"Alexandre!"

"Why does she do that?" inquired Sally.

"She's calling for Alexandre, the waiter who runs out across the street—obediently but slowly—with your pennies to buy your wine. They don't have a license here."

Alexandre made his appearance with a big red cardboard cover in his hand, which looked as if it held a copy of a weekly paper. This was the wine list. Traill gripped it from him, giving the number almost at the same moment.

Alexandre waited patiently for a moment, then deferentially suggested that he should be given the money, having received which, the little staircase swallowed up his tall, thin body again. It was all like playing at keeping restaurant, only everything worked without a hitch, which would never have happened if it had really been only a game.

"I apologize," Traill repeated, when Alexandre had disappeared.

"But there's no need to," said Sally, quickly. "I think it's very kind of you to take the interest that you do. And I suppose"—her eyes roamed plaintively round the room, rather than at that moment meet his; "I suppose I should have told you without your asking."

"Why?" he leaned a little forward.

"I don't know. Because I wanted to, I expect."

Her eyes fell to the table. She made tiny pellets of bread between her fingers and placed them one by one in a row, knowing that his eyes were searching through her. In that little moment, the silence vibrated with the current of their thoughts. Traill pulled himself together—laying hand upon anything that came within his reach.

"Look at this knife," he said in a dry voice, picking up the nearest to him. "Ever seen such a handle? it's shrunk in the wash." The bone handle of it was bent round, twisted like a ram's horn. "I generally get this about once a week. It's an old friend by this time."

She looked at it, scarcely seeing, and forced a smile that could not quite remove the furrow of silent intensity from her brows. Traill saw that. He could not take his eyes from her face. Her almost childish passivity was like a slow and heavy poison in his blood. It crept gradually and gradually through the veins, leaving fire wherever it touched.

Alexandre came back with the wine, and broke the spell of it. He spread the change out on the table, and the sound of it then, at that moment, was like the breaking of a thousand little pieces of glass, over which his presence walked with clumsy feet.

"Well, what did Mr. Arthur say?" Traill asked when Alexandre had disappeared again and Berthe had brought them their second course.

Sally looked up and smiled at his encouragement, a smile that lit through him. He could feel it dancing in his eyes.

"He asked me if I had made up my mind," she replied.

"Made up your mind to marry him?"

"Yes."

The pause was heavy, it seemed to swing against them.

"And you? What did you say?"

He tried to conceal the burning of his interest to know. His voice was steady—each note of each word quiet, true, subdued; but when the brain is tautened, vibrating as was his, it gives out of itself unconsciously. She felt the strain in her mind as well, just as though a wire, drawn out, were stretched between them. She heard the note, half-dominant in his speech. However quiet his voice, he could not dull her ears to that.

"Oh, I told him I couldn't; it was impossible. I don't love him, I never should love him. How could one take a step like that on no other basis than wanting a home? What a home it would be! I should be miserable."

These were her beliefs. She placed love before everything—lifted it to the altar as you raise a saint and worshipped with bent knees and silently moving lips. To understand the great-hearted love of a greatly loving woman, you must know the joy of greatly giving. She loves to give; she gives to love. Out of her breast, out of her heart, with arms laden to the breaking—dragged down by the weight of her gifts, she will give, and give, and give, holding nothing back, grudging nothing, forgetting all she has ever given in the blind joy of what is left to be bestowed. This, when it comes to a woman, is what she means by love as she kneels down in the silent chapel of her own heart and worships. This was the passion as Sally understood it. Her whole desire was to give, and to Mr. Arthur she could have given nothing.

"What did he say?" asked Traill, quietly. A man always speaks somewhat in awe, somewhat in deference, of another whose hopes have been flung to the ground; speaks of him as if he were a prisoner in a condemned cell—fool enough no doubt, but made a man again by the meeting of his fate. "What did he say?" he repeated.

Across Sally's mind pictures were rushing in kaleidoscope. The remembrance of Mr. Arthur as he had left her at the door and turned away, shuffling his steps along the pathway—the sight of Janet and herself, with heads raised from the pillow, listening to the muffled, disordered sounds in the next room—the recollection of Mr. Arthur's face the next morning as she had passed him in the hall, the eyes dull—steam, as it were, upon a window-pane—and the unhealthy shadows beneath. He had grudged her a good morning, but that was all, and she had scarcely seen him since then. He had been out every evening.

"He said very little," she replied, "but I know he felt it very much."

"How do you know?"

"Well, that night when he came in—" the words refused utterance. She looked up quaintly, appealing to him, desiring to be understood without further explanation.

"Drunk?" said Traill.

She nodded.

"Poor devil!"

A thousand apprehensions fled—darkening—across her face. So pass a flight of starlings with a thousand whirring wings that sweep out light of the sun.

"You think I treated him badly?"

"No, I didn't say so."

"But you think it?" She begged eagerly, importunately.

"No, no, my dear child; no. What else could you do?"

"But you felt sorry for him?"

"Do you forbid it? I was putting myself in his shoes, feeling for the moment what he must have felt. Sift it down and you'll find at the bottom that I really said poor devil for myself." He laughed as he looked at her. "Well, now," he went on, "we're getting more than halfway through dinner and we haven't decided where we're going to yet. What's it to be?"

"Really, I don't mind a little bit."

"Oh, you never give any help at all."

She laughed light-heartedly. "I find I get along quite all right if I let you choose."

"You're satisfied?"

"Absolutely."

"Well, then; I'm not going to offer inviolable judgment. I'm only going to make a suggestion."

"What is it?"

"My rooms are in Regent Street—"

"I know; I looked up the number the other day in the Who's Who? after we'd had lunch."

"Was that to know if I'd told the truth?" He held her eyes for the answer as you put your metal in the vice.

"No, of course not! How could you think I'd dream of such a thing?"

"Many women might."

"I certainly shouldn't."

A look of tenderness as it passed across his face freed her. She turned her eyes away. He was finding her so absolutely a child, and on the moment paused. There is a moment when a pause holds possibility laden full in its two hands. He let it slip by—it rode off like a feather on the wind. He lost sight of it.

"Well, what's your suggestion?" she asked.

"That we should come back to Regent Street, sit and talk; we'll have our coffee there; I'll show you how to make it."

He tried to run the whole sentence through. Set it on its feet, and pushed it to the conclusion that it might seem natural, unpremeditated. She saw nothing forced; but his ears burnt to the stumbling sounds. The breath caught in his nostrils as he waited for her definite refusal.

"I think that would be lovely," she said with genuine interest.

He let the breath slowly free, checked, curbed, the bearing rein upon it all the way. He imagined he had found country innocence in London, and for the moment stood aghast at it; could not see that it was her trust in him, blindly, implicitly placed, against all knowledge of the world. He stood for a gentleman in her eyes—that Apsley Manor, the late Sir William Hewitt Traill, C.B., they all helped to conjure the vision in her mind. She knew the world well enough in her gentle way; but this man was a gentleman.

Yet he saw little of this and, in a broadness of heart, warned her.

"I say nothing for or against myself," he said, "and this has not been put to you as a test; I want you to come, I really hope you'll come. But you'd be foolish beyond words if you indiscriminately accepted such an invitation from any man."

"I know that," she replied firmly.

"And you'll come?"

"Yes; I've said I would."

"Why do you make the exception?"

"Because I know you're a gentleman. I trust you implicitly."

That went to the heart of him—drove home—the words quivering where they struck.



CHAPTER XIV

There was much ceremony when they departed—much French politesse, and many charming little attentions were paid. Marie assisted Monsieur on with his coat, which, being British, he strongly objected to. Berthe brought Madame a beautiful chrysanthemum from the vase on one of the vacant tables and, when Sally proposed wearing it, insisted upon pinning it in herself, her eyes dancing with delight as she stood back to admire its effect.

Berthe and Marie stood at the bottom of the stairs as they ascended.

"Au'voir, Monsieur—merci—au'voir, Madame."

Now it was like a duet of little cuckoo clocks, both in unison, both in time, both with that fascinating touch of the nasal Parisienne voice. Sally was enchanted with it all.

Last of all there was Madame—Madame smiling—Madame rubbing her fat, homely hands together—Madame's twinkling brown eyes dancing upon the two of them.

"You had a good dinner, Monsieur?"

"Excellent, thank you, Madame."

"Oh, Monsieur;" she caught Traill's arm and detained him as Sally went out in front. "Oh—monsieur—elle est charmante!" Her eyes lifted and her hands carried the words upwards—to heaven, if need be.

Traill threw back his head and laughed. "Madame—vous etes trop romanesque pour ce monde."

"Ah, non, Monsieur—je suis ce que je suis. Je suis trop grosse peut-etre, mais pas trop romanesque. Au'voir, Monsieur—merci—prenez garde d'elle, Monsieur." She held up a fat warning finger. "Au'voir, Madame. A bientot."

They left her bowing there against the background of the old bottle glass, lit yellow by the light within, her smiles following them down the street.

"Well—there you are," said Traill, as they walked away. "That's the terrible, shameless Bohemian life in anarchist quarters. What a thing it is to be thankful for, that only the English manners are manners, and couldn't afford to show their face in Soho."



CHAPTER XV

They walked in silence through the little bye-streets of Soho, and followed their way down Shaftesbury Avenue. At the crossings, he lightly took her arm, protecting her from the traffic, freeing it directly they reached the pavement. Inwardly she thrilled, even at the slight touch of his hand on her elbow. She had never been quite so happy before. Nothing needed explanation. She defined no sensation to herself. When the sun first bursts in April after the leaden winter skies, you bask in it, drench yourself in the fluid of its light, and ask no questions. It is only the smallest natures that are not content with the moment that is absolute.

But in the mind of Traill, there swung a ponderous balance that could not find its equilibrium. She had called him a gentleman; was he going to act as one? Into her side of the scale, with both her little hands, she had thrown in her implicit confidence. Was there any weight on his side which he could put in to equalize? He hunted through his intentions as the goldsmith hunts amongst his drachms and his counterpoises; but he found nothing that could balance the massive quality of her faith—nothing!

In his most emotional dreams of women, he had never conceived himself in the drab light of the married man. Possibly because he had never moved amongst that class of women with whom intimacy is obtained only through the sanction of a binding sacrament. His contempt of the society to which his birth gave him right of entrance, had always kept him apart from them. But he scarcely saw the matter in that breadth of light. Intimacy with the women he had known had always been possible—possible in its various degrees, some more difficult to arrive at than others, but always possible. And, until that moment, when Sally had told him that she knew he was a gentleman, he had placed her no differently to the rest. Cheap, sordid seduction, there had been none of that in his mind; but he had tacitly admitted within himself that if their acquaintance were to drift—she willing, he content—into that condition of intimacy, then what harm would be done? She was a little type-writer; he, a man, amongst other men. A thousand women pass through the fire that way and come out little the worse.

So had he assessed her, until that moment when she had unthinkingly, unhesitatingly accepted his invitation to come and see him in his rooms. He had thought it innocence, he had imagined it a purity of mind that, in a city such as this, was almost unthinkable. It was his better nature then that had prompted the warning, the opening of a kitten's eyes before it is to be drowned.

Then the last position of all, the position that made the whole thing impossible. She was not innocent! She was not ignorant of the world! She did know the pitfalls in life—knew the luring dangers that lie concealed in the hedges of every woman's highway! No, it was not that. She knew everything—but she knew him to be a gentleman.

There is no more disarming passe in the everlasting duel between a man and a woman than this appeal—whether it be made intentionally or not—the appeal to his honour as a gentleman. Up flies the glittering rapier from his hand, he is weaponless—and at her mercy. For every man, even more especially when he is not one, would be thought a gentleman.

Traill, disarmed, defenceless, weighing every possibility, every intention, was still faced with the unequal balance, her gentle faith in the best of him dragging down the scale. By the time they had reached the stairway to his rooms, he had forged his mind to its decision. This once he would let her come to his rooms—this once, but never again. He knew his instincts and refused to trust them. If she thought him a gentleman, she should find him one. That was owed to her. We give the world its own valuation of us. This is humanity. It is therefore wisest to think well of a man. Those who think badly will find themselves surrounded by the impersonation of their own minds. It is wisest to think well, for even thinking has its unconscious effects. But say evil of a man, tell him to his face, without thought of punishment, merely in candid criticism that you find him ill and, besides giving him a bad name, you will make a dog of him.

She had said he was a gentleman—bless her heart!

"This staircase is confoundedly dark," he said; "I'll strike a match."

She waited, heart beating, listening to the scratching of the match-head against the woodwork. When it flared, he raised it above his head and strode on before her, grim shadows falling round him, following him like noiseless ghosts. Sally kept close behind.

"I used to live on the top floor," he said, "until the day before yesterday; I've moved down now to the first. There's not so much difference in the rooms, but those four flights of stairs in this sort of light were a bit too much." He thought of the last woman who had climbed the stairs with him. All she had said that evening, the first day he had met Sally, trooped through his mind in slow and vivid procession. He compared her life with that of Sally's, the ghastly hollowness of it in contrast with this child's simplicity of faith. The picture was an ugly one. He shuddered before the first, no less than before the second; for whereas one repelled, the other drew him to itself with all its subtle fascinations.

"Now," he said, forcing a smile and turning round to face her with his hand upon the handle of the door, "these are only bachelor's quarters, remember; no soft cushions, no mirrors—nothing. And if you'll stay there one second, I'll light a couple of candles. You'd far better have the room chucked at you all at once, than let it grow slowly to your eyes as I stalk round with a match. Do you mind?"

"I? Not a bit!" She laughed and turned with her back to the door, looking down the staircase which they had just ascended. Her heart was still beating, throbbing with unwonted excitement and anticipation. She knew she could trust, but there was a spring—a vibration in the thought that they played with fire. Yet what a harmless fire! No stake in the marketplace at which the soul, the honour, the life of the victim is burnt! No! Nothing like that. Only that fire which, when once it is lit, soothes, warms, nurses the hearts of men and women into love, and when once it is glowing white in heat, moulds them, forges them into the God-sent cohesion of unity. What need had she to fear in playing with so tenderly fierce a fire as that? None, and there was no trace of fear in the heart of her; but her pulses hammered; she felt them even in her throat.

"Now—you can come in now!" Traill called, and he came to the door, opening it wide for her to pass through.

Sally entered—two or three steps; then she stood there looking round her. The old oak chests, carved some of them, worm-eaten here and there; the clean, pale, straw-coloured matting, no rugs of any description: the dark green walls and the rough, heavy brass candle sconces that glittered against them, reflecting the candle flames in every polished surface: it was almost barbaric, more like a reception room of a presbytery than a living room; but a presbytery decorated to convey the best of a strong and self-reliant mind, rather than to pander with a taste ornate to the futile conception of a God.

Except for two rush-seated armchairs, there was no suggestion of providing any recognized forms of comfort. The chair at the open bureau, with its case of books above it, had a wooden seat; all the rest of the smaller wooden chairs were wooden-seated as well. There was no visible and obvious sign of any desire for luxury; yet luxurious it all seemed to Sally, every corner of it, as she gazed around her. It was a luxury conveyed by the intrinsic value of every article of furniture he possessed; a luxury far more lasting, far more complete, than any to be found in down cushions and gently shaded lights.

Austerity was the note through it all, austerity even in the pictures upon the walls. They were prints, old prints, coloured or plain, representing boxers of the old school, stripped to the waist, the ugly muscles flexed and bulging as they raised their lithe arms in the attitude of defence. There were no other pictures but these; nothing to show that he had a heart above boxing. There was one thing. In their journey around the walls, Sally's eyes fell on a little coloured miniature in a plain gold frame that hung by the side of the bureau. At that distance, she could distinguish that it was a girl, a girl with fair hair that clustered on her shoulders. The beating of her heart dropped to a whisper when she saw it, all the pulses stopped, and she felt a cool, damp air blowing across her face.

"Well," said Traill, with a smile, "I suppose you think it is confoundedly uncomfortable?"

She turned, faced him, forcing strength to master her sudden apprehension.

"I think it's absolutely lovely," she said, with simplicity. "I've never seen a room like it before."

"And you don't find the want of soft things, cushions and all that sort of business?"

"No, oh no! they'd spoil it. One doesn't want cushions to be comfortable, one wants surroundings. These are perfect."

He looked at her with appreciation; then, as a thought swept over him, it altered to an expression of tenderness. He put his heel on that, churned it round, and strode over to the fireplace.

"Here, come and sit down here and get warm while I make the coffee," he said. "It's frightfully cold outside, you know. I shouldn't wonder if it isn't freezing."

She followed obediently, and took the chair he had drawn out for her. Then he hurried about, opening cupboards and drawers, producing a saucepan here, a coffee-pot and a milk-can there, until all the things were laid on the table. And all this time, while she made sure that she was not being observed, Sally's eyes wandered backwards and forwards to the little miniature. She was nearer to it now and could more clearly distinguish the features. They reminded her somewhat of herself. There were the same round cheeks, the same small childishness of lips and nose and chin, the same pale complexion tinged with fragile pink, the same big, blue eyes. Had he taken an interest in her because she was like this girl, this girl whose miniature he had allowed to be the only breaking note in the whole symphony of his scheme of decoration? They were like each other, a likeness sufficiently apparent to suggest the thought to her mind. The miniature was painted in a fashion common to all such works of art a hundred and fifty years ago. She could not tell from its style when it had been done. But the fact that it hung there alone, the one gentle spot in otherwise austere and hard surroundings, was sufficient for her to give it the highest prominence in her mind.

It must be that, it must be what she had thought. He was lonely. He had said as much to her on that first evening when they had driven on the 'bus together as far as Knightsbridge. The girl was far away, in another country perhaps, and he had seen her, Sally, had seen the likeness, been reminded of her in some slight way, and had sought to ease his own solitude with the half-satisfying pretence that she was with him.

There was no thought of blame in Sally's mind. He meant no evil by her; but it was hard. The bitterness of it struck at her heart. After all, there was no fire to be playing with. The coldness of being absolutely alone again chilled through her whole body, and she shivered.

"Now," said Traill—everything was ready at his hand. "The making of coffee's the simplest thing in the whole world; that's why everybody finds it so deucedly difficult. We'll put this kettle on first." He thrust the kettle on the flame, pressing the coals down beneath it to give it surer hold.

"I'm awfully glad you like my room," he said, looking up from his crouching attitude by the fire. "I should have been sorry if you hadn't."

"Why?"

"Oh, I don't know. If you hadn't liked my room, you wouldn't have liked me. My friend and his dog, I suppose."

She tried to smile. "Well, I like it immensely. I think it's so awfully uncommon. I suppose you could never get a piano that would go with the rest of the things?"

For the moment his expression hardened. A piano! He hated the sight of them.

"No, never," he said.

"P'raps you're not fond of music?"

"No, not a bit. Are you?"

"Oh yes; I love it."

His eyes lost their steel again to the tone of her voice when she said that.

"Well, that's as it ought to be," he remarked. "Religion and music are two things a woman can't do without. Are you very religious?"

"I don't know exactly what you mean by that. I'm afraid I hardly ever go to church, and in that sense, I suppose, I'm not religious. But I always say my prayers every night and morning."

Traill smiled at her gently. "That's all right," he said; "churches are nothing, only monuments that fulfil the double purpose of reminding the more forgetful of us that there are a class of people who believe in things they can't prove, and that also provide employment for those who have to look after them. I don't pray myself, but I should think it's the nearest thing you can get to in a combination of religion and common sense. Is that kettle boiling, do you think? Looks like it. Oh, of course, I ought to have known you were religious."

"Why?"

"Do you remember the way you took that impoverished joke of mine about the occupants of the kingdom of heaven?"

She laughed lightly at the recollection. But it was the lightness only of a moment. Her head turned, and she found again the eyes of that miniature looking into hers. Questions then rushed to her lips—a chorus of children fretting with intense desire. She could not hold them back—they would speak. Each one held her heart in its hands.

"Why do you have that miniature—amongst all the other pictures?"

"That?" He turned round, following her eyes, the boiling kettle steaming in his hands. "Pretty, isn't it?"

They both looked at it—he, without distraction—she, with eyes wandering covertly backwards and forwards to his face. Of course, she admitted its charm. Could she do otherwise?

He poured the hot water into the strainer over the coffeepot, then shutting the lid, he laid the kettle back in the grate and walked across to the miniature, looking long and closely into it. Sally watched him, nostrils slightly distended, lips tightly pressed. In that moment an unwarranted jealousy almost charred her softer feelings with its burning breath.

"There are a good many points in it, you know," he said, turning round, "that bear a strong resemblance to you."

"Oh, but she's very pretty," said Sally.

"And you're not?" He came back to the fireplace; stood there, taking regard of every one of her features with no attempt to conceal the direction of his eyes. "And you're not, I suppose?" he repeated.

She smiled with an effort. "If I were, it 'ud scarcely be for me to say. But I don't think I am. I suppose I'm not ugly. When I'm in good spirits, I sometimes go so far as to think I'm not actually plain. But she's pretty—really pretty." Her eyes pointed in the direction of her last remark.

Traill leant forward, facing her, putting both hands on the arms of the chair in which she was sitting. "So are you," he said quietly, "really pretty."

She was locked in, his hands on the arms of her chair and his body making the bars, against which, even had she wished it, escape were impossible. She tried to take it with a little smile, the ordinary compliment in the ordinary way. But the note in his voice refused to harmonize with that. Her smile was forced, her expression unnatural. And there she was caged, locked in by his eyes and, like a bird in the first moments of its captivity, her heart beat wildly against her breast. It was not because she was afraid—the trust in her mind never failed her for an instant—but she knew that she was captive. Whoever the other woman might be, if his honour, his heart, his whole soul were plighted to her, yet Sally knew that she must love him. There was all the giving, all the yielding, all the passive abandonment in her eyes; and when he saw that, Traill shot upright, forcing his hands to anything they might do.

"That's my sister," he said hurriedly, breaking into conversation—the man pursued and seeking sanctuary. He could not trust himself to look closely at her again. The boiling of the milk was an action of refuge; he crushed the saucepan down on to the glowing coals. She had said he was a gentleman.

"Your sister?" Sally whispered. He did not turn; he did not see her lips twitching in the reaction of relief. He had known nothing of the whirlwind that had been sweeping through her mind. All that play he had lost and yet was no loser. Had he seen the jealous hunger in her heart, it would have pointed the rowels of the spur that was already drawing its blood.

"Yes; she lives down in Buckinghamshire. My father left her the place. She's married. That was done of her when she was twenty."

"Apsley Manor?"

"Yes," he twisted round. "How did you know the name of the place?"

"I saw it in Who's Who?"

"Oh—" He laughed—laughed hard. "Of course, you told me. Yes, Apsley Manor. It's a fine old place."

"I'm sure it is. I've often—tried—to picture it."

"I'll take you there one day to see it."

It was out! Ripped from him on the impulse. How could he take her to see it, if they were not going to meet again after this? But he had never determined that they were not to meet again; only that he would not bring her to his rooms. It amounted to the same thing. He was not the man to let his inclinations fool him. If they met, what was there to keep him from bringing her here? Nothing! He knew he would do it. He hoped then that she would take no notice of his remark; but he hoped in vain. She leapt to it, eyes glinting with delight. To her that offer conveyed everything. She saw herself down there in the country with him, the spring just lifting its promise of life, like a child, out of the cradle of the earth. She heard him telling her that he loved her. She felt herself pledging the very soul that God had given her into the open hollow of his hands. Take no notice of his remark? Her whole instinct lifted to it.

"I don't believe there's anything else I should like so well," she exclaimed intensely.

He inwardly cursed his impulsiveness. "Oh, well, that'll be splendid," he said soberly. "Only it's no good going down at this time of the year. The country now's a grave, a sort of God's acre where only dead things are buried. I can't stand the country at this time of the year."

"No, of course not. It's much too cold now; but in the spring—"

"Yes," he jumped at that—"in the spring. That's the time."

Then he thought so too. Perhaps the same fancies were shaping in his mind as well. She threw back her head, resting it on the chair behind. There was complete happiness in the heart of her. Every breath she took was an unspoken gratitude.

"Do you see your sister often?" she asked, as he handed her her cup of coffee.

"Often? No, once a month perhaps." His lips shut tight, as though the question had been a plea that he should see her more frequently and he were determined to refuse.

"But why is that?" she asked sympathetically. "Doesn't she often come to Town?"

"Oh yes—most part of the year. They've got a small house in Sloane Street, and live there all the winter."

Sally looked at him with troubled eyes—troubled in sympathy because, with the quick wit of a woman in love, she had felt here the need of it. His sister lived in Sloane Street—lived there for the most part of the winter, and he saw but little of her; yet he kept her miniature lovingly in his room. If there is but one woman pictured on his walls, you may be sure a man rates her high. Sally knew all this—knew there was more behind it, yet hesitated to intrude. Another gentle question was rising to her lips, when he volunteered it all.

"My sister and I differ in our points of view," he said without sentiment. "We look at life from hopelessly opposite quarters. That's why I live here. The house, the grounds, they were all left to me when my father died. She was given her legacy in a round sum—not very round either. He wasn't particularly well off. Whatever it was, at any rate, it meant little or nothing to her. The house—the property—they were the only things worth having. I was the eldest son—I got 'em. P'raps this bores you?"

She shook her head firmly—an emphatic negative. "How could you possibly think that?"

"Well, anyhow," he continued, "she was disappointed. She's become—since she married—a woman to whom social power is a jewelled sceptre. Before then, she was what you see in that miniature—a little bit of a child with a pretty face that wanted kissing—and got it. Got it from me as well as others. I was fond of her, even after she married this man—a soldier; he's in the Guards, and after dinner sometimes thinks he has an eye to the situation in politics. Even after that, when she began to lift her head so that you couldn't kiss her and wouldn't have wanted to if you could, I was fond of her. But I hate society—I wouldn't come to her crushes—I wouldn't go to her dinners. These things sicken me. They're as empty as an echo. We fell out a bit over that; but I was living down at the Manor then, and so it didn't actually come to a split. But when the governor died and she found that I'd been left the house which was worth no end to her—socially—and she'd been left the money which really wasn't worth a damn—sorry—that slipped out"—Sally smiled—"she came back to me, arms round the neck—head quite low enough to be kissed then—and did her best to patch the business up. I suppose that rattled me. I could see the value of it. It was just as empty as all the rest of her social schemes. I took her at the valuation, told her she could have the house and I'd take the money, and behaved generally like a young fool. I was only—what? Only twenty-six then. And sham seemed to me the most detestable thing on earth. So Apsley Manor went over to her and I came up to live in London. I don't know really that I regret it so very much. This life suits me in a way, though sometimes it's a bit lonely. That's, at any rate, the gist of the whole business. We see each other sometimes; but her continual efforts to get me to don the uncomfortable garments of social respectability make the meetings as uninviting as when you go to be fitted at a tailor's. I suppose that's a sort of thing you like—you're a woman—but I'm hanged if I do. I'd buy all my clothes ready made if I could be sure that nobody else had worn 'em before. Anyhow, I won't be fitted for social respectability any more often than I can help. By Jove! What's that? Do you hear that noise? It's at the back!"

They strained their ears; lips half parted on which the breath waited, to listen. The sounds, muffled, were broken at moments by a subdued chorus of men's voices.

Traill crossed the room to the door that opened into his bedroom; unlatched it, held it wide. Sally watched his face with half-expectant eyes.

"There's a yard at the back," he said; "my bedroom looks on to it. Excuse me a second." He disappeared. She heard him throw up the window, when the sounds increased in volume. Now she could distinguish individual voices—voices taut, strained to a pitch of excitement. Then Traill's voice, with a strange, stirring voice of vitality keyed in it.

"Sally—here!"

It was not thinkingly said. That there had been no thought, no premeditation, was the fact that stirred her most. In his mind she had been Sally, and in a moment of tensity he had let it shape on his lips. She felt the blood racing through her like a mill-dam loosed. She thought when first she rose to her feet—and it was as though some strong hand had lifted her—that her limbs would refuse obedience. A moment of emotion, that was passivity itself, obsessed her. Then she hurried through into the other room, across to the open window where he stood expectant. There was no thought that it was his bedroom in which they stood—no consideration in her mind of the observance of any narrow laws of propriety. He had asked her. She came.

"This is the cleanest bit of luck," he said, with scarce controlled excitement.

"What is it?" She pressed nearer to the window.

He explained. "This yard at the back belongs to some railway company and two of their men are going to settle a difference of opinion—that's putting it mildly—as far as I can make out they mean business."

"What are they going to do?"

He answered her question by putting another. "You know I told you I belonged to the National Sporting?"

"Are they going to fight?" She caught her breath, forcing back the sense of nausea.

"Yes; bare fists with a definite end in view. Why look here—" He took her arm and gently pulled her to the window where he was standing. "Look here, you see they've even got assistants—those two chaps with towels over their arms. The men are over in that shed—stripping, I suppose. By Jove, if I had thought of an entertainment, I couldn't have got anything more exciting than this for you. Ever seen a fight?"

"No." The word struggled through cold lips.

"P'raps you'd rather not look at this? Don't you hesitate to say so if you think it'll be disgusting."

She caught the note of disappointment. There was no mistaking it. In this moment of excitement, he had become a child—scarce content with seeing the passing show himself, but must drag others with him to share his delight and thereby intensify it.

"I can easily go away if I don't like it," she said.

"Yes—of course you can—of course you can. But you ought just to see the beginning, you ought to really. They'll be as quaint as two waltzing Japanese mice. All these preparations will put them right off at first. They'll be funked utterly and look as if they were trying to break bubbles, then they'll warm up a bit. You should see the novices at the National Sporting on Thursday afternoon. They make the whole house roar with laughter. Talk about Don Quixote and the windmills! You must just see the beginning!"

How could she disappoint or refuse him, though the prospect was a moving horror in her mind? She could close her eyes. He had called her. He wanted her to see it with him. How could she refuse, lessen herself perhaps in his opinion? She leant out upon the window-sill and looked bravely below. Their shoulders were touching—she found even consolation and assistance in that.

"Do you think it'll be long?" she asked in a low voice.

"Don't know; it all depends. I hope it won't be too short. Sure you don't mind?"

She was possessed of that same motive which induces a woman to make light, to make nothing of her pain and her suffering to the man she loves. In such moments—loving deeply—she looks upon it, speaks of it, as a visitation of which she is ashamed. Begs him to forgive her that she suffers. It is an entire abnegation of self. It was so in this matter with Sally.

"I'm quite sure," she replied, as she held, with tightening hands and knuckles white, upon the window-sill.



CHAPTER XVI

The two men emerged from the shed where they had put away their coats. They were stripped to the waist. The couple of lamps that the yard provided, lit up their skin—sickly yellow—and the surrounding houses flung shadows in confusion.

"They'll have a job to hit straight," said Traill, tensely. His eyes were riveted before him. He did not look at her, did not see her white, drawn face. She raised her head, gazing at the black, leaden patch of sky that was to be seen through the muddle of roofs and walls. A wondering crossed her mind of all the horrible sights and scenes that were being enacted under that same impenetrable curtain of darkness which hung over everything. She rubbed her hand across her eyes, but could not wipe it out.

When she looked back again, the men were surrounded by their little groups of supporters—not more than half a dozen in each party. All but the two combatants were talking in excited undertones—giving advice—saying what they would do—standing on tiptoe and talking over each other's shoulders—pushing those away who came between them and the expression of their own opinions. And in the centre of each of these groups stood the two who were about to be at each other's throats. Except for their bared shoulders, dazzling patches of light against the dark clothes of the men surrounding them—they looked the least aggressive in the crowd. They said nothing. Their heads bent forward listening to the medley of voices that hummed unintelligibly in their ears, and their eyes roamed from one face to another, or through the clustering of heads to the other crowd beyond.

"Told you they'd be funked by all this ceremony," said Traill. "They're beginning to wish it was over, I should think. Hang it, why don't they begin? They'll get so cold it'll be like beating frozen meat."

Sally looked at him in amazement. All the hardness, all the cruelty, she saw then. But it did not succeed in turning her from him. She stood wondering at her own passive consent, yet could not bring herself to risk his offence by declaring that she would not stay. Of his selfishness, she saw nothing. Had his attitude in the affair been pointed out to her as frankly inconsiderate, she would have denied it with fervour. Inconsiderate? It was only her weakness of spirit. Why should he be blamed for that? If she loathed the sight of what was taking place before her, then just as surely he revelled in it. Why should he be expected to give way to her? She would give way to him—willingly—freely—without question or doubt.

Now, as she looked again, a man had stepped out of the crowd holding a watch in his hand. There was a tone of command in his voice. It was evidently he who was the master of ceremonies.

"I've seen that chap at the National Sporting," said Traill, quickly. "I guessed there must be some system about this. You see, he's going to act as timekeeper and referee."

"Come on," exclaimed the man referred to. "I ain't goin' to wait 'ere the 'ole bloomin' night. Get a move on for Gawd's sake. If you ain't made all yer bets, yer'll 'ave ter do it after the show's begun. Come on an' bloody-well shake 'ands and start."

Even when that word was uttered, loathsome enough in itself for a woman's ears, yet indicative of many worse that were to come, Traill did not think of Sally. She glanced at him when she had heard it, remembering what he had once said to her—"I belong to the National Sporting—because there's a beast in every man—thank God!"

The two combatants sifted their way out of the little crowds. They came slowly towards each other, rubbing their bare arms to encourage the circulation. Neither the one nor the other seemed anxious for what was to come. Sally looked tremblingly at their faces and shuddered. One of them was clean-shaven, the other wore a moustache. Both had the deep blue shadows of the day's growth of beard upon the chin and, in that morbid yellow lamplight, their eyes were sunk in hollows dull and black as charcoal.

"Now, who's attending to Morrison?" said the master of ceremonies.

Two men stepped forward out of the crowd.

"Well—get over there at that side. Got yer towels? And the men for Tucker? Come on! Come on!"

He relegated them to their positions, and the little group of men fell away, leaving the two antagonists alone in an open space.

"Now shake 'ands, gentlemen, please," said the master. "'Urry up for Gawd's sake—I'm getting stiff, I am."

They made no motion of obedience, and he looked from one to the other. Even from their window, they could see in his face the clouds of the storm that was about to burst.

"Oh, I can understand now," exclaimed Traill, in an undertone. He addressed the remark to Sally, but his face scarcely turned in her direction. "You see, these chaps have a quarrel and they're going to fight it out under rules and regulations. They've got this fellow who knows something about boxing—at least I presume he does—to come and manage the affair. Probably he knows nothing of the quarrel. He expects them to shake hands, but I'm hanged if they're going to. By Jove! There'll be a mess here if the police get to hear anything."

"But why should they shake hands if they're going to fight?" asked Sally, forcing spurious interest. So she bled herself—sapping vitality to give him pleasure. And he took it—as a man will—unconscious of receiving anything.

"Why? Oh—it's the rules of boxing. The whole thing is supposed to be done in a friendly spirit. These chaps down here would probably cut each other's throats for a song. What's the good of their shaking hands?"

The combatants were still standing reluctant. It seemed for the moment as if the whole affair were about to topple over into a state of confusion.

"Go on, Jim," urged one man in the ring; "shake 'ands wiv 'im. Damn 'is eyes—'e's a gen'leman—ain't 'e? Go 'arn, shake 'ands."

"Look 'ere," said the master, "if there's any of yer blasted bunkum about this, yer can damn well see to it yourselves. I won't touch yer bloody money."

The words shuddered through Sally's ears.

"Go 'arn, Jim, shake 'ands. Can't yer see 'e'll drop the 'ole bloomin' show if yer don't, an' damn it, I've got a couple o' bob on yer. Shake 'ands, can't yer!"

Jim came reluctantly forward into the centre of the ring with a knotted hand held grudgingly before them. The other took it and dropped it as if it were filth.

"That's right," said the master, "now, come on. Two minutes a round—minute wait. Not more 'n ten rounds. And God save us if the coppers don't 'ave us by then. Come up—up with yer flippers! Time!" He tipped a leering wink to the crowd.

The two men edged together, their arms bent in defensive, one clenched fist held menacingly before them. Sally tried to take her eyes away, but a morbid fascination held them. The anticipation of that first blow dragged her as the butcher drags his sheep to the shambles. Every glance she stole in their direction was reluctant; but all power of volition seemed to have left her. The sight of those two half-stripped bodies, gleaming in the gas-light, had concentrated in her eyes. At that moment they filled, obsessed her vision.

"There's not much style about them," muttered Traill. He was leaning far out now, his elbows on the window-sill, his hands supporting his face—the attitude of concentrated interest. "You'll see, they'll go on dancing round each other like this for the whole of the first round. Just what I said—Japanese dancing mice."

So they sidled, ridiculous to see, had it not been in such vivid earnest. Now one feinted a blow, then the next. At each lurching attempt Sally caught the breath in her throat. It freed itself automatically with the lack of tension.

At last in a moment of over-balance—a blow from one of them that struck air and pitched the striker forward—they rushed together, each grunting like swine as the breath was driven out of them. Sally clutched the curtain at her side. Her fingers tore at the fabric.

"Break away, break away!" called the master; and when neither of them loosed his hold for fear the other would strike, he took him whom they called Jim by the shoulder and pushed him bodily backwards. The other followed him with a blow like the arm of a windmill in a gale. Traill chuckled with delight between his hands.

"Time!" called the master, and Jim, striking a futile blow that glanced harmlessly off the shoulder of his opponent, at which the little ring sent up its titter of laughter, they returned to their attendants.

Traill looked round. "What I said, you see," he remarked; "not one blow went home in the first round. Yet they're fanning them with towels—ridiculous, isn't it?" In the excitement of his interest, he spoke to her as though she were as well acquainted with the manners of the ring as he.

Once more they were called into the open. Once more they slouched forward with the advice that their backers had poured into their ears still gyrating in a wild confusion in their minds. That one minute had seemed interminable to Sally; yet she realized how small a speck of time it must have appeared to them.

"Do you think they'll hit each other this time?" she whispered.

"Well, let's hope so," said Traill. "It's pretty dull as it is. There isn't much sport in this sort of thing if you can't hit straight. Oh, one of them'll land a blow presently. They want warming, that's all."

His words sounded far away but absolutely distinct. She scarcely recognized in them the man whom she had been talking to but half an hour before. His whole expression of speech was different. The lust of this spirit of animalism was uppermost. He was a different being; yet still she clung to him. "There's a beast in every man, thank God!" Just those few words chased in circles through her brain. They had meant nothing to her; she had barely understood them before. Now they lived with reality, and so deeply had his influence penetrated into the very heart of her desire, that she knew she would not have had him different.

Then her eyes dragged back to the scene below her. The men were still sparring; waiting—as Traill had said—for the first falling blow to heat their blood to boiling. At last it fell. Jim Morrison, in a false moment of vantage, rushed in, head down, arms drawn back like the crank shafts of some unresisting engine, ready to deal the crushing body blows. Sally's eyes were wide in a gaping stare. She expected to see the other fall, waited to hear the grunt of the breath as it crushed out of him. But it did not come. She did not try to think how it happened; she only saw Morrison's head shoot upwards from a blow that seemed to rise from the earth. For a moment he poised before his man, head lifted, eyes on the second dazed with the concussion. And then fell Tucker's second blow—the heavy lunge of the body, the thump of the right foot as it came down upon the stroke, and the lightning flash of that bare left arm as it shot through the ugly shadows and found its mark. Sally heard the thud, the void, hollow sound as when the butcher wields his chopper on the naked bone. She saw one glimpse of the bloody face as it fell out of the circle of light into the shadows that hung about the ground, and the little cry that drove its way between her teeth was drowned by Traill's exclamatory delight.

"Good left!" he called out excitedly; "follow it up, man! Follow it up! Don't let him forget it!" Through the fogged haze of sensation, in which for the moment she was almost lost, Sally heard the sudden cessation of voices below. She heard the scurrying of feet and Traill's low chuckle of ironical laughter.

"It's all right!" he called to them. "Go on as far as I'm concerned. I'm nothing to do with the police. You know your own job better than I do. I don't want to interfere with it. Go on."

The voices commenced their chattering again, through which excitement, like a wandering bee, hummed a moving note.

"You won't make any fuss, will yer, mister?" the master's voice could be heard saying.

"I? Make a fuss? No; why the devil should I? Go on!"

"Third round!" said the master.

Then for a moment Sally's eyes opened. In one of the corners sat Morrison on the knee of an attendant, who was sponging the blood from his face, whilst another flapped a towel before him. She took a deep breath as he rose slowly to his feet and came forward to meet his man. Directly the shuffling sound of feet began again, she closed her eyes once more, holding with fingers numbed and cold to the fringe of the curtain beside her. All the sounds then trooped in pictures before her mind. When she heard the stamp of the foot, the dull slapping thud of the heavy blow, and the moaning rush of breath, she saw that bleeding face falling out of the sickly lamplight into the sooty shadows.

At last she could bear it no longer. Her imagination was gloating in her mind over the horrors that it drew. She forced her eyes to look. It was better to see the worst than conjure still worse terrors in her mind. She let her sight rush to those two half-naked bodies; it sped unerringly to the spot like a filing of iron to the magnet's teeth.

Now Tucker had regained the advantage which that momentary interruption of Traill's had lost him. His man was swaying before him as a sack of sawdust swings inert to the vibrating motion of speed. His blows were falling short and fast. No great force was behind them. He had no time to give them force. But they were bewildering—the stones of hail upon the naked eyes. Morrison dropped slowly and slowly backwards, one staggering step at a time; his defenceless arms held feebly like broken straws before his face. From nose to chin, from chin to neck, and from the neck in a spreading stream across his chest, the blood—black in that light—trickled like molten glue. In his eyes, she could see that questioning glare, the stupid senseless gaze of a man drunk with exhaustion. And still the blows fell to the murmuring accompaniment of that gloating crowd—fell steadily, shortly, tappingly, like the beating of a stick upon dead meat.

"He's got him now, by Jove! he's got him now," she just heard Traill muttering, and then the yellow lamplight slowly went out into the shadows; the deep, black curtain of the sky slowly descended over the whole scene; she felt a cold wind full of moisture fanning gently upon her forehead and her lips; she heard the muffled sounds going further and further away as though some great hand were spreading a black velvet cloth over it all; then Traill heard her uncomplaining moan, and felt the dead weight of her senseless body as it lurched against his own.



CHAPTER XVII

There are men of a certain type in this world whose judgment is exceedingly sound when their instincts are not in play, but who, in certain channels, when the senses are at riot, become puerile; the good ship, rudderless, which only rights itself when the storm has passed. They are men without the necessary leaven of introspection. Of themselves, in fact, they know nothing, learn nothing even in the remorse when the deed is done. For first of all, they are men of strength—men who can over-ride, with determination, rough-shod, the hampering results of their follies. Fate and circumstance have no power over them. They make their own destiny; cutting, if necessary, the knots they have tied, with a knife-edge of will that needs but the one clear sweep to set them free.

Of this type—a vivid example—is Traill. The lust of animalism and the determination to possess the woman he once desired, were the two channels, swept into which, he became ungovernable. All clear judgment which he displayed in the management of his work, all foresight which he possessed to a degree in the arrangement of common, mundane affairs, were in such a moment cast out of him. Brute instinct hugged him in its embrace. He lost all sense of honour, who could in other matters be most honourable of all. All sense of pity he left, to become the animal that scents its prey, and stretches limbs, strains heart to reach it. In those moments when the hunger held him, he took the cruelty of the beast into his heart, and drove all else out before it.

When Sally's inert body fell, crushing him against the window recess, he looked down at her white face in the first realization of what he had done. Then he came readily to action; picked her up bodily—a tender, listless weight. In the bend of his arms, he carried her into the other room. An uncushioned settle, no springs, the seat of plain wood, was where he laid her, propping her head, because he knew no better, with a pillow which he brought from the inner room. The sounds from the yard at the back still reached his ears. He strode through to the window and closed it; brought back with him a glass of water, and stood beside the settle, looking down at the slowly disappearing pallor of her face. Her hat was crushed against the pillow as she lay; he sought with blind and clumsy fingers for the hat pins, extracting them gently, with infinite slowness, as though they were fastened in the flesh. When it was free, he took the hat away and laid it on the table. Then he stood again and watched her. She looked asleep. The loosened hair clustered over her ears—soft silk of gold; his hands touched it. Where a few curls fell out, and the candle-light struck through them, the hair was pale yellow—champagne held up to the sun.

Presently, he picked up her hand, the arm hanging a dead weight from her shoulder, the knuckles touching the floor. His fingers closed over the pulse to find it faintly beating. He had been a fool to let her stand there and watch the fight. He might have known. The thought thrust itself into his mind that he would like to meet the woman who could watch the whole thing out, take the lust of it as he did. She might be worth while. But this child—she was nothing more than a child—who fainted at the sight of blood; he felt a tenderness for her. Looking down at her as she lay on the settle before him, he could not conceive himself actually doing her harm. She had called him a gentleman. It seemed as if that stray phrase of hers had taken away all the sting of the desire. She expected him to act as a gentleman; then her expectations should be fulfilled to the letter. The woman who moved him to the deepest force of his nature, was she who knew the brute, not the gentleman in him, and bowed herself in supine submission. And as he stood and watched her there, slowly creeping back through the faintest tinges of colour to consciousness, he little imagined that Sally was the very woman who would so yield herself rather than lose him from her life.

At last she opened her eyes, the dazed, wondering stare that comes after the period of forced unconsciousness.

"Where—where am I?" she whispered.

"Here—my rooms—you fainted."

"Fainted? Why?"

"I don't know;" he knelt down beside her, all tenderness and apology. "The fight, I suppose; we were looking on at that fight outside, at the back. I never thought—I was a brute—it never entered my head for a moment. Here, take a sip of this water, while I go and get you some brandy."

He put the glass in her hand, laced her cold fingers round it, and hurried across to a cupboard in one of the oak cabinets. She was sipping the water bravely when he returned. He took the glass from her, emptied nearly all the contents away into the coal-scuttle—the first receptacle that came to his hand—and poured in the neat spirit.

"Now drink a few sips of this," he said.

She put it to her lips, then lowered her hand again.

"You're really very kind to me," she said in gratitude.

"Kind! Not a bit. Go on—drink it."

She drank a little, obediently, and the points of light came back again into her eyes, the colour burnt once more with a little fevered glow in her cheeks. Then she sat up suddenly with the glass gripped tightly in her hand.

"Oh, what a fool you must think I am," she exclaimed bitterly, "to make a scene like this, the very first evening that you bring me to your rooms. I am so sorry, so awfully sorry."

He looked at her in wonder. "Great heavens!" he said. "There's nothing to be sorry about. If any one should be sorry, it ought to be myself. I let you in for it. I suppose it is a filthy sight, when you're not accustomed to it."

"Yes, but you must think me so weak. And I'm not weak really; I'm very strong."

He saw part of the pathos of this, but not all of it. He did not realize that she was pleading for herself with all the earnestness of her soul. He had no subtlety of mind, and the fact was too subtle for him to grasp that the whole scene which had taken place with that other woman in his rooms upstairs was being re-enacted, but with a different motive. That woman had fought for his money, his protection for her future. Sally was warring against the frailty of her body for his love. Of his selfishness, she had seen nothing. His cruelty, that she had seen; the beast in the every-man, that she had realized as well.

But in the components of a woman there may always be found that unswerving subjection to the lower nature of the man. It is a passive submission—for which we have much to be thankful—taking upon itself in its most extreme form, no more definite expression than the parted lips, eyes glazed with passion, and the body inert in its total abandonment.

It is foolish, therefore, to say that man, in that lower animalism of his nature, is alone in the supposed God-creation of his likeness to the divinity. The very instinct itself would die out were there not in woman the passive echo to answer to its call. Divine he may be; in every man there is the possibility, the nucleus, of divinity; but it has not yet shaken off the beast of the fields which blindly, obstinately, without intelligence, hinders the onward path of its progress.

It was this part of her nature, then, in Sally that answered to the display of the lower instincts in Traill. By reason of that part of her, she understood it; by reason of it also, and because she loved him, she was neither thwarted nor dismayed in her desire to win him to herself.

"I do hate myself for doing that!" she exclaimed afresh, when she had finished the brandy he had poured out for her. "Did I say anything foolish, silly—did I? Oh, I hope I didn't. What happened?"

Traill laughed good-naturedly at her apprehension.

"You didn't say a word; you just moaned and tumbled off. Pitched against me. If I hadn't been there, you'd have fallen clean on to the floor and perhaps hurt yourself."

She sat up, then rose unsteadily to her feet. "I am much better now!" she declared eagerly.

He watched her incomprehensively as she walked across the floor, her knees loose to bear her weight, her lips twitching, and her hands doing odd little things with no meaning in them. It was forced upon him then, the wondering why she was trying so hard to hide her weakness. He would have imagined that a woman would like to be made a fuss of, petted, looked after; to be allowed to lie prone upon a couch, emitting little moans of discomfort to attract sympathy. And he, himself, would have been quite willing to give it. But now, he came to the conclusion more than ever that she was not a woman who cared for the closest relationship. Such a moment as this had been an excellent opportunity for a woman to have forced sentiment into the position, and dragged it on from there to intimacy, to have put out her hand to touch him, seemingly for comfort, but in reality with an hysterical desire for some demonstration of affection. Sally had done none of these things. With a giant effort she had struggled against her inertia. There she was before him, walking up and down the room, talking anything that came into her head with forced courage, feigning a strength which any fool could see she did not possess.

At last his wonder dragged the question from him. "Why are you going on like this?" he asked suddenly.

She stopped abruptly in her walking, turned and faced him with lips trembling and fingers picking at the braid upon her dress.

"Like what?"

"Like this. Walking up and down the room. Trying to talk all sorts of courageous nonsense, and showing how utterly unnerved you are in everything you say."

"I'm not unnerved!" Her hand wandered blindly to the table near which she was standing. She leant on it imperceptibly for support. "I'm not unnerved," she repeated.

"But you are, my dear child. And why should you want to hide that from me?"

She stood there, swaying slightly, taking deep breaths to aid her in her effort.

"Well, I assure you I feel absolutely all right now. I'm not a bit weak now! I know I was ridiculously foolish—"

"Yes, that's the point I want to get at," he interrupted; "that's just the point I want to get hold of." He did not even appreciate his want of consideration then in pressing her to answer. "Why do you call it foolish? It was I who was foolish; I, entirely, who am to blame. I ought to have known that that was not a fit sight for any woman not accustomed to look on at such things. And because you can't stand it, you call yourself foolish."

Sally walked with an effort across to the armchair with the rushed seat and sank quietly into it.

"I only mean it was foolish," she explained, "because it was a silly thing to do, the first time that I come to your rooms, for me to faint like that. Do you think you'll feel inclined to ask me again? Isn't it natural that a man should hate a scene of that kind? I only hope that you won't think I easily faint; I don't; I've never—"

Traill leant forward on his knees. Understanding was dawning in him, it burnt a light in his eyes.

"Do you want to come again, then?" he asked.

So keen was he upon getting his answer, that he could not see the climax of hysteria towards which he was bringing her. But against that she was fighting, most fiercely of all. Like the rising water in a gauge, it was leaping in sudden bounds within her. But to break into tears, to murmur incoherently between laughter and sobbing that it could not be helped, but she loved him, wildly, passionately, would give every shred of her body into his hands if he would but take it—against this, in the sweating of her whole strength, she was battling lest he should guess her secret.

"Do you want to come again, then?" he repeated, when she continued to look at him with frightened eyes, saying nothing.

"Yes, of course; of course I do."

"But why—why?" he insisted.

This reached the summit of his cruelty—blind cruelty it may have been—but it dragged her also to the climax of her mood. Like the falling of the Tower of Babel, with its crumbling of dust and its confusion of tongues, she tumbled headlong from her pinnacle of strength.

"Oh, don't, please!" she moaned, and then in torrents came the tears; in an incoherent toppling of sound, the little cries of her weeping rushed from her; and Traill, hurled from the sling of impulse, was kneeling at her feet.

"I'm awfully sorry," he kept on saying; "I'm awfully sorry."

Even then he but vaguely understood, had not rightly guessed the verge upon which she was treading. It was not that she feared he might guess the secret in her heart. If, as she half believed, he loved her too, what real harm could be done by that? It was the fear that, in this unsexing moment of hysteria, she might lose all control, pitch all reserve and modesty into the flood-tide of her emotions, and lose him for ever in the unnatural whirlwind of her passion. Against that she fought, needing only the release from the tension of his questions. When he began, in his futile efforts to make amends, to ply them again, she rose hurriedly to her feet.

"Can I go into the other room for a moment?" she asked; "or will you go and leave me here alone—just for a minute or two?"

He stood up. "I'll do anything you like," he said.

"Then, go—just for a moment."

The door had scarcely closed behind him before she sank back again into the chair, shaking with the passion of tears. When they ran dry, she rose and crossed the room to the window, throwing it open. The cold air blew refreshingly on to her face. She pressed back the hair from her temples to let it reach her forehead. It was like ice-water on the burning pulses of her nerves. She took deep breaths of it, thankful from her heart for the release. When, at last, Traill knocked upon the door, she could turn with brave assurance and bid him enter. He came in with questioning eyes that lost their querulousness the moment they had found her face.

"You're better?" he said at once.

"Yes." She smiled reassuringly. "I'm absolutely all right now."

He looked at her eyes, red with weeping. He knew she had been crying—had heard her sobs from the other room. Part of her secret then, at least, he had realized. She was fond of him. How fond, it would be more or less impossible to divine; but it must be nipped there—strangled utterly—if he were to fulfil her expectations of him. What it was that pressed him to the sacrifice, he could not actually say; unless it were that it appealed to his better nature as a thing of shame to do otherwise. She would marry him, he felt sure of that. But marriage, with all its accompanying conventions and indissoluble bonds—indissoluble, except through the loathsome medium of the divorce court—was a condition of life that his whole nature shrank from. He refused it utterly. This girl—this little child—perhaps saw no other termination to their acquaintance than that of marriage, and either this thought had become a brake upon his desire, or he wished, in the honesty of his heart, to treat her well; whatever it was, there was not that in his mind which made him determine to be the one to teach her otherwise.

"Well, now sit down, don't stand about," he said kindly. "You can't be really as strong as you think yet, and I've got something I want to say to you. Take this chair, it's about the most comfortable there is here, and I'll get that pillow for your back."

His voice was soft—gentle even—in the consideration that he showed. To himself, he was striving to make amends; to her, he was that tenderness which she knew lay beneath the iron crust of his harder nature.

When she was seated, when he had placed the pillow at her back, he took a well-burnt pipe—the well-burnt pipe that he had smoked before under other circumstances than these—and filled it slowly from a tobacco jar.

Sally watched all his movements patiently, until she could wait for his words no longer.

"What have you to say?" she asked.

He lit the pipe before replying; drew it till the tobacco glowed like a little smelting furnace in the bowl, and the smoke lifted in blue clouds, then he rammed his finger on to the burning mass with cool intent, as though the fire of it could not pain him.

From that apparently engrossing occupation, he looked up with a sudden jerk of his head.

"You mustn't come here again," he said, without force, without feeling of any sort.

She leant back against the pillow, holding a breath in her throat, and her eyes wandered like a child that is frightened around the room, passing his face and passing it again, yet fearing to rest upon it for any appreciable moment of time.

When she found that he was going to say no more, she asked him why. Just the one word, breathed rather than spoken, no complaint, no rebellion, the pitiable simplicity of the question that the man puts to his Fate, the woman to her Maker.

"Why?"

He at least was holding himself in harness that she knew nothing of—the curb and snaffle, with the reins held tightly across fingers of iron.

"Why?" he repeated. "If you don't know human nature, would it be wise, do you think, for me to spell it out to you?"

She knit her brows, trying to see, trying to think, but finding nothing save the blank and gaping question. Through her mind it swept, that her fainting was some cause of it. She could not really believe that that could have brought so much abhorrence to his mind; yet she tried it. To say anything, to propose any cause, she struggled for that in order to know the why.

"It was because I fainted?" she said quickly. "You hate a woman to be weak; I know I was weak; you hate scenes of that sort. Do you think I can't understand it?" She worked herself into the belief that this was the reason, and her spirit of defence rose with it. "Of course I can understand. If I were a man, I should hate it too! But you're quite wrong if you think I shall get unnerved again, as I did this—"

"It's not that at all!" he said firmly. "Do you think I'm such a fool, do you even think I'm such a brute as to blame you, to think poorly, inconsiderately of you for something that was entirely my own fault? I shouldn't have let myself be carried away by the excitement of that fight. There are many things I shouldn't have done beside that. I shouldn't have stopped as I passed along King Street that night. When I saw that little gold head of yours in the window, I should have gone on, taken no notice. I shouldn't have followed, I shouldn't have spoken to you as I did."

"But why?" she entreated.

He gripped the bowl of his pipe in his fingers. "For the very reason you gave me yourself, on the 'bus that day, and afterwards when we were having lunch together."

"What was that?"

"That I didn't know you."

She looked her bewilderment. "I don't understand," she said simply.

"Then I can explain no further. We must leave it at that."

"Oh! but why can't you explain?" She had nearly added, "When it means so much to me," but shut her teeth, drew in her breath on the words, inducing the physical act to aid her in preventing their utterance.

"I think you would be—perhaps sorry—perhaps hurt—if I did."

"I'm sure I wouldn't—and I'd sooner know."

He looked at her fixedly as the pendulum of decision swung in his mind. To tell her would be to crush it, kill it utterly, the blow of the sword of Damocles falling at last—falling inevitably. He knew how she would take it; just as she had taken his advances to her on the 'bus that night. Did he think that of her? Was that all the depth of their acquaintance! Oh, she loathed him! Therefore, why let it end that way? Why not with this little mystery in her mind, which would not prevent their sometimes meeting again, even if she never came to his rooms?

He stood up from the table, crossed the room to where her hat was lying and picked it up.

"It's nearly eleven," he said quietly. "You'd better think of getting home."

She took the hat from him, then the pins. He watched her silently as she secured it to her head, not even appealing to him if it were straight. Slowly she drew on her gloves, shivering as her fingers fitted into the cold skin.

"I'm ready," she said, when all these things were done.

Traill went the round of the candles, blowing them out one by one, until the scent of the smoking wick was pungent in the air. Before the last, he stopped.

"You get to the door," he said.

Instead of obeying him, Sally walked firmly across to his side.

"We're not to meet again?" she asked.

"I didn't say that."

"But you will never bring me up to your rooms here again? As far as that goes, it finishes here?" She did not even stop to wonder at herself. The fears of losing him were spurs in her side.

"Yes."

"Then if you have any respect for me, you'll tell me why?"

"It's because I have respect for you, I suppose, that I don't tell you."

She stepped back from him. "Is it anything about me?" she asked, "or—or about yourself that you cannot tell me?" Then it was that she feared he had discovered her love for him and loathed her for the disclosing of her secret.

In this persistent determination of Sally's, Janet would scarcely have recognized her. But she was driven, the hounds of despair were at her heels. In such a moment as this, any woman drops the cloak and stands out, limbs free, to win her own.

"Is it about yourself?" she repeated.

Another suspicion now that he was married—engaged—bound in some way from which there was no escape—was throbbing, like the flickering shadow that a candle casts, in a deeply-hidden corner of her mind. She dared not let it advance, dared not let it become a palpable fear, yet there it was. And all this time, Traill was looking at her with steady eyes, behind which the pendulum was once more set a-swinging.

Should he tell her, should he not? Should he rip out the knife that would cut this knot which circumstances seemed to be tying?

"You want to know exactly what it is," he said suddenly. "Then it's this. I'm not the type of man who marries. I've seen marriage with other men and I've seen quite enough of it. My sister's married; marriage has the making of women as a rule, it gives them place, power, they want that—so much the better for them. With marriage, they get it. My sister has often tried to persuade me to marry, drop my life, adopt the social entity, and worship the god of respectability. I'd sooner put a rope round my neck and swing from the nearest lamp-post. And so, you see, I'm no fit company for you. I don't live the sort of life you'd choose a man to live. I'm not really the sort of man you take me for in the least. At dinner, this evening, you called me a gentleman. I'm not even the sort of gentleman as you understand him; though I've been trying to live up to my idea of the genus, ever since you said it. My dear Sally"—he took her hand—she let him hold it—"you don't know anything about the world, and I don't want to teach you the lesson that I suppose some man or circumstances will bring you to learn one day. Take my advice and have no truck with me."

He blew out the last remaining candle, took her arm and led her to the door. They walked down the one flight of stairs together, their footsteps echoing up through the empty house; out on the pavement he called a hansom, held his arm across the wheel as she stepped in; turned to the cabby, gave him his fare, told him Waterloo Station; then he leant across the step of the cab and held out his hand.

"Good-bye, Sally," he said.

She tried to answer him, but her words were dry and clung in her throat.



CHAPTER XVIII

The hour of twelve was tolling out across the water from the little church on Kew Green, when Sally fitted her borrowed latch-key into the door. She had performed the journey back to Kew Bridge in a stupor of mind that could hold no single thought, review no single event with any clearness of vision. It was as if not one evening, but three days, had passed by since she had left the office of Bonsfield & CO.—the day they had dined together—the day on which they had watched that terrible fight—the day, the last of all, when she had awakened from unconsciousness, had struggled through a cruel agony of mind, and had finally said good-bye to him for ever. How was it possible, with the length, breadth and depth of three days all crushed into the microscopic space of five hours—a dizzy whirling acceleration of time—how was it possible for her to think logically, consecutively, to even think at all? She could not think. She had lain back in the carriage, her head lax against the cushions, and simply permitted the whole procession of events, like some retreating army with death at its heels, to stagger across her brain. Down the old river-path to the Hewsons' house, she had walked as if asleep, the glazed eyes of the somnambulist, staring in front, but seeing nothing. Up to her bedroom she had climbed with but one thought in her mind, the fear of waking any one. She had struck a match outside the door, lest the scratching of it in the room should rouse Janet. Such considerations as these her mind could grasp. It needed a night of sleep to nurse her comprehension back to all that she had been through. As yet, she was unable to realize it.

One by one, she took off her clothes, in the same mechanical way as she would have done if she had returned exhausted from working overtime at the office. When she put on her night-dress, she knelt down unpremeditatedly upon the floor, held her hands together, and looked up to the ceiling, watching a fly that was braving the cold of winter, as it crept in a sluggish, hibernated way across the white plaster. When she rose to her feet and blew out the candle, she was under the vague impression that she had said her prayers. Then she climbed into bed, pulled the clothes about her, and, as her hand touched the pillow, its softness, the remembrance of the many nights when in loneliness she had wept herself to sleep, all rushed back with their thousand associations, and the dam against her soul broke. The flood of tears poured through, and she sobbed convulsively.

Suddenly then, with a grasp of the breath, she stopped, though the tears still toppled down. She had heard her name.

"Sally—"

It was Janet. Before she could resist, before she could explain, two thin arms were clasped round her breast and a close, warm body was next to hers.

"What is it, Sally—little Sally? tell Janet—tell Janet—whisper—"

The passionate sobbing, which had begun again immediately Sally knew it was Janet, commenced now to break into uneven, uncontrolled breaths, that by degrees became quieter and quieter as Janet whispered the fond, meaningless things into her ear. Meaningless? They would have had no meaning to any who might have overheard; but in Sally's heart, as it was meant they should be, they were charged to the full—a cup beneath an ever-flowing fountain that brims over—with such kindness and sympathy, as only a woman of Janet's nature knows how to bestow to another and more gentle of her sex.

"Are you unhappy, Sally?" she asked, when, from the sounds of her weeping, she had become more rational.

There was no answer.

"Are you, Sally?"

"Yes, frightfully—frightfully! Oh, I wish I hadn't got to go on." It was rent from her heart, torn from her. All the spirit in her was broken—crushed.

"But why, my darling? Why?" The thin arms held her tighter, warm lips kissed her neck and shoulders. "Did he treat you badly—did he?"

"No!"

Janet gleaned much in the directness of that answer.

"Doesn't he care for you?"

She knew then that Sally cared for him.

"I don't know. How could I know?"

"He hasn't told you so, one way or the other?"

"No."

"But you think he doesn't?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"Then what makes you so frightfully unhappy?"

"Because I'm never going to see him again."

The words were thick, choked almost in her throat.

"Oh, then he doesn't care," said Janet, softly.

"Yes, he does!" retorted Sally, wildly. "He does care, only—only—"

"Only what?"

"Only, he thinks too little of himself and—and too much of me. He says he's not the sort of man I ought to have anything to do with"—the words were rushing from her now—the torrent of earth that a landslip sets free. "He never wants to marry, he hates the conventionalities and the bonds of marriage like you say you do. And he asked me to forgive him for thinking I was different—different—to what he had expected. He said he ought never to have spoken to me in the first instance, and that it was his fault, and he blamed himself entirely for what had happened. Then he took me downstairs and put me in a hansom and said good-bye. And—I'm not to see him—any more."

It was a pitiable little story, pitiably told; punctuated with tears and choking breaths, with no heed for effect, nor attempt to make it dramatic or sadder than it already was.

When she had finished, she lay there, crying quietly in Janet's arms, all courage gone, all vitality sapped from her.

For a long time Janet waited, thinking it all through. Then she whispered in Sally's ears.

"And you love him, Sally?"

The heavy sigh, so deep drawn that it seemed to strain down to her heart—that was answer enough. What further answer need she give? Sighs, tears, the catch in the breath, the look in the eyes, the look from the eyes—those are the language in which a woman really speaks. Words, she uses to hide them.



CHAPTER XIX

If you look into life, you will find that the key-note of every woman's existence is love—the broad, the great, the grand passion. She may take up a million causes, champion a thousand aims; but the end that she reaches—is love. To fail in such an end—to lose the grasp of it when once it might have been hers—this is the most bitter of aloes; gall that eats into her blood and corrodes her clearest vision. A man, forging destinies, is a king, to be mated only with a woman who loves.

There are exceptions; but these are not needed to prove the rule; for there hangs even some doubt, like a fly in the amber, in the history of Jeanne D'Arc, the most patent an example of them all. Yet whether, as some chronicles would say, she was never burnt as a witch, but smuggled into the country, and there mated in love—and it would seem a shame unpardonable to rob history of a great martyr and the Church of Rome of a saint—it makes no odds in the counting. Great women have loved greatly—lesser women have loved less—but all who are of the sex have made the heart their master, and obeyed it whenever it has truly called.

So it had come to Sally. Beyond all doubt, she loved; beyond all question, she was prepared to obey the faintest call that her heart prompted. Janet, tender to her that night, fondling her and caressing her, answering to her with the very heart that she had tried to stifle within herself, was Janet herself again the next morning. But Sally was unchanged.

She dressed herself silently before the mirror, looking out through the window at the grey river-fog that fell gloomily across the water and Janet lay in bed, her hands crossed behind her head, a cigarette hanging between her lips and the smoke curling up past her eyes. The school of Art did not open until eleven o'clock that morning. Sally had to be at the office at nine.

"There'll be a fog up in Town," said Janet. She did not take the cigarette out of her mouth. It jerked up and down with the words.

"Sure to be," Sally replied.

"Suppose Mr. Traill will come and take you out to lunch?"

Sally turned quickly. "I told you last night," she said bitterly. "We shan't see each—"

"Oh yes, I know that. But do you think he means it?"

"I'm sure he does."

"I'm not."

Sally unpinned a coil of her hair and re-arranged it more carefully, unconscious that she did it because Janet had suggested the vague hope in her mind that he might come.

"Why are you so different this morning?" she asked.

Janet brushed away a piece of glowing ash that had fallen like a cloud of dust into one of the hollows below her neck.

"Didn't know I was very different."

"You are."

"Well, I've been thinking—" She threw the end of her cigarette away and jumped out of bed, walking on her heels over the cold, linoleumed floor to the washstand. "I've been thinking," she repeated as she poured out the cold water into the basin—"and as far as I can see"—she dipped her face with a rush into the icy water, and her words became a gurgle of speeding bubbles—"there was really no need for all your crying and misery—heavens! this water'd nip a tenderer bud than I am. Ain't I a bud, Sally?" She laughed and shivered her shoulders as she struggled to work the soap into a lather.

"I never can understand you when you talk like that," said Sally. "I never know whether you really mean what you say."

"Well, I mean every word of it. It's the only time I do mean things, when I talk like that. Where'd you put the towel? We want a clean towel, Sally. I sopped up some tea I spilt with this last night. No—but can't you see, there's no need for you to be so miserable as you think. Men only make a sacrifice when they really love a woman. He'll come back to you, like a duck to the water. You know he will. Do you think if he'd cared for you at all, he'd have given tuppence whether he taught you what most men teach most women. The only woman a man thinks he has no real claim to, is the woman he loves; he believes he has a proprietary right to nearly every other blessed one he meets, and has only got to assert it."

"How do you know these things, Janet? What makes you say them?"

"You mean who's taught me them—eh? What man has ever taken a sufficient interest in me to show me so much of his sex? Isn't that what you mean?"

"No!"

"Oh, I know I'm ugly enough. That glass has a habit of reminding me of it every morning. I could smash that glass sometimes with the back of a hair-brush, only it might break the hair-brush."

"Janet, you're cruel sometimes! Things like that never enter my dreams!" Sally exclaimed passionately.

"Bless your heart," said Janet, "facts never do. You take facts as they come; you act on them instinctively, but you don't realize them. I am ugly. There's no doubt about it. You don't think I'm ugly, but you see I am. That prompts your question without knowing it. But men have made fools of themselves—even over me. There was one man at the school last year—took a fancy to me, I believe because I was so ugly. Just like James II. and the ugly maids-of-honour. I was going to live with him. Can you believe that? And one night at one of the dances, we were kicking up a row a bit—dancing about as if we were lunatics—and my hair fell down—there's not much for a pin to stick into at the best of times. I remember laughing and looking across the room at him. Well, I saw an expression in his eyes that settled it. He looked as if he could see me—just like I know I am—in the mornings when I first wake up—all frowsy and fuddled, with this little bit of a mat I've got, sticking out in tails, about as long as your hand, on the pillow. It takes a bit of courage for a man to even go and live with a woman after he's seen her like that. I assure you it didn't take me much courage to tell him I'd changed my mind."

Sally watched her and the pain that she felt as she listened furrowed her brow into frowns. She knew that there was more than this, more than the bare statement behind this little story. That was Janet's way of putting it, the way Janet made herself look on at life, the apparently heartless aspect in which she viewed everything. To sympathize would only sting her to still more bitter sarcasm. Sally said nothing, the pity was in her eyes.

"I've never told you that before, have I?" said Janet.

"No."

"And I suppose you're terribly shocked because I even ever thought of living with a man?"

"No, I'm not. If you loved him and—and he couldn't marry you."

Out of the corner of her eyes Janet watched her, rubbing her face vigorously with the towel to conceal her observation. In that moment then, she saw the end of Sally, drew the matter out in her mind, as, with hurried strokes, she might have sketched a passing face upon the slip of paper.

"Well, you run on down to breakfast," she said. "You'll be late; it's five minutes to eight."

A whole week passed by, and Sally heard no more of Traill. Every day, when she went out to lunch, or left the office after work was over, she looked up and down King Street in the hope, almost the expectation, of seeing him waiting for her to come. Then the expectation died away; the hope grew fainter and fainter, like a shadow that the sun casts upon the sundial until, at an hour before setting, it is scarcely discernible.

Another week sped its days through. It was as the unwinding of a reel of silk, each day a round, each round and the body of the reel grew thinner and thinner, and the coils of silk lay wasted—entangled on the floor.

Deep shadows settled under Sally's eyes. The disease of love-sickness has its common symptoms, the whole world knows them; the hungry self-interest that wears itself out into a hypochondriacal morbidity; the perverted power of vision, the hopeless want of philosophy; not to mention the hundred ailments of the body that beset every single one who suffers from the complaint.

Janet watched Sally closely through it all until, as the time passed by, even she began to think that her calculations had been at fault.

At last, one morning, there lay on the breakfast-table in the kitchen, a little brown-paper parcel addressed to Sally. She picked it up eagerly and the flame flickered up into her cheeks as she laid it down again, unopened, in her lap. Janet smiled across at her, but said nothing. When breakfast was over, she let Sally go away by herself up to her bedroom, while she remained behind and talked to Mrs. Hewson. Ten minutes, she gave her; then she mounted the stairs as well. She did not knock. She walked straight into the bedroom and there she found Sally, seated near the window, the tears coursing down her cheeks, while she held out her wrist and stared at a woven gold bangle that bore on it her name in diamond letters. By the side of the empty box was a letter, well-folded, so that it could fit within, and on the floor lay the string and the brown paper, just as it had been torn off.

Janet stood in front of her, hands on hips, warmed with the sense of being a prophet in her own country.

"Are you satisfied now?" she asked.

Sally looked up; the pride of the woman in the bauble blent in her eyes with the disappointment of the woman in love.

"Isn't it lovely?" she said pathetically. "Oh, it is lovely. I've never had anything so beautiful before. But I can't keep it. How can I keep it?"

"Can't keep it!" exclaimed Janet. "What are you talking about? Do you think it was given to you to look at and then return? Why shouldn't you keep it? It's got your name on. He can't give it to anybody else, unless there's more than one Sally down his alley, which I should think is very doubtful. What do you mean—you can't keep it? You make me feel like Job's wife."

Sally unclasped the bangle and laid it back in the little velvet box with lingering fingers. Then she picked up the letter.

"Read that," she said.

Janet swept her eyes to it. To her, as she read, it seemed to be the condensation of more than one letter that had been written before. A man, she argued, who gives such a present, is more than probably in love; and a man who is in love, cannot write so directly to the point in his first attempt.

This was the letter:—

"DEAR MISS BISHOP—"

(To call her "Sally" in diamonds and "Miss Bishop" in ink, was ridiculous. Ink was infinitely cheaper; and if he could afford the one, then why not the other?)

"I make it a habit to discharge debts. With this to you, I wipe out my debit sheet and stand clear. You remember my bet on the Hammersmith 'bus. I hope you were none the worse for my foolishness of our last evening. I have regretted my thoughtlessness many times since.

"Yours sincerely, "J. HEWITT TRAILL."

"What foolishness?" asked Janet, looking up quickly at the end. "What did he do?"

Of the fight and her fainting, Sally had told her nothing. She told her nothing now. The fear that Traill might be thought selfish—a thought which love had refused to give entrance to in her own mind—had led her to defend him with silence. Now she told the deliberate lie, unblushingly, unfearingly.

"He did nothing," she replied; "that's only a joke of his. But you see, I can't keep the bangle," she went on quickly, covering the lie with words, as Eugene Aram hid the body of his victim with dead leaves. "I must send it back to him. I never knew he really meant it when he made that bet. I never even thought he meant it when he reminded me of it that day after lunch."

"No more he did mean it," said Janet, sharply. "If he'd seen you again and again—he'd never have paid it—not as he's pretending to pay it now."

"Pretending?"

"Yes."

Sally took up the bangle in her fingers.

"You don't call this pretence, do you?" she asked. "Why, it's worth even much more than he said in his bet. He paid more than ten pounds for this."

"Exactly," said Janet, shrewdly; "doesn't that prove it? If he was only paying his bet, you can make pretty sure that he'd have sent the money and not a penny more than he owed."

"Yes; but do you think he'd do a thing like that?" said Sally, with pride. "He'd know I wouldn't accept it that way."

"Well, perhaps not," Janet agreed; "but then he wouldn't have bought a thing that cost a penny more than ten pounds, if so much. You don't know men when they're parting with money that they've had to whip some one else to get. You say he's not so very well off. At any rate, he wouldn't have given you a thing that cost fifteen or twenty pounds—those diamonds aren't so small—when he only owed you ten."

"But he didn't owe it to me!" Sally interrupted.

"Very well, he didn't. Then why do you think he's sent you this?"

"Because he thinks he does."

"Very well, again; then why does he send you something that's worth so much more?"

Janet folded her arms in a triumph of silence. For a long time Sally could frame no reply. It had seemed, only an hour before, that she would have been so willing to seize at any straw which the tide of affairs should bring her, and now that the solid branch had floated to her reach, she could not find the confidence to throw her whole weight upon it. It was the letter that thwarted her; the letter that warned her from too great a hope.

"But read the letter," she said at last. "Read the letter again. Would he ever have written as abruptly as that if—if what you suggest is right? He might have asked me to—to think sometimes when I wore it—"

"Why? Is he a sentimentalist?"

"My goodness! No!"

"Well, then, he wouldn't. That's a stock phrase of the sentimentalist. The sentimentalist is always thinking, that's all he does, and he breaks his heart over it if other people don't act what he thinks."

"Well, he's not a sentimentalist, certainly."

She even smiled when she thought of his exclamations during the fight.

"What are you smiling at?" asked Janet, quickly. "Something he said?"

"Yes."

"That wasn't sentimental?"

"Yes."

"Well, he certainly wouldn't have told you to think about him when you wore it. I imagine I can guess exactly what sort he is."

"How can you guess?"

"Well, because I know what sort you are, and I fancy I know just the type of man whom you'd fall in love with as rapidly as you've fallen in love with this Mr. Traill. He's hard—he can bend you—he can break you—he can crush you to dust, and there'll still be some wind or other that'ud blow your ashes to his feet. He's all man—man that's got the brute in him, too—and you're all woman, woman that's got the mating instinct in her, and will go like the lioness across the miles of desert, without food and without water, when once she hears the song of sex in the hungry throat of her mate. Oh, it's a pretty little story, too strong for a drawing-room; but Darwin'll tell it you, Huxley'll tell it you. But you'll never read Darwin, and you'll never read Huxley—except in a man's eyes. Oh, I know you think I'm a beast, I know you think I've got no sense of refinement at all, that I might have been a man just as well as a woman. Lord! how your friend Traill would hate me, 'cause he's got all I've got and more—in himself. But I don't care what you say about that letter—the letter's nothing. It's the gift that's the thing. That's the song of sex if you like; and whether you return it, or whether you don't, you'll answer it, as he meant you to. You'll go creeping across the desert, and you won't touch water, and you won't touch food, till you've reached him."