"You are not saying that as part of the trick of making a jest of things?"

"I wish to God I were. The poor huge inhuman thing he has built does not know that when he was a boy he did not play at war and battles as other boys do, but as a creature obsessed. He has played at soldiers with his people as his toys throughout all his morbid life—and he has hungered and thirsted as he has done it."

A Bible lay upon the table and the Duchess drew it towards her.

"There is a verse here—" she said "—I will find it." She turned the pages and found it. "Listen! 'Know this and lay it to thy heart this day. Jehovah is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath. There is none else.' That is a power which does not confine itself to Germany or to England or France or to the Map of Europe. It is the Law of the Universe—and even Wilhelm the Second cannot bend it to his almighty will. 'There is none else.'"

"'There is none else'," repeated Coombe slowly. "If there existed a human being with the power to drive that home as a truth into his delirious brain, I believe he would die raving mad. To him there is no First Cause which was not 'made in Germany.' And it is one of his most valuable theatrical assets. It is part of his paraphernalia—like the jangling of his sword and the glitter of his orders. He shakes it before his people to arrest the attention of the simple and honest ones as one jingles a rattle before a child. There are those among them who are not so readily attracted by terms of blood and iron."

"But they will be called upon to shed blood and to pour forth their own. There will be young things like Donal Muir—lads with ruddy cheeks and with white bodies to be torn to fragments." She shuddered as she said it. "I am afraid!" she said. "I am afraid!"

"So am I," Coombe answered. "Of what is coming. What a FOOL I have been!"

"How long will it be before other men awaken to say the same thing?"

"Each man's folly is his own shame." He drew himself stiffly upright as a man might who stood before a firing squad. "I had a life to live or to throw away. Because I was hideously wounded at the outset I threw it aside as done for. I said 'there is neither God nor devil, vice nor virtue, love nor hate. I will do and leave undone what I choose.' I had power and brain and money. A man who could see clearly and who had words to choose from might have stood firmly in the place to which he was born and have spoken in a voice which might have been listened to. He might have fought against folly and blindness and lassitude. I deliberately chose privately to sneer at the thought of lifting a hand to serve any thing but the cold fool who was myself. Life passes quickly. It does not turn back." He ended with a short harsh laugh. "This is Fear," he said. "Fear clears a man's mind of rubbish and non-essentials. It is because I am AFRAID that I accuse myself. And it is not for myself or you but for the whole world which before the end comes will seem to fall into fragments."

"You have been seeing ominous signs?" the Duchess said leaning forward and speaking low.

"There have been affectionate visits to Vienna. There is a certain thing in the air—in the arrogance of the bearing of men clanking their sabres as they stride through the streets. There is an exultant eagerness in their eyes. Things are said which hold scarcely concealed braggart threats. They have always been given to that sort of thing—but now it strikes one as a thing unleashed—or barely leashed at all. The background of the sound of clashing arms and the thudding of marching feet is more unendingly present. One cannot get away from it. The great munition factories are working night and day. In the streets, in private houses, in the shops, one hears and recognizes signs. They are signs which might not be clear to one who has not spent years in looking on with interested eyes. But I have watched too long to see only the surface of things. The nation is waiting for something—waiting."

"What will be the pretext—what," the Duchess pondered.

"Any pretext will do—or none—except that Germany must have what she wants and that she is strong enough to take it—after forty years of building her machine."

"And we others have built none. We almost deserve whatever comes to us." The old woman's face was darkly grave.

"In three villages where I chance to be lord of the manor I have, by means of my own, set lads drilling and training. It is supposed to be a form of amusement and an eccentric whim of mine and it is a change from eternal cricket. I have given prizes and made an occasional speech on the ground that English brawn is so enviable a possession that it ought to develop itself to the utmost. When I once went to the length of adding that each Englishman should be muscle fit and ready in case of England's sudden need, I saw the lads grin cheerfully at the thought of England in any such un-English plight. Their innocent swaggering belief that the country is always ready for everything moved my heart of stone. And it is men like myself who are to blame—not merely men of my class, but men of my KIND. Those who have chosen to detach themselves from everything but the living of life as it best pleased their tastes or served their personal ambitions."

"Are we going to be taught that man cannot argue without including his fellow man? Are we going to be forced to learn it?" she said.

"Yes—forced. Nothing but force could reach us. The race is an undeveloped thing. A few centuries later it will have evolved another sense. This century may see the first huge step—because the power of a cataclysm sweeps it forward."

He turned his glance towards the opening door. Robin came in with some letters in her hand. He was vaguely aware that she wore an aspect he was unfamiliar with. The girl of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless had in the past, as it went without saying, expressed the final note of priceless simplicity and mode. The more finely simple she looked, the more priceless. The unfamiliarity in her outward seeming lay in the fact that her quiet dun tweed dress with its lines of white at neck and wrists was not priceless though it was well made. It, in fact, unobtrusively suggested that it was meant for service rather than for adornment. Her hair was dressed closely and her movements were very quiet. Coombe realized that her greeting of him was delicately respectful.

"I have finished the letters," she said to the Duchess. "I hope they are what you want. Sometimes I am afraid——"

"Don't be afraid," said the Duchess kindly. "You write very correct and graceful little letters. They are always what I want. Have you been out today?"

"Not yet." Robin hesitated a little. "Have I your permission to ask Mrs. James if it will be convenient to her to let Dowie go with me for an hour?"

"Yes," as kindly as before. "For two hours if you like. I shall not drive this afternoon."

"Thank you," said Robin and went out of the room as quietly as she had entered it.

When the door closed the Duchess was smiling at Lord Coombe.

"I understand her," she said. "She is sustained and comforted by her pretty air of servitude. She might use Dowie as her personal maid and do next to nothing, but she waits upon herself and punctiliously asks my permission to approach Mrs. James the housekeeper with any request for a favour. Her one desire is to be sure that she is earning her living as other young women do when they are paid for their work. I should really like to pet and indulge her, but it would only make her unhappy. I invent tasks for her which are quite unnecessary. For years the little shut-up soul has been yearning and praying for this opportunity to stand honestly on her own feet and she can scarcely persuade herself that it has been given to her. It must not be spoiled for her. I send her on errands my maid could perform. I have given her a little room with a serious business air. It is full of files and papers and she sits in it and copies things for me and even looks over accounts. She is clever at looking up references. I have let her sit up quite late once or twice searching for detail and dates for my use. It made her bloom with joy."

"You are quite the most delightful woman in the world," said Coombe. "Quite."



CHAPTER XXIX



In the serious little room the Duchess had given to her Robin built for herself a condition she called happiness. She drew the spiritual substance from which it was made from her pleasure in the books of reference closely fitted into their shelves, in the files for letters and more imposing documents, in the varieties of letter paper and envelopes of different sizes and materials which had been provided for her use in case of necessity.

"You may not use the more substantial ones often, but you must be prepared for any unexpected contingency," the Duchess had explained, thereby smoothing her pathway by the suggestion of responsibilities.

The girl did not know the extent of her employer's consideration for her, but she knew that she was kind with a special grace and comprehension. A subtle truth she also did not recognize was that the remote flame of her own being was fiercely alert in its readiness to leap upward at any suspicion that her duties were not worth the payment made for them and that for any reason which might include Lord Coombe she was occupying a position which was a sinecure. She kept her serious little room in order herself, dusting and almost polishing the reference books, arranging and re-arranging the files with such exactness of system that she could—as is the vaunt of the model of orderly perfection—lay her hand upon any document "in the dark." She was punctuality's self and held herself in readiness at any moment to appear at the Duchess' side as if a magician had instantaneously transported her there before the softly melodious private bell connected with her room had ceased to vibrate. The correctness of her to deference to the convenience of Mrs. James the housekeeper in her simplest communication with Dowie quite touched that respectable person's heart.

"She's a young lady," Mrs. James remarked to Dowie. "And a credit to you and her governess, Mrs. Dowson. Young ladies have gone almost out of fashion."

"Mademoiselle Valle had spent her governessing days among the highest. My own places were always with gentle-people. Nothing ever came near her that could spoil her manners. A good heart she was born with," was the civil reply of Dowie.

"Nothing ever came NEAR her—?" Mrs. James politely checked what she became conscious was a sort of unconscious exclamation.

"Nothing," said Dowie going on with her sheet hemming steadily.

Robin wrote letters and copied various documents for the Duchess, she went shopping with her and executed commissions to order. She was allowed to enter into correspondence with the village schoolmistress and the wife of the Vicar at Darte Norham and to buy prizes for notable decorum and scholarship in the school, and baby linen and blankets for the Maternity Bag and other benevolences. She liked buying prizes and the baby clothes very much because—though she was unaware of the fact—her youth delighted in youngness and the fulfilling of young desires. Even oftener and more significantly than ever did eyes turn towards her—try to hold hers—look after her eagerly when she walked in the streets or drove with the Duchess in the high-swung barouche. More and more she became used to it and gradually she ceased to be afraid of it and began to feel it nearly always—there were sometimes exceptions—a friendly thing.

She saw friendliness in it because when she caught sight as she so often did of young things like herself passing in pairs, laughing and talking and turning to look into each other's eyes, her being told her that it was sweet and human and inevitable. They always turned and looked at each other—these pairs—and then they smiled or laughed or flushed a little. As she had not known when first she recognized, as she looked down into the street from her nursery window, that the children nearly always passed in twos or threes and laughed and skipped and talked, so she did not know when she first began to notice these joyous young pairs and a certain touch of exultation in them and feel that it was sweet and quite a simple common natural thing. Her noting and being sometimes moved by it was as natural as her pleasure in the opening of spring flowers or the new thrill of spring birds—but she did not know that either.

The brain which has worked through many years in unison with the soul to which it was apportioned has evolved a knowledge which has deep cognizance of the universal law. The brain of the old Duchess had so worked, keeping pace always with its guide, never visualizing the possibility of working alone, also never falling into the abyss of that human folly whose conviction is that all that one sees and gives a special name to is all that exists—or that the names accepted by the world justly and clearly describe qualities, yearnings, moods, as they are. This had developed within her wide perception and a wisdom which was sane and kind to tenderness.

As she drove through the streets with Robin beside her she saw the following eyes, she saw the girl's soft friendly look at the young creatures who passed her glowing and uplifted by the joy of life, and she was moved and even disturbed.

After her return from one particular morning's outing she sent for Dowie.

"You have taken care of Miss Robin since she was a little child?" she began.

"She was not quite six when I first went to her, your grace."

"You are not of the women who only feed and bathe a child and keep her well dressed. You have been a sort of mother to her."

"I've tried to, your grace. I've loved her and watched over her and she's loved me, I do believe."

"That is why I want to talk to you about her, Dowie. If you were the woman who merely comes and goes in a child's life, I could not. She is—a very beautiful young thing, Dowie."

"From her little head to her slim bits of feet, your grace. No one knows better than I do."

The Duchess' renowned smile revealed itself.

"A beautiful young thing ought to see and know other beautiful young things and make friends with them. That is one of the reasons for their being put in the world. Since she has been with me she has spoken to no one under forty. Has she never had young friends?"

"Never, your grace. Once two—young baggages—were left to have tea with her and they talked to her about divorce scandals and corespondents. She never wanted to see them again." Dowie's face set itself in lines of perfectly correct inexpressiveness and she added, "They set her asking me questions I couldn't answer. And she broke down because she suddenly understood why. No, your grace, she's not known those of her own age."

"She is—of the ignorance of a child," the Duchess thought it out slowly.

"She thinks not, poor lamb, but she is," Dowie answered. The Duchess' eyes met hers and they looked at each other for a moment. Dowie tried to retain a non-committal steadiness and the Duchess observing the intention knew that she was free to speak.

"Lord Coombe confided to me that she had passed through a hideous danger which had made a lasting impression on her," she said in a low voice. "He told me because he felt it would explain certain reserves and fears in her."

"Sometimes she wakes up out of nightmares about it," said Dowie. "And she creeps into my room shivering and I take her into my bed and hold her in my arms until she's over the panic. She says the worst of it is that she keeps thinking that there may have been other girls trapped like her—and that they did not get away."

The Duchess was very thoughtful. She saw the complications in which such a horror would involve a girl's mind.

"If she consorted with other young things and talked nonsense with them and shared their pleasures she would forget it," she said.

"Ah!" exclaimed Dowie. "That's it."

The question in the Duchess' eyes when she lifted them required an answer and she gave it respectfully.

"The thing that happened was only the last touch put to what she'd gradually been finding out as she grew from child to young girl. The ones she would like to know—she said it in plain words once to Mademoiselle—might not want to know her. I must take the liberty of speaking plain, your grace, or it's no use me speaking at all. She holds it deep in her mind that she's a sort of young outcast."

"I must convince her that she is not—." It was the beginning of what the Duchess had meant to say, but she actually found herself pausing, held for the moment by Dowie's quiet, civil eye.

"Was your grace in your kindness thinking—?" was what the excellent woman said.

"Yes. That I would invite young people to meet her—help them to know each other and to make friends." And even as she said it she was conscious of being slightly under the influence of Dowie's wise gaze.

"Your grace only knows those young people she would like to know." It was a mere simple statement.

"People are not as censorious as they once were." Her grace's tone was intended to reply to the suggestion lying in the words which had worn the air of statement without comment.

"Some are not, but some are," Dowie answered. "There's two worlds in London now, your grace. One is your grace's and one is Mrs. Gareth-Lawless'. I HAVE heard say there are others between, but I only know those two."

The Duchess pondered again.

"You are thinking that what Miss Robin said to Mademoiselle Valle might be true—in mine. And perhaps you are not altogether wrong even if you are not altogether right."

"Until I went to take care of Miss Robin I had only had places in families Mrs. Gareth-Lawless' set didn't touch anywhere. What I'm remembering is that there was a—strictness—shown sometimes even when it seemed a bit harsh. Among the servants the older ones said that is was BECAUSE of the new sets and their fast wicked ways. One of my young ladies once met another young lady about her own age—she was just fifteen—at a charity bazaar and they made friends and liked each other very much. The young lady's mother was one there was a lot of talk about in connection with a person of very high station—the highest, your grace—and everyone knew. The girl was a lovely little creature and beautifully behaved. It was said her mother wanted to push her into the world she couldn't get into herself. The acquaintance was stopped, your grace—it was put a stop to at once. And my poor little young lady quite broke her heart over it, and I heard it was much worse for the other."

"I will think this over," the Duchess said. "It needs thinking over. I wished to talk to you because I have seen that she has fixed little ideas regarding what she thinks is suited to her position as a paid companion and she might not be prepared. I wish you to see that she has a pretty little frock or so which she could wear if she required them."

"She has two, your grace," Dowie smiled affectionately as she said it. "One for evening and one for special afternoon wear in case your grace needed her to attend you for some reason. They are as plain as she dare make them, but when she puts one on she can't help giving it A LOOK."

"Yes—she would give it all it needed," her grace said. "Thank you, Dowie. You may go."

With her sketch of a respectful curtsey Dowie went towards the door. As she approached it her step became slower; before she reached it she had stopped and there was a remarkable look on her face—a suddenly heroic look. She turned and made several steps backward and paused again which unexpected action caused the Duchess to turn to glance at her. When she glanced her grace recognized the heroic look and waited, with a consciousness of some slight new emotion within herself, for its explanation.

"Your grace," Dowie began, asking God himself to give courage if she was doing right and to check her if she was making a mistake, "When your grace was thinking of the parents of other young ladies and gentlemen—did it come to you to put it to yourself whether you'd be willing—" she caught her breath, but ended quite clearly, respectfully, reasonably. "Lady Kathryn—Lord Halwyn—" Lady Kathryn was the Duchess' young granddaughter, Lord Halwyn was her extremely good-looking grandson who was in the army.

The Duchess understood what the heroic look had meant, and her respect for it was great. Its intention had not been to suggest inclusion of George and Kathryn in her pun, it had only with pure justice put it to her to ask herself what her own personal decision in such a matter would be.

"You do feel as if you were her mother," she said. "And you are a practical, clear-minded woman. It is only if I myself am willing to take such a step that I have a right to ask it of other people. Lady Lothwell is the mother I must speak to first. Her children are mine though I am a mere grandmother."

Lady Lothwell was her daughter and though she was not regarded as Victorian either of the Early or the Middle periods, Dowie as she returned to her own comfortable quarters wondered what would happen.



CHAPTER XXX



What did occur was not at all complicated. It would not have been possible for a woman to have spent her girlhood with the cleverest mother of her day and have emerged from her training either obstinate or illogical. Lady Lothwell listened to as much of the history of Robin as her mother chose to tell her and plainly felt an amiable interest in it. She knew much more detail and gossip concerning Mrs. Gareth-Lawless than the Duchess herself did. She had heard of the child who was kept out of sight, and she had been somewhat disgusted by a vague story of Lord Coombe's abnormal interest in it and the ugly hint that he had an object in view. It was too unpleasantly morbid to be true of a man her mother had known for years.

"Of course you were not thinking of anything large or formal?" she said after a moment of smiling hesitation.

"No. I am not launching a girl into society. I only want to help her to know a few nice young people who are good-natured and well-mannered. She is not the ordinary old lady's companion and if she were not so strict with herself and with me, I confess I should behave towards her very much as I should behave to Kathryn if you could spare her to live with me. She is a heart-warming young thing. Because I am known to have one of my eccentric fancies for her and because after all her father WAS well connected, her present position will not be the obstacle. She is not the first modern girl who has chosen to support herself."

"But isn't she much too pretty?"

"Much. But she doesn't flaunt it."

"But heart-warming—and too pretty! Dearest mamma!" Lady Lothwell laughed again. "She can do no harm to Kathryn, but I own that if George were not at present quite madly in love with a darling being at least fifteen years older than himself I should pause to reflect. Mrs. Stacy will keep him steady—Mrs. Alan Stacy, you know—the one with the magnificent henna hair, and the eyes that droop. No boy of twenty-two can resist her. They call her adorers 'The Infant School'."

"A small dinner and a small dance—and George and Kathryn may be the beginning of an interesting experiment. It would be pretty and kind of you to drop in during the course of the evening."

"Are you hoping to—perhaps—make a marriage for her?" Lady Lothwell asked the question a shade disturbedly. "You are so amazing, mamma darling, that I know you will do it, if you believe in it. You seem to be able to cause the things you really want, to evolve from the universe."

"She is the kind of girl whose place in the universe is in the home of some young man whose own place in the universe is in the heart and soul and life of her kind of girl. They ought to carry out the will of God by falling passionately in love with each other. They ought to marry each other and have a large number of children as beautiful and rapturously happy as themselves. They would assist in the evolution of the race."

"Oh! Mamma! how delightful you always are! For a really brilliant woman you are the most adorable dreamer in the world."

"Dreams are the only things which are true. The rest are nothing but visions."

"Angel!" her daughter laughed a little adoringly as she kissed her. "I will do whatever you want me to do. I always did, didn't I? It's your way of making one see what you see when you are talking that does it."

It was understood before they parted that Kathryn and George would be present at the small dinner and the small dance, and that a few other agreeable young persons might be trusted to join them, and that Lady Lothwell and perhaps her husband would drop in.

"It's your being almost Early Victorian, mamma, which makes it easy for you to initiate things. You will initiate little Miss Lawless. It was rather neat of her to prefer to drop the 'Gareth.' There has been less talk in late years of the different classes 'keeping their places'—'upper' and 'lower' classes really strikes one as vulgar."

"We may 'keep our places'," the Duchess said. "We may hold on to them as firmly as we please. It is the places themselves which are moving, my dear. It is not unlike the beginning of a landslide."

Robin went to Dowie's room the next evening and stood a moment in silence watching her sewing before she spoke. She looked anxious and even pale.

"Her grace is going to give a party to some young people, Dowie," she said. "She wishes me to be present. I—I don't know what to do."

"What you must do, my dear, is to put on your best evening frock and go downstairs and enjoy yourself as the other young people will. Her grace wants you to see someone your own age," was Dowie's answer.

"But I am not like the others. I am only a girl earning her living as a companion. How do I know—"

"Her grace knows," Dowie said. "And what she asks you to do it is your duty to do—and do it prettily."

Robin lost even a shade more colour.

"Do you realize that I have never been to a party in my life—not even to a children's party, Dowie? I shall not know how to behave myself."

"You know how to talk nicely to people, and you know how to sit down and rise from your chair and move about a room like a quiet young lady. You dance like a fairy. You won't be asked to do anything more."

"The Duchess," reflected Robin aloud slowly, "would not let me come downstairs if she did not know that people would—be kind."

"Lady Kathryn and Lord Halwyn are coming. They are her own grandchildren," Dowie said.

"How did you know that?" Robin inquired.

Robin's colour began to come back.

"It's not what usually happens to girls in situations," she said.

"Her grace herself isn't what usually happens," said Dowie. "There is no one like her for high wisdom and kindness."

Having herself awakened to the truth of this confidence-inspiring fact, Robin felt herself supported by it. One knew what far-sighted perception and clarity of experienced vision this one woman had gained during her many years of life. If she had elected to do this thing she had seen her path clear before her and was not offering a gift which awkward chance might spoil or snatch away from the hand held out to receive it. A curious slow warmth began to creep about Robin's heart and in its mounting gradually fill her being. It was true she had been taught to dance, to move about and speak prettily. She had been taught a great many things which seemed to be very carefully instilled into her mind and body without any special reason. She had not been aware that Lord Coombe and Mademoiselle Valle had directed and discussed her training as if it had been that of a young royal person whose equipment must be a flawless thing. If the Dowager Duchess of Darte had wished to present her at Court some fair morning she would have known the length of the train she must wear, where she must make her curtseys and to whom and to what depth, how to kiss the royal hand, and how to manage her train when she retired from the presence. When she had been taught this she had asked Mademoiselle Valle if the training was part of every girl's education and Mademoiselle had answered,

"It is best to know everything—even ceremonials which may or may not prove of use. It all forms part of a background and prevents one from feeling unfamiliar with customs."

When she had passed the young pairs in the streets she had found an added interest in them because of this background. She could imagine them dancing together in fairy ball rooms whose lights and colours her imagination was obliged to construct for her out of its own fabric; she knew what the girls would look like if they went to a Drawing Room and she often wondered if they would feel shy when the page spread out their lovely peacock tails for them and left them to their own devices. It was mere Nature that she should have pondered and pondered and sometimes unconsciously longed to feel herself part of the flood of being sweeping past her as she stood apart on the brink of the river.

The warmth about her heart made it beat a little faster. She opened the door of her wardrobe when she found herself in her bedroom. The dress hung modestly in its corner shrouded from the penetration of London fogs by clean sheeting. It was only white and as simple as she knew how to order it, but Mademoiselle had taken her to a young French person who knew exactly what she was doing in all cases, and because the girl had the supple lines of a wood nymph and the eyes of young antelope she had evolved that which expressed her as a petal expresses its rose. Robin locked her door and took the dress down and found the silk stockings and slippers which belonged to it. She put them all on standing before her long mirror and having left no ungiven last touch she fell a few steps backward and looked at herself, turning and balancing herself as a bird might have done. She turned lightly round and round.

"Yes. I AM—" she said. "I am—very!"

The next instant she laughed at herself outright.

"How silly! How silly!" she said. "Almost EVERYBODY is—more or less! I wonder if I remember the new steps." For she had been taught the new steps—the new walking and swayings and pauses and sudden swirls and swoops. And her new dress was as short as other fashionable girls' dresses were, but in her case revealed a haunting delicacy of contour and line.

So before her mirror she danced alone and as she danced her lips parted and her breast rose and fell charmingly, and her eyes lighted and glowed as any girl's might have done or as a joyous girl nymph's might have lighted as she danced by a pool in her forest seeing her loveliness mirrored there.

Something was awakening as something had awakened when Donal had kissed a child under the soot sprinkled London trees.



CHAPTER XXXI



The whole day before the party was secretly exciting to Robin. She knew how much more important it seemed to her than it really was. If she had been six years old she might have felt the same kind of uncertain thrills and tremulous wonders. She hid herself behind the window curtains in her room that she might see the men putting up the crimson and white awning from the door to the carriage step. The roll of red carpet they took from their van had a magic air. The ringing of the door bell which meant that things were being delivered, the extra moving about of servants, the florists' men who went into the drawing-rooms and brought flowers and big tropical plants to re-arrange the conservatory and fill corners which were not always decorated—each and every one of them quickened the beating of her pulses. If she had belonged in her past to the ordinary cheerful world of children, she would have felt by this time no such elation. But she had only known of the existence of such festivities as children's parties because once a juvenile ball had been given in a house opposite her mother's and she had crouched in an almost delirious little heap by the nursery window watching carriages drive up and deposit fluffy pink and white and blue children upon the strip of red carpet, and had seen them led or running into the house. She had caught sounds of strains of music and had shivered with rapture—but Oh! what worlds away from her the party had been.

She found her way into the drawing-rooms which were not usually thrown open. They were lofty and stately and seemed to her immense. There were splendid crystal-dropping chandeliers and side lights which she thought looked as if they would hold a thousand wax candles. There was a delightfully embowered corner for the musicians. It was all spacious and wonderful in its beautiful completeness—its preparedness for pleasure. She realized that all of it had always been waiting to be used for the happiness of people who knew each other and were young and ready for delight. When the young Lothwells had been children they had had dances and frolicking games with other children in the huge rooms and had kicked up their young heels on the polished floors at Christmas parties and on birthdays. How wonderful it must have been. But they had not known it was wonderful.

As Dowie dressed her the reflection she saw in the mirror gave back to her an intensified Robin whose curved lips almost quivered as they smiled. The soft silk of her hair looked like the night and the small rings on the back of her very slim white neck were things to ensnare the eye and hold it helpless.

"You look your best, my dear," Dowie said as she clasped her little necklace. "And it is a good best." Dowie was feeling tremulous herself though she could not have explained why. She thought that perhaps it was because she wished that Mademoiselle could have been with her.

Robin kissed her when the last touch had been given.

"I'm going to run down the staircase," she said. "If I let myself walk slowly I shall have time to feel queer and shy and I might seem to CREEP into the drawing-room. I mustn't creep in. I must walk in as if I had been to parties all my life."

She ran down and as she did so she looked like a white bird flying, but she was obliged to stop upon the landing before the drawing-room door to quiet a moment of excited breathing. Still when she entered the room she moved as she should and held her head poised with a delicately fearless air. The Duchess—who herself looked her best in her fine old ivory profiled way—gave her a pleased smile of welcome which was almost affectionate.

"What a perfect little frock!" she said. "You are delightfully pretty in it."

"Is it quite right?" said Robin. "Mademoiselle chose it for me."

"It is quite right. 'Frightfully right,' George would say. George will sit near you at dinner. He is my grandson—Lord Halwyn you know, and you will no doubt frequently hear him say things are 'frightfully' something or other during the evening. Kathryn will say things are 'deevy' or 'exquig'. I mention it because you may not know that she means 'exquisite' and 'divine.' Don't let it frighten you if you don't quite understand their language. They are dear handsome things sweeping along in the rush of their bit of century. I don't let it frighten me that their world seems to me an entirely new planet."

Robin drew a little nearer her. She felt something as she had felt years ago when she had said to Dowie. "I want to kiss you, Dowie." Her eyes were pools of childish tenderness because she so well understood the infinitude of the friendly tact which drew her within its own circle with the light humour of its "I don't let them frighten ME."

"You are kind—kind to me," she said. "And I am grateful—GRATEFUL."

The extremely good-looking young people who began very soon to drift into the brilliant big room—singly or in pairs of brother and sister—filled her with innocent delight. They were so well built and gaily at ease with each other and their surroundings, so perfectly dressed and finished. The filmy narrowness of delicate frocks, the shortness of skirts accentuated the youth and girlhood and added to it a sort of child fairy-likeness. Kathryn in exquisite wisps of silver-embroidered gauze looked fourteen instead of nearly twenty—aided by a dimple in her cheek and a small tilted nose. A girl in scarlet tulle was like a child out of a nursery ready to dance about a Christmas tree. Everyone seemed so young and so suggested supple dancing, perhaps because dancing was going on everywhere and all the world whether fashionable or unfashionable was driven by a passion for whirling, swooping and inventing new postures and fantastic steps. The young men had slim straight bodies and light movements. Their clothes fitted their suppleness to perfection. Robin thought they all looked as if they had had a great deal of delightful exercise and plenty of pleasure all their lives.

They were of that stream which had always seemed to be rushing past her in bright pursuit of alluring things which belonged to them as part of their existence, but which had had nothing to do with her own youth. Now the stream had paused as if she had for the moment some connection with it. The swift light she was used to seeing illuminate glancing eyes as she passed people in the street, she saw again and again as new arrivals appeared. Kathryn was quite excited by her eyes and eyelashes and George hovered about. There was a great deal of hovering. At the dinner table sleek young heads held themselves at an angle which allowed of their owners seeing through or around, or under floral decorations and alert young eyes showed an eager gleam. After dinner was over and dancing began the Duchess smiled shrewdly as she saw the gravitating masculine movement towards a certain point. It was the point where Robin stood with a small growing circle about her.

It was George who danced with her first. He was tall and slender and flexible and his good shoulders had a military squareness of build. He had also a nice square face, and a warmly blue eye and knew all the latest steps and curves and unexpected swirls. Robin was an ozier wand and there was no swoop or dart or sudden sway and change she was not alert at. The swing and lure of the music, the swift movement, the fluttering of airy draperies as slim sister nymphs flew past her, set her pulses beating with sweet young joy. A brief, uncontrollable ripple of laughter broke from her before she had circled the room twice.

"How heavenly it is!" she exclaimed and lifted her eyes to Halwyn's. "How heavenly!"

They were not safe eyes to lift in such a way to those of a very young man. They gave George a sudden enjoyable shock. He had heard of the girl who was a sort of sublimated companion to his grandmother. The Duchess herself had talked to him a little about her and he had come to the party intending to behave very amiably and help the little thing enjoy herself. He had also encountered before in houses where there were no daughters the smart well-born, young companion who was allowed all sorts of privileges because she knew how to assume tiresome little responsibilities and how to be entertaining enough to add cheer and spice to the life of the elderly and lonely. Sometimes she was a subtly appealing sort of girl and given to being sympathetic and to liking sympathy and quiet corners in conservatories or libraries, and sometimes she was capable of scientific flirtation and required scientific management. A man had to have his wits about him. This one as she flew like a blown leaf across the floor and laughed up into his face with wide eyes, produced a new effect and was a new kind.

"It's you who are heavenly," he answered with a boy's laugh. "You are like a feather—and a willow wand."

"You are light too," she laughed back, "and you are like steel as well."

Mrs. Alan Stacy, the lady with the magnificent henna hair, had recently given less time to him, being engaged in the preliminary instruction of a new member of the Infant Class. Such things will, of course, happen and though George had quite ingenuously raged in secret, the circumstances left him free to "hover" and hovering was a pastime he enjoyed.

"Let us go on like this forever and ever," he said sweeping half the length of the room with her and whirling her as if she were indeed a leaf in the wind, "Forever and ever."

"I wish we could. But the music will stop," she gave back.

"Music ought never to stop—never," he answered.

But the music did stop and when it began again almost immediately another tall, flexible young man made a lightning claim on her and carried her away only to hand her to another and he in his turn to another. She was not allowed more than a moment's rest and borne on the crest of the wave of young delight, she did not need more. Young eyes were always laughing into hers and elating her by a special look of pleasure in everything she did or said or inspired in themselves. How was she informed without phrases that for this exciting evening she was a creature without a flaw, that the loveliness of her eyes startled those who looked into them, that it was a thrilling experience to dance with her, that somehow she was new and apart and wonderful? No sleek-haired, slim and straight-backed youth said exactly any of these things to her, but somehow they were conveyed and filled her with a wondering realization of the fact that if they were true, they were no longer dreadful and maddening, since they only made people like and want to dance with one. To dance, to like people and be liked seemed so heavenly natural and right—to be only like air and sky and free, happy breathing. There was, it was true, a blissful little uplifted look about her which she herself was not aware of, but which was singularly stimulating to the masculine beholder. It only meant indeed that as she whirled and swayed and swooped laughing she was saying to herself at intervals,

"This is what other girls feel like. They are happy like this. I am laughing and talking to people just as other girls do. I am Robin Gareth-Lawless, but I am enjoying a party like this—a YOUNG party."

Lady Lothwell sitting near her mother watched the trend of affairs with an occasional queer interested smile.

"Well, mamma darling," she said at last as youth and beauty whirled by in a maelstrom of modern Terpsichorean liveliness, "she is a great success. I don't know whether it is quite what you intended or not."

The Duchess did not explain what she had intended. She was watching the trend also and thinking a good deal. On the whole Lady Lothwell had scarcely expected that she would explain. She rarely did. She seldom made mistakes, however.

Kathryn in her scant gauzy strips of white and silver having drifted towards them at the moment stood looking on with a funny little disturbed expression on her small, tip-tilted face.

"There's something ABOUT her, grandmamma," she said.

"All the girls see it and no one knows what it is. She's sitting out for a few minutes and just look at George—and Hal Brunton—and Captain Willys. They are all laughing, of course, and pretending to joke, but they would like to eat each other up. Perhaps it's her eyelashes. She looks out from under them as if they were a curtain."

Lady Lothwell's queer little smile became a queer little laugh.

"Yes. It gives her a look of being ecstatically happy and yet almost shy and appealing at the same time. Men can't stand it of course."

"None of them are trying to stand it," answered little Lady Kathryn somewhat in the tone of a retort.

"I don't believe she knows she does it," Lady Lothwell said quite reflectively.

"She does not know at all. That is the worst of it," commented the Duchess.

"Then you see that there IS a worst," said her daughter.

The Duchess glanced towards Kathryn, but fortunately the puzzled fret of the girl's forehead was even at the moment melting into a smile as a young man of much attraction descended upon her with smiles of his own and carried her into the Tango or Fox Trot or Antelope Galop, whichsoever it chanced to be.

"If she were really aware of it that would be 'the worst' for other people—for us probably. She could look out from under her lashes to sufficient purpose to call what she wanted and take and keep it. As she is not aware, it will make things less easy for herself—under the circumstances."

"The circumstance of being Mrs. Gareth-Lawless' daughter is not an agreeable one," said Lady Lothwell.

"It might give some adventurous boys ideas when they had time to realize all it means. Do you know I am rather sorry for her myself. I shouldn't be surprised if she were rather a dear little thing. She looks tender and cuddle-some. Perhaps she is like the heroine of a sentimental novel I read the other day. Her chief slave said of her 'She walks into a man's heart through his eyes and sits down there and makes a warm place which will never get cold again.' Rather nice, I thought."

The Duchess thought it rather nice also.

"'Never get cold again,'" she repeated. "What a heavenly thing to happen to a pair of creatures—if—" she paused and regarded Robin, who at the other side of the room was trying to decide some parlous question of dances to which there was more than one claimant. She was sweetly puckering her brow over her card and round her were youthful male faces looking eager and even a trifle tense with repressed anxiety for the victory of the moment.

"Oh!" Lady Lothwell laughed. "As Kitty says 'There's something about her' and it's not mere eyelashes. You have let loose a germ among us, mamma my sweet, and you can't do anything with a germ when you have let it loose. To quote Kitty again, 'Look at George!'"

The music which came from the bower behind which the musicians were hidden seemed to gain thrill and wildness as the hours went on. As the rooms grew warmer the flowers breathed out more reaching scent. Now and again Robin paused for a moment to listen to strange delightful chords and to inhale passing waves of something like mignonette and lilies, and apple blossoms in the sun. She thought there must be some flower which was like all three in one. The rushing stream was carrying her with it as it went—one of the happy petals on its surface. Could it ever cast her aside and leave her on the shore again? While the violins went singing on and the thousand wax candles shone on the faint or vivid colours which mingled into a sort of lovely haze, it did not seem possible that a thing so enchanting and so real could have an end at all. All the other things in her life seemed less real tonight.

In the conservatory there was a marble fountain which had long years ago been brought from a palace garden in Rome. It was not as large as it was beautiful and it had been placed among palms and tropic ferns whose leaves and fronds it splashed merrily among and kept deliciously cool and wet-looking. There was a quite intoxicating hot-house perfume of warm damp moss and massed flowers and it was the kind of corner any young man would feel it necessary to gravitate towards with a partner.

George led Robin to it and she naturally sat upon the edge of the marble basin and as naturally drew off a glove and dipped her hand into the water, splashing it a little because it felt deliciously cool. George stood near at first and looked down at her bent head. It was impossible not also to take in her small fine ear and the warm velvet white of the lovely little nape of her slim neck. He took them in with elated appreciation. He was not subtle minded enough to be aware that her reply to a casual remark he had made to her at dinner had had a remote effect upon him.

"One of the loveliest creatures I ever saw was a Mrs. Gareth-Lawless," he had said. "Are you related to her?"

"I am her daughter," Robin had answered and with a slightly startled sensation he had managed to slip into amiably deft generalities while he had secretly wondered how much his grandmother knew or did not know.

An involuntary thought of Feather had crossed his mind once or twice during the evening. This was the girl who, it was said, had actually been saved up for old Coombe. Ugly morbid sort of idea if it was true. How had the Duchess got hold of her and why and what was Coombe really up to? Could he have some elderly idea of wanting a youngster for a wife? Occasionally an old chap did. Serve him right if some young chap took the wind out of his sails. He was not a desperate character, but he had been very intimate with Mrs. Alan Stacy and her friends and it had made him careless. Also Robin had drawn him—drawn him more than he knew.

"Is it still heavenly?" he asked. (How pointed her fingers were and how soft and crushable her hand looked as it splashed like a child's.)

"More heavenly every minute," she answered. He laughed outright.

"The heavenly thing is the way you are enjoying it yourself. I never saw a girl light up a whole room before. You throw out stars as you dance."

"That's like a skyrocket," Robin laughed back. "And it's because in all my life I never went to a dance before."

"Never! You mean except to children's parties?"

"There were no children's parties. This is the first—first—first."

"Well, I don't see how that happened, but I am glad it did because it's been a great thing for me to see you at your first—first—first."

He sat down on the fountain's edge near her.

"I shall not forget it," he said.

"I shall remember it as long as I live," said Robin and she lifted her unsafe eyes again and smiled into his which made them still more unsafe.

Perhaps it was because he was extremely young, perhaps it was because he was immoral, perhaps because he had never held a tight rein on his fleeting emotions, even the next moment he felt that it was because he was an idiot—but suddenly he found he had let himself go and was kissing the warm velvet of the slim little nape—had kissed it twice.

He had not given himself time to think what would happen as a result, but what did happen was humiliating and ridiculous. One furious splash of the curled hand flung water into his face and eyes and mouth while Robin tore herself free from him and stood blazing with fury and woe—for it was not only fury he saw.

"You—You—!" she cried and actually would have swooped to the fountain again if he had not caught her arm.

He was furious himself—at himself and at her.

"You—little fool!" he gasped. "What did you do that for even if I WAS a jackass? There was nothing in it. You're so pretty——"

"You've spoiled everything!" she flamed, "everything—everything!"

"I've spoiled nothing. I've only been a fool—and it's your own fault for being so pretty."

"You've spoiled everything in the world! Now—" with a desolate horrible little sob, "now I can only go back—BACK!"

He had a queer idea that she spoke as if she were Cinderella and he had made the clock strike twelve. Her voice had such absolute grief in it that he involuntarily drew near her.

"I say," he was really breathless, "don't speak like that. I beg pardon. I'll grovel! Don't—Oh! Kathryn—COME here."

This last because at this difficult moment from between the banks of hot-house bloom and round the big palms his sister Kathryn suddenly appeared. She immediately stopped short and stared at them both—looking from one to the other.

"What is the matter?" she asked in a low voice.

"Oh! COME and talk to her," George broke forth. "I feel as if she might scream in a minute and call everybody in. I've been a lunatic and she has apparently never been kissed before. Tell her—tell her you've been kissed yourself."

A queer little look revealed itself in Kathryn's face. A delicate vein of her grandmother's wisdom made part of her outlook upon a rapidly moving and exciting world. She had never been hide-bound or dull and for a slight gauzy white and silver thing she was astute.

"Don't be impudent," she said to George as she walked up to Robin and put a cool hand on her arm. "He's only been silly. You'd better let him off," she said. She turned a glance on George who was wiping his sleeve with a handkerchief and she broke into a small laugh, "Did she push you into the fountain?" she asked cheerfully.

"She threw the fountain at me," grumbled George. "I shall have to dash off home and change."

"I would," replied Kathryn still cheerful. "You can apologize better when you're dry."

He slid through the palms like a snake and the two girls stood and gazed at each other. Robin's flame had died down and her face had settled itself into a sort of hardness. Kathryn did not know that she herself looked at her as the Duchess might have looked at another girl in the quite different days of her youth.

"I'll tell you something now he's gone," she said. "I HAVE been kissed myself and so have other girls I know. Boys like George don't really matter, though of course it's bad manners. But who has got good manners? Things rush so that there's scarcely time for manners at all. When an older man makes a snatch at you it's sometimes detestable. But to push him into the fountain was a good idea," and she laughed again.

"I didn't push him in."

"I wish you had," with a gleeful mischief. The next moment, however, the hint of a worried frown showed itself on her forehead. "You see," she said protestingly, "you are so FRIGHTFULLY pretty."

"I'd rather be a leper," Robin shot forth.

But Kathryn did not of course understand.

"What nonsense!" she answered. "What utter rubbish! You know you wouldn't. Come back to the ball room. I came here because my mother was asking for George."

She turned to lead the way through the banked flowers and as she did so added something.

"By the way, somebody important has been assassinated in one of the Balkan countries. They are always assassinating people. They like it. Lord Coombe has just come in and is talking it over with grandmamma. I can see they are quite excited in their quiet way."

As they neared the entrance to the ball room she paused a moment with a new kind of impish smile.

"Every girl in the room is absolutely shaky with thrills at this particular moment," she said. "And every man feels himself bristling a little. The very best looking boy in all England is dancing with Sara Studleigh. He dropped in by chance to call and the Duchess made him stay. He is a kind of miracle of good looks and takingness."

Robin said nothing. She had plainly not been interested in the Balkan tragedy and she as obviously did not care for the miracle.

"You don't ask who he is?" said Kathryn.

"I don't want to know."

"Oh! Come! You mustn't feel as sulky as that. You'll want to ask questions the moment you see him. I did. Everyone does. His name is Donal Muir. He's Lord Coombe's heir. He'll be the Head of the House of Coombe some day. Here he comes," quite excitedly, "Look!"

It was one of the tricks of Chance—or Fate—or whatever you will. The dance brought him within a few feet of them at that very moment and the slow walking steps he was taking held him—they were some of the queer stealthy almost stationary steps of the Argentine Tango. He was finely and smoothly fitted as the other youngsters were, his blond glossed head was set high on a heroic column of neck, he was broad of shoulder, but not too broad, slim of waist, but not too slim, long and strong of leg, but light and supple and firm. He had a fair open brow and a curved mouth laughing to show white teeth. Robin felt he ought to wear a kilt and plaid and that an eagle's feather ought to be standing up from a chieftain's bonnet on the fair hair which would have waved if it had been allowed length enough. He was scarcely two yards from her now and suddenly—almost as if he had been called—he turned his eyes away from Sara Studleigh who was the little thing in Christmas tree scarlet. They were blue like the clear water in a tarn when the sun shines on it and they were still laughing as his mouth was. Straight into hers they laughed—straight into hers.



CHAPTER XXXII



Through all aeons since all the worlds were made it is at least not unthinkable that in all the worlds of which our own atom is one, there has ruled a Force illimitable, unconquerable and inexplicable and whichsoever its world and whatsoever the sign denoting or the name given it, the Force—the Thing has been the same. Upon our own atom of the universe it is given the generic name of Love and its existence is that which the boldest need not defy, the most profound need not attempt to explain with clarity, the most brilliantly sophistical to argue away. Its forms of beauty, triviality, magnificence, imbecility, loveliness, stupidity, holiness, purity and bestiality neither detract from nor add to its unalterable power. As the earth revolves upon its axis and reveals night and day, Spring, Summer and Winter, so it reveals this ceaselessly working Force. Men who were as gods have been uplifted or broken by it, fools have trifled with it, brutes have sullied it, saints have worshipped, poets sung and wits derided it. As electricity is a force death dealing, or illuminating and power bestowing, so is this Great Impeller, and it is fatuous—howsoever worldly wise or moderately sardonic one would choose to be—to hint ironically that its proportions are less than the ages have proved them. Whether a world formed without a necessity for the presence and assistance of this psychological factor would have been a better or a worse one, it is—by good fortune—not here imperative that one should attempt to decide. What is—exists. None of us created it. Each one will deal with the Impeller as he himself either sanely or madly elects. He will also bear the consequences—and so also may others.

Of this force the Head of the House of Coombe and his old friend knew much and had often spoken to each other. They had both been accustomed to recognizing its signs subtle or crude, and watching their development. They had seen it in the eyes of creatures young enough to be called boys and girls, they had heard it in musical laughter and in silly giggles, they had seen it express itself in tragedy and comedy and watched it end in union or in a nothingness which melted away like a wisp of fog. But they knew it was a thing omnipresent and that no one passed through life untouched by it in some degree.

Years before this evening two children playing in a garden had not know that the Power—the Thing—drew them with its greatest strength because among myriads of atoms they two were created for oneness. Enraptured and unaware they played together, their souls and bodies drawn nearer each other every hour.

So it was that—without being portentous—one may say that when an unusually beautiful and unusually well dressed and perfectly fitted young man turned involuntarily in the particular London ball room in which Mrs. Gareth-Lawless' daughter watched the dancers, and looked unintentionally into the eyes of a girl standing for a moment near the wide entrance doors, the inexplicable and unconquerable Force reconnected its currents again.

Donal Muir's eyes only widened a little for a second's time. He had not known why he had suddenly looked around and he did not know why he was conscious of something which startled him a little. You could not actually stare at a girl because your eyes chanced to get entangled in hers for a second as you danced past her. It was true she was of a startling prettiness and there was something—. Yes, there was SOMETHING which drew the eye and—. He did not know what it was. It had actually given him a sort of electric shock. He laughed at himself a little and then his open brow looked puzzled for a moment.

"You saw Miss Lawless," said Sara Studleigh who was at the moment dancing prettily with him. She was guilty of something which might have been called a slight giggle, but it was good-natured. "I know, you saw Miss Lawless—the pretty one near the door."

"There are so many pretty ones near everything. You can't lift your eyes without seeing one," Donal answered. "What a lot of them!" (The sense of having received a slight electric shock made you feel that you must look again and find out what had caused it, he was thinking.)

"She is the one with the eyelashes."

"I have eyelashes—so have you," looking down at hers with a very taking expression. Hers were in fact nice ones.

"But ours are not two inches long and they don't make a big soft circle round our eyes when we look at anyone."

"Please look up and let me see," said Donal. "When I asked you to dance with me I thought—"

What a "way" he had, Sara Studleigh was thinking. But "perhaps it WAS the eyelashes" was passing through Donal's mind. Very noticeable eyelashes were rather arresting.

"I knew you saw her," said Sara Studleigh, "because I have happened to be near two or three people this evening when they caught their first sight of her."

"What happens to them?" asked Donal Muir.

"They forget where they are," she laughed, "and don't say anything for a few seconds."

"I should not want to forget where I am. It wouldn't be possible either," answered Donal. ("But that was it," he thought. "For a minute I forgot.")

One should not dance with one girl and talk to her about another. Wisely he led her to other subjects. The music was swinging through the air performing its everlasting miracle of swinging young souls and pulses with it, the warmed flowers breathed more perceptible scent, sweet chatter and laughter, swaying colour and glowing eyes concentrated in making magic. This beautiful young man's pulses only beat with the rest—as one with the pulse of the Universe. Lady Lothwell acting for the Duchess was very kind to him finding him another partner as soon as a new dance began—this time her own daughter, Lady Kathryn.

Even while he had been tangoing with Sara Studleigh he had seen the girl with the eyelashes, whirling about with someone, and when he began his dance with Kathryn, he caught a glimpse of her at the other end of the room. And almost immediately Kathryn spoke of her.

"I don't know when you will get a dance with Miss Lawless," she said. "She is obliged to work out mathematical problems on her programme."

"I have a setter who fixes his eyes on you and waits without moving until you look at him and then he makes a dart and you're obliged to pat him," he said. "Perhaps if I go and stand near her and do that she will take notice of me."

"Take notice of him, the enslaving thing!" thought Kathryn. "She'd jump—for all her talk about lepers—any girl would. He's TOO nice! There's something about HIM too."

Robin did not jump. She had no time to do it because one dance followed another so quickly and some of them were even divided in two or three pieces. But the thrill of the singing sound of the violins behind the greenery, the perfume and stately spaces and thousand candlelights had suddenly been lifted on to another plane though she had thought they could reach no higher one. Her whole being was a keen fine awareness. Every moment she was AWARE. After all the years—from the far away days—he had come back. No one had dreamed of the queer half abnormal secret she had always kept to herself as a child—as a little girl—as a bigger one when she would have died rather than divulge that in her loneliness there had been something she had remembered—something she had held on to—a memory which she had actually made a companion of, making pictures, telling herself stories in the dark, even inventing conversations which not for one moment had she thought would or could ever take place. But they had been living things to her and her one near warm comfort—closer, oh, so weirdly closer than kind, kind Dowie and dearly beloved Mademoiselle. She had wondered if the two would have disapproved if they had known—if Mademoiselle would have been shocked if she had realized that sometimes when they walked together there walked with them a growing, laughing boy in a swinging kilt and plaid and that he had a voice and eyes that drew the heart out of your breast for joy. At first he had only been a child like herself, but as she had grown he had grown with her—but always taller, grander, marvellously masculine and beyond compare. Yet never once had she dared to believe or hope that he could take form before her eyes—a living thing. He had only been the shadow she had loved and which could not be taken away from her because he was her secret and no one could ever know.

The music went swinging and singing with notes which were almost a pain. And he was in the very room with her! Donal! Donal! He had not known and did not know. He had laughed into her eyes without knowing—but he had come back. A young man now like all the rest, but more beautiful. What a laugh, what wonderful shoulders, what wonderful dancing, how long and strongly smooth and supple he was in the line fabric of his clothes! Though her mind did not form these things in words for her, it was only that her eyes saw all the charm of him from head to foot, and told her that he was only more than ever what he had been in the miraculous first days.

"Perhaps he will not find out at all," she thought, dancing all the while and trying to talk as well as think. "I was too little for him to remember. I only remembered because I had nothing else. Oh, if he should not find out!" She could not go and tell him. Even if a girl could do such a thing, perhaps he could not recall a childish incident of so long ago—such a small, small thing. It had only been immense to her and so much water had flowed under his bridge bearing so many flotillas. She had only stood and looked down at a thin trickling stream which carried no ships at all. It was very difficult to keep her eyes from stealing—even darting—about in search of him. His high fair head with the clipped wave in its hair could be followed if one dared be alert. He danced with an auburn haired girl, he spun down the room with a brown one, he paused for a moment to show the trick of a new step to a tall one with black coils. He was at the end of the room, he was tangoing towards her and she felt her heart beat and beat. He passed close by and his eyes turned upon her and after he had passed a queer little inner trembling would not cease. Oh! if he had looked a little longer—if her partner would only carry her past him! And how dreadful she was to let herself feel so excited when he could not be EXPECTED to remember such a little thing—just a baby playing with him in a garden. Oh!—her heart giving a leap—if he would look—if he would LOOK!

When did she first awaken to a realization—after what seemed years and years of waiting and not being able to conquer the inwardly trembling feeling—that he was BEGINNING to look—that somehow he had become aware of her presence and that it drew his eyes though there was no special recognition in them? Down the full length of the room they met hers first, and again as he passed with yet another partner. Then when he was resting between danced and being very gay indeed—though somehow he always seemed gay. He had been gay when they played in the Gardens. Yes, his eyes cane and found her. She thought he spoke of her to someone near him. Of course Robin looked away and tried not to look again too soon. But when in spite of intention and even determination, something forced her glance and made it a creeping, following glance—there were his eyes again. She was frightened each time it happened, but he was not. She began to know with new beatings of the pulse that he no longer looked by chance, but because he wanted to see her—and wished her to see him, as if he had begun to call to her with a gay Donal challenge. It was like that, though his demeanour was faultlessly correct.

The incident of their meeting was faultlessly correct, also, when after one of those endless lapses of time Lady Lothwell appeared and presented him as if the brief ceremony were one of the most ordinary in existence. The conventional grace of his bow said no more than George's had said to those looking on, but when he put his arm round her and they began to sway together in the dance, Robin wondered in terror if he could not feel the beating of her heart under his hand. If he could it would be horrible—but it would not stop. To be so near—to try to believe it—to try to make herself remember that she could mean nothing to him and that it was only she who was shaking—for nothing! But she could not help it. This was the disjointed kind of thing that flew past her mental vision. She was not a shy girl, but she could not speak. Curiously enough he also was quite silent for several moments. They danced for a space without a word and they did not notice that people began to watch them because they were an attracting pair to watch. And the truth was that neither of the two knew in the least what the other thought.

"That—is a beautiful waltz," he said at last. He said it in a low meaning voice as if it were a sort of emotional confidence. He had not actually meant to speak in such a tone, but when he realized what its sound had been he did not care in the least. What was the matter with him?

"Yes," Robin answered. (Only "Yes.")

He had not known when he glanced at her first, he was saying mentally. He could not, of course, swear to her now. But what an extraordinary thing that—! She was like a swallow—she was like any swift flying thing on a man's arm. One could go on to the end of time. Once round the great ball room, twice, and as the third round began he gave a little laugh and spoke again.

"I am going to ask you a question. May I?"

"Yes."

"Is your name Robin?"

"Yes," she could scarcely breathe it.

"I thought it was," in the voice in which he had spoken of the music. "I hoped it was—after I first began to suspect. I HOPED it was."

"It is—it is."

"Did we—" he had not indeed meant that his arm should hold her a shade closer, but—in spite of himself—it did because he was after all so little more than a boy, "—did we play together in a garden?"

"Yes—yes," breathed Robin. "We did." Surely she heard a sound as if he had caught a quick breath. But after it there were a few more steps and another brief space of silence.

"I knew," he said next, very low. "I KNEW that we played together in a garden."

"You did not know when you first looked at me tonight." Innocently revealing that even his first glance had been no casual thing to her.

But his answer revealed something too.

"You were near the door—just coming into the room. I didn't know why you startled me. I kept looking for you afterwards in the crowd."

"I didn't see you look," said Robin softly, revealing still more in her utter inexperience.

"No, because you wouldn't look at me—you were too much engaged. Do you like this step?"

"I like them all."

"Do you always dance like this? Do you always make your partner feel as if he had danced with you all his life?"

"It is—because we played together in the garden," said Robin and then was quite terrified at herself. Because after all—after all they were only two conventional young people meeting for the first time at a dance, not knowing each other in the least. It was really the first time. The meeting of two children could not count. But the beating and strange elated inward tremor would not stop.

As for him he felt abnormal also and he was usually a very normal creature. It was abnormal to be so excited that he found himself, as it were, upon another plane, because he had recognized and was dancing with a girl he had not seen since she was five or six. It was not normal that he should be possessed by a desire to keep near to her, overwhelmed by an impelling wish to talk to her—to ask her questions. About what—about herself—themselves—the years between—about the garden.

"It began to come back bit by bit after I had two fair looks. You passed me several times though you didn't know." (Oh! had she not known!) "I had been promised some dances by other people. But I went to Lady Lothwell. She's very kind."

Back swept the years and it had all begun again, the wonderful happiness—just as the anguish had swept back on the night her mother had come to talk to her. As he had brought it into her dreary little world then, he brought it now. He had the power. She was so happy that she seemed to be only waiting to hear what he would say—as if that were enough. There are phases like this—rare ones—and it was her fate that through such a phase she was passing.

It was indeed true that much more water had passed under his bridge than under hers, but now—! Memory reproduced for him with an acuteness like actual pain, a childish torment he thought he had forgotten. And it was as if it had been endured only yesterday—and as if the urge to speak and explain was as intense as it had been on the first day.

"She's very little and she won't understand," he had said to his mother. "She's very little, really—perhaps she'll cry."

How monstrous it had seemed! Had she cried—poor little soul! He looked down at her eyelashes. Her cheek had been of the same colour and texture then. That came back to him too. The impulse to tighten his arms was infernally powerful—almost automatic.

"She has no one but me to remember!" he heard his own child voice saying fiercely. Good Lord, it WAS as if it had been yesterday. He actually gulped something down in his throat.

"You haven't rested much," he said aloud. "There's a conservatory with marble seats and corners and a fountain going. Will you let me take you there when we stop dancing? I want to apologize to you."

The eyelashes lifted themselves and made round her eyes the big soft shadow of which Sara Studleigh had spoken. A strong and healthy valvular organ in his breast lifted itself curiously at the same time.

"To apologize?"

Was he speaking to her almost as if she were still four or five? It was to the helplessness of those years he was about to explain—and yet he did not feel as though he were still eight.

"I want to tell you why I never came back to the garden. It was a broken promise, wasn't it?"

The music had not ceased, but they stopped dancing.

"Will you come?" he said and she went with him like a child—just as she had followed in her babyhood. It seemed only natural to do what he asked.

The conservatory was like an inner Paradise now. The tropically scented warmth—the tiers on tiers of bloom above bloom—the softened swing of music—the splash of the fountain on water and leaves. Their plane had lifted itself too. They could hear the splashing water and sometimes feel it in the corner seat of marble he took her to. A crystal drop fell on her hand when she sat down. The blue of his eyes was vaguely troubled and he spoke as if he were not certain of himself.

"I was wakened up in what seemed to me the middle of the night," he said, as if indeed the thing had happened only the day before. "My mother was obliged to go back suddenly to Scotland. I was only a little chap, but it nearly finished me. Parents and guardians don't understand how gigantic such a thing can be. I had promised you—we had promised each other—hadn't we?"

"Yes," said Robin. Her eyes were fixed upon his face—open and unmoving. Such eyes! Such eyes! All the touchingness of the past was in their waiting on his words.

"Children—little boys especially—are taught that they must not cry out when they are hurt. As I sat in the train through the journey that day I thought my heart would burst in my small breast. I turned my back and stared out of the window for fear my mother would see my face. I'd always loved her. Do you know I think that just then I HATED her. I had never hated anything before. Good Lord! What a thing for a little chap to go through! My mother was an angel, but she didn't KNOW."

"No," said Robin in a small strange voice and without moving her gaze. "She didn't KNOW."

He had seated himself on a sort of low marble stool near her and he held a knee with clasped hands. They were hands which held each other for the moment with a sort of emotional clinch. His position made him look upward at her instead of down.

"It was YOU I was wild about," he said. "You see it was YOU. I could have stood it for myself. The trouble was that I felt I was such a big little chap. I thought I was years—ages older than you—and mountains bigger," his faint laugh was touched with pity for the smallness of the big little chap. "You seemed so tiny and pretty—and lonely."

"I was as lonely as a new-born bird fallen out of its nest."

"You had told me you had 'nothing.' You said no one had ever kissed you. I'd been loved all my life. You had a wondering way of fixing your eyes on me as if I could give you everything—perhaps it was a coxy little chap's conceit that made me love you for it—but perhaps it wasn't."

"You WERE everything," Robin said—and the mere simpleness of the way in which she said it brought the garden so near that he smelt the warm hawthorn and heard the distant piano organ and it quickened his breath.

"It was because I kept seeing your eyes and hearing your laugh that I thought my heart was bursting. I knew you'd go and wait for me—and gradually your little face would begin to look different. I knew you'd believe I'd come. 'She's little'—that was what I kept saying to myself again and again. 'And she'll cry—awfully—and she'll think I did it. She'll never know.' There,"—he hesitated a moment—"there was a kind of mad shame in it. As if I'd BETRAYED your littleness and your belief, though I was too young to know what betraying was."

Just as she had looked at him before, "as if he could give her everything," she was looking at him now. In what other way could she look while he gave her this wonderful soothing, binding softly all the old wounds with unconscious, natural touch because he had really been all her child being had been irradiated and warmed by. There was no pose in his manner—no sentimental or flirtatious youth's affecting of a picturesque attitude. It was real and he told her this thing because he must for his own relief.

"Did you cry?" he said. "Did my little chap's conceit make too much of it? I suppose I ought to hope it did."

Robin put her hand softly against her heart.

"No," she answered. "I was only a baby, but I think it KILLED something—here."

He caught a big hard breath.

"Oh!" he said and for a few seconds simply sat and gazed at her.

"But it came to life again?" he said afterwards.

"I don't know. I don't know what it was. Perhaps it could only live in a very little creature. But it was killed."

"I say!" broke from him. "It was like wringing a canary's neck when it was singing in the sun!"

A sudden swelling of the music of a new dance swept in to them and he rose and stood up before her.

"Thank you for giving me my chance to tell you," he said. "This was the apology. You have been kind to listen."

"I wanted to listen," Robin said. "I am glad I didn't live a long time and grow old and die without your telling me. When I saw you tonight I almost said aloud, 'He's come back!'"

"I'm glad I came. It's queer how one can live a thing over again. There have been all the years between for us both. For me there's been all a lad's life—tutors and Eton and Oxford and people and lots of travel and amusement. But the minute I set eyes on you near the door something must have begun to drag me back. I'll own I've never liked to let myself dwell on that memory. It wasn't a good thing because it had a trick of taking me back in a fiendish way to the little chap with his heart bursting in the railway carriage—and the betrayal feeling. It's morbid to let yourself grouse over what can't be undone. So you faded away. But when I danced past you somehow I knew I'd come on SOMETHING. It made me restless. I couldn't keep my eyes away decently. Then all at once I KNEW! I couldn't tell you what the effect was. There you were again—I was as much obliged to tell you as I should have been if I'd found you at Braemarnie when I got there that night. Conventions had nothing to do with it. It would not have mattered even if you'd obviously thought I was a fool. You might have thought so, you know."

"No, I mightn't," answered Robin. "There have been no Eton and Oxford and amusements for me. This is my first party."

She rose as he had done and they stood for a second or so with their eyes resting on each other's—each with a young smile quivering into life which neither was conscious of. It was she who first wakened and came back. He saw a tiny pulse flutter in her throat and she lifted her hand with a delicate gesture.

"This dance was Lord Halwyn's and we've sat it out. We must go back to the ball room."

"I—suppose—we must," he answered with slow reluctance—but he could scarcely drag his eyes away from hers—even though he obeyed, and they turned and went.

In the shining ball room the music rose and fell and swelled again into ecstasy as he took her white young lightness in his arm and they swayed and darted and swooped like things of the air—while the old Duchess and Lord Coombe looked on almost unseeing and talked in murmurs of Sarajevo.

THE END

PUBLISHERS' NOTE

The inflexible limitations of magazine space necessitated the omission—in its serial form—of so large a portion of THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE OF COOMBE as to eliminate much of the charm of characterization and the creation of atmosphere and background which add so greatly to the power and picturesqueness of the author's work.

These values having been unavoidably lost in a greatly compressed version, it is the publishers' desire to produce the story in its entirety, and, as during its writing it developed into what might be regarded as two novels—so distinctly does it deal with two epochs—it has been decided to present it to its public as two separate books. The first, THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE OF COOMBE, deals with social life in London during the evolutionary period between the late Victorian years and the reign of Edward VII and that of his successor, previous to the Great War. It brings Lord Coombe and Donal, Feather and her girl Robin to the summer of 1914. It ends with the ending of a world which can never again be the same. The second novel, ROBIN, to be published later continues the story of the same characters, facing existence, however, in a world transformed by tragedy, and in which new aspects of character, new social, economic, and spiritual possibilities are to be confronted, rising to the surface of life as from the depths of unknown seas. Readers of THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE OF COOMBE will follow the story of Robin with intensified interest.