now; your face is fuller by day than by night. You come to me out here, where I wait for you, and hold out your hand. I rise, and take it—and off we go. I realise now that I am in the conduct of a fairy. I was inspired when I hailed you—how long ago?—as Queen Mab. You show me wonderful things. Do you know that you come?"

"No, but—" She stopped, and bent her head. Her experience had not been so simple. "I have thought sometimes—" She could not finish—broke off abruptly. There was a beating pause, during which neither of them dared look at the other. She broke it. She asked him what he did out here alone.

"I live," he said, "very much as I did. I read—in three tongues; I paint rarely; I do a great deal of work. At night I write my book. And then—you come."

"And what is your book?"

"It began as Memoirs—in three volumes, but those have stopped. There was plenty to say, but after certain experiences which came to me here— singular enough experiences—nothing in it seemed worth while. Now I call it Despoina, after the principal character. Despoina, or the Lore of Proserpine."

"Who is Despoina?" She showed him that she had the answer already.

He looked at her, smiling with his eyes. "You are Despoina."

"Oh," said she, "I thought I was Queen Mab."

"It is the same thing. Despoina means the Lady—the Lady of the Country. She is a great fairy. The greatest."

It was now for her to smile at him, which she did a little wistfully. "Your Despoina is either too much fairy, or not enough. She does very humdrum things. She has done mischief; now she is going to repair it. She is going to be married."

He was watching her quietly, and took her news quietly.

"Yes, so I learned. There was a youth here who told me."

She stopped him, flushing wildly. "A youth! Struan was here? Then it's true—it's true?"

He was quite calm under this outcry. "Yes, your champion Glyde was here. A good fellow in the main, but, Lord! what a donkey! I think I did him good. He left me a week ago. He had told me about you—found out where you lived, and what was happening." She sat with her face between her hands, dared not let him see it.

Senhouse resumed the question of her marriage. "It doesn't matter what you do. You are you. So Ingram has forgiven Master Glyde, and now—"

She lifted her pale face at this name of duty.

"His wife died a year ago; rather more. He wants me to marry him, and I think I must."

"You don't want to?" She shook her head, watching her fingers tear the grass.

"No," she said, "not in the least. But I shall do it. Don't you think that I should?"

He thought, then threw his arms out. "God knows what I am to say! If the world held only you and me and him—here—fast in this valley—I tell you fairly. I should stop it." She looked up quickly, and their eyes met. Hers were haunted with longing. He had to turn his head. "But it doesn't. To me what you intend to do seems quite horrible because I am flesh, and cannot see that you are spirit. That is a perfectly reasonable reading of the Laws, which says, What I did as a child I must abide as a woman. It's a law of Nature, after all's said; and yet it can be contradicted in a breath. It's one of those everlasting propositions which are true both ways, positively and negatively; for Nature says, That is my rule, and immediately after, Break it if you're strong enough. Now, you are, but I am not."

Once more they looked at each other, these two who had but one desire between them—and who knew it each of each. And again it was he who broke away.

"I'm a coward, I'm false to my own belief. It's love that makes me so. Oh, Heaven, I see so well what it would be! And it would be right, mind you. These laws of Society are nothing, absolutely nothing. But you are pleased, for reasons, to submit. You are deliberate, you are strong. It's the old thing over again. Hideous, vile, abominable servitude! But you are pleased to do it. You say it is Destiny, and you may be right. I tell you once more, I dare not say a word against it."

"No, no," she said hastily; "don't say anything to stop me. I must go on with it. I have promised. He knows I don't love him, and he doesn't care."

Senhouse pricked up his head. "Does he love you, do you suppose? Do you believe it?"

She shrugged half-heartedly. "He says so. He seemed to when I told him that I was going away.

"When was that?" he asked her. She told him the whole story as the reader knows it. Senhouse heard her, his head between his hands.

At the end of it, he looked out over the valley.

"Would to God," he said, "you and I had never met, Sanchia."

Tears filled her eyes. "Oh, why do you say that?"

He took her hands. "You know why." There was no faltering in the look that passed between them now. They were face to face indeed. He got up, and stood apart from her. She waited miserably where she was.

"We may be friends now, I believe," he said. You'll let me write to you? You'll trust me?"

"I shall live in your letters," she said. "I read nothing else but those I have. They are all the help I have." Then with a cry she broke out, "Oh, Jack, what a mess you've made of our affairs!"

He laughed bitterly. "Do you know my tale?"

"I guess it," she said.

"I played the rogue," he told her, "to a good girl, who was as far from my understanding as I was from hers. I thought that I had got over—it, you know, and that she and I could be happy together. Absurd, absurd! God bless her, she's happy now. I swear to you that I meant to do her honour— and directly I found out what she really wanted, I would have given it her. You'll not believe that I was such a fool as to suppose she could feel happy with my ideas of wedded life—but I did. Oh, Heavens! Poor dear, affectionate, simple soul, she felt naked! She shivered at her own plight, and wondered why I'd been so unkind to her, seeing I was by ordinary so kind. I shudder to think what she must have gone through."

"But," she said, anxious to save him, "but she knew what your beliefs were—and accepted them. You told me so."

"Queen Mab," he said gravely, "she was a woman, not a fairy. And please to observe the difference. She, poor dear, felt as if she was stripped until she married. You will feel stripped when you do. Yet you both do it for the same reason. She obeys the law because she dare not break it; you because you choose to keep it. Despoina! Despoina!"

She laughed, a little awry. "You used to call me Artemis. I'm not she any more."

"You are all the goddesses. You do what you please. Your mind is of Artemis; you have the form of Demeter, the grave-eyed spirit of the corn— and your gown, I observe, is blue, as hers was. I see Hera in you, too, the peering, proud lady of intolerant eyelids; and Kore, the pale, sad wife—which makes you your own daughter, my dear; and Gaia, by whom the Athenians swore when they were serious,—Gaia, the Heart of the Earth. All these you are in turns; but to me Despoina, the Lady of the Country, whose secrets no man knows but me."

She was now by his side, very pale and pure in her distress. She put her hand on his shoulder as she leaned to him. "Dearest, there is one of my secrets you have not learned. May I tell it you?"

He listened sideways, not able to look at her. She felt him tremble. "I think not—I think not. You will tell Ingram first—then do as you please. Don't ask me to listen. Haven't I told you that I see you every night?"

"And I tell you nothing of my secret?"

"I never ask you."

"But do I not tell you? Can I keep it?"

"You don't speak to me. You never speak. You look. Fairies don't speak with the tongue. They have better ways."

"What do you do with me?"

"I follow you, over the hills."

"And then?"

"At dawn you leave me."

"I am a ghost?"

"I don't know. You are Despoina. You go at dawn."

A power was upon her, and within her. She put both hands on his shoulders. "One night I shall come—and not leave you. And after that you will not follow me any more. I shall follow you." Perfectly master of himself, his eyes met hers and held them.

"It shall be as you will."

She smiled confidently. "I shall come. I know that. But I shan't speak."

"What need of speech between you and me?"

She saw Chevenix upon the high ground above. He stood on the grass dykes of Hirlebury, and waved his hat.

"I must go now," she said. "Good-bye, my dear one."

"Good-bye, Despoina. In seven hours you will be here again...."

"It is to be observed," says a gifted author, "that the laws of human conduct are precisely made for the conduct of this world of Men in which we live and breed and pay rent. They do not affect the Kingdom of the Dogs, nor that of the Fishes; by a parity of reasoning they should not be supposed to obtain in the Kingdom of Heaven, in which the Schoolmen discovered the citizens dwelling in nine spheres, apart from the blessed Immigrants, whose privileges did not extend so near to the Heart of the Presence. How many realms there may be between mankind's and that ultimate object of Pure Desire cannot at present be known, but it may be affirmed with confidence that any denizen of any one of them, brought into relation with human beings, would act, and lawfully act, in ways which to men would seem harsh, unconscionable, without sanction or convenience. Such a being might murder one of the ratepayers of London, compound a felony, or enter into conspiracy to depose the King himself, and, being detected, very properly be put under restraint, or visited with chastisement either deterrent or vindictive, or both. But the true inference from the premisses would be that, although duress or banishment from the kingdom might be essential, yet punishment, so called, ought not to be visited upon the offender. For he or she could not be nostri juris, and that which was abominable to us might well be reasonable to him or her, and, indeed, a fulfilment of the law of his being. Punishment, therefore, could not be exemplary, since the person punished exemplified nothing to Mankind; and if vindictive, then would be shocking, since that which it vindicated, in the mind of the victim either did not exist, or ought not. The ancient Greek who withheld from the sacrifices to Showery Zeus because a thunderbolt destroyed his hayrick, or the Egyptian who manumitted his slaves because a god took the life of his eldest son, was neither a pious nor a reasonable person.

"Beyond question," he continues, "there are such beings upon the earth, visitors or sojourners by chance, whose true commerce is elsewhere, in a state not visible to us, nor to be apprehended by most of us; whose relation with mankind is temporary. The spheres which govern us, govern not them, and their conduct is dictated by their good pleasure, where ours goes after the good pleasure of our betters. Thus a man may, if he can, take a goddess or nymph to wife, but should not be disconcerted with what she may elect to do."

Sanchia returned silently to London by the 6.50 from Salisbury, and arrived at Charles Street by half-past eight, which was Lady Maria's usual hour. She changed her dress hurriedly and came into the drawing-room. Ingram was waiting there, his hands behind his back. He looked at her as she entered, but did not greet her. Perhaps he saw his doom in her eyes.

"Had a good day, Sancie?" he asked, after a while of gazing.

"Very good," she said.

"Saw your man?"

"Yes, I saw him."

"Mad as ever?"

"Ah," she said, "who is mad?"

"Well, my dear, if he is not, we are. That's certain. What have you done with Bill Chevenix?"

"He's gone home to dress. He will be here directly."

"I hope," said Ingram, "he played the perfect squire." She stood by the window looking out towards the west. Luminous orange mist flared up behind the chimney-stacks in streamers. Above that, in a sky faintly blue, crimson clouds, like plumes of feather, floated without motion.

Ingram called her to him. "Sancie, come here a minute. I want you." She turned her head and looked at him, then slowly crossed the room. She kept her eyes upon him, but did not seem to see him. They were haunted eyes. She came in front of him, and stood, questing his face, as if she was trying to see him within it.

He continued to smile jauntily, but his lips twitched with the strain. He put his arm round her shoulder and drew her towards him. "This day month, my girl," he said, and kissed her. She stiffened at his touch. Her lips were cold, and made him shiver. His arm fell back. "Pooh! what do you care?" She stood in her place before him without speaking. If she had looked at him she might have stricken him blind. When Lady Maria came in, she moved away, and returned to the window. The glow had almost gone; nothing remained but wan blue, white towards the horizon. It was the colour of death; but a single star shone out in it.

Chevenix came in briskly, fastening his sleeve-links. "Here is the Perfect Chaperon, here is he!" he said, and bowed to Lady Maria. "My dear Aunt Wenman, you've no notion how hungry I am. We saw Senhouse teaching the hares their catechism. Afterwards we lunched on conversation and water. Ah, and salad. Excellent salad. Then I went goat-stalking, and had a nap. Sancie and the Seer conversed. A great day."

Lady Maria took Ingram's arm, Sanchia that of Chevenix, and they went downstairs. Half-way down she stopped. Chevenix looked at her. She was white; she could hardly breathe. "Good God, Sancie, what's the matter?"

She stared, gasped, moved her head about. "I can't go on—I can't—I can't. It's horrible—it's awful—I'm afraid. Hush—don't make a fuss. I'm going away. This isn't possible."

The other couple were in the dining-room by now. Chevenix didn't know what to do.

"There's dinner, you know, Sancie," he said. "That's an institution, eh? You'll feel better, I expect. Keep your pecker up. I'll have a go at Nevile for you. I swear I will. Now, where's your pluck, my dear?"

She shook her head, struggling all the time to get her breath. "It's gone —clean gone."

"You want food, Sancie; that's what you want. Come. Don't let's have a commotion. You leave all this to me."

She leaned against the wall, and brushed her hand across her face. Chevenix was in despair. Nevile, from below, called up, "What are you two conspiring about?" Sanchia shivered, and stood up.

"Go down alone," she said. "I can't."



III

She dragged herself upstairs, and locked herself in her room, stumbled to the window, caught at it by the sill and leaned out. Her skin burned, her blood beat at her temples, and her breath came panting from her. Her white breasts ached with the burden of her strife. "I was born to live, not die. Air! or I shall fall."

It was mellow dusk by now, the lamps below her lighted, and above the chimneys and broken roof-line, above the trembling glare which meant London, there were stars in a violet sky. The stars which looked on London, looked also on the dim grass wolds, on hills rolling like waves, on muffled woods, rivers swift under their banks, on cornlands stiff and silent in the calm, on pastures and drowsy sheep. But the hills stretched out on either side of a valley, fold upon fold, everlastingly the same. There Despoina walked, at the deepest hour of the night. Even now she was looked for by one who sat in the valley and watched the East—intent, hooded, white, his chin upon his knees. A knock sounded at her door. She turned and ran to open. "Her ladyship have sent to know if you would have something sent up, miss." "Nothing, nothing." She sped back to the window.

At midnight, Despoina should be there. At midnight! In three hours! It was time to get ready; there wasn't a moment to lose. She watched the night as if she were listening to it, counting its pulse. Then, kneeling where she was, she began to unfasten her hair, running her hands through it as each clinging coil loosened and grew light. So presently she was curtained in her hair.

It drooped about her burning cheeks and veiled her bosom. She looked like the Magdalen in the desert, facing, wide-eyed, the preacher. There she knelt on, in a trance, waiting for the hour.

It struck ten—eleven.

She changed her dress and put on again the blue cotton gown of the day's wearing—but she left her hair loose about her face and shoulders, and her feet were bare. She looked at herself in the glass. Her face was white, her eyes were wide and strange. She did not know herself, smiling so sharply—like a goddess wild with a rapture not known by men and women. Fiercer delights than theirs she knew, the joy of power mated with its equal, coping fellow to fellow. Consciousness of immortal bliss dawned upon her wise lips, and flickered in their curve.

"Despoina is here," she said, and blew out the light.



IV

It was intensely dark in the cup of the hills, but by the difference of a tone it was just possible to make out where the sky began. Looking closer yet, you could guess at a film of light, as if the rim of down absorbed and reflected a caught radiance from the stars.

On a quiet night the stars seem to burn more fiercely, and on this night you might have believed they gave you heat. There was no moon; but the sky was illuminated by stars. Jupiter had rays like a sun, and Sirius lay low down and glowed, now fiery, now green. A winged creature, crossing up the valley, would pass unnoticed; but if it struck suddenly upwards for a higher flight, above the hills into the upper air, you would see the light upon its pinions, and even the glitter of its watchful eye.

There was no wind; the silence could be felt, throbbing about you. It was past the hour when the creatures go hunting; the time when every breathing thing submits to the same power. Men and women forgot each other and their loves; foxes lay coiled in their earths. The shriek of the field-mouse startled you no more, nor the swift dry rustle of the grass-snake. Presently, very far away across the hills, in some valley not to be known, a dog barked; but the sound just marked the silence, and died down.

The hooded figure down there sat like a Buddha on his rock, motionless, unwinking, breathing deep and slow. His hands clasped his shins, his chin was on his knees; he pored into the dark. He sat facing the ridgeway where it came from the East, and watched the courses of the stars.

Through the window of the hidden hut a faint light glimmered, and within the open door there was to be discerned a pale diffusion of light. In the beam of this he sat, cowled in white, but his face was shadowed. He was like the shell of a man who had died in his thought, and stiffened in the act of meditation. No relation between him and the rest of the world could be discerned. He was as far from the sleepers as the dead are.

Yet within him was the patience which comes of wild expectancy. His mind was as couched as his body for the moment. He had not fasted for years in the wilderness, and communed with the spirits of the hidden creatures without learning the secret of their immobility. To him who could speak with plants and beasts, with hills and trees, the Night itself could converse. So surely as the crystal fluid which is the air streams in circles of waves about our sphere, so surely ranged his sense.

At a certain moment of time, without stirring, he changed. Intensity of search gathered in his eyes, and filled them with power. He remained for a little time longer in a state of tension so extreme, so strung to an act that there might have streamed a music from him, as from the Memnon in the sands when light and heat thrill the fibres of the stone. His look was concentrated upon a point above him where, look as one might, one could have seen nothing to break the translucent veil of dark.

Yet, after a time, looking just there, one might feel rather than know a something coming. The watcher certainly did. Deep within the shadow of the cowl his eyes dilated and narrowed, his lips parted, his breath came quick and sharp. But he did not move.

The sense of a presence heightened; one knew it much nearer. By and by, one could have seen pale forms wavering in the fluid violet of the night, like marsh-fires going and coming—and could guess them one and the same. Bodily substance could only be inferred. But he who waited, tense for the hour, knew that the hour had come.

Her white face, made narrow by the streaming curtain of her hair, her white arms and feet were luminous in that dark place, and revealed the semblance of her body. His cowl was thrown back; he had bowed his head to his knees. She stood over him, looking down upon him, not moving. Her eyes were clear and wide, and her parted lips smiled. The rise and fall of her breasts could be heard as they stirred her gown.

She put out her hand and laid it on his head; she stooped to him as he looked fearfully up, and, meeting his face, kissed him. No words passed between them, but he rose and stood by her, and she took his hand.

Together, hand in hand, they went deep into the valley, and the night hid them under the stars, and the silence swallowed up the sounds of their bare footfalls.



V

The philosopher sat barefoot in the hollow of his valley, and wrote diligently in a book. He paused, pen in hand, and looked over the folds of the hills where the haze of heat hung blue, and brown at the edges. It lay upon the hill-tops like a mist. The sky was grey, and the land was pale, burned to the bone. Heavy masses of trees in the hanging wood showed lifeless and black. No bird sang, but there were crickets in the bents, shrilling inconceivably. The swoon of midsummer was over all, and Sanchia was coming.

He knew that she was coming before he saw her. She came along the edge of the plain above him springing barefoot. He saw her legs gleam under her swirling skirts. He strained his eyes to her, but could not see her face for the mist over them. He waited for her, watching, feeling her approach. She began the descent of the scarp timidly, as if she was playing with the thought of his bliss, which she held daintily in her hands. "Dangerously beautiful, my Beautiful One, art thou. Heedless always of thyself. Now a wind blows from thee to me. Thy herald, O Thou that shrillest on the wind!"

He heard her gay and confident voice. "Jack! Jack! Where are you?" He rose and went to meet her; she saw him, and suddenly faltered in her stoop. She stopped, poised as if for flight; he saw her wings fold behind her, and lie quivering where they touched each other.

Her heart urged her. "Go to him."

She looked at him. "I can't see him perfectly, and can't trust myself."

Her heart cried, "I have brought you so far. I daren't stop." Still she stood and flickered.

Senhouse mounted to meet her. Blushful and bashful she stood; but her eyes, deeply watchful, never left him.

He, too, had lost his tongue. "Queen Mab! I knew that you were coming."

Her eyes were timid and her tongue tied. She was like a rueful child.

"How did you come, my dear?"

"I don't know."

"You came last night?"

"Ah, you knew me?"

"Well, Queen Mab?"

She had nothing to say.

"Oh, my dear, my dear," he asked her, "why are you come?"

"I can't tell you if you don't know." She looked at him, and he knew.

"You came to me—not because I love you?"

"No, no! Not for that!"

"You are beautiful beyond belief, Queen Mab. And you are the soul of truth. My dear one, do you love me?"

She hung her head, and looked up from under her long lashes. He saw, not heard, her answer.

He encircled her with his arm, and felt her trembling at his side. "My dear," he said, "I was writing my Memoirs. Now we'll burn the book, for I see that I am now going to be born."

She looked up at him laughing. She was the colour of a flushed rose. "My bride," he said, and kissed her lips. She turned in his arm and clung to him. The storm swept surging over her; passion long pent made her shiver like a blown fire. They took their wild joy....

He led her by her hand to the shade of the valley, where the deep turf is hardly ever dry. She was barefoot, as he was, and bareheaded. In her bosom was a spray of dog-rose.

"You are blue-gowned, like Despoina," he told her, "and, indeed, that is your name. I am to have a fairy wife."

"Artemis no more," she laughed.

"You fulfil all the goddesses. Artemis was your childhood. But let's be practical. What is to be done?" She faltered her answer.

"I have found out by myself what to do," she said. And then she kissed him. "It's done now."

They picked up their lives where they had dropped them. They were content to wait for the fulness of their joy. He busied himself with food for her; he cooked, and she helped him; they talked of his affairs as if they had always been hers.

Something stirred the practical side of him. She was to see him as near a man of the world as it was possible for him to be. It might have been a shock to her, but its simplicity was all his own.

"I must see one person, and you must see one. I'll go to your father, and you shall tell Ingram what's going to happen. We don't owe him much, but there's that, I think. I've a great idea of treating the world with civility. The one thing it has worth having is its sense of manners. Let us have manners, then. Don't you think so?" He held her close as he spoke, and with a strange discrepancy between sight and sound, looked at her with dim eyes of love, before which she had to close down her own. To his, "Don't you think so?" she could only murmur without breath, "You mustn't love me so much—not yet, not yet!" but he pressed her the nearer and laughed his joy of her. "What! After eight years! And if I don't hold her very close, Mab, the tricksy sprite, may slip me."

Then he returned to his moralisings. "You'll see Ingram, my blessed one, don't you think?"

She said gravely, with hard outlook upon the distant wold, "Yes, I must see him—" and then, with a sudden turn to him and a wondrous veil of tenderness upon her eyes, "You know that I think what you think from now onwards." Their lips sealed the pact.

He broke away at last. "Practice! Practice! Do let's be practical. Think of this. My house is yours until we marry; that can't be for a week." A week! This was Senhouse practical. She blushed her answer.

"What will you do? I mustn't turn you out." He opened his arms wide to the airs of the down.

"I sleep in the open. The stars for me. They shall see you wedded. Meanwhile, I shall wait upon you. But do let us be practical. We wait a week; we marry; but then what shall we do? Shall we reform the world? I think we shall do that in spite of ourselves; for if two people dare to be simple, there's no reason why two million shouldn't." She lay at peace considering; her blue eyes, searching wonderfully into his, saw peace like a crown of stars.

"I'll tell you what I should like to do," she said. "I've thought about it this minute. It never occurred to me before, but I should like to teach better than anything in the world."

He looked far out to the white rim of horizon. He took her very seriously. "It's the highest profession of all, of course. Let's think. I've begun on it already, oddly enough. And yet, you know, it's not odd. Nothing is after our experiences.... We will teach. Woodcraft, weathercraft, husbandry, beast-craft, sky-craft. I can do that much for them. Lit., hum., Greek, Latin, English, Dante. History, shadowy; geography, practical. Tinkering, carpentering, planting. No mathematics; I can't add two to two."

"But I can," she told him. "I'll teach the babies, for we must have babies."

His eyes flashed upon hers for one beating second of full interchange. Then he turned them away, and scanned again the hazy hills. But hers remained on their watch, charged with their wistful dream.

"Our school," he presently resumed, "I see it. We teach first of all Nature's face and the love of it. We lead their hungry mouths to Nature's breast. No books! No books for them to glue their eyes upon. They shall learn by ear; their eyes have a better book to read in. Classics by ear and by heart, eh?"

She glowed at a memory. "You wrote to me about that. You said that, before the Printing Press, people used to get poetry by heart."

He looked down at her where she lay at ease. "'As I have got you,' I said." She dreamed beneath her flickering eyelids.

"You had me then. I didn't know it; but you had. And you have me still. That's wonderful. But now I have got you!" She lay awhile under the spell of him and the thought, and glowed and blossomed under them until at last, flowering like a rose, she turned and hid her face in his arm. Senhouse, grave and strong, let her lie where she was; but he felt the pulsing of her bosom, and was moved to utterance. Nothing in the eyes he bent down to her beauty, and nothing in his words betrayed the passion of his heart.



"The loveliest thing in all the world to me," he said, "is a beautiful thing bent in humility, stooping to serve. I shall see you teaching your children. They will be at your knees, on your knees; you will kiss them, and I shall go mad with joy. Flowers and you! Yes, we'll have our school. We'll teach people the beauty of their own business by means of the most beautiful things. Flowers and you!"

They talked long and late, walking down the valley to the farmstead for bread. On this, with milk and fruit, they supped after Sanchia had bathed, and clad herself in one of his Moorish robes. Hooded and folded in this she sat at meat, and Senhouse, filled with the Holy Ghost, discoursed at large. The past they took for granted; the present was but a golden frame for the throbbing blue of the days to come.

* * * * *

Very early on the morning after the night when, as has been foretold, she was made a wife under the stars, Senhouse came back to her bedside and put a little flower into her hand. It woke her out of her dreams; glozed and dewy from them she looked at it, and smiled at him through it. In grey- green leafage, dewy and downy, lay a little blossom of delicate pink, chalice-shaped, with a lip of flushed white. Watching him, she laid it to her lips. "My flower, our flower," she said, and watching him still put it deep within her bosom. "My dear one, we have earned it."

"'Rest-Harrow,'" said Senhouse, in a sententious mood, "'grows in any soil.... The seed may be sown as soon as ripe, in warm, sheltered spots out of doors.... It is a British plant.' So says Weathers, the learned

THE END